Market Has 'Stage 4 Cancer' as 'Unprecedented' Valuations MUST Face Reality: Dave Collum
Summary
Everything Bubble: The guest argues markets are at unprecedented valuation extremes and likely to stagnate for decades rather than correct quickly.
Passive Investing: Concerns that market-cap weighted index flows distort price discovery and could create air pockets if flows reverse.
Precious Metals: Broad discussion on gold, silver, and platinum as alternatives amid monetary and market risks.
Silver: Acknowledges recent highs and volatility; debate between structural shortage narratives and frothy price action driven by paper markets.
Platinum: Bullish fundamental case citing catalytic converter demand (especially hybrids), rising jewelry substitution, and tight supply concentrated in South Africa and Russia.
Supply Risks: Highlights potential South African instability and slow mining response as key drivers of a platinum supply deficit.
Market Mechanics: Notes lack of market makers and short sellers may exacerbate downside once passive flows slow or reverse.
Outlook: Prefers real assets like precious metals over richly valued equities, warning investors about low forward returns and dividend yields.
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where we break down commodities markets, sound money principles and geopolitics all with the goal of making you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Today is January 9th, 2026 and I'm thrilled to welcome Dave Colum to the program. A market commentator, professor of chemistry at Cornell, and a man very outspoken against prevailing narratives on a variety of topics. Dave is well aware that he's been pounding the table on the broad market being overvalued and due for a serious correction for some time, but so have many of the world's smartest investors. And the data doesn't lie. By so many metrics, it feels like the Mag 7 and the AI revolution is a fairy tale that is set to burn to the ground when reality sinks in. And Dave breaks down why he thinks that could be sooner rather than later. Dave also dives into gold, silver, and platinum. And you're going to want to stick around to the end of the interview where we engage in an epic discussion about secret societies, the dark motivations behind the political elites, and the death of free speech around the world. If you love silver, pick up your commodity culture, stack silver, not fiat t-shirt, backed by 100% quality guarantee. Use the link in the description below. And now, my friends, strap yourselves in. And I really mean it this time for my conversation with Dave Colum. Dave Colum, it is great to have you back on Commodity Culture. Now, we've spoken several times on this show about overvaluation in the current broad market. And in your recent year in review article, you noted that the price to book of the S&P 500 is at an all-time high. Price to sales is around levels last seen pret. and the Buffett indicator which calculates inflation adjusted US stock market value to GDP also at an all-time high. Now there's plenty of other me metrics out there the Schiller PE ratio that are perhaps causing alarm bells to ring. Howard Marks recently pointing out that historically when the market has been around these valuation levels expected returns for the following decade hover between minus2 and plus 2%. So, I'd love you to expand on your take that you wrote in your year in review, which by the way will be linked in the description below. I recommend everybody check it out. Will 2026 finally be the year this bubble bursts or do you think the market could remain irrational for longer than many are anticipating? >> Well, I think the market has been irrational for several decades. Actually, I think that one the the the the thing I like to show I like the case shower because there's good data going back to about 1880 and for 110 years it just channeled. It just oscillated around a mean value of around 15. Um and and then in uh around 1994 it escaped the channel and then just never looked back. And so, uh, the recency bias is either back, um, um, um, 30 years or if you want to go back to, um, excuse me, 30 25. Yeah, 30. Um, if you want to go back to 1981, um, where the beginning of the bull market started, um, the recency bias goes back 60 years, right? Um, 65 years, something like that. And um and as a consequence, we've been in this unbelievable boom and and there's hardly a person alive who remembers what it was like to be in a serious bust. Um I do not include 2008 2009 as a serious bust because if you look at valuation charts and you did um the the the the GFC the great financial crisis brought equity prices down to the historical mean. So it felt horrible but we we we we didn't correct for two reasons. One is we didn't go well below the mean to make them dirt cheap. they were actually fairly priced in 2008 and N. But also um anything that bounces like a golf ball in a cart path back up corrected nothing. And so if if if we drop 50% this year and then two years from now we've regained new highs that I'm I I'm unwilling to call that a correction because a correction involves correcting something that's wrong. And if two years later it's wrong again, you haven't corrected it. It's like taking out half of a tumor. And um and so I I I there's one chart in there that I don't know if you noticed. I tried to emphasize it. It's a chart showing the inflation adjusted S&P and with bunch of red arrows going across. And what you do is you take the 1906 high. Actually, it goes all the way back to some 1880 something high. But um and you draw an arrow across. So you don't ask the question from the high, how long did it take to recover, but rather from the high, how long did it take for it to get to that same price for the last time, not the first time. And those arrows, there's five of them in the 20th century that go from a high basically we're tracking from a secular high to a secular low is what we're actually doing. And you say, "Well, that's not fair." And I go, "But that's what happens. That does happen." um there's five times and that they take 40 to 75 years. And so if you were if you own expensive stocks, you're in trouble. If you own secular peaks, you're you're toast. You're in big trouble. So the 1929 high, we didn't get we got back. We recovered in about 20 years, but it turns out on an inflation adjusted basis n early 1980s we were at exactly the same price inflation adjusted and that pe there's most people who can't comprehend that and I see podcast um I see podcast I had a p podcast and I he he booted up that chart and I think we are going to go back and test the 2000 high sometime in the next 20 years and 20 to 40 years. Um and and how we get there I there's no way to know but but I think we're going to do it. And and I people just laugh. They they just think that's silly. But actually I think if you look at the chart it's it's it's you sit there and you go, "Holy [ __ ] I never noticed that." It's it's a almost an undeniable pattern where secular high to final secular low treading water and it you know I also see things where people talk about how if you miss the 10 best days in the market um you lost a lot of money right but if you miss the 10 the 13 best days on the NASDAQ it turns out at one point in time at least those 13 so if you subtract them I go well yeah if they're 3% a piece and you times 10. What kind of stupid stupid metric is that? If you miss the 10 worst days, it helps your portfolio. Um, turns out the 13 worst the 13 best days in the NASDAQ were all during the com bust. The 13 best days in the NASDAQ were all during the com bust. So, so you got to be careful from idiots on Wall Street who try to sell you [ __ ] like that. It's just a load of crap. So, by missing the 13 best days in the NASDAQ, you would have saved yourself an 83% decline. So I it's just so I think we're at a massive high at a unprecedented high. I think we're at an all-time high and I also think it's pervasive. I don't think it's just an equity market. I think it's real estate, probably fine art, you name it. And so I think it the everything bubble. It means it's like a stage four cancer and you got lumps all over your body and you're in trouble. >> So what do you think needs to happen for a correction to to be called uh in in your terms for things to correct? You said if it dropped 50% and then came back, that wouldn't be a true correction in your view. What What do you think needs to happen? >> You got a correct price and you got a correct attitude. When it bounces back, you don't correct attitude. You reinforce bad attitude. You reinforce the idea that you should just hang on no matter what because you'll be fine. So, I call it the complacency bubble because because I think there's a ton of people who know the markets are wacky, right? Nvidia, right?$5 trillion, bigger than the Nikkay, bigger than, you know, I it's just ridiculous. um they know it's wacky, but they somehow think that somehow the Fed will save them. Somehow the central banks will save them and they'll say, "Well, they'll inflate the problem away." And I go, "Well, there's a whole bunch of arguments against that, but let's start with the you you'll suffer badly in that kind of an inflationary environment." So that you want you want to suffer. Look at the 67 to 81 bare market. That was pain and suffering of a higher order. The market treaded water. nominally lost 75 80% on an inflation adjusted basis. And the worst part of it is it took 14 years. You know, the the 1929 to 33 peak to trough was like a a a clean flesh wound. It it went right through, right? And and then we sort of climbed out of there and we had some trouble in 38 stuff like that. But um you do not you you do not want like the Nikkay spent 3540 years underwater right from the 89 high inflation adjusted probably still underwater at at a NK of 50,000. Um you don't want to spend 40 or 50 years getting nowhere. You can't afford to do that. And I think that's what we're going to do. And and so every goddamn podcast I do says, you know, column calls a crash. Column never calls a crash. I I never call a crash. I think we're going to rot ourselves to death on this one. We're going to have it's going to get knocked down 20% and buyers, let's say we start a bad period. It'll get knocked down. The buyers will then jump back in and it'll recover a lot and then they'll get knocked on their ass again. And that'll just keep happening over and over and over and then there'll be a new high potentially but then they'll get knocked on their ass again and you'll look up 30 40. So I I did the math. So let's say we're 200% over historical valuation. Not all the valuation metrics say that but the case shiller PE for example does and I think Jesse Felder's composite P uh composite valuation metric does. You can inflate your way out because it's the again the numerator and denominator are both inflation sensitive. So if you're sitting at a case hill or PE of 42, which is where we're at, and the historical average is 15, if you cause inflation, the numerator and denominator are just going to track each other, and it doesn't solve the valuation problem. You actually have to hurt the price relative to inflation. And so um and so um you say, well, what if we grow our way out? Well, if we grow our way out at at, you know, 2.5% GDP per year, how long would it take us to grow our way out? If we don't move a buck on the index, but we just grow our GDP and end up at a Buffett historical average valuation, it'll take 45 years. 45 years. That's 1.025 025 to the 45th power gets you to a 200% g gets you to the 200% gain that you need to grow out of it. The sponsor of today's episode is Arc Silver Gold Osmium. Owner Ian Everard is praised even by his competitors as one of the most honest and level-headed bullion dealers in the United States. They have some great prices. You can see some of them displayed right now on screen. can take advantage of these specials today by reaching out to Ian at 3072649441 or by email at ianarchsggo.com. Make sure to tell them, of course, that commodity culture sent you. And now back to the interview. Well, in your year review, you also noted the work of Michael Green in regards to the impact of passive investing. You wrote, "The idea is so simple. Hand every month's allocation savings to your Vanguard's S&P index fund or any one of a bazillion clones and then forget about it. It has worked brilliantly since it first began in the mid 1990s. I think passive investing has been so successful that most people are now trained to think investing in an index fund is basically a highinterest savings account that presents no risk. um you know the whole random walk down Wall Street theory that don't bother trying to you know find things that are undervalued and don't bother trying to pick individual securities just throw everything into an index fund because fundamental analysis doesn't work technical analysis doesn't work and this is kind of the only way to go. Um however this has presented perhaps a massive danger. How does this massive influx of capital into these market cap weighted indices affect valuations and does it extend this bubble farther than would normally be possible? Whether it's causal or not, I don't know, but there was a law passed in 1994. You may recognize that was the date that I said I left the channel that somehow allowed passive investing funds to do some stuff that made them more efficient so they became more attractive. And Green says it was in 1994 that that law was passed. So Green and I have exactly the same date coming at it from totally unrelated positions. And and um and so what happens is it it is not imaginable to me that you can keep just growing the market valuations in perpetuity because at that point now you're just trading NFTTS or Pokemon chips. If if if if we we have a huge problem if our equity markets cease to reflect the idea that they represent a a cash flow from functional wealth creating businesses. If if that's gone, then free