The Petrodollar Cracks, the Skyscraper Stalls, and the Commodity Firestorm | Mark Thornton
Summary
Commodity Supercycle: The guest argues a broad-based upswing in commodities is underway, driven by Middle East disruptions and monetary inflation, despite short-term volatility.
Energy Markets: Oil and natural gas supply from the Persian Gulf is severely curtailed, with long restart times for wells and widespread impacts across refining, plastics, shipping, and global CPI.
Precious Metals: Gold (and to a lesser extent silver) face tactical headwinds from higher interest rates but retain a strong secular bid as central banks boost reserves.
De-dollarization: The decline of the petrodollar is accelerating, with BRICS promoting alternative currencies and gold-linked settlement mechanisms for cross-border trade.
Gold Settlement: Central banks and BRICS-aligned systems are increasingly using gold in reserves and as a settlement anchor, raising gold’s monetary role.
LNG Arbitrage: The U.S. has abundant, cheap natural gas; building out LNG liquefaction, pipelines, ships, and terminals presents an arbitrage opportunity versus Europe’s high prices.
Agriculture and Chemicals: Fertilizer shortages and higher diesel costs threaten crop yields; sulfuric acid supply is critical for copper mining, highlighting risks across Materials value chains.
Regional Positioning: The guest is bullish on North America—particularly the United States—for commodity investment due to resource abundance and infrastructure, while noting macro risks from inflation and rates.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues Podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Well, even if the war settles down and peace breaks out in the Persian Gulf, a lot of damage is already been done to the world economy and the Persian Gulf area itself. In terms of oil and the main exports of the Persian Gulf, um the the oil production facilities have uh either been destroyed, disrupted or shut down. And that means a slow uh comeback period uh in terms of production. And we're already as I've indicated previously entering a period of higher and higher commodity prices. Um so oil, natural gas, chemicals etc. and also fertilizers. So the disruption to fertilizer production and distribution from the Persian Gulf areas is going to see diminished crop production um in the next crop season and possibly longer term fertilizer and crop prices um going into the foreseeable future. So that's been very destructive and disruptive to the entire global population and even the fact that the United States is an energy producing economy and an agriculture producing economy. These are all global markets of course and so prices in these commodities tend to rise with global prices. So it's going to adversely affect the entire world population including the United States. And also of course what we're learning in more recent weeks is that this is having a very disruptive effect on the Gulf state economies themselves and these are the the economies the governments that are behind the pro dollar status. uh countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, etc. Uh these countries have all agreed previously uh to sell their oil product and other production in terms of US dollars. And in return for that guarantee, the United States is supposed to provide uh diplomatic and uh military protection uh for these countries and their governments. Uh but of course, a lot of that is up in the air right now and the petro dollar status is in grave doubt. Uh the Iranians clearly are taking advantage of their victory over the United States in the Persian Gulf to push against the petro dollar and of course their um allies in China, India, uh Russia, uh many of the European people um want to move away from uh the petro dollar uh and have a more free competitive uh international exchange system and uh so you know it's to China's and all these other countries advantage especially after they were attacked with US tariff policies recently as well. They're all very much on the lookout to move away from the dollar and uh reliance on US government bonds and securities. Um moving more into domestic and regional uh investments and uh and currencies. So, and of course, the demise of the petro dollar could also cause an an advancing, steamrolling, snowballing effect to consumer prices in the United States and producer prices as well in the United States. If the US dollar takes a hit in terms of its global exchange price level, um that means that all domestic and internationally traded goods are going to rise in price relative um to the US dollar. And so we would see a uh decline in the global valuation of the US dollar and of course um prices in the United States for consumers and for our businesses. So all of that is very much um all in the negative um aspects to the prior equilibrium in the Gulf before Israel was joined by the United States in attacking Iran and assassinating their religious leader slashpolitical leader um in Iran. So this has caused quite a disruption. Um and in addition to um all of these very important and um fundamental disturbances, the trumped up economy um of 2026 has also put a little pet project of my own in certain doubt, which is the skyscraper curse. um which originally we anticipated the the Jedha Tower in Saudi Arabia to be completed in 2020. That was shut down for political reasons and then restarted in 2025 and it was expected uh to reach a new record height um sometime in 2027. Originally, it was kind of early in 2027. Uh, but now the record height is projected for later in 2027. Um, they've made a a whole lot of progress in 2025 up until the current point in 2026. But as you can imagine, the disrupt the disruption um to the finances in the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia who's financing the project and then all of the disruptions of logistics uh that this has caused in terms of moving uh materials for the construction project uh to Jedha on the west coast. of Saudi Arabia. And then if peace does break out uh the reconstruction um and u redevelopment of the oil fields, the oil facilities, the chemical facilities, the transportation facilities, the creditworthiness of all of these governments and their various businesses u is going to take precedent over um a symbolic mega tower on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. So we're not really sure uh you know we're kind of expecting um a uh impact on the stock market and the western economies associated with the skyscraper curse which is generally timed with about the um the complete not the completion of these projects but whenever it does offici officially reach a record setting high um level of construction, basic construction, not uh where people are moving into fully furnished units, apartments, uh spaces of all kinds. Uh but reaching that record height of live livable space. So, you know, the disruptions, uh, the destruction, um, the higher costs that are going to be imposed on all of us from this trumped up economy, um, are very hard to, uh, list out at any one point in time. they seem to increase and expand um as our attention is drawn to things that are impacted secondarily, tertiary and so forth. So um we'll be taking um more look at that um that particular project and also I plan to do a an examination of what seems so highly unlikely as a predictor of economic crisis in the world economy. Um but it's built on the Austrian theory of the business cycle. uh but it seems so flimsy um that I want to do a comparison and a contrast between Austrians and the Austrian business cycle theory and this skyscraper curse which gets linked to it. um and the mainstream approach to um business cycle timing and prediction which is based on hardcore measurements of macroeconomic activity. So I really look forward to doing that and um highlighting the superiority of the theoretical approach. Um so I look forward to that. Um, side B of this podcast, um, I'm going to replay a recent interview, um, from Palisades Gold Radio that I did recently, uh, where we looked at this firestorm that has hit the global economy and the emergence of, uh, this commodity super cycle. uh which is also going which I high um provided the highlights to here but we go into it in uh a much more greater detail. So thank you for listening to this episode of the minor issues podcast. Uh please check out the events page um at the Mises Institute on misesus.org. Um we have many exciting events coming up including um a uh Mises Circle event in New Hampshire that if you're in the area or you're traveling uh to or in into the area uh in New H New Hampshire um it'll well be well worth um finding out more details about that u all the great speakers that we're going to be having. Um and uh and of course the camaraderie uh that you will experience by going to a Misus Institute event uh hearing our great speakers uh communicating with others with in with which you share a lot of uh interest and knowledge. Uh so please check that out uh and attend if you can. Uh and thank you for watching this episode of the minor issues podcast. >> Dr. Mark Torton, economist and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. It is a true pleasure to host you on Palisades Gold Radio today. >> It's great to be back on your show. >> Excellent. And Mark, it is a great time to have you back on the show as well. We're going through one of the largest, if not the largest commodity flow disruptions that we have seen in history. Yet equity markets find themselves at all-time highs. So Mark, very excited to hear where you think the what the state is of the global economy and where it's headed as well as how we should all be thinking about risk versus opportunity right now. >> Well, I think you know, of course, there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of disruptions in the precious metals market. Of course, we had this huge correction in February. And then to add insult to injury, of course, the Israeli US attack on Iran um starts and disrupts not just the energy market, but shipping and a variety of other related markets uh to the oil and natural gas resources and reserves uh in the Gulf. And so that sets off a firestorm of, you know, price changes throughout the economy as well as important policy implications. And I think one of the biggest things to note is not only is higher energy bad for uh the price of gasoline and so many other things um in the economy, but most importantly it drives up expectations for higher statistical price increases or CPI increases. And of course that feeds directly into central bank calculations about policy. And so before the war, central banks had the expectations that they would be cutting rates. But with higher oil and energy prices and higher CPI prices certainly in the works, all of those rate cuts came off the board. And so with higher rates rather than lower rates, that's adding insult to injury to the precious metals. Higher interest rates means that in particular the speculators are less likely to be holding a lot of gold because of the opportunity cost. And so this has really thrown markets into a state of confusion. But in terms of looking at all prices across the board, uh the US government bond, the value of the US dollar, the value of uh the stock market, commodity prices, you know, the CRB index is way up. Uh even though gold prices have come down, the overall comm commodity complex is up and monetary inflation, at least in the United States, is up. They're increasing money and prices are rising in various places throughout the economy. So the thesis about government runaway spending and borrowing increasing the money supply to finance that spending and borrowing and of course the commodity super cycle which is led by gold and silver that is still intact at least in my evaluation. Lots to unpack there and I'm sure we'll take a stab at that during this interview. Mark, I would love to get started zooming a bit deeper into this commodity disruption that we are seeing in the Middle East. Very often discussed on social media as well as on this channel. Some analysts are saying we've already lost about a billion barrels of oil or at least are on track of losing that. Some some people are highlighting we might be losing 1.5 billions of barrels of oil. Of course, we're also talking about disruption in fertilizers, helium, aluminium, and and the list goes on like you outlined earlier. Now, as we speak currently, the futures of WTI are only between brackets trading at around $105 a barrel. And like we outlined earlier, S&P um futures or at least SP index is trading at an all-time high as we speak currently. What gives? Why is there such a discrepancy between those two? Shouldn't we expect more impact of a supply disruption like this? >> Well, that's true. Uh, you know, the S&P 500 and the Magnificent 7, um, and you know, the the leading stocks in those indexes, they're not very highly oil dependent. The American economy, uh, is not as highly oil dependent as it was in previous cycles. So that in the United States and in other countries um the the amount of oil necessary to produce GDP has fallen significantly uh over time. And of course while resources and assets are certainly at risk in world markets and in the Persian Gulf um you know investments