The Mark Moss Show | Marty Bent

he is on front. He's in front of what is going on as this world is changing, and I'm talking about it through the lens of politics, finance, and technology and the merger of those three. And we are going to talk about all three of those topics. The economy, the markets, the signs of the economy is breaking down, but what does that mean for the market, How the monetary system of the world is changing, what's going on with the World Forum, what they're talking about, and what

is going to happen from that. We're gonna talk about all that. Let's quead just jump right into the interview with Marty. Alright, Marty, thanks for hosting. I'm hosting you this time. But in your studio, tables of the table is gonna nice its chairs So here we are in the t FTC studios with UM with Marty Bent. If you don't watch Marty Show, you definitely should t f TC and read his uh every read it right, every day. Right, you're trying to get back to it. Your days been

like two just three days a week. This week, I'm getting back to five days a week. So check out his email. Will link will link to that stuff down below. UM. I always love listening to your stuff. We share a very common worldview, so so it's always a pleasure to get down to sit down talk to you as well a lot of things to cover today. You put an article I think it was this morning or last night talking about the signs of economic stress or everywhere, So

I want to dig into that first. I was just saying before we sat down that I think this year is gonna be better than most people expect, and that's a contrary and view. So let's let's talk about that a little bit and then we'll get into a bunch of other fun stuff that I have planned. But so what I there's all there's been all these like disparate stories there we've been reading on zero Hedge and they're just like siloed. That's what I try to do with this letter last night was to put a few of

them together. That's what I focused on was consumer credit and savings UM, housing or a real estate more broadly commercial real estate and residential real estate, and then the used car market. And you threw in late layoffs and layoffs as well UM, and that tied into the commercial real estate and so consumer credit, Uh, it's hitting new all time highs. Obviously, it fell significantly after the COVID lockdowns.

People went into their houses, paid off their debt, had a lot more disposable income, and they weren't traveling to work and eating out and all that jazz. But since then, if you look at like the slope of the increase of consumer credit since it started going back up, and it's a bit steeper than it was in the ten years prior after after things started going back up after eight and so we have that situation. Then you juxtapose

that credit growth with savings rates which are plummeting. There two point seven of disposable income right now, which is the second lowest point in recorded history, with the first being two point four in two thousand five, right before the housing crisis and so, and that was as of Q three two, so we have another quarter of which Christmas was abolved with. So you have to imagine people were digging in their savings to do all their spending.

And the retail numbers came in this morning and retail sales were down one point one percent, which was for Christmas. Yeah, which was lower than expected. And so that savings rates probably even a bit lower, um than it was in Q three two. And then you combine those two and add an interest rates. You have credit card rates hitting levels around on average. So that signals to me that the consumers under an immense amount of stretch stress excuse me.

They're over extending themselves, going into more debts at the same time blowing through their savings. Uh. And obviously prices are going up. Food energy, it's leveled off a bit, but it seems like wheels going back up. And so that was the one sort of theme that I honed

in on, like, Hey, consumers seem pretty stressed out. They're adding more debt at higher rates, although they haven't cut their spending no, which is weird, Yes, because uh, people, I forget what podcast I was listening to, but um, it's like a social psychological thing. Like once you're used to getting a new iPhone every eighteen months or getting the latest athletic equipment and want to keep doing that. It's just like hard. Let go that that tendency in

the latest CPI day that it just came out. Um, the core inflation is very sticky. It's like not budging, which kind of shows this consumer is just not stopping spending. No. Yeah, no, well the core inflation too. It's like going, you know, thinking what they're spending on, like food and then g predominantly um, which is your central goods. Yeah, obviously we have an egg crisis country right up, which is this bird flu. But yeah, people are freaking out about eggs,

which is something I never thought i'd see. It's weird. Yeah, it's weird when you know, we have this ranch out here and it might be a little t m I for the audience. But my daughter was freaking out at the time. They were having like a tampon shortage and like she was like seeing the news and like all these girls are freaking out and she was like freaking out. It's like the end of the world for her. You know, we have to go stockpile these things, so like seeing

whether it's eggs or that. Like, I mean, the economy is just kind of breaking down, which I want to come back to. Okay, So the consumers getting stretched, then that's a horrible um position both spending or if say saving or credit going up as savings are going down. So the consumers getting stretched, it's not cut couldn't spending yet. Um. Then we have a couple of other things, right, So the used car our markets, So what do you see? What are you see in there? Like what are you

thinking about that? So these are typically used cars, particularly like leading indicators of economic stress because people are deciding hey, uh, they're either just saying, hey, I need to get rid

of this car because I don't need it. I can take an uber, especially in the uber eyes world, like people are weighing their monthly payment verse um just paying an uber to get to and from work, which does tend to be cheaper, Like I uber to and from here usually met my wife have one car, and it's definitely cheaper than our car payment over the course of the month, especially when you had in parking and all the other stuff. Yeah, exactly, And so that market's career

but it's it's down. It was down, had like the largest monthly decline in December. But you also have to take an account that also had this roaring bull market after when people moved out of the city as they said, Hey, I'm gonna live in the suburbs, I need a car if I'm in the suburbs. Uh, and so that sent prices of used cars skyrocketing. Another factor of that was the supply chains for new cars got completely bored. They couldn't find the parts and so you have to supply

con straight on the new cars. So used car market got flooded. But yeah, if you look at I forget the exact stats, but the average monthly payment for I believe thousand dollars, yeah, for of used car owners, UM, which is pretty high, uh, for your average consumer. And then on top of that, the probably I didn't include it in the newsletter, but I saw the stat this morning. Um, the sixty day delinquency rate for used cars is up

year on year. And so there's delinquency rates When people stop paying their bills, that's usually an indicator that they can't and they're in economic stress. And so that wasn't included in that particular newsletter, but it's a stat I saw this morning, year on year, sixty day delinquacies up,

which is a pretty material increase. I have a buddy who runs the auto auctions in California, and I was talking to just this last weekend, and um, he said that there's still a lot of action, but he has seen a lot of weakness, and especially the luxury car marks. The g wagons specifically have taken like a massive hit. Um. Some of that is a lot of these cars were going fifty thousand a hundred thousand over sticker, which is insane, insane. I mean, we looked at when we bought our car

that we have. We brought it in June, right we left the city. We were in New York. We left early March, pretty early, and then we were living excuse me, we're living down the shore and needed a car, and so we went we bought a used car. Um locked in like a four percent interest rate. It was like twenty two grand. It was like the best time to get in because we checked prices like a year later. In our car, even with all the miles we put on it, what have sold for like the DeGrand um

an they used car um. And so another thing to fact interest rates coming to this story as well. The average interest rate on these used cars is temper set as well. Um. And when you think a quarter of these used car owners are paying a thousand dollars a month plus that temper cent interest rate. I've seen a lot of people talking about the the used car market.

