Interest Rates and Market Control: The podcast discusses the impact of government and bank control over interest rates, contrasting it with a free market approach, and highlights the resulting economic instability.
Inflation and Currency Debasement: Lawrence Lepard emphasizes the ongoing loss of purchasing power in fiat currencies, predicting accelerated inflation and advocating for sound money principles.
Economic Perspectives: The conversation includes differing views on inflation and deflation, with references to experts like Lacy Hunt and Steve Hanky, and debates on the accuracy of official inflation metrics.
Investment Strategies: Lepard suggests diversifying investments into gold, silver, and Bitcoin as protection against currency devaluation, noting the historical resilience of these assets.
Energy and Economic Policy: The discussion touches on the importance of energy policy, particularly nuclear power, in maintaining economic competitiveness, and critiques past U.S. energy strategies.
Fourth Turning and Economic Cycles: The podcast explores the concept of the fourth turning, suggesting we are in a period of significant economic and societal transformation, with potential for major shifts in monetary policy.
Market Outlook: Lepard expresses skepticism about current stock market valuations, favoring investments in commodities and precious metals, while acknowledging the potential for market volatility.
Transcript
You know, the the interest rate ought to balance the supply of savings against the demand for capital. That's what the interest rate should be. It should be set in the free market full stop. But of course, what we have is a bank and government cartel that sets it. And that's why we have all these problems. I mean, you know, look at it, Adam. You have 0% interest rates, you know, which makes everybody who can borrow wealthy, or you have 20% interest rates that almost bank my dad in, you know, in 1980 when we were eating tuna fish sandwiches for dinner for weeks on end. I mean, it's just, you know, it's it's kind of a it's just an up and down system that's very painful because it's it's run by a cartel that, you know, the banks and the governments. [Music] Welcome to thoughtful money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Tagert. In my opinion, the easiest macro trend to forecast is that our fiat currencies will continue to lose purchasing power in the years ahead. likely at an accelerating rate. Today's guest not only agrees, but rings that same bell even more loudly than I do. For an update on his outlook for inflation, asset prices, the economy, the dollar, and what to expect next in this current fourth turning, we're fortunate to welcome back to the program investor and sound money advocate Lawrence Leard, author of the book The Big Print: What Happened to America and How Sound Money Will Fix It. Lawrence, thanks so much for joining us today. >> Good to be back with you, Adam. I really enjoy you and your show. So, looking forward to this. >> Well, right back at you. This is your second appearance on the show. Uh, your first one got a lot of great feedback, Lawrence. So, um, looking forward to doing this on a regular basis with you. Um, first off to you, I want to thank you. We're recording this on Labor Day. You're letting me ruin your Labor Day festivities here. Uh, I had some, uh, schedule rejiggering this week and you were kind enough to be flexible to record today. So, thank you very much. Um, look, you um got a lot of questions here for you, but you have done me the kindness of um, watching a couple of my recent videos. Um, one with Lacy Hunt and one with um, Steve Hanky. both of whom are predicting disinflation in the case of Hanky or or really outright deflation in the case of of Lacy. And um I I think there's some things that they've said that you agree with and there might be some things that they said that maybe you have a different opinion on. So, can we start from >> I love those were I thought they were two of your really best interviews recently and and um and I learned a lot and and I like both gentlemen a lot have a lot of respect for both gentlemen although in in Hanky's case I'm not real wild about his view on Bitcoin but we'll set that aside you know he started working in 1970 so it's harder for older folks sometimes to get it let's start with Hanky I mean um and and and I understand that the you know just the whole notion that we could have disinflation or deflation I mean yes of course when you build up a lot of debt and you get way out over your skis, you're bringing consumption forward. And so that debt, if it starts to unwind, that's a deflationary event. I mean, you know, a perfect example of this was in 1929. There was a ton of debt. There was a ton of growth. There was a huge bubble. And as it unwind, we had massive deflation. So, so don't get me wrong, it's not as if we have to have inflation forever, you know, and and in fact, deflation usually follows massive inflations. However, we've got to consider the policy response, and we'll get to that in just a minute. But let's look at Hanky. Um, you know, I thought what he said was extremely interesting. Um, where I really kind of dis disagree that that we could have a disinflationary period. Where I really kind of disagreed with him was partly how he's measuring inflation. We all know that the numbers are are not really true. And I think he kind of accepts what they tell us as as the accurate numbers. And I think you have to kind of read outside the box and realize that no, that the numbers are they're reporting aren't true. But but even for the sake of argument, let's say they are true. You know, he said something in his interview with you that I just found kind of stunning and I I disagreed strongly with where he said, well, yes, I mean, we need, you know, money supply right now is growing at between 4.2 and 4.6%. And if you look at that, Bill just had some great charts that he sent out shows, you know, M2 has now hit a record high and it's growing at 4.8%, he says. And Hanky said, well, look, it's, you know, it's growing at this rate, but that's not fast enough to keep, you know, the 2% inflation mandate. He he made the point and said he believes that M2 needs to grow at 6% to have the inflation target of 2% get hit. And my brain kind of exploded when I heard that because I was just like, hang on a second. M2 by definition is the underlying definition of inflation. Now, of course, it shows up in different places at different times at different speeds. I mean, you know, insurance costs are high right now. I mean, look, inflation is not an even thing. And then then he went on to say, "Well, yeah, notice how, you know, we took rates down to zero and post the GFC and, you know, we had a problem keeping inflation at 1 or 2%." And I was like, "Well, yeah, dude, but you know, look at asset inflation during that time frame." You know, you had this enormous carried interest bubble that got built, you know, in in all the assets. So, so I I kind of disagree with his notion. I mean I I tend to be much more of a hardcore monitorist in the belief that you know in the long run if you look over 50 years M2 has grown at 7% and that's the underlying rate of inflation. Now CPI is going to go up and down. There are all kinds of different things that occur as we know CO drove it up to nine and then you know pow shrinking the money supply by 4.7% brought it back down to well we kind of briefly got it stated at three but whether it's there or not that's open for debate but anyway that's that's it on Hanky. I mean just to kind of summarize um >> and and sorry let me just clarify one thing. So from your tone >> you uh you don't place a lot of faith in the official CPI numbers because you suspect they are higher. I just wanted to make sure that's clear. >> That's exactly right. I mean I just and I think most people listening to this would just have to agree. I mean our I don't you know we are not experiencing 3% inflation today year. I mean I can point to numerous categories where we're well over three. In fact, this morning I tweeted a chart on on electricity prices, average electricity prices throughout the United States, and they're going up at a lot faster than 3% a year. I can tell you that. Now, part of that's based on the AI demand and what I call the AI bubble, and we can get to that later, but um and so that's that's a different matter. That's not necessarily M2 inflation. That's demand driven inflation. But um but yes, you're right. I think the inflation numbers are misstated. And and more importantly, I I really wish in that interview, and I'm sure you know, you can't always interrupt these guys when they're talking. I was kind of like, "Come on, Adam. ask him how the heck he gets to 2% growth inflation with 6% money supply growth. I mean that's a disconnect in my mind anyway. Um so let's go to Lacy who is obviously you know as you said in your thing is one of our best economists and brilliant guy tons of respect for him. Um and he made two points and I'm going to disagree with the first one. I'm going to agree with the second one. The first point he made was that he thought we were in kind of a fiscally balanced situation. And he said that, you know, they were doing the accounting on the big beautiful bill incorrectly and that therefore he didn't actually think deficits were going to grow the way the Congressional Budget Office and others say they're going to grow. And I I would push back on that. My observation is one, if you look at the last few months, I mean, first of all, tariff revenue is good, right? And he said we were going to get 300 plus billion of tariff revenue. I'm not so sure about that. Looks like we're getting about 20 billion a month. So that annualizes out to 240 billion. >> Yeah. >> Although just so you know, um Secretary Bessant has I think as recently as like yesterday said uh he was thinking more 300 billion and is now saying it could be substantially more than that. So >> it might be it might be. >> They got to show us. We got to be Missurians here and say >> yeah. Show me. I mean, well, and and as Hanky or I mean, as um as Lacy pointed out, you know, there's there's a second and third round. Maybe maybe they increase. I mean, we don't know. Right now, what we do know, last couple of months, we've gotten about 20 billion more per month in in tariff revenue. That's good. I mean, that helps balance the budget. The flip of that is that they did the big beautiful bill. And depends on how you look at it, how you score it. And look, Lacy's probably, you know, Lacy's probably forgotten more about economics and being an economist than I know, but I do know that, you know, what I read and what I see would indicate that there are some people who say that it's at least a two or$300 billion in excess spending as a result of the big beautiful bill and arguably could be four, five, 600. I mean, that's admittedly out there a bit, but my point is there doesn't seem to be, from what I can see, a lot of evidence that the fiscal situation is getting better. He claims it's kind of he thinks it's neutral to flat. And furthermore, if if what he's right, what we're going to talk about in his second point is correct and the economy does slow down, that's not going to help either because a slower economy, a slower growth in stock market, all of those kinds of things, they hit the revenue side >> and then some of the safety, you know, measures get hit and unemployment and stuff and the costs go up. I mean, as we do know in '08 and 2000, you know, we had those two big downturns. I mean, the deficit went up, you know, like six and 8% respectively as a percentage of GDP. So if we get a big economic slowdown, which we're coming to in his second point, then the deficit's going to get worse. So the So I guess my belief is that the deficit's really a mess. And I don't see any evidence that DC's really dealing with it. In fact, more recently, I mean, and and God bless him. I mean, there's a lot of things I like about Trump. There's some things I don't like about Trump. I mean, Trump's talking about, well, we're getting all this tariff revenue. Maybe we should send out a tariff dividend. I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? We're running these enormous deficits. You finally start to get closer to balancing the budget. You're going to give back the money that we got as as tariff income. I mean, come on. That's just not going to help the problem. So, but let let's move to Lacy's second point, which I thought was really insightful and brilliant, and I hadn't fully thought through the implications of it. And that is that kind of the Charles Kindleberger argument about what happened when the last time we really did tariffs in the 20s and 30s, >> you know, and the whole Smoot Holly and and as it looks like, you know, in fact, it was um Hanky who said, you know, we're running our Yale says our tariffs are running about 18%. And you know, it was interesting. The smooth holly tariffs were about 19.7%. So we're kind of right where they were on an average today. And Lacy said, "Hey, look, hang on a second. This is a tax. This is going to slow down demand. This is going to slow down the economy. This means that, you know, our trade deficit is not going to be as large, which means that their account surpluses aren't going to be as large. Their account surpluses get invested in our markets. They're not going to do as much of that. Oh, and by the way, the fact that the dollar is going down isn't going to help their I mean, part of why we've been able to maintain the sound markets. we've been able to maintain is that the dollar had been strong and so a foreign investor could come put their money in our stock market and then when they came back to their native currency if the dollar hadn't moved they they had a gain. Well, if they put money in our stock market, our market goes up 10%. But the value of the of the dollar goes down 10% against their currency, you know, their net break even. So that, you know, so that's another reason why, you know, I think our markets are kind of teetering on the edge of of having a real accident. And I know you've had some other guests on that talked about that. I'm not really I mean I'm I've I've kind of given up being a bear on the stock market. It's been such a frustrating experience. I've lost a lot of money behind puts and but but I do know it's not cheap. So um but I I guess you know so the point that he went on to make that I thought was so so insightful was that these tariffs are going to slow things down and they're going to make a mess and most people aren't really thinking that through. And I have to agree with him. But here's how here's, you know, the the party didn't follow through on it. My next conclusion is, okay, that's probably right. But tell me about the policy response, >> right? >> That's that's the point of my book, right? >> Well, and this was my question for you is I actually think you and Lacy maybe see the world pretty similarly. It's just that when we get into this Kindleberger spiral that he's concerned about, that opens the door to the next step of the big >> print. Yeah. I mean that's and so you know and but I I mean I was fascinated. Weren't you fascinated to hear that Lacy thinks the Fed is too restrictive and should take you know go down 100 basis points. I was fascinated to hear that. >> I I was except he had said something similar the last time I'd interviewed him. So I I was prepared for it. Yeah. >> Yeah. I had missed that but I'm kind of like wow. I mean who thought he would be talking Trump's book you know and as he said he he thought about it before Trump came through with you know his 300 basis point cut. But uh but anyway, I mean so so I think he makes a really great point which is that you know these tariffs are going to slow things down and that is going to have an impact on liquidity on the markets on everything else. And so I think we're eventually headed towards some kind of an accident or a problem where the Fed is once again deeply backed into a corner and and I think Trump actually is correct. They are too late. I mean they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't because they really don't have inflation under control. I mean we all know that and yet you know but given the debt burden given the cost and given the fiscal emergency and I really do call it that. I mean I think we are in a fiscal emergency you know with interest rates going up as rapidly as they have the interest expense going up as rapidly as it has. They've got to get that interest expense down. They've just got to or something's going to break. And it's kind of there's some signals it's breaking. You can kind of see it in the 30-year Japanese bond. You can kind of see it in the 30-year UK guild. >> You know the French bond. You can't see it in US credit spreads. >> No. Isn't it amazing? US credit spreads are tight as can be. And the 10ear's hung right in there. I mean, it's now but but to be fair on the 10-year, you know, Bent has been doing what Groman calls, you know, kind of shadow QE twist, which is to say he's been selling short-term bonds and then using the proceeds to buy the longer stuff, right? So he he he doesn't want the So so the real you know the real important thing that's going to come up here and actually my partner pointed this out to me this morning is okay so they're going to take rates down then what happens to the US tenure I mean that you know I've really kind of got my eyes peeled on the US tenure we know if it goes above 5% they've got a problem because we saw that happen in September 2023 and they panicked >> right >> 12 Fed governors talking about how the rate height cycle was over so so to me you know if the 10-year takes out five you know we're all the way in it And I think we're probably pretty close to all the way in it based on the recent price action in silver and gold literally as recently as last week and this weekend. I mean, as you know, silver is now through $40, which is enormous overhead resistance. I mean, like, you know, 20 or 30 year overhead resistance. And, you know, gold has now broken out of a big bull flag at 3500. Bitcoin has not followed yet. I got some interesting data on that if you want to discuss it. But, um, you know, it to me it's like kind of like we're in it in my view. And you know, I I definitely noticed the portfolio I manage. I mean, all the gold stocks I'm involved with are and you mentioned earlier, I think in another video, you said you'd had your first, you know, 10 bagger or something, one of your gold stocks. I mean, we've had some of that, too. It's it's crazy, right? And so, to me, what's happening is the world is waking up to this problem of fiscal dominance, the problem that the government can really only solve it by printing money and that the basement, yes, it's bad, and guess what? It might get worse. And to me, that's the biggest thing when I listen to all these podcasts. The thing that I feel like enough people aren't screaming about is how bad the inflation's going to get. I mean, I've got some data points. Um, the last time we had yield curve control was right after World War II. And they were dealing with 130% debt to GDP at that time. And, you know, the Fed had locked in the the short rate at 38 and the long rate at 2 and a half%. And this all was before the Treasury Cord in 51 when they changed it. But in that in like 47 and 51 they had some they had one month where inflation was year-on-year up 17%. They had another month where year was up 21%. I mean this these were eye peeling inflation numbers. That was all because they were doing yield curve control. They were holding those rates low. The only way they could hold those rates low was to print the money and expand M2. And it grew massively. And then that led to inflation. And I was kind of like, okay, this is going to rhyme. you know, I can see I can see where this is going, you know, so we're not there yet, but it feels to me like we're very close to the edge on that. >> So, a couple of things. Um, so I I'm I'm right there with you, and I do want to talk about the action that's going on in in gold and silver and Bitcoin. Um, uh, and as I said in the intro, look, that haven't done a ton of these interviews, right? the there's a lot of things that that I can put on a spectrum of probability. >> Yeah. >> But the thing I can put >> the furthest to my high confidence part of the spectrum is that the purchasing power of fiat currencies is going to continue to go down, right? For for all the reasons you wrote about in your book and you've mentioned a number of them here. >> Um now the question is is you know uh what's the path between now and then going to look like, right? And and guys like you and I, you know, Larry, we we got into gold and silver a long time ago because we saw this risk. You got into Bitcoin. I personally haven't really gotten into it that much. And you know, yes, do I wish I had bought it back in 2013 when I interviewed the data architect behind Bitcoin? Absolutely. But I didn't. Um uh and but but you know, Gold and Silver, you know, between 2013 and two years ago, you know, it was a rough slog, right? So >> tell me about it. I mean I, you know, I detail that in my book. I mean, I I tweeted the other day about how, you know, um, meet with triumph and disaster, you know, Kipling. I mean, in 2015, I mean, I was I was I was broken. I was a broken investor. I really was. And I, you know, I I converted religiously and I I mean, I went and I just I thought I sat there and I thought to myself, well, there's there's got to be a higher plan here and I'm just going to hang on because I think I'm right about this stuff and there's no going back. So, yeah. And and by the way, that you know, that's kind of happened to some people in Bitcoin, too. I mean, remember, Bitcoin is not a free ride. You know, if you bought it at Sam Bankman free peak of 65, it went to 15. You know, there are a lot of people who did that and when it went to 15, they thought they'd made a mistake. And even today, >> yeah. >> Yeah. Even today, I always tell people when they're looking to buy it, I say, you do realize this can go down 50%. You mean you got to be ready for that. And and you got to you got to realize that if that were to happen, you would want to be thinking about buying, not selling, and thinking you made a mistake because as you know, a good friend of mine, George Bodin, puts out in his one tweet he put out recently, if you Bitcoin, if you hold it for four years or more, you're always you've always been in a profit historically. But a lot can happen in that four years. The volatility of those draw downs is no fun. I can assure you I was there. >> Right. So that's my that's my point here, which is, you know, you can have really high confidence in the outcome. Yeah, >> but the path might kill you six ways to Sunday if you put all your chips on that app. >> Absolutely. Have you have you ever seen Dan Murmurachan's chart, his Weimar chart, the gold, you know, a brilliant chart. Dan's a great guy, a great monetary scholar and uh yeah, I mean these monetary events are confusing and volatile and leverage is not your friend. You know, you gota you got to know what you own. You got to know why you own it. And the reason I own gold and silver and Bitcoin is they are form I believe they are all forms of money and I know for a fact the government cannot print them. And so but and and you know what happens on the price daytoday. I mean there are plenty of people who beat me up for poor performance and in a down cycle and I recommended Bitcoin at the New Orleans gold show you know at 50 and it went to 15 and I got a lot of angry calls and I just said well you got to wait you know I mean I it's um I I invest in a 5 10 year window. I mean, I I look at I look at longer term. I I I'm much more concerned with being right longer term with than with being right in a, you know, in a six-month or one-year window. >> Okay. So, totally agree, though. Again, the point I wanted to sort of stress for folks is you it's probably going to be a wild ride no matter what happens. But you you've got to be an active manager on this. Um, and if you decide just to put it all on on your high confidence outcome in the long run, that's your choice. Just know that it could be a real bruising ride between now and then. >> Well, correct. But the point and the point of the book, by the way, just to reemphasize, was that I still think that if you look at, and I don't know exactly who your audience is, but I know it's huge, and I think it's a lot of everyday investors in America, and I still think a very large percentage of that base just owns a lot of stocks. >> Oh, absolutely. >> Yeah. And and does not own a lot of this stuff. does not own a lot of Bitcoin, does not own a lot of gold, does not own a lot of silver. And and I, you know, I really tried to write the book as a wakeup call to that base of people is say, "Hey guys, this monetary debasement thing is real. It's a trend. It's going to last multi-year, maybe decades." And, you know, at least for a while, you have got to have 10, 20, 30% of your assets over in this bet because if you're all stocks, that's that's just not the right allocation. You know, that's what I was trying to say. >> So, and I I I agree with that I think the book does a really good job of making that argument. Um, you you're largely right about this audience. I would say uh like everybody I mean right now the retail investor has more exposure to stock than they ever have and and scarily the this the population of retirees the oldest population. >> That's right. The boom is their highest exposure. >> I I look at all my friends and neighbors and they're all just and they're feeling great because they've had a bunch of great years and they've been very heavily trained to buy the dip. I mean, since 2008, if you bought the dip, you're looking good, you know, even even as recently as this year, you know, I mean, Liberation Day happens, wacko, you know, we're down 10 12% really fast. But, you know, if you bought it, you're feeling okay today, >> right? And I and I I wonder, and this might be a question for later in the discussion, you know, are are is that cohort just whistling past the graveyard here and and you know, kind of on a collision course? I think I think you would think probably so, but >> I think they are, but I but I could be wrong. I mean, I've been wrong before. >> Yeah. Well, so where I'm going with this is, um, again, we may have confidence in the outline, but the path between here and there is is inherently unknowable. Um, but we can probably have some confidence it's going to have some big twists and turns, right? So, so Lacy, again, I I don't want to speak for him, but I'll I'll I'll do my best interpretation, which is um you know, he he's very concerned by the debt overhang, as you are, right? And I mean at the end of the day, you know, unless you can get this economy to sustainably grow at much higher rates, which I don't think anybody really sees happening. Uh we we we don't have that visible hope on the radar yet, we probably it looks like we are hurdling towards a a default and it will either be a default of um uh choice where we just say, "Hey, look, you know, these debts are going to go bad and we're going to let the the borrowers take their lumps." That is not generally how things go with the way the show is run. Um we generally default by printing and that just you know we we we pay back the debts nominally but but to do so we basically um reduce or destroy the purchasing power of of the currency. So when I talk to Lacy I see him being very concerned about um the debt problem. He is concerned about the level of fiscal spending um if it didn't come across as much. I mean it's still something he's very concerned about. And um I just think in the near term he thinks look this economy is at risk of slowing much faster than is conventionally appreciated right now. And um >> I share that view. >> Yeah. And so that that could Larry, I'm not saying it was, but I'd like to get your thoughts on this. That really could take the inflation worries away in the near term, right? Inflationary impacts of tariffs. So there's people who think tariffs could still be inflationary even though Lacy says evidence is they actually are deflationary because they reduce liquidity. So we could go through a period even a recession um where inflation gets taken off the table as as an immediate worry, right? And now all of a sudden we're all worried because companies are firing people and nobody has jobs and that type of stuff, right? doesn't mean that we should take our eye off the ball for from purchasing power uh uh reduction purchasing power because of your big print expectation. Right? So all I'm all I'm going with this on this is right now I interview a lot of people and where they see inflation going and and bond yields going in the next 12 months is probably the single greatest area of of um disparity in experts outlook. something something we're think we're stuck in a in a new inflationary cycle and it's only going to go up from here and tariffs are going to make it worse and bond yields are going to be sticky or they're going to keep going up no matter what the Fed does. Others like Lacy I think