market's gone, the economyy's gone. Uh, and so, so, uh, and I I I tell people, "Show me a show me a a a an asset that got way overvalued that didn't ultimately find its way back to cheap." It always does. There's no example of that in history. And so I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know what by by what path, but if we're 200% over historical average valuation, and if it gets back to cheap, call it 50% below historical, you are you we're going to destroy lives, we will destroy the boomers. And I believe that is the boomers ceasing to put money in and starting to take it out that'll be that'll contribute to reversing the path of flow. Um, I talked to a very famous guy who knows Mike Green very well and he doesn't think in the foreseeable future that passive flow will reverse. So Mike Mike is more agnostic. Mike seems frustrated. He seems like he he maybe can see evidence that it's sputtering a little bit. Sort of like your car sputtering and you go, "Wait a minute. What's going on? Something's not working here." Um, a deep recession could slow the flows. could have reversed them. I don't know. Flows are coming from overseas. Geop politics, you know, it's not like they aren't getting more volatile. Um, a a serious beginning of a correction could cause people to start hitting the sell button. And since it's a single button, boom, one one click sells the whole market, right? You've got an index fund, you've got Jack Bogle's fund, one click sells the whole market, everything's going to sell. They have no cash buffer. There's no market makers. And so if I put in a $100,000 sell order to the market, they have to sell $100,000 worth of equities. And then the question is, who is going to be the buyer? It is so far to date for many, many, many years been the passive flow was the buyer. If the passive flow reverses, who's the buyer? There's no short sellers left on the planet because they've been destroyed. So short sellers often are buying the buying buying the dips because they shorted now they got a cover. So they often buy the dips, they sell the tops, they round out the sharp sharp peaks and troughs. They're gone. They're they're name a name a guy who's a pure short seller. I don't think you can. You know the Jim Chainoses of the world, Bill Fleenstein, they've all said, "No, this game I'm not playing it anymore." Um, so as as it's currently as the market's currently priced, it's price return about 2.5%. When it has a PE of 15 is price return about, I don't know, 7%. So are the boomers ready to to get 2.5% um off of their off of their investment. And and and you know, if you tread water, you say, "Well, at least I get dividends." Well, the S&P's dividends are 1.1%. So, as I said, my copy editor actually didn't get the joke. I said, "There's no F in in dividends." And he said, "I I don't I don't understand that sentence." I go, "Say it fast. There's no F in dividends." You know, and uh and uh and so you you're you're not and and by the way, the the dividends are 1.1% versus the historical average of 4.4 before and versus the high from years ago of 6 point something. That is a valuation metric. It means you're getting no cash flow off of your investments. It's like buying a Toyota. It could be a perfectly good car, but if you pay 150,000 for it, resale is going to suck. I don't know when I it's to me it's and you know my I look at podcast comments. I I I think I've got to the point I can now spot the bots. I I think I'm getting better at spotting. I see the same comment in every one. I go, there's some computer just got one comment. Um, but the complacency is just extraordinary. It's just extraordinary where the people just say, "Well, this guy's been calling for a crash for 10 years or whatever." And I go, "Yeah, at some level they're correct." But also I make a case this year as you may have noticed that in 2015 the legends of Wall Street, not just the data, not just the the charts and the valuations. The legends of Wall Street said, "We have now recreated a gigantic bubble again. It is catastrophic. What the hell are we doing here?" And I'm not talking smart hedge ventures. I'm talking the famous guy saying, "We are now staring back into the abyss. How did this happen so quickly?" And then you go, where did it go from there? Straight up. So either they were all wrong or we are all [ __ ] up. You know, we're just we're just in worse shape than we were before. And the returns are extraordinary off of that 2015 valuation. And so I it's I I if regression of the mean is a force of nature. It's a truism. and and I just don't know when and I it's got to be tied to the boomers aging, right? It's got to be tied to there's things and so I made a list of what about 10 risks I think that could cause the flows to to to reverse sign. And Green says once once the flows reverse sign, you will have these air pockets that will not be met with buyers. They just won't be there. and and and once people say, you know, and you own a stock like Philip Morris, it's a P of 10 and a dividend of some number of percent, you know, like six%. Which which I own, and if you put a gun to my head said buy something, I', you know, Philip Morris, Rio Tinto, I'd probably buy those, right? Um, but but when the the PE in the market in ' 81 was six, half of the stocks in the market were below six. So, if you own something with a P of 12 and you think you're safe, well, if you get a dividend, you might get it. Although, they might stop it, too. That's a that's a that's an arbitrarily chosen thing to do by the company. Um, but but if it goes from a P of 12 to six, you just lost half your money. And by the way, that means you lost half of your income for the rest of retirement. No one is thinking in these terms. So, you can hear my frustration. >> Yeah. And like I said, I think a lot of is this just the normalization of throwing money into an index fund. A lot of retirees, they look at it as a savings account, like it's a like it's a bond or something >> and that we've been saved over and over and over. Now, here's the thing drives me bananas. So, everyone on the planet can all agree that the Fed kept rates too low for too long. To that I add too many times. And now what are they saying? The Fed has to drop rates. I go, "Didn't you just say they kept it too low too long? Too many times?" And yet your solution is to drop rates. You're a [ __ ] You're a complete idiot. >> Yeah. Yeah. I concur with that. >> And and and and and right. And then and then they, well, housing's too expensive. Young guys can't buy it. I said, so let's see if we got let's see if I got this right. We've got a choice. You can either drop rates to some basement level, which allows the boomers to sell you their in a 50-year mortgage allows the boomers to sell you their house. without any capital loss or erosion. So they can get out of their highly appreciated asset handing it to you as a youngster such at some point in the future when rates go up, you get obliterated because now your house is not worth that. or we let the price of houses drop so that you get to buy it at a credible price and the boomers have to suck up the the loss and and capital gains of their house. Which should we choose? >> Well, apparently now what what >> I know what the boomers are. >> Yeah. What what is the latest scheme that Trump has cooked up? He's forcing the government to buy mortgagebacked bonds. Isn't that the latest thing that's claiming that that's going to somehow reduce the mortgage rate? I have a book re recommendation. It's something like what happened to capitalism. That's not may not be quite right, but it's it's by a guy named Rousir Sharma and and it's it's it's not a screed. It's not a Marxist screed. It's not he he's not a libertarian. He's not saying just, you know, leave us alone and let us do whatever we want. It's none of that. He is the way I describe is two things. He says, "We flood the system with a ton of money and then we try to use regulations to control the consequences and it doesn't work." He said, "We we we have the way I phrase it is we have um bad interventions with good intentions." And so we intervene in some way thinking we're fixing it, but but they're not going to fix it. It's just going to make it more broken. and he shows and he goes through all these arguments and it's really well done and I I'm told he's and I've told this to several people like Steve Hanky in a podcast and he said, "Oh yeah, I read his stuff all the time." So he is a highly respected guy. But he talks about this idea, this non-stop interventions that are really a consequence of they're flooding the system with money and they need to keep intervening. And then you say, "Well, what if you don't flood the system with money?" Well, now we've got a bankruptcy problem. Right. We've got too big too big a deficit. And you know, inflation is not monetary in my opinion. I know Milton's rolling in his grave. Inflation is government spending. Government spending causes the monetary problem. So, I think you can trace I think you can trace inflation to government spending. >> Well, I'd love to get your take on both gold and silver here as both metals recently hit new all-time highs. Silver in particular has been going on a rampage. Um, in addition to displaying some very volatile price action, but recently hitting new all-time highs, we are above $80, I believe, as of the time of this recording. Do you feel like we're getting overbought here when it comes to silver in particular? And just your thoughts on on both the precious metals and perhaps you could throw something in about platinum because that's also done tremendously well. I know that's something we discussed in the past and you made a good call on that. >> Yeah. Um, it does feel frothy. And so I think you have to make one of two arguments. Either that we're due for a breather. That's there's a euphemism people like or digesting the gains or getting our ass kicked. I don't know which. Um, so it's possible that that silver and there's narratives, right? There's claims it's, you know, there's a silver shortage. Um, smart guys make the claims. I I'm not qualified. I can't figure out if their claims are right. Um, and and you know, they talk about breaking the comx and all this and that silver could go to 200 and and and and this is both the frothiness or or finally something has changed and that the that the the rigging of the paper markets which is real. Um, it's not to say that they're rigging it to make you go any one direction or another, but they're rigging it so that they make money, right? So, they they've turned our retirements into their casino. It it's always that way, but it seems to be more egregious than it used to be. And and you know, they're they're screwing around with people's lives. some some guys in cubicles, they just they're just having a ball making money and, you know, getting hookers and blow during their time off and and um and and but it's our retirements that they're messing with. It's our lives they're messing with. So, I'm not very sensitive to if they get their asses kicked royally. I' I'd love to see those guys out on the street. Love to see private equity out on the street absolutely destroyed. Um and and so either there's something big happening or it's frothy and I don't know which it is. >> And talk to us about platinum and your thoughts on that. >> Platinum is a different story. So the platinum story is interesting and I again I mentioned Hanky. Hank is a currency guy and he he's very outside the box and he one time sent me an Excel spreadsheet with all his investments. Holy moly, you have never seen such weird investments. Uh all these currency swaps and everything. It it was really a weird portfolio. And um and he says, "Tell me more about platinum." So I talked a little and then I sent him my write up and then I did another podcast with him about two weeks later and I said, "Well, what about platinum?" He said, "Oh, you were dead, right?" So the platinum story is as follows. You know, platinum's using catalytic converters. there's actually increased um jewelry demand because gold got so expensive that that apparently the Chinese are saying well you know that wedding ring we can make that out of platinum instead of gold um but the catalytic converter of internal combustion engines which you could say are are dodo birds going out the door I don't think so as long as as long as Doomberg's right and there's tons and tons of fossil fuel we're gonna have internal combustion engines um you know things uh China, they're gagging on their fumes and so they have reason to have more efficient catalytic inverters and scrubbers and things like that. Critically, um while electric vehicles don't use a lot of platinum, hybrids use more platinum than internal combustion engines. So, so and I think the hybrid is the optimum technology. I think to have both fuels at one time makes total sense to me. Um I could be wrong on that. Now, here's the real story. According to multiple sources that I've tried to cross-ch checkck and shoot down, and I've tried to use AI to find alternative answers, the current deficit production of platinum, which comes 70% from South Africa, uh 15% from Russia, there's a there's a North Dakota mine or two, something like that. But um South Africa is the biggie. Uh which is at risk of being a failed state, right? I mean, South Africa could really and and you go, what does that mean? Well, when when Marxists grab the machinery of production, what they usually discover is they don't know how to produce anything. And so, Venezuelan oil, great example, right? 