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We are live. Jim Hunter, welcome to the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.

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Jordan, thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor.

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All right. Again, you have been a good friend. We met each other at church,

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and then you've since gone on to help start a church. So why don't you introduce yourself

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for those who aren't familiar with who you are and what you do?

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Sure. Jim Hunter, I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up in a Christian home. I grew up kind of Episcopalian because my mom was born and raised Episcopalian. Both sets of my grandparents were Episcopalian, and then my dad was Presbyterian.

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As I've said to you and many others, if there's such a thing as a high Presbyterian church, that was my home church.

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I was baptized there.

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I was confirmed there.

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And I was actually married there.

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And the name of the church is Independent Presbyterian in Birmingham.

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Tragically, it's gone the way of the woke world, and it's a disaster, truly tragically.

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But if one was to go to the church, you would swear it was built in the 16th century with three or four stories high in terms of the ceiling of the church, the stained glass windows, the pipe organ.

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Absolutely beautiful.

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I had a call to ministry when I was seven years old.

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I majored in religion at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

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I thought I was going to go straight to seminary, but by the time I graduated in mid-85,

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the woke tears among the wheat was already obvious.

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And at that point, I'm like, well, what am I going to do?

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I didn't know enough about the continuing movements of the Episcopal Church.

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I knew the PCA, because the PCA flagship church, Briarwood, is in Birmingham.

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However, if you went back and talked to those particular guys at the time, they would tell you things like, well, we're really four-point Calvinists.

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They were—and I'm not saying that to be ugly.

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I'm just saying that's how they viewed the world.

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And it was very much of a Billy Graham's got it right in kind of the every Sunday is an altar call Billy Graham crusade.

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Well, that to me, relative to historical Reformed Presbyterian Episcopalian faith, just wasn't the same thing.

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So I wasn't really attracted there.

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And that ended up leading to kind of what is, quote unquote, the continuing Episcopal Church.

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I got involved with a small traditional Episcopal church in Point Clear, Alabama in 1988 when I was getting my MBA at Auburn University.

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So, wait, how did I go from going to seminary to MBA?

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Well, because I wasn't sure, all right, well, what flight path should I be on?

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Because I don't, I mean, I'm not okay with women elders.

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I'm not okay with all the things that were going on.

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So I figured, well, until I could find a flight path forward, the other thing God put in me was a love of economics.

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And we didn't have a minor program at Rhodes, but if we had had one, I would have minored in econ.

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So I was like, all right, well, I'm going to, until the dust settles, the smoke clears, I'm going to go get the MBA.

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and then I can at least underwrite myself if I need to do something with a continuing church.

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So because my parents had moved to Point Clear, that's how I got to know the continuing Episcopal Church.

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That got me involved with the 39 Articles of Religion, which I didn't know about until that time,

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the old prayer book, 1928 and prior, because I then learned what a travesty the 1979 Book of

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Common Prayer was. It essentially bulldozed the entire, well, Christian history of the Episcopal

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Church. Jim, do me a favor, because we have a lot of people who do not know any of this history. So

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maybe give like a five-minute intro to the Episcopal Church, and then you can kind of

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define some of the 39 articles. So all the Episcopal Church is, is the Church of England

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in the United States. Episcopal means a bishop, a bishopric of bishops, that sort of thing.

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And so that's all it is. But if you look at the, what were the grounding documents of the Church

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of England, what's typically thought of today is, oh, well, Episcopalians are kind of like

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diet Catholics, Catholic lights, the Catholic Church without the Pope, and that sort of,

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which is a fair assessment of what, if you go to a typical Episcopal church today, even

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those that are quote-unquote traditional, what you'll end up finding is what would be

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termed an Anglo-Catholic church, which is, it really does seem like a, it looks, feels,

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sounds, everything about it is like a quote-unquote traditional Catholic church, with the exception

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of Mary, well, actually in some of them there are some Mariology, et cetera. But the actual

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Protestant grounding of the whole Church of England was not about Henry VIII. It was about

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Thomas Cranmer, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had traveled to the continent

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at the end of Henry's reign, beginning of Edward VI reign. And he talks to Luther. He figures out

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what's going on, he comes back to England as a changed man. And Edward, so he worked with the

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young Edward VI, and that's where the 39 Articles of Religion come from. If you read those, which

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are 100 years older than the Westminster Confession, there's no doubt the Westminster

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Divide are looking at the 39 Articles going, okay, well, we need to expand here, expand there,

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you know, et cetera. But that's where it all comes from. And up to really the mid-19th century,

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turn up the 19th to the 20th, it is the Church of England or the Anglican communion around the world,

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which it's not a coincidence that the King James Bible,

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the Church of England, is the Bible and the church

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that follows the empire around the world,

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the empire upon which the sun never sets.