you know what deflation's going to win this battle in the near term or you know near to midterm next 12 plus >> I I think that's possible. I mean I think one of the things that he's probably banking on is the notion that even if the Fed does all the inflationary things I'm talking about it won't matter. this bubble is so damn big that you know that there will be no demand for anything and if if demand goes down a lot prices do fall that is >> deflation and and I think that's why he's saying he thinks the Fed should be cutting 100 points right now. >> Yeah, that's that's certainly a tail case for me and I and I don't I don't discount that. Um I still think that even in that tail case on a I know on a relative basis gold, silver and bitcoin will hold up well compared to stocks and probably okay compared to bonds. I mean there won't be necessarily I mean yields could fall but but again I think I think the policy response will be so massive and so aggressive and they tested it with co you know as you saw I mean they they just created so much money so fast we've now got the concept of stimmy checks out there >> yeah direct direct payments know how to wire money directly to people you know um you know we the PPP gave you know trillions of dollars to businesses I You know, as Ben Bernaki famously said, you know, we have a technology called a printing press and we can stop deflation from happening. And uh, you know, whatever it might take, I I think they will view deflation, hardcore deflation, as an existential threat, and they'll behave in a way, a policy response will be so aggressive that that the outcome will be inflation. That's my belie. Now, I, you know, I could be wrong about that. Um, it also depends upon the politics of it all. I mean, um, you know, there's we've got a Trump administration, and I found it fascinating. I was just interviewed by Michelle McCrory, and she showed me an ad that Eric Trump was running for gold, uh, and goldbacked investments. I think he's being paid by the company, but and you know, he said, "My dad's a big, you know, fan of sound money and gold." And I was like, "Wow." And we've heard Trump say things like, "He who has the gold makes the rules." >> And we've heard Andy Sheckchman and others, and I agree with them, say, you know, all these gold imports this year might have been refilling Fort Knox. And I I have an old friend who knew some of the Treasury officials now dead in the Johnson administration. I I think Fort Knox was drained when they supported the London gold pool in the 60s. That's my thesis. And we don't have all the gold that we say we have there. But I think they're trying to refill it. >> Well, and when the French were, you know, taking it >> Yeah. And when the French were taking this stuff out. Exactly. And so, so, you know, Yeah. I mean, it's Look, it's it's it's the right area to be debating. And I don't think any of us know. And I think one of the reasons we really don't know is we don't know what the government's going to do. We don't know exactly what the policy response will be. And what I've done is I've mapped, you know, the last 15 or 20 years of policy responses. And you know, you're a politician. Your choice is let the entire world collapse and you know, we're fighting in the streets and the ATMs don't work or you're going to print the money. You know, pick one. And they're always going to pick the pick the print the money. >> Yeah. And let me interject to this because your your book does a great job of of making the historical argument for why we should expect more of that going forward. Um and uh I I actually think um we don't even need to get to that level of of sort of existential threat before elements of the big uh print start kicking in. Um, you know, I I think Lacy could be. Look, this doesn't matter what my opinion is, but you know, the laces of the world think that, hey, look, the sledding is going to get tougher economically in the near term as these forces of deflation, hankies disinflation take over in the near term. But if and when it gets to the point where we start seeing some real pain, the central planners are going to step into rescue mode, right? And, you know, we don't even necessarily need to go into recession. I just think if bond yields, to your point, if they start going up to five, right, the the Fed hasn't said this publicly. I've heard a lot of people who who talked to the Fed say, you know, QE is going to be kind of politically tough for the the Fed to to ramp up again because it it really kind of became appreciated that it really just more than anything else just drove wealth disparity. >> But but at the end of the day, this government has to fund itself, right? And if and if it starts really compromising the US government's ability to fund itself, I think they're going to go back to Q. I think the odds of them going back to >> Well, yes. And I think Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's it's interesting though, they're going to dress it up. They're going to create in my opinion, and this is just a guess. I I don't know anything, but I you know, I just you have to speculate if you're making bets on this stuff. And my speculs to do it. They're going to they're going to go to the banks and give the bank and and they're going to actually they're going to use foreign banks as well. >> Yeah. you know, they're going to say, I mean, what if they went to the the JGB, the Japanese central bank, and said, "Guys, we're going to give you an unlimited swap line at 50 basis points, but you got to use the proceeds to buy the tenure, >> right? I mean, and they could do that, right? They can do the same thing with the US banks, guys. We're going to take away all the SL, the supplementary leverage ratios, all the restrictions, all the regul, all of it. It's all gone. You have to buy the treasuries." Oh, you don't have enough capital to do it? Fine. you know, the new lending rate for the Treasury purchase program that we've just initiated is X. And by the way, X is below, you know, the Y, which is the Treasury Y. I mean, frankly, this is I mean, it's in my book. This is what happened in World War I. I mean, it was brilliant. What they did was, you know, liberty bonds, remember they were selling in World War I, they had to, you know, support the war, be patriotic, buy Liberty Bonds three and a half%. >> Then they went to the banks and said, "Guess what? You can borrow us from us at 3%." And the banks were like, "We can." And they were like, "Yeah, this is" and and they said, "Okay, we we know how this works. We're going to borrow from you at 3%. We're going to buy the Liberty bonds at three and a half percent. We're going to get five 50 basis points free, you know, because risk, right? And that's what they did. And that's how they grew their balance sheet. That's how they finance the war. I mean, this is kind of the evil partnership that we've got between the government and the Fed where, you know, the Fed gets to keep the system going and the government gets the things they want paid for paid for. Right. >> Yeah. Well, and this is kind of like, you know, the Brent Johnson like, you know, just we got a lot of dirty tricks that we still have yet to pull out of the bag here. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the do the dollar is not dead and America's not going away. I mean, you know, there are a lot of smart people in DC. I mean, and they will come up with all kinds of new things. In fact, in Luke Groman's newsletter this weekend, I'm not going to spoil it because you got to subscribe to get it. He had another one that they're talking about doing that was really brilliant. I mean, um, and it relates to the Euro dollar. So yeah, you know, they they'll figure out ways to do it, but but at the end of the day, Adam, as you and I both know, all of those things lead to some form of currency debasement because >> absolutely >> because Growth has to exceed Rates and the only way you can do that is to inflate G, you know, and inflate. I mean, and we're not we're not getting natural growth because it's not like we're having huge productivity thing. We can get into AI if you want, but but you know, the growth, the form of growth we're going to get is inflationary growth, right? So, >> so let me ask you this because you're I think um you not uniquely positioned but but few people have your you know straddle the world that you do of sound money, Bitcoin and what's going on here um in the areas we're talking about these stable coins the the administration's hunger to get the stable coins involved. I mean to me that seems pretty transparently they just want additional buyers of treasuries to you know it's just incremental demand hopefully trying to bring some of those longer yields down. >> This is a great place to go into because I got a lot of thoughts about this. Okay. So so yes I mean again they're looking they're starved for treasuries. They got seven to n trillion they got to roll over. They don't have enough buyers. They're going to find ways to do it. And what they went and they noticed these stable coin guys of course you know circle and tether all they do is buy stable coins. Well not true they buy some gold too but you know >> I mean all they do is buy treasuries. the stable coins treasuries. Yeah. By treasuries. And so, you know, Tether's 160 billion and and Circle 60. So, there's $220 billion of stable coin round numbers, you know, demand for treasuries. I mean, some of that, as I said, goes into gold, but um but you know, they've got a roll over 79 trillion. Now, that number has been growing at 50% a year, but most of that is actually I was at a show, Adam, and I learned, you know, those stable coins, what those are really being used for, that's an alternative to the Swift system. Stable coin market grew when we shut Russia out of Swift. And suddenly I was I was at a dinner with a bunch of Russian business people and they all said, "Yeah, we all just got Kraken accounts and started using stable coins because we couldn't use the Swift system to make dollar payments." Right? So that's what's going on there. And I the whole notion that stable coins are going to bail us out. That kind of reminds me of Doge and we all kind of know how Doge worked out, right? We're going to save two trillion. No, we're going to save one trillion. Well, maybe we'll save 300 billion. I mean, right now it's kind of like unclear that we're really saving anything. thing. I mean, I think they got some bad programs, but it's certainly not what Elon and and VC were originally discussing, right? And I think the same is true with the stable coin market. Although, again, kind of as a teaser, what Luke had in his most recent quarter talks about something that would arguably drive a lot more demand for stable coins, and then that would be the balance sheet needed in order to buy more treasuries. But yes, they need to find somebody to buy those treasuries. But I'm pretty sure they will. I mean, I you know, because they got they've got the pen, they can write the laws, they can change everything. You know, they've got offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. I mean, you know, we're not going to fail tomorrow, and the dollar is not going to go away tomorrow. And the US isn't going to fail, but but guess what? We're going to have inflation. I'm really confident about that. I mean, we might have really shortterm deflation. I mean, I think >> Well, that's where I'm going. Like, will the yield problem potentially solve itself in the near term if the economy slows enough? >> Yeah. Yeah, it could. I mean, I could see I could easily see let let's say something really breaks like the AI bubble bursts and a few bad things happen and the tariffs really bite and unemployment really starts to go up and you know we kind of hit a deflationary trend. I I could see the 10-year Yeah. declining from you know from the fours into the threes. I mean and everybody's kind of you know you know I mean stock market's down you know 10 20 30%. I mean it's it's possible. Although if you look at, you know, on on the tariff, it was interesting on liberation day, stock market got whacked pretty hard. Bond market got whacked, too. I was kind of like, huh, >> that's not so good. You know, stock market going down, the bond market should catch a bid. And it didn't. So, you know, yeah, what you're talking about, that's the old history playbook and that's probably how it should work. If there's a big enough deflation, bonds should catch a bid. But, you know, on the other hand, you know, that that that debasement horse is out of the barn. you know, gold is running free, silver's running free, Bitcoin's running free. You know, geez, you you let a little stock market burst, you know, stop people from going into sound money. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, it's it's a question mark, right? >> Well, you're you're taking it where I want to go. And just to let you know, you know, there folks I've been interviewing recently. Jim Carson comes to mind from Kai volatility >> who pretty much has that same um outlook like, okay, it's going to get tougher. Um yeah, the the economy is going to slow down. Uh you'll have probably some safety trade coming into bonds and stuff like that. Uh but like you, he expects the same policy response. So for him, he's like this is a trade for bonds. like yeah this this is something that you got to play but you got to again be active >> well and I remind everybody I'm a multi-year guy. I mean I'm not you know I'm not playing quarter by quarter for my results. I'm I'm you know I'm trying to manage in a two five 10 year time frame and then I'm going to retire. So >> yeah. Yeah. And I mean to to that point um you know they they they they in the old days they used to say that Vulkar and the the heads of the um Fed looked at the gold watch the gold price closely because it was basically the mirror uh being held up to show the dollar devaluation right now. I think I I think that maybe they they they began to care a little bit less about it in the past decade or so as as Grant Williams famously wrote, you know, back in 2011 or what or 2012, like nobody cares about gold. Like yes, I understand all your reasons for why this should happen, but right now nobody cares about it. >> That's that was the truth. Yeah. >> Yeah. Now they're starting to. Um but but I I I think maybe in this now we're getting into the price action that we're seeing in in we've seen in Bitcoin and then we're now seeing in gold and then as recently silver you know it does seem like enough people care that that maybe there is a um sustainable repricing going on in these things where people are saying look you know what we kind of we kind of relegated gold silver precious metals as the barbaric relic. We we we initially were looking at Bitcoin as just make believe, you know, money. >> But now we're really beginning to wake up to this sustained, >> hey, no matter what choice gets made, it's going to reduce the purch. >> The last the last four years have been very instructive. I mean, if you held 20 or 30-year bonds, you've lost 30 40 50% of your purchasing power. And if you held gold, you're up 200% in bond terms. If you held Bitcoin, you're up 2,000% in bond terms. That's from LA the last five years, from 2020 to present. So that kind of a move, I mean, what you described with Lacy and the deflation, I mean, could there be a severe counter trend move? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think people have to be aware of that and prepared for that. And frankly, it's probably due to come because we're all feeling pretty giddy right now that we've been right. And so it could come at any time. But again, I I just know where I think we'll go. And I I see some things on the horizon I think are very positive. We haven't talked at all about the Fed and I don't want to get into all the, you know, the Real Housewives of the Fed drama that's been going on, >> but but we do know that that Powell terms out in May of next year and the Trump administration is aggressively, you know, campaigning for lower rates. And so in in I don't think we've broken the last inflation cycle. And I think we can almost be assured that in starting in May of next year, we will have a very dovish Fed. And so I think that the the the sound money alternatives to the dollar, they can all smell that and that's why they're doing what they're doing, right? >> Do so. Do you think that's driving the recent action here or is that people are thinking, oh, it's because that follows the president? >> I think it's part of it. I mean, I think I think it's a combination of things. I think it's the Doge failed. I think it's the you know, the Liberty Caucus caved. I mean, what happened to the Liberty Caucus? I mean, you know, Trump bullied all of them except for Massie and and Ran Paul into basically accepting a huge increase in spending bill, right? Um, you know, the big beautiful bill came through. >> I mean, it's right. I mean, it's just and and then even Bent pivoted when he said, "Hey, you know, um, everyone's asking about he said, well, we we've kind of changed our focus. Our focus now is on growth." You know, I mean, >> remember he he was talking about detox. We're going to have this period of detox. And like, you know, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe that's not such a good idea. Let's focus on growth. And and it's almost and it's industrial policy like and and they're and they've kind of they've shown you that they're going to take the gloves off and do whatever it takes. Hey, Intel, guess what? We get to own a piece of you. You know, I mean, and and I mean, to me, they're going to, you know, I I think the military has told them that this is existential and that the that the bond market I mean, tell you another interesting thing. So, I'm at I'm at the Bitcoin show in Las Vegas last uh year or early this year. And a guy who's very highly placed, I checked him out. I did all the the LinkedIn on him in the defense establishment. I mean, threeletter agencies, one of which was the NSA, came up to me and said, 'Your book is burning up the halls of all these agencies. I said, "Really?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, our job is to look at existential threats to the United States and hyperinflation is one of them, and I've told everybody they got to read your book to understand the issue." Right. And so, yeah. Isn't that interesting? Right. So, >> I mean, I'm not I'm not surprised that a great book is getting widely read, but it's similar to my question to Lacy where he was talking about Kindleberger and, you know, we were talking about how the Fed had kind of been saying right up until Jackson Hole, hey, everybody's everything's fine, everybody. And then all of a sudden, he pal was like, whoa, wait a minute, that we're starting to see the economy cool more than I wanted to. Right. Um, and so they're beginning to maybe, >> you know, say, hey, uh, we we don't want to risk >> maybe we're behind the curve. No, I mean he >> but but the point is just let me finish the point which is um >> you know like Kindleberger is a famous economist. He's written books on like the Fed has how many PhDs? Like >> so I'm sort of what surprises me about your story is just like >> the the the clear lack of financial literacy that we have on average across government because a lot of what you're talking about you would think anybody that was sort of remotely connected to fiscal or monetary policy would have a general sense about but apparently not. Well, you know, I think it is kind of stunning and as he talked about, they're all neocanesians and there's nobody who's, you know, a neocclassicist like he is. I mean, yeah. No, it's look, I mean, the the there's a part of our government that's actually kind of smart. I mean, borderline parts of it are evil as well. But, I mean, at least, you know, I know that Jason Lowry wrote something called software, which is the case the the strategic case for Bitcoin. And he told my partner David Foley that, you know, look, uh, the people in that run the Pentagon, run the defense department, run the DoD, etc., They understand what the sound money, you know, what what Triffin's dilemma has done to this country. They understand the sound money thing. I was trying to make that point earlier. I mean, it's an existential threat because as we've now read, you know, Adam, the basically, you know, we couldn't even go to war with China if we want to because they've got all the rare earth we need to build our weapons. It's just like, whoa, how did that happen? Well, somebody wasn't paying attention and and that's, you know, and and and so Trump comes in with a very blunt instrument of tariffs and he's swinging this axe around, but good god, somebody had to do it because the route we were on was literally towards becoming, you know, just a vassal state of China and uh and that's that's not a good outcome. >> All right. So, I I got a bunch of questions here. I'm start Well, and and you're you're on you're touching on one of them here, which is >> um you know, this not a political channel. You're not necessar I don't I don't see see >> I'm a libertarian I'm very much a libertarian >> you're a libertarian you're a guy that kind of calls balls and strikes as he sees them >> what kind of grade do you give the Trump administration's economic policies so far >> I'd probably give them a B minus you know I mean you know I I think they're they're certainly better than the alternative um I think they understand that sound money is important I know Robert Kennedy understands it everyone should go listen to the Robert Kennedy speech at Bitcoin Nashville it's an outstanding ing speech. He gets it. >> When when was that when was that made? >> It was not this year. It was probably 2024. >> Okay. >> Highly recommended. Um, you know, Bent gets it. I mean, Bent's admitted gold bug. >> Yeah. >> Bent's positive on Bitcoin. Miran is positive on Bitcoin. I mean, I think they understand what unound money has done to this country. I think they understand how Triffin's dilemma has hollowed out the manufacturing base. I mean, Bent said it or I mean, JD Vance said it. You know, Wall Street's been doing just fine. It's time for Main Street to win. you know, and and by the way, for that to occur, the bond market's got to die. And it's and it's going to die. I mean, they're they're going to kill it. And and and you know, they don't say they want a cheaper dollar, but they want a cheaper dollar. They want a serious dollar devaluation because that's necessary, you know, in order to solve this imbalance that we've got that that, you know, has put us in the position that we're in. So, I mean, I look I I think they I think they mean well. I think they're going in the right direction. I think they're trying hard. I think some of it has been hamfisted. Um I think some of it is unrealistic. Um, obviously Liberation Day was kind of, you know, I mean, what happened on liberation day was fascinating to me, right? Because the bond market basically schooled Trump, right? You know, we're going to do all these tariffs and the bond market and the stock market, the bond market falls, stock market falls. Well, maybe we're not, you know, maybe we're going to rethink that. And so, you know, I mean, they they so they, you know, okay, but fine. So, they adjusted. I we'll put a 60 I was it a 60-day or 90-day extension? I think it was 90, but they they put an extension on when they went into effect, right? And um >> I'm trying to think if they did more than just >> I can't remember what it was. Somebody somebody will put it in the show notes, but anyway, the bottom is they put an extension in and the market recovered, so on and so forth. So they I I think their intent is right. They're kind of feeling their way around in the dark. I I give them, you know, who who could get it perfectly right. I mean, it's 20 years of misadventure in the wrong direction. I mean, you can't fix it in a year. I mean, he hasn't even been there a year yet. Right. >> Right. And I I would say from a monetary policy standpoint, you would say it's more like 50 years only because I'm >> Well, that's right. If you want to go back to 71. >> Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um well, look, I I think this is coming from your book, but just to help listeners here. So, Larry, where does this end up uh currency-wise? Do do you think the US returns to a backed currency of some sort at some point in time? I'm sure to get from here to there is going to be wicked painful in a lot of ways. But do do you think we end up with a new monitor? >> Marblehead. Yeah. Your marble head upbringing is showing because there aren't many people I speak to who use the word wicked. >> When you were talking about about Lacy earlier, I was going to say he's wicked smart. >> He's wicked smart. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a great question. And um, yes, I do. And I think only because it's it's the Church Hillian line of Americans do the right thing after you try everything else. I think I think the way this goes is that inflation becomes the problem of our age for the next 10 years and at some point you know enough politicians like Kennedy or Vance or others recognize that this is the core of the problem and that we need to return to some form of sound money and actually chapter 26 in my book is the speech I would give as a president to how we do that and the reset we would need to do and it's been done before I mean on a different scale smaller but with some different facts Roosevelt did it in the 30s and 33, you know, grabbed all the gold and repriced gold to fight deflation. So, >> um, you know, that could be done here and there are many people who've described it. Judy Shelton has proposed, you know, a gold back treasury bond. That would be one way to do it. You could also do a bit bond, which would be a treasury with some Bitcoin attached to it. I mean, you know, but yes, we will. We we we we must and we will and and and just natural forces will cause us to drift back to sound money, which is not to say the dollar will necessarily disappear, but the dollar is going to have a lot of competitors. And certainly the bond market, you know, the I mean, I look at gold and Bitcoin as really reserve assets, not necessarily reserve currencies. And and currency, as you know, has two pieces to it. is it's a savings vehicle. It's a store of value vehicle. It's also a medium of exchange vehicle. Well, in today's world with technology, you can exchange one thing to another in the heartbeat. You know, you got Venmo, PayPal, dollars, yen. I mean, it's it doesn't matter. The currencies will all be out there, you know, for payments. But what what people will be willing to hold that they trust will be gold, silver, and bitcoin in my view. >> And and those will come center stage. and and perhaps even to the point where I I you know I kind of dream and think in my book and we're talking you probably after I'm gone we're talking 20 plus years out here I actually believe my kids might be doing transactions of Satoshi's which is the smallest unit of one bitcoin so um you know and the dollar might be a thing of the past and every might be saying well you know how could it be that you guys let 12 people in a market-based economy set something as important as the price of money I mean right >> we all know price fixing doesn't work that you know the the interest rate ought to balance the supply of savings against the demand for capital. That's what the interest rate should be. It should be set in the free market full stop. But of course, what we have is a bank and government cartel that sets it. And that's why we have all these problems. I mean, you know, look at it, Adam. You have 0% interest rates, you know, which makes everybody who can borrow wealthy, or you have 20% interest rates that almost banked them with my dad in, you know, in 1980 when we were eating tuna fish sandwiches for dinner for weeks on end. I mean, it's just, you know, it's it's kind of a it's just an up and down system that's very painful because it's it's run by a cartel that is, you know, the banks and the governments. So, >> all right. Um, I am biting my tongue to to not go deeper on some of these things. Just >> I'm happy to go. >> I've got the time if you want to go deeper, so just let me know. >> I appreciate that. I I just don't want to keep you here for hours, but but let's let's keep hacking away here. So, um, >> uh, as you referenced earlier, um, silverber is is above long-term resistance. Um, really, I think getting above 35 was a big deal. >> I agree. Yeah, that was the first that was the first measure. 