in US stocks are relatively safe. they're away from the war zone. They're not impacted very much by oil prices. Um and so they're, you know, insulated uh from that effect. And all of this money that the Fed is creating and has created, it has to go somewhere. So yes, we are concerned about oil prices and yes, we are concerned about precious metals prices, but when you when you step back and look at the overall picture, you realize well that money initially was going into liquidity and moving into other markets away from precious metals in the big runup that we had. um you know every bull market has significant cor corrections and you know and so investors in that area have to anticipate that that's going to happen uh to gold and silver even though the thesis remains intact and uh and so you know when we look around um you know and we see government bond prices higher the value of the US dollar higher uh US stocks higher higher uh other commodity prices higher, you know, so that um you know, all sorts of things that are adversely affected uh as a result of the attack on Iran uh and the shutting down uh of the Persian Gulf. It does go beyond um things like uh oil and natural gas and just with natural gas which of course at one time in the past they would just burn off as a worthless byproduct and now not only is natural gas uh seemed to be vital and of course some countries are really worried about the liqufied natural gas being cut off uh from Oman. man and the United Arab Emirates. Uh but also in processing that natural gas, uh we get the helium that's used in uh computer chip fabrication um and and all sorts of uh important technical industries. And the sulfur that results from that is then used in a multi-step chemical processing effort. Uh it's very complicated, but out pops the at the other end comes sulfuric acid, which is kind of like the king of the chemical laboratory. It's used for all sorts of things. Uh and companies that use it are really worried about keeping the supply. So it for example it's vital uh in copper mining because sulfuric acid is used to break down the raw ore uh and separate uh copper from the raw ore in order to be further processed and turned into copper. And so I'm actually a little bit surprised that copper prices haven't moved a little bit more uh as a result. But you know those are just some steps. And then with oil refinering of course there's dozens of byproducts uh that are very very important and uh all the plastics uh that we get. Um, so it's not just, you know, moving production from point A to point B and trucks and the gasoline and the rubber and the tires and the asphalt uh of the roads uh but it's also the packaging uh well the production of so many goods. I mean, if you looked at what comes out of the byproducts of uh oil refinery, it it affects virtually everything in your bathroom. Uh it has to it it affects everything to do with most hobbies. Uh it has to do with many things that um are involved not just in the production of uh fertilizers and the raw food products but also in the packaging of all of those products and then um you know all of the pla plastic uh uh you know the packaging and then the processing of all of those things in our own kitchens. So this is going to have negative pervasive effects uh on the economy and you know you said 1 billion uh barrels of oil but the cut off is actually higher than that you know the amount of oil that isn't flowing out of the Persian Gulf you know it was 20% of oil 20% of natural gas and uh you know there's like one and a half equivalent barrels flowing out of Oman and 1 and a half billion barrels flowing west out of Saudi Arabia. And so most of the oil is being cut off. The Iranians uh typically have a smuggling operation where they get their oil out uh on small boats into super tankers. And so they've been able to dodge for the most part uh the blockade of the Gulf. Uh but you're still talking about a small fraction. And you're also talking about the Persian Gulf production economies having to shut down their oil and natural gas wells. And this will take a long time to restart those wells. It's going to take uh and and in in mo many cases these wells will be less productive than they were prior to because when you shut down wells you never know what you're going to get when you start them back up again. It's not like a switch that can be easily turned on and off. And in some cases these older wells uh will have to be refitted and redrilled uh in order to get them back online. So, uh, typically I say that, you know, war news is a temporary phenomenon that's not worth investing. Um, and I think there will be a snapback when we uh get peace restored in this region. But, uh, there are are also going to be some lingering effects in terms of production of the master ingredient in our economy. I consider oil and natural gas a master ingredient in that it powers everything uh from agriculture to manufacturing to transportation uh including all kinds of mining um and it affects everything. So, oil, natural gas, uh, as President Trump seemed to know at one point in his political career that, you know, driving the price of oil down like he did in his first term, uh, was a major component of the strength in the economy during that first term and people's perception of the economy uh, in his first term because oil production increased. uh oil and natural gas and energy prices fell and that helped the economy and it helped people's perception and their real purchasing power of their incomes. So this this is going to have significant long-term effects on the economy. I'm really trying to get a sense for when this situation becomes critical because those headline figures like you outlined we we might be missing up to 15 20% of the world's supply of oil and gas LNG when does that situation truly become a pain point where some countries or European countries for example will not be able to access it anymore and through that we will see demand destruction which could be very painful. >> Yes. Well, you don't want to look this look at this in terms of the Keynesian macro GDP uh format. You want to look at it in the Austrian schools micro format and realize that um just like the fact that oil exports from the Persian Gulf, you know, before the war and before the blockade and all of that nonsense, uh you know, those there were ships in transit for a very long time and only recently did the the final uh shipments actually land and get unloaded. And so we're going to see um you know certain countries that are going to be adversely affected right away. So countries like India, China, East Asia, Australia, which got a huge percentage of their energy imports from the Persian Gulf. Well, they're feeling the pinch right away. Whereas in the United States uh you know where there's abundant supply of domestic production um our the impact here is entirely just in terms of price. there's no quantity um shortages price can effectively allocate but in some of these countries uh there's the shock is just too much and so their households and their businesses you know their businesses have already had to adopt emergency measures in terms of how much production how much can the labor force come into work given the fact that there's there's uh visible tangible shortages of energy in the things it produces. So you know that this is a wavelike pattern uh that emanates from the Persian Gulf and it moves outward and especially uh to those countries that are uh dependent upon the actual imports rather than talking about the world marketplace where prices we can see those world prices going up and down. Uh but certain countries are being more uh affected and certain products are being more affected. So, uh, we're seeing a draw down and a lack of resupply of a lot of fertilizer products during the, uh, northern he hemisphere planting season. So, a lot of agriculture right now that's planting in the spring for fall harvest, they're going to have less uh, diesel to run all of their equipment. Diesel is going to be more expensive and they're going to have less fertilizer. So, they're going to be uh you know that that means that land is going to have to be nonoptimally used and uh less land is going to be put into production. So that we will see you know the impact of that uh after the fall harvest uh is actually realized and you know given that the weather patterns are stable from one year to the next which of course they're not uh but if they were we definitely will see a great uh a loss of production there. So it's going to affect manufacturing it's going to affect agriculture. It's going to affect technology and transportation. Um, it's going to affect mining uh significantly. um you know places that are completely dependent upon imports of diesel fuel and sulfuric acid um like in Africa uh you know they're going to be um no doubt facing uh shortages and shipping shipping failures and they're not going to be able to maintain a regular production schedule. And so um you know these effects are pervasive. they're uh almost entirely difficult to quantify I think at this point but the world needs to get ready and I think the world had already entered a commodity cycle um you know where all commodities were going to be headed higher agriculture um you know energy is 40% uh food production is about 40% of the commodity price index And then metals are about 20% with more than half of that is industrial metals and then less than half is precious metals. But really once you understand that diesel fuel is really um you know that's what powers all that equipment. It's what powers the transportation of raw ores throughout the production process and the sulfuric acid and other chemicals uh that are used in the mining to refining to final product. Um, all of that's going to be much more difficult and the world is going to uh have to adjust much quicker to higher commodity prices across the board than it otherwise would have uh with what I was anticipating as a commodity cycle. um you know and uh and of course that will snap back a little bit um once peace is restored and once production starts to flow and once and when anticipation of more exports from the Persian Gulf uh and more of their production facilities come back online but you know already uh a lot of the production facilities in the Persian Gulf of course they're all at risk but a lot of them have been damaged or destroyed. Um and a lot, you know, we depend upon a lot of things there. They're the cheapest producer uh because they have very very cheap energy prices and so they can you know they can engage in the production of sulfuric acid and out sell most of the rest of the world market. uh they can engage in the production of boide into aluminum and uh because they have such inexpensive energy. Uh but now the world's going to have to work through all the chaos that we've uh brought about as a result of this adventure with Israel uh against Iran. You know, hearing you speak like that, Mark, it it almost sounds like a shock like this is almost what the US and and the West as a whole kind of needs to reshore commodities and supply chains. Is that fair to say? >> Well, it's a good question. um you know, everybody because of President Trump's ill- fated uh pro uh protection scheme of tariffs. Um and I think there's, you know, a underlying uh trade war, monet monetary war going on between the United States and China and other countries, the brick countries. And so everybody unfortunately is engaged in trying to uh obtain, maintain and store critical commodities and uh you know the uh Ludig van Mises you know the namesake of the institute that I work for uh you know he was tireless in demonstrating that what's called globalism now or free trade um is largely responsible for our rising standards of living that we can all engage across the entire globe and get uh more production at lower cost and have higher incomes. And so that's a great thing and and this regionalism and trade warism and tariffs that all breaks the all of that down and makes us less um uh cooperative with uh the other people in the world. And so this is a very dangerous path. I mean people politicians in particular they feel like this is the way to go. and uh you know that everybody should have have their own sources, but that's done at a at a very high cost across the board. And uh you know, so and it it it certainly doesn't lead to lower prices. It's going to lead to higher prices because we're going to be using collectively as a human population less efficient producers. Now, I may already have a great advantage in the production of say cotton um and uh but if other countries try to get their own supply of cotton, they're going to have to produce it at a higher cost. And if I want to have my own supply of silver, for example, I may not be so good at that. And it may cost the production wise a lot more for me to produce it the in the United States uh whereas I previously could have uh imported it at from a cheaper cost region such as Mexico or Peru. So this is a this is um what politicians see as you know an easy fix because they see the world at war with one another. Uh but that perspective uh runs absolutely counter to human betterment and the standard of living. It's not just war itself, but it's preparation