I've seen changes in lending standards where they're being much more relaxed, which is a problem because they're just trying to get units out the door, which again shows the consumers stress, the credit the money is not there. And and for sure it's like a leading indicator to the point that you made, But do you think it really poses a systemic threat to the rest of the economy. I don't think they used car market particularly right. I don't think like an implosion of used cars of the economy.

It's just an indicator that hey, there's some sex subsection of the economy that's under stress, is either dumping these cars or not buying them because they can't afford them. Yeah. And then we have the real estate market you covered, which I think goes into the layoffs. You said, yes, uh so that's particularly with the reats, the non tradeable rates. Blackstone had their sixty nine billion dollar reat fund that

they UH curb redemptions two in November. They've recently got a capital injection from the University California system of four billion dollars, so I think that's back open. But then there was a star Wood Asset Management also curb redemptions to their sixteen billion dollar UH non tradeable rate and their explanation for why their investors were pulling money out because they had a stellar U two and they were taking profits. But I think, UH, like, especially in this market,

you want to like people are scared. They people are scared, they want their money UM. And even though these reds performed really well the last couple of years, signals to me that if these types of investors are pulling their money out of that first, it's for a reason. And these rates typically invest in commercial real estate UM here

in the United States and UM post lockdowns UM. And now with these tech layoffs going on, like the market for commercial real estate it's seeming pretty bearish because people are either working from home or if they are working out in an office, A lot of these tech companies are beginning to lay off people at an increasing pace, especially office space in Silicon Valley for example, right, really bad. I was looking at some of the data on Blackstone like a week ago. I talked about it in a

different video. Um, you know, the whole thing with the GBTC situation, grace scale, bitcoin trust and that they don't really want to unravel that thing because they're making a two percent premium on that, which is super healthy. Blackstone makes three point six percent. They're charging three. They're making was it two billion dollars a year or something like that, right to to three point six on sixty eight billion whatever that was or something like that. I'm sorry, I

can't do math on the top of my head. Um, Austin, what is that three point six of sixty billion? Anyway? Um? And uh it's even more murky so um. Just on a little side note, but they don't mark to market their assets, so it's all controlled internally, and internally they set the valuation of what their assets are. It's a breat that people invest into and they don't even have any say of what assets they buy, so who knows what they're even buying and they could be buying junk

assets and then they're not marked to market. They set the valuation, which they're probably keeping artificially high because they're making the three point six percent off the back of it. That's did you forget what that is? Uh? Probably it's probably like some point three billion. It was a lot there. Side note, But okay, so back to this. So um, those that those are great data points. Um. The the economic data is bad, it's really bad. We could talk

about indicators and it's all looking bad. We have the most extreme yield curve we've ever seen in history, which tells us the recessions coming. Um, the unemployment number is low, but if you dig in the data, it's actually really bad. Um, And we can keep going on and on on. They don't factoring the participation rate, which is very important, the participation rate, which is at its lowest point in history.

I was trying to do a little research and look at when the unemployment rate was this low before and what the participation rate, but it was hard to get that data. But okay, so we frame it up and the economic data is bad. It's really bad, and we're hurdling too catastrophe at the rate we're on potentially, Um, we can add in a couple more things just real quick. Uh,

the baby boomers are all retiring. Under the ereset law, they were able to invest tax free, but they're forced to start cashing in and pay the taxes now when they're seventy three or whatever. Um, we have interest rates so high that all these corporations aren't gonna be able to roll over their debt. And then if they don't, if they can't borrow more money, they're not buying back their stocks. So they're not buying as the boomers are selling. I mean, we can go on the question I have

is um, so what not not so what? But more? What does that mean? So? Um? When if we look at uh, what we saw is that the economy does not equal the markets. The entire economy was literally shut down. It couldn't have been any worse. Businesses were literally put out of business, and yet the markets hit all new times asset prices, stocks, bonds, real estate, bitcoin, etcetera. So when we're looking at the economic data and we're looking all these data points, is it so like, Um, what

does the average listener care? Like, Hey, you better buckle down because the economy is gonna get bad, maybe hard to make money or for like investing does that matter in terms of like asset prices a agree like show like the markets do not equal the economy. But the key difference between three and is FED policy, right, like you have the FED seems pretty dead set on driving

rates and keeping them there higher than five percent. It seems like every other day you have a FED governor from some part of the country coming out and saying, yep, we're gonna we're gonna raise rates above five and then try to keep it there through the rest of the year.

So I think that's the number one factor that would lead to a different outcome than where you shut down the economy, UH, lowered rates, print a bunch of money at a government stimulus on top of that, and people simply a more disposable income that they weren't spending as they were traveling to and from work and hanging out and weren't able to go to bars, going to movies,

good all that. UM. So I think that's different today where the interest rates part really could bring markets in the economy closer to UM sort of like markets the economy, markets in the economy, UH could be accurately reflected together instead of this disconnection that we had in Yeah, Yeah, the Fed. The FED wants to crush demand. So they want to crush the economy because they want people to be broke so they don't keep spending so much money.

