Markets, Manipulation, and Silver-Stacking | Mark Thornton
Summary
Market Outlook: The guest describes an historic, sharp correction in gold and silver, noting cascading stop-loss triggers and a dollar rebound after Fed leadership news as key drivers.
Precious Metals Thesis: Strong, multi-century case for gold and silver as monetary metals with stable purchasing power versus fiat currency inflation and policy risk.
Silver Stacking Strategy: Advocates a disciplined, dollar-cost-averaging approach to silver stacking, budgeting for regular purchases, and treating metals as personal property and long-term savings.
Market Structure & Manipulation: Highlights suspected futures market shenanigans, HFT circumvention of circuit breakers, and growing scrutiny that could diminish London/US dominance as China markets rise.
Industrial Demand: Emphasizes robust silver demand in electronics, AI, and renewable energy (e.g., solar), while gold is constrained in industry by higher cost.
Supply Chain Evolution: Notes sector “growing pains” across mints, refiners, and distributors, with new refining capacity likely improving market function over time.
Macro & Policy Lens: Uses Austrian economics to frame inflation, debt, and savings erosion, positioning precious metals as an individual hedge against fiat debasement and policy missteps.
Transcript
[music] Hello and welcome to another episode of the minor issues podcast. I'm Mark Thornton [music] at the Misesus Institute. This week's episode is a long form interview by men Ben Mummy of the Living Your Greatness podcast. And in this uh episode uh it looks at a lot of things uh in my own personal journey. Uh but starting with the recent activity in the precious metals markets, why did things go up so high? Why did we have uh the recent crash um in the market and what I think about the current situation and things moving forward? Um we look at the macroeconomic uh economy, the macroeconomic situation. Uh but then um Ben takes me through my own personal journey and education um and in my own thoughts and and opinions really about what people can do in the present to deal with this macroeconomic uh situation. So, it's a lot of fun and um Ben uh had me spend a great deal of time on my perspective on Austrian economics, my own journey um in Austrian economics as well as precious metals and um and what people um out there can learn and integrate it into their own situation, their own livelihoods, their own lives and um you know what kind of strengths does that bring to each and every person moving forward. Um so we do a lot of uh background on myself uh my opinions and uh about the current situation including um and most importantly really what the power elites have constructed for American society in particular um and how that's having such a negative effect on so many people and what we can do about it really and uh and also why I'm so optimistic about the world um in the even in the current context but certainly moving uh forward over time. And so, uh, it really is a, um, it's a very long form interview, uh, but it gets to, uh, uh, things that might not otherwise come up, um, in terms of my own, uh, personal perspective and opinions, um, and, uh, what I've been learning along the way, including fairly recently, um, in terms of how important it is for each and every one of us uh to self-dagnose uh the world economy, their current uh personal economy. Um I even talk about my recent uh runin with cancer um and how that um can really benefit everybody's um outlook and how they can uh better manage their own situation uh moving forward. So, uh, this is a long interview, so uh, don't just click right away. Um, and, uh, but because you're going to need some time to digest all this, but I think it's very interesting and I appreciate Ben's questions especially, um, and his podcast in general. So, thanks for watching this episode of the Minor Issues Podcast on Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Welcome back everyone to Living Your Greatness. My name is Ben Mummy and I'm excited today to have Dr. Mark Thordan onto the podcast. So Mark, welcome to the show. So good to see you here today. >> Hey Ben, it's great to be on your show. Thank you for the invitation. >> Super great to have you here. I actually said to you earlier on that I've been following your work probably the last four years and here we are now. Here we are chatting. It's crazy how gold is up more than 65% than a year ago. And even silver, you know, it's up 165%. Last week, there was a big thing that happened with silver and spooped a lot of people out, a lot of investors, especially who are new. I just want to give you the floor. If you could just share what are you seeing right now in the financial markets and even specifically gold and silver. you know, that was kind of a reckoning last week. It was also historic. So, I'd love to get your opinion and to hear you talk. >> Yeah, Ben, it was absolutely historic and it was absolutely shocking despite the fact that myself and I think most people were at least starting to think in terms of a big correction in the market just because it had gone up gone up literally straight up into the air on the charts. And you know whenever you see that uh you need to be a little more cautious uh and a little more pessimistic and a little more careful uh about investing under those conditions. Uh and that's true of any market really. Uh any market that goes straight up um has a tendency to move right back down a certain amount. uh we're still trading above in gold and silver above where the we started the year. So, as horrific as a move and as shocking a move that we saw and almost predictable really that, you know, something negative was going to happen eventually. Even if we were thinking about a straight line between where we are right now and where we think we're going to be, you know, sometime in the future, you can look at any chart of any asset and it's moving a lot around like crazy, generally speaking. Um, and so, you know, I was expecting it initially. I thought, well, this this is to be expected. And of course, a lot of people had stoploss orders in on electronic silver and gold and, you know, the miners and things like that. So, once the market starts to go down, it hits all those stop-loss orders and it sort of caves in on itself. Now, of course, uh I've been interviewed already about this situation, and the first thing I noted was the fact that President Trump uh appointed Kevin Walsh to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve uh on Thursday, late Thursday. And if you look at the charts, you know, you see uh the price of gold skyrocketing and you see the price of gold plum pl plum uh excuse me, the price of gold skyrocketing and the value of the dollar plummeting. uh as we looked at you know Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we get the appointment right then right after the dollar index has hit uh a new low we really had broken technical support. So if you were in Washington or New York, uh it would have set off little alarm bells that hey, the dollar is crashing and you know Kevin Walsh gets appointed and the dollar rises and of course gold uh sinks. So I think that's the primary driver of those events. But of course other people more expert in the technicalities of these markets uh have indicated that clearly there seems to be an orchestrated sort of demolition um of this market. Um I learned from David Jarrett for example that um you know normally we would have expected some circuit breakers to go off in the futures market. you know, if it goes down 10% in an hour, they're supposed to have a halt of trading. But for whatever reason, there's a technicality that the high frequency traders were able uh to engineer so as to avoid uh that shock absorber, that halt in trading. So everything uh looks kind of suspicious and I used to be not very suspicious of things like especially markets. Uh but I become increasingly more suspicious over time, especially when you reach sort of into the realms of this world that the power elite uh control and you know they control Wall Street, they control Washington DC. uh the small investor and the average American voter has very little say over their domains. And you know, the evidence is starting uh to look like that they were um you know, active in markets to stabilize the dollar and to, you know, put the herd on gold prices and especially of course silver prices which fell much more than gold. And so, you know, I think it was those combination of those factors of the setup in the market, the fact that it had gone so high and we had all these stop-loss orders in and then the futures market uh was set and primed uh to be able to, you know, sell futures uh contract short, push the market down, uh break those stop-loss orders and to not set off uh the trading halts. And as a result, you know, it threw the market into a tizzy, at least in the short run. And uh pullbacks of that nature can cause a short to intermediary uh intermediate chaos into the marketplace. So, we don't know really where the market's going to go right now in the short run. it seems to be uh trying to stabilize itself under uh the prices that existed at the end of 2025. Right. No, I appreciate that explanation and even this shock that has just happened especially with silver. You know, Michael Oliver has been actually saying, "Hey, there might be a jiggle at some point." He recently was interviewed and actually was honest about yeah I think this is that jiggle that pullback which we'll probably see at least for the next month in terms of the short term. So something I want to kind of ask you Mark was you spoke about control right and I know people that are watching this we have some retail investors we have some more maybe traders but sometimes people are worried about is the market manipulated so I would love to get your opinion on do you feel that investors when they are looking at the gold and silver space do you feel it will always be manipulated and controlled >> no um I don't I think that, you know, when silver went through $50 an ounce, I said that, you know, we're going to be experiencing growing pains um in these markets. And we've seen every aspect of those markets from, you know, mom and pop coin shops, from the refiners, from the distributors, from the mints, um government mints, private mints, the wholesale market, the big-time refiners. Um everybody, um is experiencing growing pains. Everybody is dealing with a whole new set of problems. And I think um you know so there's a little bit of chaos right now because of that uh and there's going to be longerterm adjustments um that are going to be coming about exactly because of that and I think we're going to be in a better place uh in the future going forward as new refining capacity uh is established and as new futures and commodity markets notably in China and other places around the world where these other markets are going to grow in size and importance relative to the London market and the American market. Uh, and so I think um the shenanigans that the power players um have been up to for years and that they've been using to manipulate the market just recently because, you know, for whatever reason they they've sold too much short um or whatever the reason is that they're doing it. Um, I think that that's going to cause them to lose market share and to lose market influence and they're already under a lot more suspicion and they're a lot more under the microscope um of this gr this grand emerging army of silver stackers in the United States and around the world. you know, everybody's realizing that, hey, you know, this this isn't some denatured sort of independent objective marketplace at the wholesale level. So, everybody's much more on guard right now. And in other markets like in China, um you know, they're they're looking to establish their independence. Um and so moving forward, I think that the influence that our power elites have over the London market and the um and the wholesale markets and the futures markets in the United States is going to be greatly diminished. And so I'm not really worried about that, especially from the perspective of uh your typical man on the street silver stacker who has really an objective function of accumulating small amounts of silver consistently over time. It's not really worried about price um or, you know, or things of that nature. you're just following a plan, executing a plan, sticking with a plan. Uh I I feel like that has been vindicated um for sure. And I think that that is the the sort of the game plan um to even to work through these much more difficult and much more turbulent times. People ask me, you know, what should we do? How should we do it? And I just say stick with the plan. >> So then let's hear more about that plan. It sounds like you were saying being consistent, knowing the fundamentals, being educated, but right now Mark, if I was, let's say you're a nephew and I was reaching out to you and I was like, "Hey Mark, I'm new to the space. I've been educating myself. I've now bought in a small trench of silver and I also own a little bit of gold, but you know, I'm kind of new to this." What would you advise them if you could go deeper more into this plan? >> Well, you know, I think the silver stacking plan is to purchase a regular on a regular basis amount an amount of silver that a certain number of dollars can buy. And so you're exchanging your government fiat currency for actual real substantive money that's your property. And uh you know you have to have a budget, personal budget and you have to establish a schedule so that you can either buy silver at a local coin shop on a weekly basis maybe um or make a online purchase, you know, if you don't have a local coin shop on a monthly basis where you can get where you can make your purchase without paying, you know, the shipping and handling charge. At least that's my thinking. Um, and you know, you just stick with that plan. Uh, the price of silver, the purchasing power of silver has risen and you're exchanging, you're getting out of fiat currency as one form of you saving for the future. And uh and so that smaller amount of silver still has the same amount of purchasing power uh as it did the last month that you paid, you know, that you exchanged those number of uh dollars um currency units. And and so you're you're purchasing the same amount even though it's a a smaller weight of silver. And so you don't want to necessarily have to think about it. You don't want to necessarily have to worry about it. You're, you know, you just have to stick with the plan, you know, making sure you have disposable income um with your paycheck to make those purchases on your schedule. and uh you know and then you don't have to really worry about what might happen you know years from now in terms of hyperinflation um and you're protected even in the shorter run if you run into some personal difficulties um with your job or your home or whatever you know you have an additional form of savings that is not the currency units but it's silver and I think the great thing about saving being, you know, making silver a big part of your personal savings is that it is tax-free until you exchange it. Even then, you might be able to get around