for war that also contributes to lowering our standards of living. And just like all of these shortages um that we were previously talking about, you know, there are going to be some people on this earth in some countries who are living um you know, at a subsistence level. And so while everybody is uh becoming slightly poor or maybe a lot poor as a result of all these policies, some people are going to fall below subsistence. Uh they're going to be hungry, they're going to be starving, they're going to be get sick and die. And so, you know, it's um these these nonfighting wartime conditions actually kill as well as impoverish. I think your argument for global trade is is undeniable that it does raise standards of living and it moves production towards the lowest cost producers around the world which of course is a net positive. However, you could also make the argument for security which you already started outlining there. Um if you are playing this game as a country, isn't it a worse position to be if you are not the producer of a lot of the goods that you're actually trading? kind of like the situation the US is in right now. It's exporting US dollars but not really that much goods and services. >> Well, you know, it it does fit into overall political economy, but take for example uh Switzerland. I mean, it produces very little um very few things uh that it consumes. it produces a very small number of things and certainly the country couldn't get by with just wearing watches and eating chocolate. Um, and of course Switzerland has been right smack dab in the middle of Europe uh for hundreds and hundreds of years as a separate uh political entity and uh of course they've never been successfully invaded. Even the old Soviet Union which had all these war plans uh to invade Switzerland and you know take the gold and so on and so forth. They actually uh if you looked at the plans, they actually would always um you know go around Switzerland because Switzerland spent enough money on national defense and preparedness um you know in what in what they needed to survive any kind of onslaught or you know attack or blockade of of of trade and so forth. Um, you know, and the same thing with the Nazis in Germany in World War II, you know, they wanted to take over the entire globe. Um, you know, or at least all of Europe. And of course, they, you know, uh, just sidestepped, uh, Switzerland and went into the Balkans and Italy and France and all around them. So there are ways of uh protecting domestic tranquility um without you know all of that uh Antarctic uh production where you feel like you have to produce everything domestically. uh you know taking on a Sparta like perspective and a Sparta like economy and living a Spartan type existence. And so you know this is an age-old historically validated perspective which Mises knew inside and outside. Um and uh modern politicians though of course with all the special interest groups pulling at their um you know pulling at them constantly they want to go for the quick solution you know that benefit certain people in you know their political friends and so forth um and then say they're doing something about it uh when in fact you know the protectionism tariff you go it alone philosophy leads right to war. Okay. So, so I've been talking about for when I started my podcast over two years ago. I mean, I started talking about this stuff that protectionism. Well, first of all, it's domestic interventionism in your own economy leads to calls for protectionism from international competitors. And then there's the political squabble of foreign affairs where uh you start battling uh other countries with tariffs and and sanctions and quotas and strategic stockpiles and all the rest. And it just it actually pushes the economy further and quicker towards war itself. >> Perhaps we can continue to talk about natural gas for a second. I believe earlier in this interview you mentioned that natural gas used to be so abundant that it was just flared away. Of course, because of environmental rules, the US can no longer flare natural gas. So now it has to find a solution to use it. And the same for Canada, I suppose. But there's still so much natural gas in North America that prices are very low compared to global standards. Of course, you can't trade it internationally as easily because it's hard to transport. you need to convert it to LG first. This is still, it seems, a tremendous opportunity for North America as it is basically energy that's currently dirt cheap. If you were to convert that into energy, you could use that to grow your economy. >> Absolutely. You know, crude oil uh coming out of the ground was once considered a pollution. And you know, farmers and people who built roads and stuff thought, "Oh my god, this stuff is getting everywhere. You know, they considered it just a nuisance, a pollution." And then they realized that, hey, we could take this crude oil and turn it into kerosene. Uh but the rest of the crude oil was still, you know, considered useless. So that initial entrepreneur figured out, hey, kerosene, I could, you know, this this would be a substitute for whale order, whale oil to light lamps and things of that nature. So that was great. And you know, John D. Rockefeller made a zillion dollars by taking advantage of that entrepreneurial discovery. And then you know in his uh oil refining uh companies they discovered uses for some of the other byproducts which were just thrown away. Um and uh and so now there are dozens and dozens. In fact, they use uh virtually every drop uh every molecule of crude oil to produce all the various um you know byproducts from oil production. And you know now we've you know producing um rayon and nylon and all of the artificial um fabrics and uh it's used to produce fertilizers and you know uh all sorts of things and natural gas for the longest time was just burned off. So the the oil would come out, the crude oil would come out, they take the crude oil to the refinery, but they burned off the natural gas as being, you know, dangerous, a dangerous nuisance. Um, and then subsequently, of course, we've learned to tap that and use that as a fuel. And in refining it, we've found other byproducts from the dirty natural gas, the sour gas as it's called, you know. So that's where there's helium in there and there's um sulfur in there and uh and so in refining the natural gas into a clean burning fuel um you know we've come up with these other byproducts. entrepreneurs have, you know, they get giant piles of these byproducts and realize, hey, we could use this to make some, you know, money off of this. And so over, you know, since 18 like the 1850s, um, when we started all of this in the United States and entrepreneurs have been working on this just like they do in other areas where they're they're constantly looking for ways of making money uh, with those things that get thrown away really, you know, so that, you know, orange peels were just thrown away at one time and now they're used to make uh you know scents and oils and fertilizers and you know all sorts of things. So entrepreneurs, you know, take th those initial resources and make them more and more valuable and they actually make the original kerosene or gasoline cheaper and cheaper and cheaper because the competitive process uh you know more people want that crude oil because it's more and more valuable and more is produced. So we actually get more gasoline, more kerosene, more jet fuel uh produced than otherwise and it drives down the price. Uh but the producers are still making more money because they're using more of the raw material to make more and better things for us. So in terms of the United States, we've got tons of natural gas. um it's at a very low price and entrepreneurs are trying to come up with ways of liquefying that natural gas inexpensively and then shipping it to places uh such as Europe of course prominently and East um East Asia uh where there's a high demand for energy but not much supply and so we're just in the process of developing that and The reason we're behind in that and um is because of the stupid war between Russia and Ukraine uh cutting off Russian natural gas which is even cheaper uh and was a lot closer to Europe you know and uh because the Europeans are refusing to buy Russian oil they've ruined their manufacturing industries uh in that country because the energy cost of European manufacturing has gone up so much that they are no longer competitive in a lot of different areas. Uh and so that shock because of the Russian Ukrainian conflict is why the US and Canada have not ramped up sufficiently to meet those de demands. And so the price of natural gas in Europe is several hundred% higher than it is in Russia or in the United States or in Canada. Um you know and it takes a long time. I mean it takes a long time to develop things like pipelines and uh uh refining capacity because of environmental restrictions. Uh and then you have to have specialized ships of course to move and and even the terminals uh have to be specially built to uh be able to move uh the natural gas into liqufied natural gas and then ship it across the ocean. So these things take a lot of time. uh entrepreneurs are busy working at it because there is money to be made um in those areas. I'm kind of betting on that myself u that there's some arbitrage between the lowriced uh natural gas in the United States and the much higher uh prices for natural gas in Europe. And what about the resource wealth that the United States is sitting on in general? If you look at any real commodity, honestly, the United States is is so gifted for having it in its shores. What is required to unshackle this this resource base? And is North America and more specifically the United States the best place in the world right now to invest in commodities? >> Well, I think so. I mean in terms of agricultural production uh in terms of energy uh the United States has a great abundance uh and unfortunately Americans don't realize that a lot of their success you know we all want to attribute success entirely to our own genius uh but Americans are the first ones to forget that this area you know including Canada has a an abundance of natural resources, land, timber, oil and natural gas, farmland, uh easy ways of transportating transporting things within that entire system and then out to foreign countries. Um and of course they also forget that um largely because it was so difficult to govern such a huge area, we always had you know until maybe a hundred years ago a very small government and entrepreneurs were on their own you know very free and unshackled from government intervention. And so we had the greatest entrepreneurial class, most of whom have gone completely unnoticed in history, but um you know they've forgotten that and uh but a return to realizing that we want to exploit resources and that all of this environmental regulation and control uh has to go out. I mean that that that that that's been a big um stalling influence on the development of resources is that it's been become very difficult uh to get permits to use things and of course the federal government has a lot of controls um and interventions on American agriculture uh and transportation and energy usage. Um and so to get full utilization of these resources and not just help ourselves and raise our own incomes but help the rest of the world simultaneously. Uh we need to greatly reduce all of those restrictions, those environmental restrictions uh that came to be during the boom times when our attentions were not on our incomes and standards of living but on our philosophy of life which is increasingly socialistic in the United States. Uh and so you've got this, you know, um obsession with things like the environment and inequality that were completely misplaced. And so, you know, doing that and unleashing the entrepreneurs uh much more fully um you know, will be uh a great source of uh economic development. um here in the United States and Canada, in particular, Canada has the same uh bloody problem with the environmentalists uh and the socialists running the government. Um and I guess most countries uh have that same phenomenon. I mean, it's true in Mexico as well, a lot of the South American countries. So it's a general phenomenon that of course you know that's what the Misesus Institute does. That's what we monitor. That's what we try to correct. Not that we're advocating just people believe in the market uh and oppose government, but we sort of teach the general population why the market works and why government always fails. So that's our mission. That's our contribution to this whole scheme of improving humanity. >> Incredibly interesting. I would also love to zoom a bit deeper into gold for just a second which of course we dedicated a large part of our discussion last time um on specifically the last few months to years even we've of course seen a meteoric rise for gold and more specifically in recent times we've seen shatters or cracks in the petro dollar system. Are we seeing the role of gold change right before our eyes as we speak currently? >> Yes. And most people have no idea. Uh well, first of all, they they have very little idea that since for a hundred years the dollar was the world reserve currency