So maybe they're saying, hey, we're doing a good job. I guess we're Larry Summers come out. I mean he's not officially associated with the Federal Reserve anymore, but I mean he was on CNBC a few weeks ago sitting on a beach saying, yeah, we need to uh, we need to drive chop loss here so that we can lower prices and the economy on a solid base. And that is a very scary thing that people need to hear again. So we're gonna repeat that again. So they want to crush demand by making you pour so you

don't buy as much stuff. They're trying to do that to get CPI down to the two to three percent range, but they also want to get unemployment up to five They want more people to lose their jobs. Yeah, the Fed, it's pretty evil. I mean, the Fed won't come out and say it. They need a proxy member like Larry Summers to come out and say what everybody knows they're

trying to do. Um, But Yeah, when you think about it, just highlights the insanity in the perverse nature of FED policy, like they really only care about these numbers and not the well being of individuals. At the end of the day, they've created this Frankenstein monster that they sort of lost control of, and so they're trying to get control of this monster, and they're willing to do that at the expense of your everyday American. I mean, it's to come out and say, we need more people to lose their

job and high wages is a problem for them. They need people to make less money because high wages drives inflation. Yes, exactly, I mean, come on, insanity. Um. But I had said out there before we came in that I think this year could be better, and I was specifically talking about asset prices. Um. Then most people think. And the reason why I'm shifting my thinking a little bit, I don't

know if you saw it just happened this week. The BLS came and said they're gonna change the way they calculate cp I. So again again right, they've done it multiple times using shadow Stats. Well, the lightest CPI rating was six point five percent. Shadow Stats says we're a fifteen point six percent if you go back to how

they calculate in the eighties. So now they're going to change the way they calculate CPI, and instead of looking at a two year average of the comparables of the comp it's going to be just one year, which is the last year, which was the highest inflation we've ever had,

So you measure from there, it comes down. And so even if inflation stays flat from here, which we're trending down pretty quickly right now, but let's just say it's a look at the economy, it's probably gonna trend not even faster, but assuming it just stays flat, by the end of Q one will be in the three percent range. Yeah. But again so yeah, they're just manipulating the base from which they calculate inflation. Even though inflation has come down.

One thing that everybody has to consider is, like going back to last year, inflation started running hot through the summer and through or towards like the fall, started climbing up and then um all the way through. And so even though yes, the inflation rate has come down like six five percent, that's still growing on a bigger base that was still going to last year and still going up. And even if it is only six and a half percent, six and a half percent, inflation is still very high. One,

it's really fifteen and a half percent exactly. For if you're using the FEDS manipulated metrics, I mean, their target historically has been two percent. They've been teasing like they're going to raise that up to four percent. But even if it's four percent, you're still, um, they're still well above it, to and a half percent above your target.

So um. The reason why I would want to kind of make that distinction between the economy and the mark gets And then now looking at this if if they can magically are not magically through changing the way they calculate, it could get CPI down to three pc by the end of Q one. That gives them all the political cover they need to be easy. And again, yes, yes, it does, definitely does, and maybe that's the intention behind

the manipulation of the CPI number. But I also think we need to zoom out a bit and realize that the US economy, yes it's the largest economy in the world,

but we're not in a bubble. There are some uh sort of negative externalities that can come from outside the US, particularly Japan right now, which I think is a canary in the coal mine that could throw a wrench in any plans in the Federal Reserve might have because the Bank of Japan is having a pretty hard time successfully controlling their yield curve and they said they're gonna they said they may abandon it. Yeah, And they're larger center

of U S treasuries in the world. They they own half of their their bond market, and I think they own a lot of their stock market as well. UM And I think that's why I'm more cautious going to this year again. I think the economic data here in the US looks pretty pissed poor, and then like an even scarier prospect is this negative externality coming from somewhere like Japan or um if Europe, I mean the UK got into a pension crisis not too long ago as well.

There there's like these events that we're not really aware of. They can just pop up, and it's like that Mike Tyson uh quote. Everybody has a planned to get punched in the face. And I think it could be Japan, could be Europe, it could be somewhere else. But I think there there's somebody crouching behind the low in the

bush waiting to punch global markets in the face. By the way, the first interview I in my new studio in person was with Mike Tyson, and I asked the first question I asked him was did you really say that? And I quoted it and he said yeah. I said that it wasn't that good of an interview, Um was, he hid? Yeah, it was. It was a big Yeah,

it was. It was pretty difficult. I think that. And he was eating mushrooms at the same time, and it was like it was like it was like sitting across the table from like a caged lion, except where he didn't have the chain one. You know, you don't want to you don't want to piss. And I was like and I and I kind of did. I kind of like digging into questions and he was like, okay, So anyway, it wasn't my best interview, but anyway I did. I

did ask him that question. Um, you had also talked about what's going on with the bricks nations and even Saudi Arabia and the Petro dollar, and so that also throws a massive wrench, right, So the FED can control who's in their system. But if there's these other people moving into the other system, then they lose control over that. Yeah, exactly. I mean so this, I have a tag on my website called oil wars, and we started writing about this

in September seventeen. This issue isn't hasn't made it on the website yet. I'm still going back and adding all the previous issues I wrote before transitioning to ghosts. But in September it was the first time I spoke of these oil wars. And at the time, China it was simply expressing its intent where it's wish to UH to denominate their oil trades in Yuan with Saudi Arabia, and

at the time nobody really thought much of it. It was just like China saying, like, we we'd like to settle this in Yuan, and nobody thought it was a real possibility. Fast forward the last two years, obviously Russia, Ukraine and the sanctions that came with it have really um shown to the bricks nations, specifically that the US can weaponize the dollar system swift and even UH confiscate

central bank reserves from these countries. And so I think that's accelerated a move toward a decay in the Petriot dollar system when and this is really accelerated particularly in the last six weeks when UH President g went to Saudi Arabia and had a meeting with them, with the

Prince of Saudi Arabia and other GCC members. UH and at the end of that meeting expressed that yes, we're gonna strengthen our relationship with Saudi Arabia, We're gonna begin buying more oil from them, and on top of that, we're gonna settle these trades and you want. We've set up this four x exchange in Beijing. I believe hinjen um that is going to allow us to facilitate these

oil trades in Yuan UM and then you fast forwards. Yesterday, UM at the Alvas, representative from Saudi Arabia was interviewed by Bloomberg and he came out basically confirmed, Yes, we're gonna strengthen our relationship with China and we're gonna do you Wan settled oil trades. But on top of that, we're open to doing a settlement in other currencies as wealth.

