Get ready.
September tenth, twenty twenty five. Allegedly, according to that thing we call a calendar, it's Wednesday. And this is going to be a weird one because I didn't intend to schedule two guests on one night. But that's what we're going to do. And first thing is I want to welcome back Mike Swanson, the guy behind Wall Street Window, and we're gonna find out what he's doing with that brand, that publication. I'm still getting emails, hopefully some of you
are still interesting articles and thoughts. I thought maybe he was going to go with substack whatever. But you know what, we're going to straighten that out in a moment. Since we are live. Guess what I can comment on the fact that a right wing podcaster was assassinated today, And yes, I use that term with the fair fair amount of confidence, because when one person is targeted, they're calling it a mass shooting, they're calling it all kinds of things. Appears
to me as though there was a targeted assassination. Now I have no idea what the motive was. People are talking about the timing, the questioning. I've been over the video. It's pretty horrendous and quite Frankly, I don't think it's going to be productive if any of this continues. Don't care which party you're in, don't care what your thoughts are. Do I think you need to go out there and do the whole prove me wrong thing. Not necessarily, but it's not my choice because it's not my speech, and
I don't think anybody should be murdered for words. But welcome to twenty twenty five. This sucks. What can I say now? You know? Maybe I'll get into more about Charlie Kirk and what happens and who's been arrested and all that later in the week, because news is news, plus there's a lot of other stuff to go over.
I mean, I could tell Mike. I'm sure he's seen it, but I could tell Mike Swanson, who's with me here in the first hour that, gee, you know, in a week where I'm learning that Fawn Hall and Ali North got married, Okay, and there were many that's true. That's a true story. According to New York Post, they got a copy of the marriage license and there's a story there. I know many of you young people are like, who's Olly North and who's Fawn Hall? But I ran Contra
google it. I guess you know there's something to it. Anyway, Then you got the mass shootings that have been hoaxes, a couple of dozen of them over the past few weeks. Obviously, what happened to Charlie Kirk not a hoax, not a crisis actor situation or none of that. Unfortunately this guy, I mean, that's some ugly video that has circulated widely immediately. Anyway, daylight savings time is going to end on I think November sec. I mean, there's a lot of things we
could talk about in the news. I can tell you about the BMA spot they did for Ozzy Osbourne. I thought was pretty cool, actually, But what are you going to do on a day like today, the day before the September eleventh anniversary. And I got to say, I'm not feeling any better about it today than I did on the twelfth of September two thousand and one. The direction that the nation is going in. But that's just me. Mike, how are you? How have you been? People been asking,
you know, is Mike okay? And all that? And I keep telling him, Look, Mike just doesn't really want to talk too much right now. And I kind of had to ask you ten times to get you on the show, didn't I.
Yeah, I really slowed down over a year ago. I've been you know, doing content, putting stuff out since really nineteen ninety nine in the financial space, and you know, we did shows over the years. But I was just you know, yeah, well, I'm sort of coming back. I get so I'll talk about why is why that is. But a year ago I just felt as if at the I'd really had nothing much more to tell people.
For two reasons. One, on my website in the financial space, I was really telling people that I believe the United States was gonna have debt problems, that we're gonna get
what they do. You know, things are gonna get worse economically, and they should be diversified, but really by gold and silver, not put all their money into it, but by gold and silver, and do it before it started to go up, well, once silver went above twenty six dollars, I just stopped doing YouTube videos, in which I've been doing for since two thousand and seven or something. I just said, I don't really have nothing else to say. I'm telling you to do it.
It's happening.
I don't want to keep putting that content just for the algorithm, just for social media, because that's what you have to do. You just have to put stuff out over and over and over and over again to get any to get these algorithms to push out what you're saying. So I was just tired of doing it for twenty over twenty five years, you know. But I also emotionally, quite honest, I I know, I sent you a phasing a couple of emails, and I sent it to other
people that the country's going down the toilet. And this was something I started to say last year, a couple
of weeks before Trump was shot. So I wasn't having in mind the outcome of the presidential election or Republican Democrat, which is how so much of the discussion is framed in the news cycle, and the people who are most engaged in news, that's how the news sources are talking to them most of the time, right, And most people, the majority of people I think are really have disengaged themselves from the following all these events going on in the news cycle in general. And but you know today, yeah,
it's kind of a coincidence. You know, we talked about doing this show a couple of days ago, and you see this news of of Charlie Kirk being shot, and to me, that's just a symptom of what.
I was thinking was going to get worse.
Not necessarily simply violence, but just a worsening situation in the country. I do think one day it will get better, but I don't. I think it's going to get worse before it does. And I came to that conclusion last year in the spring, at some point. And it's like, you know, in two thousand and eight, I knew ahead of time before people realized that the financial crisis was
going to happen. In two thousand and two, that whole year, I was very worried and upset about what would happen when the United States went to war in Iraq, and I thought that was going to be one of the worst decisions we would see in our lifetime. And I still think, you know that, maybe maybe I don't you know that that still believe.
That, well, that's almost a cake walking.