for central banks and it was near monopoly in terms of you know trading currencies in the world that countries traded across borders in terms of dollars. Uh so that's very very important because it literally uh you know people around the world were used to you know people who were involved in the world as business leaders and um that they would make all of their calculations in terms of dollars and and so that's been very very important and the and the dollar has been very strong. Uh the dollar has been very stable um as a result, but you know the there have been serious cracks. Uh the biggest one to take note of is of course with the US stealing uh Russia's uh reserves in in terms of US government securities. um you know that made all central banks in foreign countries take note that hey you know the United States if they can do that to Russia they can do that to anybody and that's been a big boon uh to gold so that now gold is the leading reserve assets for the the overall uh central bank complex across the world and uh and so the reserve status of gold has risen dramatically versus the dollar and government bonds and the tra as a trading currency. The dollar is held up better. But of course, the brick nations uh that's what they're going after. They want uh a system where not just the US dollar is involved in trade but uh other c other currencies of course the Chinese would like the Chinese one um as an international trading currency and of course it you know the mainstream media doesn't really cover this in the Persian Gulf conflict uh but you can if you're paying attention you'll realize that the Iranians do not want to um use the US dollar. They want to accept Chinese one in order to pay for the goods that they're receiving from China. Uh a lot of it is from a railroad that was built from China all the way to Tran. So that there was always a there's now a back door uh from China over uh Asia and into Tran. Um and uh and of course uh Iran wants to uh get paid for its oil in terms of Chinese Juan and it wants the tankers to pay the fee uh in either Juan or uh Chinese Juan or cryptocurrency. So you can see the tension and then across the Persian Gulf from Iran, you know, you look at Oman and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, uh those countries u are stuck on uh the petro dollar and that's where the deal has taken place where you know they agree to sell their production uh for dollars only and in exchange change. Uh the US guarantees them some sort of security status by the US military. Uh which of course the Muslims, you know, their local population, they don't like that that the US is stationing military forces in their countries. Uh but the leaders of those countries feel like they need that US military support. Well, you know, now things look a lot different. It looks like no, the US can't protect those countries. They can't protect their oil reserves. Iran can easily hit and destroy all of the oil production. Iran has hit and disabled all of the US military facilities um in the Persian Gulf countries. And uh you know I I was surprised when I heard that Iran had blown up uh some hotels uh because they had been so careful and deliberate in who they hit and when they hit them and so on. Uh and then of course we find out that American troops, their barracks and their bases had been destroyed and so we were you know putting them up in these hotels in Dubai and Oman and the UAE um and you know the Iranians found out and attacked the hotels. So, um, you know, I think in the minds of those people over there that they realized that this petrod dollar deal was a sucker's bet and uh so I think the petrod dollar is in serious serious danger moving forward which uh will move up those developments of uh that run counter to the dollar the strength of the dollar uh you know that's going to deteriorate even faster than we thought to begin with. >> Continuing your train of thought of the potential shattering of the petro dollar system and a scramble for potentially other currencies, Luke Groman recently went viral with his tweet on X um where he mentioned that non-monetary gold was the single largest export item of the United States, four out of the last five months and the other month was number two I believe top of my head. Is it fair to say that market forces are already forcing gold to be a settlement currency in this day and age? Well, I think it is more and more so that's the um the model that the brick countries are trying to develop where the currencies the local currencies are involved in the exchanges but in order to settle the accounts between countries uh that would occur uh driven based on calculated based on uh gold reserves in the um individual vaults um that run that are going to that are planned to run through all of the brick countries from China uh through Saudi Arabia and then of course beyond that um into places like South Africa so down to the south and then over to Brazil and so you know that's a network and of course you know the original uh gold standard system it took forever I mean uh centuries or more uh to expand from where gold was initially used as money uh to to its use in international trade uh that took a long time to develop and so people are critical of the bricks and what they're doing is like, well, this is taking forever and it's it's not impacting a very high percentage of overall sales and and flows. Uh, but relative to uh historical development, which of course was admittedly, you know, plotting through step by step, country by country, um, you know, it's fairly rapid, I would say, not slow. And the governments uh as well as the entrepreneurs, but the governments are helping to drive this. And the local commercial classes uh are also um helping to drive this because the local banks um want to get connected into these systems because they know that expands the extent of their markets. Um and it brings them you know into a bigger customer base within their existing market. So that you know some banks that don't participate in certain commercial uh categories you know are now incentivized uh to join the system and get involved with this alternative system uh to the you the to the to the US dollar system uh because it then then they get involved with exporters and industrial companies. and they could potentially get involved with countries and transactions with other countries around the world. And so, you know, the profit motive is helping the governments push these policies along the way. Uh it's always helpful if you, you know, if you have the government with the incentive to expand your market. uh but the government's directives to expand the to develop and expand these markets are also helped by the private profit incentive by all the local participants. And so I I see this as an unstoppable progressive uh development that is going to continue. And of course um you know just based on any kind of projection um we know uh that uh the economies of Africa, India and surrounding countries East Asia and China and we suspect South America as well are going to be growing at higher rates of economic growth uh compared compared to the European economy and probably the North American economy and uh some of the East Asian economies like Japan. So, it's very exciting developments and of course the media is not going to report on any of this stuff because they can't get you know there's no great headlines here and the the headlines that have emerged in recent time of course go against the whole propaganda apparatus of uh you know the Trump administration and the United States. So most people are completely unaware uh of these developments that really are going to have an impact on their lives. Well said on that that last point of course you know if gold continues to accelerate this trend of becoming a larger part of global settlements and it becomes a larger part of global trade. Wouldn't the incentive for a lot of governments around the world then not be to have as high of a nominal value attached of their fiat currency to gold for it to function better as a settlement currency? >> There's a lot of speculation about revaluing currencies and revaluing uh gold. Um but it's clearly becoming more a part of domestic monetary policy and you know and it's also become clearly I think part of global monetary positioning uh amongst the central banks um as a way of getting a higher status for your local currency visa v other currencies. You know, Turkey, for example, uh recently took a large chunk of its gold and put it on the table uh as a way of uh buffering the shock from the from the war, which is actually right next door to Turkey. uh and it it involves potentially the Kurdish population which lives in uh Iran, Iraq, Turkey and other places. Uh and so you know they they that was an active use of gold in monetary policy. But then there are other countries that are adding to their uh gold stocks um you know as an alternative to US dollars and government bonds. And then there are other countries that are adding to their stocks uh to raise the profile of their currency. So I'm thinking of Poland for example uh adding gold, adding silver uh into reserves as a way of uh strengthening and raising the the profile uh of their uh currency. you know, it would potentially uh raising it to a status where it becomes easier for them to use their currency in regional trade. Okay? So, they're not going to use it in widescale international trade, you know, in the short run. uh but you can you can well imagine that they're going to be in using it you know increasingly um you know in countries like that um you know in regional trade. So it's uh it's you know there's a this global competition uh that's going on that's been instigated you know by this uh you know part of it is the protectionist tariff thing. Uh but ultimately it's other countries wanting uh to raise their status to you know some sort of equality with the US dollar. And the reason they're wanting to do that is because of course the US the central bank has been inflating uh the US dollar and uh and transmitting it around the globe and that not only transmits inflation but it also uh transmits a certain degree of economic instability and um smaller more peripheral countries um have really been wrecked in the past by the this admission of excess money in the United States and then when they adopted the dollar for current uh for credit uh transactions, borrowing and lending uh you know that didn't really help because then they would end up not being able to pay the loans off because of the value of the dollar versus their currency changed. And so, you know, they they're very they've experienced a lot of pain uh because of this paper money system where everything's unstable. Everything is moving uh there's no set values. gold you have a set value and the more people who use gold the more set and stable it becomes and so I think it's a great thing that the world is moving ever you know it's slow um but it's steady and it's moving in that sense the world is moving in the right monetary direction they're moving back to what um brought brought humanity out of a very primitive condition which was you know uh Antarctic production for oneself uh no money to make transactions and calculations. Uh but eventually those primitive societies developed an understanding for the use of money away from barter and then we you know discovered that gold and silver were the greatest forms of money that spread throughout the globe. And if you look at the trajectory of world history, you know, that all happened uh including the industrial revolution, the discovery of the new world, you know, all sorts of important markers in the development of humanity occurred because we had a separate and distinct commodity money, not government paper money. And every time governments lapsed into printing paper money, of course, you can look and see the destruction and the chaos that were produced. >> Mark, this has been incredible. Once again, is there anywhere you would like to direct the viewers where can they keep up with your work? And for example, the Mises Institute. >> Well, mises.org is our web page, the institute web page. We have podcasts, lectures, books, conferences, uh everything. And it's all written for real people so that you can learn how the economy works, why government always fails, and all of the relevant policy reforms that we can make and commentary from a libertarian and Austrian perspective on issues of the day. My uh small contribution to that is the minor issues podcast. M I N O R. I mean I talk a lot about miners, gold and silver miners, but this is meant to be a podcast, very short about issues not covered in the mainstream or issues that are covered in the mainstream but not from a free market perspective. And so it's, you know, it's just 10 minutes a week and I encourage everybody to stop over, check us out. Everything's free and uh there's no registration or anything and you can subscribe to all sorts of great content. So I encourage everybody to do that. It's more important now than ever. >> We'll make sure to put the links in description. Dr. Mark Thorson, thank you so much for your time and and your generosity with your insights today. >> Oh, I had a great time. Thank you very much for inviting me.