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And so, you know, that's—

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but by the time you get to the late 19th century,

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some listeners may be familiar with J.C. Ryle.

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John Charles Ryle, one of the great Protestant

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Church of England bishops. He was a bishop of Liverpool. Today, by Anglo-Catholics,

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he's degraded as a Presbyterian with a prayer book, and that's pretty much what I am,

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is a Presbyterian with a prayer book, because I think the beauty, the incredible power of what

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was written in the Book of Common Prayer, which did go all over the world, and the succinctness

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of the 39 articles, which are hammering on the errors of the Catholic Church,

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but they don't do things like go so far as call the Pope the Antichrist

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or really get bulldozer-ish as Westminster and arguably the 1689 London Confession does as well.

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But that's the general background.

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John J.C. Ryle, if you have not read him, if you're a listener,

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you should read this guy.

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You would swear he wrote the stuff he wrote last week.

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Unless you pick up here or there a timing giveaway,

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you really would think he wrote it very recently.

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But that is, in general, that's where God has put my heart.

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That's what needs to be recreated.

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I was in the CREC for a long time because I thought that was the flight path.

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yes, I departed the CREC,

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but in terms of that's not an ugly departure,

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it's a, I love all these guys,

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it's just God's called me a different direction.

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Yeah, and again, there's so much more

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we can say on that front,

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but I mean, just the Episcopalian Church,

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there's many people throughout the history

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of the United States

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who've been part of the Episcopalian Church,

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many names that people would recognize

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even if they wouldn't affiliate them with the church.

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So yeah, so good on you.

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Glad there's people trying to recover the good that's there and reject a lot of the insanity that's come to dominate it.

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But let's go from talking about that, which would be an incredible episode.

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Maybe we do that sometime in the future.

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We want to talk about gold.

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So obviously, let me just take a peek here.

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Let's see.

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Do you have the spot price of gold?

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It looks like $4,344 as of the time of this recording.

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So this is obviously a little different

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than things were about six months ago, a year ago, Jim.

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Things have gotten kind of crazy in gold world.

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So I'm sure this is not surprising to you.

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We've had a bunch of conversations.

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And there's other people who, again,

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would be surprised to hear a conversation about gold

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on a Bitcoin podcast because they would assume

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that we are mortal enemies

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between the digital and analog realms.

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And so we would love to disappoint them, the two of us,

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because we did a debate together

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hosted by the CrossPolitik program

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out in Moscow, Idaho.

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The two of us got out there

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and we were debating with another guy

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who was representing the traditional,

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again, hilariously titled

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traditional finance world,

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less than a hundred years old,

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but sure, it's traditional.

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So we get out there

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and to much of this surprise

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and possible chagrin

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of the entire audience,

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you and I just went back and forth

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defending each other the whole time.

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Right.

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Great.

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So I wanted to have you on.

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It's, you know, gold's doing super well.

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And so I want to come kind of have you on here and just kind of have you make the Christian case for gold to our audience.

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A lot of them, again, are already gold appreciators.

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But I would love for you to kind of talk about that.

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So, again, you've already mentioned how you got into economics, your interest there.

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How did you come to be interested and see the value of gold?

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So when I went to school between my—I started at Auburn University in their MBA program in the fall of 1987.

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That was almost simultaneous with when one of the board of trustees member, John Denton, opened Auburn to the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

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The only reason literally Von Mises Institute's in Auburn is because of this guy, John Denton, who was on the board for trustees.

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So it's kind of, ah, you know, why in the world are these free market gold guys, you know, Austrian economics guys in Auburn, Alabama, but that's why.

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And now they've built their own campus.

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It's a great building, et cetera.

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But as a result, I had some professors that were very friendly with the Von Mises Institute.

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So that's how I learned about, oh, okay, the reason the Austrians like it is because they want free markets, and part of the whole way the free markets work is limited government.