the taxes. Um, so and and plus there's transactions cost in terms of using your silver to make purchases or to pay bills. And so I've always found from a very long time ago that I was very reluctant to ever sell any of my silver and that I would always try to make do with my currency holdings of dollar bills uh to pay my bills and to get through things and and so you know that stack of silver builds up over time. You don't think about it. You don't waste time thinking about it or worrying about it. it's in a safe spot. You know, you've got your plan, you execute your plan. Um, and that's the way savings should be. Now, of course, the government has made savings for regular people almost impossible because it inflates the value of the currency away and then it taxes the interest uh that you might earn at a bank. And then of course the Fed has been keeping interest rates at, you know, very low levels uh for years and years now. And so they've made saving for your future, improving your future incredibly difficult. And I hold that against the Fed. I hold that against our government, our politicians, even the voters that they're willing to put up with that because really the American dream is firmly embedded in this concept of savings, savings in the bank, you know, savings in in your household, um those kind of things so that you raise your standard of living over time. That's what we want. We want people independent. We don't want people, you know, if they get a bad bill or, you know, a medical condition that all of a sudden they, you know, they're they're paycheck to paycheck and they don't have any savings. Uh that destroys individuals independence. And so silver stacking is one way of overcoming that adverse uh those adverse policies that their government is imposing on each and every one of us. And so, you know, I think it's um it's a legitimate um thing to consider and to include in your own budgetary plans that you know people make um if they want to build for a better future. And of course to see the extent of what government policy has done to people. I mean, my god, we've got people now with, you know, huge mortgages and huge student debts, huge credit card debts. Uh we've got corporations with, you know, huge amounts of debt and of course the government itself with huge amounts of debt. and uh you know and now you know the stories in the news are about you know where people you know make Door Dash purchases on installment plans you know so they've completely warped the way Americans used to be which were just like a lot of people in other countries India and China and the Netherlands and you know other countries where they didn't have this uh persistence uh you know, people save and Americans used to save. We used to save more than 12% of our disposable income um and not have, you know, that's above and beyond any net debt. Uh and really the only form of debt that um Americans used to have uh was their home mortgage. And uh you know the credit cards uh they've been around for a few decades now, but that's a relatively uh that's not you know that was uh a relatively new phenomenon. I mean in the 1970s people most people did not have credit cards. So, um, but now, of course, you know, everybody has multiple credit cards and they have thousands of dollars, uh, on balances and I get, you know, credit card applications for my cats. you know, I'm not sure how it how that's worked out, but I I get um applications or I did I actually haven't I haven't seen many credit card applications in the mail in recent months, but um you know, it's they've turned society upside down and made us more dependent and less independent, right? So, I would love you to expand a little bit more on why, you know, credit cards, this concern that you just spoke about is such a big deal in today's age. Well, you know, in in today's age, you know, we do use um cards and accounts to make payments for virtually everything. Um so, it's not that I'm against the idea of using credit cards to make payments or debit cards um or even, you know, the use of credit cards to temporarily borrow money. Uh but every smart financial person that I know uh they will tell you that they if they do use credit cards, they always pay off their balances 100% every month. Um, you know, that's just um a general rule of thumb that I've found with people who are stable. Maybe not lavishly uh successful and rich, but people who are stable and uh can afford to buy what they want and live within their means. Um all of those things. Uh but when I was a kid, yeah, people did not have credit cards. Credit cards were a relatively new thing. Um the [clears throat] market discouraged people from using credit cards and of course the interest um on credit card loans. You know, you're making teeny loans that are unsecured. You know, a mortgage is a secured loan. It's a huge loan. There's not much paperwork in the sense that it's just, you know, one transaction. And so the interest rate on home mortgages is relatively low because it's secured collateralized with your house whereas credit cards are not. And so the credit card companies, you know, if somebody doesn't pay their bills, uh, you know, they may lose that money and they have to take allowances for that. And as a result, the risk of credit card lending by those companies and those banks carries a much much higher interest rate on them. So it's unsecured um lending. It involves lots of transactions costs and uh and typically it's people with uh lower credit scores that are using them the most. And so the the interest rate on those things is exorbitant and uh of course it's not there's no tax advantages like there is with a home mortgage. So again another rule of thumb that I found with smart stable people is that yes they do have a mortgage. That's the last thing they try to pay off uh because the rates are lower and it has some tax advantages uh built into it. So, um there are really two different um cases of credit. Uh and secured credit is just at a much lower interest rate. Yeah. No, I hear you. I appreciate that answer because it's also just habits, right? Financial habits. If you want to have a war chest that you want to keep growing, you don't want these habits to compound in like a negative way, right? You'd rather it be going in a positive way. and you would rather than if you're saving your money than learning how you can invest your money. So, we spoke a little bit about silver. I would love to hear your opinion on both gold and silver of why you owe both of them and why you think it's so important that more people need to understand the fundamentals that you were alluding to before, but I don't think you fully went into. >> Yeah. Well, you know, gold and silver are money and the paper notes that the government issues that's currency. Uh it's unbacked by anything real or tangible where gold and silver are real tangible commodities that have a very high demand for them for for a variety of reasons. And gold and silver are property. They're your property. if you own them, they're your property. Whereas, you know, fiat dollars issued by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, those are not properties. are a financial instrument and uh there's no backing to those things and they can be the supply of them can be expanded to infinity um at the any anytime the government officials and politicians um wish to do so. And gold and silver have a many thousands of years um as used as commodities and almost the same amount of time as used as a medium of exchange or as a form of money. Money is a medium of exchange and you know and so it was something that was determined or set in the marketplace and governments didn't really get involved at all until much later. And then of course they realized uh that you know that's one thing that most governments in fact all governments have wanted to control. They've wanted to have some control over um gold and silver. They took over the private minting and the private mining um of these things. Initially they started making their own coins. you know, they realized it it, you know, it was such a great opportunity for them to extract advantages uh from the economy if they could somehow in a form of alchemy, you know, create more money, whether that's shaving the coins or clipping the coins or converting the coins into paper. uh you know they realized that um early on but it was something that was discovered in the marketplace and basically I've done a study of the history of gold in particular but gold and silver more generally and you know um as a matter of fact the French word for money aren is the French word for silver you know so it it's got that kind of history going back to the early days of linguistics and languages. So, it's embedded in human civilization, not in some government uh decree. But the great thing and probably why the marketplace chose these uh metals in in the early metal ages of early human history was that they maintained um a very stable purchasing power of all other things in the economy. So you know right now gold and silver are highly erratic but that's only relative to the paper currency. If we go back to times when gold and silver were the actual money they had a very very stable purchasing power and that's why the marketplace ended up picking them. So uh for example gold and silver have always had industrial uses. Now, of course, it's much more complicated. Gold, silver, and platinum have medical uses. Uh they're used in medical technology and medical devices and electronics. And you know, gold is really too expensive nowadays. So, it's not involved in a lot of the things that could be involved with like electronics and stereo equipment and you know, all sorts of things. It's just too expensive. That's why you see this big emphasis on silver in electronics and artificial intelligence and computers and AI and you know also alternative energies uh solar panels, windmills, all sorts of things. So it's got a lot of practical uses as a commodity but it also has uh demand as money. And so it's got multi- reasons why people demand it. And they also have multiple sources of supply. Uh there are many mines out there that can be opened and closed and expanded and contracted. Uh there's ways to recycle these metals. Uh there's ways to take um uh substitute away from industrial uses into monetary uses. So it's a multiaceted market and they the various uses interact with one another so that the metals are put to their most highly useful purposes and you know that means all kinds of micro adjustments are going on uh constantly in a natural money market using gold and silver and that's why they had tremendously stable purchasing ing power over hundreds of years really. And um and so that's what makes gold and silver great. It's not that they're shiny or it's not that they're pretty. Um it's that they really impact and interact with society and individuals on so many different levels. And it's really the marketplace that orchestrates all of these interactions um so that we get a very stable unit of money but also we can um deploy a lot of gold and silver to its most highly valued uses. And also we put a lot of effort and resources into recycling these metals especially when they're highly highly valued. Um, you know, we go out of our way uh to find alternative ways of substituting out of silver and out of gold uh so that the those elements can be redeployed in other industries or as money. So, it's a very flexible natural marketplace, right? I really appreciate that explanation. And you know, we talked about your nephew and what about if you had a niece who was like, "Hey, I get this. I look at all the fundamentals. I see that gold and silver are real monetary metals, you know, they're not a US dollar that is almost like cash or that cash is trash, you know, or even toilet paper as Robert Kiyosaki always says. Maybe a little exaggerated, but also true. But what if they come up to you and they're like, "Yeah, but Mark, you know what? There's only one thing I'm concerned about. In 1933, gold was confiscated by the government. So, that could happen again. So, I'd love to get your opinion on what if someone is holding back, not because of all the fundamentals are so bullish or strong, but if they're concerned about that, what would you say to them? Well, I think most people are jumping in rather than holding out. But, you know, I understand there's a lot of concerns. I don't think younger people really maybe have never really been told about Roosevelt's confiscation of gold. Um, and you know that's a possibility, but I don't think the go the government has created such a monster of of economic and financial problem that they're not going to really be able to go around and get people at the uh, you know, the tip of a bayonet or a gun to get people to turn in their gold and silver. And I think really that they would be very reluctant uh to do that because they're in such a state of being discredited. Political leadership in the United States is widely mistrusted. Uh most Americans who trust have any trust left in a polit a politician or a political party only do so because they're so afraid of the other party. uh but in general they they don't like what's going on in especially in national politics and they have a very very low level of trust and I think right now uh the level of trust uh on the part of Americans in government in our particular form of national government and the power elites that control it and I think it does seem more obvious today that the power elites control our elected officials whereas I think when I was a kid we didn't there was not really much thought um in those terms and and and Washington DC did behave um a little differently but I think that there's you know a lot of um scams a lot of one-sidedness in American politics there's not a lot of bipartisanship. Um, you know, we have these scandals that are reoccurring. I think the Ebstein case is something that I haven't followed um you know directly and in any kind of detail way but it's it really has infuriated uh a lot of Americans that our politicians won't do anything when it seems obvious that a lot of bad things uh happened and the politicians and the courts are not really following up on what is a huge amount of evidence and there are other things you know people being um you know shot by the government officials uh Charlie Kirk being murdered uh President Trump being shot at you know there's a lot of things that uh just aren't right and um and I think most Americans let's say a a very large and increasing number of Americans ans uh don't trust uh the people at the top and I think that's a good thing because nothing good comes from the top down. Everything good in human society comes from the bottom up. And that, you know, that's an age-old lesson that things that come from bottom up are tend to be, you know, good things or great things. And, you know, things that are, you know, edicts from up on high. and things from the top down are inherently seen as problematic and where you know people's individual situations are taken to account of and so I I think that that you know that the government risks um you know furthering their the disrespect that people have of them if they even suggested that or you know it would be very