No, I'm not sure when the downslide began, you know, but yeah, that's certainly, but it's part of it, huh.
I want to ask you this because it's almost like a cakewalk. Looking back at Yeah, I thought that was a bad decision too. Uh, the idea that we were going to you know, make this war on terror the centerpiece of our foreign policy wasn't all for it. Now I understand the idea for retribution. The American people in general, the people that I was around at that time, wanted retribution. And I had no question over the narrow I believe that, you know, that was a time that we needed to
unite as a country and all of that. But I didn't think that expanding the violence in the Middle East was going to solve anything. And it didn't. But it also didn't bring us to the brink of you know, real destruction like I was worried it would, frankly, and you know, had to re educate myself a bit. Now, what's fascinating is you've told people about trends long ahead of time. People respected that. I mean, at one point you were part of running a hedge fund. Things like that.
People trusted you with their money, they trusted you with advice and all that, and they still do. But the odd thing is now they've turned it all, almost everything that anyone says into a political debate. Right, So if you're saying the economy is going to make a downturn, they're they're saying, well, you must be against whoever's in
office at the time. You're making a political statement. When you're not making a political statement, you're making a calculation based on trends you see emerging and certain signals that are commonplace, seems like to me for the past one hundred and some odd years in the markets right one way or another. And the misperception of that is so strange too, because politics in and of itself will change
what happens in finances to some degree. You know, even if they believe the illusion, it works for a little while, like you know, the massive crash in nineteen twenty nine. Everybody thinks the Great Depression lasted a whole decade, but really there was a bounce back in nineteen thirty a bit, and then we had well, you know, all sorts of mixed results all the way up to the fifties in the economy, and people's perception of that is no longer
accurate to what the numbers reflect. And they've rewritten the history. They rewrote it at the time, and the feeling because you know, we had the victory in World War Two, et cetera, et cetera. There were all sorts of politics
grafted onto the reality. And I think that's been a common trend in American history, and I think that's what started to happen to you as it was starting to get a little sickening between you know, these guys who were using algorithms and AI crap to flood the zone when it comes to content, between that and the disingenuous nature of people just attaching everything to a political argument when you're being an analyst, and I think that was what discouraged you. Is that fair or am I af.
Yeah, that's probably true what you're saying. I think that's true.
Now. I think I had a vielin.
Somewhat, Like you know, it's a little futile to try to give people all this analysis or whatnot when other people don't.
Blame me for it. This way, I really believe like.
The what I've been, you know, writing stuff on the internet and making content, like I said, since nineteen ninety nine, and I can tell in the financial space that it's changed, and I think that change is reflected, you know, what's happening in everything else. I think it's just you know, I've seen it there and it's happening everywhere else. But I know it's so well, you know that I know it in detail. But to make a long story short, I could say what I got into the trading and investing.
People go to the bookstore, they buy books, and there are certain gurus I guess called that experts or whatever in the nineties who like advocated a certain method. They would have their method on how to you know, make a good stock pick and look for these different things in a company and in the stock and that's how you'd make a good That's what they would.
Say were the best ones to buy.
Okay, And and I'd read those books. And I was also interested in charting and trends, and there are books about that and so forth. And I would run ads to build an email list using Google from say two thousand and two to two thousand and eight or so, and the ads would say learn a certain stock investing term, learn this, And those ads were successful.
In today. You know, over the.
Past ten years, you couldn't run that ad. No one will click it because they don't want to learn that methodology. They just want to be told by this by this by this and you'll get rich quick. In this trend of the change of what people in the financial space want, I could see it. It really started around twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, and I think it coincided with the rise of social media with Facebook and all the Twitter and
all these other things. Before that, those things weren't so prominent. So in the two thousands, people got on the internet. They went on websites and read articles, and video didn't really take off till two thousand and six and seven with YouTube, and then it was so the way people are consuming this media on the Internet changed. And then the algorithms, you know, we're created to push out the content that people want, you know, that they're going to
pay attention to and click. And the people in the financial space who created advertising in videos and content.
They.
Went into more and more of a mode of just pure height, pure height, pure height, right or well this is a minority making Yeah, this is how we dire predictions of doom.
Well, this is how we ended up.
But what I say happened is this is.