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How do you limit government?

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You do not let government.

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You tie the hands of government from doing what we've been doing since we got off the gold standard in August 1971, and they go absolutely hog wild and print money ex nihilo and print credit ex nihilo.

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and uh uh so that's where it's introduced to this is the the the philosophical rationale for why you

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want to have it um and so and that's 87 so i'm only 16 years after they had gotten off the gold

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standard at that point uh i also am at school when you had the october 19th 1987 crash so that was

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interesting, down 22% a day. And of course, we've never seen that low again. And part of the reason

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we haven't is because of this credit creation ex nihilo. Jim, let me just interrupt you. I was

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instructed, I was told, I mean, under the assumption that the stock market is never that volatile. I

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mean, that's only Bitcoin volatility, 22% in one day. Oh, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it

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It certainly happens, and it can certainly happen again.

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And, you know, there are all kinds of other truths you've probably been told, like, housing prices in the United States never go down.

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Oh, yes, you're right.

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Yeah.

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I'll never forget that one, too.

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So that's where I get introduced to it.

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My first, I spent most of my career until the last nine years was in institutional fixed income, which means I was a bond trading and sales for Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, that side of Wall Street.

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and then from 05 to 2010

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I had a hedge fund

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which was a structured credit hedge fund

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which if you have seen

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the movies The Big Short

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or Margin Call

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either one of those

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both of them did a superb job

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of actually telling you

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this is what it really was like

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Margin Call in particular

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the boardroom scene in Margin Call

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is absolutely 100% real life.

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They nailed it.

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And, but we were the big short,

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except we weren't short mortgages.

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We were short investment grade credit.

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But we did very well because obviously if you were short

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in those years, your fund did superbly.

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But it was being in the middle of that huge conflagration

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and watching how it was actually dealt with.

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I mean, I had a front row seat to this

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because our counterparties for our fund

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were Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers,

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and Bank of America,

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before Bank of America and Merrill Lynch

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were shotgun wedding together.

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Lehman Brothers was basically,

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if you want to think about it,

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it was almost like a mob hit.

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You know, this is a mob.

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we don't want to deal with Dominic anymore, so he's gone, and they smoked them.

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But if you go back and look at what should have actually come to pass,

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given what are rules of capital, what are, if you're insolvent, it's too bad.

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You went, you bet, and you lost, and you lose.

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Well, except that's not what happened.

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What happened was Goldman still exists.

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J.P. Morgan still exists.

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Citibank, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, all these firms still exist.

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And what should have happened to them all is if you're familiar with the movie Trading Places.

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This is an old movie with Eddie Murphy.

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It's a comic.

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That was the one that came to mind, but I was like, wait, it can't be that one.

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Yes, it is that one.

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Because the serious part of Trading Places is at the end, after they come out of the orange juice pits

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and they say margin call boys and the two Duke brothers who have tried to illegally corner the

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market with inside info, they go, you know perfectly well we don't have $394 million in cash.

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So the guy says, okay, sell all assets of Duke and Duke commodity brokers and sell their seats.

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The brothers go crazy and say, you can't do that. We founded this exchange. This thing is ours.

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Well that what they were is what Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan were doing at the time And of course so why didn that happen

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Because you've got congressmen and senators who don't know which way is up.

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They sent Ben Bernanke, who works for them as the head of the Federal Reserve, and that's still true today.

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The Fed works for City of London, Wall Street banks, Rothschilds, and some other.

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And this isn't like tinfoil has secret inside information.

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00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:11,780
You can go look this up on the internet.

224
00:17:13,760 --> 00:17:15,160
They send Bernanke in.

225
00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:16,640
They send him in with Hank Paulson.

226
00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:26,420
Oh, was there any conflict of interest between the fact that Hank Paulson was Treasury Secretary and he had been Goldman Sachs' CEO?

227
00:17:26,420 --> 00:17:27,300
Surely not.

228
00:17:27,601 --> 00:17:28,080
Surely not.

229
00:17:28,180 --> 00:17:44,341
What a shred of, so anyway, and basically they tell the congressman, if you don't give us what we want, if you go back and you can watch the hearings, they essentially say, if you don't give us what we want, we're probably going to have tanks in the streets of New York tomorrow.

230
00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:47,080
The congressmen don't know which way is up.