4 million barrels a day. Now, they're making 1 million barrels a day because they've got their heads up their asses. Um, so we're in deficit production now. And it and if you look at the above ground available platinum supply and the deficit production platinum we've got about two and a half years of platinum left. Now the message there is it's a phenomenal supply demand problem. Phenomenal supply demand problem. And it's not like you're all of a sudden going to increase the production fast because that's not how mining works, right? Mining is a very sluggish thing. You don't know to say, you know, that big open pit mine, let's let's crank three times as much [ __ ] out of that mine, right? Or let's open new mines. No, you don't do that either. So So if that's true, then you say, well, you know, maybe they won't use platinum. I go, well, uh, you're going to sell Ford F-150s no matter how much that catalytic converter costs, right? you're going to be price insensitive, not because um and not not because you don't care, but because it's too small a percentage of the car to stop production because of it. So, it could cost five times as much platinum, they'll pay it. They'll just tack it out and the Ford F-150 will now cost $90,000 instead of $80,000, whatever it is. Um, and so I think there's tremendous reason that the fundamental story of platinum is right. And so you're not chasing price like gold potentially like silver. I don't know. The silver shortage argument. I I just I don't know how to get my brains around it because silver kind of permeates the earth. You don't find jars of platinum in people's dressers and stuff, right? But um silver silver silver you could imagine silver coming out of the woodwork if if as the price goes up platinum won't come out of the woodwork. There's no woodwork with platinum in it, right? You don't you don't have a jar of platinum coins that you collected when you were a kid or anything. Um so the the platinum story I really like because it's a fundamental story, not a price story. Well, let's get into the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro as we switch more towards geopolitics. Would love to get your overall thoughts. Do you think Greenland and maybe Canada could be next? And midterm elections coming up. I believe that's November of this year. If the Democrats win the majority, are they just going to reverse everything Trump is doing and move to impeach him and all of this will be for not? How do you see this all moving forward? >> Boy, I'm I'm outside my skill set. Um, I've done enough podcast lately where fortunately there's been another guest who knows I can kind of fake it. I can Milly vanilia it a little bit to me. Maduro Maduro I I almost get the feeling Maduro agreed to be arrested. Let's start with that because because he looked at uh the the life expectancy of former dictators is not high. And so I think Maduro might have said, "Holy [ __ ] the writing's on the wall. come and save me, right? And we might have even cut a deal where say, "Look, we're gonna throw you in jail for a little while, but then we'll set you up on some Caribbean island, and you can, you know, just keep your mouth shut." Um, according to Hanky, they left the regime intact and and he says, "New boss worse than the old boss." So he thinks they've they've they've lost ground by taking out Maduro and and and uh he was the advisor to several Venezuelan presidents. So he he does know this world. Um um I just got off a two-hour podcast with Michael Yan and everything for Michael's military and he thinks this is all just, you know, this just a big Game of Thrones chess match where everything's about resources and access to trade routes and all sorts of things like that. Um if if if the bad case scenarios are a if we somehow get dragged into a boots on the ground war or a protracted battle that costs us a fortune. If we can do a hit and run then then it will it will not be a terrible failure. But I also suspect, and this is just from watching just news events over my lifetime, that it I don't think it would shock anyone if Venezuela fell into a state of total chaos. Now, did we know that when we took out Maduro and said, "Yeah, yeah, it'll turn into chaos, but then we'll go clean up the mess and get the oil and whatever." I was shocked by people's opinion as to why it was a good idea. I I I don't have a problem with it being a good idea because I don't understand why we're doing it. I It could be Monroe Doctrine, right? Could be could be we're accepting the idea of a multipolar world and say, "Okay, okay, multipolar world. We got Russia and China and and US and some bricky [ __ ] stuff like that." And Trump could be saying, "South America is ours. Western Hemisphere is ours. Get out of here." and and that that's not irrational, I don't think. Um, as long as as long as it too many people don't pay with their lives and starving to death and stuff like that. Although history shows we empires do that all the time, right? It's not like the Romans didn't kill a few on route to becoming an empire. Um, and um, but I also could imagine it just going catastrophic like so many of our military endeavors do and then and then I I don't know what to make of it. I I don't think it's about just the oil. I don't think it's just the oil, especially if Doomberg's right. We have a ton of oil. We don't need to. And you know when we attacked Iraq, I remember there was an article and they quoted a German um a German oil analyst who said, "I don't understand the Americans. We just buy the oil, right?" And and you know, it tells you that it couldn't have been about the oil, right? I mean, and now could be that Exon Mobile wants to sell you the oil and and they don't like the idea that Saddam is selling you the oil. I am unsympathetic to that. I don't I don't I don't like that model at all. I don't I don't think we should be killing people so that the Dole brothers can grow pineapples in Hawaii. That was the first overthrow, by the way. That was the US's first overthrow was Hawaii. They took the queen of Hawaii out. There's a good book called Overthrow by Steven Kinszer, I think, but it's called Overthrow. And it's about 13 explicit US sanctioned sponsored overthrows. They're very careful to say, "Look, our fingerprints are all over a lot of stuff. These are 13 that are unamiguously we just over like Mosedc and Iran and places like that." Um, there's a lot of people I know who are from South America who really hate what we've done to South America over the decades. So, um, this could be more of the same. I'm just babbling now. So, is Greenland next at this point? Um, because Trump has indicated that that could be a possibility and even Canada, which he's been talking about as well. Are are these things on the table in your view? >> Um, I think Greenland's probably on the table. I I think it's been discussed in previous presidencies and I think there's a certain amount of logic to us just bringing it into our orbit and saying, "Okay, no one's doing anything with it. It's just a big rock covered with ice." I don't know if there's a reason why we really want it. Uh whether it's a mineral thing or whether it's just a why not. Um maybe a national defense thing. Maybe want to put military bases there. But we could probably agree find some way to do that anyways because we put air b military bases anywhere we want in the world. Anyways, um Canada is a more interesting question. I think Canada requires the Canadian sign off. I don't think we're going to invade Canada. Um, but there's some pretty seriously unhappy provinces up in Canada. Um, one of them, I can't even remember which one's which now, but one of them's kind of in the middle. So that if if they seceded from Canada, Canada would all of a sudden be a two separate separate countries kind of like, you know, I never have understood east and west Berlin embedded in the Soviet block. I I never understood the West Berlin. I never understood the importance of why West Berlin was so meaningful to us because it seemed like such a royal pain in the ass. Go ahead, you guys. You guys in the Soviets take West Berlin. Maybe it was militarily strategic. Um, so Canada's a maybe. I've speak I've spoken with a Canadian guy who knows this thing, goes to a lot of important meetings and he thinks Canada's days are numbered as a as a in its current form. >> I would tend to agree with that. Yeah, I'm actually giving a presentation about that at the VRIC coming up uh at the end of the month. But >> so what's the cause? What's the problem? Is it are people just pissed off or what? Well, I think it it involves a number of factors and these similar factors are plaguing a lot of these legacy brand western countries such as the UK as well. We're seeing a rising cost of living. Wages are not keeping pace. That's one of the main issues. Prices for homes and rent are skyrocketing. Um, now the reasons behind it are because the bureaucracy has become so incredibly bloated in in my opinion when it comes to the Canadian government. And if we go even deeper than that, there's a bunch of different theories on on why the west is falling apart and and a lot of them really fascinating. But there's a guy named Jangsu Shin. He does this uh channel called Predictive History. He's a school teacher in Beijing. And uh he's got a really interesting series called Hidden Secrets of Power. I recommend people check it out. He believes that bureaucracies in western governments have been taken over by secret societies who want to invert good and evil and and that those are the people who are pulling the levers of power. >> So would this be the the whole satanic cult crap and stuff like that? Well, maybe the Frankists, the the the Frankists are a religious organization that believe to actually become one with God, you have to sin and you have to actually destroy reality. They they have some sort of twisted religious ideology behind them. But when it comes to Canada in particular, you look at things like maid, how they're assisting people in dying and the requirements are getting lower and lower. Recently in Calgary, there was an instance where a woman um the court agreed she's allowed to die. Now, she's been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, but beyond that, there's no issue. Like, it's not like she's in pain and and suffering. And her father was trying to stop the courts and the courts ruled no. I think she was 27 years old. I mean, I was not very smart at 27 years old uh to be able to make that sort of decision. And um they're saying now at the moment in Canada mental ill like if you have mental problems, if you're depressed, that's not allowed yet. I believe they're pushing for that to be allowed in 2027 or something. >> Not yet, I believe. But in this case, they're saying she has autism. That counts as a disability, so she's allowed to die. And so far, over 70,000 people have been killed by maid. This to me feels like human sacrifice in in some form or another. I mean there's a bunch of other >> or at least some sort of human decay, right? Some sort of societal decay, you know, end of >> end of civilization type thing. The problem is the the conf I mean I think right to die under the extreme conditions is is totally rational. >> Yes. >> You know, if you're in excruciating pain and stuff like that, but you know, um a 27year-old can be in excruciating emotional pain and not give a [ __ ] a year later. >> Exactly. Exactly. And so, um, so I think we're at great risk. Um, I think the abortion battles, I'm a pro-choice guy, but but not too many years ago at least, the left were pushing abortions to end of third trimester, you know, at the contraction phase of birth abortions. And I go, if if you push it that far, you give me a binary choice of no abortions or that, I'll I'll I'll switch to the no abortion team very quickly. And so I I think the the activists were trying to get sort of the ultimate win, the ultimate women's choice, freedom of choice story. And and it's just stupid. It's just it's just it's dumb. >> Yeah. I I also believe the the whole gender identity thing could perhaps have a twisted religious belief behind it. Um the change again that whole inverting turning virtue into evil and evil into virtue. Um so changing genders in children in Canada now in many places the school like the teachers are allowed to discuss gender with the students and they're allowed to keep it secret from the parents that their boy has decided. >> I thought that stuff was going to go away. >> Yeah, it it hasn't in Canada. I tell you, I'd have a chat with that teacher that would be off the record that would say, "If you continue doing this, your house is going to burn down." >> Yeah. And that is one of the main reasons I live in Serbia. I do not have kids yet, but I do plan on it. In Serbia, there's no debate. There's no discussion. >> Poland doesn't have the debate. Hungary doesn't have the debate. Right. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Since when is the Eastern Block the voice of reason in the world? Right. That's the >> Yeah, >> that's a sort of a funny situation. So, you know, I've been reading my year in reviews from 16 years forward, and I'm almost done proofing them all because they're all getting bound by Bob Morardi for reasons that I didn't know at the time, but I'm now realizing that I benefited enormously. So, it's like 3,500 pages. I don't know. I'm going to have to add it up one of these days and find out how many pages it was. Um, and you can see trends and patterns and oddities by looking at what happened year after year after year. You can see it economically. You can see it in social structure. Um, I really thought that we had dealt with the super wokey [ __ ] I thought that we were not going to be hearing about guys and women's sports, which which I'll fight to the death on too. You know, you want to call me a misogynist pig have a ball. I've been called worse this year. Um, I if if you don't want to support women's sports by by protecting young women from being invaded by dudes, you're [ __ ] up. Not me, right? You can call me anything you want, but but you need to pull your head out of your ass or get a psychiatrist or something. Um, and I, you know, if someone wants to call me out and give me golf, I'll go, "Yeah, let's have it out. Let's take let's take the gloves off right now. Let's do it. Let's have the fight." And uh, so there's some real stupid stuff. I was stunned reading a from not too many years back some of the complete absurdities that society had signed off on like some some woman got fired because of something her father tweeted five years earlier you know just insane things like that I go you know take the gloves off me said something like there comes a time when men need to you know take their gloves off and break out the knives and start throats >> yes well this is one of the other issues with Canada is that the people are so complant ent. They either agree with everything that's being done or they're meek and just they want to get along with everybody. The Canadian niceness is not actually being nice. It's just a desire to not be singled out and to not have to take action. And this is pervasive throughout society. But I want to end now on digital censorship, control of the narrative online, something political elites seem very focused on for 2026. The UK, Germany, and Australia seem to really be leading the way when it comes to arresting people for tweeting things the government doesn't like. All under the guise of anti-hate speech. But this is another issue in Canada. Now they are attempting to pass legislation that could see the Gestapo at your door for indicating you don't like diversity. The EU, of course, has become an absolute cesspool of anti-free speech activism on the part of these political elites. Now, the internet and social media obviously has its issues, but it's one of the few places where everybody can kind of voice their opinion. Do you think the elites see this as a major threat to their power? And will there come a day when conversations like we're having right now will be censored for being fringe or or against the norm. >> I think it's possible the day the internet went live, we were going we charted a path to authoritarianism. I think it's possible that it was not avoidable. It was one of those if you follow the bouncing ball and say, "Okay, where does this eventually take us?" I'm not convinced that because the internet is so powerful that whoever has control of it will have the power and they will use it against us. So um so so so I I don't think there's any reason to believe that people in position of great authority will become good guys and and all of a sudden because the the the um the addiction to power seems to have history's been pretty clear on that point. Um one stazzy exazzy guy said he said if you think the government's going to collect information on you and not use it against you you're out of your mind. And so, uh, it is possible that that that, um, that I timed my existence pretty perfectly and that I won't have to be around for the real bad parts. I don't know. They could come faster than that. But, um, I I think Twitter was kind of saved by Elon. Not that it's perfectly saved, but it's way better saved than it was, right? I mean, when you got booted off Twitter for for being antiax or or saying the election was rigged or whatever, you can still run into guff, though. I I I think there's still algorithms that are controlling the flow of your information pretty seriously. And they're certainly controlling information you get. I I want I'm going to do an experiment with my brother at some point. We're going to we're going to do some searches and look at how they differ. We're gonna we're going to parallel search identical topics from our two computers like on Twitter, you know, just search some topic and and and then see what the top 10 tweets are and see if we're being fed different information. Um I'm a big opponent of fact checkers. I I think the fact checkers are all propaganda. They're all propaganda. I think they have the luxury of telling the truth sometimes because the truth actually works in their best interest. But, you know, if you search anything dicey like, you know, that did the Clintons traffic children, you will get just fact checked after fact check after fact check that said they didn't when in fact um above the fold news story said they did. and and a very famous Army Intel guy um named Tony Schaffer told me personally I asked him that question. He said, "Oh yeah, the Clinton Foundation traffic children like crazy." And and the fact that the president of the United States and the president wannabe are trafficking children is already not a good sign. And the fact that I I don't think there's any doubt that Bill broke some laws in his sexual exploits, right? I mean, if you had to bet your life, you know how you'd bet. And um and uh the fact that he hasn't in any way paid for this, right? And you know, Pete did he did all sorts of bad stuff. He got he got convicted of prostitution, you know. So, so there there's no, as I said to Tucker, um there are no rules above some socioeconomic cut. There are no rules. There's, you know, James Comey will never go to prison even though I think he was treasonous. Um, and it might be thousands of people who are treasonous and were in a position to do something in there for you. You round them up. Now, this is now starting to sound like kind of a brown shirt moment in Germany, too, right? You know, when when do you cross the dotted line and you become the historical bad guy? I don't know. Um, but I do know that um I just I wrote about January 6th back when it happened and I just proofed it the other day and I I was stunned at how bad it was. I I'd forgotten how thoroughly I had written about it and I've been shocking myself with my former writing. Um, and you hear about some guy who's being tortured in in prison, a January 6er, right? No one should be tortured in prison. um let alone the J6ers who were just protesters in my opinion. It got out of control, but that's what protests do, right? Big big crowds do do occasionally get unruly, right? It happens and doesn't hurt when you got 274 FBI guys stirring up the pot. Let's wrap this up with a bit of a bow here and kind of just quickly get back to the to the digital censorship topic because I' I'd love to get your thoughts on where you think that's going, particularly as we're seeing, you know, a guy in the EU's being sanctioned for, you know, >> Great Britain in terrible shape. Great Britain's in terrible shape. >> But Great Britain's in terrible shape. I mean, Ursula Vanderlin and other EU elites are out there talking about how there's freedom of speech, but there's not. you know, anything with a butt after it's a big problem. And uh like I said, in Canada, they're looking to pass new legislation. Australia, after Bondi Beach, the prime minister comes out and says, you know, we cannot have this anti-semitism raging, so we now need to >> That's a different story. That's a different story. >> Here here's the the question that I have, and that is why these people obviously have no respect for what their system is founded on. Why would they why would they so to you know when you open the southern border in the United States when you take away people's civil liberties do do you have no understanding of of of the foundations of our system? I mean we had a great country at one point and and if if you throw it away you're going to really you're going to really regret it. So um wh why why why do they not have some sort of dotted line they say no I won't go below that. I I'll be self- serving. I'll be narcissistic. I'll do that. But I won't I won't throw the entire United States or my entire country, you know, Great Britain, Australia. There's a whole bunch of them that are suffering. And I I don't I don't understand why they don't have some sort of guard rail that says, "Okay, be it steal, cheat, do whatever, but don't do that." Right? It's like if you read Stephen Pinker's book about medieval, you know, about violence in the past. Um he says he says when you read about some of the things they used to do to to to kill people, right? So So in the old days, you didn't incarcerate them. That was too expensive. So he just whacked him. And he he when I was reading the book, you had to take breaks because some of the ways they thought of whacking people were so bad were just so ugly and you had to say I can't read any more of this [ __ ] But and then speaker said I could be standing in front of Adolf Hitler and not think of doing that. Right? And and so um so why do why do these leaders not see the problem that they are sending us into this Orwellian future? And what would what would they say if you confronted them with that? Well, what's their what do you think their explanation would be? If I could Vanderline in these guys or the the Brits who are really performing terribly, what do you think they would say? Well, I think their true motivations could be religious as I alluded to earlier and so obviously they would not give you a >> King Charles King Charles and his pedophilia and stuff like that. >> Well, that that that I don't really I'm not really too aware of King Charles's history, but um that that is an interesting point though because the you know Charles was involved with Jimmy Seville, right? That was like his best friend, >> right? So what's up with that connection? >> As was everybody. >> Yeah. >> Well, there is a theory that that everyone knew but they weren't necessarily participating. So I've seen arguments made that Jimmy Seville was a perf, but he was only a perf himself. He wasn't a trafficker to the elites. But I think those arguments are specious. I think those arguments I think the royal family is incomprehensibly screwed up. >> Yeah. >> I think the Rothschild family is incomprehensibly screwed up. I think I think I think there's if if you start reading about that stuff, it it's it's mind-boggling the stuff you can read and you don't know if it's true, but there's these seemingly self-consistent stories of just wretched wretched cultural evolution within these royal bloodlines. >> Yes. And >> and things that they do to to children and stuff like that. >> Yes. And I I think so I think all these people are are psychopaths. So they have psychopathy. Um so they enjoy inflicting harm and suffering on others. And I think there is a way to ensure that a child grows up a certain way and also gets that mindset by abusing them. And I I think a lot of abuse goes on within those families. >> I mean there are claims by abused victims that they're like eighth generational satanic. They come from eighth generational satanic family. They traffic their own kids into the satanic networks. They they you know they're just horrible horrible and the stuff they do. This is not just dancing around and acting like idiots, right? Horrifying things. Um I would love to know what's on that frazzled drip laptop of of of Anthony Weiner. Um and and I guess I would love to. It's it's quite possible I would not. It's quite possible that it would just haunt me for the rest of my life knowing that that shit's happening. Um, and and I I do believe according to one podcaster who's a very smart guy. He says Satanism is actually the fastest growing religion right now. And you know, historically it's been there. So would it have gone away? There's no evidence that it would necessarily have gone away. So, I I I got to stop reading that stuff. It's actually ripping my soul out through my nostrils like an Egyptian mummy. Um, >> well, I think that when we look at a lot of the actions of the elites that seem confusing or that seem like how could they possibly do this, a lot of it's attributed to ignorance or just these people are stupid, they're on a power trip. But if they do have a hidden motivation behind the scenes that is some twisted religious belief and that religious belief revolves around the inversion of good and evil then a lot of their actions actually make sense. That's my thought. We've had a a large span farreaching conversation today Dave. It it has been awesome. Um why don't you tell us where the best place is for people to go to follow you? As I mentioned at the top of the show you dropped your year-end review for 2025 recently. So, I'm going to put a link to that in the description. Is X the other place people should be going to follow you? >> Yeah, Twitter um under David B. Column. Um the other um if you want, you just search YouTube under my name and you can binge my my annual review. I actually for archival reasons list all the podcasts I've done that year and it's around I don't know 85 90 podcasts this last year. Um, this this year's year in review is a little screwy. I mean, it's it's unusual. It's different than all the others because I uh I sort of got disenchanted and disoriented and and could not figure out how to make separate fact from fiction and sort of a really sort of crisis level confusion. And and then again, I got into it with the Zionists, which was very unpleasant. and um and that's sort of calmed down not only in the world but in my head. So I've I've come to terms with the fact that Mark Leven can can hate me and I don't care. The one thing I do worry about on that is is I don't want my colleagues to have to suffer. I don't want Cornell to have to suffer. So I I don't like the bad press it brings to other people. I could live with it. Um and Mark Mark Leven can eat [ __ ] and die for all I care. Awesome. Well, I'm going to on that note, I'm going to put links to your ex account as well as the year and review in the description. Uh, thank you so much, Dave. It's always a blast when I have you on the show. >> No problem. Thank you. >> Thank you for joining us today. This episode is brought to you by Ark, Silver, Gold, Osmium. They have some great specials on silver bullion products right now. They are on your screen. These are subject to change and while supplies last. So reach out to owner Ian Everard today at 3072649441 or by email at ianarchsggo.com and make sure to tell him that commodity culture sent you and pick up your stacks silver not fiat t-shirt available exclusively in the commodity culture shop using the link in the description below and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up to date with the latest episodes.