I'm sorry, Mike, this is how we ended up with game stop and that whole thing versus right the go ahead and invest all your money and be a gold bug, right, because that was the answer otherwise, right, an instant call and response is what the problem was. Because I watched developed like you did, where you know, we've had to face Okay, there's Robin Hood, there's you know, follow the
DC pizza or whatever. Right, you know, algorithm online You've seen that, right, whatever pizza is being ordered that tells you what's going on at the State Department. You know, weird stuff like this. And everybody wanted instant call and response and in real time. They wanted to be able to play it like it's a game instead of you know, and and by the way, you're being pitted against computers
who are making trades in fractions of seconds. So it's no longer about you picking up a strategy and knowing what happened on the markets overnight in Asia and figuring out how that's going to affect the markets when they open this morning. It's no longer any of that. It's the you know, things that happen in three seconds at the beginning of the day. It sets the trend for
the rest of the day. And you got to know how to game the game before the game is played, and that's like the evolution of gaming and game theory actually, and then on top of it, I think this weird
grafting of what is your political ideology? Right, well, you support certain stocks, that's now akin to what your identity is, what your identity politic is, you know, support you know, Tesla for instance, right remember the Tesla stock was crashing and everybody's going, oh, well, you know that's because Elon is part of doge and what we got to do
is support him. So now you have political stock picks which have nothing to do with the reality of trying to make money or you know, we're stabilizing companies or any of this. And it's weird because again you and I were alive in the eighties when you know, corporate raiders and all kinds of things went on, you know, greed is good and all that, and they were you know, destroying and completely just membering companies and spreading around their
assets and redistributing things. I don't even think that's a thing anymore. Now. It's about you know, building these giant borg entities, whether it's in the media or anything else, that encompasses everything. I mean, if you think about the company that owns any sort of media you like or whatever. You know, let's just say you're into the superhero movies, which I don't think either one of us are. You're not a superhero movie guy or you.
Mike, No, not really, I didn't think so.
But we know it's a significant financial factor in the entertainment business, or at least it was. You know, which company actually owns all of the money making aspects of that thing. There's a bunch of companies that come together under some flag somewhere, just like we're watching the uh, you know, the paramount CBS deal. You know, what does that really mean? What's going on there?
Uh?
And now we have an interesting political tug war going on where you know, hey, look, the president's going to sue certain entities. Maybe you'll threaten to take away this and that. And the politics have creeped into everything, you know, whether it's the identity politics of oh my god, remember the freak out that the Internet had because Captain America was a woman, you know, stuff like that, or no, no, excuse me, Captain Marble was a woman. Captain America was black.
That was the problem. I got to keep it straight. And you know that became a tug of war all of a sudden when you're talking about comic book characters who don't have a race by definition, you know. But anyway, here we go. It's a weird world we're in where everything is in this disconnected political hopper, and the truth is it's all gamed by different algorithms, and if you can figure out how to beat or break the algorithm,
you can definitely win the game. I mean, they did the whole thing with Game Stop, and you remember that where it was like they took a company that really didn't deserve to do well and propped it up somehow, and all of a sudden it was a big money maker. People cashed out on it. And we've also had the implementation of crypto this and that and the third thing, right, I can't keep track of the coins and the NFTs and all that, which you and I tried to discuss
too as it was emerging. Nobody wanted to hear it if they were on the side of it, though, right, So, I mean, I'm just trying to give a general sort of idea about the whole landscape that I think, you know, turned you off because you're a real person. You know, you're not an algorithm generated business model, which other people are operating under one way or another, whether they're in social media circles and they're an influencer, or they're a
podcast or anymore. They're all operating under these AI driven and conceptual business models. And it doesn't matter if it's the financial industry or if it's making clips or critiquing you know, entertainment media or music or anything else. Everything is now generated by the grand set of algorithms you've
decided to assemble. I mean, do you think it's one of those things that's all the way across the culture and the interaction, or you think it's primarily focused on the financial What are your thoughts there?
Oh, no, no, I think it's all cross. I mean, the thing about the financial space is what I came to believe was that after you know, is that there's a relationship with the algorithms and the you know everyone else, you know, the consumers of the content, and that the algorithms over time with the hot I'm just using the financial space as example. With the constant height hype pipe HEP, they program people like brainwash them into thinking that's what
investing is. That investing is about getting rich quick in a crypto coin.
And not about any sort of analysis.
And there's an incredible lact of knowledge education of among the people that have gotten into trading now in the past couple of years. I mean, I've talked to people they're like thirty years old and they'll get a robin Hood app and you know, have twenty grand in it or something, and they're trading for a year and they don't know what a bond is. You know, if you don't know what a bond is, you have no clue what the market is, what capitalism is, what you're doing
getting involved in. All they know is they're telling me this is going to go up. Someone buy it, and that's what I'm seeing on social media. But the constant flood, that's what they're seeing though, that's their frame of reference. That's what's educated them. Is the images and videos of people who are catering to algorithms. That's what they're learning from.
So it's programmed people. And I would suggest that you know, I've learned of a term to maybe two years ago, it might have been last year that the Pentagon uses for propaganda of using social media as mimetic engineering, and Elon Musk has used that term when he bought Twitter, and the.
Idea is using.
The social media feeds to change people's opinion and mold them into thinking one way or the other, basically manipulate them through propaganda the constant flood of the of what they're seeing, and.
It's quite effective, and I think it's changed.
You know, people spend so much time on the phone and so forth, that it's changed the way a lot of people interact even in real life with other people. And it's built in us versus them picking pattern which could it may be that even without the Internet and all the things have said that a lot of the things would still be going on in our politics and society as they are. But I certainly think it's as exasperated and there's some sort of relationship between correlation of
some sorts between the two. An event today, I'm.
Sure you know this.
Whoever did this news event today? And there's gonna be one next week.
There's one.