similar except in much larger numbers numbers if they started taxing people's uh retirement accounts, which I have a feeling that's going to eventually happen. And you know, people are going to be in an uproar. And you know, that these are um supposed to be, you know, once a benefit is given, people assume that, you know, it's their property uh that they paid their taxes and now they're being taxed again. That's going to be, you know, a very unsettling attitude. And the more people oppose government, the better government acts. So if we're if we sit around on our hands and we don't do anything, we don't put up a fuss, um you know, government officials will continue to act more irresponsibly and the political elites will act much more disrespectful to the average citizen. Whereas if there's opposition where there's self-education and people are aware of what's going on or what they should know, what they should be allowed to know and they're not being told. Um, you know, I think that's a problem for the elites. And so, you know, this is not a one, you know, one thing or another. There's a margin involved where, you know, the more we distrust, the more we hold public officials accountable for, the more we know about what they're doing, the less they can get away with. So then let's go there. If we cannot trust them with a T here, let's go with what should people be more educated about? We spoke a lot about gold and silver, but I would love to hear all the hard truths that you want to talk about right now. Wow. Well, I mean, you know, my business is teaching economics and economics is fundamental for society in general. I mean uh what Austrian economics does is it brings a uh you know some people call it common sense but it's really um a hard established doctrine set of doctrines based on economic theory which is using the logic of human action. And once you start to understand and appreciate what the Austrian school has produced and how relevant it is for all aspects of society, uh then you have a tool. So it's not just you working now. You have a tool for understanding the world and politics and current events and history. Very important. And of course, we address all of those things on our web page. We have articles on history. We have articles on politics and political science. Um, you know, current events and, uh, economic policies. And it all starts with, you know, the great thing about Misesus is he wrote an entire treatise on economics of human action at its most basic level. Murray Rothbart also uh improved and extended that. And so we have the tools. And so here at the Mises Institute, we're we're not in the business of telling people you need to support the free market. Uh you need to be opposed to the government. We're here to teach why the free market works, how does it work, and why does go government action in the economy, why does it always fail, why does it always produce a lots of negative results? Why doesn't it ever resolve issues? They tend to compound economic problems. So, you know, that's kind of what I do and what we do and what, you know, Misesus and Rothbart and others have developed these tools, the hammer and the saw and the screwdriver for how uh to work through and to understand things. And and I think that's really important because there are a lot of people out there, in fact, I think it's probably the majority who think the free market's a pretty good thing and who think that, you know, government intervention in the economy is really problematic. But we don't, a lot of us don't know why that's the case. And once we know why that's the case, then you know the socialists who say you know we need a basic income or we need minimum wage or you know housing is unaffordable so we need to build government housing or have rent control. You know well the average person isn't going to know well what's wrong with that? you know, that sounds like maybe something I should support that. But if you understand economics, you'll realize that that doesn't solve the problem. And it makes the problem worse over time. And you know it also you know economics shows that an economy where private savings is invested in the economy creating capital in businesses better tools for making goods and services that you know the economic pie expands and wage rates go up. So, you know, those are some of the basics that we really try to hit home on so that we have a much more uh educated and people who can deal with uh this huge opposition in society that is you know advocates intervention in the economy and nowadays advocates socialism of the economy. I want to continue on this path of Austrian economics. I've spoke a little bit about it on the show, but definitely not enough, which is why I want to go deeper with you. There are some greats or the giants in the space, you've spoken about some of them. I always believe it doesn't matter what you do, whether it's sports, whether it's finance, whether it's economics, when you study the best of the best, you learn a lot. So I would love to give you the mic again here to talk about who are some of the greats and what are the biggest lessons that you've learned from them that you think more people need to know about. Well, the Austrian school has long tradition. It goes back to Carl Manger and his first book um the principles of economics in 1871. But the the actual tradition without that name Austrian goes back a lot longer than that into the 15th century. Uh the person I do my research on his name is Richard Kantion who wrote a manuscript in 1730 right after the Mississippi bubble where he laid out economic theory for the first time. So the school goes way back in time and we've really solved a lot of the theoretical problems that ancient thinkers or Adam Smith, you know, points that Adam Smith didn't get. Um, and nowadays the school has greatly expanded. I mean in addition to Mises and Rothbart, I mean another giant is Friedrich von Hayek or FA Hayek. As a matter of fact, we're giving away a free book of Hayek's greatest hits articles to anybody who who writes us and signs up and wants a copy. You can get the physical copy, but you can also download the electronic or ebook, you know, PDF versions as well. It's his greatest hits. and he talks about economics, he talks about socialism, he talks about choice and currency which is uh the inspiration the for the founders of Bitcoin in cryptocurrency. Um he also talks about why the worst people get to the top in government. Um so it's it's really a great little collection. It's a great starting point, but you can just go to mises.org og and you know whether you're interested in uh sports or finance or history um uh international relations really any topic uh we deal with um you know with articles and lectures and videos and conferences which are recorded and available um you know so many different avenues. So your interests you can find a common bond with Austrian economics where one of us or most of us like I've done a lot of work about the war on drugs you know and uh and my work is cited as is one of the important contributions to the economics of the war on drugs because it explains why prohibition of drugs lead to harder, more potent, more dangerous drugs. And I wrote that in the 1980s. And you know, now it's more important than ever because of things like fentanyl, you know, and so we're out there addressing issues um of the common man on the street. And that's why we, you know, have this aversion to mo the modern political elites that seem to want to remake society in their image. And so, and we've got a lot of great um economists here on staff. Joe Serno is really um an amazing economist. He's our vice president of academics here at the Misesus Institute. He's the editor of our academic journal. We have the jour the quarterly journal of Austrian economics and we also have the journal of libertarian studies too. So we do academic work and academic conferences. Um yeah and nowadays there's Austrian economists around the world. When I went to graduate school, there were almost no um Austrian economists who were still working and working at a PhD granting university. And fortunately, I think Lou Rockwell came around just in the nick of time and um you know started the institute and it's become kind of the bedrock uh for reestablishing the Austrian school. So there's a lot of um Austrian economist in Spain and throughout Europe, especially Poland. You'll notice that Poland, you know, they seem to be a little smarter than the rest of the Europeans and they're the ones that are adding to their gold and silver, you know, reserves. Um, and uh, you know, and then there's Austrian economists really around the world. uh Javier Malay in Argentina, you know, was was a mainstream economist who converted to the Austrian school and became president of Argentina because the people down there had been suffering severely from government uh and unions uh union oppression really and fascism and interventionism um for decades and decades and they finally threw up their hands. Well, You know, things are not perfect in Argentina, but they've made a lot of progress in Argentina. You know, it's a political process, so it's going to be imperfect, but they've definitely turned things around in the right direction. I have, you know, high hopes or at least great wishes that all of that continues. uh and we have you know students and professors coming from you know uh various countries from around the world uh including Japan and China, India uh many of the Eastern European countries in Europe um you know South America and uh so it's a it's a movement that is spreading so It it may still be the smallest compared to mainstream economics, but it is the oldest and I think it's the fastest growing and I think we have the youngest demographic. You know, we have the youngest group of faculty relative to the mainstream and we have lots of young uh supporters out there uh who've come to our conferences and who are on Twitter and in other social media, you know, making um a statement. And of course in the precious metal uh arena, you know, there's a lot of advocates and proponents of Austrian economics because it's we're advocating for a return to real money and away from, you know, paper money. So these are people in in the precious metals, even if it's their business, you know, and they're making money by the fact that government is inflating the money supply and creating a demand for inflation. hedges. They still would rather have uh a free market economy with a free market monetary system without the uh Federal Reserve. So, I think that speaks very loudly um for what Austrian economics can teach us all. When did you first go down that rabbit hole of studying economics in general before even going to Austrian economics? Well, uh, I was a coin collector as a as a young child and, um, I was exposed to the fact that my relatives had all put away the silver coinage, you know, in their businesses, uh, when they took silver out of coins. And I had a couple of silver dollars, uh, excuse me, um, silver certificates, the paper dollars that said silver certificates. And I told my father one day, I said, "I'm going down to the bank and I'm going to turn these silver certificates in for silver coins." And my father said, "No, they won't do that anymore. They'll just give you a new dollar bill." And so I felt like I was I I'd been totally scammed by my government. And you know, I've been that's stuck with me really almost my entire life. Um, now not constantly. You know, I went to through high school and into college. Wasn't really thinking about that, but I did become an economics major. Um and uh it was um at um uh the Libertarian Party had had gotten I'd noticed the Libertarian Party and through that I had become aware of the Austrian school in Mises and Hayek. Um, and so I'd studied that a little bit on my own and I went to an Institute for Humane Studies conference where I met a professor who taught at Auburn University. And so when it came time to graduate from college, of course, it was probably the American economy was in the worst shape ever. Uh in the early 1980s, interest rates were 20%, un um unemployment was 10%. Uh the inflation rate was over 10%. There were no jobs. So I went to graduate school and I ended up choosing to go to Auburn University because I had met this one Austrian professor, Roger Garrison. And uh so I came to Alabama, you know, and people thought this could well people already thought I was crazy. Uh but when I said I was moving to Alabama, they really thought I was crazy, but it's turned out great uh in the sense that Lou Rockwell founded the Mises Institute the same year and moved it to Auburn University the next year. And I've been fortunate to be affiliated with the Misesus Institute in one form or another uh for a very very long time. And you know, we've seen uh the Austrian school and the Austrian movement, the libertarian movement grow from virtually nothing uh into into becoming, you know, an important consideration and something that the power elites really want to squash, which I think you could see very vividly uh in the most recent Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention where, you know, somehow or another the Libertarian Party ended up with without really any kind of national candidate to speak of um mysteriously and and so it's been a heck of a ride and um but I think you know that fundamental notion that the we've allowed the government to be put in charge of money um and it reic on that promise uh in 1971 and you know in 1971 where Nixon took us off of the gold standard supposedly on a temporary basis of course it's been more than 50 years now it's you know there's no looking back really and then of course those times were not good the 1970s the economy was not good. The business cycle was rampant. Inflation was rampant. Unemployment was rampant. It was the decade of stagflation. Um it was a very difficult economic decade for a lot of people, most people um in the American economy. So it really stuck with me. And um when I found Austrian economics, I really started to get some answers beyond that basic notion about gold and the value of money where gold kept the value of money stable. And without gold, everything became erratic and everything became less stable. And a lot of the institutions and a lot of the behaviors um that existed when we were on the gold standard have sort of been cut loose from their moorings and and of course we see that uh to a large extent today in the United States. We had a a a summer research fellow here for a couple of summers, uh Jeffrey Daggner who completed his dissertation work here and which was on the economics of inflation and the family. And what Jeff did was he demonstrated theoretically and empirically how inflation uh has undermined the American family. And uh it's a very powerful argument, set of arguments. Uh it was published recently as a book. And so we're, you know, we're not just concerned with the stock market. We're not just concerned with economic growth. We're concerned really and increasingly so in the bedrock foundations of human society. And I think that's reflected in what Austrian economists have addressed over time and what the institute has been trying to uh promote um and to reinvigorate