Market Has 'Stage 4 Cancer' as 'Unprecedented' Valuations MUST Face Reality: Dave Collum
Summary
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where we break down commodities markets, sound money principles and geopolitics all with the goal of making you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Today is January 9th, 2026 and I'm thrilled to welcome Dave Colum to the program. A market commentator, professor of chemistry at Cornell, and a man very outspoken against prevailing narratives on a variety of topics. Dave is well aware that he's been pounding the table on the broad market being overvalued and due for a serious correction for some time, but so have many of the world's smartest investors. And the data doesn't lie. By so many metrics, it feels like the Mag 7 and the AI revolution is a fairy tale that is set to burn to the ground when reality sinks in. And Dave breaks down why he thinks that could be sooner rather than later. Dave also dives into gold, silver, and platinum. And you're going to want to stick around to the end of the interview where we engage in an epic discussion about secret societies, the dark motivations behind the political elites, and the death of free speech around the world. If you love silver, pick up your commodity culture, stack silver, not fiat t-shirt, backed by 100% quality guarantee. Use the link in the description below. And now, my friends, strap yourselves in. And I really mean it this time for my conversation with Dave Colum. Dave Colum, it is great to have you back on Commodity Culture. Now, we've spoken several times on this show about overvaluation in the current broad market. And in your recent year in review article, you noted that the price to book of the S&P 500 is at an all-time high. Price to sales is around levels last seen pret. and the Buffett indicator which calculates inflation adjusted US stock market value to GDP also at an all-time high. Now there's plenty of other me metrics out there the Schiller PE ratio that are perhaps causing alarm bells to ring. Howard Marks recently pointing out that historically when the market has been around these valuation levels expected returns for the following decade hover between minus2 and plus 2%. So, I'd love you to expand on your take that you wrote in your year in review, which by the way will be linked in the description below. I recommend everybody check it out. Will 2026 finally be the year this bubble bursts or do you think the market could remain irrational for longer than many are anticipating? >> Well, I think the market has been irrational for several decades. Actually, I think that one the the the the thing I like to show I like the case shower because there's good data going back to about 1880 and for 110 years it just channeled. It just oscillated around a mean value of around 15. Um and and then in uh around 1994 it escaped the channel and then just never looked back. And so, uh, the recency bias is either back, um, um, um, 30 years or if you want to go back to, um, excuse me, 30 25. Yeah, 30. Um, if you want to go back to 1981, um, where the beginning of the bull market started, um, the recency bias goes back 60 years, right? Um, 65 years, something like that. And um and as a consequence, we've been in this unbelievable boom and and there's hardly a person alive who remembers what it was like to be in a serious bust. Um I do not include 2008 2009 as a serious bust because if you look at valuation charts and you did um the the the the GFC the great financial crisis brought equity prices down to the historical mean. So it felt horrible but we we we we didn't correct for two reasons. One is we didn't go well below the mean to make them dirt cheap. they were actually fairly priced in 2008 and N. But also um anything that bounces like a golf ball in a cart path back up corrected nothing. And so if if if we drop 50% this year and then two years from now we've regained new highs that I'm I I'm unwilling to call that a correction because a correction involves correcting something that's wrong. And if two years later it's wrong again, you haven't corrected it. It's like taking out half of a tumor. And um and so I I I there's one chart in there that I don't know if you noticed. I tried to emphasize it. It's a chart showing the inflation adjusted S&P and with bunch of red arrows going across. And what you do is you take the 1906 high. Actually, it goes all the way back to some 1880 something high. But um and you draw an arrow across. So you don't ask the question from the high, how long did it take to recover, but rather from the high, how long did it take for it to get to that same price for the last time, not the first time. And those arrows, there's five of them in the 20th century that go from a high basically we're tracking from a secular high to a secular low is what we're actually doing. And you say, "Well, that's not fair." And I go, "But that's what happens. That does happen." um there's five times and that they take 40 to 75 years. And so if you were if you own expensive stocks, you're in trouble. If you own secular peaks, you're you're toast. You're in big trouble. So the 1929 high, we didn't get we got back. We recovered in about 20 years, but it turns out on an inflation adjusted basis n early 1980s we were at exactly the same price inflation adjusted and that pe there's most people who can't comprehend that and I see podcast um I see podcast I had a p podcast and I he he booted up that chart and I think we are going to go back and test the 2000 high sometime in the next 20 years and 20 to 40 years. Um and and how we get there I there's no way to know but but I think we're going to do it. And and I people just laugh. They they just think that's silly. But actually I think if you look at the chart it's it's it's you sit there and you go, "Holy [ __ ] I never noticed that." It's it's a almost an undeniable pattern where secular high to final secular low treading water and it you know I also see things where people talk about how if you miss the 10 best days in the market um you lost a lot of money right but if you miss the 10 the 13 best days on the NASDAQ it turns out at one point in time at least those 13 so if you subtract them I go well yeah if they're 3% a piece and you times 10. What kind of stupid stupid metric is that? If you miss the 10 worst days, it helps your portfolio. Um, turns out the 13 worst the 13 best days in the NASDAQ were all during the com bust. The 13 best days in the NASDAQ were all during the com bust. So, so you got to be careful from idiots on Wall Street who try to sell you [ __ ] like that. It's just a load of crap. So, by missing the 13 best days in the NASDAQ, you would have saved yourself an 83% decline. So I it's just so I think we're at a massive high at a unprecedented high. I think we're at an all-time high and I also think it's pervasive. I don't think it's just an equity market. I think it's real estate, probably fine art, you name it. And so I think it the everything bubble. It means it's like a stage four cancer and you got lumps all over your body and you're in trouble. >> So what do you think needs to happen for a correction to to be called uh in in your terms for things to correct? You said if it dropped 50% and then came back, that wouldn't be a true correction in your view. What What do you think needs to happen? >> You got a correct price and you got a correct attitude. When it bounces back, you don't correct attitude. You reinforce bad attitude. You reinforce the idea that you should just hang on no matter what because you'll be fine. So, I call it the complacency bubble because because I think there's a ton of people who know the markets are wacky, right? Nvidia, right?$5 trillion, bigger than the Nikkay, bigger than, you know, I it's just ridiculous. um they know it's wacky, but they somehow think that somehow the Fed will save them. Somehow the central banks will save them and they'll say, "Well, they'll inflate the problem away." And I go, "Well, there's a whole bunch of arguments against that, but let's start with the you you'll suffer badly in that kind of an inflationary environment." So that you want you want to suffer. Look at the 67 to 81 bare market. That was pain and suffering of a higher order. The market treaded water. nominally lost 75 80% on an inflation adjusted basis. And the worst part of it is it took 14 years. You know, the the 1929 to 33 peak to trough was like a a a clean flesh wound. It it went right through, right? And and then we sort of climbed out of there and we had some trouble in 38 stuff like that. But um you do not you you do not want like the Nikkay spent 3540 years underwater right from the 89 high inflation adjusted probably still underwater at at a NK of 50,000. Um you don't want to spend 40 or 50 years getting nowhere. You can't afford to do that. And I think that's what we're going to do. And and so every goddamn podcast I do says, you know, column calls a crash. Column never calls a crash. I I never call a crash. I think we're going to rot ourselves to death on this one. We're going to have it's going to get knocked down 20% and buyers, let's say we start a bad period. It'll get knocked down. The buyers will then jump back in and it'll recover a lot and then they'll get knocked on their ass again. And that'll just keep happening over and over and over and then there'll be a new high potentially but then they'll get knocked on their ass again and you'll look up 30 40. So I I did the math. So let's say we're 200% over historical valuation. Not all the valuation metrics say that but the case shiller PE for example does and I think Jesse Felder's composite P uh composite valuation metric does. You can inflate your way out because it's the again the numerator and denominator are both inflation sensitive. So if you're sitting at a case hill or PE of 42, which is where we're at, and the historical average is 15, if you cause inflation, the numerator and denominator are just going to track each other, and it doesn't solve the valuation problem. You actually have to hurt the price relative to inflation. And so um and so um you say, well, what if we grow our way out? Well, if we grow our way out at at, you know, 2.5% GDP per year, how long would it take us to grow our way out? If we don't move a buck on the index, but we just grow our GDP and end up at a Buffett historical average valuation, it'll take 45 years. 45 years. That's 1.025 025 to the 45th power gets you to a 200% g gets you to the 200% gain that you need to grow out of it. The sponsor of today's episode is Arc Silver Gold Osmium. Owner Ian Everard is praised even by his competitors as one of the most honest and level-headed bullion dealers in the United States. They have some great prices. You can see some of them displayed right now on screen. can take advantage of these specials today by reaching out to Ian at 3072649441 or by email at ianarchsggo.com. Make sure to tell them, of course, that commodity culture sent you. And now back to the interview. Well, in your year review, you also noted the work of Michael Green in regards to the impact of passive investing. You wrote, "The idea is so simple. Hand every month's allocation savings to your Vanguard's S&P index fund or any one of a bazillion clones and then forget about it. It has worked brilliantly since it first began in the mid 1990s. I think passive investing has been so successful that most people are now trained to think investing in an index fund is basically a highinterest savings account that presents no risk. um you know the whole random walk down Wall Street theory that don't bother trying to you know find things that are undervalued and don't bother trying to pick individual securities just throw everything into an index fund because fundamental analysis doesn't work technical analysis doesn't work and this is kind of the only way to go. Um however this has presented perhaps a massive danger. How does this massive influx of capital into these market cap weighted indices affect valuations and does it extend this bubble farther than would normally be possible? Whether it's causal or not, I don't know, but there was a law passed in 1994. You may recognize that was the date that I said I left the channel that somehow allowed passive investing funds to do some stuff that made them more efficient so they became more attractive. And Green says it was in 1994 that that law was passed. So Green and I have exactly the same date coming at it from totally unrelated positions. And and um and so what happens is it it is not imaginable to me that you can keep just growing the market valuations in perpetuity because at that point now you're just trading NFTTS or Pokemon chips. If if if if we we have a huge problem if our equity markets cease to reflect the idea that they represent a a cash flow from functional wealth creating businesses. If if that's gone, then free market's gone, the economyy's gone. Uh, and so, so, uh, and I I I tell people, "Show me a show me a a a an asset that got way overvalued that didn't ultimately find its way back to cheap." It always does. There's no example of that in history. And so I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know what by by what path, but if we're 200% over historical average valuation, and if it gets back to cheap, call it 50% below historical, you are you we're going to destroy lives, we will destroy the boomers. And I believe that is the boomers ceasing to put money in and starting to take it out that'll be that'll contribute to reversing the path of flow. Um, I talked to a very famous guy who knows Mike Green very well and he doesn't think in the foreseeable future that passive flow will reverse. So Mike Mike is more agnostic. Mike