40 is a bigger one. Yeah. >> Yeah. And now, now, at least on the day we're talking, uh, silver futures are 41 something. >> Are they? I had looked. Yeah. >> Yeah. The momentum we saw that started on Friday is continuing. Now, of course, US markets aren't open. We'll see if that holds tomorrow. Um, but we've got that and we've got gold futures at an all-time high here. So, what significance do you place on this new rarified territory that the precious metals find themselves in? >> Well, it's a breakout. It's a breakout after many years of suppression. And, you know, if you kind of some people would say, well, these are too expensive. They have to come back down. And I would say, no, no, no. You need to compare them to the outstanding money that we've created. And, you know, I mean, Brent Johnson has a great table. It's actually in my book as well that shows that to fully back the dollar with gold and this was a couple years ago, you know, at today's and 100% backing, by the way, is not required to have a gold standard. I mean, you can run a gold standard at 20 to 40% backing, >> right? But if you wanted 100% back the dollar, you know, M2, you know, with gold, you'd have to have $90,000 an ounce gold. Now, you know, it's not there. It's at 3500. And so, so they I I I believe they have a lot of room to run. And people have asked me my outlook. I mean, I think we see 4,000 this year and probably five the next year. And I can clearly see up to 10, you know, in the next, you know, five to plus years. And and with Bitcoin, I can kind of see, you know, I think 140 this year and, you know, higher following years. I mean, they'll probably be at some point it'll get ahead of itself and we'll have a real, you know, we'll have that 50% pullback that'll scare people, but in, you know, 2030 plus, I think Bitcoin's a million dollars a coin. I said that at New Orleans, I think it was last year, and a lot of people gawought and made fun of me and argued with me and this that and the other, but >> once you really kind of dig into what it is, which is to say, you know, it's the first commodity that can't be manufactured beyond its limit. So every other I mean, so we've never really seen anything like Bitcoin before. I think people have to get their head around that there. There has never been something like this. There's never been a financial thing with a fixed supply ever. Gold grows at 170 a year. In 40 years, we'll have twice as much gold on this planet. In 40 years, there'll still only be 21 million Bitcoin, right? So, putting it getting your wrapping your head around that is is why it can just keep going for a very long time, and I think it will. >> So, a couple things. First off, thank you. You uh as a good interviewee, you interpreted uh or anticipated the questions I was going to ask you. So, thank you for those price targets. Um the 1 million um prediction for Bitcoin. Just want to let you know, you know, a few others share that. Mark Moss um made that prediction about a year ago when he spoke at our conference. Um but I mean I I know when you made this prediction, Larry, it was yours was no less um courageous to make it at that point in time. There's still a lot of people that I think um can't wrap their brains around that. Um let me ask you this. I asked this a little bit last time and I I I we should probably spend a whole uh interview on this at some point in the future. So, let's just give it a tiny bit of of discussion here. But, >> um, you said, you know, something like Bitcoin hasn't existed before where it's intended to not be able to be, you know, it's it's fixed. It's intended to be fixed at what it is, right? I I think so. There's a lot of people, I think, who watch this channel um, who don't own Bitcoin, and they're not philosophically opposed to it. They're probably a lot like me where they should be really philosophically for it because we're fans of sound money and stuff like that. But one of the hurdles they have is, "All right, I get it, Larry. They're not going to make any more bitcoins than the 21 million that are out there, but why can't somebody tomorrow create another coin that's just as competitive, maybe as a few other bells and whistles, and that's going to be fixed, too. So, how does Bitcoin get to keep it? How does it defend itself?" >> It's a great question. It's a great concern. We deal with it a lot and I I I fully understand it and all I would say is that it has to do with the network effect of what people adopt as money. And so a and and and don't get me wrong, I I accept that as a risk. It is one of the risks, okay? It's not like a zero probability risk, okay? Um but but a good analog to that might be, well, okay, how about tomorrow somebody's going to make a better Amazon, right? They're going to have all the things for sale, all the people buying there, all the usage of it, etc. It's just it's going to emerge. It's going to have something some feature that causes it to make Amazon die and it's going to win. I mean, in other words, there there's a you know, it's called metaf's law. There's a network effect here that's in place where, you know, it would take something substantially better to cause people to migrate off of this network and onto a better network. Do you follow me? And people say, >> I totally do. So, so there's two things here. There's the the network effect, which is the bigger the network, the more value it has, right? That's why eBay beat every other auction site out there because they just had the most sellers and then so that attracted the most buyers, which then attracted more sellers, right? And it snowballed. and and Google and Amazon are other examples, right? >> There are other examples of that. But I want Google is a great one to mention here. So, um so then there's switching costs, right? Which is like look, I'm I'm using Amazon or what I'm I'm using provider X and just for me to stop using it and move over to this guy is going to have a big hassle factor, right? And so that's true that that goes handinhand with the network effect. But let's look at Google. And this might not be a direct analogy, but you know AI is coming out. I know panicking because of Google. >> Yeah. All of a sudden a ton of people are doing their searches on chat. >> I know. And my, you know, my 30-year-old daughter works at Google. I mean, and and so we we've had this discussion and >> and I, you know, again, Adam, I I don't think it's impossible that that there could be something that would be better that would come along. I I think you know you'd have to see it and and you'd have to you know and and you you know that you could see what what would happen is if it was doing extremely well and Bitcoin wasn't doing well and people were migrating from Bitcoin to it because of its better qualities. Well then that would be a data point and and maybe you'd go over there. But I I think you know one of the things one of the other things I think prevents it from being you know that happening is it's based on this proof of work which in the early days was very hackable. you know, if you get a 50% attack, 51% attack, if you control more than half of the mining capability of it, you could, you know, basically corrupt it and cheat it. Okay? And >> and when it was smaller, that would have been possible. I mean, I know people who were mining them on, you know, M2s. I mean, it was crazy how easy it all was. >> But now you've got billions and billions of dollars, 20 plus billion dollars probably spent in the mining industry, you know, on these specialized ASIC factories that mine it. And you know the notion of somebody conducting a 51% attack or just it's ridiculous. You couldn't you know it couldn't happen again. And so so and if you look at it there are people who debate is this a discovery or is it an invention? I don't you know it doesn't really matter. It's you know it's the same with an airplane. Was that a discovery and invention? I call it an invention. When they invented digital scarcity you only get to do it once. And and so and that's really the big breakthrough here. What Bitcoin brought that was never existent before was a form of digital scarcity. And so, you know, can somebody else create digital scarcity? Yes. But the first mover advantage and the largest network, I think, win, unless for some reason, you know, if Bitcoin core really screws up Bitcoin and somebody comes up with a much better version of it that causes a lot of people to go over there instead of here. And those things are possible. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't discount those. And I'm always looking around for other things to wonder, could that happen? You know what I mean? But but to date, I don't see anything like that. You know what I'm saying? >> Okay. And I appreciate your open mind on this and just again my one man. >> It's a legit I gotta tell you I had all these concerns myself. I mean it's you know this your bit moving down the rabbit hole of believing in Bitcoin and owning some Bitcoin. It's hard. I mean I had Max Kaiser telling me in 2011 or 12, you got to buy this dude. And I was like it's like Max what the are you talking about? I mean sorry pardon my English. My wife's going to be mad at me because she monitors my my stuff. Um you know what are you talking about? I mean you know they've tried this. I mean there was hash cache, there was ecash, there was digital go. I mean it doesn't work you know it just does not work because every one of those had a technical flaw and and of course you know we've got the having you know and the difficulty I mean all the things that went into constructing Bitcoin you know right 256 the cryptography I mean it's kind of an amazing collaboration of a bunch of technologies is like oh wow we cracked the code we figured out digital scarcity >> do you know what I mean and it all came together. >> Yeah. And and look, I I I don't just my opinion, but I I I I agree with Larry, like I I don't see uh the high capability of somebody resting Bitcoin from, you know, the crown from Bitcoin anytime soon. Maybe never. I I'm totally open to the fact that, hey, it might be the the long-term winner here. Um so, even though I'm raising these questions, Larry, it's not like I think it's going to go away. >> Well, I I know I know where you're at. I I feel like you're almost orange pill and I mean once you get settled in Nevada you got to start buying some because then you'll be in a tax-free state. So >> yeah, exactly. And look, part of it too is I I'm I'm I'm sure once you buy it and you experience some real growth in it, then you get that >> it's selfreinforcing. Yeah. If I bought at three or 400, I'm feeling really great about Right. >> Yeah. I mean must be you must be feeling awesome about that. So um last question on this just again p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p poking holes so that the skeptics of Bitcoin can hear your answers to them. Um back to AI, you know, I think AI has has surprised many people, not even doubters, maybe even some of its fans with in certain areas about how quickly it has improved, right? And and it does improve at an exponential rate, right? So there is the risk that maybe not tomorrow but maybe not too far after tomorrow we really get into kind of quantum computing and cryptography that can um break uh Bitcoin6. Yeah. No, that's and that's that's the other thing I worry about and it's that's a legitimate risk as well and you I'm not a computer scientist. I don't write code. I don't understand any of the issues there. I just listen to the smart people including Adam Back and Lyn Lyn Alden and others and I I I just what what I from what I understand you know where they are on AI or where they are on quantum and the pace of the development it's not even remotely a threat for at least a decade and maybe two but as you point out we have been it's funny AI in some ways is really positively surprised but I would also say in other ways you know I think there's a lot AI reminds me a lot of the internet bubble um there's just a lot of hype I mean does it make my life easier and your life easier. Sure. I mean, I can I can ask a question, get an answer like that. It's fabulous. >> But you go to a website and you use their AI chatbot to get help and you're pulling your hair out. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, and it's I mean, is it going to, you know, I mean, I've heard stuff like, well, in five years there'll be no white collar jobs because of AI. And I'm like, h I don't think so. You know, I mean, there might be a few less parallegals because one parallegal can do 3x the work, but, you know, and there might be a few less financial analysts, you know. I mean, there there's some great uses of it. It's a tool that helps people, no doubt. And and I you know I think in 1015 years it'll probably have a larger impact than any of us could imagine. But but I mean the the market is now pricing it as though it's all going to happen next year. And uh you know I think I mean wasn't there a recent I read a recent survey said like 95% of the companies who've been involved in it you know said that the project have kind of been a failure and yet so many of these technical big tech firms have been putting billions and billions of dollars into it. I mean >> it pay paying huge bonuses to hire people and it's nuts. It feels it feels very 2000 like to me in terms of you know we're never going to have enough bandwidth you know >> um I mean having seen that show as well it does to me as well especially just some of the gargantuan valuations some of these firms are getting and that being said a lot of cases they do have real revenues but again these are revenues by people who are who are it's with capex right so it's on the hope that they're going to make some operating profit down the road that to your point the operating profit >> I think I mean I chat I paid $200 to chat GBT because I want the unlimited version of it. I think they're making pretty good money off of that. But it's, you know, it's I mean, like I look at the the Palunteer valuation. I mean, and of course it's all government spending anyway, but I'm just like, huh? >> Yeah. But 200 times sales or something crazy like that. >> I just Yeah. That that just can't last. But but I mean, you know, the problem with these bubbles is they go on longer than you think and either look stupid in the beginning or stupid afterwards. So >> that's that's the classic Husman quote. And yeah, and and with this one too, you know, >> just as Scott McNeely famously >> Yeah, I love that. >> Said, "Hey, you guys are valuing some micros systems at 10 times sales. You're nuts." Sam Alman just came. I mean, of all people, Sam Alman said, "This is a bubble." >> Yeah. Right. >> Right. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know timing timing the bursting of bubbles is extremely tough. I mean, I I know people who tried to short Japan. I know people shorting the internet. I mean, look at, you know, one of one of the greatest investors of our times, Dre Miller, you know, got on the wrong side of the internet bubble with I think he bet billions of dollars and lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the internet bubble, you know, >> by shorting it. >> Exactly. >> 989. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um All right. Curious to hear your answer to this question. think I know what it is, but um so obviously you um are a substantial investor in both the precious metals and Bitcoin. >> Yeah. >> Do you trade between the two at all depending upon their relative valuations or are you just stacking and holding as you go? >> I'm stacking and holding as I go. Um so what's happened to me, Adam, is that I feel much more bullish on Bitcoin than I do on gold and silver. And which is not to in any way denigrate gold. I love them. hate it when people knock them. Um, but at the margin I'm a buyer of Bitcoin, whereas at the margin I I haven't bought a lot of new gold and silver. I bought a lot of gold and silver miners, which is a slightly different kettle of fish with a lot of risk involved. >> And of course, what's happened to me over the years is my Bitcoin waiting has just become higher because it's gone up faster. >> Um, and I've never, you know, I'm not into selling my gold and silver. I'm not going to do that. But I, you know, I mean, let's say I'm I earn a salary at my job, which I do, and let's say I have some excess capital and I want to put it somewhere. I usually look for the best opportunity. I mean, recently actually that's been in some gold and silver stocks, but in general, if it weren't there, you know, I would be a buyer of Bitcoin. Um, >> okay. >> And is that pretty much for the reason that all things being equal, you know, given your outlooks, you think Bitcoin has a higher probability of increasing by 10x than gold? I >> I think that's right. I think I think that I mean, in the book, there's some good charts that show how Bitcoin has outperformed gold. And and really the reason for that, I mean, gold is the best form of money that's ever existed until Bitcoin came along. And you know it it p it protects against purchasing power but it's also fully distributed. The reason Bitcoin's outperforming gold is that you've got an adoption curve going on. It's this Malcolm Gladwell. We're only in year 15 of something that I think is going to be adopted for a bunch more years. And so you know as we know the total gold market is $20 billion. The total Bitcoin or I'm sorry 20 trillion. The total Bitcoin market is $2 trillion. And so you know there's just more growth in Bitcoin. Right. >> All right. um you had prepared a slide um comparing gold and Bitcoin. Let's not forget that. So, why don't you pull that up as you're p as you're pulling it up? Let me just ask you this question. So to the person who just hasn't gotten on the Bitcoin train yet, but but understands follows your logic and and is saying maybe I should own some of this stuff, but man, the big money's already been made and me buying in is going to have to be an admission to somewhat that my idiot brother-in-law who bought in seven years ago, who probably bought in for all the wrong reasons but made a crap ton of money. Um would you just say forget all that? It's just a >> saution. I'd make a couple of statements to that. I'd say one, zoom out because you might look wrong short term, but in five years you're going to look really right. You know, if you're in I mean, let's say you're a gold and silver person. You got all your money in gold and silver, you got none in Bitcoin. Okay. What I would submit to you is that's not correct. You zero Bitcoin is the wrong allocation for something that's this asymmetric. And even if you only sold 10% of your gold and silver and put it into Bitcoin, you should do that. And by the way, you know, in the short run, the go the Bitcoin might go down, but in the long run, I think it will outperform the gold and silver. The other thing I say to people who are experienc what you're describing is price shock. I've had a lot of people come up to me. I, as you know, I've been a sound money person for years. I've been pumping gold and silver for years. People think, you know, my wife used to say, "Don't talk about the at cocktail parties. We need to stay popular around here." Yeah. And and and now they're calling. >> I think my my wife might have said something somewhere to me, too. >> Yeah. And now they're calling me say, "Hey, what should I do? Is it too late?" And I'm kind of like, well, you know, it would have been better a year or two ago, no doubt. But, um, I try and use the following analogy. I've used this in other podcasts, but I'll just repeat it because I think it's relevant. I think fiat currency is failing slowly but surely, consistently over time. It's sinking. Kind of like the Titanic is sinking. Okay. I think gold or sank. I think gold, Bitcoin, and silver are seats on a lifeboat away from sinking fiat currencies. Now, I got my first Bitcoin seat at 300 bucks. I got my first gold seat at 300 bucks. I got silver seats at $5. They're a lot higher right now. Those seats cost a lot more today than they cost back when I was originally buying them. But if what's going on in fiat currency continues, I think you want to own one of those seats, right? Even if it costs you $3,500 an ounce for gold or, you know, $120,000 a coin for Bitcoin. And of course, as you know, you can buy fractions of both. You don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin. You don't need to buy a whole ounce of gold. So I just think to not have some allocation in this bucket is is not you know it's not good asymmetric investing I guess is what I would say based on what we know about the risk of monetary debasement and and then I think everybody should decide that allocation should be what are you comfortable with knowing that these things are volatile and could go against you 30 to 50% but you hold them as long-term insurance against the government trashing the money and it seems highly likely the government will trash the money So that's that's that's kind of how I I speak to them. But I don't know. Can you see the chart that we were talking about that I've now brought up? >> I can I can see it. Let me just make one perhaps poor analogy and then then I'll give you the the floor here. So when it comes to buying into Bitcoin because of of you thinking it as as sound money and perhaps the the future superior form of sound money, it's like uh you know uh the fall of of Saigon um back in um >> in in the Vietnam War, which is like don't haggle what your the price of your seat on that last helicopter is going to be. Just get on it. >> Exactly. That's that's I think it's a very good analogy. you want that seat on a helicopter badly if if what's going on in fiat continues. And you know, and as I say, I'm not suggesting to anyone that you should put 100% of your money in this bet. I'm just suggesting to a lot of people who have zero in the bet that like, oh, no, no, no. Wake up and pay attention to this. And I think I think if you do, I think in five years or 10 years, you'll thank me. And in the same way that people today are like, well, gosh, it's 100 grand, Larry. You paid 10 for it. How can I pay 10x what you know you paid for it? I'm like, okay, but but just accept that in six years, say, and I think it'll be about six years to go to a million in six, you know, because it's it's it's 10xed. It's it's order of magnitude grown like a bunch of times. It went from one to 10 to 100 to a,000 to 10,000 to 100,000, you know, in 15 years. So, kind of every three to four years, it would 10x. And I think that it'll 10x again. And so, at some point in the future, it'll be a million bucks. And you'll be thinking, god, I wish I bought it at 100,000, >> right? >> That that seemed cheap. And it's so it's all just don't let the price framing mess you up of what it for what it is. Do you know what I mean? >> I do. And sorry, last question before you talk about the chart here. >> Do you have guidance any strong guidance to people when they say, "Okay, well, what should I buy in at? Should I should I actually buy it and buy the coin itself and hold on exchange or have a cold wallet? Can I use one of these ETFs?" Like what do you have? Yeah, I just give you I'll give you the real quick overview on that because that's a long deep rabbit hole that we could go down. I mean, to get price exposure to it for the average person because learning how to self-custody and managing your own keys is a time-consuming process and for those who aren't technically literate, it's scary. You can get price exposure to it with your, you know, with your brokerage account by buying IBIT, which is the Black Rockck one, or FBTC, which is the Felity Fidelity ETF, and you've got price exposure, and you're paying 30 bips as a fee, which isn't very much. And so, if it doubles, you're going to double your money. Um, you know, or 10x, you're going to 10x your money. Um, but the issue there, just full disclosure, is that if we ever had a Democratic administration in the future and Stephanie Kelton was the Treasury Secretary and they decided that Keynesianism was the rule of the land and that Bitcoin and gold were ruining their beautiful fiat system and that therefore they needed to confiscate all the Bitcoin very much the way Roosevelt did with 6102. And they called up Fidelity and they called up Black Rockck and they said, "Send all those Bitcoin to us and we're going to give you dollars." Well, you'd be screwed. because the value of Bitcoin would skyrocket in dollar terms and you would have lost yours. >> And so that's the argument for self- custody which is a longer that's an involved process that um probably we don't want to go into in this call or in this uh pod but you know people can easily look into self-custody bitcoin a lot of people can help you with that. >> All right that's a very helpful concise answer. Thank you. So let's go to this chart. >> Okay so this was prepared by my partner David Foley who runs a Bitcoin opportunity fund. their private partnership doing extremely well a lot of Bitcoin public and private companies great results they're open to accredited investors I got to put in a little advertisement there I'm an adviser to them not a principle the Foley and Lavish run it but he prepared this chart and what this shows the orange line is the price of Bitcoin and the gold line is the price of gold and of course the scales are very different right I mean um you know on the because Bitcoin's going up a lot more than gold um you know the right hand scale is the price of gold. The left hand scale is the price of Bitcoin. I think it's I think it's log because of how fast Bitcoin has gone up. But when you lay the two over each other, what you see is that gold tends to look at early 2019, gold tends to smell monetary debasement before Bitcoin. So it broke out and started running and Bitcoin sat flat from 2019 to 2020ish and then suddenly it woke up, you know, to to what was going on with COVID and it went berserk, you know, it just went straight up and outperformed gold. And then of course when the correction came post that, you know, and they could smell POW was probably going to get tight, then Bitcoin corrected a lot. And this was the Sam Bankman free dip. But um and gold corrected a bit too. And so, but back back again, you know, 2022 when they can start to see that the Fed is is probably getting closer to the point where they're going to pivot again, which they did by announcing in the fall of 2023 that they weren't uh that the rate hiking cycle was over. Again, gold started to smell the debasement first. You know, Bitcoin started to go up a bit, but then Bitcoin really caught fire and raced past gold. And then when it corrected, it corrected more. So, you know, and and again, you see it here. Then Bitcoin broke out again. Well, then eventually bit or gold broke out again. Bitcoin caught on, took off fast. So, so we're now in a period where, you know, basically the Fed has been on hold. They've started cutting, not aggressively. I think they're going to be forced to cut aggressively. And gold's been forming a big bull flag that this chart's not updated. It just broke through that 3500 number. And Bitcoin's actually kind of languishing. And I got a lot of grief on my Bitcoin, you know, or my Twitter thread. You know, what the hell's going on with Bitcoin? Why is gold working and Bitcoin's not? I'm just like, guys, Bitcoin smells it first or gold smells it first and then Bitcoin follows through much harder. And that's just the pattern that we've seen over these years. And so, you know, that's how I get to my re my belief that we'll end the year at 4,4500 gold and then this Bitcoin line is going to at some point in here really catch fire and we're going to 140, you know, probably, you know, late this year, early next year, you know, up from today's one. What are we at? 108 today, I think. So, um, but I think it's an interesting chart, interesting way of looking at it, isn't it? And in general, you can see how they're both kind of correlated as forms of sound money. Now, some people say, well, yeah, Bitcoin's a proxy for the NASDAQ, and it certainly was more of that in the past, but I think I think there I've seen some studies that have shown that that's beginning to decrease as time goes on. And that, you know, while it is a liquidity driven, risk-on asset, it's not trading step forep with what the NASDAQ's doing. And and you notice that in fact, because this year it's greatly outperformed the NASDAQ. I mean, NASDAQ's not up very much this year, and Bitcoin's up solidly. So, >> all right. Well, really, really interesting. Okay. Um, I've got a few more questions I want to try to squeeze in before we're done here. Thank you for going along with me here. >> Um, I'm going to see if I can pull up this chart, but I wanted to get back to uh your comments that you had made earlier about um electricity costs. >> Yeah, Twitter feed. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I'm I'm going to pull that up. So just bear with me one second here. Um here's your tweet. I >> think you were retweeting uh a tweet from the >> Kobe Kobe letter. Yeah. >> Yeah. And we can see energy prices take off. And I I've shown a chart, Lawrence, of um America's energy productive capacity relative to Europe's and China's. And basically America and and the EU have been morbined for decades. It's kind of like a you know a sideways trending line where China >> Yeah. China's just shooting the moon and to your point you know to the extent that AI has now become sort of you know an existential race race on the sovereign level like whoever wins AI is going to be the next you know uh reigning superpower. Um we have to dramatically increase our electrical production and rebuild our grid and and it seems like the new administration has got religion around that. We got a lot of investment going in there, right? >> But let me let me ask you this question. Um, so yes, this is um uh inflationary meaning, you know, electricity or energy is an input into everything, right? So the more expensive energy becomes, the more expensive everything becomes. We're talking kind of about electricity here, but um we could maybe even make it energy at large. Um, back when be right before the shale boom happened, when peak oil was, you know, all the talk, um, a guy named Jim Paplava asked, uh, who who is, >> I know, >> a financial interviewer like me, he was a previous generation. Um, he asked a really interesting question. He said, um, is oil, specifically the price of oil, now going to become the next Fed funds rate because it was the limiter on the system, right? You know, the central banks can't print more oil. And if we were starting to sort of run out and it was just going to get more and more expensive, >> you could have made the argument that, hey, yeah, oil was going to actually be what mattered, the price of oil was going to matter most to to what the economy was going to do, perhaps even more than the Fed funds rate. And I'm curious, given that we have such a a deficit of where we need to be going forward, could we be entering an era where electricity costs or just energy costs in general might actually become more important than the Fed funds, right? >> Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think um and it's interesting that you both in a way gold and uh Bitcoin are energybacked currencies. I mean, it takes energy to mine gold and it takes energy to to, you know, run the Bitcoin. >> Doesn't take much energy to run the Fed printers, you know. Well, I guess it takes more than we thought that the new headquarters is going to be 2.5 billion, but Right. But, um, yes, I think what you're describing is completely correct and accurate. And I think the reason, you know, it's so sad that that this has occurred, Adam, and I I laid it out in my book. I mean, you know, China was building nuclear reactors and and they got a lot of coal and that's dirty and they're they're a big poller and that's not great. But but they invested very very heavily in nuclear. Meanwhile, you know, we didn't do that probably because of the oil and gas lobby prevented us from doing that. And we went and spent $8 trillion trying to conquer the Middle East and then retreated from it, which was just such a colossic um colossal, you know, strategic error on our part. I mean, it just it drives me nuts. I live in Massachusetts. High energy cost in Massachusetts kilowatt hour 34 cents. All my neighbors have Teslas because they're virtue signaling. But I've done the math. It's more expensive to drive electric at 34 cents than it is to buy the gasoline at today's prices. And >> it's kind of like, huh? You know, and and and you know, and it's tragic because, as you know, you're from Marblehead. I mean, >> you know, Quebec has got oodles of, you know, five to seven cent, you know, hydro power, but all the environmentalists in Northern New England won't let us run it through their state. Do you know what I mean? And so um yeah, I mean I the US energy policy I mean to me and I I' this is an area where although Trump is you know drill baby drill and open up mines and get all the strategic minerals and you know takes an investment in MP and a lot of smart stuff. Boy, I I really wish they would take on I mean we we need we need a Marshall plan for nuclear energy for the United States. And it's interesting in a in a conversation I had with Michael Sailor he said don't worry about it Larry. The reason it's going to happen is that AI is going to demand it. I mean, if you want if you want these AI productivity gains, you can't do this without having nuclear power. >> We have got to have nuclear power. And so, >> right. And I I believe I actually don't want to make this assumption, but you know, there's a lot of people that say, and on the way there, we're going to rely a lot more heavily on natural gas as kind of the bridge fuel, and you'll see a lot of new investments in there. Um, sounds like you you see that happening. >> I totally agree with that. Totally agree with that. And we've got a lot of natural gas. That's a beautiful thing. >> Yeah. And a lot of cheap natural gas, which is >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, that's all that's all on the come. I mean, you know, um for those who think I haven't been kind enough to Trump, I would just make the statement that, you know, this administration has been such a breath of fresh air compared to what we would have gotten with the other side, you know. Um but that doesn't mean they're perfect. >> Yeah. And it is interesting kind of back to my question to you about, you know, can energy set the tune? Will energy set the tune from here? I mean, it it it it sort of is already, right? I mean, we we we you you've mentioned So, we've looked at how our chief competitor, China, is just way ahead of us on this, right? And we say, look, if we if we want to >> the IRS is going to be one on plentiful, cheap available electricity. They're way ahead of us. We got to catch up. So, we probably will sort of have a an Apolloesque or Marshall plan uh put together to to make that happen. And I feel like it's already probably in the process of getting >> I think they're working on it. I hope they are. They should be. >> And and you can say, "Look, we had a lot of missteps." And you could compare this administration to previous ones, but you can to really see how badly you could be, we just need to look over to like Germany, right? >> Yeah. Well, they Yeah, they've done even worse. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, we didn't help them by blowing up the Nord pipeline, but Yeah. They've done even worse. >> Yeah. And so, you know, um I guess my point is is hey, you know, we're not the worst at this, but um what is it that Duneberg says? Well, there's that there's that saying like decline is a choice. And and sometimes, you know, um yeah, if we're not first in the race for something we care about, it's because we were making the wrong policies. The good news is, as Duneberg likes to say, um it's a lot easier to remove a political strength than a a political constraint than a geological one. And the good news with America is we still have a ton of resources that we could be using more aggressively and if we just get the political constraints out of the way, we can we we can actually maybe have the future we want. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. There's there's a really bright future here if we do the right policies. There really is. We can fix this monetary all this. I mean, I've been accused of being a doomer and I'm not a doomer. I'm just an older guy who's seen a bunch of cycles and I know how this works. And so, you know, I I just I can see that we are we are truly in a forth turning and and monetarily there's going to be some real turmoil here. And and as you I think you said, you know, very preiently earlier in the conversation, there's no way we don't get out of this with some pain. You know, there there there going to be some winners and losers, sadly. And um you know, but we but we do need to get out of it. I mean, and that's why I I argue that the sooner we get out of it, the better. I want my kids, my grandkids to grow up in a world that's more like the one I grew up in, you know, where we have a middle class and things are fairer. You know, I mean, this this world right now is really really upside down. The book talks about that a lot as you know. >> Well, from your lips to the universe's ears, buddy. Um, fourth turning. Wish we had more time to really delve into it, but quickly, where do you see us in the fourth turning here? Um, and less timewise and more >> disruption. Um, I, you know, I don't think we haven't hit the climax and the resolution. That's for damn sure. That's when the currency system will have changed. Um I it's easier to do it time-wise. They tend to be 20 to 30 years long. I think this one started in '08. So that means, you know, 2028 to 2038 is the end point if they're 20 to 30 years long. Um and some were shorter. The Civil War was a little shorter. Although if you can if you think that the war started in 1850 instead of 1860 and it kind of did because there's a lot of strife and ended after reconstruction in 187 was probably 20 30 years. Um you know, the revolution was, you know, was all of that and and then some. Um, yeah. I don't know, Adam. I mean, I think we we're, you know, we're get we're getting to the we're getting to the heart of the matter to be honest with you. I mean, it's, you know, the fiat money is kind of failing and, you know, 2008. Okay, fine. They put it back in the bottle. They made it to 2020, you know, fine. Okay, they put it, they got it back in the bottle. But, of course, it was bigger. Um, you know, the span between those two was quite long, right? Um, you know, 12 years. I don't think it's going to take 12 years for the next one. I think it's coming up in the next three years probably. Um and then you know what what happens with a currency event is if you if you study and I've read read so many books about hyperinflations around the world and study them all they occur when a quorum of the people come to realize that there's no way the government can ever stop printing money. Mhm. >> And at that point in time, they all just kind of it becomes the smart it's Gresham's law, right? The smart thing to do is to just get the hell out of this currency and own something else. >> Yeah. >> Boom and prices go nuts and the whole the whole nine yards. And we've seen it. We've seen it in emerging countries. We've seen it in Venezuela. We saw it. We've seen it in developed countries like Weimar, Germany, Zimbabwe. Lots of third world countries have had it. Some big ones have had it. You know, sometimes it's a political revolution. Happened with Mao, happened with, you know, the Russian Revolution. But, you know, you have you have a currency event and the currency fails. I mean, I I find it interesting. I I I talked to a lot of people from South America because I'm in the mining investment business. I talked to people from Argentina and Peru and they kind of get it because, you know, their currencies have all failed multiple times. >> Oh, yeah. They they it's not academic to them. They they've got >> real. I mean, they talk about I had a guy talking to me about how his parents, you know, used to get paid and they'd literally go to the supermarket right after they got paid to buy the food or else they weren't going to eat that weekend. So, so, so I talked to a guy from Argentina who said the same thing, but he said the trick was you had to get to the supermarket and see where the guy with the sticker gun was because like twice a day that he'd go update prices ahead of him to get before he put the new sticker on it. Yeah. Isn't that something? >> Yeah. So, you know, we haven't had it at a reserve currency level in kind of maybe like forever, unless you want to argue the Roman Daenerius failing was a reserve currency. But um and but yet you know I I like to say you know pursue emerging market policies get emerging market results right and and we're pursuing all the same policies we're spending more you know we're at the point now where we're printing money just to cover the interest. I mean that pretty much does it right. >> Have you have you ever seen that acronym? It's sort of a meme um fa around. Yeah yeah yeah f around and find out. Yeah. Maybe maybe that should be changed to fiat around and find out. >> I think that's about right. I mean it's the same Yeah, it's the same idea. Yeah. The other acronym I really love is um um NTS what nothing stops this train. I love >> Yeah. Yeah. Lalden. Yeah. >> Because it really does seem to be I mean you know the political system I mean it's funny. I mean one of the problems is that when they set up social security they thought people would you know people were dying in their 60s and 70s. Of course, we're now living to our 80s and 90s and we have all expensive health care and you know, so the boomers are going to get screwed on their social security because they're just not going to buy as much as they age. But, you know, and it's the third rail of politics. They can't touch it. But effectively, they're going to they're really going to get screwed in the sense that they're going to lose half. Okay? So, you're not going to cut social security, but you're going to cut the purchasing power what you get from social security. So, you get to the same place, right? So, um, this is a whole other thing we could we could talk about that I I we just don't have time to derail it, but I've been talking a lot about this recently where yes, there is going to be a big wealth handoff from the boomer generation to their children. >> Yeah. >> But I don't I'm going to take the under on it because I think a lot of that is going to get lost in the decline of purchasing power and and how far medical you end of life medical care costs and and assisted living. >> Totally agree. Yeah, totally agree. I mean, and it's really sad. And that's what that's what's so great about Sound Money. I remember very clearly watching my dad who retired with a with with a very respectable amount of money for a Midwestern businessman. And I just watched him kind of run out of money slowly over time as the you know, as the inflation ate away at it. Do you know what I mean? By the time >> it's interesting how that drive that drives a lot of us. I saw the same thing with my mother. >> I'm 68. I at some point I really do kind of want to stop working. I don't want to run out of money, you know? So, you save money. It's kind of like, okay, what can I save in so that doesn't get stolen from me by inflation in the future? You know, >> it's a real issue. >> All right, my friend. Well, look, um, let me let me start to land the plane here. One one more sort of major question, then some wrap-up ones. Um, just, uh, do you have a general market outlook uh, from here? Um, markets are obviously richly priced at the time we're talking about here and we've mentioned that the economy is slowing and that tends to not be a great cocktail for future asset prices, but I don't want to lead your answer. And secondly, do you have any sort of recommended positioning at this point in time given your market outlook beyond the the sound money assets we've talked about? >> Um I don't I mean I so I'm kind of a bear on the stock market. I don't think it's particularly cheap, but um you know these bubbles can go on longer than you think. And maybe we do live in a new monetary world where there's going to be a crackup boom. I mean, I think people who own stocks in Venezuela and Weimar, the stocks, like if you own stock of Merc, it's in the book. If you own stock of Mercedes-Benz, you went through the Weimar example, you know, you hold on to your certificates, you know, they reset into a new currency and that stock ultimately had value because Mercedes-Benz was a useful enterprise, right? So, so stocks kind of protect you. >> Um, so I'm not, you know, I'm not terribly down on stocks, but I just don't find these values compelling. I mean the the only compelling values I see in the stock market are are internationally and in commodity based businesses and in the gold and silver minings. I might have to put in a pitch for that. I run a fund that specializes in those. And until very recently I had a lot of companies trading at two or three times EBIT DA and for those who are financially driven that's cheap. You know I mean uh Google is selling at 20x EIDA. So um you know those are up a good bit. So the first innings first two innings are over in that in the bull market for that stuff. So, I'm pretty but I'm pretty bold up on, you know, gold and silver, gold, and silver mining stocks, what they can do. Um, you know, I know your I know your guys, you know, Landre and the guys you work with are in the same position. >> The the New Harour guys. I know you're >> New Harour guys. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know. I mean, I I have a lot of people I know a lot of people are really married to their stocks and I, you know, look, owning a great company for a long period of time. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, you know, if I were looking at getting into the stock market right now, gosh, it's not cheap. you know, I'd much rather I'd much rather buy it, you know, when there's blood in the street. >> Yeah. >> You know, let me ask you this on the miners. Um, do you feel that they have caught up to the metals in terms of their expected price? >> That's a great question. So, the miners were just grossly undervalued compared to the price of the metal. And and what was going on there was people were thinking, well, this metal move isn't real. You know, gold's going back to 2000 and therefore the miners are properly priced. And maybe they were priced. They weren't overpriced at 2,000, but maybe that was a fair they were at a fair price at 2,000. Of course, now with gold at 3500, you know, the the margins just have exploded. The profits have exploded and so you're buying them at very slow low multiples to cash flow. And you know, the the Huey, the XAG, GX, GX, I most things are up about 85% this year. My funds up about the same amount, almost 90%. Um, and so so yeah, we moved off the bottom and we've started to close. It was really an alligator jaws as you can see on the chart. And so we moved off the bottom and and what you can see is that the Huey is catching up to the price of gold. But I I always said I do believe this that you know we're now just getting to the low end of the range of fair value. Um and typically in bull markets you tend to go to fair value or a little beyond. And that's you know the low end of the range of fair value maybe at $3,000 gold. And if we're going to $5,000 gold well then fair value is going to get even higher. So you know handicapping where we are in the gold market. My personal opinion is if this is a nine inning baseball game, we're in the third inning. You know, we're in the top of the bottom of the third and uh you know, we got a few more innings to go. I mean, some people would say I think I heard Luke Groman or I No, I heard somebody say we're in the second second pitch of the second inning. I can't remember. It was a podcast somebody said that recent. >> Pretty specific. >> Yeah. I was like, "Wow, really?" I think it might have been Luke Groman who said that. I mean, it's really early. I I don't know. I mean, I don't you know, these things have moved and you know, they're not I'm get I'm not paying the I'm not getting the bargain prices. I mean, a year ago, I was buy I was just like, I can't believe this. I mean, I can buy this company. It's growing. It's profitable. I'm paying three times cash flow. What? You know, it's just this is nuts. How How do I have this opportunity? It was just because people didn't understand it. Well, that company's now doubled in value. So, now I'm paying six times cash flow, but cash flow is going to go up a bit. And, you know, even six times cash flow is not crazy overexpensive. I mean, at the peak in these gold and silver stock mining runs, they get up to 15 or 20 times cash flow. That's expensive, but you know, so multiples do expand in a bull market, but of course margins will expand if the metals keep running. So, so we've got a bit further to run at them. I'm very comfortable buying them here, and I'm very comfortable. I'm still taking new investors here. Um, I took a bunch of new investors at the top. And in 2019, I went up 97%. In 2020, I went up 123%. And a bunch of new investors came piling in. Oh my god, this is the greatest thing since Slice. I got to own this thing. D. And and then I rapidly recruit, you know, went down 40%. you know, and they're like, "You're an idiot." You know, why did I put my money with you? And I'm like, "Well, you know, if you have a long-term time frame, you're going to be okay, but obviously not everybody could see that, right?" And so, so I'll probably, you know, when we go up a little bit further, I might say to new investors, "No, I'm not going to take you in at this level because I, you know, there's a chance we'll have a correction and I don't want you to be unhappy." So, >> all right. Well, Larry, if someone's interested in learning about the fund, where should they go? >> Oh, yeah. So, so you can go to ema2.com, edwardmark.com, or Google equity management associates, which is the fund. It's run by myself and David Foley. Um, and then the other kind of for a real time and we we have a quarterly report there where you can see our macro views and fund views and our strategy. It's free. You can sign up for a free newsletter. Just go down to the bottom of the page. You can in insert the email there and we won't spam you. Um, you'll get the newsletter every quarter. And then probably just on a real-time basis, the best thing is just follow me on Twitter because I I'm pretty active on just kind of talking about things. occasionally, you know, for those who are looking for like what's your favorite silver stock right now or, you know, what name should I be buying? Um, you know, um, I I I leak out gems there for free on Twitter. Like, I love this stock. I mean, actually, I'm just looking at one. I'll give you one now that here's a silver stock that hasn't moved that I absolutely love. I think it's really cheap. Um, it's Southern Silver Exploration. Um, SSV.VC. The ticker, the US ticker is SSVF. These guys have a ton of silver. They're in Mexico. It's very safe. It's good management team and nobody knows what it is yet. It's still cheap. So, um, it's got a 60 Yeah. No, it's got a $617 million. Uh, make sure I get this right. Yeah, it's it's a modest market cap for what they have in terms of the amount of silver they have. So, um, yeah. >> All right. Well, fantastic. So, Larry, when I edit this video, um, I'll put up the links to your website, to your your ex handle, so folks know where to go. Um, I'll also put up for the ticker for uh that silver >> silver. Yeah. And I'll get you the chart on um uh the comparing the two, the Huey to >> Great. Yeah. Great. Um but uh but um uh I very much appreciate you sharing the ticker. That was a nice little little bonus. >> Yeah, I figure what the heck. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, well, very importantly, we we've referenced it enough during this discussion, but um, and I I was looking for my copy and and couldn't find it right before I had to jump on here. I'm sure I see you got a stack behind you there. There we go. So, for folks that would like to get the big print, um, where should they go? Is it just anywhere books are sold? >> It's just Amazon. I don't have a professional publisher yet. It's a little bit edgy. Like Richard Warner, who couldn't get Princess of the Yen published in the US, I've been getting turned down by publishers. I don't think they like the message. It's it's it's not Fed friendly as you know. >> Have Have you told him it's burning up Capitol Hill? >> Well, yeah, it is. I I haven't told him that. And I've sold 40,000 copies of it. So, it's >> Yeah, just which is I hear that's okay. I mean, I don't you know, there's pretty darn good. As a guy who's who's Yeah. authored a co-authored a book that sold over 20,000. Uh I know that 40,000 is actually quite good. >> Well, yeah, there 300 people here. So, we got a long way to go to educate everybody, but it's on Amazon. It's all formats. hard copy, hop copy, paperback, Kindle, and audio. So, um, yeah, I mean, obviously, and and as you know from doing books, you don't really make much money on books, but I what what got me into this, Adam, I had an early potential editor. I was speaking to her and she said to me, she said, you know, Larry, books can change the world. And that was just like she just sunk the hook, you know? I was like, all right, I got an ego, you know, I want to write a book that's going to change the world because I just I looked out there and I saw that all these people are getting hurt by inflation. They don't understand why and they don't understand how to protect themselves, you know, and so the book is aimed at really try to solve that problem. But point out why. Part one is why they're getting hurt and part two is what they can do about it, you know. >> Yeah. I I I think a great thing that that your book does, Larry, is I think the average person can feel it in their gut that their money is just buying less over time. They're just feeling like the headwinds are getting stronger and stronger, but they don't necessarily know why. And on this channel, I talk an awful lot about the failure of our education system to teach financial literacy, right? Your book does a great job of just pulling the veil from like like explaining it to them >> in an intuitive way that they can take it and understand what's going on. And then to your point, it's not just problem definition. It's hey, here's what you individually can do about this. >> Exactly. And if that if that, you know, if I help some people, well then, you know, it's it's my legacy and that was the goal. So, I hope it works. >> Well, I'm so glad you did do it. And again, for the folks that didn't get your book after your first appearance on this channel, folks, highly recommend you go get yourself a copy. Um, so go to Amazon. Um, all right. Well, look, um, as we wrap up here, um, Larry, I'm looking at the time. Um, you went real late with me. Thank you for being generous with >> I really enjoy it. You're you're one of the best in this business and so it's an honor to be on your show. >> Well, it's it's a real pleasure. Um, folks, please let Larry know how much you appreciate him coming on by hitting the like button and then clicking the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. All right. Well, in wrapping up here, um, first, if you are looking to get some help in figuring out how to invest for the type of future that Larry, uh, sees ahead, especially if we continue going through this fourth turning, and if if, uh, you know, uh, Lacy and Steve Hanky's uh, outlooks for disinflation, perhaps even deflation, uh, lie in store for us in the near term, at least. Um, and obviously we've got the purching power uh, concerns that Larry and I talked about in great depth here. Um, if you would like to get some help in figuring out, okay, how do I navigate my wealth through this type of short-term and longer term in future where hopefully I don't become a victim of these trends and I might even be able to position to profit from them. Um, then highly recommend most of the people watching this video get that help from a good professional financial adviser. Obviously, one that takes into account all the macro issues we talked about here. If you've got a good one who's doing that for you and has a good record of executing on that plan for you, great. Don't mess with success. You should stick with them. But if you don't or you'd like a second opinion for one who does meet that criteria, uh then consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial adviserss endorsed by Thoughtful Money. These are the firms you see with me on this channel week in and week out. You heard uh Lawrence reference the guys there from New Harbor Financial. Um so to set up one of those consultations, just fill out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. These consultations are totally free. There's no commitments involved to work with these firms. It's just a free service they offer to be as helpful as possible to as many people as possible. Also, don't forget that we are still uh making tickets available for the upcoming thoughtful money fall online conference uh available at the early bird price discount. That's the lowest price we're going to offer for this. Again, the conference is on October 18th. That's a Saturday. If you can't watch live that day, don't worry. Everybody who registers is going to get replay videos of the entire event, all the presentations, all the live Q&A. Uh the uh conference faculty is amazing. It continues to get better and I'm uh I think revealing this for the first time publicly. Uh we just had Lynn Alden commit to come on. Uh and she's going to talk specifically about uh Bitcoin. Um we're going to do a deep dive with her on Bitcoin. As Lawrence mentioned, she's one of the best experts uh best known experts out there on the topic. Um we'll have some other guests talking about gold and silver, but we're going to reserve this slot for Lynn to really go deep into what's going on with Bitcoin. So, um, if you would like to lock in your early bird price discount, go to thoughtfulmoney.com/conference, register today for it. Also, a reminder, if you are a subscriber to the thoughtfulmoney premium substack, make sure you check the emails you've got from me. I've sent you the uh promo code to use to get an additional $50 off of that early bird price discount. All right, Larry, again, can't thank you enough, my friend. It's always great to talk to you. really appreciate appreciate you giving us so much time especially on a Labor Day and um look forward to seeing you again on this program soon. >> Thank you. >> Nice to see you. >> All right. And everybody else, thanks so much for watching.