231
00:17:47,180 --> 00:17:49,440
Then, just like they don't know which way is up now.

232
00:17:49,540 --> 00:17:51,440
And they basically gave them everything they wanted.

233
00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:51,800
Yeah.

234
00:17:51,940 --> 00:17:57,900
All they know is that if the stock market goes apocalyptic on their watch, they're going to get voted out and blamed for it.

235
00:17:57,900 --> 00:17:59,560
And so it's all self-protection.

236
00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:00,260
It's horrible.

237
00:18:00,460 --> 00:18:00,640
Correct.

238
00:18:01,300 --> 00:18:01,500
Correct.

239
00:18:01,620 --> 00:18:03,920
And here's a question for you, just real quick.

240
00:18:04,180 --> 00:18:08,700
So I just want to go back to what you said about you being short institutional credit.

241
00:18:08,940 --> 00:18:12,560
So obviously you have guys like Steve Eisman, the whole big short crew.

242
00:18:12,900 --> 00:18:14,660
These guys are digging into Michael Burry.

243
00:18:14,660 --> 00:18:21,160
They're digging into mortgages and buying up mortgage-backed securities because they're

244
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:22,680
realizing this is a house of cards.

245
00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:30,180
What were you seeing in institutional credit that allowed you to kind of go short and profit from what you saw?

246
00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:35,660
Sure. Okay. Well, my hedge fund was myself and my partner, my Christian brother.

247
00:18:36,300 --> 00:18:39,060
And both of us had come out of Wall Street.

248
00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:45,680
He was institutional fixed income derivatives, and I was institutional fixed income cash.

249
00:18:46,900 --> 00:18:50,600
Both of us were saying, yeah, we knew mortgages were a disaster, too.

250
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:59,520
The question was, if our firm is two guys in Fairhope, Alabama with a couple of Bloomberg screens, how are we going?

251
00:18:59,700 --> 00:19:02,240
We cannot be wrong.

252
00:19:02,900 --> 00:19:04,960
We can be wrong, but we're a little wrong.

253
00:19:05,020 --> 00:19:06,040
We can't be a lot wrong.

254
00:19:06,440 --> 00:19:11,480
In the big short film, Michael Burry, the character played by the guy who was Batman.

255
00:19:11,700 --> 00:19:12,180
Christian Bale.

256
00:19:12,341 --> 00:19:13,220
Yeah, Christian Bale.

257
00:19:13,460 --> 00:19:18,720
The Christian Bale character, he's really wrong, and he's really, really bad down.

258
00:19:18,720 --> 00:19:23,120
And there's a scene in the film where the guys are like, you can't do this.

259
00:19:23,500 --> 00:19:25,640
He's like, well, I'm going to get even more along.

260
00:19:25,860 --> 00:19:25,960
Yeah.

261
00:19:26,020 --> 00:19:27,520
Or I'm getting even more short.

262
00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:30,520
He was down hundreds and a couple hundred million bucks at one point or something.

263
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:30,960
Correct.

264
00:19:31,260 --> 00:19:31,540
Correct.

265
00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:34,080
Well, we couldn't afford to do that.

266
00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:38,560
We couldn't, in a percentage basis, we never had that sort of capital under management.

267
00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:44,860
But we felt like our absolute maximum downside was something like 30%.

268
00:19:44,860 --> 00:19:45,280
Okay.

269
00:19:45,280 --> 00:19:55,280
But we were looking at whether it was any sort of credit, because the Federal Reserve had killed interest rates to zero, 1%.

270
00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:57,380
It was ridiculous.

271
00:19:57,760 --> 00:19:59,360
These are not real interest rates.

272
00:19:59,440 --> 00:20:02,620
These are concocted, just like they have been all this time.

273
00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:06,180
And we looked at investment grade credit.

274
00:20:06,180 --> 00:20:16,640
And at the time, if I had a triple A U.S. government and I sold that and bought a triple B, I was only going to get paid 30 basis points to do it.

275
00:20:17,020 --> 00:20:19,180
Well, what's the normal relationship?

276
00:20:19,420 --> 00:20:20,100
It's 110.

277
00:20:20,980 --> 00:20:21,400
Oh, my gosh.

278
00:20:21,680 --> 00:20:23,180
So it's like, this is stupidity.

279
00:20:23,180 --> 00:20:33,200
I mean, unless you're talking about a robust Christian moral nation and universities that are pumping out.