The Petrodollar Cracks, the Skyscraper Stalls, and the Commodity Firestorm | Mark Thornton
Summary
Transcript
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues Podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Well, even if the war settles down and peace breaks out in the Persian Gulf, a lot of damage is already been done to the world economy and the Persian Gulf area itself. In terms of oil and the main exports of the Persian Gulf, um the the oil production facilities have uh either been destroyed, disrupted or shut down. And that means a slow uh comeback period uh in terms of production. And we're already as I've indicated previously entering a period of higher and higher commodity prices. Um so oil, natural gas, chemicals etc. and also fertilizers. So the disruption to fertilizer production and distribution from the Persian Gulf areas is going to see diminished crop production um in the next crop season and possibly longer term fertilizer and crop prices um going into the foreseeable future. So that's been very destructive and disruptive to the entire global population and even the fact that the United States is an energy producing economy and an agriculture producing economy. These are all global markets of course and so prices in these commodities tend to rise with global prices. So it's going to adversely affect the entire world population including the United States. And also of course what we're learning in more recent weeks is that this is having a very disruptive effect on the Gulf state economies themselves and these are the the economies the governments that are behind the pro dollar status. uh countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, etc. Uh these countries have all agreed previously uh to sell their oil product and other production in terms of US dollars. And in return for that guarantee, the United States is supposed to provide uh diplomatic and uh military protection uh for these countries and their governments. Uh but of course, a lot of that is up in the air right now and the petro dollar status is in grave doubt. Uh the Iranians clearly are taking advantage of their victory over the United States in the Persian Gulf to push against the petro dollar and of course their um allies in China, India, uh Russia, uh many of the European people um want to move away from uh the petro dollar uh and have a more free competitive uh international exchange system and uh so you know it's to China's and all these other countries advantage especially after they were attacked with US tariff policies recently as well. They're all very much on the lookout to move away from the dollar and uh reliance on US government bonds and securities. Um moving more into domestic and regional uh investments and uh and currencies. So, and of course, the demise of the petro dollar could also cause an an advancing, steamrolling, snowballing effect to consumer prices in the United States and producer prices as well in the United States. If the US dollar takes a hit in terms of its global exchange price level, um that means that all domestic and internationally traded goods are going to rise in price relative um to the US dollar. And so we would see a uh decline in the global valuation of the US dollar and of course um prices in the United States for consumers and for our businesses. So all of that is very much um all in the negative um aspects to the prior equilibrium in the Gulf before Israel was joined by the United States in attacking Iran and assassinating their religious leader slashpolitical leader um in Iran. So this has caused quite a disruption. Um and in addition to um all of these very important and um fundamental disturbances, the trumped up economy um of 2026 has also put a little pet project of my own in certain doubt, which is the skyscraper curse. um which originally we anticipated the the Jedha Tower in Saudi Arabia to be completed in 2020. That was shut down for political reasons and then restarted in 2025 and it was expected uh to reach a new record height um sometime in 2027. Originally, it was kind of early in 2027. Uh, but now the record height is projected for later in 2027. Um, they've made a a whole lot of progress in 2025 up until the current point in 2026. But as you can imagine, the disrupt the disruption um to the finances in the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia who's financing the project and then all of the disruptions of logistics uh that this has caused in terms of moving uh materials for the construction project uh to Jedha on the west coast. of Saudi Arabia. And then if peace does break out uh the reconstruction um and u redevelopment of the oil fields, the oil facilities, the chemical facilities, the transportation facilities, the creditworthiness of all of these governments and their various businesses u is going to take precedent over um a symbolic mega tower on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. So we're not really sure uh you know we're kind of expecting um a uh impact on the stock market and the western economies associated with the skyscraper curse which is generally timed with about the um the complete not the completion of these projects but whenever it does offici officially reach a record setting high um level of construction, basic construction, not uh where people are moving into fully furnished units, apartments, uh spaces of all kinds. Uh but reaching that record height of live livable space. So, you know, the disruptions, uh, the destruction, um, the higher costs that are going to be imposed on all of us from this trumped up economy, um, are very hard to, uh, list out at any one point in time. they seem to increase and expand um as our attention is drawn to things that are impacted secondarily, tertiary and so forth. So um we'll be taking um more look at that um that particular project and also I plan to do a an examination of what seems so highly unlikely as a predictor of economic crisis in the world economy. Um but it's built on the Austrian theory of the business cycle. uh but it seems so flimsy um that I want to do a comparison and a contrast between Austrians and the Austrian business cycle theory and this skyscraper curse which gets linked to it. um and the mainstream approach to um business cycle timing and prediction which is based on hardcore measurements of macroeconomic activity. So I really look forward to doing that and um highlighting the superiority of the theoretical approach. Um so I look forward to that. Um, side B of this podcast, um, I'm going to replay a recent interview, um, from Palisades Gold Radio that I did recently, uh, where we looked at this firestorm that has hit the global economy and the emergence of, uh, this commodity super cycle. uh which is also going which I high um provided the highlights to here but we go into it in uh a much more greater detail. So thank you for listening to this episode of the minor issues podcast. Uh please check out the events page um at the Mises Institute on misesus.org. Um we have many exciting events coming up including um a uh Mises Circle event in New Hampshire that if you're in the area or you're traveling uh to or in into the area uh in New H New Hampshire um it'll well be well worth um finding out more details about that u all the great speakers that we're going to be having. Um and uh and of course the camaraderie uh that you will experience by going to a Misus Institute event uh hearing our great speakers uh communicating with others with in with which you share a lot of uh interest and knowledge. Uh so please check that out uh and attend if you can. Uh and thank you for watching this episode of the minor issues podcast. >> Dr. Mark Torton, economist and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. It is a true pleasure to host you on Palisades Gold Radio today. >> It's great to be back on your show. >> Excellent. And Mark, it is a great time to have you back on the show as well. We're going through one of the largest, if not the largest commodity flow disruptions that we have seen in history. Yet equity markets find themselves at all-time highs. So Mark, very excited to hear where you think the what the state is of the global economy and where it's headed as well as how we should all be thinking about risk versus opportunity right now. >> Well, I think you know, of course, there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of disruptions in the precious metals market. Of course, we had this huge correction in February. And then to add insult to injury, of course, the Israeli US attack on Iran um starts and disrupts not just the energy market, but shipping and a variety of other related markets uh to the oil and natural gas resources and reserves uh in the Gulf. And so that sets off a firestorm of, you know, price changes throughout the economy as well as important policy implications. And I think one of the biggest things to note is not only is higher energy bad for uh the price of gasoline and so many other things um in the economy, but most importantly it drives up expectations for higher statistical price increases or CPI increases. And of course that feeds directly into central bank calculations about policy. And so before the war, central banks had the expectations that they would be cutting rates. But with higher oil and energy prices and higher CPI prices certainly in the works, all of those rate cuts came off the board. And so with higher rates rather than lower rates, that's adding insult to injury to the precious metals. Higher interest rates means that in particular the speculators are less likely to be holding a lot of gold because of the opportunity cost. And so this has really thrown markets into a state of confusion. But in terms of looking at all prices across the board, uh the US government bond, the value of the US dollar, the value of uh the stock market, commodity prices, you know, the CRB index is way up. Uh even though gold prices have come down, the overall comm commodity complex is up and monetary inflation, at least in the United States, is up. They're increasing money and prices are rising in various places throughout the economy. So the thesis about government runaway spending and borrowing increasing the money supply to finance that spending and borrowing and of course the commodity super cycle which is led by gold and silver that is still intact at least in my evaluation. Lots to unpack there and I'm sure we'll take a stab at that during this interview. Mark, I would love to get started zooming a bit deeper into this commodity disruption that we are seeing in the Middle East. Very often discussed on social media as well as on this channel. Some analysts are saying we've already lost about a billion barrels of oil or at least are on track of losing that. Some some people are highlighting we might be losing 1.5 billions of barrels of oil. Of course, we're also talking about disruption in fertilizers, helium, aluminium, and and the list goes on like you outlined earlier. Now, as we speak currently, the futures of WTI are only between brackets trading at around $105 a barrel. And like we outlined earlier, S&P um futures or at least SP index is trading at an all-time high as we speak currently. What gives? Why is there such a discrepancy between those two? Shouldn't we expect more impact of a supply disruption like this? >> Well, that's true. Uh, you know, the S&P 500 and the Magnificent 7, um, and you know, the the leading stocks in those indexes, they're not very highly oil dependent. The American economy, uh, is not as highly oil dependent as it was in previous cycles. So that in the United States and in other countries um the the amount of oil necessary to produce GDP has fallen significantly uh over time. And of course while resources and assets are certainly at risk in world markets and in the Persian Gulf um you know investments in US stocks are relatively safe. they're away from the war zone. They're not impacted very much by oil prices. Um and so they're, you know, insulated uh from that effect. And all of this money that the Fed is creating and has created, it has to go somewhere. So yes, we are concerned about oil prices and yes, we are concerned about precious metals prices, but when you when you step back and look at the overall picture, you realize well that money initially was going into liquidity and moving into other markets away from precious metals in the big runup that we had. um you know every bull market has significant cor corrections and you know and so investors in that area have to anticipate that that's going to happen uh to gold and silver even though the thesis remains intact and uh and so you know when we look around um you know and we see government bond prices higher the value of the US dollar higher uh US stocks higher higher uh other commodity prices higher, you know, so that um you know, all sorts of things that are adversely affected uh as a result of the attack on