uh within well not within academia but in academia you know Austrian economics is is is not does not get along well with mainstream economics. they, you know, they don't uh like what we have to say and they would rather that we go away and hide and not uh make our points of view known. They they'll they're much more willing to put up with, you know, the crackpots and cranks on the left, so to speak. Uh the modern monetary theorists and the the outright socialist and Marxist. Um but you know Austrian economics uh has to be ignored and has to be suppressed uh from the mainstream point of view because we do have a point of view with theory to back it that shows that their recommendations and their analysis are faulty and that their recommendations really uh don't solve problems and end up making these problems s bigger over time rather than causing some kind of resolution to problems. >> Why do you think mainstream media doesn't like Austrian economics? >> Well, mainstream media is kind of in bed with uh the power elites. you know, they're they're clearly um you know, controlled by you know, the the mainstream media is controlled by the power elites. I mean, you know, they Amazon owns the Washington Post and you know, this corporation owns CBS News. you know, all the networks, all the major newspapers um are controlled uh by much larger corporations um in the United States and those corporations are controlled by the power uh the power elites and you know so in the in the mainstream media you know you can't really talk they really can't talk openly and honestly about politics. They can't talk openly and honestly allow free speech with respect to vaccines and COVID. uh you know there's no there's no critical discussion of the pharmaceutical industry um or the medical establishment or the Federal Reserve >> or the big banks or you know there's no critical analysis of even you know the federal budget you know and so the main the mainstream media because they're in bed with the power elites and actually owned by the power elites. All of these issues are simply not discussed in any kind of open competitive way in the mainstream media. And you know, anybody who's aware of, you know, the media outside of the mainstream realizes, you know, if you go back and watch uh the mainstream news and the mainstream media, um you know, it's it's a singular almost a singular voice, you know, and that there's very little disagreement uh even between the political parties, you You know, there's just a few issues, a few individual departmental budgets that are contested, but the vast majority of it is all accepted by the major political parties and the major corporations who benefit uh from the system. And the, you know, and the power elites, they all they all benefit. They all profit from an approach that's referred to as kicking the can down the road. You know, that's the policy that they prefer. Uh they don't want to solve any of the problems because all the money that government is throwing at these problems is where they're getting a lot of their profits from. So, you know, quite naturally, um, you know, that the the mainstream media is not really uh an arena, a competitive arena where issues are fully vetted and fully debated. And why, you know, such a huge portion of the active and intelligent uh American population is going to the realm of podcasts. uh to get their news um to get their information uh to be educated about issues and events. Uh because so much, you know, that those people in particular realize that, you know, they could spend a whole year listening to the mainstream media about various contested issues and they're not going to really find out the truth or even come anywhere close to the truth or even a fair and balanced presentation um of the issues. It's just not there. And so that's why people are going hand over fist in incredible numbers to uh the podcast arena where things are competitive, things are open. Um things are um there's a lot of different podcasts um in every different area and a lot of general interest podcast uh with their own demographic audiences. And so there's no way to control uh those groups unless you're explicitly taking funding from, you know, pharmaceutical ads, let's say. you know, there there's no way that any aspect of the power elites can really control that marketplace at this point in time, you know, and but you know, that's always something we've got to be concerned about is that they do want to control everything. you know, they will reach down and if given the opportunity, they certainly have the resources that they will attempt to control every source of information. I really appreciate you speaking your truth about that because it's not always comfortable and you know, it shows that you're someone that you choose to think for yourself and you choose to think critically and I really admire that about you. I think it's also important for anyone that's tuning in to realize that we need more openness. We need more openness. You don't need to even if we're on a different side here, we need to hear opinions. We need to have more conversation. How's the hard talks actually because that's where real progress gets made forward rather than avoid and keep picking the can. Mark, something I I can't help but ask you is if you were to take a step back, you know, from your financial title or your economic title or just all titles aside, who is Mark? Well, that's a good question. Um, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a very mildmannered person. I wouldn't even a couple of years ago I wouldn't even be uh speaking as openly and negatively against the power elites but I've become I don't know if the word is disgruntled but you know I've been preparing myself uh for this battle for a very long time and I got to tell you I couldn't be more optimistic about how this is all going to work out in the end. But it really is going to take um a lot of people stepping forth and understanding the problems that we face and be willing to speak up uh to their friends and neighbors about how they feel. you know, not in the comfort of the voting booth, but you know, we believe that ideas matter. And I I'm just um you know somebody who loves ideas um especially about the free society because everything else in my life that I love um about life, my family and my friends and art and science >> and sports and baseball. Um, you know, I I feel like I want to do my part to protect uh the best of what human society can do and has done. And I think the the Austrian school's belief in the importance of ideology and an understanding a liberal understanding of society, you know, that um brought it in uh to human slavery just a few hundred years ago and started standing up for women's rights just a few hundred years ago. That was something that happened near where I grew up. Um, Senica Falls, New York, the sort of the birthplace of the women's right movement in the United States was just 10 minutes down the road from where I was born and grew up. But the liberals of Europe actually started um working in this direction long before anything like this happened in the United States. So I'm very proud that this intellectual tradition that I've been fortunate enough to be educated in and to contribute little bits and pieces to um you know has done so much to contribute to the the flourishing of human society and the individual human spirit and has seen being, you know, this flowering of, you know, great fiction and great art and uh sports and, you know, rights and um you know, all the magnificent things that the free market society um has helped brought about. Um, and so I see it as a, you know, my work is to go in and do what I can to see, you know, how I can best help protect what's left um of those institutions and hopefully and and I am very hopeful uh that we can really restore uh free markets because if we look around the world, if we look at this in the long term, And we look at in global terms uh you know more and more of the world is actually a market-based economy uh you know poverty is falling the standards of living are rising um income distribution is getting more equal I mean there's nothing inherently necessary or great about equality but you know if we look at the whole globe the distribution of income and wealth is actually becoming more equal as the world becomes more market oriented. So I do take that longer term view and I don't let you know short-term losses and short-term distortions uh day-to-day events discourage me because I think we are winning and I think we will win. I want to build off of that optimism. You have a lot of I think it's beyond hope. I think you have a lot of desire to share your knowledge because when people have knowledge, they can't get it stolen from them. They can't get taxed. And I think knowledge is just super powerful. It also builds competency which then builds our confidence right in. So something I want to kind of ask you here is right now if you think about each person that you're trying to educate right that ripple effect what is it that you're trying to do as your end goal here? Well, um, at a in a very general level, I want people to think for themselves. And I wanted I wanted them to think and this is maybe just a re a recent realization on my part in terms of the last three or four years that it's really important for people to be to self-dagnose to self diagnose their own problems and to self diagnose the problems in society that they see around them. Economics helps with a lot of that. Obviously, we can't start from scratch on any of this stuff. Um, you know, inflation that took us took economists 500 years to figure out what it was. So, you know, we have to rely on competency and expertise uh to a certain extent. But still once you self diagnose something like inflation and you realize the what's causing it and what its effects are um you know you can therefore integrate that into the rest of your activities. Um, I recently had um just this past week I had a surgery to remove a precancerous skin cancer uh from my temple. And you know, it's something we all know a little bit about and you know, my doctor didn't see it. Um, in the examination, uh, my dermatologist didn't see it, but I knew there was something wrong. I sort of self diagnosed myself and I alerted them to take a second look at this thing in particular. And you know obviously I don't know anything about ter dermatology but I you know you learn you can learn a few things on the cheap about any including cancer um and I self diagnose that so I think you know various forms of self diagnosis with a little bit of expertise which you can get pretty cheaply I mean you can get to you can learn a lot about economics by going to Mises org. Um, and you can pick up, you know, a lot about your health, uh, from the medical establishment and the medical anti-establishment. Um, and I'm not, you know, recommending wholesale uh, self diagnosis and treatment here, okay? I mean, I went to my doctor. I went to the dermatologist, you know, I made a realization and I asked for assistance from the professionals. Um but I think we do have to think about things in terms of self diagnosing our problems, our individual problems. Uh be objective. Uh learn about things and then of course our economic problems whether they're individual or where they're they're social. I mean the government has run up $ 38 trillion in national debt. you should know the ABCs of what that implies for your future. And uh it's not really that hard uh to come to grasp with that, but you need to know that so you're not caught flatfooted and that you can make some initial steps in the direction of preparing yourself uh for buying, you know, whatever the problem is. You can buy a fire extinguisher, right, to put out a fire. And that's what, you know, silver stacking is all about for the problems of inflation and hyperinflation and the difficulty of savings in America. It's one little thing, you know, that many many people have found is a practical solution to multiple problems of government in the economy. Um so these are it's not rocket science. Um and you can't be uh you have to be objective about these things as well. So um but it's thinking for yourself basically. I mean that that's that's what it all really boils down to is thinking for yourself coming to grips with what you don't know. I mean that's the biggest issue is you know what don't I know? What do I have to guess at? What am I really unfamiliar with? And if it's important, find out. If this was your last interview today, what would be one last thing that you'd want to share with everyone? Whether it's something you're concerned about or a life lesson, anything. Anything. Well, you know, a lot of what the things that we've talked about today, I've been thinking about for a very long time. And at various points in time in my life, I've been very discouraged, especially when things turn sour. Uh the government goes in the wrong direction. Um you know, that sort of es and flows over time. It seems to have gotten to a very bad point in time. Gold and silver are kind of like the alarm bells in the economy. They're kind of like the canary in the coal mine. If the canary, they used to put canaries in coal mines and as a signal that if the canary died meant that the air was too impure and that it would eventually, you know, people would pass out and die. So it that's what gold and silver are in today's economy. They're like an alarm bell. Um, and so we're at a very important juncture. But I think the thing that I've learned over time in many many different aspects and ways and from historical lessons that I've seen in this country and in others is that the human spirit um has got to be considered not the underdog but the favorite in this battle. government is, you know, it has the advantage of just hanging on uh and tolerated at certain points in time until it gets the upper hand and government has the upper hand right now. But I I have the feeling that we can overcome this, we can um solve these problems, we can get these problems behind us. We might even get to the sort of a philosoph philosophical millstone of where we don't need traditional government at all. >> That government has become really the central problem of human economic and social development. And you know, as this battle rages on over the next several years, more and more people are going to see that point and and hopefully we can get to that point that we were headed towards just a couple of hundred years ago. And uh maybe we can get back on that path where we're moving directly uh towards a society with less government uh in our lives. I hear you, Mark. Well, Mark, I just want to take this last little bit of time, you know, first time meeting you virtually and I've enjoyed this conversation a lot. So, I would love to take this last little bit of time to really thank you for being here. Thank you also too for being so consistent. It's been like so many years, at least 60 years that you've been in this space. So, I just want to drink this last time to just Yeah. Thank you for being here today and sharing your knowledge. Thank you, Ben. It's been great being on your program and I really respect the program that you've designed and are carrying out there for people.