280
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:36,700
But this is every vials left and right.

281
00:20:36,820 --> 00:20:36,980
Yeah.

282
00:20:37,120 --> 00:20:37,380
Right.

283
00:20:37,580 --> 00:20:42,820
And you look on what the actual culture was and you're like 30 basis points for that swap.

284
00:20:43,080 --> 00:20:43,300
Yeah.

285
00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:45,820
And we've got debt out our eyeballs.

286
00:20:45,940 --> 00:20:47,260
I mean, this doesn't make any sense.

287
00:20:47,260 --> 00:20:54,500
So how do you instead, if you couldn't do mortgages because you can't afford being wrong, you do investment grade credit.

288
00:20:54,620 --> 00:20:59,960
Because if you're 30 basis points, triple B to triple A, how bad can that get?

289
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:01,140
Can it go to parity?

290
00:21:01,140 --> 00:21:09,940
maybe it was so crazy maybe it could but fortunately obviously it didn't and we we we did well yeah

291
00:21:09,940 --> 00:21:16,180
but that was it was the same thing credit has been ballooned up just whether it's mortgage credit

292
00:21:16,180 --> 00:21:22,560
investment grade credit uh high yield bond credit whatever the credit was it was silly because the

293
00:21:22,560 --> 00:21:29,060
federal reserve had killed all yield so if i'm a japanese pension fund and i got zero percent there

294
00:21:29,060 --> 00:21:30,700
I got 0% in the treasuries.

295
00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:36,920
Give me any yield anywhere of any sort because I've got to pay my retirees.

296
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:37,580
Exactly.

297
00:21:37,660 --> 00:21:38,820
That was a trade to be sure.

298
00:21:39,300 --> 00:21:39,660
Okay.

299
00:21:39,780 --> 00:21:42,120
So were you aware of Iceman?

300
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:43,060
Like, did you know him?

301
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:46,360
Or were you aware of those guys and the trade that they were putting on or not really?

302
00:21:46,420 --> 00:21:49,300
Because I know there were people who knew about it who thought they were nuts.

303
00:21:49,820 --> 00:21:51,320
There were other people who just never knew about it.

304
00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:55,400
So kind of, you know, in your case, you said we couldn't afford to be wrong.

305
00:21:55,400 --> 00:22:01,980
So maybe it just didn't fit given your risk profile and the funds under management, that kind of stuff.

306
00:22:03,100 --> 00:22:05,241
Yes, we did know of him.

307
00:22:05,460 --> 00:22:05,680
Okay.

308
00:22:05,860 --> 00:22:07,540
And we certainly knew Michael Burry.

309
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:08,000
Yeah.

310
00:22:08,060 --> 00:22:12,480
We had also known of guys that got carried out on a stretcher who were right.

311
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:16,700
You know, they were right, but they put the trade on in 04.

312
00:22:17,060 --> 00:22:17,241
Yeah.

313
00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:21,460
Sometimes having the wrong timing is indistinguishable from being wrong.

314
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:22,160
Correct.

315
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:23,200
That's right.

316
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:23,640
Yeah.

317
00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:26,220
And so, yes, we knew of them.

318
00:22:26,780 --> 00:22:34,880
Again, the wrong part was that, again, a Michael Burry with that much institutional credibility.

319
00:22:35,020 --> 00:22:40,200
Now, we had institutional credibility as on the bond desk that we were on.

320
00:22:40,260 --> 00:22:46,741
We did not have institutional credibility when we created a fund, a brand new fund in Fairhope, Alabama.

321
00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:47,100
Sure.

322
00:22:47,180 --> 00:22:48,180
That's what I mean.

323
00:22:48,180 --> 00:22:58,040
Because when you go into an institutional guy and say, well, we want to compete to manage your money, he's looking at us like, wait a second, I got five guys in New York and 10 in Chicago.

324
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:00,220
Why should I, why am I going to do it with you?

325
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:01,000
Right.

326
00:23:01,241 --> 00:23:01,420
Yeah.

327
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:04,080
And that's, and that's, that's, that's how we compete.

328
00:23:04,900 --> 00:23:10,040
I think you said this, I think you said this, but what year did you leave New York and then move to Fairfax?

329
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:10,580
I never did.

330
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:11,720
I never went to New York.