We can do it in euros, we can do it in real UM and so that signals that the US dollar reserve system is beginning to be significantly threatened, because that is what really gives the dollar a lot of its strength is the fact that all these countries have to go they buy will from Saudi Arabia converted at the dollars, and that drives demand for the dollar. And it seems like pretty quickly that is not going to

be the situation anymore. Um. And then when you factor in that China's opening back up, our economy is still growing, um, it could becoming a significant buyer of oil from Saudi Arabia, and it gives Saudi Arabia the ability to be like, hey, the United States, thank you for the decades of an incredible relationship. The Petris tear dollar system worked well, it did, but we're we're we have a lot more buyers and we're gonna we're gonna appease them as well. Yeah. So

you have this fractured sort of oil trade. Do you see the world continuing to fracture in this way? I continue to move into a multipolar world? Um? I think so yeah, not just the bricks, but maybe even into smaller factions. Oh yeah, bricks, I mean you can even here in the United States, I think we're we're sort of having a a multi polar union, if you will, states like Texas, Florida. You have the secession movement up

in Idaho and Oregon that's been getting some steam. I think, I think that it's gonna be the big trend in the next couple of decades. Is uh, like at different scales, going local, whether it's in a particular region of the world or even a particular region of the United States. And so then if if the world continues to break apart, trust is continue to break down, Um, the dollar, which has been the most trusted system, which isn't really trust

it anymore. To your point, Um, if Russia gets their FIC reserve sees the mean, what chances anybody else have Exactly? So you think that really opens up the door for a new form of payment settlement. I think so in the long run, if we focus particularly onlike these oil trades and using different currencies to settle that. I mean, I do think bitcoin is perfectly suited for all these trades.

From a mechanical and engineering perspective. It's a peer to peer distributed network that allows you to make transactions with the counterpart that you may not trust your trusting let's distributing that big piece, right, You're not trusting that the US won't take your money or say they're holding your money and just not give it to you. You can't do that with bitcoin. So I do think from an

engineering perspective, it's perfect to facilitate these types of trades. However, I do things there will be interim period where you have the sort of fractured markets where the Chinese are setting you on, maybe the Europeans defect from the US and they decide they want to settle in euros and

then go on down the line. Um. And that's simply because bitcoin doesn't have a liquidity profile at the moment too um to facilitate oil trade on the magnitude that would be necessary, um Like, there will be a lot of slippage and stuff like that right now, especially if they're just using bitcoin as a rail on the knee automatically liquidate on the other end. Um. I do think when bitcoin gets to a multi trillion dollar market, uh, the facilitation of those types of trade settlements will will

be better. And then also I think if bitcoin does get to that market, it signals that all these FI currencies are being debased pretty heavily, and so people are adopting bitcoin, um, And at that point that's when it fled ups because, Uh, the slip at you would have using a field currency to buy oil would be larger than the slippet that you would incur using bitcoin because

Bitcoin would be more stable at that point. Yeah, you mentioned liquidity and like that's kind of like the big thing, right, So it's like, um, people want to trade in dollars because they can use dollars anywhere in the world. And I guess I could trade with China now and they could pay me in yuan because I could just buy stuff from China back and you want. But I probably wouldn't be able to buy stuff from other countries in yuan. Or maybe some might take it because they know they

need trade with China. But why would I take a smaller known currency the Turkish lira? What am I? What am I gonna do with the Turkish lira? Right? Or bitcoin for that example, right, So we needed to have more liquidity, more acceptance globally for them people to be able to receive it like Russian ruble, Like we only take Russian rouble and they're getting paid in Russian ruble, but what are they going to do with those rubles? No,

one's god not take them. So like you can get paid in bitcoin, but you need someone else to take those bitcoin from you. Exactly right. Yes, we need more adoption. And as funny as it's not even a chicken and

egg problem, it's just like a it's an evolution. Evolution, yeah, where people get more familiar with it, it gets bedded into more merchant systems, which is happening, gets embedded into more balance sheets as a as an inflation, they're not inflation hedge park where you yell at me for saying that as a means store wealth over time. But yeah, I think we're just going through the evolution. Really, fourteen years into this bit, Quinn is still extremely young. Um,

there's still a lot of infrastructure be built out. But I do think slowly but shortly over time, it's all gonna come. Yeah. Let's uh, well, let's park that and let's jump to a couple of other things and we'll come back and tie that together. So you've been talking about on your Twitter feed the weft, the weapon. The weft is meeting Um, Klaus Schwab called out for everyone, all the people to come in master the future. That

was his call. We need to master the future. So these people have this grand plan, the the global business leaders and influencers, etcetera. Right, Um, have you been paying attention to that at all? Yeah, I've been following along this week because these people have been getting on stage and word vomiting all over the world. It's very creepy. Any uh, any any new plans that they have that you've seen that are different than what we already kind

of know about. I think one of the people aren't aware of is the intent more than than The World Economic Forum is starting to put out this narrative that it is essential to prevent um cybercrimes from happening happening, that that we emerge the banking sector with the intelligence agencies so that um, you sort of roll them up into one entity that's able to manage the monetary side of things and the financial side of things and the surveillance side of things. So that is one very wearing

narrative that's coming out of the World Economic Forum. So still kind of beating the drum on the cyber pandemic. The potential dangers of this cyber crimes or whatever um and then introducing new suggestions of how they could fix that,

which of course is more control. And it's a private public partnership and you get the private banks and they the intelligence agencies represent the public and you just partner of them together, which is incredibly scary thought experiment to go down, because, I mean, the intelligence agencies, I think are some of the most evil yeah entities on the world. I mean, the CIA just don't even think that's debatable. No, I mean it just came out. They just admitted that