Markets, Manipulation, and Silver-Stacking | Mark Thornton
Summary
Transcript
[music] Hello and welcome to another episode of the minor issues podcast. I'm Mark Thornton [music] at the Misesus Institute. This week's episode is a long form interview by men Ben Mummy of the Living Your Greatness podcast. And in this uh episode uh it looks at a lot of things uh in my own personal journey. Uh but starting with the recent activity in the precious metals markets, why did things go up so high? Why did we have uh the recent crash um in the market and what I think about the current situation and things moving forward? Um we look at the macroeconomic uh economy, the macroeconomic situation. Uh but then um Ben takes me through my own personal journey and education um and in my own thoughts and and opinions really about what people can do in the present to deal with this macroeconomic uh situation. So, it's a lot of fun and um Ben uh had me spend a great deal of time on my perspective on Austrian economics, my own journey um in Austrian economics as well as precious metals and um and what people um out there can learn and integrate it into their own situation, their own livelihoods, their own lives and um you know what kind of strengths does that bring to each and every person moving forward. Um so we do a lot of uh background on myself uh my opinions and uh about the current situation including um and most importantly really what the power elites have constructed for American society in particular um and how that's having such a negative effect on so many people and what we can do about it really and uh and also why I'm so optimistic about the world um in the even in the current context but certainly moving uh forward over time. And so, uh, it really is a, um, it's a very long form interview, uh, but it gets to, uh, uh, things that might not otherwise come up, um, in terms of my own, uh, personal perspective and opinions, um, and, uh, what I've been learning along the way, including fairly recently, um, in terms of how important it is for each and every one of us uh to self-dagnose uh the world economy, their current uh personal economy. Um I even talk about my recent uh runin with cancer um and how that um can really benefit everybody's um outlook and how they can uh better manage their own situation uh moving forward. So, uh, this is a long interview, so uh, don't just click right away. Um, and, uh, but because you're going to need some time to digest all this, but I think it's very interesting and I appreciate Ben's questions especially, um, and his podcast in general. So, thanks for watching this episode of the Minor Issues Podcast on Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Welcome back everyone to Living Your Greatness. My name is Ben Mummy and I'm excited today to have Dr. Mark Thordan onto the podcast. So Mark, welcome to the show. So good to see you here today. >> Hey Ben, it's great to be on your show. Thank you for the invitation. >> Super great to have you here. I actually said to you earlier on that I've been following your work probably the last four years and here we are now. Here we are chatting. It's crazy how gold is up more than 65% than a year ago. And even silver, you know, it's up 165%. Last week, there was a big thing that happened with silver and spooped a lot of people out, a lot of investors, especially who are new. I just want to give you the floor. If you could just share what are you seeing right now in the financial markets and even specifically gold and silver. you know, that was kind of a reckoning last week. It was also historic. So, I'd love to get your opinion and to hear you talk. >> Yeah, Ben, it was absolutely historic and it was absolutely shocking despite the fact that myself and I think most people were at least starting to think in terms of a big correction in the market just because it had gone up gone up literally straight up into the air on the charts. And you know whenever you see that uh you need to be a little more cautious uh and a little more pessimistic and a little more careful uh about investing under those conditions. Uh and that's true of any market really. Uh any market that goes straight up um has a tendency to move right back down a certain amount. uh we're still trading above in gold and silver above where the we started the year. So, as horrific as a move and as shocking a move that we saw and almost predictable really that, you know, something negative was going to happen eventually. Even if we were thinking about a straight line between where we are right now and where we think we're going to be, you know, sometime in the future, you can look at any chart of any asset and it's moving a lot around like crazy, generally speaking. Um, and so, you know, I was expecting it initially. I thought, well, this this is to be expected. And of course, a lot of people had stoploss orders in on electronic silver and gold and, you know, the miners and things like that. So, once the market starts to go down, it hits all those stop-loss orders and it sort of caves in on itself. Now, of course, uh I've been interviewed already about this situation, and the first thing I noted was the fact that President Trump uh appointed Kevin Walsh to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve uh on Thursday, late Thursday. And if you look at the charts, you know, you see uh the price of gold skyrocketing and you see the price of gold plum pl plum uh excuse me, the price of gold skyrocketing and the value of the dollar plummeting. uh as we looked at you know Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we get the appointment right then right after the dollar index has hit uh a new low we really had broken technical support. So if you were in Washington or New York, uh it would have set off little alarm bells that hey, the dollar is crashing and you know Kevin Walsh gets appointed and the dollar rises and of course gold uh sinks. So I think that's the primary driver of those events. But of course other people more expert in the technicalities of these markets uh have indicated that clearly there seems to be an orchestrated sort of demolition um of this market. Um I learned from David Jarrett for example that um you know normally we would have expected some circuit breakers to go off in the futures market. you know, if it goes down 10% in an hour, they're supposed to have a halt of trading. But for whatever reason, there's a technicality that the high frequency traders were able uh to engineer so as to avoid uh that shock absorber, that halt in trading. So everything uh looks kind of suspicious and I used to be not very suspicious of things like especially markets. Uh but I become increasingly more suspicious over time, especially when you reach sort of into the realms of this world that the power elite uh control and you know they control Wall Street, they control Washington DC. uh the small investor and the average American voter has very little say over their domains. And you know, the evidence is starting uh to look like that they were um you know, active in markets to stabilize the dollar and to, you know, put the herd on gold prices and especially of course silver prices which fell much more than gold. And so, you know, I think it was those combination of those factors of the setup in the market, the fact that it had gone so high and we had all these stop-loss orders in and then the futures market uh was set and primed uh to be able to, you know, sell futures uh contract short, push the market down, uh break those stop-loss orders and to not set off uh the trading halts. And as a result, you know, it threw the market into a tizzy, at least in the short run. And uh pullbacks of that nature can cause a short to intermediary uh intermediate chaos into the marketplace. So, we don't know really where the market's going to go right now in the short run. it seems to be uh trying to stabilize itself under uh the prices that existed at the end of 2025. Right. No, I appreciate that explanation and even this shock that has just happened especially with silver. You know, Michael Oliver has been actually saying, "Hey, there might be a jiggle at some point." He recently was interviewed and actually was honest about yeah I think this is that jiggle that pullback which we'll probably see at least for the next month in terms of the short term. So something I want to kind of ask you Mark was you spoke about control right and I know people that are watching this we have some retail investors we have some more maybe traders but sometimes people are worried about is the market manipulated so I would love to get your opinion on do you feel that investors when they are looking at the gold and silver space do you feel it will always be manipulated and controlled >> no um I don't I think that, you know, when silver went through $50 an ounce, I said that, you know, we're going to be experiencing growing pains um in these markets. And we've seen every aspect of those markets from, you know, mom and pop coin shops, from the refiners, from the distributors, from the mints, um government mints, private mints, the wholesale market, the big-time refiners. Um everybody, um is experiencing growing pains. Everybody is dealing with a whole new set of problems. And I think um you know so there's a little bit of chaos right now because of that uh and there's going to be longerterm adjustments um that are going to be coming about exactly because of that and I think we're going to be in a better place uh in the future going forward as new refining capacity uh is established and as new futures and commodity markets notably in China and other places around the world where these other markets are going to grow in size and importance relative to the London market and the American market. Uh, and so I think um the shenanigans that the power players um have been up to for years and that they've been using to manipulate the market just recently because, you know, for whatever reason they they've sold too much short um or whatever the reason is that they're doing it. Um, I think that that's going to cause them to lose market share and to lose market influence and they're already under a lot more suspicion and they're a lot more under the microscope um of this gr this grand emerging army of silver stackers in the United States and around the world. you know, everybody's realizing that, hey, you know, this this isn't some denatured sort of independent objective marketplace at the wholesale level. So, everybody's much more on guard right now. And in other markets like in China, um you know, they're they're looking to establish their independence. Um and so moving forward, I think that the influence that our power elites have over the London market and the um and the wholesale markets and the futures markets in the United States is going to be greatly diminished. And so I'm not really worried about that, especially from the perspective of uh your typical man on the street silver stacker who has really an objective function of accumulating small amounts of silver consistently over time. It's not really worried about price um or, you know, or things of that nature. you're just following a plan, executing a plan, sticking with a plan. Uh I I feel like that has been vindicated um for sure. And I think that that is the the sort of the game plan um to even to work through these much more difficult and much more turbulent times. People ask me, you know, what should we do? How should we do it? And I just say stick with the plan. >> So then let's hear more about that plan. It sounds like you were saying being consistent, knowing the fundamentals, being educated, but right now Mark, if I was, let's say you're a nephew and I was reaching out to you and I was like, "Hey Mark, I'm new to the space. I've been educating myself. I've now bought in a small trench of silver and I also own a little bit of gold, but you know, I'm kind of new to this." What would you advise them if you could go deeper more into this plan? >> Well, you know, I think the silver stacking plan is to purchase a regular on a regular basis amount an amount of silver that a certain number of dollars can buy. And so you're exchanging your government fiat currency for actual real substantive money that's your property. And uh you know you have to have a budget, personal budget and you have to establish a schedule so that you can either buy silver at a local coin shop on a weekly basis maybe um or make a online purchase, you know, if you don't have a local coin shop on a monthly basis where you can get where you can make your purchase without paying, you know, the shipping and handling charge. At least that's my thinking. Um, and you know, you just stick with that plan. Uh, the price of silver, the purchasing power of silver has risen and you're exchanging, you're getting out of fiat currency as one form of you saving for the future. And uh and so that smaller amount of silver still has the same amount of purchasing power uh as it did the last month that you paid, you know, that you exchanged those number of uh dollars um currency units. And and so you're you're purchasing the same amount even though it's a a smaller weight of silver. And so you don't want to necessarily have to think about it. You don't want to necessarily have to worry about it. You're, you know, you just have to stick with the plan, you know, making sure you have disposable income um with your paycheck to make those purchases on your schedule. and uh you know and then you don't have to really worry about what might happen you know years from now in terms of hyperinflation um and you're protected even in the shorter run if you run into some personal difficulties um with your job or your home or whatever you know you have an additional form of savings that is not the currency units but it's silver and I think the great thing about saving being, you know, making silver a big part of your personal savings is that it is tax-free until you exchange it. Even then, you might be able to get around the taxes. Um, so and and plus there's transactions cost in terms of using your silver to make purchases or to pay bills. And so I've always found from a very long time ago that I was very reluctant to ever sell any of my silver and that I would always try to make do with my currency holdings of dollar bills uh to pay my bills and to get through things and and so you know that stack of silver builds up over time. You don't think about it. You don't waste time thinking about it or worrying about it. it's in a safe spot. You know, you've got your plan, you execute your plan. Um, and that's the way savings should be. Now, of course, the government has made savings for regular people almost impossible because it inflates the value of the currency away and then it taxes the interest uh that you might earn at a bank. And then of course the Fed has been keeping interest rates at, you know, very low levels uh for years and years now. And so they've