It's like you know one all the time, so it's nothing new. They'll be looking at the person's what they're looking at on social media and what they've written and so forth.
Yeah, their social media presence will definitely become part of the conversation very very soon, it'll become exactly who they are, and it'll become a couple of words worth of a descriptor. And that's like the society we find ourselves in. And I'll tell you the old chicken or the egg? Which one came first? Question? Right, which a lot of people have when they're trying to analyze these things after the events, you know, take place and take hold. It's fascinating here
because I got a real argument. I don't know which game first here? You know, did the social media do this or was it the thing that was spawned by a lack of what attention span? A desire to educate oneself?
You know?
Is it all about instant gratification? We heard about that for decades, right, that was the biggest problem because we're all, you know, fat and lazy and want everything handed to us, right because we're Americans. We're ugly Americans. You know, did that reality come home to roost? And did we get a chicken in the egg at the same time? Year through the social media engineering, the me medic engineering, like
you're saying, I think it's a valid question. Anyway, as this is going on, you're still willing to write some stuff, some historical stuff anyway, even if you've sort of given up on the financial space in a lot of ways. Although I still see you talking about things that have to do with finance. And you had a recent article. I guess we could call it an article. Do you call these things articles anymore?
Well, they're were emails sitting at emails, and you know they're not long, you know, four articles, but you know the three nine hundred words you know with it. But I never stopped writing about the financial space and with the email list, you know, because that's to me, that's a little different because it's a written form a communication.
It's not a tweet.
You know, a one sentence tweet at nine hundred words is still meaningful, and you know sometimes it can be longer than that. So but decided, you know, I wrote, you know, I've written that war state book, and people who bought it gotten a lot out of it. But the first book I wrote was a local history book.
And when about Danville, Virginia, right yeah, right right?
And a local yeah, a local history. And when I wrote it, I thought one of the things I thought was. You know, this will be in the library and people can go in the library and read this one hundred years from now, you know, because there's not that many there's not gonna be that many books written about it, and that's a meaningful thing to produce. And I've got things, you know, that I do want to write and talk about on different topics with the financial space I've thought
about putting together for free. I'm not not trying to sell this, but of course telling people kind of the different lessons I've.
Learned from the years and.
Ways I think are good to invest that anyone can do, like an educational series. And also, you know, I want to write more about the Kennedy assassination and other related historical topics over the rest of my life.
So I've decided, well, you know, to.
Do all that, I got to get an audience, and I do have the I still have an audience, and you know from the financial email list, so I'll just try to I decide I'll just keep doing that and I'll try to revive the YouTube channel, and I'll start out talking about some of the financial stuff going on, because I do think there are important things happening in the markets in the economy, and I'll see if I can revive it, and then time I could use it to talk about other topics too.
I do want to see you do this, Mike, But I wonder if you're even aware of the strangeness that's gone on on YouTube in the recent months, even you know, we now have edited language on that platform where you know, look, you're going to talk about history, obviously, you're going to bring up things like murder, and you know they're using terms on there like unalived instead if someone was killed.
I'm not kidding by the way. You know, you talk about the Kennedy assassination, you might have to bring up the suicide of a particular figure or two or ten because they might come up and you know, they would say that they blank out that word on YouTube. You can't even use those words now on YouTube. It's a very very weird, you know, just nineteen eighty four style, you know, newspeak kind of platform now. So YouTube is no longer what it was, and it's again no longer
what it was again repeatedly. I don't know how you'll survive on there with the weirdness. Just speaking bluntly using common language. You know, when people talk about even with this Epstein thing, they talk about you know, sexual assault, they're saying things like yours you know, someone.
Was sayed.
You're not even allowed to use those words. It's getting really weird, you know, the the news speak and the thought police are out there. I think the only space where you're going to be able to do something like that might be something like Patreon, you know, where people are subscribers. They come in and they can you know, watch your videos, or they have a live broadcast thing on there now, which I'm exploring for audio and things
like that. But you're going to have to go onto a platform where only people that have like paid entry can come and see what you have to say. I mean, that's the reality.
Now.
These platforms have gotten so weird that you know, they've decided very straight, you know, and people have complained over the years, recent years, especially Oh the Conservatives are all being police, their thoughts are being policed. But I got to tell you when when they're removing words which are just descriptors of events that have occurred, how do you
even cover you know, a historical event. I mean the Kennedy's I literally saw, you know, the Kennedy assassination video a couple of days ago where the audio kept diving out because they were talking about him being shot or killed. Okay, and they're blurring the suppruder frames and all. I mean, they haven't gotten to all of it yet. But anything new that's being produced is being policed heavily by these algorithms that have decided that certain words, certain images, provocative
thoughts are not acceptable. And yet there are others who are blessed who have you know, bigger media presences, who can get away with talking about everything, even if it's just in the news. The ugliness that occurs, you know, they're full on letting the Just today, they're full on letting a pretty brutal looking video. I mean, Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck and you can see it clearly.