they kill JFK. What about m ok m Okay. Yeah, the FBI is out there tweeting we want to honor m Okay. Uh. They were threatening to and they were telling him to kill himself, and many people think they were part of his murder. The CIA was started by it was startup seated with Nazis. Like when we started the CIA, we pulled out all the Nazi scientists and

engineers and they started their psychological warfare. Every thing's like Operation Paper Click, mocking Bird, MK Ultra and these are all people are like, oh, that's a conspiracy theory, Like no, this is all FOIA. This is all information you get from a FOIA requests, like it's all out there, and then you have the FBI. I was like watching videos of ray apps yesterday. It's like this guy work for

the FBI is like everybody get in the capital. Like that was an obvious intelligence agency run called a false flag. The FBI is notorious for entrapment. These people don't want to protect you, They want to incite you to give up your rights. That Gretchen Whitmeyer can apping plot for the governor and like half of the people involved were all like government agencies. Yeah, like they were all entrapping each other. It's I mean insanity. Um I was, I

was telling these guys earlier today. Um how when I was a kid, because I'm old. When I was a kid, there was the Iran Contra all over North was you know, brought under the Reagan administration whatever, and um the Iran contra deal was they were taking drugs from El Salvador, flying him to Los Angeles, selling the cocaine in the streets, getting people hooked on crack, taking the cash given it to Iran, buying weapons and then bringing the weapons back

to overthrow the government and in Costa Rica. We were down there a month ago and they have one of the planes crashed in Costa Rica and they've turned it into like a restaurant now, and even go there and they have the whole story there and it's like this is all document, it's all on the open, like everybody knows this. Yeah, that's then you get into this whole.

I mean, this is something I haven't really been paying attention to it, which is highlights the hypocrisy of these agencies, which is the classified documents where um Trump had some. I didn't even die deep into that, but he had some. His house got rated. It was a whole big story.

And we find out Joe Biden has some and it's like that's whatever, like it was a mistake, and there's very Do you think it's all whatever or do you think they're setting him up to get him out because he said he was going to run again, and I don't want him run again. I mean, he can't run again. He can't think, he can't speak, you can't walk, you should not be president. It would not surprise me if

that's their intention either. But then it's a weird place where if they try to get him out before you have Kamala Harris, who's just walking incompetent yeah bolt Yeah. So um, getting back to the big WEFT meeting that was going on, so master the future, um, the cyber pandemic um. I was looking at a list of like topics that they were going to discuss, and one was about the next pandemic. How to prepare or prevent like the next pandemic from happening, um, Which might seem reasonable

to some people if they don't understand what's just happened. Um, But how do you prevent the next pandemic? How about you don't create bioweapons, bioweapons, using't gain a function. That's a pretty that's a pretty good start. Yeah. Um. What

about have you seen these fifteen minutes cities? Oh yes, I mean the Netherlands is ground zero for this, where they're taking all the farm land um and trying to create these I forget what they're calling them, at these cities where everything you'll ever need in your life is within fifteen minutes within walking the king. Um. Yeah, it's scary. It's again like going back to WEFT in Davis this week, they're still leading into the climate crisis, which doesn't exist.

They're they're using it as a fair tactic to try to coerce people to y be like all right, I think the Netherland's thing. They're telling his farmers to give up their farmland because of because of the I believe it's signed up to that there. Yeah, the cows, Well, was the fertilizer too much fertilizers being used, which I've looked into that a little bit. And uh, because we live in a complex system, central planners messed everything up when they try to fix one thing that creates all

these unengineed consequences. And because of rule changes they placed in the EU, it pushed all the cows and farming to the Netherlands, so it all got concentrated there. So the reason why there's so much there is because of previous rule changes that that took it from a decentralized state where it was all spread out across the countrysides like I should be, and it pushed it all into

the one little area. UM. And now they're trying to go, well now we have now we've created another problem to go solve that UM and the Netherlands I believe is like the top exporter of like food. Yeah right, so like um, the u N says eight hundred and sixty eight million, almost a billion people could potentially starved to death in the next twenty four months. We have the largest exporter of food in Europe and they want to

shut them down. It's makes disgusting and they're in their justification for it doesn't make any sense of the whole carbon emissions boogeyman uh narrative is disgusting. And then with the cows, they use methane um. But if you actually look like the composition of the atmosphere, yes, methane is a heavier greenhouse gas, but if you look at its overall composition of the gases in the atmosphere, it's minuscule, minuscule.

Even though we're adding all this methane, it's not really doing anything to affect it's not taking anything in decomposing grass. Emits methane decomposing grass on its own, and the cows eat the gas and then they break it down. Even more so, we got the weft um potential cyber pandemics potentially putting in like I d S and basically taking away like anonymous use of the internet. Yes, um, potentially

health pandemics that they're planning for or somehow or another. Um. There were some European representatives laughing at a at a US representative of all one of the stages they were on saying, Hey, you guys are gonna have to enact hate crimes and curb speech in the US. Soon enough, it will come. You guys are gonna do it. Um, So a tax on free speech, you're can add that to it. Klaus Schwab was telling everybody that we're all gonna have chips in our head. Um, it's a pretty

if you think of everything. It's scary that you can put in one dystopian novel. They're trying to check all the boxes. Now, UM, I love your worldview on this because you see all this and you I mean you see it, you're not naive to it. But at the same time, you tweet all the time like we will win. Yes, we're gonna win. So explain that I think. I mean, I focus on bitcoin specifically, and that's what we have right out here in front of the studios. Fix the money,

fix the world. I think a lot of the problems, uh that we're describing right now emanate from the fact that we've broken the money. Um, we need to fix the money. We need to fix the way we allocate capital.