made saving for your future, improving your future incredibly difficult. And I hold that against the Fed. I hold that against our government, our politicians, even the voters that they're willing to put up with that because really the American dream is firmly embedded in this concept of savings, savings in the bank, you know, savings in in your household, um those kind of things so that you raise your standard of living over time. That's what we want. We want people independent. We don't want people, you know, if they get a bad bill or, you know, a medical condition that all of a sudden they, you know, they're they're paycheck to paycheck and they don't have any savings. Uh that destroys individuals independence. And so silver stacking is one way of overcoming that adverse uh those adverse policies that their government is imposing on each and every one of us. And so, you know, I think it's um it's a legitimate um thing to consider and to include in your own budgetary plans that you know people make um if they want to build for a better future. And of course to see the extent of what government policy has done to people. I mean, my god, we've got people now with, you know, huge mortgages and huge student debts, huge credit card debts. Uh we've got corporations with, you know, huge amounts of debt and of course the government itself with huge amounts of debt. and uh you know and now you know the stories in the news are about you know where people you know make Door Dash purchases on installment plans you know so they've completely warped the way Americans used to be which were just like a lot of people in other countries India and China and the Netherlands and you know other countries where they didn't have this uh persistence uh you know, people save and Americans used to save. We used to save more than 12% of our disposable income um and not have, you know, that's above and beyond any net debt. Uh and really the only form of debt that um Americans used to have uh was their home mortgage. And uh you know the credit cards uh they've been around for a few decades now, but that's a relatively uh that's not you know that was uh a relatively new phenomenon. I mean in the 1970s people most people did not have credit cards. So, um, but now, of course, you know, everybody has multiple credit cards and they have thousands of dollars, uh, on balances and I get, you know, credit card applications for my cats. you know, I'm not sure how it how that's worked out, but I I get um applications or I did I actually haven't I haven't seen many credit card applications in the mail in recent months, but um you know, it's they've turned society upside down and made us more dependent and less independent, right? So, I would love you to expand a little bit more on why, you know, credit cards, this concern that you just spoke about is such a big deal in today's age. Well, you know, in in today's age, you know, we do use um cards and accounts to make payments for virtually everything. Um so, it's not that I'm against the idea of using credit cards to make payments or debit cards um or even, you know, the use of credit cards to temporarily borrow money. Uh but every smart financial person that I know uh they will tell you that they if they do use credit cards, they always pay off their balances 100% every month. Um, you know, that's just um a general rule of thumb that I've found with people who are stable. Maybe not lavishly uh successful and rich, but people who are stable and uh can afford to buy what they want and live within their means. Um all of those things. Uh but when I was a kid, yeah, people did not have credit cards. Credit cards were a relatively new thing. Um the [clears throat] market discouraged people from using credit cards and of course the interest um on credit card loans. You know, you're making teeny loans that are unsecured. You know, a mortgage is a secured loan. It's a huge loan. There's not much paperwork in the sense that it's just, you know, one transaction. And so the interest rate on home mortgages is relatively low because it's secured collateralized with your house whereas credit cards are not. And so the credit card companies, you know, if somebody doesn't pay their bills, uh, you know, they may lose that money and they have to take allowances for that. And as a result, the risk of credit card lending by those companies and those banks carries a much much higher interest rate on them. So it's unsecured um lending. It involves lots of transactions costs and uh and typically it's people with uh lower credit scores that are using them the most. And so the the interest rate on those things is exorbitant and uh of course it's not there's no tax advantages like there is with a home mortgage. So again another rule of thumb that I found with smart stable people is that yes they do have a mortgage. That's the last thing they try to pay off uh because the rates are lower and it has some tax advantages uh built into it. So, um there are really two different um cases of credit. Uh and secured credit is just at a much lower interest rate. Yeah. No, I hear you. I appreciate that answer because it's also just habits, right? Financial habits. If you want to have a war chest that you want to keep growing, you don't want these habits to compound in like a negative way, right? You'd rather it be going in a positive way. and you would rather than if you're saving your money than learning how you can invest your money. So, we spoke a little bit about silver. I would love to hear your opinion on both gold and silver of why you owe both of them and why you think it's so important that more people need to understand the fundamentals that you were alluding to before, but I don't think you fully went into. >> Yeah. Well, you know, gold and silver are money and the paper notes that the government issues that's currency. Uh it's unbacked by anything real or tangible where gold and silver are real tangible commodities that have a very high demand for them for for a variety of reasons. And gold and silver are property. They're your property. if you own them, they're your property. Whereas, you know, fiat dollars issued by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, those are not properties. are a financial instrument and uh there's no backing to those things and they can be the supply of them can be expanded to infinity um at the any anytime the government officials and politicians um wish to do so. And gold and silver have a many thousands of years um as used as commodities and almost the same amount of time as used as a medium of exchange or as a form of money. Money is a medium of exchange and you know and so it was something that was determined or set in the marketplace and governments didn't really get involved at all until much later. And then of course they realized uh that you know that's one thing that most governments in fact all governments have wanted to control. They've wanted to have some control over um gold and silver. They took over the private minting and the private mining um of these things. Initially they started making their own coins. you know, they realized it it, you know, it was such a great opportunity for them to extract advantages uh from the economy if they could somehow in a form of alchemy, you know, create more money, whether that's shaving the coins or clipping the coins or converting the coins into paper. uh you know they realized that um early on but it was something that was discovered in the marketplace and basically I've done a study of the history of gold in particular but gold and silver more generally and you know um as a matter of fact the French word for money aren is the French word for silver you know so it it's got that kind of history going back to the early days of linguistics and languages. So, it's embedded in human civilization, not in some government uh decree. But the great thing and probably why the marketplace chose these uh metals in in the early metal ages of early human history was that they maintained um a very stable purchasing power of all other things in the economy. So you know right now gold and silver are highly erratic but that's only relative to the paper currency. If we go back to times when gold and silver were the actual money they had a very very stable purchasing power and that's why the marketplace ended up picking them. So uh for example gold and silver have always had industrial uses. Now, of course, it's much more complicated. Gold, silver, and platinum have medical uses. Uh they're used in medical technology and medical devices and electronics. And you know, gold is really too expensive nowadays. So, it's not involved in a lot of the things that could be involved with like electronics and stereo equipment and you know, all sorts of things. It's just too expensive. That's why you see this big emphasis on silver in electronics and artificial intelligence and computers and AI and you know also alternative energies uh solar panels, windmills, all sorts of things. So it's got a lot of practical uses as a commodity but it also has uh demand as money. And so it's got multi- reasons why people demand it. And they also have multiple sources of supply. Uh there are many mines out there that can be opened and closed and expanded and contracted. Uh there's ways to recycle these metals. Uh there's ways to take um uh substitute away from industrial uses into monetary uses. So it's a multiaceted market and they the various uses interact with one another so that the metals are put to their most highly useful purposes and you know that means all kinds of micro adjustments are going on uh constantly in a natural money market using gold and silver and that's why they had tremendously stable purchasing ing power over hundreds of years really. And um and so that's what makes gold and silver great. It's not that they're shiny or it's not that they're pretty. Um it's that they really impact and interact with society and individuals on so many different levels. And it's really the marketplace that orchestrates all of these interactions um so that we get a very stable unit of money but also we can um deploy a lot of gold and silver to its most highly valued uses. And also we put a lot of effort and resources into recycling these metals especially when they're highly highly valued. Um, you know, we go out of our way uh to find alternative ways of substituting out of silver and out of gold uh so that the those elements can be redeployed in other industries or as money. So, it's a very flexible natural marketplace, right? I really appreciate that explanation. And you know, we talked about your nephew and what about if you had a niece who was like, "Hey, I get this. I look at all the fundamentals. I see that gold and silver are real monetary metals, you know, they're not a US dollar that is almost like cash or that cash is trash, you know, or even toilet paper as Robert Kiyosaki always says. Maybe a little exaggerated, but also true. But what if they come up to you and they're like, "Yeah, but Mark, you know what? There's only one thing I'm concerned about. In 1933, gold was confiscated by the government. So, that could happen again. So, I'd love to get your opinion on what if someone is holding back, not because of all the fundamentals are so bullish or strong, but if they're concerned about that, what would you say to them? Well, I think most people are jumping in rather than holding out. But, you know, I understand there's a lot of concerns. I don't think younger people really maybe have never really been told about Roosevelt's confiscation of gold. Um, and you know that's a possibility, but I don't think the go the government has created such a monster of of economic and financial problem that they're not going to really be able to go around and get people at the uh, you know, the tip of a bayonet or a gun to get people to turn in their gold and silver. And I think really that they would be very reluctant uh to do that because they're in such a state of being discredited. Political leadership in the United States is widely mistrusted. Uh most Americans who trust have any trust left in a polit a politician or a political party only do so because they're so afraid of the other party. uh but in general they they don't like what's going on in especially in national politics and they have a very very low level of trust and I think right now uh the level of trust uh on the part of Americans in government in our particular form of national government and the power elites that control it and I think it does seem more obvious today that the power elites control our elected officials whereas I think when I was a kid we didn't there was not really much thought um in those terms and and and Washington DC did behave um a little differently but I think that there's you know a lot of um scams a lot of one-sidedness in American politics there's not a lot of bipartisanship. Um, you know, we have these scandals that are reoccurring. I think the Ebstein case is something that I haven't followed um you know directly and in any kind of detail way but it's it really has infuriated uh a lot of Americans that our politicians won't do anything when it seems obvious that a lot of bad things uh happened and the politicians and the courts are not really following up on what is a huge amount of evidence and there are other things you know people being um you know shot by the government officials uh Charlie Kirk being murdered uh President Trump being shot at you know there's a lot of things that uh just aren't right and um and I think most Americans let's say a a very large and increasing number of Americans ans uh don't trust uh the people at the top and I think that's a good thing because nothing good comes from the top down. Everything good in human society comes from the bottom up. And that, you know, that's an age-old lesson that things that come from bottom up are tend to be, you know, good things or great things. And, you know, things that are, you know, edicts from up on high. and things from the top down are inherently seen as problematic and where you know people's individual situations are taken to account of and so I I think that that you know that the government risks um you know furthering their the disrespect that people have of them if they even suggested that or you know it would be very similar except in much larger numbers numbers if they started taxing people's uh retirement accounts, which I have a feeling that's going to eventually happen. And you know, people are going to be in an uproar. And you know, that these are um supposed to be, you know, once a benefit is given, people assume that, you know, it's their property uh that they paid their taxes and now they're being taxed again. That's going to be, you know, a very unsettling attitude. And the more people oppose government, the better government acts. So if we're if we sit around on our hands and we don't do anything, we don't put up a fuss, um you