There's various angles they got, you know, different all sorts of people, you know, with their tiktoks, live and everything else. A lot of video has been captured because now we don't need video surveillance. We are walking video surveillance with these phones, and that stuff is up there. But God help you if you talk about something that might have occurred where someone was stabbed in a bar fight or something, and it's you know, part of history, the history of
a case, the history of what happened. You might not be allowed to talk about anything that you know contains violence or whatever. And look American history. One thing I think no one can argue with is that it is littered with plenty of violence. So I don't know if you'd be able to freely talk about it on there.
What do you think, Well, I mean, I'll find out eventually. But in the end, you know, this is the problem of platforms, and these Internet platforms in general. You know, they can ban you, they come and go. My Space is gone, you know YouTube, you know the plenty that have.
Come and gone.
And in the end, the only you know, I've been doing this for twenty five years. The only thing you own that I own is the list of the database I have on my newsletter. So if i'm that's my primary means of communication. So if one of these platforms goes or kicks me off or something, I just I still got my email list. I just tell those people we're using this video system.
Instead, you know.
And that's why I always tell the people subscribe to the email list, not go subscribe to my Facebook page or YouTube channel or Twitter or something. Right, you know, it's just that's subscribe to my newsletter.
I mean to give you a weird example. Larry Hancock has been banned from Facebook.
Yeah, you know that's crazy.
That's a guy who is He doesn't use inflammatory language, he doesn't unnecessarily focus on things, he doesn't post images of violence. Uh, this guy's not a toxic presence ever. And you know, anybody who's listening to my show long enough knows it. But yeah, we live in a weird world where Larry Hancock's getting banned from a platform and can't even get an explanation. You know, some people would say, oh, you know, well, Chuck, you get banned. Yeah I do.
And okay, some people think I deserve it because oh, well you said, you know, you said or covered things that they don't want covered or what. Okay, explain to me Larry Hancock, because I don't get it. So, yeah, no, that's true. And isn't that a principle in business? I just want to take this back old school real quick. It's a principal business, okay, because even when a local plumber would sell his business, you know, back when I used to be in the regular business world. The key
thing that they wanted was his customer list. It wasn't about his truck, or his tools, or his office location. Right, even if you bought a plumbing business, what they wanted was the customer list. You know, all those contacts, all those people and your phone number. In other words, your contacts and your contact base. This is why people are selling. You know, their can sell their X platform profiles, they can sell their email lists. It's because of the connectivity
to the audience, the connectivity to the customer base. So you're sticking to a very old school principle here. Like I said, you know the guy who ran a plumbing business, the guy who ran a catering business, guy who did home improvements, the guy who would repair you know, machinery, lawnmower repair guys. What they wanted really was not your location. You know, they bought everything, but what was the key thing that was really a value.
It was the.
Connection to the customers. Or do I have a crazy business idea there? I mean, look, you're actually educated in this world. I just worked in it. But I mean that's what I always saw. It was about getting the customer base and getting the connectivity to the customer base, whether it's viewers or it's people literally paying for a service or anything else. That's really what's the value is that connected list of interested people that you know, you can monetize somehow or am I wrong about that.
Now? One hundred percent?
I mean that's that's what the you know, these internet companies are all about, too, getting as much data as they possible can. That's what all these data centers are about. That's what AI is really about. Scraping all the data off Internet and then repurposing it to people and calling it you know.
AI.
That's all they're doing. But it's the same, you know, it's just well that's a little different than a customer list. But but oh no, but the president's data.
Yeah, the principle remains the same. It's the data to connect to them so that you know. And that's the funny thing is that when I covered that thing in Dubai, like I don't know, ten years ago now, where they had this you know, summit about the future of business
and the way it was going to run. There were a bunch of speakers who came out and said, look, uh, data information that is going to be the oil of the future, the thing that you can go wrong with so long as you can get a good supply of it. That is the deal. That's where the riches are. And everybody thought I was just being paranoid and weird about it, and I said, no, this guy's telling you something real.
And meanwhile, they had a parade of people coming up at this international summit about the future of global business. You know, where is it going to be? Is it going to be in the oil industry? Is it going to be you know, in monetary devices? Are we going to be trading bonds across the planet forever? And that's how people can make their money. No, it's about data collection and information in and of itself, and I think
people failed to recognize what that might mean. Maybe they're getting an idea now because of AI and they can see, you know, I mean, like the real reason why an Amazon is worth what it is is because look, they've got everybody's addresses, they've got people's purchasing information, They've got you know, financial information from every kind of bank, credit card, et cetera. You know, in a huge portion of the market. This is why Amazon is the beast it is, or am I crazy again.
Yeah, you're right. You think about like coping like eBay. You know, eBay doesn't. I don't think eBay even has a warehouse. They don't. You know, they're just a middleman. But they have thousands of users, millions of people, not thousands, millions that log into their website.
You know, that's their customer list. Yeah, and then.
You know, some are buying and some are selling.