331
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:18,020
I was always in the, I started in Mobile, Alabama, went to Birmingham at a Shearson-Lehman office.

332
00:23:18,020 --> 00:23:22,200
Then I was in Atlanta for five years with Marilyn Lehman.

333
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:22,680
Okay.

334
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,700
When my daughter was born in 98, we moved back to Fairhope.

335
00:23:26,020 --> 00:23:26,180
Yeah.

336
00:23:26,260 --> 00:23:31,260
I worked for a regional firm until 05, and then I had the hedge fund 05 to 2010.

337
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:32,140
Okay.

338
00:23:32,300 --> 00:23:34,700
So you guys do well on that trade.

339
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:40,720
You know, if you guys are looking like geniuses, you know, you're maybe not making Michael Burry money, but you're still doing great.

340
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:46,220
still doing great. So then, you know, was it a direct jump to, you know, go into gold,

341
00:23:46,340 --> 00:23:53,220
starting Alpen and going into gold or no? It wasn't direct. The first thing that happened was

342
00:23:53,220 --> 00:23:58,400
the other way we competed was to say, we are, if you come to us and ask for liquidity,

343
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:03,160
we're going to give it to you. So for instance, one of our biggest accounts was a university.

344
00:24:03,460 --> 00:24:09,020
We were the only hedge fund that was up. And we were also the only hedge fund that wasn't gating

345
00:24:09,020 --> 00:24:10,680
that what in the world's a gate?

346
00:24:10,820 --> 00:24:13,940
A gate means I, as the head fund manager, can say,

347
00:24:14,100 --> 00:24:17,400
you can't take your money out because if you do,

348
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:19,120
it'll adversely affect the fund.

349
00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:21,880
So I am, quote-unquote, throwing the gates up

350
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:23,360
so you can't pull your money out.

351
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,241
Or other guys would say force majeure,

352
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:29,900
which is a law term saying something has happened,

353
00:24:30,260 --> 00:24:34,100
force majeure, majority force, something so great

354
00:24:34,100 --> 00:24:37,120
that, quote-unquote, we couldn't have anticipated,

355
00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:41,640
sure therefore we're not going to give you your money back yeah so the so here comes the school

356
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:46,420
going you're the only people giving us liquidity and you're the only people that up we don't want

357
00:24:46,420 --> 00:24:51,520
to take the money away from you but we have no choice yeah so we were we maxed out at about 35

358
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:56,620
million in assets under management okay by the time we get to like mid-09 we were down to four

359
00:24:56,620 --> 00:25:02,540
wow we're sitting there going wait a minute we didn't do anything long we did everything we said

360
00:25:02,540 --> 00:25:12,020
we were going to do. We've lost all around AUM. And then I'll give you a little vignette. In the

361
00:25:12,020 --> 00:25:18,820
fourth quarter of 08, Merrill Lynch is one of our counterparties. We don't have to get too far in

362
00:25:18,820 --> 00:25:24,380
the weeds about, you know, how to swap contracts work, et cetera. But suffice it to say, every

363
00:25:24,380 --> 00:25:32,360
quarter there was a payment that either we owed Merrill or Merrill owed us. Well, Merrill did owe

364
00:25:32,360 --> 00:25:37,680
at the end of where the book settled up at September 30.

365
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,080
Essentially, we're on the phone with this guy that's the payments guy at Merrill.

366
00:25:42,980 --> 00:25:47,900
Long story short, he's basically asking for a day or two to send us the money he owed us.

367
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:48,820
All right?

368
00:25:49,180 --> 00:25:53,140
Now, this is Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Spinner, and Smith in New York City.

369
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:58,340
The amount of money they owed us should have been in a cigar box behind some of these guys.

370
00:25:58,340 --> 00:26:00,340
Yeah, in the church cushions.

371
00:26:00,900 --> 00:26:01,080
Right.

372
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:05,580
You cannot be serious that y'all are, no, you owe us and you need to pay it.

373
00:26:05,980 --> 00:26:09,640
And a lot of, you know, they did send us the money.

374
00:26:10,140 --> 00:26:13,560
But the whole idea that we were having the conversation was crazy.

375
00:26:13,900 --> 00:26:15,261
Did you guys go more short?

376
00:26:16,220 --> 00:26:19,100
Well, we certainly kept the shorts we had on.