Our Money Is Dying | Lawrence Lepard
Summary
Transcript
You know, the the interest rate ought to balance the supply of savings against the demand for capital. That's what the interest rate should be. It should be set in the free market full stop. But of course, what we have is a bank and government cartel that sets it. And that's why we have all these problems. I mean, you know, look at it, Adam. You have 0% interest rates, you know, which makes everybody who can borrow wealthy, or you have 20% interest rates that almost bank my dad in, you know, in 1980 when we were eating tuna fish sandwiches for dinner for weeks on end. I mean, it's just, you know, it's it's kind of a it's just an up and down system that's very painful because it's it's run by a cartel that, you know, the banks and the governments. [Music] Welcome to thoughtful money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Tagert. In my opinion, the easiest macro trend to forecast is that our fiat currencies will continue to lose purchasing power in the years ahead. likely at an accelerating rate. Today's guest not only agrees, but rings that same bell even more loudly than I do. For an update on his outlook for inflation, asset prices, the economy, the dollar, and what to expect next in this current fourth turning, we're fortunate to welcome back to the program investor and sound money advocate Lawrence Leard, author of the book The Big Print: What Happened to America and How Sound Money Will Fix It. Lawrence, thanks so much for joining us today. >> Good to be back with you, Adam. I really enjoy you and your show. So, looking forward to this. >> Well, right back at you. This is your second appearance on the show. Uh, your first one got a lot of great feedback, Lawrence. So, um, looking forward to doing this on a regular basis with you. Um, first off to you, I want to thank you. We're recording this on Labor Day. You're letting me ruin your Labor Day festivities here. Uh, I had some, uh, schedule rejiggering this week and you were kind enough to be flexible to record today. So, thank you very much. Um, look, you um got a lot of questions here for you, but you have done me the kindness of um, watching a couple of my recent videos. Um, one with Lacy Hunt and one with um, Steve Hanky. both of whom are predicting disinflation in the case of Hanky or or really outright deflation in the case of of Lacy. And um I I think there's some things that they've said that you agree with and there might be some things that they said that maybe you have a different opinion on. So, can we start from >> I love those were I thought they were two of your really best interviews recently and and um and I learned a lot and and I like both gentlemen a lot have a lot of respect for both gentlemen although in in Hanky's case I'm not real wild about his view on Bitcoin but we'll set that aside you know he started working in 1970 so it's harder for older folks sometimes to get it let's start with Hanky I mean um and and and I understand that the you know just the whole notion that we could have disinflation or deflation I mean yes of course when you build up a lot of debt and you get way out over your skis, you're bringing consumption forward. And so that debt, if it starts to unwind, that's a deflationary event. I mean, you know, a perfect example of this was in 1929. There was a ton of debt. There was a ton of growth. There was a huge bubble. And as it unwind, we had massive deflation. So, so don't get me wrong, it's not as if we have to have inflation forever, you know, and and in fact, deflation usually follows massive inflations. However, we've got to consider the policy response, and we'll get to that in just a minute. But let's look at Hanky. Um, you know, I thought what he said was extremely interesting. Um, where I really kind of dis disagree that that we could have a disinflationary period. Where I really kind of disagreed with him was partly how he's measuring inflation. We all know that the numbers are are not really true. And I think he kind of accepts what they tell us as as the accurate numbers. And I think you have to kind of read outside the box and realize that no, that the numbers are they're reporting aren't true. But but even for the sake of argument, let's say they are true. You know, he said something in his interview with you that I just found kind of stunning and I I disagreed strongly with where he said, well, yes, I mean, we need, you know, money supply right now is growing at between 4.2 and 4.6%. And if you look at that, Bill just had some great charts that he sent out shows, you know, M2 has now hit a record high and it's growing at 4.8%, he says. And Hanky said, well, look, it's, you know, it's growing at this rate, but that's not fast enough to keep, you know, the 2% inflation mandate. He he made the point and said he believes that M2 needs to grow at 6% to have the inflation target of 2% get hit. And my brain kind of exploded when I heard that because I was just like, hang on a second. M2 by definition is the underlying definition of inflation. Now, of course, it shows up in different places at different times at different speeds. I mean, you know, insurance costs are high right now. I mean, look, inflation is not an even thing. And then then he went on to say, "Well, yeah, notice how, you know, we took rates down to zero and post the GFC and, you know, we had a problem keeping inflation at 1 or 2%." And I was like, "Well, yeah, dude, but you know, look at asset inflation during that time frame." You know, you had this enormous carried interest bubble that got built, you know, in in all the assets. So, so I I kind of disagree with his notion. I mean I I tend to be much more of a hardcore monitorist in the belief that you know in the long run if you look over 50 years M2 has grown at 7% and that's the underlying rate of inflation. Now CPI is going to go up and down. There are all kinds of different things that occur as we know CO drove it up to nine and then you know pow shrinking the money supply by 4.7% brought it back down to well we kind of briefly got it stated at three but whether it's there or not that's open for debate but anyway that's that's it on Hanky. I mean just to kind of summarize um >> and and sorry let me just clarify one thing. So from your tone >> you uh you don't place a lot of faith in the official CPI numbers because you suspect they are higher. I just wanted to make sure that's clear. >> That's exactly right. I mean I just and I think most people listening to this would just have to agree. I mean our I don't you know we are not experiencing 3% inflation today year. I mean I can point to numerous categories where we're well over three. In fact, this morning I tweeted a chart on on electricity prices, average electricity prices throughout the United States, and they're going up at a lot faster than 3% a year. I can tell you that. Now, part of that's based on the AI demand and what I call the AI bubble, and we can get to that later, but um and so that's that's a different matter. That's not necessarily M2 inflation. That's demand driven inflation. But um but yes, you're right. I think the inflation numbers are misstated. And and more importantly, I I really wish in that interview, and I'm sure you know, you can't always interrupt these guys when they're talking. I was kind of like, "Come on, Adam. ask him how the heck he gets to 2% growth inflation with 6% money supply growth. I mean that's a disconnect in my mind anyway. Um so let's go to Lacy who is obviously you know as you said in your thing is one of our best economists and brilliant guy tons of respect for him. Um and he made two points and I'm going to disagree with the first one. I'm going to agree with the second one. The first point he made was that he thought we were in kind of a fiscally balanced situation. And he said that, you know, they were doing the accounting on the big beautiful bill incorrectly and that therefore he didn't actually think deficits were going to grow the way the Congressional Budget Office and others say they're going to grow. And I I would push back on that. My observation is one, if you look at the last few months, I mean, first of all, tariff revenue is good, right? And he said we were going to get 300 plus billion of tariff revenue. I'm not so sure about that. Looks like we're getting about 20 billion a month. So that annualizes out to 240 billion. >> Yeah. >> Although just so you know, um Secretary Bessant has I think as recently as like yesterday said uh he was thinking more 300 billion and is now saying it could be substantially more than that. So >> it might be it might be. >> They got to show us. We got to be Missurians here and say >> yeah. Show me. I mean, well, and and as Hanky or I mean, as um as Lacy pointed out, you know, there's there's a second and third round. Maybe maybe they increase. I mean, we don't know. Right now, what we do know, last couple of months, we've gotten about 20 billion more per month in in tariff revenue. That's good. I mean, that helps balance the budget. The flip of that is that they did the big beautiful bill. And depends on how you look at it, how you score it. And look, Lacy's probably, you know, Lacy's probably forgotten more about economics and being an economist than I know, but I do know that, you know, what I read and what I see would indicate that there are some people who say that it's at least a two or$300 billion in excess spending as a result of the big beautiful bill and arguably could be four, five, 600. I mean, that's admittedly out there a bit, but my point is there doesn't seem to be, from what I can see, a lot of evidence that the fiscal situation is getting better. He claims it's kind of he thinks it's neutral to flat. And furthermore, if if what he's right, what we're going to talk about in his second point is correct and the economy does slow down, that's not going to help either because a slower economy, a slower growth in stock market, all of those kinds of things, they hit the revenue side >> and then some of the safety, you know, measures get hit and unemployment and stuff and the costs go up. I mean, as we do know in '08 and 2000, you know, we had those two big downturns. I mean, the deficit went up, you know, like six and 8% respectively as a percentage of GDP. So if we get a big economic slowdown, which we're coming to in his second point, then the deficit's going to get worse. So the So I guess my belief is that the deficit's really a mess. And I don't see any evidence that DC's really dealing with it. In fact, more recently, I mean, and and God bless him. I mean, there's a lot of things I like about Trump. There's some things I don't like about Trump. I mean, Trump's talking about, well, we're getting all this tariff revenue. Maybe we should send out a tariff dividend. I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? We're running these enormous deficits. You finally start to get closer to balancing the budget. You're going to give back the money that we got as as tariff income. I mean, come on. That's just not going to help the problem. So, but let let's move to Lacy's second point, which I thought was really insightful and brilliant, and I hadn't fully thought through the implications of it. And that is that kind of the Charles Kindleberger argument about what happened when the last time we really did tariffs in the 20s and 30s, >> you know, and the whole Smoot Holly and and as it looks like, you know, in fact, it was um Hanky who said, you know, we're running our Yale says our tariffs are running about 18%. And you know, it was interesting. The smooth holly tariffs were about 19.7%. So we're kind of right where they were on an average today. And Lacy said, "Hey, look, hang on a second. This is a tax. This is going to slow down demand. This is going to slow down the economy. This means that, you know, our trade deficit is not going to be as large, which means that their account surpluses aren't going to be as large. Their account surpluses get invested in our markets. They're not going to do as much of that. Oh, and by the way, the fact that the dollar is going down isn't going to help their I mean, part of why we've been able to maintain the sound markets. we've been able to maintain is that the dollar had been strong and so a foreign investor could come put their money in our stock market and then when they came back to their native currency if the dollar hadn't moved they they had a gain. Well, if they put money in our stock market, our market goes up 10%. But the value of the of the dollar goes down 10% against their currency, you know, their net break even. So that, you know, so that's another reason why, you know, I think our markets are kind of teetering on the edge of of having a real accident. And I know you've had some other guests on that talked about that. I'm not really I mean I'm I've I've kind of given up being a bear on the stock market. It's been such a frustrating experience. I've lost a lot of money behind puts and but but I do know it's not cheap. So um but I I guess you know so the point that he went on to make that I thought was so so insightful was that these tariffs are going to slow things down and they're going to make a mess and most people aren't really thinking that through. And I have to agree with him. But here's how here's, you know, the the party didn't follow through on it. My next conclusion is, okay, that's probably right. But tell me about the policy response, >> right? >> That's that's the point of my book, right? >> Well, and this was my question for you is I actually think you and Lacy maybe see the world pretty similarly. It's just that when we get into this Kindleberger spiral that he's concerned about, that opens the door to the next step of the big >> print. Yeah. I mean that's and so you know and but I I mean I was fascinated. Weren't you fascinated to hear that Lacy thinks the Fed is too restrictive and should take you know go down 100 basis points. I was fascinated to hear that. >> I I was except he had said something similar the last time I'd interviewed him. So I I was prepared for it. Yeah. >> Yeah. I had missed that but I'm kind of like wow. I mean who thought he would be talking Trump's book you know and as he said he he thought about it before Trump came through with you know his 300 basis point cut. But uh but anyway, I mean so so I think he makes a really great point which is that you know these tariffs are going to slow things down and that is going to have an impact on liquidity on the markets on everything else. And so I think we're eventually headed towards some kind of an accident or a problem where the Fed is once again deeply backed into a corner and and I think Trump actually is correct. They are too late. I mean they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't because they really don't have inflation under control. I mean we all know that and yet you know but given the debt burden given the cost and given the fiscal emergency and I really do call it that. I mean I think we are in a fiscal emergency you know with interest rates going up as rapidly as they have the interest expense going up as rapidly as it has. They've got to get that interest expense down. They've just got to or something's going to break. And it's kind of there's some signals it's breaking. You can kind of see it in the 30-year Japanese bond. You can kind of see it in the 30-year UK guild. >> You know the French bond. You can't see it in US credit spreads. >> No. Isn't it amazing? US credit spreads are tight as can be. And the 10ear's hung right in there. I mean, it's now but but to be fair on the 10-year, you know, Bent has been doing what Groman calls, you know, kind of shadow QE twist, which is to say he's been selling short-term bonds and then using the proceeds to buy the longer stuff, right? So he he he doesn't want the So so the real you know the real important thing that's going to come up here and actually my partner pointed this out to me this morning is okay so they're going to take rates down then what happens to the US tenure I mean that you know I've really kind of got my eyes peeled on the US tenure we know if it goes above 5% they've got a problem because we saw that happen in September 2023 and they panicked >> right >> 12 Fed governors talking about how the rate height cycle was over so so to me you know if the 10-year takes out five you know we're all the way in it And I think we're probably pretty close to all the way in it based on the recent price action in silver and gold literally as recently as last week and this weekend. I mean, as you know, silver is now through $40, which is enormous overhead resistance. I mean, like, you know, 20 or 30 year overhead resistance. And, you know, gold has now broken out of a big bull flag at 3500. Bitcoin has not followed yet. I got some interesting data on that if you want to discuss it. But, um, you know, it to me it's like kind of like we're in it in my view. And you know, I I definitely noticed the portfolio I manage. I mean, all the gold stocks I'm involved with are and you mentioned earlier, I think in another video, you said you'd had your first, you know, 10 bagger or something, one of your gold stocks. I mean, we've had some of that, too. It's it's crazy, right? And so, to me, what's happening is the world is waking up to this problem of fiscal dominance, the problem that the government can really only solve it by printing money and that the basement, yes, it's bad, and guess what? It might get worse. And to me, that's the biggest thing when I listen to all these podcasts. The thing that I feel like enough people aren't screaming about is how bad the inflation's going to get. I mean, I've got some data points. Um, the last time we had yield curve control was right after World War II. And they were dealing with 130% debt to GDP at that time. And, you know, the Fed had locked in the the short rate at 38 and the long rate at 2 and a half%. And this all was before the Treasury Cord in 51 when they changed it. But in that in like 47 and 51 they had some they had one month where inflation was year-on-year up 17%. They had another month where year was up 21%. I mean this these were eye peeling inflation numbers. That was all because they were doing yield curve control. They were holding those rates low. The only way they could hold those rates low was to print the money and expand M2. And it grew massively. And then that led to inflation. And I was kind of like, okay, this is going to rhyme. you know, I can see I can see where this is going, you know, so we're not there yet, but it feels to me like we're very close to the edge on that. >> So, a couple of things. Um, so I I'm I'm right there with you, and I do want to talk about the action that's going on in in gold and silver and Bitcoin. Um, uh, and as I said in the intro, look, that haven't done a ton of these interviews, right? the there's a lot of things that that I can put on a spectrum of probability. >> Yeah. >> But the thing I can put >> the furthest to my high confidence part of the spectrum is that the purchasing power of fiat currencies is going to continue to go down, right? For for all the reasons you wrote about in your book and you've mentioned a number of them here. >> Um now the question is is you know uh what's the path between now and then going to look like, right? And and guys like you and I, you know, Larry, we we got into gold and silver a long time ago because we saw this risk. You got into Bitcoin. I personally haven't really gotten into it that much. And you know, yes, do I wish I had bought it back in 2013 when I interviewed the data architect behind Bitcoin? Absolutely. But I didn't. Um uh and but but you know, Gold and Silver, you know, between 2013 and two years ago, you know, it was a rough slog, right? So >> tell me about it. I mean I, you know, I detail that in my book. I mean, I I tweeted the other day about how, you know, um, meet with triumph and disaster, you know, Kipling. I mean, in 2015, I mean, I was I was I was broken. I was a broken investor. I really was. And I, you know, I I converted religiously and I I mean, I went and I just I thought I sat there and I thought to myself, well, there's there's got to be a higher plan here and I'm just going to hang on because I think I'm right about this stuff and there's no going back. So, yeah. And and by the way, that you know, that's kind of happened to some people in Bitcoin, too. I mean, remember, Bitcoin is not a free ride. You know, if you bought it at Sam Bankman free peak of 65, it went to 15. You know, there are a lot of people who did that and when it went to 15, they thought they'd made a mistake. And even today, >> yeah. >> Yeah. Even today, I always tell people when they're looking to buy it, I say, you do realize this can go down 50%. You mean you got to be ready for that. And and you got to you got to realize that if that were to happen, you would want to be thinking about buying, not selling, and thinking you made a mistake because as you know, a good friend of mine, George Bodin, puts out in his one tweet he put out recently, if you Bitcoin, if you hold it for four years or more, you're always you've always been in a profit historically. But a lot can happen in that four years. The volatility of those draw downs is no fun. I can assure you I was there. >> Right. So that's my that's my point here, which is, you know, you can have really high confidence in the outcome. Yeah, >> but the path might kill you six ways to Sunday if you put all your chips on that app. >> Absolutely. Have you have you ever seen Dan Murmurachan's chart, his Weimar chart, the gold, you know, a brilliant chart. Dan's a great guy, a great monetary scholar and uh yeah, I mean these monetary events are confusing and volatile and leverage is not your friend. You know, you gota you got to know what you own. You got to know why you own it. And the reason I own gold and silver and Bitcoin is they are form I believe they are all forms of money and I know for a fact the government cannot print them. And so but and and you know what happens on the price daytoday. I mean there are plenty of people who beat me up for poor performance and in a down cycle and I recommended Bitcoin at the New Orleans gold show you know at 50 and it went to 15 and I got a lot of angry calls and I just said well you got to wait you know I mean I it's um I I invest in a 5 10 year window. I mean, I I look at I look at longer term. I I I'm much more concerned with being right longer term with than with being right in a, you know, in a six-month or one-year window. >> Okay. So, totally agree, though. Again, the point I wanted to sort of stress for folks is you it's probably going to be a wild ride no matter what happens. But you you've got to be an active manager on this. Um, and if you decide just to put it all on on your high confidence outcome in the long run, that's your choice. Just know that it could be a real bruising ride between now and then. >> Well, correct. But the point and the point of the book, by the way, just to reemphasize, was that I still think that if you look at, and I don't know exactly who your audience is, but I know it's huge, and I think it's a lot of everyday investors in America, and I still think a very large percentage of that base just owns a lot of stocks. >> Oh, absolutely. >> Yeah. And and does not own a lot of this stuff. does not own a lot of Bitcoin, does not own a lot of gold, does not own a lot of silver. And and I, you know, I really tried to write the book as a wakeup call to that base of people is say, "Hey guys, this monetary debasement thing is real. It's a trend. It's going to last multi-year, maybe decades." And, you know, at least for a while, you have got to have 10, 20, 30% of your assets over in this bet because if you're all stocks, that's that's just not the right allocation. You know, that's what I was trying to say. >> So, and I I I agree with that I think the book does a really good job of making that argument. Um, you you're largely right about this audience. I would say uh like everybody I mean right now the retail investor has more exposure to stock than they ever have and and scarily the this the population of retirees the oldest population. >> That's right. The boom is their highest exposure. >> I I look at all my friends and neighbors and they're all just and they're feeling great because they've had a bunch of great years and they've been very heavily trained to buy the dip. I mean, since 2008, if you bought the dip, you're looking good, you know, even even as recently as this year, you know, I mean, Liberation Day happens, wacko, you know, we're down 10 12% really fast. But, you know, if you bought it, you're feeling okay today, >> right? And I and I I wonder, and this might be a question for later in the discussion, you know, are are is that cohort just whistling past the graveyard here and and you know, kind of on a collision course? I think I think you would think probably so, but >> I think they are, but I but I could be wrong. I mean, I've been wrong before. >> Yeah. Well, so where I'm going with this is, um, again, we may have confidence in the outline, but the path between here and there is is inherently unknowable. Um, but we can probably have some confidence it's going to have some big twists and turns, right? So, so Lacy, again, I I don't want to speak for him, but I'll I'll I'll do my best interpretation, which is um you know, he he's very concerned by the debt overhang, as you are, right? And I mean at the end of the day, you know, unless you can get this economy to sustainably grow at much higher rates, which I don't think anybody really sees happening. Uh we we we don't have that visible hope on the radar yet, we probably it looks like we are hurdling towards a a default and it will either be a default of um uh choice where we just say, "Hey, look, you know, these debts are going to go bad and we're going to let the the borrowers take their lumps." That is not generally how things go with the way the show is run. Um we generally default by printing and that just you know we we we pay back the debts nominally but but to do so we basically um reduce or destroy the purchasing power of of the currency. So when I talk to Lacy I see him being very concerned about um the debt problem. He is concerned about the level of fiscal spending um if it didn't come across as much. I mean it's still something he's very concerned about. And um I just think in the near term he thinks look this economy is at risk of slowing much faster than is conventionally appreciated right now. And um >> I share that view. >> Yeah. And so that that could Larry, I'm not saying it was, but I'd like to get your thoughts on this. That really could take the inflation worries away in the near term, right? Inflationary impacts of tariffs. So there's people who think tariffs could still be inflationary even though Lacy says evidence is they actually are deflationary because they reduce liquidity. So we could go through a period even a recession um where inflation gets taken off the table as as an immediate worry, right? And now all of a sudden we're all worried because companies are firing people and nobody has jobs and that type of stuff, right? doesn't mean that we should take our eye off the ball for from purchasing power uh uh reduction purchasing power because of your big print expectation. Right? So all I'm all I'm going with this on this is right now I interview a lot of people and where they see inflation going and and bond yields going in the next 12 months is probably the single greatest area of of um disparity in experts outlook. something something we're think we're stuck in a in a new inflationary cycle and it's only going to go up from here and tariffs are going to make it worse and bond yields are going to be sticky or they're going to keep going up no matter what the Fed does. Others like Lacy I think you know what deflation's going to win this battle in the near term or you know near to midterm next 12 plus >> I I think that's possible. I mean I think one of the things that he's probably banking on is the notion that even if the Fed does all the inflationary things I'm talking about it won't matter. this bubble is so damn big that you know that there will be no demand for anything and if if demand goes down a lot prices do fall that is >> deflation and and I think that's why he's saying he thinks the Fed should be cutting 100 points right now. >> Yeah, that's that's certainly a tail case for me and I and I don't I don't discount that. Um I still think that even in that tail case on a I know on a relative basis gold, silver and bitcoin will hold up well compared to stocks and probably okay compared to bonds. I mean there won't be necessarily I mean yields could fall but but again I think I think the policy response will be so massive and so aggressive and they tested it with co you know as you saw I mean they they