Yeah, and it's no longer the huge business it once was. But still the template prevails. And quite frankly, even look, this isn't me with the you know, sour grapes, but the PayPal mapia is a real thing. I mean, think about it as the go between for the exchange of
digital currency on all sorts of levels, even internationally. PayPal's a monster, you know, there's it's no wonder that they bought all these other things like Venmo and these various other things that are under different you know, company names. They're all about making their money from just the exchange. Yeah, but it's also the information that they have on buyers and sellers everywhere that have had to use PayPal at some point or other, even though you know, again they
banned me. But but they're getting strange and selective, and that's a massive business in and of itself that I doubt that you know, without a system as sophisticated as they have, nobody really knows the massive size of the data that can be collected from that, the data that is influenced by that, et cetera. I mean, it's almost unfathomable to the rich person exactly how large things like
that become and have become. Anyway, now we've kind of gone into a weird place, and you recently wrote well an email about the FED and everything, and I'm wondering if you got any responses on that. Did people react, you know, et cetera, you know, maybe give people an idea what you had to say here, because we do have Larry Hancock coming up in the next hour. But I wanted to touch on this mainly for our discussion, but we wound up elsewhere. Sorry about that. That's what
I do. But I also want to thank you because it's been a long time since I've been able to have this conversation with anybody who is observing, you know, objectively, what's going on here. I think, you know, because it's not about Mike's politics, it's about his analysis, and that's the thing that's been lost in the shuffle here lately. And you know, God bless anybody who can make a living off of influencing and know, making short clips and whatever.
I mean, you know, good for you, however you make a living without hurting other people, Good luck. But man, we're in a different sort of world here than where we used to be, and that that FED article is really what I wanted to talk to you about. But we wound up going off on these other discussions. But it's been so long since we talked, I mean, it's kind of unavoidable. I hope they'll come back again soon
so we can continue this conversation. But in the meantime, tell people about the newsletter, the email and oh, by the way, can they still sign up for it if they haven't, which I don't know anybody personally who listens to my show that hasn't signed up for your newsletter, But you know, how can they do that still and
get the emails and be on your email list? Because if I'm going to give my information to anybody, I mean, Mike Swanson's one of these guys that's not gonna, you know, sell you out and give you the phishing because that's another weird group of people that have emerged, these you know, fake redirection plans that are out there that just scam people. And you know, if they get to scam one out of a thousand people, victory for the cheap ads they put up. And by the way, those are on the
big legitimate platforms. Those are on the you know, it's not just dark web where people are getting screwed. Just saying, but you know, that's my commentary. But yeah, tell us about this FED article and the email list and how you're still sending them out and if people can sign up and all that, please.
Yeah, they just if anyone wants to get free, you just go to Wall Street Window dot com, just type in your email and you'll get it a couple of days, a couple of times a week.
But in the news.
This year, there's been a lot of talk about Trump and the Federal Reserve and Trump warning interest rates lowered and angry that the current Federal Reserve chairman isn't lowering them, firing FED officials, trying to put pressure on the FED, and so forth. And what's obscured in all this is there's interesting thing that happened last Friday, and that is the Treasury Secretary interviewed candidates to become the next Federal Reserve chairman. The pal's term expires in May next year,
so the Treasury Secretary Bessent is interviewing people. Well, what's interesting about that is when Powell was picked, Trump interviewed him and others to be the new Federal Reserve chairman. This time Trump isn't doing the interviews. The Treasury Secretary is doing the interviews. So what I argued in my email was that this whole narrative about Trump versus the Fed, it's a narrative that's perfect for the discourse.
And the media.
That's all about Trump. But and people that want to hate Trump or they worship Trump, they like.
To hear about him.
So the whole thing about the FED is about Trump, when in reality, what's really happening is that the Treasury Secretary, the Treasury Department is in effect taking over the Federal Reserve. That's what is really happening. And the reason why that's happening is because the Federal Reserve has had a mandate, it's called a dual mandate, an official mandate to change interest rates to try to keep inflation down and employment up. So when there's a recession, they're lower rates to improve
the employment situation. And when there'd be an economic boom inflation would appear, they'd raise rates, and you know, it's sort of a Kenesian cycle too. But now the Treasure Department, not just Trump, the Treasury Department once interest rates lowered, while inflation is still around three percent the CPI official number, and the stop markets at all time has and in a high valuation, and there's no official recession, and unapployment hasn't gone up in any dramatic way to justify law
and rates. So what's happening is they weren't the rates lowered despite all that, And people should be asking why, and they've said why, and that is because the debt situation, the government debt situation is not stop shrinking, and it's growing and it's growing and it's growing in DOGE failed to change that situation despite what was promised. You know, the government debt this year is bigger than it was last year, has bigger, it's going to be bigger next year.
And this is creating a situation where the interest on the debt is now making up a bigger portion of the budget, so they're trying to lower rates to make the interest future interests lower. Uh and naturalere we're at and the consequences of that are going to be more inflation down the road.
And no one is saying that.
The media is not saying that because they just want to talk about Trump.
Now.
I got interesting reactions to the email. A few people, you know, said, I mean that, no one was angry. Really, A few people said this is provocative and interesting and you.
Know, making me think about things now.
I got one response which was kind of I never got an email like this.
Before, and it was very long, while.