We need to fix opportunity costs. The ability to print money is completely perturbed opportunity costs and led to this misallocation of capital, and the people that have control of the money printing right now are allocating that capital towards these dystopian use cases that we're we're describing, um and so like the government's printing a bunch of money and then giving them to these organizations. I saw the Uh, I'm drawn a blank on the guy's name. They're subsidizing Carpon.

He just put together a bill to stop funding the w h O for example. So that's kind of what you're talking about. Should definitely do that. Defund NATO, defund all that. But yeah, go backin. We're gonna win because bitcoin exists. But if we, if we, if we had to fix money supply that they couldn't artificially create, then

they wouldn't have this money to give to these organizations. Exactly, you have to that have to actually work hard for it and provide valuable services that people are willing to pay for. And then um, they could try to allocate that money that way, but it would just get UM driven out of office because it would prove to be in this allocation of capital yet again. But yeah, and I think since bitcoin exists, I've been around for almost

ten years now, which is hard to believe. And even though we're down around twenty dollars, we've had a lot of punches to the face and the form of a degenerate industry in the crypto space. Really giving bitcoin to block black eye, uh, stay of the protocol is never been better. Um, more adoption than ever, more people self custoding bitcoin than ever. Uh. And you have to bitcoin. I tweeted this out the other day, Like bitcoin is

just extremely reliable. You know, it's going to produce a block of transactions that are produced and a peer to peer fashion that don't uh or censorship resistant roughly every ten minutes. And that reliability and a world full of all this chaos is a godsend, Like and I don't

think people are pricing in that reliability yet. And then on top of that, I think from a distribution standpoint of the actual nodes in the network, the mining of the network has gotten a little bit concentrated here in Texas. But UM, I think overall it is significantly more distributed than it was let's say five years ago. UM. And I think every day the bitcoin survives, keeps producing blocks, keeps producing, the miners, keep producing hashes, it just gets

harder and harder to shut bitcoin down. Then on top of that, it's growing in mind share as well. Um, there's more engineers coming to bit on the networks and more cool things that you can build on second layers, like Lightning network. And this is just enabling this value transfer and these types of applications that have never been possible and really enable the individual to get away from

all this crazy and to win. Because I mean, the you know'll tried and true trope is like, oh, just vote, if you vote, just vote harder and you'll get out of this. And that, my opinion, is never gonna work. We need to go build this system outside of the FIAT system and then we can then begin fixing things from there. And then on top of that, you just have just the sovereign movements, more people buying ranches, spinning up farms, and getting more in touch with homeschooling, UM,

school choice. Those trends are growing. Uh. And then again, you have here in the States, this trend of individual states asserting their autonomy against the federal government and against black rock against black was it I think Missouri, Florida, Mississippi, six states and invested their money. Yeah, billions of dollars um, which is good to see. And still obviously you have like the NBC archetype which is still doubling and tripling down on there their love of authority. Yeah, and that's

growing as well. But I think the sovereign trend is growing faster and stronger than than it has in many decades. Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know. It's. Um. The reason why I kind of want to jump to this and we put a pin on that kind of adoption piece. Um, the road to evolution we're calling it, is just because as humans, we only move when we only react when the pain's high enough. I've gone to chiropractic most of my life. I believe in the chiropractic and that our body should

be aligned. Um, but I typically only go when I'm in pain. I'm busy otherwise, right, um, And so like, the pain has to get high enough, and at some point the pain is so high that will act um from a US centric. You point, it's hard for us to get the money situation. But if you're in North Korea or in the Congo or in whatever Turkey like you, you're watching your money lose a percent of its value. Like what, I'll take the risk, right, I'll go into

something else. But as we talk about the WEF and um, what's company with the cyber pandemic, the health pandemic, um, all these things, I think it's just gonna keep turning that pain dial up and it's only going to accelerate the adoption people are going to need constantly and to

the point of sovereign movement. The sovereign movement is being led because there's a need to become a sovereign person, right, And as they turn that dial up, more people become sovereign, more people will find a bitcoin and so um, I guess we have like the S curve, right, Um, so the ES curve kind of kind of has this straight up and I think we're probably in that period and unfortunately the pain dial gets turned up. The good is that people wake up and start moving into this in

this new parallel economy and start building that out. Yeah. No, I think the pain dial I mean you mentioned it earlier. I think the the combination, well, well, these boomers retiring, selling their stocks, and the FED being put and it looks like they're going to be put between a rock and a hard place where inflation may still be elevated, but the economy is doing so bad that they need

to begin printing money. And if you couple those situations, have stocks plumbering because boomers are selling all of it, inflation is still high because the supply chains and just overall monetary supply growth, and the FED begins printing again and then inflation ramps up again. I think that is a perfect ship storm to really wake people up and feel the pain that will drive them to seek alternatives.

Like hopefully, if we do get to that point, I won't say it's a foregone conclusion, but if that point does come, people have to realize. I would imagine that the FED doesn't really have control, the government doesn't really have control. We need to go seek out alternatives. Who has control? Then? You do? Are you as an individual

we the people? Yeah? Yeah, something I was thinking about when I was reading that with Kloup Schwab and he says, you know, master the future, and he's calling all these business leaders and politicians and influence people to master the future, and we need to go create this and we need to do this and this is our vision. But it's like they didn't ask us, we didn't vote, like who

are they? Right, and so they wanted to create you you you already mentioned it, the public private partnership fascism corporatism. So if we get if we get Twitter or Facebook to censor people, if we get the banks to not fund people, right, if we can get the private businesses to work together with the governments, then we can reshape the world the way we want without asking our opinion. Right.

We didn't even bring up to Twitter files where the FBI was embedded in twitters headquarters telling them the censor and who not to. Yeah, that's a big deal. I wanted to ask you about that. Okay, so let's let's ask let's let's talk about that for a second. Um we can get into Twitter files if you want. I was just thinking specifically. Um Must said he wanted to buy Twitter to open up free speech. He said that he thought it was like for humanity, it was that important.