Iran uh and the shutting down uh of the Persian Gulf. It does go beyond um things like uh oil and natural gas and just with natural gas which of course at one time in the past they would just burn off as a worthless byproduct and now not only is natural gas uh seemed to be vital and of course some countries are really worried about the liqufied natural gas being cut off uh from Oman. man and the United Arab Emirates. Uh but also in processing that natural gas, uh we get the helium that's used in uh computer chip fabrication um and and all sorts of uh important technical industries. And the sulfur that results from that is then used in a multi-step chemical processing effort. Uh it's very complicated, but out pops the at the other end comes sulfuric acid, which is kind of like the king of the chemical laboratory. It's used for all sorts of things. Uh and companies that use it are really worried about keeping the supply. So it for example it's vital uh in copper mining because sulfuric acid is used to break down the raw ore uh and separate uh copper from the raw ore in order to be further processed and turned into copper. And so I'm actually a little bit surprised that copper prices haven't moved a little bit more uh as a result. But you know those are just some steps. And then with oil refinering of course there's dozens of byproducts uh that are very very important and uh all the plastics uh that we get. Um, so it's not just, you know, moving production from point A to point B and trucks and the gasoline and the rubber and the tires and the asphalt uh of the roads uh but it's also the packaging uh well the production of so many goods. I mean, if you looked at what comes out of the byproducts of uh oil refinery, it it affects virtually everything in your bathroom. Uh it has to it it affects everything to do with most hobbies. Uh it has to do with many things that um are involved not just in the production of uh fertilizers and the raw food products but also in the packaging of all of those products and then um you know all of the pla plastic uh uh you know the packaging and then the processing of all of those things in our own kitchens. So this is going to have negative pervasive effects uh on the economy and you know you said 1 billion uh barrels of oil but the cut off is actually higher than that you know the amount of oil that isn't flowing out of the Persian Gulf you know it was 20% of oil 20% of natural gas and uh you know there's like one and a half equivalent barrels flowing out of Oman and 1 and a half billion barrels flowing west out of Saudi Arabia. And so most of the oil is being cut off. The Iranians uh typically have a smuggling operation where they get their oil out uh on small boats into super tankers. And so they've been able to dodge for the most part uh the blockade of the Gulf. Uh but you're still talking about a small fraction. And you're also talking about the Persian Gulf production economies having to shut down their oil and natural gas wells. And this will take a long time to restart those wells. It's going to take uh and and in in mo many cases these wells will be less productive than they were prior to because when you shut down wells you never know what you're going to get when you start them back up again. It's not like a switch that can be easily turned on and off. And in some cases these older wells uh will have to be refitted and redrilled uh in order to get them back online. So, uh, typically I say that, you know, war news is a temporary phenomenon that's not worth investing. Um, and I think there will be a snapback when we uh get peace restored in this region. But, uh, there are are also going to be some lingering effects in terms of production of the master ingredient in our economy. I consider oil and natural gas a master ingredient in that it powers everything uh from agriculture to manufacturing to transportation uh including all kinds of mining um and it affects everything. So, oil, natural gas, uh, as President Trump seemed to know at one point in his political career that, you know, driving the price of oil down like he did in his first term, uh, was a major component of the strength in the economy during that first term and people's perception of the economy uh, in his first term because oil production increased. uh oil and natural gas and energy prices fell and that helped the economy and it helped people's perception and their real purchasing power of their incomes. So this this is going to have significant long-term effects on the economy. I'm really trying to get a sense for when this situation becomes critical because those headline figures like you outlined we we might be missing up to 15 20% of the world's supply of oil and gas LNG when does that situation truly become a pain point where some countries or European countries for example will not be able to access it anymore and through that we will see demand destruction which could be very painful. >> Yes. Well, you don't want to look this look at this in terms of the Keynesian macro GDP uh format. You want to look at it in the Austrian schools micro format and realize that um just like the fact that oil exports from the Persian Gulf, you know, before the war and before the blockade and all of that nonsense, uh you know, those there were ships in transit for a very long time and only recently did the the final uh shipments actually land and get unloaded. And so we're going to see um you know certain countries that are going to be adversely affected right away. So countries like India, China, East Asia, Australia, which got a huge percentage of their energy imports from the Persian Gulf. Well, they're feeling the pinch right away. Whereas in the United States uh you know where there's abundant supply of domestic production um our the impact here is entirely just in terms of price. there's no quantity um shortages price can effectively allocate but in some of these countries uh there's the shock is just too much and so their households and their businesses you know their businesses have already had to adopt emergency measures in terms of how much production how much can the labor force come into work given the fact that there's there's uh visible tangible shortages of energy in the things it produces. So you know that this is a wavelike pattern uh that emanates from the Persian Gulf and it moves outward and especially uh to those countries that are uh dependent upon the actual imports rather than talking about the world marketplace where prices we can see those world prices going up and down. Uh but certain countries are being more uh affected and certain products are being more affected. So, uh, we're seeing a draw down and a lack of resupply of a lot of fertilizer products during the, uh, northern he hemisphere planting season. So, a lot of agriculture right now that's planting in the spring for fall harvest, they're going to have less uh, diesel to run all of their equipment. Diesel is going to be more expensive and they're going to have less fertilizer. So, they're going to be uh you know that that means that land is going to have to be nonoptimally used and uh less land is going to be put into production. So that we will see you know the impact of that uh after the fall harvest uh is actually realized and you know given that the weather patterns are stable from one year to the next which of course they're not uh but if they were we definitely will see a great uh a loss of production there. So it's going to affect manufacturing it's going to affect agriculture. It's going to affect technology and transportation. Um, it's going to affect mining uh significantly. um you know places that are completely dependent upon imports of diesel fuel and sulfuric acid um like in Africa uh you know they're going to be um no doubt facing uh shortages and shipping shipping failures and they're not going to be able to maintain a regular production schedule. And so um you know these effects are pervasive. they're uh almost entirely difficult to quantify I think at this point but the world needs to get ready and I think the world had already entered a commodity cycle um you know where all commodities were going to be headed higher agriculture um you know energy is 40% uh food production is about 40% of the commodity price index And then metals are about 20% with more than half of that is industrial metals and then less than half is precious metals. But really once you understand that diesel fuel is really um you know that's what powers all that equipment. It's what powers the transportation of raw ores throughout the production process and the sulfuric acid and other chemicals uh that are used in the mining to refining to final product. Um, all of that's going to be much more difficult and the world is going to uh have to adjust much quicker to higher commodity prices across the board than it otherwise would have uh with what I was anticipating as a commodity cycle. um you know and uh and of course that will snap back a little bit um once peace is restored and once production starts to flow and once and when anticipation of more exports from the Persian Gulf uh and more of their production facilities come back online but you know already uh a lot of the production facilities in the Persian Gulf of course they're all at risk but a lot of them have been damaged or destroyed. Um and a lot, you know, we depend upon a lot of things there. They're the cheapest producer uh because they have very very cheap energy prices and so they can you know they can engage in the production of sulfuric acid and out sell most of the rest of the world market. uh they can engage in the production of boide into aluminum and uh because they have such inexpensive energy. Uh but now the world's going to have to work through all the chaos that we've uh brought about as a result of this adventure with Israel uh against Iran. You know, hearing you speak like that, Mark, it it almost sounds like a shock like this is almost what the US and and the West as a whole kind of needs to reshore commodities and supply chains. Is that fair to say? >> Well, it's a good question. um you know, everybody because of President Trump's ill- fated uh pro uh protection scheme of tariffs. Um and I think there's, you know, a underlying uh trade war, monet monetary war going on between the United States and China and other countries, the brick countries. And so everybody unfortunately is engaged in trying to uh obtain, maintain and store critical commodities and uh you know the uh Ludig van Mises you know the namesake of the institute that I work for uh you know he was tireless in demonstrating that what's called globalism now or free trade um is largely responsible for our rising standards of living that we can all engage across the entire globe and get uh more production at lower cost and have higher incomes. And so that's a great thing and and this regionalism and trade warism and tariffs that all breaks the all of that down and makes us less um uh cooperative with uh the other people in the world. And so this is a very dangerous path. I mean people politicians in particular they feel like this is the way to go. and uh you know that everybody should have have their own sources, but that's done at a at a very high cost across the board. And uh you know, so and it it it certainly doesn't lead to lower prices. It's going to lead to higher prices because we're going to be using collectively as a human population less efficient producers. Now, I may already have a great advantage in the production of say cotton um and uh but if other countries try to get their own supply of cotton, they're going to have to produce it at a higher cost. And if I want to have my own supply of silver, for example, I may not be so good at that. And it may cost the production wise a lot more for me to produce it the in the United States uh whereas I previously could have uh imported it at from a cheaper cost region such as Mexico or Peru. So this is a this is um what politicians see as you know an easy fix because they see the world at war with one another. Uh but that perspective uh runs absolutely counter to human betterment and the standard of living. It's not just war itself, but it's preparation for war that also contributes to lowering our standards of living. And just like all of these shortages um that we were previously talking about, you know, there are going to be some people on this earth in some countries who are living um you know, at a subsistence level. And so while everybody is uh becoming slightly poor or maybe a lot poor as a result of all these policies, some people are going to fall below subsistence. Uh they're going to be hungry, they're going to be starving, they're going to be get sick and die. And so, you know, it's um these these nonfighting wartime conditions actually kill as well as impoverish. I think your argument for global trade is is undeniable that it does raise standards of living