Over a thousand words, and it was AI generated. You could tell by the way it was written that it was generated by AI. Most likely the person took what I wrote and asked AI one of the arguments against this, you know, and somebody fit out all this stuff.
Somebody copying, and at the end, somebody literally copied and pasted your analysis into GROC and said, hey, Groc, how do I respond to this, and then spit that email back at you.
Okay, yeah, And I never had anyone do that before, so that was interesting and amusing.
But here's the kicker. The end conclude.
The email had all these different arguments, some of them were contradictory, but then at the end they conclude by saying, what people need to do is put all their money in crypto.
They need to put.
You know, a portion of their money in bitcoin for safety and then buy at coins for growth, which is the most reckless advice you know, a financial advisor could give anyone, you know, and that's what this thing said to do. And that's you know, it's just but you got to realize if it was groc that didn't Elon Musk and his friends are manipulating the crypto market and hav an interest in getting people to believe and things like that.
If you went to a.
Normal investment advisor, you know, almost all investment advisors in the United States tell people to put a certain percentage of money in stocks for their so called risk, a certain percent in bonds for their so called safety.
And what this.
Was email was basically saying was bitcoin is safety and all all coins are risk.
It's truly disgusting.
So that's so nor with these algorithms are people. So I reply to the guy and I said, look, this AI is not intelligent, nor is it wise. It just spits out information.
Right.
Well, see there's the thing, because nowhere in there did I hear anything about you know those uh, solid investments I used to hear of, which was like what real estate, precious metals, right, stable, stable bonds. These are all what I what I used to think of as what we're conservative investments.
Right.
If you had a massive amount of money and you wanted to put it into a safe place where it would grow a little bit, you know what would they tell you? Put it into a CD, put it into you know these things that have you know, small payoffs, but you don't You're not going to lose your money, is the idea for the most part, up to a certain point. You know, everything has risk. But the point is that, you know, so long as the country doesn't go bankrupt and you buy us bonds, you're good, you
know what I'm saying. And if you buy gold, it usually won't go down in value anything that isn't commensurate with the value of your dollars anyway, So not bad. And you know the old adage about you know, buy real estate. God ain't making any more of it, Okay, true, but also a fairly good investment over time. If you patiently leave it there and it's not about instant payoff, one thing is almost certain it will go up in value, right, I mean these are sort of just used to be
common sense, I thought. But the AI didn't mention any of that, did it. No, I didn't see this email, folks. I'm just guessing. But you know, why would something that's not in the real world bother to give you a real world answer? Is my question?
You know, and I don't think you know, at some point, you know, in the future, we'll talk on the show about the Kennedy assassination these files is But right, I don't think AI has any use at all in trying to look through that stuff and it come to a conclusion.
Well no, no, not to come to a conclusion. We could train an AI to organize these things better. That's a possibility to organize things, you know, to give us a what would you call that a global index? You know that really covers the minutia that could be done by an AI.
Okay, but I don't see how that's much different than what the Mary Farrell Foundation is doing on their website already.
No, not much different. However, it could be, you know, again, a force multiplier, like most tools are. It could be a useful tool to do it in a more refined, in a faster and more efficient manner. That's possible, just like automation does.
Right.
You know, you could say.
I'm also afraid, yeah, good the people advocating it, and I'm not talking about you, but people who But now there's not that many people doing that, but the few that have advocated for that, you're saying the AI is going to cause a breakthrough. I'm afraid it's just an excuse to be lazy and not look at the files, just say well, this one day, Ai'll do it for me.
Well that's a possibility, but that would be the same thing as you know, people saying, well, I'm waiting for the day we have flying cars. We might get there eventually, but I got to tell you, if you're waiting around for that, you might wait your whole life. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, so you know, and look,
I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying that it makes sense to use it in a way that would be helpful to those who actually have to do the final analysis, Okay, but it doesn't mean that it is the solution. It means that it could be a tool. That's all I'm saying about it, And that's my opinion. I could be wrong. Look, I'm not saying I'm an expert on any of that. I mean, even though I am expert, you know, giving myself a headache looking at
the files myself. But you know, every time I examine them, if I think about you know, and I recently made this observation, which, by the way, this whole like FED perception thing is funny to me because there was that whole FED perception about you know, JFK challenge the Fed. That's why he got shot, you know, because of the
silver certificates and all that. And meanwhile, what it really ends up being, regardless of the politics and what people wanted to see in it, is that Kennedy actually handed a lot more power to what his Treasury secretary. It was over this very very small issue of the representative amount of over notes, you know, being distributed based on the amount of silver on deposit at the bank. And then you got to put it in context, and this is something AI is not capable of doing is putting
it in context. What does this really mean? You know? And I think that's that's where people are failing to understand. If you want the actual answer, you're not going to get it. It might help you organize a lot of data quickly, just like a computer is a much more efficient way. Let's say to distribute your written work. You know, you can type it out right now, Mike, pound out a thousand words, press a button, and it'll be in front of however many people you have on your email