It's like the most important thing in humanity or something that affect they forget. Um. A lot of people guess about his ulterior motives. I made a video his real motive was because he's trying to start this new payment system and whatever. But anyway, Um, he has opened up free speech a lot on Twitter, and it's already seems to be reshaping things pretty rapidly. Are you seeing that? Yeah,

I definitely mean, I definitely see more. Definitely see people more comfortable putting out tweets that they probably would not have under the last regime. But again, yeah, like he has come out and say like we need we're going to build like the Wi Bow of the West. And I go back and forth with Ellen a trend toward I think you might be like a false prophet where it's like everybody's like, oh, Ellen, come save us, come

save free speech. But there's like little things with what he's doing to Twitter that makes me raise my eyebrow, like the like paying the monthly fee for the blue check mark and if you don't pay, uh, you don't get as much visibility or engagement. Um, which is interesting. And yeah, I think if any I do agree that people seem to be speaking more freely on Twitter these days. But I don't think we should be dependent on Elon sort of waving as one saying you get free speech now.

We should be building, similar to Bitcoin, alternative communication protocols. There's one uh noster that's come out, which is a distributed relay system that allows you to build Twitter like clients on top of it. And due to how the relay system works, it's extremely hard to censor individuals. You can connect to many different relays. One individual relay can sense for you, um, but the likelihood of all of them censoring you is extremely low. You could spin up

your own and syndicate via your own relay. Um. I think that's the solution to the free speech problem today. Like I do agree, I think people are speaking more freely on Twitter right now. But again I don't. I'm not sure what Elon's motives are, but I do think

they're just like the nagging. I thought my head that he could be a false prophet where he was like, oh, you're gonna save us and save free speech, and then it's just going to turn into dystopian be But like, I agree with you somewhat on that, but I think for me it's more like, um, we should never race somebody up like that and think they're the savior. Um. I think there's good things that he's doing, and there's

probably bad things that he's doing as well. There's certainly things I don't agree with, but then I do like some of the things that he is doing right, and so like it's okay to like I like this good job, this is bad right, And so I think that's kind of how I see Ellen, Like, um, he wants to stick microchips in my brain, Like I'm not down with that. No, No, it's like this is the push and poll I have with Tesla and SpaceX. Particularly like Tesla, I think it's

like a green ergy grift. I think a transition to a fleet of electric vehicles on global scales a terrible idea. Then you look at SpaceX and he's sending rockets up the space and the landing them back on these very small platforms. You're like, yeah, this is obviously extremely cool and definitely an advancement on this rocket tech that's probably gonna be necessary. Yeah. Um, so yeah, Ellen confuses me.

So we don't need but we don't need deatist. And I think the same way with politics, like I don't know what I am politically, I can't align a percent with anything like I pick and choose different things. Right, generally I side with more freedom, right and less government. I was watching, uh, I was watching Rohnd Santis and he came out with this whole speech and he was talking about UM, the WEF and how we need to

crack down on the WEFT. He's trying to do some stuff in the state and the CCP, the Communist Chinese Party, and we want to ban um the CCP fron be able to buy land in Florida, which sounds great. I'm I'm for that. We shouldn't allow the comments to by land, right except for wait a minute, that means that he's

going to restrict what I can do with my private property. Yeah, I don't know if weird can undrum right, and so like, you have to really think through these issues, especially if we're trying to be a men of integrity and um. So anyway back to kind of like the Santist there's lots of things he's doing that I like some things. I think that he is a dictator too. Yeah, and uh, same with Elon and Trump and everybody else for that matter, right, Yeah, No, and I can see like going back to like Chinese

buying land or property. UM told me a few years ago, like you shouldn't do that, but like, yeah, and there's no way we should do that. I know Kyle Bass is beating this drum as well. But then like in the bitcoin mining industry, after the Chinese exodus, a lot of the Chinese miners have come over to the US because they want to continue bitcoin mining and the bitcoin mining for a reason, because they believe in the ideals that bitcoin was founded on on censorship resistant private property rights,

uh and freedom to transact how you want to. And so I've been interacting professionally with a lot of these Chinese miners, and we separate the CCP from individual Chinese men and women, and um it's it's hard to get's mucky right, Yeah. Yeah, these are not easy issues, which is why they should be dealt with, I think more on an individual basis and not centrally planned you know decisions.

So taking that and that actually kind of took us to where I wanted to go because um, it seems like, um, it seems like businesses are the ones that really create the change, and that's why they want to have this public private PARTSIP. They realize that government politics alone isn't enough. We need to get the businesses, the banks, the social media, the corporations, cocols that we need them to get involved. Right. Um, so a couple of things I think in there so one.

Um with Twitter going to free speech. Um, it seems like to me it's changing things. Like I'm starting to see a lot of information spefically on the pandemic and trials from Visor and stuff I don't want to say because I'm on youtub you here, you can't say the stuff on you. It's susan. You gotta end it, right and so. But but my point is, so this has really opening up on Twitter and Facebook's tanking. Do you think Facebook, oh shoot, we better change our policy or

we're dead in the water. You know, we have to compete. We have to compete. But the consumer ones because at the end of the consumer does drive someones. And that's what I asked you, the question, if they don't have the power, who has the power? We have the power? Really, the consumer has the power, right at the end of the day, the consumer, they want our money, and so who's gonna give If we're gonna give more time? And

attention and they have to serve us. And so Twitter broke that seal and hey, look we want freedom or freedom of speech or whatever, and now Facebook and YouTube are going to have to deal with that. Yeah, especially YouTube, I said Susan. I was talking to YouTube ceo CEO. Susan was sicky, like I just got I gotta strike on.

I can't monetize YouTube right now because I had somebody on talking about what you're not supposed to talk about, which is I've had to not post interviews I've done on YouTube and just put them on Rumble and I saying I've been doing that in the last couple of months because of the strike. But it's it's insane because all we were literally just talking about facts that are public now and then got back to trust this. Don't don't take my channel down. I'm not like talking about

trust the science. You can talk about particular pure reviewed studies, but you can't talk about others or you get kicked off. I mean, I know I know what not to say to to make sure this gets on YouTube, but yeah, at the end of the day, consumer drives it. You're going back to We're gonna win. That's I do. Even though things are seem dire, the populace here in the United States seems a bit complacent, seems a bit degenerate.