and it moves production towards the lowest cost producers around the world which of course is a net positive. However, you could also make the argument for security which you already started outlining there. Um if you are playing this game as a country, isn't it a worse position to be if you are not the producer of a lot of the goods that you're actually trading? kind of like the situation the US is in right now. It's exporting US dollars but not really that much goods and services. >> Well, you know, it it does fit into overall political economy, but take for example uh Switzerland. I mean, it produces very little um very few things uh that it consumes. it produces a very small number of things and certainly the country couldn't get by with just wearing watches and eating chocolate. Um, and of course Switzerland has been right smack dab in the middle of Europe uh for hundreds and hundreds of years as a separate uh political entity and uh of course they've never been successfully invaded. Even the old Soviet Union which had all these war plans uh to invade Switzerland and you know take the gold and so on and so forth. They actually uh if you looked at the plans, they actually would always um you know go around Switzerland because Switzerland spent enough money on national defense and preparedness um you know in what in what they needed to survive any kind of onslaught or you know attack or blockade of of of trade and so forth. Um, you know, and the same thing with the Nazis in Germany in World War II, you know, they wanted to take over the entire globe. Um, you know, or at least all of Europe. And of course, they, you know, uh, just sidestepped, uh, Switzerland and went into the Balkans and Italy and France and all around them. So there are ways of uh protecting domestic tranquility um without you know all of that uh Antarctic uh production where you feel like you have to produce everything domestically. uh you know taking on a Sparta like perspective and a Sparta like economy and living a Spartan type existence. And so you know this is an age-old historically validated perspective which Mises knew inside and outside. Um and uh modern politicians though of course with all the special interest groups pulling at their um you know pulling at them constantly they want to go for the quick solution you know that benefit certain people in you know their political friends and so forth um and then say they're doing something about it uh when in fact you know the protectionism tariff you go it alone philosophy leads right to war. Okay. So, so I've been talking about for when I started my podcast over two years ago. I mean, I started talking about this stuff that protectionism. Well, first of all, it's domestic interventionism in your own economy leads to calls for protectionism from international competitors. And then there's the political squabble of foreign affairs where uh you start battling uh other countries with tariffs and and sanctions and quotas and strategic stockpiles and all the rest. And it just it actually pushes the economy further and quicker towards war itself. >> Perhaps we can continue to talk about natural gas for a second. I believe earlier in this interview you mentioned that natural gas used to be so abundant that it was just flared away. Of course, because of environmental rules, the US can no longer flare natural gas. So now it has to find a solution to use it. And the same for Canada, I suppose. But there's still so much natural gas in North America that prices are very low compared to global standards. Of course, you can't trade it internationally as easily because it's hard to transport. you need to convert it to LG first. This is still, it seems, a tremendous opportunity for North America as it is basically energy that's currently dirt cheap. If you were to convert that into energy, you could use that to grow your economy. >> Absolutely. You know, crude oil uh coming out of the ground was once considered a pollution. And you know, farmers and people who built roads and stuff thought, "Oh my god, this stuff is getting everywhere. You know, they considered it just a nuisance, a pollution." And then they realized that, hey, we could take this crude oil and turn it into kerosene. Uh but the rest of the crude oil was still, you know, considered useless. So that initial entrepreneur figured out, hey, kerosene, I could, you know, this this would be a substitute for whale order, whale oil to light lamps and things of that nature. So that was great. And you know, John D. Rockefeller made a zillion dollars by taking advantage of that entrepreneurial discovery. And then you know in his uh oil refining uh companies they discovered uses for some of the other byproducts which were just thrown away. Um and uh and so now there are dozens and dozens. In fact, they use uh virtually every drop uh every molecule of crude oil to produce all the various um you know byproducts from oil production. And you know now we've you know producing um rayon and nylon and all of the artificial um fabrics and uh it's used to produce fertilizers and you know uh all sorts of things and natural gas for the longest time was just burned off. So the the oil would come out, the crude oil would come out, they take the crude oil to the refinery, but they burned off the natural gas as being, you know, dangerous, a dangerous nuisance. Um, and then subsequently, of course, we've learned to tap that and use that as a fuel. And in refining it, we've found other byproducts from the dirty natural gas, the sour gas as it's called, you know. So that's where there's helium in there and there's um sulfur in there and uh and so in refining the natural gas into a clean burning fuel um you know we've come up with these other byproducts. entrepreneurs have, you know, they get giant piles of these byproducts and realize, hey, we could use this to make some, you know, money off of this. And so over, you know, since 18 like the 1850s, um, when we started all of this in the United States and entrepreneurs have been working on this just like they do in other areas where they're they're constantly looking for ways of making money uh, with those things that get thrown away really, you know, so that, you know, orange peels were just thrown away at one time and now they're used to make uh you know scents and oils and fertilizers and you know all sorts of things. So entrepreneurs, you know, take th those initial resources and make them more and more valuable and they actually make the original kerosene or gasoline cheaper and cheaper and cheaper because the competitive process uh you know more people want that crude oil because it's more and more valuable and more is produced. So we actually get more gasoline, more kerosene, more jet fuel uh produced than otherwise and it drives down the price. Uh but the producers are still making more money because they're using more of the raw material to make more and better things for us. So in terms of the United States, we've got tons of natural gas. um it's at a very low price and entrepreneurs are trying to come up with ways of liquefying that natural gas inexpensively and then shipping it to places uh such as Europe of course prominently and East um East Asia uh where there's a high demand for energy but not much supply and so we're just in the process of developing that and The reason we're behind in that and um is because of the stupid war between Russia and Ukraine uh cutting off Russian natural gas which is even cheaper uh and was a lot closer to Europe you know and uh because the Europeans are refusing to buy Russian oil they've ruined their manufacturing industries uh in that country because the energy cost of European manufacturing has gone up so much that they are no longer competitive in a lot of different areas. Uh and so that shock because of the Russian Ukrainian conflict is why the US and Canada have not ramped up sufficiently to meet those de demands. And so the price of natural gas in Europe is several hundred% higher than it is in Russia or in the United States or in Canada. Um you know and it takes a long time. I mean it takes a long time to develop things like pipelines and uh uh refining capacity because of environmental restrictions. Uh and then you have to have specialized ships of course to move and and even the terminals uh have to be specially built to uh be able to move uh the natural gas into liqufied natural gas and then ship it across the ocean. So these things take a lot of time. uh entrepreneurs are busy working at it because there is money to be made um in those areas. I'm kind of betting on that myself u that there's some arbitrage between the lowriced uh natural gas in the United States and the much higher uh prices for natural gas in Europe. And what about the resource wealth that the United States is sitting on in general? If you look at any real commodity, honestly, the United States is is so gifted for having it in its shores. What is required to unshackle this this resource base? And is North America and more specifically the United States the best place in the world right now to invest in commodities? >> Well, I think so. I mean in terms of agricultural production uh in terms of energy uh the United States has a great abundance uh and unfortunately Americans don't realize that a lot of their success you know we all want to attribute success entirely to our own genius uh but Americans are the first ones to forget that this area you know including Canada has a an abundance of natural resources, land, timber, oil and natural gas, farmland, uh easy ways of transportating transporting things within that entire system and then out to foreign countries. Um and of course they also forget that um largely because it was so difficult to govern such a huge area, we always had you know until maybe a hundred years ago a very small government and entrepreneurs were on their own you know very free and unshackled from government intervention. And so we had the greatest entrepreneurial class, most of whom have gone completely unnoticed in history, but um you know they've forgotten that and uh but a return to realizing that we want to exploit resources and that all of this environmental regulation and control uh has to go out. I mean that that that that that's been a big um stalling influence on the development of resources is that it's been become very difficult uh to get permits to use things and of course the federal government has a lot of controls um and interventions on American agriculture uh and transportation and energy usage. Um and so to get full utilization of these resources and not just help ourselves and raise our own incomes but help the rest of the world simultaneously. Uh we need to greatly reduce all of those restrictions, those environmental restrictions uh that came to be during the boom times when our attentions were not on our incomes and standards of living but on our philosophy of life which is increasingly socialistic in the United States. Uh and so you've got this, you know, um obsession with things like the environment and inequality that were completely misplaced. And so, you know, doing that and unleashing the entrepreneurs uh much more fully um you know, will be uh a great source of uh economic development. um here in the United States and Canada, in particular, Canada has the same uh bloody problem with the environmentalists uh and the socialists running the government. Um and I guess most countries uh have that same phenomenon. I mean, it's true in Mexico as well, a lot of the South American countries. So it's a general phenomenon that of course you know that's what the Misesus Institute does. That's what we monitor. That's what we try to correct. Not that we're advocating just people believe in the market uh and oppose government, but we sort of teach the general population why the market works and why government always fails. So that's our mission. That's our contribution to this whole scheme of improving humanity. >> Incredibly interesting. I would also love to zoom a bit deeper into gold for just a second which of course we dedicated a large part of our discussion last time um on specifically the last few months to years even we've of course seen a meteoric rise for gold and more specifically in recent times we've seen shatters or cracks in the petro dollar system. Are we seeing the role of gold change right before our eyes as we speak currently? >> Yes. And most people have no idea. Uh well, first of all, they they have very little idea that since for a hundred years the dollar was the world reserve currency for central banks and it was near monopoly in terms of you know trading currencies in the world that countries traded across borders in terms of dollars. Uh so that's very very important because it literally uh you know people around the world were used to you know people who were involved in the world as business leaders and um that they would make all of