just created so much money so fast we've now got the concept of stimmy checks out there >> yeah direct direct payments know how to wire money directly to people you know um you know we the PPP gave you know trillions of dollars to businesses I You know, as Ben Bernaki famously said, you know, we have a technology called a printing press and we can stop deflation from happening. And uh, you know, whatever it might take, I I think they will view deflation, hardcore deflation, as an existential threat, and they'll behave in a way, a policy response will be so aggressive that that the outcome will be inflation. That's my belie. Now, I, you know, I could be wrong about that. Um, it also depends upon the politics of it all. I mean, um, you know, there's we've got a Trump administration, and I found it fascinating. I was just interviewed by Michelle McCrory, and she showed me an ad that Eric Trump was running for gold, uh, and goldbacked investments. I think he's being paid by the company, but and you know, he said, "My dad's a big, you know, fan of sound money and gold." And I was like, "Wow." And we've heard Trump say things like, "He who has the gold makes the rules." >> And we've heard Andy Sheckchman and others, and I agree with them, say, you know, all these gold imports this year might have been refilling Fort Knox. And I I have an old friend who knew some of the Treasury officials now dead in the Johnson administration. I I think Fort Knox was drained when they supported the London gold pool in the 60s. That's my thesis. And we don't have all the gold that we say we have there. But I think they're trying to refill it. >> Well, and when the French were, you know, taking it >> Yeah. And when the French were taking this stuff out. Exactly. And so, so, you know, Yeah. I mean, it's Look, it's it's it's the right area to be debating. And I don't think any of us know. And I think one of the reasons we really don't know is we don't know what the government's going to do. We don't know exactly what the policy response will be. And what I've done is I've mapped, you know, the last 15 or 20 years of policy responses. And you know, you're a politician. Your choice is let the entire world collapse and you know, we're fighting in the streets and the ATMs don't work or you're going to print the money. You know, pick one. And they're always going to pick the pick the print the money. >> Yeah. And let me interject to this because your your book does a great job of of making the historical argument for why we should expect more of that going forward. Um and uh I I actually think um we don't even need to get to that level of of sort of existential threat before elements of the big uh print start kicking in. Um, you know, I I think Lacy could be. Look, this doesn't matter what my opinion is, but you know, the laces of the world think that, hey, look, the sledding is going to get tougher economically in the near term as these forces of deflation, hankies disinflation take over in the near term. But if and when it gets to the point where we start seeing some real pain, the central planners are going to step into rescue mode, right? And, you know, we don't even necessarily need to go into recession. I just think if bond yields, to your point, if they start going up to five, right, the the Fed hasn't said this publicly. I've heard a lot of people who who talked to the Fed say, you know, QE is going to be kind of politically tough for the the Fed to to ramp up again because it it really kind of became appreciated that it really just more than anything else just drove wealth disparity. >> But but at the end of the day, this government has to fund itself, right? And if and if it starts really compromising the US government's ability to fund itself, I think they're going to go back to Q. I think the odds of them going back to >> Well, yes. And I think Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's it's interesting though, they're going to dress it up. They're going to create in my opinion, and this is just a guess. I I don't know anything, but I you know, I just you have to speculate if you're making bets on this stuff. And my speculs to do it. They're going to they're going to go to the banks and give the bank and and they're going to actually they're going to use foreign banks as well. >> Yeah. you know, they're going to say, I mean, what if they went to the the JGB, the Japanese central bank, and said, "Guys, we're going to give you an unlimited swap line at 50 basis points, but you got to use the proceeds to buy the tenure, >> right? I mean, and they could do that, right? They can do the same thing with the US banks, guys. We're going to take away all the SL, the supplementary leverage ratios, all the restrictions, all the regul, all of it. It's all gone. You have to buy the treasuries." Oh, you don't have enough capital to do it? Fine. you know, the new lending rate for the Treasury purchase program that we've just initiated is X. And by the way, X is below, you know, the Y, which is the Treasury Y. I mean, frankly, this is I mean, it's in my book. This is what happened in World War I. I mean, it was brilliant. What they did was, you know, liberty bonds, remember they were selling in World War I, they had to, you know, support the war, be patriotic, buy Liberty Bonds three and a half%. >> Then they went to the banks and said, "Guess what? You can borrow us from us at 3%." And the banks were like, "We can." And they were like, "Yeah, this is" and and they said, "Okay, we we know how this works. We're going to borrow from you at 3%. We're going to buy the Liberty bonds at three and a half percent. We're going to get five 50 basis points free, you know, because risk, right? And that's what they did. And that's how they grew their balance sheet. That's how they finance the war. I mean, this is kind of the evil partnership that we've got between the government and the Fed where, you know, the Fed gets to keep the system going and the government gets the things they want paid for paid for. Right. >> Yeah. Well, and this is kind of like, you know, the Brent Johnson like, you know, just we got a lot of dirty tricks that we still have yet to pull out of the bag here. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the do the dollar is not dead and America's not going away. I mean, you know, there are a lot of smart people in DC. I mean, and they will come up with all kinds of new things. In fact, in Luke Groman's newsletter this weekend, I'm not going to spoil it because you got to subscribe to get it. He had another one that they're talking about doing that was really brilliant. I mean, um, and it relates to the Euro dollar. So yeah, you know, they they'll figure out ways to do it, but but at the end of the day, Adam, as you and I both know, all of those things lead to some form of currency debasement because >> absolutely >> because Growth has to exceed Rates and the only way you can do that is to inflate G, you know, and inflate. I mean, and we're not we're not getting natural growth because it's not like we're having huge productivity thing. We can get into AI if you want, but but you know, the growth, the form of growth we're going to get is inflationary growth, right? So, >> so let me ask you this because you're I think um you not uniquely positioned but but few people have your you know straddle the world that you do of sound money, Bitcoin and what's going on here um in the areas we're talking about these stable coins the the administration's hunger to get the stable coins involved. I mean to me that seems pretty transparently they just want additional buyers of treasuries to you know it's just incremental demand hopefully trying to bring some of those longer yields down. >> This is a great place to go into because I got a lot of thoughts about this. Okay. So so yes I mean again they're looking they're starved for treasuries. They got seven to n trillion they got to roll over. They don't have enough buyers. They're going to find ways to do it. And what they went and they noticed these stable coin guys of course you know circle and tether all they do is buy stable coins. Well not true they buy some gold too but you know >> I mean all they do is buy treasuries. the stable coins treasuries. Yeah. By treasuries. And so, you know, Tether's 160 billion and and Circle 60. So, there's $220 billion of stable coin round numbers, you know, demand for treasuries. I mean, some of that, as I said, goes into gold, but um but you know, they've got a roll over 79 trillion. Now, that number has been growing at 50% a year, but most of that is actually I was at a show, Adam, and I learned, you know, those stable coins, what those are really being used for, that's an alternative to the Swift system. Stable coin market grew when we shut Russia out of Swift. And suddenly I was I was at a dinner with a bunch of Russian business people and they all said, "Yeah, we all just got Kraken accounts and started using stable coins because we couldn't use the Swift system to make dollar payments." Right? So that's what's going on there. And I the whole notion that stable coins are going to bail us out. That kind of reminds me of Doge and we all kind of know how Doge worked out, right? We're going to save two trillion. No, we're going to save one trillion. Well, maybe we'll save 300 billion. I mean, right now it's kind of like unclear that we're really saving anything. thing. I mean, I think they got some bad programs, but it's certainly not what Elon and and VC were originally discussing, right? And I think the same is true with the stable coin market. Although, again, kind of as a teaser, what Luke had in his most recent quarter talks about something that would arguably drive a lot more demand for stable coins, and then that would be the balance sheet needed in order to buy more treasuries. But yes, they need to find somebody to buy those treasuries. But I'm pretty sure they will. I mean, I you know, because they got they've got the pen, they can write the laws, they can change everything. You know, they've got offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. I mean, you know, we're not going to fail tomorrow, and the dollar is not going to go away tomorrow. And the US isn't going to fail, but but guess what? We're going to have inflation. I'm really confident about that. I mean, we might have really shortterm deflation. I mean, I think >> Well, that's where I'm going. Like, will the yield problem potentially solve itself in the near term if the economy slows enough? >> Yeah. Yeah, it could. I mean, I could see I could easily see let let's say something really breaks like the AI bubble bursts and a few bad things happen and the tariffs really bite and unemployment really starts to go up and you know we kind of hit a deflationary trend. I I could see the 10-year Yeah. declining from you know from the fours into the threes. I mean and everybody's kind of you know you know I mean stock market's down you know 10 20 30%. I mean it's it's possible. Although if you look at, you know, on on the tariff, it was interesting on liberation day, stock market got whacked pretty hard. Bond market got whacked, too. I was kind of like, huh, >> that's not so good. You know, stock market going down, the bond market should catch a bid. And it didn't. So, you know, yeah, what you're talking about, that's the old history playbook and that's probably how it should work. If there's a big enough deflation, bonds should catch a bid. But, you know, on the other hand, you know, that that that debasement horse is out of the barn. you know, gold is running free, silver's running free, Bitcoin's running free. You know, geez, you you let a little stock market burst, you know, stop people from going into sound money. I don't know. I mean, I, you know, it's it's a question mark, right? >> Well, you're you're taking it where I want to go. And just to let you know, you know, there folks I've been interviewing recently. Jim Carson comes to mind from Kai volatility >> who pretty much has that same um outlook like, okay, it's going to get tougher. Um yeah, the the economy is going to slow down. Uh you'll have probably some safety trade coming into bonds and stuff like that. Uh but like you, he expects the same policy response. So for him, he's like this is a trade for bonds. like yeah this this is something that you got to play but you got to again be active >> well and I remind everybody I'm a multi-year guy. I mean I'm not you know I'm not playing quarter by quarter for my results. I'm I'm you know I'm trying to manage in a two five 10 year time frame and then I'm going to retire. So >> yeah. Yeah. And I mean to to that point um you know they they they they in the old days they used to say that Vulkar and the the heads of the um Fed looked at the gold watch the gold price closely because it was basically the mirror uh being held up to show the dollar devaluation right now. I think I I think that maybe they they they began to care a little bit less about it in the past decade or so as as Grant Williams famously wrote, you know, back in 2011 or what or 2012, like nobody cares about gold. Like yes, I understand all your reasons for why this should happen, but right now nobody cares about it. >> That's that was the truth. Yeah. >> Yeah. Now they're starting to. Um but but I I I think maybe in this now we're getting into the price action that we're seeing in in we've seen in Bitcoin and then we're now seeing in gold and then as recently silver you know it does seem like enough people care that that maybe there is a um sustainable repricing going on in these things where people are saying look you know what we kind of we kind of relegated gold silver precious metals as the barbaric relic. We we we initially were looking at Bitcoin as just make believe, you know, money. >> But now we're really beginning to wake up to this sustained, >> hey, no matter what choice gets made, it's going to reduce the purch. >> The last the last four years have been very instructive. I mean, if you held 20 or 30-year bonds, you've lost 30 40 50% of your purchasing power. And if you held gold, you're up 200% in bond terms. If you held Bitcoin, you're up 2,000% in bond terms. That's from LA the last five years, from 2020 to present. So that kind of a move, I mean, what you described with Lacy and the deflation, I mean, could there be a severe counter trend move? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think people have to be aware of that and prepared for that. And frankly, it's probably due to come because we're all feeling pretty giddy right now that we've been right. And so it could come at any time. But again, I I just know where I think we'll go. And I I see some things on the horizon I think are very positive. We haven't talked at all about the Fed and I don't want to get into all the, you know, the Real Housewives of the Fed drama that's been going on, >> but but we do know that that Powell terms out in May of next year and the Trump administration is aggressively, you know, campaigning for lower rates. And so in in I don't think we've broken the last inflation cycle. And I think we can almost be assured that in starting in May of next year, we will have a very dovish Fed. And so I think that the the the sound money alternatives to the dollar, they can all smell that and that's why they're doing what they're doing, right? >> Do so. Do you think that's driving the recent action here or is that people are thinking, oh, it's because that follows the president? >> I think it's part of it. I mean, I think I think it's a combination of things. I think it's the Doge failed. I think it's the you know, the Liberty Caucus caved. I mean, what happened to the Liberty Caucus? I mean, you know, Trump bullied all of them except for Massie and and Ran Paul into basically accepting a huge increase in spending bill, right? Um, you know, the big beautiful bill came through. >> I mean, it's right. I mean, it's just and and then even Bent pivoted when he said, "Hey, you know, um, everyone's asking about he said, well, we we've kind of changed our focus. Our focus now is on growth." You know, I mean, >> remember he he was talking about detox. We're going to have this period of detox. And like, you know, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe that's not such a good idea. Let's focus on growth. And and it's almost and it's industrial policy like and and they're and they've kind of they've shown you that they're going to take the gloves off and do whatever it takes. Hey, Intel, guess what? We get to own a piece of you. You know, I mean, and and I mean, to me, they're going to, you know, I I think the military has told them that this is existential and that the that the bond market I mean, tell you another interesting thing. So, I'm at I'm at the Bitcoin show in Las Vegas last uh year or early this year. And a guy who's very highly placed, I checked him out. I did all the the LinkedIn on him in the defense establishment. I mean, threeletter agencies, one of which was the NSA, came up to me and said, 'Your book is burning up the halls of all these agencies. I said, "Really?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, our job is to look at existential threats to the United States and hyperinflation is one of them, and I've told everybody they got to read your book to understand the issue." Right. And so, yeah. Isn't that interesting? Right. So, >> I mean, I'm not I'm not surprised that a great book is getting widely read, but it's similar to my question to Lacy where he was talking about Kindleberger and, you know, we were talking about how the Fed had kind of been saying right up until Jackson Hole, hey, everybody's everything's fine, everybody. And then all of a sudden, he pal was like, whoa, wait a minute, that we're starting to see the economy cool more than I wanted to. Right. Um, and so they're beginning to maybe, >> you know, say, hey, uh, we we don't want to risk >> maybe we're behind the curve. No, I mean he >> but but the point is just let me finish the point which is um >> you know like Kindleberger is a famous economist. He's written books on like the Fed has how many PhDs? Like >> so I'm sort of what surprises me about your story is just like >> the the the clear lack of financial literacy that we have on average across government because a lot of what you're talking about you would think anybody that was sort of remotely connected to fiscal or monetary policy would have a general sense about but apparently not. Well, you know, I think it is kind of stunning and as he talked about, they're all neocanesians and there's nobody who's, you know, a neocclassicist like he is. I mean, yeah. No, it's look, I mean, the the there's a part of our government that's actually kind of smart. I mean, borderline parts of it are evil as well. But, I mean, at least, you know, I know that Jason Lowry wrote something called software, which is the case the the strategic case for Bitcoin. And he told my partner David Foley that, you know, look, uh, the people in that run the Pentagon, run the defense department, run the DoD, etc., They understand what the sound money, you know, what what Triffin's dilemma has done to this country. They understand the sound money thing. I was trying to make that point earlier. I mean, it's an existential threat because as we've now read, you know, Adam, the basically, you know, we couldn't even go to war with China if we want to because they've got all the rare earth we need to build our weapons. It's just like, whoa, how did that happen? Well, somebody wasn't paying attention and and that's, you know, and and and so Trump comes in with a very blunt instrument of tariffs and he's swinging this axe around, but good god, somebody had to do it because the route we were on was literally towards becoming, you know, just a vassal state of China and uh and that's that's not a good outcome. >> All right. So, I I got a bunch of questions here. I'm start Well, and and you're you're on you're touching on one of them here, which is >> um you know, this not a political channel. You're not necessar I don't I don't see see >> I'm a libertarian I'm very much a libertarian >> you're a libertarian you're a guy that kind of calls balls and strikes as he sees them >> what kind of grade do you give the Trump administration's economic policies so far >> I'd probably give them a B minus you know I mean you know I I think they're they're certainly better than the alternative um I think they understand that sound money is important I know Robert Kennedy understands it everyone should go listen to the Robert Kennedy speech at Bitcoin Nashville it's an outstanding ing speech. He gets it. >> When when was that when was that made? >> It was not this year. It was probably 2024. >> Okay. >> Highly recommended. Um, you know, Bent gets it. I mean, Bent's admitted gold bug. >> Yeah. >> Bent's positive on Bitcoin. Miran is positive on Bitcoin. I mean, I think they understand what unound money has done to this country. I think they understand how Triffin's dilemma has hollowed out the manufacturing base. I mean, Bent said it or I mean, JD Vance said it. You know, Wall Street's been doing just fine. It's time for Main Street to win. you know, and and by the way, for that to occur, the bond market's got to die. And it's and it's going to die. I mean, they're they're going to kill it. And and and you know, they don't say they want a cheaper dollar, but they want a cheaper dollar. They want a serious dollar devaluation because that's necessary, you know, in order to solve this imbalance that we've got that that, you know, has put us in the position that we're in. So, I mean, I look I I think they I think they mean well. I think they're going in the right direction. I think they're trying hard. I think some of it has been hamfisted. Um I think some of it is unrealistic. Um, obviously Liberation Day was kind of, you know, I mean, what happened on liberation day was fascinating to me, right? Because the bond market basically schooled Trump, right? You know, we're going to do all these tariffs and the bond market and the stock market, the bond market falls, stock market falls. Well, maybe we're not, you know, maybe we're going to rethink that. And so, you know, I mean, they they so they, you know, okay, but fine. So, they adjusted. I we'll put a 60 I was it a 60-day or 90-day extension? I think it was 90, but they they put an extension on when they went into effect, right? And um >> I'm trying to think if they did more than just >> I can't remember what it was. Somebody somebody will put it in the show notes, but anyway, the bottom is they put an extension in and the market recovered, so on and so forth. So they I I think their intent is right. They're kind of feeling their way around in the dark. I I give them, you know, who who could get it perfectly right. I mean, it's 20 years of misadventure in the wrong direction. I mean, you can't fix it in a year. I mean, he hasn't even been there a year yet. Right. >> Right. And I I would say from a monetary policy standpoint, you would say it's more like 50 years only because I'm >> Well, that's right. If you want to go back to 71. >> Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um well, look, I I think this is coming from your book, but just to help listeners here. So, Larry, where does this end up uh currency-wise? Do do you think the US returns to a backed currency of some sort at some point in time? I'm sure to get from here to there is going to be wicked painful in a lot of ways. But do do you think we end up with a new monitor? >> Marblehead. Yeah. Your marble head upbringing is showing because there aren't many people I speak to who use the word wicked. >> When you were talking about about Lacy earlier, I was going to say he's wicked smart. >> He's wicked smart. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a great question. And um, yes, I do. And I think only because it's it's the Church Hillian line of Americans do the right thing after you try everything else. I think I think the way this goes is that inflation becomes the problem of our age for the next 10 years and at some point you know enough politicians like Kennedy or Vance or others recognize that this is the core of the problem and that we need to return to some form of sound money and actually chapter 26 in my book is the speech I would give as a president to how we do that and the reset we would need to do and it's been done before I mean on a different scale smaller but with some different facts Roosevelt did it in the 30s and 33, you know, grabbed all the gold and repriced gold to fight deflation. So, >> um, you know, that could be done here and there are many people who've described it. Judy Shelton has proposed, you know, a gold back treasury bond. That would be one way to do it. You could also do a bit bond, which would be a treasury with some Bitcoin attached to it. I mean, you know, but yes, we will. We we we we must and we will and and and just natural forces will cause us to drift back to sound money, which is not to say the dollar will necessarily disappear, but the dollar is going to have a lot of competitors. And certainly the bond market, you know, the I mean, I look at gold and Bitcoin as really reserve assets, not necessarily reserve currencies. And and currency, as you know, has two pieces to it. is it's a savings vehicle. It's a store of value vehicle. It's also a medium of exchange vehicle. Well, in today's world with technology, you can exchange one thing to another in the heartbeat. You know, you got Venmo, PayPal, dollars, yen. I mean, it's it doesn't matter. The currencies will all be out there, you know, for payments. But what what people will be willing to hold that they trust will be gold, silver, and bitcoin in my view. >> And and those will come center stage. and and perhaps even to the point where I I you know I kind of dream and think in my book and we're talking you probably after I'm gone we're talking 20 plus years out here I actually believe my kids might be doing transactions of Satoshi's which is the smallest unit of one bitcoin so um you know and the dollar might be a thing of the past and every might be saying well you know how could it be that you guys let 12 people in a market-based economy set something as important as the price of money I mean right >> we all know price fixing doesn't work that you know the the interest rate ought to balance the supply of savings against the demand for capital. That's what the interest rate should be. It should be set in the free market full stop. But of course, what we have is a bank and government cartel that sets it. And that's why we have all these problems. I mean, you know, look at it, Adam. You have 0% interest rates, you know, which makes everybody who can borrow wealthy, or you have 20% interest rates that almost banked them with my dad in, you know, in 1980 when we were eating tuna fish sandwiches for dinner for weeks on end. I mean, it's just, you know, it's it's kind of a it's just an up and down system that's very painful because it's it's run by a cartel that is, you know, the banks and the governments. So, >> all right. Um, I am biting my tongue to to not go deeper on some of these things. Just >> I'm happy to go. >> I've got the time if you want to go deeper, so just let me know. >> I appreciate that. I I just don't want to keep you here for hours, but but let's let's keep hacking away here. So, um, >> uh, as you referenced earlier, um, silverber is is above long-term resistance. Um, really, I think getting above 35 was a big deal. >> I agree. Yeah, that was the first that was the first measure. 