seems frustrated. He seems like he he maybe can see evidence that it's sputtering a little bit. Sort of like your car sputtering and you go, "Wait a minute. What's going on? Something's not working here." Um, a deep recession could slow the flows. could have reversed them. I don't know. Flows are coming from overseas. Geop politics, you know, it's not like they aren't getting more volatile. Um, a a serious beginning of a correction could cause people to start hitting the sell button. And since it's a single button, boom, one one click sells the whole market, right? You've got an index fund, you've got Jack Bogle's fund, one click sells the whole market, everything's going to sell. They have no cash buffer. There's no market makers. And so if I put in a $100,000 sell order to the market, they have to sell $100,000 worth of equities. And then the question is, who is going to be the buyer? It is so far to date for many, many, many years been the passive flow was the buyer. If the passive flow reverses, who's the buyer? There's no short sellers left on the planet because they've been destroyed. So short sellers often are buying the buying buying the dips because they shorted now they got a cover. So they often buy the dips, they sell the tops, they round out the sharp sharp peaks and troughs. They're gone. They're they're name a name a guy who's a pure short seller. I don't think you can. You know the Jim Chainoses of the world, Bill Fleenstein, they've all said, "No, this game I'm not playing it anymore." Um, so as as it's currently as the market's currently priced, it's price return about 2.5%. When it has a PE of 15 is price return about, I don't know, 7%. So are the boomers ready to to get 2.5% um off of their off of their investment. And and and you know, if you tread water, you say, "Well, at least I get dividends." Well, the S&P's dividends are 1.1%. So, as I said, my copy editor actually didn't get the joke. I said, "There's no F in in dividends." And he said, "I I don't I don't understand that sentence." I go, "Say it fast. There's no F in dividends." You know, and uh and uh and so you you're you're not and and by the way, the the dividends are 1.1% versus the historical average of 4.4 before and versus the high from years ago of 6 point something. That is a valuation metric. It means you're getting no cash flow off of your investments. It's like buying a Toyota. It could be a perfectly good car, but if you pay 150,000 for it, resale is going to suck. I don't know when I it's to me it's and you know my I look at podcast comments. I I I think I've got to the point I can now spot the bots. I I think I'm getting better at spotting. I see the same comment in every one. I go, there's some computer just got one comment. Um, but the complacency is just extraordinary. It's just extraordinary where the people just say, "Well, this guy's been calling for a crash for 10 years or whatever." And I go, "Yeah, at some level they're correct." But also I make a case this year as you may have noticed that in 2015 the legends of Wall Street, not just the data, not just the the charts and the valuations. The legends of Wall Street said, "We have now recreated a gigantic bubble again. It is catastrophic. What the hell are we doing here?" And I'm not talking smart hedge ventures. I'm talking the famous guy saying, "We are now staring back into the abyss. How did this happen so quickly?" And then you go, where did it go from there? Straight up. So either they were all wrong or we are all [ __ ] up. You know, we're just we're just in worse shape than we were before. And the returns are extraordinary off of that 2015 valuation. And so I it's I I if regression of the mean is a force of nature. It's a truism. and and I just don't know when and I it's got to be tied to the boomers aging, right? It's got to be tied to there's things and so I made a list of what about 10 risks I think that could cause the flows to to to reverse sign. And Green says once once the flows reverse sign, you will have these air pockets that will not be met with buyers. They just won't be there. and and and once people say, you know, and you own a stock like Philip Morris, it's a P of 10 and a dividend of some number of percent, you know, like six%. Which which I own, and if you put a gun to my head said buy something, I', you know, Philip Morris, Rio Tinto, I'd probably buy those, right? Um, but but when the the PE in the market in ' 81 was six, half of the stocks in the market were below six. So, if you own something with a P of 12 and you think you're safe, well, if you get a dividend, you might get it. Although, they might stop it, too. That's a that's a that's an arbitrarily chosen thing to do by the company. Um, but but if it goes from a P of 12 to six, you just lost half your money. And by the way, that means you lost half of your income for the rest of retirement. No one is thinking in these terms. So, you can hear my frustration. >> Yeah. And like I said, I think a lot of is this just the normalization of throwing money into an index fund. A lot of retirees, they look at it as a savings account, like it's a like it's a bond or something >> and that we've been saved over and over and over. Now, here's the thing drives me bananas. So, everyone on the planet can all agree that the Fed kept rates too low for too long. To that I add too many times. And now what are they saying? The Fed has to drop rates. I go, "Didn't you just say they kept it too low too long? Too many times?" And yet your solution is to drop rates. You're a [ __ ] You're a complete idiot. >> Yeah. Yeah. I concur with that. >> And and and and and right. And then and then they, well, housing's too expensive. Young guys can't buy it. I said, so let's see if we got let's see if I got this right. We've got a choice. You can either drop rates to some basement level, which allows the boomers to sell you their in a 50-year mortgage allows the boomers to sell you their house. without any capital loss or erosion. So they can get out of their highly appreciated asset handing it to you as a youngster such at some point in the future when rates go up, you get obliterated because now your house is not worth that. or we let the price of houses drop so that you get to buy it at a credible price and the boomers have to suck up the the loss and and capital gains of their house. Which should we choose? >> Well, apparently now what what >> I know what the boomers are. >> Yeah. What what is the latest scheme that Trump has cooked up? He's forcing the government to buy mortgagebacked bonds. Isn't that the latest thing that's claiming that that's going to somehow reduce the mortgage rate? I have a book re recommendation. It's something like what happened to capitalism. That's not may not be quite right, but it's it's by a guy named Rousir Sharma and and it's it's it's not a screed. It's not a Marxist screed. It's not he he's not a libertarian. He's not saying just, you know, leave us alone and let us do whatever we want. It's none of that. He is the way I describe is two things. He says, "We flood the system with a ton of money and then we try to use regulations to control the consequences and it doesn't work." He said, "We we we have the way I phrase it is we have um bad interventions with good intentions." And so we intervene in some way thinking we're fixing it, but but they're not going to fix it. It's just going to make it more broken. and he shows and he goes through all these arguments and it's really well done and I I'm told he's and I've told this to several people like Steve Hanky in a podcast and he said, "Oh yeah, I read his stuff all the time." So he is a highly respected guy. But he talks about this idea, this non-stop interventions that are really a consequence of they're flooding the system with money and they need to keep intervening. And then you say, "Well, what if you don't flood the system with money?" Well, now we've got a bankruptcy problem. Right. We've got too big too big a deficit. And you know, inflation is not monetary in my opinion. I know Milton's rolling in his grave. Inflation is government spending. Government spending causes the monetary problem. So, I think you can trace I think you can trace inflation to government spending. >> Well, I'd love to get your take on both gold and silver here as both metals recently hit new all-time highs. Silver in particular has been going on a rampage. Um, in addition to displaying some very volatile price action, but recently hitting new all-time highs, we are above $80, I believe, as of the time of this recording. Do you feel like we're getting overbought here when it comes to silver in particular? And just your thoughts on on both the precious metals and perhaps you could throw something in about platinum because that's also done tremendously well. I know that's something we discussed in the past and you made a good call on that. >> Yeah. Um, it does feel frothy. And so I think you have to make one of two arguments. Either that we're due for a breather. That's there's a euphemism people like or digesting the gains or getting our ass kicked. I don't know which. Um, so it's possible that that silver and there's narratives, right? There's claims it's, you know, there's a silver shortage. Um, smart guys make the claims. I I'm not qualified. I can't figure out if their claims are right. Um, and and you know, they talk about breaking the comx and all this and that silver could go to 200 and and and and this is both the frothiness or or finally something has changed and that the that the the rigging of the paper markets which is real. Um, it's not to say that they're rigging it to make you go any one direction or another, but they're rigging it so that they make money, right? So, they they've turned our retirements into their casino. It it's always that way, but it seems to be more egregious than it used to be. And and you know, they're they're screwing around with people's lives. some some guys in cubicles, they just they're just having a ball making money and, you know, getting hookers and blow during their time off and and um and and but it's our retirements that they're messing with. It's our lives they're messing with. So, I'm not very sensitive to if they get their asses kicked royally. I' I'd love to see those guys out on the street. Love to see private equity out on the street absolutely destroyed. Um and and so either there's something big happening or it's frothy and I don't know which it is. >> And talk to us about platinum and your thoughts on that. >> Platinum is a different story. So the platinum story is interesting and I again I mentioned Hanky. Hank is a currency guy and he he's very outside the box and he one time sent me an Excel spreadsheet with all his investments. Holy moly, you have never seen such weird investments. Uh all these currency swaps and everything. It it was really a weird portfolio. And um and he says, "Tell me more about platinum." So I talked a little and then I sent him my write up and then I did another podcast with him about two weeks later and I said, "Well, what about platinum?" He said, "Oh, you were dead, right?" So the platinum story is as follows. You know, platinum's using catalytic converters. there's actually increased um jewelry demand because gold got so expensive that that apparently the Chinese are saying well you know that wedding ring we can make that out of platinum instead of gold um but the catalytic converter of internal combustion engines which you could say are are dodo birds going out the door I don't think so as long as as long as Doomberg's right and there's tons and tons of fossil fuel we're gonna have internal combustion engines um you know things uh China, they're gagging on their fumes and so they have reason to have more efficient catalytic inverters and scrubbers and things like that. Critically, um while electric vehicles don't use a lot of platinum, hybrids use more platinum than internal combustion engines. So, so and I think the hybrid is the optimum technology. I think to have both fuels at one time makes total sense to me. Um I could be wrong on that. Now, here's the real story. According to multiple sources that I've tried to cross-ch checkck and shoot down, and I've tried to use AI to find alternative answers, the current deficit production of platinum, which comes 70% from South Africa, uh 15% from Russia, there's a there's a North Dakota mine or two, something like that. But um South Africa is the biggie. Uh which is at risk of being a failed state, right? I mean, South Africa could really and and you go, what does that mean? Well, when when Marxists grab the machinery of production, what they usually discover is they don't know how to produce anything. And so, Venezuelan oil, great example, right? 