I do think at the end of the day, good beats evil, and somewhere down and many most people's stomachs, there is this this craving for freedom, for truth, for a reality in which people are good to each other. And I do think that's beginning to its head. And maybe give you lots of props. That is one thing we needed to begin changing the tides at the corporate level is somebody with the balls to stand up and say, hey, no, we're gonna We're gonna bring ed doubt on, We're gonna

bring Trump back on. We're gonna bring all these conservatives who are banned um yeah over the last few years and let them have open debate on my platform. And then that's how the truth is found. Debate. Consumers flocked there, and then, like you said, facebooks, they're out. Damn, we're losing people. And if they start adding for more features

to take more share from Facebook, Facebook's gonna have to respond, right. Um. One thing, you're gonna see me really starting to pound the table a lot this year On is that this is kind of where I'm really starting to push um is back to this uh, this um um sovereign thesis kind of world or a parallel market world, because this is where I just really see the most power we have is to affect change through the economy through economic means.

You had was a vivik On from a Strive asset management, right, and he created it. He created a parallel to Black Rock. But instead of trying to say we beat them on returns or we have better performance or better customer, no, no, no, he just had to we serve a different customer with different values, right um. And there's examples of this popping up all over and I think, Um, we the consumer has the power because we have the money. And if we start demanding businesses to provocater to us or we

don't give them our money, then they'll they'll cave. And I think there's an even bigger opportunity for entrepreneurs to go create all these like Texas Slims done with the beef initiative. But I don't know if you've seen bench Fare and Daily Wire. He created Jeremy's Razors again. And then the examples are trying to pop up and there's a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs and then we as consumers

get behind it and like we win. And then of course the banking system won't like that, they'll shut us down, and we have bitcoin and that will underpin that will That would be what makes it all possible. Yeah, and I actually I'd like to think I'm trying to build one of these products, which is in terms of content creation.

So for our site, t FTC dot io, we spun that up in April of twenty nine, that's been around for almost four years now, um, and we spun it up using Ghosts because ghost is open source and it's easy to build on. And when I launched the site, just selfishly, I wanted to incorporate bitcoin payments using an open source payment processor called PTC pay Server into Ghosts.

And so over the last four years we've sort of been building that product out for ourselves and I've actually come to conclusion hole crap, Like we could package this up and give it to people so that they can do exactly what sub stacks doing, but uh, in a self sovereign fashion, particularly with bitcoin payments, that you cast

yourself because substecs and incredible platform. I think there are another example of a company that decided not to sense or people and they've seen an extreme amount of user flow because of that, people craving truth to go into Substack. Because Substack has drawn the hardline we're not going to censor these hard conversations. But uh, the censorship that happens

on substack is via Stripe the payment process. That's what some content creators, even though they're able to write on Substack, that can't monetize on substack because Stripe is stepped in and say, hey, we're not gonna allow to use our rails to receive money. Um. And so if that trend continues in the government doesn't like the substack, this free it's having this free, open discussion, and they go to Stripe and say, all right, demonetize all these people. That's gonna,

uh just gonna ruin substack for those writers. And so this is just one small thing that we're trying to build a t FTC. We're trying to package up. What we've built goes to PDC pay server. We're gonna open sources for everybody, but we'll also have uh like a centralized platform that if you don't want to do a rethink yourself. We'll help you do it just plugging some API keys and tokens and stuff like that, and you'll be able to inject the bitcoin payment processor code into

your ghosts. And so yeah, and that was that. I built that for myself because, as you may know, with the newsletter UH and the podcast, I talked about some topics that the government and others don't like, and so I'm not big enough to get censored, but I've built this with the intention of getting big and potentially getting to the point where they're like, hey, we're gonna senser you and I just look at them be like that

they can't come take my note. But by us it's been up those businesses and even just for question to get paid in bitcoin. Then more people use it and the adoption happens, that paindal gets turned up and it all starts going pretty quickly. Oh yeah, I think it's gonna be uh. And that's the other thing with bitcoin to like, in terms of adoption, that's definitely happening here in the West. Strike UH. Their implementation with NCR at

self checkout should be coming to market soon. So if you want to go and pay at Whole Foods or somewhere if they download the NCR software, you'll be able to do that UM and you can pay from any while you don't need to pay from a strike wall it. So that allows you to sort of live and spend on a bitcoin standard UM. But even more importantly, I think what's happening like emerging markets like Africa in Latin America, where these people actually desperately need bitcoins utility UM as

a payments vehicle and a wealth preservation vehicle. UM is really going to drive a lot of the adoption over the next year. So that's actually my one of the bullish cases for bitcoin. Three and so we have this black Swan adoption event and emerging markets where there's a lot of activity going on right now UM. And even if the government here in the US or other Western governments and so we don't like bitcoin, we're gonna stop it. I think what's happening UH in developing markets is h

is something that many people are paying attention to. It could sneak up on. I think that's the big growth theory. Like if you look at the Internet, the US Internet group fast because we had wired phone lines, but in UH in emerging markets. It's skipped that and went straight to wireless right and so here we have these existing us D payment rails over there they don't so it just skips it just goes right to a new rails mobile first, it's all mobile first, goes right to bt

TH rails. U cool man. Well, we covered a lot. I think we'll wrap it up with that. Um, t FTC dot io check that out for sure? What else? Uh, I've already been on Twitter. Um yeah that's uh start of business except BTC check out the payment gateway with ghost Well when it comes out, yeah, well follow Marty for for updates on that. Yeah, we'll be open sourcing it soon. So um, we're just making sure it's stable so you can follow all that stuff. Podcast is t

FTC rabbit Hole Recap. It's the other show I do. Um, but Mark, thank you. This is I think that's the first time the tables I've been turned in the studio. Nice. I'm glad it was me. This is a comfortable seat too. Thanks