their calculations in terms of dollars and and so that's been very very important and the and the dollar has been very strong. Uh the dollar has been very stable um as a result, but you know the there have been serious cracks. Uh the biggest one to take note of is of course with the US stealing uh Russia's uh reserves in in terms of US government securities. um you know that made all central banks in foreign countries take note that hey you know the United States if they can do that to Russia they can do that to anybody and that's been a big boon uh to gold so that now gold is the leading reserve assets for the the overall uh central bank complex across the world and uh and so the reserve status of gold has risen dramatically versus the dollar and government bonds and the tra as a trading currency. The dollar is held up better. But of course, the brick nations uh that's what they're going after. They want uh a system where not just the US dollar is involved in trade but uh other c other currencies of course the Chinese would like the Chinese one um as an international trading currency and of course it you know the mainstream media doesn't really cover this in the Persian Gulf conflict uh but you can if you're paying attention you'll realize that the Iranians do not want to um use the US dollar. They want to accept Chinese one in order to pay for the goods that they're receiving from China. Uh a lot of it is from a railroad that was built from China all the way to Tran. So that there was always a there's now a back door uh from China over uh Asia and into Tran. Um and uh and of course uh Iran wants to uh get paid for its oil in terms of Chinese Juan and it wants the tankers to pay the fee uh in either Juan or uh Chinese Juan or cryptocurrency. So you can see the tension and then across the Persian Gulf from Iran, you know, you look at Oman and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, uh those countries u are stuck on uh the petro dollar and that's where the deal has taken place where you know they agree to sell their production uh for dollars only and in exchange change. Uh the US guarantees them some sort of security status by the US military. Uh which of course the Muslims, you know, their local population, they don't like that that the US is stationing military forces in their countries. Uh but the leaders of those countries feel like they need that US military support. Well, you know, now things look a lot different. It looks like no, the US can't protect those countries. They can't protect their oil reserves. Iran can easily hit and destroy all of the oil production. Iran has hit and disabled all of the US military facilities um in the Persian Gulf countries. And uh you know I I was surprised when I heard that Iran had blown up uh some hotels uh because they had been so careful and deliberate in who they hit and when they hit them and so on. Uh and then of course we find out that American troops, their barracks and their bases had been destroyed and so we were you know putting them up in these hotels in Dubai and Oman and the UAE um and you know the Iranians found out and attacked the hotels. So, um, you know, I think in the minds of those people over there that they realized that this petrod dollar deal was a sucker's bet and uh so I think the petrod dollar is in serious serious danger moving forward which uh will move up those developments of uh that run counter to the dollar the strength of the dollar uh you know that's going to deteriorate even faster than we thought to begin with. >> Continuing your train of thought of the potential shattering of the petro dollar system and a scramble for potentially other currencies, Luke Groman recently went viral with his tweet on X um where he mentioned that non-monetary gold was the single largest export item of the United States, four out of the last five months and the other month was number two I believe top of my head. Is it fair to say that market forces are already forcing gold to be a settlement currency in this day and age? Well, I think it is more and more so that's the um the model that the brick countries are trying to develop where the currencies the local currencies are involved in the exchanges but in order to settle the accounts between countries uh that would occur uh driven based on calculated based on uh gold reserves in the um individual vaults um that run that are going to that are planned to run through all of the brick countries from China uh through Saudi Arabia and then of course beyond that um into places like South Africa so down to the south and then over to Brazil and so you know that's a network and of course you know the original uh gold standard system it took forever I mean uh centuries or more uh to expand from where gold was initially used as money uh to to its use in international trade uh that took a long time to develop and so people are critical of the bricks and what they're doing is like, well, this is taking forever and it's it's not impacting a very high percentage of overall sales and and flows. Uh, but relative to uh historical development, which of course was admittedly, you know, plotting through step by step, country by country, um, you know, it's fairly rapid, I would say, not slow. And the governments uh as well as the entrepreneurs, but the governments are helping to drive this. And the local commercial classes uh are also um helping to drive this because the local banks um want to get connected into these systems because they know that expands the extent of their markets. Um and it brings them you know into a bigger customer base within their existing market. So that you know some banks that don't participate in certain commercial uh categories you know are now incentivized uh to join the system and get involved with this alternative system uh to the you the to the to the US dollar system uh because it then then they get involved with exporters and industrial companies. and they could potentially get involved with countries and transactions with other countries around the world. And so, you know, the profit motive is helping the governments push these policies along the way. Uh it's always helpful if you, you know, if you have the government with the incentive to expand your market. uh but the government's directives to expand the to develop and expand these markets are also helped by the private profit incentive by all the local participants. And so I I see this as an unstoppable progressive uh development that is going to continue. And of course um you know just based on any kind of projection um we know uh that uh the economies of Africa, India and surrounding countries East Asia and China and we suspect South America as well are going to be growing at higher rates of economic growth uh compared compared to the European economy and probably the North American economy and uh some of the East Asian economies like Japan. So, it's very exciting developments and of course the media is not going to report on any of this stuff because they can't get you know there's no great headlines here and the the headlines that have emerged in recent time of course go against the whole propaganda apparatus of uh you know the Trump administration and the United States. So most people are completely unaware uh of these developments that really are going to have an impact on their lives. Well said on that that last point of course you know if gold continues to accelerate this trend of becoming a larger part of global settlements and it becomes a larger part of global trade. Wouldn't the incentive for a lot of governments around the world then not be to have as high of a nominal value attached of their fiat currency to gold for it to function better as a settlement currency? >> There's a lot of speculation about revaluing currencies and revaluing uh gold. Um but it's clearly becoming more a part of domestic monetary policy and you know and it's also become clearly I think part of global monetary positioning uh amongst the central banks um as a way of getting a higher status for your local currency visa v other currencies. You know, Turkey, for example, uh recently took a large chunk of its gold and put it on the table uh as a way of uh buffering the shock from the from the war, which is actually right next door to Turkey. uh and it it involves potentially the Kurdish population which lives in uh Iran, Iraq, Turkey and other places. Uh and so you know they they that was an active use of gold in monetary policy. But then there are other countries that are adding to their uh gold stocks um you know as an alternative to US dollars and government bonds. And then there are other countries that are adding to their stocks uh to raise the profile of their currency. So I'm thinking of Poland for example uh adding gold, adding silver uh into reserves as a way of uh strengthening and raising the the profile uh of their uh currency. you know, it would potentially uh raising it to a status where it becomes easier for them to use their currency in regional trade. Okay? So, they're not going to use it in widescale international trade, you know, in the short run. uh but you can you can well imagine that they're going to be in using it you know increasingly um you know in countries like that um you know in regional trade. So it's uh it's you know there's a this global competition uh that's going on that's been instigated you know by this uh you know part of it is the protectionist tariff thing. Uh but ultimately it's other countries wanting uh to raise their status to you know some sort of equality with the US dollar. And the reason they're wanting to do that is because of course the US the central bank has been inflating uh the US dollar and uh and transmitting it around the globe and that not only transmits inflation but it also uh transmits a certain degree of economic instability and um smaller more peripheral countries um have really been wrecked in the past by the this admission of excess money in the United States and then when they adopted the dollar for current uh for credit uh transactions, borrowing and lending uh you know that didn't really help because then they would end up not being able to pay the loans off because of the value of the dollar versus their currency changed. And so, you know, they they're very they've experienced a lot of pain uh because of this paper money system where everything's unstable. Everything is moving uh there's no set values. gold you have a set value and the more people who use gold the more set and stable it becomes and so I think it's a great thing that the world is moving ever you know it's slow um but it's steady and it's moving in that sense the world is moving in the right monetary direction they're moving back to what um brought brought humanity out of a very primitive condition which was you know uh Antarctic production for oneself uh no money to make transactions and calculations. Uh but eventually those primitive societies developed an understanding for the use of money away from barter and then we you know discovered that gold and silver were the greatest forms of money that spread throughout the globe. And if you look at the trajectory of world history, you know, that all happened uh including the industrial revolution, the discovery of the new world, you know, all sorts of important markers in the development of humanity occurred because we had a separate and distinct commodity money, not government paper money. And every time governments lapsed into printing paper money, of course, you can look and see the destruction and the chaos that were produced. >> Mark, this has been incredible. Once again, is there anywhere you would like to direct the viewers where can they keep up with your work? And for example, the Mises Institute. >> Well, mises.org is our web page, the institute web page. We have podcasts, lectures, books, conferences, uh everything. And it's all written for real people so that you can learn how the economy works, why government always fails, and all of the relevant policy reforms that we can make and commentary from a libertarian and Austrian perspective on issues of the day. My uh small contribution to that is the minor issues podcast. M I N O R. I mean I talk a lot about miners, gold and silver miners, but this is meant to be a podcast, very short about issues not covered in the mainstream or issues that are covered in the mainstream but not from a free market perspective. And so it's, you know, it's just 10 minutes a week and I encourage everybody to stop over, check us out. Everything's free and uh there's no registration or anything and you can subscribe to all sorts of great content. So I encourage everybody to do that. It's more important now than ever. >> We'll make sure to put the links in description. Dr. Mark Thorson, thank you so much for your time and and your generosity with your insights today. >> Oh, I had a great time. Thank you very much for inviting me.