4 million barrels a day. Now, they're making 1 million barrels a day because they've got their heads up their asses. Um, so we're in deficit production now. And it and if you look at the above ground available platinum supply and the deficit production platinum we've got about two and a half years of platinum left. Now the message there is it's a phenomenal supply demand problem. Phenomenal supply demand problem. And it's not like you're all of a sudden going to increase the production fast because that's not how mining works, right? Mining is a very sluggish thing. You don't know to say, you know, that big open pit mine, let's let's crank three times as much [ __ ] out of that mine, right? Or let's open new mines. No, you don't do that either. So So if that's true, then you say, well, you know, maybe they won't use platinum. I go, well, uh, you're going to sell Ford F-150s no matter how much that catalytic converter costs, right? you're going to be price insensitive, not because um and not not because you don't care, but because it's too small a percentage of the car to stop production because of it. So, it could cost five times as much platinum, they'll pay it. They'll just tack it out and the Ford F-150 will now cost $90,000 instead of $80,000, whatever it is. Um, and so I think there's tremendous reason that the fundamental story of platinum is right. And so you're not chasing price like gold potentially like silver. I don't know. The silver shortage argument. I I just I don't know how to get my brains around it because silver kind of permeates the earth. You don't find jars of platinum in people's dressers and stuff, right? But um silver silver silver you could imagine silver coming out of the woodwork if if as the price goes up platinum won't come out of the woodwork. There's no woodwork with platinum in it, right? You don't you don't have a jar of platinum coins that you collected when you were a kid or anything. Um so the the platinum story I really like because it's a fundamental story, not a price story. Well, let's get into the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro as we switch more towards geopolitics. Would love to get your overall thoughts. Do you think Greenland and maybe Canada could be next? And midterm elections coming up. I believe that's November of this year. If the Democrats win the majority, are they just going to reverse everything Trump is doing and move to impeach him and all of this will be for not? How do you see this all moving forward? >> Boy, I'm I'm outside my skill set. Um, I've done enough podcast lately where fortunately there's been another guest who knows I can kind of fake it. I can Milly vanilia it a little bit to me. Maduro Maduro I I almost get the feeling Maduro agreed to be arrested. Let's start with that because because he looked at uh the the life expectancy of former dictators is not high. And so I think Maduro might have said, "Holy [ __ ] the writing's on the wall. come and save me, right? And we might have even cut a deal where say, "Look, we're gonna throw you in jail for a little while, but then we'll set you up on some Caribbean island, and you can, you know, just keep your mouth shut." Um, according to Hanky, they left the regime intact and and he says, "New boss worse than the old boss." So he thinks they've they've they've lost ground by taking out Maduro and and and uh he was the advisor to several Venezuelan presidents. So he he does know this world. Um um I just got off a two-hour podcast with Michael Yan and everything for Michael's military and he thinks this is all just, you know, this just a big Game of Thrones chess match where everything's about resources and access to trade routes and all sorts of things like that. Um if if if the bad case scenarios are a if we somehow get dragged into a boots on the ground war or a protracted battle that costs us a fortune. If we can do a hit and run then then it will it will not be a terrible failure. But I also suspect, and this is just from watching just news events over my lifetime, that it I don't think it would shock anyone if Venezuela fell into a state of total chaos. Now, did we know that when we took out Maduro and said, "Yeah, yeah, it'll turn into chaos, but then we'll go clean up the mess and get the oil and whatever." I was shocked by people's opinion as to why it was a good idea. I I I don't have a problem with it being a good idea because I don't understand why we're doing it. I It could be Monroe Doctrine, right? Could be could be we're accepting the idea of a multipolar world and say, "Okay, okay, multipolar world. We got Russia and China and and US and some bricky [ __ ] stuff like that." And Trump could be saying, "South America is ours. Western Hemisphere is ours. Get out of here." and and that that's not irrational, I don't think. Um, as long as as long as it too many people don't pay with their lives and starving to death and stuff like that. Although history shows we empires do that all the time, right? It's not like the Romans didn't kill a few on route to becoming an empire. Um, and um, but I also could imagine it just going catastrophic like so many of our military endeavors do and then and then I I don't know what to make of it. I I don't think it's about just the oil. I don't think it's just the oil, especially if Doomberg's right. We have a ton of oil. We don't need to. And you know when we attacked Iraq, I remember there was an article and they quoted a German um a German oil analyst who said, "I don't understand the Americans. We just buy the oil, right?" And and you know, it tells you that it couldn't have been about the oil, right? I mean, and now could be that Exon Mobile wants to sell you the oil and and they don't like the idea that Saddam is selling you the oil. I am unsympathetic to that. I don't I don't I don't like that model at all. I don't I don't think we should be killing people so that the Dole brothers can grow pineapples in Hawaii. That was the first overthrow, by the way. That was the US's first overthrow was Hawaii. They took the queen of Hawaii out. There's a good book called Overthrow by Steven Kinszer, I think, but it's called Overthrow. And it's about 13 explicit US sanctioned sponsored overthrows. They're very careful to say, "Look, our fingerprints are all over a lot of stuff. These are 13 that are unamiguously we just over like Mosedc and Iran and places like that." Um, there's a lot of people I know who are from South America who really hate what we've done to South America over the decades. So, um, this could be more of the same. I'm just babbling now. So, is Greenland next at this point? Um, because Trump has indicated that that could be a possibility and even Canada, which he's been talking about as well. Are are these things on the table in your view? >> Um, I think Greenland's probably on the table. I I think it's been discussed in previous presidencies and I think there's a certain amount of logic to us just bringing it into our orbit and saying, "Okay, no one's doing anything with it. It's just a big rock covered with ice." I don't know if there's a reason why we really want it. Uh whether it's a mineral thing or whether it's just a why not. Um maybe a national defense thing. Maybe want to put military bases there. But we could probably agree find some way to do that anyways because we put air b military bases anywhere we want in the world. Anyways, um Canada is a more interesting question. I think Canada requires the Canadian sign off. I don't think we're going to invade Canada. Um, but there's some pretty seriously unhappy provinces up in Canada. Um, one of them, I can't even remember which one's which now, but one of them's kind of in the middle. So that if if they seceded from Canada, Canada would all of a sudden be a two separate separate countries kind of like, you know, I never have understood east and west Berlin embedded in the Soviet block. I I never understood the West Berlin. I never understood the importance of why West Berlin was so meaningful to us because it seemed like such a royal pain in the ass. Go ahead, you guys. You guys in the Soviets take West Berlin. Maybe it was militarily strategic. Um, so Canada's a maybe. I've speak I've spoken with a Canadian guy who knows this thing, goes to a lot of important meetings and he thinks Canada's days are numbered as a as a in its current form. >> I would tend to agree with that. Yeah, I'm actually giving a presentation about that at the VRIC coming up uh at the end of the month. But >> so what's the cause? What's the problem? Is it are people just pissed off or what? Well, I think it it involves a number of factors and these similar factors are plaguing a lot of these legacy brand western countries such as the UK as well. We're seeing a rising cost of living. Wages are not keeping pace. That's one of the main issues. Prices for homes and rent are skyrocketing. Um, now the reasons behind it are because the bureaucracy has become so incredibly bloated in in my opinion when it comes to the Canadian government. And if we go even deeper than that, there's a bunch of different theories on on why the west is falling apart and and a lot of them really fascinating. But there's a guy named Jangsu Shin. He does this uh channel called Predictive History. He's a school teacher in Beijing. And uh he's got a really interesting series called Hidden Secrets of Power. I recommend people check it out. He believes that bureaucracies in western governments have been taken over by secret societies who want to invert good and evil and and that those are the people who are pulling the levers of power. >> So would this be the the whole satanic cult crap and stuff like that? Well, maybe the Frankists, the the the Frankists are a religious organization that believe to actually become one with God, you have to sin and you have to actually destroy reality. They they have some sort of twisted religious ideology behind them. But when it comes to Canada in particular, you look at things like maid, how they're assisting people in dying and the requirements are getting lower and lower. Recently in Calgary, there was an instance where a woman um the court agreed she's allowed to die. Now, she's been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, but beyond that, there's no issue. Like, it's not like she's in pain and and suffering. And her father was trying to stop the courts and the courts ruled no. I think she was 27 years old. I mean, I was not very smart at 27 years old uh to be able to make that sort of decision. And um they're saying now at the moment in Canada mental ill like if you have mental problems, if you're depressed, that's not allowed yet. I believe they're pushing for that to be allowed in 2027 or something. >> Not yet, I believe. But in this case, they're saying she has autism. That counts as a disability, so she's allowed to die. And so far, over 70,000 people have been killed by maid. This to me feels like human sacrifice in in some form or another. I mean there's a bunch of other >> or at least some sort of human decay, right? Some sort of societal decay, you know, end of >> end of civilization type thing. The problem is the the conf I mean I think right to die under the extreme conditions is is totally rational. >> Yes. >> You know, if you're in excruciating pain and stuff like that, but you know, um a 27year-old can be in excruciating emotional pain and not give a [ __ ] a year later. >> Exactly. Exactly. And so, um, so I think we're at great risk. Um, I think the abortion battles, I'm a pro-choice guy, but but not too many years ago at least, the left were pushing abortions to end of third trimester, you know, at the contraction phase of birth abortions. And I go, if if you push it that far, you give me a binary choice of no abortions or that, I'll I'll I'll switch to the no abortion team very quickly. And so I I think the the activists were trying to get sort of the ultimate win, the ultimate women's choice, freedom of choice story. And and it's just stupid. It's just it's just it's dumb. >> Yeah. I I also believe the the whole gender identity thing could perhaps have a twisted religious belief behind it. Um the change again that whole inverting turning virtue into evil and evil into virtue. Um so changing genders in children in Canada now in many places the school like the teachers are allowed to discuss gender with the students and they're allowed to keep it secret from the parents that their boy has decided. >> I thought that stuff was going to go away. >> Yeah, it it hasn't in Canada. I tell you, I'd have a chat with that teacher that would be off the record that would say, "If you continue doing this, your house is going to burn down." >> Yeah. And that is one of the main reasons I live in Serbia. I do not have kids yet, but I do plan on it. In Serbia, there's no debate. There's no discussion. >> Poland doesn't have the debate. Hungary doesn't have the debate. Right. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Since when is the Eastern Block the voice of reason in the world? Right. That's the >> Yeah, >> that's a sort of a funny situation. So, you know, I've been reading my year in reviews from 16 years forward, and I'm almost done proofing them all because they're all getting bound by Bob Morardi for reasons that I didn't know at the time, but I'm now realizing that I benefited enormously. So, it's like 3,500 pages. I don't know. I'm going to have to add it up one of these days and find out how many pages it was. Um, and you can see trends and patterns and oddities by looking at what happened year after year after year. You can see it economically. You can see it in social structure. Um, I really thought that we had dealt with the super wokey [ __ ] I thought that we were not going to be hearing about guys and women's sports, which which I'll fight to the death on too. You know, you want to call me a misogynist pig have a ball. I've been called worse this year. Um, I if if you don't want to support women's sports by by protecting young women from being invaded by dudes, you're [ __ ] up. Not me, right? You can call me anything you want, but but you need to pull your head out of your ass or get a psychiatrist or something. Um, and I, you know, if someone wants to call me out and give me golf, I'll go, "Yeah, let's have it out. Let's take let's take the gloves off right now. Let's do it. Let's have the fight." And uh, so there's some real stupid stuff. I was stunned reading a from not too many years back some of the complete absurdities that society had signed off on like some some woman got fired because of something her father tweeted five years earlier you know just insane things like that I go you know take the gloves off me said something like there comes a time when men need to you know take their gloves off and break out the knives and start throats >> yes well this is one of the other issues with Canada is that the people are so complant ent. They either agree with everything that's being done or they're meek and just they want to get along with everybody. The Canadian niceness is not actually being nice. It's just a desire to not be singled out and to not have to take action. And this is pervasive throughout society. But I want to end now on digital censorship, control of the narrative online, something political elites seem very focused on for 2026. The UK, Germany, and Australia seem to really be leading the way when it comes to arresting people for tweeting things the government doesn't like. All under the guise of anti-hate speech. But this is another issue in Canada. Now they are attempting to pass legislation that could see the Gestapo at your door for indicating you don't like diversity. The EU, of course, has become an absolute cesspool of anti-free speech activism on the part of these political elites. Now, the internet and social media obviously has its issues, but it's one of the few places where everybody can kind of voice their opinion. Do you think the elites see this as a major threat to their power? And will there come a day when conversations like we're having right now will be censored for being fringe or or against the norm. >> I think it's possible the day the internet went live, we were going we charted a path to authoritarianism. I think it's possible that it was not avoidable. It was one of those if you follow the bouncing ball and say, "Okay, where does this eventually take us?" I'm not convinced that because the internet is so powerful that whoever has control of it will have the power and they will use it against us. So um so so so I I don't think there's any reason to believe that people in position of great authority will become good guys and and all of a sudden because the the the um the addiction to power seems to have history's been pretty clear on that point. Um one stazzy exazzy guy said he said if you think the government's going to collect information on you and not use it against you you're out of your mind. And so, uh, it is possible that that that, um, that I timed my existence pretty perfectly and that I won't have to be around for the real bad parts. I don't know. They could come faster than that. But, um, I I think Twitter was kind of saved by Elon. Not that it's perfectly saved, but it's way better saved than it was, right? I mean, when you got booted off Twitter for for being antiax or or saying the election was rigged or whatever, you can still run into guff, though. I I I think there's still algorithms that are controlling the flow of your information pretty seriously. And they're certainly controlling information you get. I I want I'm going to do an experiment with my brother at some point. We're going to we're going to do some searches and look at how they differ. We're gonna we're going to parallel search identical topics from our two computers like on Twitter, you know, just search some topic and and and then see what the top 10 tweets are and see if we're being fed different information. Um I'm a big opponent of fact checkers. I I think the fact checkers are all propaganda. They're all propaganda. I think they have the luxury of telling the truth sometimes because the truth actually works in their best interest. But, you know, if you search anything dicey like, you know, that did the Clintons traffic children, you will get just fact checked after fact check after fact check that said they didn't when in fact um above the fold news story said they did. and and a very famous Army Intel guy um named Tony Schaffer told me personally I asked him that question. He said, "Oh yeah, the Clinton Foundation traffic children like crazy." And and the fact that the president of the United States and the president wannabe are trafficking children is already not a good sign. And the fact that I I don't think there's any doubt that Bill broke some laws in his sexual exploits, right? I mean, if you had to bet your life, you know how you'd bet. And um and uh the fact that he hasn't in any way paid for this, right? And you know, Pete did he did all sorts of bad stuff. He got he got convicted of prostitution, you know. So, so there there's no, as I said to Tucker, um there are no rules above some socioeconomic cut. There are no rules. There's, you know, James Comey will never go to prison even though I think he was treasonous. Um, and it might be thousands of people who are treasonous and were in a position to do something in there for you. You round them up. Now, this is now starting to sound like kind of a brown shirt moment in Germany, too, right? You know, when when do you cross the dotted line and you become the historical bad guy? I don't know. Um, but I do know that um I just I wrote about January 6th back when it happened and I just proofed it the other day and I I was stunned at how bad it was. I I'd forgotten how thoroughly I had written about it and I've been shocking myself with my former writing. Um, and you hear about some guy who's being tortured in in prison, a January 6er, right? No one should be tortured in prison. um let alone the J6ers who were just protesters in my opinion. It got out of control, but that's what protests do, right? Big big crowds do do occasionally get unruly, right? It happens and doesn't hurt when you got 274 FBI guys stirring up the pot. Let's wrap this up with a bit of a bow here and kind of just quickly get back to the to the digital censorship topic because I' I'd love to get your thoughts on where you think that's going, particularly as we're seeing, you know, a guy in the EU's being sanctioned for, you know, >> Great Britain in terrible shape. Great Britain's in terrible shape. >> But Great Britain's in terrible shape. I mean, Ursula Vanderlin and other EU elites are out there talking about how there's freedom of speech, but there's not. you know, anything with a butt after it's a big problem. And uh like I said, in Canada, they're looking to pass new legislation. Australia, after Bondi Beach, the prime minister comes out and says, you know, we cannot have this anti-semitism raging, so we now need to >> That's a different story. That's a different story. >> Here here's the the question that I have, and that is why these people obviously have no respect for what their system is founded on. Why would they why would they so to you know when you open the southern border in the United States when you take away people's civil liberties do do you have no understanding of of of the foundations of our system? I mean we had a great country at one point and and if if you throw it away you're going to really you're going to really regret it. So um wh why why why do they not have some sort of dotted line they say no I won't go below that. I I'll be self- serving. I'll be narcissistic. I'll do that. But I won't I won't throw the entire United States or my entire country, you know, Great Britain, Australia. There's a whole bunch of them that are suffering. And I I don't I don't understand why they don't have some sort of guard rail that says, "Okay, be it steal, cheat, do whatever, but don't do that." Right? It's like if you read Stephen Pinker's book about medieval, you know, about violence in the past. Um he says he says when you read about some of the things they used to do to to to kill people, right? So So in the old days, you didn't incarcerate them. That was too expensive. So he just whacked him. And he he when I was reading the book, you had to take breaks because some of the ways they thought of whacking people were so bad were just so ugly and you had to say I can't read any more of this [ __ ] But and then speaker said I could be standing in front of Adolf Hitler and not think of doing that. Right? And and so um so why do why do these leaders not see the problem that they are sending us into this Orwellian future? And what would what would they say if you confronted them with that? Well, what's their what do you think their explanation would be? If I could Vanderline in these guys or the the Brits who are really performing terribly, what do you think they would say? Well, I think their true motivations could be religious as I alluded to earlier and so obviously they would not give you a >> King Charles King Charles and his pedophilia and stuff like that. >> Well, that that that I don't really I'm not really too aware of King Charles's history, but um that that is an interesting point though because the you know Charles was involved with Jimmy Seville, right? That was like his best friend, >> right? So what's up with that connection? >> As was everybody. >> Yeah. >> Well, there is a theory that that everyone knew but they weren't necessarily participating. So I've seen arguments made that Jimmy Seville was a perf, but he was only a perf himself. He wasn't a trafficker to the elites. But I think those arguments are specious. I think those arguments I think the royal family is incomprehensibly screwed up. >> Yeah. >> I think the Rothschild family is incomprehensibly screwed up. I think I think I think there's if if you start reading about that stuff, it it's it's mind-boggling the stuff you can read and you don't know if it's true, but there's these seemingly self-consistent stories of just wretched wretched cultural evolution within these royal bloodlines. >> Yes. And >> and things that they do to to children and stuff like that. >> Yes. And I I think so I think all these people are are psychopaths. So they have psychopathy. Um so they enjoy inflicting harm and suffering on others. And I think there is a way to ensure that a child grows up a certain way and also gets that mindset by abusing them. And I I think a lot of abuse goes on within those families. >> I mean there are claims by abused victims that they're like eighth generational satanic. They come from eighth generational satanic family. They traffic their own kids into the satanic networks. They they you know they're just horrible horrible and the stuff they do. This is not just dancing around and acting like idiots, right? Horrifying things. Um I would love to know what's on that frazzled drip laptop of of of Anthony Weiner. Um and and I guess I would love to. It's it's quite possible I would not. It's quite possible that it would just haunt me for the rest of my life knowing that that shit's happening. Um, and and I I do believe according to one podcaster who's a very smart guy. He says Satanism is actually the fastest growing religion right now. And you know, historically it's been there. So would it have gone away? There's no evidence that it would necessarily have gone away. So, I I I got to stop reading that stuff. It's actually ripping my soul out through my nostrils like an Egyptian mummy. Um, >> well, I think that when we look at a lot of the actions of the elites that seem confusing or that seem like how could they possibly do this, a lot of it's attributed to ignorance or just these people are stupid, they're on a power trip. But if they do have a hidden motivation behind the scenes that is some twisted religious belief and that religious belief revolves around the inversion of good and evil then a lot of their actions actually make sense. That's my thought. We've had a a large span farreaching conversation today Dave. It it has been awesome. Um why don't you tell us where the best place is for people to go to follow you? As I mentioned at the top of the show you dropped your year-end review for 2025 recently. So, I'm going to put a link to that in the description. Is X the other place people should be going to follow you? >> Yeah, Twitter um under David B. Column. Um the other um if you want, you just search YouTube under my name and you can binge my my annual review. I actually for archival reasons list all the podcasts I've done that year and it's around I don't know 85 90 podcasts this last year. Um, this this year's year in review is a little screwy. I mean, it's it's unusual. It's different than all the others because I uh I sort of got disenchanted and disoriented and and could not figure out how to make separate fact from fiction and sort of a really sort of crisis level confusion. And and then again, I got into it with the Zionists, which was very unpleasant. and um and that's sort of calmed down not only in the world but in my head. So I've I've come to terms with the fact that Mark Leven can can hate me and I don't care. The one thing I do worry about on that is is I don't want my colleagues to have to suffer. I don't want Cornell to have to suffer. So I I don't like the bad press it brings to other people. I could live with it. Um and Mark Mark Leven can eat [ __ ] and die for all I care. Awesome. Well, I'm going to on that note, I'm going to put links to your ex account as well as the year and review in the description. Uh, thank you so much, Dave. It's always a blast when I have you on the show. >> No problem. Thank you. >> Thank you for joining us today. This episode is brought to you by Ark, Silver, Gold, Osmium. They have some great specials on silver bullion products right now. They are on your screen. These are subject to change and while supplies last. So reach out to owner Ian Everard today at 3072649441 or by email at ianarchsggo.com and make sure to tell him that commodity culture sent you and pick up your stacks silver not fiat t-shirt available exclusively in the commodity culture shop using the link in the description below and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up to date with the latest episodes.