377
00:26:19,100 --> 00:26:22,360
But really at that time, we were more concerned of,

378
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:25,980
are we going to be able to get the principal back to our clientele?

379
00:26:25,980 --> 00:26:26,520
Sure, yeah.

380
00:26:26,980 --> 00:26:28,741
So we didn't want to go too crazy.

381
00:26:29,120 --> 00:26:30,420
You know, you're in no man's land.

382
00:26:30,460 --> 00:26:30,620
Yeah.

383
00:26:30,620 --> 00:26:35,840
If we demand the money from Merrill and close all the swaps, will they actually do it?

384
00:26:36,780 --> 00:26:37,080
Right?

385
00:26:37,761 --> 00:26:43,420
It was, when you hear the war stories of what was going on, it really was.

386
00:26:43,780 --> 00:26:45,360
It was a wild time.

387
00:26:45,501 --> 00:26:45,700
Yep.

388
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:46,241
Yep.

389
00:26:46,380 --> 00:26:49,720
Well, fast forward the clock about nine months into mid-09.

390
00:26:50,180 --> 00:26:50,440
Mm-hmm.

391
00:26:51,460 --> 00:26:53,020
Same guy from Merrill Lynch.

392
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:54,980
Now he's Merrill Lynch Bank of America.

393
00:26:54,980 --> 00:27:01,540
now my partner are trying to re-raise assets under management because now we want to go long risk

394
00:27:01,540 --> 00:27:06,741
because we're seeing what they're doing yeah it's like oh you're they're basically making it

395
00:27:06,741 --> 00:27:12,001
there's no way they're going to let the credit market going to let they will inflate the they'll

396
00:27:12,001 --> 00:27:17,920
make phony money that way the bond payments will get made so we want to be long risk now okay

397
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:26,160
Well, we go to Merrill Lynch, the swap guy, the payments guy, the same guy who was begging for more time.

398
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:29,400
And all of a sudden, we got a totally different attitude.

399
00:27:29,700 --> 00:27:31,001
Now, what do you guys want to do?

400
00:27:31,140 --> 00:27:32,120
You know, what's going to, you know.

401
00:27:32,420 --> 00:27:33,460
So we explain.

402
00:27:33,780 --> 00:27:36,680
And he's like, well, how many assets in our management do you have?

403
00:27:36,761 --> 00:27:38,820
And we're like, time out.

404
00:27:39,060 --> 00:27:42,040
We made every payment in the worst part of 08.

405
00:27:42,140 --> 00:27:43,480
We never were a problem.

406
00:27:43,741 --> 00:27:46,840
What difference does it make to you about how many assets?

407
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:47,780
Oh, I'm sorry.

408
00:27:47,780 --> 00:27:50,540
If you've got a quarter billion, we've got nothing to do here.

409
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:51,280
Oh, my gosh.

410
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:52,580
And we're like looking at each other.

411
00:27:52,660 --> 00:27:54,700
This is as rich as you can get.

412
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:55,460
Yeah, yeah.

413
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:57,700
I mean, we did everything right.

414
00:27:57,800 --> 00:27:58,680
We gave liquidity.

415
00:27:59,001 --> 00:28:04,680
We come back to a counterparty we were never a problem to and told, sorry, you don't get to play.

416
00:28:05,001 --> 00:28:05,880
Yeah, yeah.

417
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:08,120
And to this day, what do we got?

418
00:28:08,220 --> 00:28:12,700
Jamie Dimon running around in private jets, being important, making big speeches.

419
00:28:12,700 --> 00:28:18,501
as well as all these other guys, firms that should have been shuttered.

420
00:28:20,001 --> 00:28:25,300
So basically God came out of that like, wait, this whole thing is so corrupt.

421
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:25,880
Yeah.

422
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,820
And I don't know anything in the Bible.

423
00:28:29,001 --> 00:28:33,440
I don't know anything in history where you do the sort of things that have been done here

424
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,840
where the piper doesn't end up coming back for his bill.

425
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:37,380
Yep.

426
00:28:37,380 --> 00:28:45,220
So that and then all of what I'd learned at Auburn all through the years, that gold was one thing that didn't.

427
00:28:45,820 --> 00:28:53,340
And then if you go to our website, you'll see one of the quotes I have up there is Genesis chapter 2, verses 11 and 12.