know, government officials will continue to act more irresponsibly and the political elites will act much more disrespectful to the average citizen. Whereas if there's opposition where there's self-education and people are aware of what's going on or what they should know, what they should be allowed to know and they're not being told. Um, you know, I think that's a problem for the elites. And so, you know, this is not a one, you know, one thing or another. There's a margin involved where, you know, the more we distrust, the more we hold public officials accountable for, the more we know about what they're doing, the less they can get away with. So then let's go there. If we cannot trust them with a T here, let's go with what should people be more educated about? We spoke a lot about gold and silver, but I would love to hear all the hard truths that you want to talk about right now. Wow. Well, I mean, you know, my business is teaching economics and economics is fundamental for society in general. I mean uh what Austrian economics does is it brings a uh you know some people call it common sense but it's really um a hard established doctrine set of doctrines based on economic theory which is using the logic of human action. And once you start to understand and appreciate what the Austrian school has produced and how relevant it is for all aspects of society, uh then you have a tool. So it's not just you working now. You have a tool for understanding the world and politics and current events and history. Very important. And of course, we address all of those things on our web page. We have articles on history. We have articles on politics and political science. Um, you know, current events and, uh, economic policies. And it all starts with, you know, the great thing about Misesus is he wrote an entire treatise on economics of human action at its most basic level. Murray Rothbart also uh improved and extended that. And so we have the tools. And so here at the Mises Institute, we're we're not in the business of telling people you need to support the free market. Uh you need to be opposed to the government. We're here to teach why the free market works, how does it work, and why does go government action in the economy, why does it always fail, why does it always produce a lots of negative results? Why doesn't it ever resolve issues? They tend to compound economic problems. So, you know, that's kind of what I do and what we do and what, you know, Misesus and Rothbart and others have developed these tools, the hammer and the saw and the screwdriver for how uh to work through and to understand things. And and I think that's really important because there are a lot of people out there, in fact, I think it's probably the majority who think the free market's a pretty good thing and who think that, you know, government intervention in the economy is really problematic. But we don't, a lot of us don't know why that's the case. And once we know why that's the case, then you know the socialists who say you know we need a basic income or we need minimum wage or you know housing is unaffordable so we need to build government housing or have rent control. You know well the average person isn't going to know well what's wrong with that? you know, that sounds like maybe something I should support that. But if you understand economics, you'll realize that that doesn't solve the problem. And it makes the problem worse over time. And you know it also you know economics shows that an economy where private savings is invested in the economy creating capital in businesses better tools for making goods and services that you know the economic pie expands and wage rates go up. So, you know, those are some of the basics that we really try to hit home on so that we have a much more uh educated and people who can deal with uh this huge opposition in society that is you know advocates intervention in the economy and nowadays advocates socialism of the economy. I want to continue on this path of Austrian economics. I've spoke a little bit about it on the show, but definitely not enough, which is why I want to go deeper with you. There are some greats or the giants in the space, you've spoken about some of them. I always believe it doesn't matter what you do, whether it's sports, whether it's finance, whether it's economics, when you study the best of the best, you learn a lot. So I would love to give you the mic again here to talk about who are some of the greats and what are the biggest lessons that you've learned from them that you think more people need to know about. Well, the Austrian school has long tradition. It goes back to Carl Manger and his first book um the principles of economics in 1871. But the the actual tradition without that name Austrian goes back a lot longer than that into the 15th century. Uh the person I do my research on his name is Richard Kantion who wrote a manuscript in 1730 right after the Mississippi bubble where he laid out economic theory for the first time. So the school goes way back in time and we've really solved a lot of the theoretical problems that ancient thinkers or Adam Smith, you know, points that Adam Smith didn't get. Um, and nowadays the school has greatly expanded. I mean in addition to Mises and Rothbart, I mean another giant is Friedrich von Hayek or FA Hayek. As a matter of fact, we're giving away a free book of Hayek's greatest hits articles to anybody who who writes us and signs up and wants a copy. You can get the physical copy, but you can also download the electronic or ebook, you know, PDF versions as well. It's his greatest hits. and he talks about economics, he talks about socialism, he talks about choice and currency which is uh the inspiration the for the founders of Bitcoin in cryptocurrency. Um he also talks about why the worst people get to the top in government. Um so it's it's really a great little collection. It's a great starting point, but you can just go to mises.org og and you know whether you're interested in uh sports or finance or history um uh international relations really any topic uh we deal with um you know with articles and lectures and videos and conferences which are recorded and available um you know so many different avenues. So your interests you can find a common bond with Austrian economics where one of us or most of us like I've done a lot of work about the war on drugs you know and uh and my work is cited as is one of the important contributions to the economics of the war on drugs because it explains why prohibition of drugs lead to harder, more potent, more dangerous drugs. And I wrote that in the 1980s. And you know, now it's more important than ever because of things like fentanyl, you know, and so we're out there addressing issues um of the common man on the street. And that's why we, you know, have this aversion to mo the modern political elites that seem to want to remake society in their image. And so, and we've got a lot of great um economists here on staff. Joe Serno is really um an amazing economist. He's our vice president of academics here at the Misesus Institute. He's the editor of our academic journal. We have the jour the quarterly journal of Austrian economics and we also have the journal of libertarian studies too. So we do academic work and academic conferences. Um yeah and nowadays there's Austrian economists around the world. When I went to graduate school, there were almost no um Austrian economists who were still working and working at a PhD granting university. And fortunately, I think Lou Rockwell came around just in the nick of time and um you know started the institute and it's become kind of the bedrock uh for reestablishing the Austrian school. So there's a lot of um Austrian economist in Spain and throughout Europe, especially Poland. You'll notice that Poland, you know, they seem to be a little smarter than the rest of the Europeans and they're the ones that are adding to their gold and silver, you know, reserves. Um, and uh, you know, and then there's Austrian economists really around the world. uh Javier Malay in Argentina, you know, was was a mainstream economist who converted to the Austrian school and became president of Argentina because the people down there had been suffering severely from government uh and unions uh union oppression really and fascism and interventionism um for decades and decades and they finally threw up their hands. Well, You know, things are not perfect in Argentina, but they've made a lot of progress in Argentina. You know, it's a political process, so it's going to be imperfect, but they've definitely turned things around in the right direction. I have, you know, high hopes or at least great wishes that all of that continues. uh and we have you know students and professors coming from you know uh various countries from around the world uh including Japan and China, India uh many of the Eastern European countries in Europe um you know South America and uh so it's a it's a movement that is spreading so It it may still be the smallest compared to mainstream economics, but it is the oldest and I think it's the fastest growing and I think we have the youngest demographic. You know, we have the youngest group of faculty relative to the mainstream and we have lots of young uh supporters out there uh who've come to our conferences and who are on Twitter and in other social media, you know, making um a statement. And of course in the precious metal uh arena, you know, there's a lot of advocates and proponents of Austrian economics because it's we're advocating for a return to real money and away from, you know, paper money. So these are people in in the precious metals, even if it's their business, you know, and they're making money by the fact that government is inflating the money supply and creating a demand for inflation. hedges. They still would rather have uh a free market economy with a free market monetary system without the uh Federal Reserve. So, I think that speaks very loudly um for what Austrian economics can teach us all. When did you first go down that rabbit hole of studying economics in general before even going to Austrian economics? Well, uh, I was a coin collector as a as a young child and, um, I was exposed to the fact that my relatives had all put away the silver coinage, you know, in their businesses, uh, when they took silver out of coins. And I had a couple of silver dollars, uh, excuse me, um, silver certificates, the paper dollars that said silver certificates. And I told my father one day, I said, "I'm going down to the bank and I'm going to turn these silver certificates in for silver coins." And my father said, "No, they won't do that anymore. They'll just give you a new dollar bill." And so I felt like I was I I'd been totally scammed by my government. And you know, I've been that's stuck with me really almost my entire life. Um, now not constantly. You know, I went to through high school and into college. Wasn't really thinking about that, but I did become an economics major. Um and uh it was um at um uh the Libertarian Party had had gotten I'd noticed the Libertarian Party and through that I had become aware of the Austrian school in Mises and Hayek. Um, and so I'd studied that a little bit on my own and I went to an Institute for Humane Studies conference where I met a professor who taught at Auburn University. And so when it came time to graduate from college, of course, it was probably the American economy was in the worst shape ever. Uh in the early 1980s, interest rates were 20%, un um unemployment was 10%. Uh the inflation rate was over 10%. There were no jobs. So I went to graduate school and I ended up choosing to go to Auburn University because I had met this one Austrian professor, Roger Garrison. And uh so I came to Alabama, you know, and people thought this could well people already thought I was crazy. Uh but when I said I was moving to Alabama, they really thought I was crazy, but it's turned out great uh in the sense that Lou Rockwell founded the Mises Institute the same year and moved it to Auburn University the next year. And I've been fortunate to be affiliated with the Misesus Institute in one form or another uh for a very very long time. And you know, we've seen uh the Austrian school and the Austrian movement, the libertarian movement grow from virtually nothing uh into into becoming, you know, an important consideration and something that the power elites really want to squash, which I think you could see very vividly uh in the most recent Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention where, you know, somehow or another the Libertarian Party ended up with without really any kind of national candidate to speak of um mysteriously and and so it's been a heck of a ride and um but I think you know that fundamental notion that the we've allowed the government to be put in charge of money um and it reic on that promise uh in 1971 and you know in 1971 where Nixon took us off of the gold standard supposedly on a temporary basis of course it's been more than 50 years now it's you know there's no looking back really and then of course those times were not good the 1970s the economy was not good. The business cycle was rampant. Inflation was rampant. Unemployment was rampant. It was the decade of stagflation. Um it was a very difficult economic decade for a lot of people, most people um in the American economy. So it really stuck with me. And um when I found Austrian economics, I really started to get some answers beyond that basic notion about gold and the value of money where gold kept the value of money stable. And without gold, everything became erratic and everything became less stable. And a lot of the institutions and a lot of the behaviors um that existed when we were on the gold standard have sort of been cut loose from their moorings and and of course we see that uh to a large extent today in the United States. We had a a a summer research fellow here for a couple of summers, uh Jeffrey Daggner who completed his dissertation work here and which was on the economics of inflation and the family. And what Jeff did was he demonstrated theoretically and empirically how inflation uh has undermined the American family. And uh it's a very powerful argument, set of arguments. Uh it was published recently as a book. And so we're, you know, we're not just concerned with the stock market. We're not just concerned with economic growth. We're concerned really and increasingly so in the bedrock foundations of human society. And I think that's reflected in what Austrian economists have addressed over time and what the institute has been trying to uh promote um and to reinvigorate uh within well not within academia but in academia you know Austrian economics is is is not does not get along well with mainstream economics. they, you know, they don't uh like what we have to say and they would rather that we go away and hide and not uh make our points of view known. They they'll they're much