40 is a bigger one. Yeah. >> Yeah. And now, now, at least on the day we're talking, uh, silver futures are 41 something. >> Are they? I had looked. Yeah. >> Yeah. The momentum we saw that started on Friday is continuing. Now, of course, US markets aren't open. We'll see if that holds tomorrow. Um, but we've got that and we've got gold futures at an all-time high here. So, what significance do you place on this new rarified territory that the precious metals find themselves in? >> Well, it's a breakout. It's a breakout after many years of suppression. And, you know, if you kind of some people would say, well, these are too expensive. They have to come back down. And I would say, no, no, no. You need to compare them to the outstanding money that we've created. And, you know, I mean, Brent Johnson has a great table. It's actually in my book as well that shows that to fully back the dollar with gold and this was a couple years ago, you know, at today's and 100% backing, by the way, is not required to have a gold standard. I mean, you can run a gold standard at 20 to 40% backing, >> right? But if you wanted 100% back the dollar, you know, M2, you know, with gold, you'd have to have $90,000 an ounce gold. Now, you know, it's not there. It's at 3500. And so, so they I I I believe they have a lot of room to run. And people have asked me my outlook. I mean, I think we see 4,000 this year and probably five the next year. And I can clearly see up to 10, you know, in the next, you know, five to plus years. And and with Bitcoin, I can kind of see, you know, I think 140 this year and, you know, higher following years. I mean, they'll probably be at some point it'll get ahead of itself and we'll have a real, you know, we'll have that 50% pullback that'll scare people, but in, you know, 2030 plus, I think Bitcoin's a million dollars a coin. I said that at New Orleans, I think it was last year, and a lot of people gawought and made fun of me and argued with me and this that and the other, but >> once you really kind of dig into what it is, which is to say, you know, it's the first commodity that can't be manufactured beyond its limit. So every other I mean, so we've never really seen anything like Bitcoin before. I think people have to get their head around that there. There has never been something like this. There's never been a financial thing with a fixed supply ever. Gold grows at 170 a year. In 40 years, we'll have twice as much gold on this planet. In 40 years, there'll still only be 21 million Bitcoin, right? So, putting it getting your wrapping your head around that is is why it can just keep going for a very long time, and I think it will. >> So, a couple things. First off, thank you. You uh as a good interviewee, you interpreted uh or anticipated the questions I was going to ask you. So, thank you for those price targets. Um the 1 million um prediction for Bitcoin. Just want to let you know, you know, a few others share that. Mark Moss um made that prediction about a year ago when he spoke at our conference. Um but I mean I I know when you made this prediction, Larry, it was yours was no less um courageous to make it at that point in time. There's still a lot of people that I think um can't wrap their brains around that. Um let me ask you this. I asked this a little bit last time and I I I we should probably spend a whole uh interview on this at some point in the future. So, let's just give it a tiny bit of of discussion here. But, >> um, you said, you know, something like Bitcoin hasn't existed before where it's intended to not be able to be, you know, it's it's fixed. It's intended to be fixed at what it is, right? I I think so. There's a lot of people, I think, who watch this channel um, who don't own Bitcoin, and they're not philosophically opposed to it. They're probably a lot like me where they should be really philosophically for it because we're fans of sound money and stuff like that. But one of the hurdles they have is, "All right, I get it, Larry. They're not going to make any more bitcoins than the 21 million that are out there, but why can't somebody tomorrow create another coin that's just as competitive, maybe as a few other bells and whistles, and that's going to be fixed, too. So, how does Bitcoin get to keep it? How does it defend itself?" >> It's a great question. It's a great concern. We deal with it a lot and I I I fully understand it and all I would say is that it has to do with the network effect of what people adopt as money. And so a and and and don't get me wrong, I I accept that as a risk. It is one of the risks, okay? It's not like a zero probability risk, okay? Um but but a good analog to that might be, well, okay, how about tomorrow somebody's going to make a better Amazon, right? They're going to have all the things for sale, all the people buying there, all the usage of it, etc. It's just it's going to emerge. It's going to have something some feature that causes it to make Amazon die and it's going to win. I mean, in other words, there there's a you know, it's called metaf's law. There's a network effect here that's in place where, you know, it would take something substantially better to cause people to migrate off of this network and onto a better network. Do you follow me? And people say, >> I totally do. So, so there's two things here. There's the the network effect, which is the bigger the network, the more value it has, right? That's why eBay beat every other auction site out there because they just had the most sellers and then so that attracted the most buyers, which then attracted more sellers, right? And it snowballed. and and Google and Amazon are other examples, right? >> There are other examples of that. But I want Google is a great one to mention here. So, um so then there's switching costs, right? Which is like look, I'm I'm using Amazon or what I'm I'm using provider X and just for me to stop using it and move over to this guy is going to have a big hassle factor, right? And so that's true that that goes handinhand with the network effect. But let's look at Google. And this might not be a direct analogy, but you know AI is coming out. I know panicking because of Google. >> Yeah. All of a sudden a ton of people are doing their searches on chat. >> I know. And my, you know, my 30-year-old daughter works at Google. I mean, and and so we we've had this discussion and >> and I, you know, again, Adam, I I don't think it's impossible that that there could be something that would be better that would come along. I I think you know you'd have to see it and and you'd have to you know and and you you know that you could see what what would happen is if it was doing extremely well and Bitcoin wasn't doing well and people were migrating from Bitcoin to it because of its better qualities. Well then that would be a data point and and maybe you'd go over there. But I I think you know one of the things one of the other things I think prevents it from being you know that happening is it's based on this proof of work which in the early days was very hackable. you know, if you get a 50% attack, 51% attack, if you control more than half of the mining capability of it, you could, you know, basically corrupt it and cheat it. Okay? And >> and when it was smaller, that would have been possible. I mean, I know people who were mining them on, you know, M2s. I mean, it was crazy how easy it all was. >> But now you've got billions and billions of dollars, 20 plus billion dollars probably spent in the mining industry, you know, on these specialized ASIC factories that mine it. And you know the notion of somebody conducting a 51% attack or just it's ridiculous. You couldn't you know it couldn't happen again. And so so and if you look at it there are people who debate is this a discovery or is it an invention? I don't you know it doesn't really matter. It's you know it's the same with an airplane. Was that a discovery and invention? I call it an invention. When they invented digital scarcity you only get to do it once. And and so and that's really the big breakthrough here. What Bitcoin brought that was never existent before was a form of digital scarcity. And so, you know, can somebody else create digital scarcity? Yes. But the first mover advantage and the largest network, I think, win, unless for some reason, you know, if Bitcoin core really screws up Bitcoin and somebody comes up with a much better version of it that causes a lot of people to go over there instead of here. And those things are possible. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't discount those. And I'm always looking around for other things to wonder, could that happen? You know what I mean? But but to date, I don't see anything like that. You know what I'm saying? >> Okay. And I appreciate your open mind on this and just again my one man. >> It's a legit I gotta tell you I had all these concerns myself. I mean it's you know this your bit moving down the rabbit hole of believing in Bitcoin and owning some Bitcoin. It's hard. I mean I had Max Kaiser telling me in 2011 or 12, you got to buy this dude. And I was like it's like Max what the are you talking about? I mean sorry pardon my English. My wife's going to be mad at me because she monitors my my stuff. Um you know what are you talking about? I mean you know they've tried this. I mean there was hash cache, there was ecash, there was digital go. I mean it doesn't work you know it just does not work because every one of those had a technical flaw and and of course you know we've got the having you know and the difficulty I mean all the things that went into constructing Bitcoin you know right 256 the cryptography I mean it's kind of an amazing collaboration of a bunch of technologies is like oh wow we cracked the code we figured out digital scarcity >> do you know what I mean and it all came together. >> Yeah. And and look, I I I don't just my opinion, but I I I I agree with Larry, like I I don't see uh the high capability of somebody resting Bitcoin from, you know, the crown from Bitcoin anytime soon. Maybe never. I I'm totally open to the fact that, hey, it might be the the long-term winner here. Um so, even though I'm raising these questions, Larry, it's not like I think it's going to go away. >> Well, I I know I know where you're at. I I feel like you're almost orange pill and I mean once you get settled in Nevada you got to start buying some because then you'll be in a tax-free state. So >> yeah, exactly. And look, part of it too is I I'm I'm I'm sure once you buy it and you experience some real growth in it, then you get that >> it's selfreinforcing. Yeah. If I bought at three or 400, I'm feeling really great about Right. >> Yeah. I mean must be you must be feeling awesome about that. So um last question on this just again p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p poking holes so that the skeptics of Bitcoin can hear your answers to them. Um back to AI, you know, I think AI has has surprised many people, not even doubters, maybe even some of its fans with in certain areas about how quickly it has improved, right? And and it does improve at an exponential rate, right? So there is the risk that maybe not tomorrow but maybe not too far after tomorrow we really get into kind of quantum computing and cryptography that can um break uh Bitcoin6. Yeah. No, that's and that's that's the other thing I worry about and it's that's a legitimate risk as well and you I'm not a computer scientist. I don't write code. I don't understand any of the issues there. I just listen to the smart people including Adam Back and Lyn Lyn Alden and others and I I I just what what I from what I understand you know where they are on AI or where they are on quantum and the pace of the development it's not even remotely a threat for at least a decade and maybe two but as you point out we have been it's funny AI in some ways is really positively surprised but I would also say in other ways you know I think there's a lot AI reminds me a lot of the internet bubble um there's just a lot of hype I mean does it make my life easier and your life easier. Sure. I mean, I can I can ask a question, get an answer like that. It's fabulous. >> But you go to a website and you use their AI chatbot to get help and you're pulling your hair out. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, and it's I mean, is it going to, you know, I mean, I've heard stuff like, well, in five years there'll be no white collar jobs because of AI. And I'm like, h I don't think so. You know, I mean, there might be a few less parallegals because one parallegal can do 3x the work, but, you know, and there might be a few less financial analysts, you know. I mean, there there's some great uses of it. It's a tool that helps people, no doubt. And and I you know I think in 1015 years it'll probably have a larger impact than any of us could imagine. But but I mean the the market is now pricing it as though it's all going to happen next year. And uh you know I think I mean wasn't there a recent I read a recent survey said like 95% of the companies who've been involved in it you know said that the project have kind of been a failure and yet so many of these technical big tech firms have been putting billions and billions of dollars into it. I mean >> it pay paying huge bonuses to hire people and it's nuts. It feels it feels very 2000 like to me in terms of you know we're never going to have enough bandwidth you know >> um I mean having seen that show as well it does to me as well especially just some of the gargantuan valuations some of these firms are getting and that being said a lot of cases they do have real revenues but again these are revenues by people who are who are it's with capex right so it's on the hope that they're going to make some operating profit down the road that to your point the operating profit >> I think I mean I chat I paid $200 to chat GBT because I want the unlimited version of it. I think they're making pretty good money off of that. But it's, you know, it's I mean, like I look at the the Palunteer valuation. I mean, and of course it's all government spending anyway, but I'm just like, huh? >> Yeah. But 200 times sales or something crazy like that. >> I just Yeah. That that just can't last. But but I mean, you know, the problem with these bubbles is they go on longer than you think and either look stupid in the beginning or stupid afterwards. So >> that's that's the classic Husman quote. And yeah, and and with this one too, you know, >> just as Scott McNeely famously >> Yeah, I love that. >> Said, "Hey, you guys are valuing some micros systems at 10 times sales. You're nuts." Sam Alman just came. I mean, of all people, Sam Alman said, "This is a bubble." >> Yeah. Right. >> Right. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know timing timing the bursting of bubbles is extremely tough. I mean, I I know people who tried to short Japan. I know people shorting the internet. I mean, look at, you know, one of one of the greatest investors of our times, Dre Miller, you know, got on the wrong side of the internet bubble with I think he bet billions of dollars and lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the internet bubble, you know, >> by shorting it. >> Exactly. >> 989. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um All right. Curious to hear your answer to this question. think I know what it is, but um so obviously you um are a substantial investor in both the precious metals and Bitcoin. >> Yeah. >> Do you trade between the two at all depending upon their relative valuations or are you just stacking and holding as you go? >> I'm stacking and holding as I go. Um so what's happened to me, Adam, is that I feel much more bullish on Bitcoin than I do on gold and silver. And which is not to in any way denigrate gold. I love them. hate it when people knock them. Um, but at the margin I'm a buyer of Bitcoin, whereas at the margin I I haven't bought a lot of new gold and silver. I bought a lot of gold and silver miners, which is a slightly different kettle of fish with a lot of risk involved. >> And of course, what's happened to me over the years is my Bitcoin waiting has just become higher because it's gone up faster. >> Um, and I've never, you know, I'm not into selling my gold and silver. I'm not going to do that. But I, you know, I mean, let's say I'm I earn a salary at my job, which I do, and let's say I have some excess capital and I want to put it somewhere. I usually look for the best opportunity. I mean, recently actually that's been in some gold and silver stocks, but in general, if it weren't there, you know, I would be a buyer of Bitcoin. Um, >> okay. >> And is that pretty much for the reason that all things being equal, you know, given your outlooks, you think Bitcoin has a higher probability of increasing by 10x than gold? I >> I think that's right. I think I think that I mean, in the book, there's some good charts that show how Bitcoin has outperformed gold. And and really the reason for that, I mean, gold is the best form of money that's ever existed until Bitcoin came along. And you know it it p it protects against purchasing power but it's also fully distributed. The reason Bitcoin's outperforming gold is that you've got an adoption curve going on. It's this Malcolm Gladwell. We're only in year 15 of something that I think is going to be adopted for a bunch more years. And so you know as we know the total gold market is $20 billion. The total Bitcoin or I'm sorry 20 trillion. The total Bitcoin market is $2 trillion. And so you know there's just more growth in Bitcoin. Right. >> All right. um you had prepared a slide um comparing gold and Bitcoin. Let's not forget that. So, why don't you pull that up as you're p as you're pulling it up? Let me just ask you this question. So to the person who just hasn't gotten on the Bitcoin train yet, but but understands follows your logic and and is saying maybe I should own some of this stuff, but man, the big money's already been made and me buying in is going to have to be an admission to somewhat that my idiot brother-in-law who bought in seven years ago, who probably bought in for all the wrong reasons but made a crap ton of money. Um would you just say forget all that? It's just a >> saution. I'd make a couple of statements to that. I'd say one, zoom out because you might look wrong short term, but in five years you're going to look really right. You know, if you're in I mean, let's say you're a gold and silver person. You got all your money in gold and silver, you got none in Bitcoin. Okay. What I would submit to you is that's not correct. You zero Bitcoin is the wrong allocation for something that's this asymmetric. And even if you only sold 10% of your gold and silver and put it into Bitcoin, you should do that. And by the way, you know, in the short run, the go the Bitcoin might go down, but in the long run, I think it will outperform the gold and silver. The other thing I say to people who are experienc what you're describing is price shock. I've had a lot of people come up to me. I, as you know, I've been a sound money person for years. I've been pumping gold and silver for years. People think, you know, my wife used to say, "Don't talk about the at cocktail parties. We need to stay popular around here." Yeah. And and and now they're calling. >> I think my my wife might have said something somewhere to me, too. >> Yeah. And now they're calling me say, "Hey, what should I do? Is it too late?" And I'm kind of like, well, you know, it would have been better a year or two ago, no doubt. But, um, I try and use the following analogy. I've used this in other podcasts, but I'll just repeat it because I think it's relevant. I think fiat currency is failing slowly but surely, consistently over time. It's sinking. Kind of like the Titanic is sinking. Okay. I think gold or sank. I think gold, Bitcoin, and silver are seats on a lifeboat away from sinking fiat currencies. Now, I got my first Bitcoin seat at 300 bucks. I got my first gold seat at 300 bucks. I got silver seats at $5. They're a lot higher right now. Those seats cost a lot more today than they cost back when I was originally buying them. But if what's going on in fiat currency continues, I think you want to own one of those seats, right? Even if it costs you $3,500 an ounce for gold or, you know, $120,000 a coin for Bitcoin. And of course, as you know, you can buy fractions of both. You don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin. You don't need to buy a whole ounce of gold. So I just think to not have some allocation in this bucket is is not you know it's not good asymmetric investing I guess is what I would say based on what we know about the risk of monetary debasement and and then I think everybody should decide that allocation should be what are you comfortable with knowing that these things are volatile and could go against you 30 to 50% but you hold them as long-term insurance against the government trashing the money and it seems highly likely the government will trash the money So that's that's that's kind of how I I speak to them. But I don't know. Can you see the chart that we were talking about that I've now brought up? >> I can I can see it. Let me just make one perhaps poor analogy and then then I'll give you the the floor here. So when it comes to buying into Bitcoin because of of you thinking it as as sound money and perhaps the the future superior form of sound money, it's like uh you know uh the fall of of Saigon um back in um >> in in the Vietnam War, which is like don't haggle what your the price of your seat on that last helicopter is going to be. Just get on it. >> Exactly. That's that's I think it's a very good analogy. you want that seat on a helicopter badly if if what's going on in fiat continues. And you know, and as I say, I'm not suggesting to anyone that you should put 100% of your money in this bet. I'm just suggesting to a lot of people who have zero in the bet that like, oh, no, no, no. Wake up and pay attention to this. And I think I think if you do, I think in five years or 10 years, you'll thank me. And in the same way that people today are like, well, gosh, it's 100 grand, Larry. You paid 10 for it. How can I pay 10x what you know you paid for it? I'm like, okay, but but just accept that in six years, say, and I think it'll be about six years to go to a million in six, you know, because it's it's it's 10xed. It's it's order of magnitude grown like a bunch of times. It went from one to 10 to 100 to a,000 to 10,000 to 100,000, you know, in 15 years. So, kind of every three to four years, it would 10x. And I think that it'll 10x again. And so, at some point in the future, it'll be a million bucks. And you'll be thinking, god, I wish I bought it at 100,000, >> right? >> That that seemed cheap. And it's so it's all just don't let the price framing mess you up of what it for what it is. Do you know what I mean? >> I do. And sorry, last question before you talk about the chart here. >> Do you have guidance any strong guidance to people when they say, "Okay, well, what should I buy in at? Should I should I actually buy it and buy the coin itself and hold on exchange or have a cold wallet? Can I use one of these ETFs?" Like what do you have? Yeah, I just give you I'll give you the real quick overview on that because that's a long deep rabbit hole that we could go down. I mean, to get price exposure to it for the average person because learning how to self-custody and managing your own keys is a time-consuming process and for those who aren't technically literate, it's scary. You can get price exposure to it with your, you know, with your brokerage account by buying IBIT, which is the Black Rockck one, or FBTC, which is the Felity Fidelity ETF, and you've got price exposure, and you're paying 30 bips as a fee, which isn't very much. And so, if it doubles, you're going to double your money. Um, you know, or 10x, you're going to 10x your money. Um, but the issue there, just full disclosure, is that if we ever had a Democratic administration in the future and Stephanie Kelton was the Treasury Secretary and they decided that Keynesianism was the rule of the land and that Bitcoin and gold were ruining their beautiful fiat system and that therefore they needed to confiscate all the Bitcoin very much the way Roosevelt did with 6102. And they called up Fidelity and they called up Black Rockck and they said, "Send all those Bitcoin to us and we're going to give you dollars." Well, you'd be screwed. because the value of Bitcoin would skyrocket in dollar terms and you would have lost yours. >> And so that's the argument for self- custody which is a longer that's an involved process that um probably we don't want to go into in this call or in this uh pod but you know people can easily look into self-custody bitcoin a lot of people can help you with that. >> All right that's a very helpful concise answer. Thank you. So let's go to this chart. >> Okay so this was prepared by my partner David Foley who runs a Bitcoin opportunity fund. their private partnership doing extremely well a lot of Bitcoin public and private companies great results they're open to accredited investors I got to put in a little advertisement there I'm an adviser to them not a principle the Foley and Lavish run it but he prepared this chart and what this shows the orange line is the price of Bitcoin and the gold line is the price of gold and of course the scales are very different right I mean um you know on the because Bitcoin's going up a lot more than gold um you know the right hand scale is the price of gold. The left hand scale is the price of Bitcoin. I think it's I think it's log because of how fast Bitcoin has gone up. But when you lay the two over each other, what you see is that gold tends to look at early 2019, gold tends to smell monetary debasement before Bitcoin. So it broke out and started running and Bitcoin sat flat from 2019 to 2020ish and then suddenly it woke up, you know, to to what was going on with COVID and it went berserk, you know, it just went straight up and outperformed gold. And then of course when the correction came post that, you know, and they could smell POW was probably going to get tight, then Bitcoin corrected a lot. And this was the Sam Bankman free dip. But um and gold corrected a bit too. And so, but back back again, you know, 2022 when they can start to see that the Fed is is probably getting closer to the point where they're going to pivot again, which they did by announcing in the fall of 2023 that they weren't uh that the rate hiking cycle was over. Again, gold started to smell the debasement first. You know, Bitcoin started to go up a bit, but then Bitcoin really caught fire and raced past gold. And then when it corrected, it corrected more. So, you know, and and again, you see it here. Then Bitcoin broke out again. Well, then eventually bit or gold broke out again. Bitcoin caught on, took off fast. So, so we're now in a period where, you know, basically the Fed has been on hold. They've started cutting, not aggressively. I think they're going to be forced to cut aggressively. And gold's been forming a big bull flag that this chart's not updated. It just broke through that 3500 number. And Bitcoin's actually kind of languishing. And I got a lot of grief on my Bitcoin, you know, or my Twitter thread. You know, what the hell's going on with Bitcoin? Why is gold working and Bitcoin's not? I'm just like, guys, Bitcoin smells it first or gold smells it first and then Bitcoin follows through much harder. And that's just the pattern that we've seen over these years. And so, you know, that's how I get to my re my belief that we'll end the year at 4,4500 gold and then this Bitcoin line is going to at some point in here really catch fire and we're going to 140, you know, probably, you know, late this year, early next year, you know, up from today's one. What are we at? 108 today, I think. So, um, but I think it's an interesting chart, interesting way of looking at it, isn't it? And in general, you can see how they're both kind of correlated as forms of sound money. Now, some people say, well, yeah, Bitcoin's a proxy for the NASDAQ, and it certainly was more of that in the past, but I think I think there I've seen some studies that have shown that that's beginning to decrease as time goes on. And that, you know, while it is a liquidity driven, risk-on asset, it's not trading step forep with what the NASDAQ's doing. And and you notice that in fact, because this year it's greatly outperformed the NASDAQ. I mean, NASDAQ's not up very much this year, and Bitcoin's up solidly. So, >> all right. Well, really, really interesting. Okay. Um, I've got a few more questions I want to try to squeeze in before we're done here. Thank you for going along with me here. >> Um, I'm going to see if I can pull up this chart, but I wanted to get back to uh your comments that you had made earlier about um electricity costs. >> Yeah, Twitter feed. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I'm I'm going to pull that up. So just bear with me one second here. Um here's your tweet. I >> think you were retweeting uh a tweet from the >> Kobe Kobe letter. Yeah. >> Yeah. And we can see energy prices take off. And I I've shown a chart, Lawrence, of um America's energy productive capacity relative to Europe's and China's. And basically America and and the EU have been morbined for decades. It's kind of like a you know a sideways trending line where China >> Yeah. China's just shooting the moon and to your point you know to the extent that AI has now become sort of you know an existential race race on the sovereign level like whoever wins AI is going to be the next you know uh reigning superpower. Um we have to dramatically increase our electrical production and rebuild our grid and and it seems like the new administration has got religion around that. We got a lot of investment going in there, right? >> But let me let me ask you this question. Um, so yes, this is um uh inflationary meaning, you know, electricity or energy is an input into everything, right? So the more expensive energy becomes, the more expensive everything becomes. We're talking kind of about electricity here, but um we could maybe even make it energy at large. Um, back when be right before the shale boom happened, when peak oil was, you know, all the talk, um, a guy named Jim Paplava asked, uh, who who is, >> I know, >> a financial interviewer like me, he was a previous generation. Um, he asked a really interesting question. He said, um, is oil, specifically the price of oil, now going to become the next Fed funds rate because it was the limiter on the system, right? You know, the central banks can't print more oil. And if we were starting to sort of run out and it was just going to get more and more expensive, >> you could have made the argument that, hey, yeah, oil was going to actually be what mattered, the price of oil was going to matter most to to what the economy was going to do, perhaps even more than the Fed funds rate. And I'm curious, given that we have such a a deficit of where we need to be going forward, could we be entering an era where electricity costs or just energy costs in general might actually become more important than the Fed funds, right? >> Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think um and it's interesting that you both in a way gold and uh Bitcoin are energybacked currencies. I mean, it takes energy to mine gold and it takes energy to to, you know, run the Bitcoin. >> Doesn't take much energy to run the Fed printers, you know. Well, I guess it takes more than we thought that the new headquarters is going to be 2.5 billion, but Right. But, um, yes, I think what you're describing is completely correct and accurate. And I think the reason, you know, it's so sad that that this has occurred, Adam, and I I laid it out in my book. I mean, you know, China was building nuclear reactors and and they got a lot of coal and that's dirty and they're they're a big poller and that's not great. But but they invested very very heavily in nuclear. Meanwhile, you know, we didn't do that probably because of the oil and gas lobby prevented us from doing that. And we went and spent $8 trillion trying to conquer the Middle East and then retreated from it, which was just such a colossic um colossal, you know, strategic error on our part. I mean, it just it drives me nuts. I live in Massachusetts. High energy cost in Massachusetts kilowatt hour 34 cents. All my neighbors have Teslas because they're virtue signaling. But I've done the math. It's more expensive to drive electric at 34 cents than it is to buy the gasoline at today's prices. And >> it's kind of like, huh? You know, and and and you know, and it's tragic because, as you know, you're from Marblehead. I mean, >> you know, Quebec has got oodles of, you know, five to seven cent, you know, hydro power, but all the environmentalists in Northern New England won't let us run it through their state. Do you know what I mean? And so um yeah, I mean I the US energy policy I mean to me and I I' this is an area where although Trump is you know drill baby drill and open up mines and get all the strategic minerals and you know takes an investment in MP and a lot of smart stuff. Boy, I I really wish they would take on I mean we we need we need a Marshall plan for nuclear energy for the United States. And it's interesting in a in a conversation I had with Michael Sailor he said don't worry about it Larry. The reason it's going to happen is that AI is going to demand it. I mean, if you want if you want these AI productivity gains, you can't do this without having nuclear power. >> We have got to have nuclear power. And so, >> right. And I I believe I actually don't want to make this assumption, but you know, there's a lot of people that say, and on the way there, we're going to rely a lot more heavily on natural gas as kind of the bridge fuel, and you'll see a lot of new investments in there. Um, sounds like you you see that happening. >> I totally agree with that. Totally agree with that. And we've got a lot of natural gas. That's a beautiful thing. >> Yeah. And a lot of cheap natural gas, which is >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, that's all that's all on the come. I mean, you know, um for those who think I haven't been kind enough to Trump, I would just make the statement that, you know, this administration has been such a breath of fresh air compared to what we would have gotten with the other side, you know. Um but that doesn't mean they're perfect. >> Yeah. And it is interesting kind of back to my question to you about, you know, can energy set the tune? Will energy set the tune from here? I mean, it it it it sort of is already, right? I mean, we we we you you've mentioned So, we've looked at how our chief competitor, China, is just way ahead of us on this, right? And we say, look, if we if we want to >> the IRS is going to be one on plentiful, cheap available electricity. They're way ahead of us. We got to catch up. So, we probably will sort of have a an Apolloesque or Marshall plan uh put together to to make that happen. And I feel like it's already probably in the process of getting >> I think they're working on it. I hope they are. They should be. >> And and you can say, "Look, we had a lot of missteps." And you could compare this administration to previous ones, but you can to really see how badly you could be, we just need to look over to like Germany, right? >> Yeah. Well, they Yeah, they've done even worse. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, we didn't help them by blowing up the Nord pipeline, but Yeah. They've done even worse. >> Yeah. And so, you know, um I guess my point is is hey, you know, we're not the worst at this, but um what is it that Duneberg says? Well, there's that there's that saying like decline is a choice. And and sometimes, you know, um yeah, if we're not first in the race for something we care about, it's because we were making the wrong policies. The good news is, as Duneberg likes to say, um it's a lot easier to remove a political strength than a a political constraint than a geological one. And the good news with America is we still have a ton of resources that we could be using more aggressively and if we just get the political constraints out of the way, we can we we can actually maybe have the future we want. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. There's there's a really bright future here if we do the right policies. There really is. We can fix this monetary all this. I mean, I've been accused of being a doomer and I'm not a doomer. I'm just an older guy who's seen a bunch of cycles and I know how this works. And so, you know, I I just I can see that we are we are truly in a forth turning and and monetarily there's going to be some real turmoil here. And and as you I think you said, you know, very preiently earlier in the conversation, there's no way we don't get out of this with some pain. You know, there there there going to be some winners and losers, sadly. And um you know, but we but we do need to get out of it. I mean, and that's why I I argue that the sooner we get out of it, the better. I want my kids, my grandkids to grow up in a world that's more like the one I grew up in, you know, where we have a middle class and things are fairer. You know, I mean, this this world right now is really really upside down. The book talks about that a lot as you know. >> Well, from your lips to the universe's ears, buddy. Um, fourth turning. Wish we had more time to really delve into it, but quickly, where do you see us in the fourth turning here? Um, and less timewise and more >> disruption. Um, I, you know, I don't think we haven't hit the climax and the resolution. That's for damn sure. That's when the currency system will have changed. Um I it's easier to do it time-wise. They tend to be 20 to 30 years long. I think this one started in '08. So that means, you know, 2028 to 2038 is the end point if they're 20 to 30 years long. Um and some were shorter. The Civil War was a little shorter. Although if you can if you think that the war started in 1850 instead of 1860 and it kind of did because there's a lot of strife and ended after reconstruction in 187 was probably 20 30 years. Um you know, the revolution was, you know, was all of that and and then some. Um, yeah. I don't know, Adam. I mean, I think we we're, you know, we're get we're getting to the we're getting to the heart of the matter to be honest with you. I mean, it's, you know, the fiat money is kind of failing and, you know, 2008. Okay, fine. They put it back in the bottle. They made it to 2020, you know, fine. Okay, they put it, they got it back in the bottle. But, of course, it was bigger. Um, you know, the span between those two was quite long, right? Um, you know, 12 years. I don't think it's going to take 12 years for the next one. I think it's coming up in the next three years probably. Um and then you know what what happens with a currency event is if you if you study and I've read read so many books about hyperinflations around the world and study them all they occur when a quorum of the people come to realize that there's no way the government can ever stop printing money. Mhm. >> And at that point in time, they all just kind of it becomes the smart it's Gresham's law, right? The smart thing to do is to just get the hell out of this currency and own something else. >> Yeah. >> Boom and prices go nuts and the whole the whole nine yards. And we've seen it. We've seen it in emerging countries. We've seen it in Venezuela. We saw it. We've seen it in developed countries like Weimar, Germany, Zimbabwe. Lots of third world countries have had it. Some big ones have had it. You know, sometimes it's a political revolution. Happened with Mao, happened with, you know, the Russian Revolution. But, you know, you have you have a currency event and the currency fails. I mean, I I find it interesting. I I I talked to a lot of people from South America because I'm in the mining investment business. I talked to people from Argentina and Peru and they kind of get it because, you know, their currencies have all failed multiple times. >> Oh, yeah. They they it's not academic to them. They they've got >> real. I mean, they talk about I had a guy talking to me about how his parents, you know, used to get paid and they'd literally go to the supermarket right after they got paid to buy the food or else they weren't going to eat that weekend. So, so, so I talked to a guy from Argentina who said the same thing, but he said the trick was you had to get to the supermarket and see where the guy with the sticker gun was because like twice a day that he'd go update prices ahead of him to get before he put the new sticker on it. Yeah. Isn't that something? >> Yeah. So, you know, we haven't had it at a reserve currency level in kind of maybe like forever, unless you want to argue the Roman Daenerius failing was a reserve currency. But um and but yet you know I I like to say you know pursue emerging market policies get emerging market results right and and we're pursuing all the same policies we're spending more you know we're at the point now where we're printing money just to cover the interest. I mean that pretty much does it right. >> Have you have you ever seen that acronym? It's sort of a meme um fa around. Yeah yeah yeah f around and find out. Yeah. Maybe maybe that should be changed to fiat around and find out. >> I think that's about right. I mean it's the same Yeah, it's the same idea. Yeah. The other acronym I really love is um um NTS what nothing stops this train. I love >> Yeah. Yeah. Lalden. Yeah. >> Because it really does seem to be I mean you know the political system I mean it's funny. I mean one of the problems is that when they set up social security they thought people would you know people were dying in their 60s and 70s. Of course, we're now living to our 80s and 90s and we have all expensive health care and you know, so the boomers are going to get screwed on their social security because they're just not going to buy as much as they age. But, you know, and it's the third rail of politics. They can't touch it. But effectively, they're going to they're really going to get screwed in the sense that they're going to lose half. Okay? So, you're not going to cut social security, but you're going to cut the purchasing power what you get from social security. So, you get to the same place, right? So, um, this is a whole other thing we could we could talk about that I I we just don't have time to derail it, but I've been talking a lot about this recently where yes, there is going to be a big wealth handoff from the boomer generation to their children. >> Yeah. >> But I don't I'm going to take the under on it because I think a lot of that is going to get lost in the decline of purchasing power and and how far medical you end of life medical care costs and and assisted living. >> Totally agree. Yeah, totally agree. I mean, and it's really sad. And that's what that's what's so great about Sound Money. I remember very clearly watching my dad who retired with a with with a very respectable amount of money for a Midwestern businessman. And I just watched him kind of run out of money slowly over time as the you know, as the inflation ate away at it. Do you know what I mean? By the time >> it's interesting how that drive that drives a lot of us. I saw the same thing with my mother. >> I'm 68. I at some point I really do kind of want to stop working. I don't want to run out of money, you know? So, you save money. It's kind of like, okay, what can I save in so that doesn't get stolen from me by inflation in the future? You know, >> it's a real issue. >> All right, my friend. Well, look, um, let me let me start to land the plane here. One one more sort of major question, then some wrap-up ones. Um, just, uh, do you have a general market outlook uh, from here? Um, markets are obviously richly priced at the time we're talking about here and we've mentioned that the economy is slowing and that tends to not be a great cocktail for future asset prices, but I don't want to lead your answer. And secondly, do you have any sort of recommended positioning at this point in time given your market outlook beyond the the sound money assets we've talked about? >> Um I don't I mean I so I'm kind of a bear on the stock market. I don't think it's particularly cheap, but um you know these bubbles can go on longer than you think. And maybe we do live in a new monetary world where there's going to be a crackup boom. I mean, I think people who own stocks in Venezuela and Weimar, the stocks, like if you own stock of Merc, it's in the book. If you own stock of Mercedes-Benz, you went through the Weimar example, you know, you hold on to your certificates, you know, they reset into a new currency and that stock ultimately had value because Mercedes-Benz was a useful enterprise, right? So, so stocks kind of protect you. >> Um, so I'm not, you know, I'm not terribly down on stocks, but I just don't find these values compelling. I mean the the only compelling values I see in the stock market are are internationally and in commodity based businesses and in the gold and silver minings. I might have to put in a pitch for that. I run a fund that specializes in those. And until very recently I had a lot of companies trading at two or three times EBIT DA and for those who are financially driven that's cheap. You know I mean uh Google is selling at 20x EIDA. So um you know those are up a good bit. So the first innings first two innings are over in that in the bull market for that stuff. So, I'm pretty but I'm pretty bold up on, you know, gold and silver, gold, and silver mining stocks, what they can do. Um, you know, I know your I know your guys, you know, Landre and the guys you work with are in the same position. >> The the New Harour guys. I know you're >> New Harour guys. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know. I mean, I I have a lot of people I know a lot of people are really married to their stocks and I, you know, look, owning a great company for a long period of time. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, you know, if I were looking at getting into the stock market right now, gosh, it's not cheap. you know, I'd much rather I'd much rather buy it, you know, when there's blood in the street. >> Yeah. >> You know, let me ask you this on the miners. Um, do you feel that they have caught up to the metals in terms of their expected price? >> That's a great question. So, the miners were just grossly undervalued compared to the price of the metal. And and what was going on there was people were thinking, well, this metal move isn't real. You know, gold's going back to 2000 and therefore the miners are properly priced. And maybe they were priced. They weren't overpriced at 2,000, but maybe that was a fair they were at a fair price at 2,000. Of course, now with gold at 3500, you know, the the margins just have exploded. The profits have exploded and so you're buying them at very slow low multiples to cash flow. And you know, the the Huey, the XAG, GX, GX, I most things are up about 85% this year. My funds up about the same amount, almost 90%. Um, and so so yeah, we moved off the bottom and we've started to close. It was really an alligator jaws as you can see on the chart. And so we moved off the bottom and and what you can see is that the Huey is catching up to the price of gold. But I I always said I do believe this that you know we're now just getting to the low end of the range of fair value. Um and typically in bull markets you tend to go to fair value or a little beyond. And that's you know the low end of the range of fair value maybe at $3,000 gold. And if we're going to $5,000 gold well then fair value is going to get even higher. So you know handicapping where we are in the gold market. My personal opinion is if this is a nine inning baseball game, we're in the third inning. You know, we're in the top of the bottom of the third and uh you know, we got a few more innings to go. I mean, some people would say I think I heard Luke Groman or I No, I heard somebody say we're in the second second pitch of the second inning. I can't remember. It was a podcast somebody said that recent. >> Pretty specific. >> Yeah. I was like, "Wow, really?" I think it might have been Luke Groman who said that. I mean, it's really early. I I don't know. I mean, I don't you know, these things have moved and you know, they're not I'm get I'm not paying the I'm not getting the bargain prices. I mean, a year ago, I was buy I was just like, I can't believe this. I mean, I can buy this company. It's growing. It's profitable. I'm paying three times cash flow. What? You know, it's just this is nuts. How How do I have this opportunity? It was just because people didn't understand it. Well, that company's now doubled in value. So, now I'm paying six times cash flow, but cash flow is going to go up a bit. And, you know, even six times cash flow is not crazy overexpensive. I mean, at the peak in these gold and silver stock mining runs, they get up to 15 or 20 times cash flow. That's expensive, but you know, so multiples do expand in a bull market, but of course margins will expand if the metals keep running. So, so we've got a bit further to run at them. I'm very comfortable buying them here, and I'm very comfortable. I'm still taking new investors here. Um, I took a bunch of new investors at the top. And in 2019, I went up 97%. In 2020, I went up 123%. And a bunch of new investors came piling in. Oh my god, this is the greatest thing since Slice. I got to own this thing. D. And and then I rapidly recruit, you know, went down 40%. you know, and they're like, "You're an idiot." You know, why did I put my money with you? And I'm like, "Well, you know, if you have a long-term time frame, you're going to be okay, but obviously not everybody could see that, right?" And so, so I'll probably, you know, when we go up a little bit further, I might say to new investors, "No, I'm not going to take you in at this level because I, you know, there's a chance we'll have a correction and I don't want you to be unhappy." So, >> all right. Well, Larry, if someone's interested in learning about the fund, where should they go? >> Oh, yeah. So, so you can go to ema2.com, edwardmark.com, or Google equity management associates, which is the fund. It's run by myself and David Foley. Um, and then the other kind of for a real time and we we have a quarterly report there where you can see our macro views and fund views and our strategy. It's free. You can sign up for a free newsletter. Just go down to the bottom of the page. You can in insert the email there and we won't spam you. Um, you'll get the newsletter every quarter. And then probably just on a real-time basis, the best thing is just follow me on Twitter because I I'm pretty active on just kind of talking about things. occasionally, you know, for those who are looking for like what's your favorite silver stock right now or, you know, what name should I be buying? Um, you know, um, I I I leak out gems there for free on Twitter. Like, I love this stock. I mean, actually, I'm just looking at one. I'll give you one now that here's a silver stock that hasn't moved that I absolutely love. I think it's really cheap. Um, it's Southern Silver Exploration. Um, SSV.VC. The ticker, the US ticker is SSVF. These guys have a ton of silver. They're in Mexico. It's very safe. It's good management team and nobody knows what it is yet. It's still cheap. So, um, it's got a 60 Yeah. No, it's got a $617 million. Uh, make sure I get this right. Yeah, it's it's a modest market cap for what they have in terms of the amount of silver they have. So, um, yeah. >> All right. Well, fantastic. So, Larry, when I edit this video, um, I'll put up the links to your website, to your your ex handle, so folks know where to go. Um, I'll also put up for the ticker for uh that silver >> silver. Yeah. And I'll get you the chart on um uh the comparing the two, the Huey to >> Great. Yeah. Great. Um but uh but um uh I very much appreciate you sharing the ticker. That was a nice little little bonus. >> Yeah, I figure what the heck. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, well, very importantly, we we've referenced it enough during this discussion, but um, and I I was looking for my copy and and couldn't find it right before I had to jump on here. I'm sure I see you got a stack behind you there. There we go. So, for folks that would like to get the big print, um, where should they go? Is it just anywhere books are sold? >> It's just Amazon. I don't have a professional publisher yet. It's a little bit edgy. Like Richard Warner, who couldn't get Princess of the Yen published in the US, I've been getting turned down by publishers. I don't think they like the message. It's it's it's not Fed friendly as you know. >> Have Have you told him it's burning up Capitol Hill? >> Well, yeah, it is. I I haven't told him that. And I've sold 40,000 copies of it. So, it's >> Yeah, just which is I hear that's okay. I mean, I don't you know, there's pretty darn good. As a guy who's who's Yeah. authored a co-authored a book that sold over 20,000. Uh I know that 40,000 is actually quite good. >> Well, yeah, there 300 people here. So, we got a long way to go to educate everybody, but it's on Amazon. It's all formats. hard copy, hop copy, paperback, Kindle, and audio. So, um, yeah, I mean, obviously, and and as you know from doing books, you don't really make much money on books, but I what what got me into this, Adam, I had an early potential editor. I was speaking to her and she said to me, she said, you know, Larry, books can change the world. And that was just like she just sunk the hook, you know? I was like, all right, I got an ego, you know, I want to write a book that's going to change the world because I just I looked out there and I saw that all these people are getting hurt by inflation. They don't understand why and they don't understand how to protect themselves, you know, and so the book is aimed at really try to solve that problem. But point out why. Part one is why they're getting hurt and part two is what they can do about it, you know. >> Yeah. I I I think a great thing that that your book does, Larry, is I think the average person can feel it in their gut that their money is just buying less over time. They're just feeling like the headwinds are getting stronger and stronger, but they don't necessarily know why. And on this channel, I talk an awful lot about the failure of our education system to teach financial literacy, right? Your book does a great job of just pulling the veil from like like explaining it to them >> in an intuitive way that they can take it and understand what's going on. And then to your point, it's not just problem definition. It's hey, here's what you individually can do about this. >> Exactly. And if that if that, you know, if I help some people, well then, you know, it's it's my legacy and that was the goal. So, I hope it works. >> Well, I'm so glad you did do it. And again, for the folks that didn't get your book after your first appearance on this channel, folks, highly recommend you go get yourself a copy. Um, so go to Amazon. Um, all right. Well, look, um, as we wrap up here, um, Larry, I'm looking at the time. Um, you went real late with me. Thank you for being generous with >> I really enjoy it. You're you're one of the best in this business and so it's an honor to be on your show. >> Well, it's it's a real pleasure. Um, folks, please let Larry know how much you appreciate him coming on by hitting the like button and then clicking the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. All right. Well, in wrapping up here, um, first, if you are looking to get some help in figuring out how to invest for the type of future that Larry, uh, sees ahead, especially if we continue going through this fourth turning, and if if, uh, you know, uh, Lacy and Steve Hanky's uh, outlooks for disinflation, perhaps even deflation, uh, lie in store for us in the near term, at least. Um, and obviously we've got the purching power uh, concerns that Larry and I talked about in great depth here. Um, if you would like to get some help in figuring out, okay, how do I navigate my wealth through this type of short-term and longer term in future where hopefully I don't become a victim of these trends and I might even be able to position to profit from them. Um, then highly recommend most of the people watching this video get that help from a good professional financial adviser. Obviously, one that takes into account all the macro issues we talked about here. If you've got a good one who's doing that for you and has a good record of executing on that plan for you, great. Don't mess with success. You should stick with them. But if you don't or you'd like a second opinion for one who does meet that criteria, uh then consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial adviserss endorsed by Thoughtful Money. These are the firms you see with me on this channel week in and week out. You heard uh Lawrence reference the guys there from New Harbor Financial. Um so to set up one of those consultations, just fill out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. These consultations are totally free. There's no commitments involved to work with these firms. It's just a free service they offer to be as helpful as possible to as many people as possible. Also, don't forget that we are still uh making tickets available for the upcoming thoughtful money fall online conference uh available at the early bird price discount. That's the lowest price we're going to offer for this. Again, the conference is on October 18th. That's a Saturday. If you can't watch live that day, don't worry. Everybody who registers is going to get replay videos of the entire event, all the presentations, all the live Q&A. Uh the uh conference faculty is amazing. It continues to get better and I'm uh I think revealing this for the first time publicly. Uh we just had Lynn Alden commit to come on. Uh and she's going to talk specifically about uh Bitcoin. Um we're going to do a deep dive with her on Bitcoin. As Lawrence mentioned, she's one of the best experts uh best known experts out there on the topic. Um we'll have some other guests talking about gold and silver, but we're going to reserve this slot for Lynn to really go deep into what's going on with Bitcoin. So, um, if you would like to lock in your early bird price discount, go to thoughtfulmoney.com/conference, register today for it. Also, a reminder, if you are a subscriber to the thoughtfulmoney premium substack, make sure you check the emails you've got from me. I've sent you the uh promo code to use to get an additional $50 off of that early bird price discount. All right, Larry, again, can't thank you enough, my friend. It's always great to talk to you. really appreciate appreciate you giving us so much time especially on a Labor Day and um look forward to seeing you again on this program soon. >> Thank you. >> Nice to see you. >> All right. And everybody else, thanks so much for watching.