list instantly. Right in the past, you would have had to take that, go get it printed and make sure there were enough copies and then get them to people one way or another to put them in front of them. So a force multiplier that might increase the speed doesn't necessarily means that changes the quality of what's being written. That's the way I look at the AI situation. It's not intelligent, it's not you know, near the sci fi nightmare that it could be yet, But then again, I mean,
what would it be like if people believe that it is? Anyway, all of that having been said, Mike, I don't know how to conclude this except yeah, go to Wall Street window dot com. I'll put a link in with the show notes and tell you to go there. You can sign up with the newsletter, and Mike's not charging you anything there. But if you do decide to give these master classes, I suggest you charge for them because they
will be unique. I don't think anybody's doing, you know, real analysis when it comes to a lot of the stuff that you're gonna wind up talking about, and definitely not from your perspective, which you know. I always find it funny when when people have tried to like ascribe different things and tried to put, you know, guys like
you into a box. It's Hilary. I've heard people try to call you a liberal, and I'm like, Mike's not a liberal, And you know, whatever proof you think you might have for him being a liberal, it's your perception that's getting bent here. You know you want a simple answer to that, Mike, you admitted on this show you voted for Trump. You're not exactly looking to You're not
exactly looking to join the woke mob. I know that, you know, you're just a solid guy who wants real answers about things and actually would like to advise people so that they don't get hurt in the markets more than you know doing a get rich quick scheme or trying to capitalize on your influencer status or whatever else. That's not you. You know, you're not one of those guys. And you're also not a grandpa who doesn't realize that. You know technology is coming clearly, you're using it, clearly,
you understand it's usefulness. But what you're saying is, don't rely on that to do your thinking for you, I think is your overall message. Unless I miss something here, is that right?
Yeah, you're right, that's right.
So you know, at the end of the day, if you want a world where you know real thinking is valued, you're going to have to contribute to it by doing your own thinking. I don't know. Maybe that's the ultimate conclusion here, But then again, Mike, maybe you have a different way that we should close this out.
No, tell people's side of email list and and stay tuned exactly. We'll have more to say in the future.
And I'd love to have a chat with you about a bunch of things. I mean, if you want to talk about other media analysis. I don't know what movies or TV shows you've been enjoying but I got to tell you, the world of all of it is getting strangely distorted. And you know, is it just us getting old? You know, we are similar age. I think Mike's a little younger than me, believe it or not. But you know, and and oh, you're not coming to Dallas this year, right?
I don't know.
I'm not.
I don't know for sweet it's what I'm doing, I'm going or not. I got something I won't know from four weeks, four weeks.
I won't know from.
Well if you do. I just had a guy on named Paul Abbott, and I like him. He's interesting us. He's now doing a podcast in support of his book and all that. And I got to be honest with you, I think that the next time you release a book, you might want to borrow from some of what Paul's doing because I like it. I think it's it's a good diversified way to get people to read your stuff and to digest it. And I like him a lot. He's one of my big suggestions for being a presenter
this year. And he focuses on the death of Lee Harvey Oswald and you know all the things that went into that because that's another thing that occurred that weekend Let's not forget in Dallas. And I'm looking very forward to his analysis and discussion about the events of that weekend in November nineteen sixty three. And also I'm hoping to get a little time to hang out with the guy.
He's really interesting. So if you do make it, I think we should all at least either make the trip to Campezi's or have lunch or something.
Because oh, sure that'd be awesome, you know, I mean, I'm trying to go. I just I don't know. I got somethinge a family thing, I don't know.
Well, look, I don't want to pressure you. I'm just saying obviously, I love it when you're there because it's always good to see a friend. And yeah, Mike full disclosure, is a friend of the show, friend of mine, and that's not why I appreciate his work. I appreciated his work before we became friendly, but very glad that you are still out there. And man, I got to tell you, whatever it is you do, I hope that you'll come here and we'll try and support in best best way
we can. You know, anything that you do. And he's also yes, a sponsor of the show and one of the few that remains. So you know, and that again is not why I'm singing his praises. If I thought it was bad, I'd be critiquing everything. But I highly recommend The War State Why the Vietnam War. Mike's book on Danville, Virginia. Now I'm not familiar with the baseline material there, but my understanding is it's a solid book as well.
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Revel go ahead, Carlin in The Truth about the JAFA assassination.
Right, Well, what do you want to know.
Duddy Baker's wild claim Oswald girlfriend he knew Ruby and Barry answer weapons, Really.
I imagine I could claim I have four wheels. It doesn't make me a wagon.
But okay, Oswald was on the building and trying to prevent the murder of John Kennedy.
Come on now, has a.
Real effort on the day of hay assassination. Book into her claim.
Go to Amazon dot com enter Judith Baker in her own words. You'll get the results for a digital copy of a book where Walt Brown utilizes her own words and the known evidence in the case to get at well a different perspective. Let's say you can get Judith Barry Baker in her own words from the author himself, signed if you request it by contacting doctor Brown at KIA s j F K at A O L dot com.
It's a fun book and it actually dissects the many, many fantastic claims Judith very Baker in her own words.
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