more willing to put up with, you know, the crackpots and cranks on the left, so to speak. Uh the modern monetary theorists and the the outright socialist and Marxist. Um but you know Austrian economics uh has to be ignored and has to be suppressed uh from the mainstream point of view because we do have a point of view with theory to back it that shows that their recommendations and their analysis are faulty and that their recommendations really uh don't solve problems and end up making these problems s bigger over time rather than causing some kind of resolution to problems. >> Why do you think mainstream media doesn't like Austrian economics? >> Well, mainstream media is kind of in bed with uh the power elites. you know, they're they're clearly um you know, controlled by you know, the the mainstream media is controlled by the power elites. I mean, you know, they Amazon owns the Washington Post and you know, this corporation owns CBS News. you know, all the networks, all the major newspapers um are controlled uh by much larger corporations um in the United States and those corporations are controlled by the power uh the power elites and you know so in the in the mainstream media you know you can't really talk they really can't talk openly and honestly about politics. They can't talk openly and honestly allow free speech with respect to vaccines and COVID. uh you know there's no there's no critical discussion of the pharmaceutical industry um or the medical establishment or the Federal Reserve >> or the big banks or you know there's no critical analysis of even you know the federal budget you know and so the main the mainstream media because they're in bed with the power elites and actually owned by the power elites. All of these issues are simply not discussed in any kind of open competitive way in the mainstream media. And you know, anybody who's aware of, you know, the media outside of the mainstream realizes, you know, if you go back and watch uh the mainstream news and the mainstream media, um you know, it's it's a singular almost a singular voice, you know, and that there's very little disagreement uh even between the political parties, you You know, there's just a few issues, a few individual departmental budgets that are contested, but the vast majority of it is all accepted by the major political parties and the major corporations who benefit uh from the system. And the, you know, and the power elites, they all they all benefit. They all profit from an approach that's referred to as kicking the can down the road. You know, that's the policy that they prefer. Uh they don't want to solve any of the problems because all the money that government is throwing at these problems is where they're getting a lot of their profits from. So, you know, quite naturally, um, you know, that the the mainstream media is not really uh an arena, a competitive arena where issues are fully vetted and fully debated. And why, you know, such a huge portion of the active and intelligent uh American population is going to the realm of podcasts. uh to get their news um to get their information uh to be educated about issues and events. Uh because so much, you know, that those people in particular realize that, you know, they could spend a whole year listening to the mainstream media about various contested issues and they're not going to really find out the truth or even come anywhere close to the truth or even a fair and balanced presentation um of the issues. It's just not there. And so that's why people are going hand over fist in incredible numbers to uh the podcast arena where things are competitive, things are open. Um things are um there's a lot of different podcasts um in every different area and a lot of general interest podcast uh with their own demographic audiences. And so there's no way to control uh those groups unless you're explicitly taking funding from, you know, pharmaceutical ads, let's say. you know, there there's no way that any aspect of the power elites can really control that marketplace at this point in time, you know, and but you know, that's always something we've got to be concerned about is that they do want to control everything. you know, they will reach down and if given the opportunity, they certainly have the resources that they will attempt to control every source of information. I really appreciate you speaking your truth about that because it's not always comfortable and you know, it shows that you're someone that you choose to think for yourself and you choose to think critically and I really admire that about you. I think it's also important for anyone that's tuning in to realize that we need more openness. We need more openness. You don't need to even if we're on a different side here, we need to hear opinions. We need to have more conversation. How's the hard talks actually because that's where real progress gets made forward rather than avoid and keep picking the can. Mark, something I I can't help but ask you is if you were to take a step back, you know, from your financial title or your economic title or just all titles aside, who is Mark? Well, that's a good question. Um, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a very mildmannered person. I wouldn't even a couple of years ago I wouldn't even be uh speaking as openly and negatively against the power elites but I've become I don't know if the word is disgruntled but you know I've been preparing myself uh for this battle for a very long time and I got to tell you I couldn't be more optimistic about how this is all going to work out in the end. But it really is going to take um a lot of people stepping forth and understanding the problems that we face and be willing to speak up uh to their friends and neighbors about how they feel. you know, not in the comfort of the voting booth, but you know, we believe that ideas matter. And I I'm just um you know somebody who loves ideas um especially about the free society because everything else in my life that I love um about life, my family and my friends and art and science >> and sports and baseball. Um, you know, I I feel like I want to do my part to protect uh the best of what human society can do and has done. And I think the the Austrian school's belief in the importance of ideology and an understanding a liberal understanding of society, you know, that um brought it in uh to human slavery just a few hundred years ago and started standing up for women's rights just a few hundred years ago. That was something that happened near where I grew up. Um, Senica Falls, New York, the sort of the birthplace of the women's right movement in the United States was just 10 minutes down the road from where I was born and grew up. But the liberals of Europe actually started um working in this direction long before anything like this happened in the United States. So I'm very proud that this intellectual tradition that I've been fortunate enough to be educated in and to contribute little bits and pieces to um you know has done so much to contribute to the the flourishing of human society and the individual human spirit and has seen being, you know, this flowering of, you know, great fiction and great art and uh sports and, you know, rights and um you know, all the magnificent things that the free market society um has helped brought about. Um, and so I see it as a, you know, my work is to go in and do what I can to see, you know, how I can best help protect what's left um of those institutions and hopefully and and I am very hopeful uh that we can really restore uh free markets because if we look around the world, if we look at this in the long term, And we look at in global terms uh you know more and more of the world is actually a market-based economy uh you know poverty is falling the standards of living are rising um income distribution is getting more equal I mean there's nothing inherently necessary or great about equality but you know if we look at the whole globe the distribution of income and wealth is actually becoming more equal as the world becomes more market oriented. So I do take that longer term view and I don't let you know short-term losses and short-term distortions uh day-to-day events discourage me because I think we are winning and I think we will win. I want to build off of that optimism. You have a lot of I think it's beyond hope. I think you have a lot of desire to share your knowledge because when people have knowledge, they can't get it stolen from them. They can't get taxed. And I think knowledge is just super powerful. It also builds competency which then builds our confidence right in. So something I want to kind of ask you here is right now if you think about each person that you're trying to educate right that ripple effect what is it that you're trying to do as your end goal here? Well, um, at a in a very general level, I want people to think for themselves. And I wanted I wanted them to think and this is maybe just a re a recent realization on my part in terms of the last three or four years that it's really important for people to be to self-dagnose to self diagnose their own problems and to self diagnose the problems in society that they see around them. Economics helps with a lot of that. Obviously, we can't start from scratch on any of this stuff. Um, you know, inflation that took us took economists 500 years to figure out what it was. So, you know, we have to rely on competency and expertise uh to a certain extent. But still once you self diagnose something like inflation and you realize the what's causing it and what its effects are um you know you can therefore integrate that into the rest of your activities. Um, I recently had um just this past week I had a surgery to remove a precancerous skin cancer uh from my temple. And you know, it's something we all know a little bit about and you know, my doctor didn't see it. Um, in the examination, uh, my dermatologist didn't see it, but I knew there was something wrong. I sort of self diagnosed myself and I alerted them to take a second look at this thing in particular. And you know obviously I don't know anything about ter dermatology but I you know you learn you can learn a few things on the cheap about any including cancer um and I self diagnose that so I think you know various forms of self diagnosis with a little bit of expertise which you can get pretty cheaply I mean you can get to you can learn a lot about economics by going to Mises org. Um, and you can pick up, you know, a lot about your health, uh, from the medical establishment and the medical anti-establishment. Um, and I'm not, you know, recommending wholesale uh, self diagnosis and treatment here, okay? I mean, I went to my doctor. I went to the dermatologist, you know, I made a realization and I asked for assistance from the professionals. Um but I think we do have to think about things in terms of self diagnosing our problems, our individual problems. Uh be objective. Uh learn about things and then of course our economic problems whether they're individual or where they're they're social. I mean the government has run up $ 38 trillion in national debt. you should know the ABCs of what that implies for your future. And uh it's not really that hard uh to come to grasp with that, but you need to know that so you're not caught flatfooted and that you can make some initial steps in the direction of preparing yourself uh for buying, you know, whatever the problem is. You can buy a fire extinguisher, right, to put out a fire. And that's what, you know, silver stacking is all about for the problems of inflation and hyperinflation and the difficulty of savings in America. It's one little thing, you know, that many many people have found is a practical solution to multiple problems of government in the economy. Um so these are it's not rocket science. Um and you can't be uh you have to be objective about these things as well. So um but it's thinking for yourself basically. I mean that that's that's what it all really boils down to is thinking for yourself coming to grips with what you don't know. I mean that's the biggest issue is you know what don't I know? What do I have to guess at? What am I really unfamiliar with? And if it's important, find out. If this was your last interview today, what would be one last thing that you'd want to share with everyone? Whether it's something you're concerned about or a life lesson, anything. Anything. Well, you know, a lot of what the things that we've talked about today, I've been thinking about for a very long time. And at various points in time in my life, I've been very discouraged, especially when things turn sour. Uh the government goes in the wrong direction. Um you know, that sort of es and flows over time. It seems to have gotten to a very bad point in time. Gold and silver are kind of like the alarm bells in the economy. They're kind of like the canary in the coal mine. If the canary, they used to put canaries in coal mines and as a signal that if the canary died meant that the air was too impure and that it would eventually, you know, people would pass out and die. So it that's what gold and silver are in today's economy. They're like an alarm bell. Um, and so we're at a very important juncture. But I think the thing that I've learned over time in many many different aspects and ways and from historical lessons that I've seen in this country and in others is that the human spirit um has got to be considered not the underdog but the favorite in this battle. government is, you know, it has the advantage of just hanging on uh and tolerated at certain points in time until it gets the upper hand and government has the upper hand right now. But I I have the feeling that we can overcome this, we can um solve these problems, we can get these problems behind us. We might even get to the sort of a philosoph philosophical millstone of where we don't need traditional government at all. >> That government has become really the central problem of human economic and social development. And you know, as this battle rages on over the next several years, more and more people are going to see that point and and hopefully we can get to that point that we were headed towards just a couple of hundred years ago. And uh maybe we can get back on that path where we're moving directly uh towards a society with less government uh in our lives. I hear you, Mark. Well, Mark, I just want to take this last little bit of time, you know, first time meeting you virtually and I've enjoyed this conversation a lot. So, I would love to take this last little bit of time to really thank you for being here. Thank you also too for being so consistent. It's been like so many years, at least 60 years that you've been in this space. So, I just want to drink this last time to just Yeah. Thank you for being here today and sharing your knowledge. Thank you, Ben. It's been great being on your program and I really respect the program that you've designed and are carrying out there for people.