428
00:28:53,980 --> 00:28:55,960
River runs out of Eden.

429
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:58,840
The name of the first river is Passau.

430
00:28:59,020 --> 00:29:02,620
It goes into the land of Havilah, and there is gold in that land.

431
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:04,741
And the gold of that land is good.

432
00:29:05,540 --> 00:29:11,360
Why on earth is God telling us pre-fall about gold being in some land?

433
00:29:12,261 --> 00:29:14,040
What is he doing?

434
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,940
Well, we find out because wisdom is better than fine gold.

435
00:29:18,940 --> 00:29:22,340
We burn the dross off the silver to make you better.

436
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:23,501
Oh, okay.

437
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:25,380
It's going to become the standard.

438
00:29:26,220 --> 00:29:29,360
Well, not only is it a standard for biblical truths,

439
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:33,940
it also becomes, as we know from the history of the world,

440
00:29:33,940 --> 00:29:39,120
It becomes the standard for what is a unit of account,

441
00:29:39,261 --> 00:29:41,840
media of exchange, and store of labor,

442
00:29:42,261 --> 00:29:45,320
and store of value, and most importantly, a store of labor.

443
00:29:45,780 --> 00:29:49,420
That is what gold was then, is now,

444
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,800
and I truly believe until the Lord returns,

445
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:54,880
it will continue to have that role.

446
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,380
Yeah, and this is, I have some,

447
00:29:57,780 --> 00:29:59,720
I have a buddy who's also into Bitcoin,

448
00:30:00,220 --> 00:30:01,820
and we have this debate,

449
00:30:01,820 --> 00:30:03,380
we had this on a podcast not too long ago,

450
00:30:03,380 --> 00:30:07,340
where he just basically was like talking about Bitcoin demonetizing gold.

451
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:11,320
And I'm just like, listen, I could see it happening in limited amounts.

452
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:16,680
I just don't see, you know, I just don't see it happening over like a thousand year period or something like that.

453
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:24,340
I, you know, I, yeah, I could see it happening to some degree, but I just think just given the nature of things,

454
00:30:24,340 --> 00:30:26,480
I just think gold's going to be around a lot longer.

455
00:30:26,700 --> 00:30:30,180
You know, it's, yeah, I just think it's going to be, it's this foolish thing.

456
00:30:30,180 --> 00:30:35,820
It's this quote unquote dumb rock. And yet, you know, they're still going to be there for people all over the world.

457
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:41,001
You know, they still it's been around for, you know, thousands of years is still going to be around for a long time.

458
00:30:41,100 --> 00:30:44,900
I don't see any any any chance of just going away. Absolutely.

459
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:52,520
OK, so let's kind of get into and do some of the things that, you know, when you talk to people.

460
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:59,560
So obviously, as part of this part of the reason for this podcast is to facilitate conversations about Bitcoin with a couple different audiences.

461
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,900
or rarely three, but we'll talk about two of them for right now. One of them is Christians who are

462
00:31:03,900 --> 00:31:08,880
into Bitcoin. So we want to, you know, a lot of them who have gotten into Bitcoin and find value

463
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:14,280
in Bitcoin, they started out as gold people. Like they valued, and a lot of the reasons why they

464
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:19,100
value Bitcoin is because of these principles that they first found in gold. And they found through

465
00:31:19,100 --> 00:31:24,380
Austrian economics and this kind of thing. The second group, and so those people are much more

466
00:31:24,380 --> 00:31:29,200
kindred spirits, I would say, with you, just, you know, very, in a manner similar to the way that I

467
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:35,100
with you. The second group would be Christians who are not yet into Bitcoin. That's who we're

468
00:31:35,100 --> 00:31:41,520
creating this podcast for. And so I would imagine that most of that same audience,

469
00:31:41,940 --> 00:31:46,920
that group of people, they would also be very skeptical about the role of gold and the value

470
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:52,580
of gold because they've been gaslit by a lot of these investment firms and guys like Dave Ramsey

471
00:31:52,580 --> 00:31:56,660
and, you know, Dave Austin as well.

472
00:31:57,180 --> 00:32:00,180
And, you know, a lot of these other people into thinking that,

473
00:32:00,340 --> 00:32:02,140
oh, gold is just some dumb rock.

474
00:32:02,900 --> 00:32:05,200
You know, we should just put our money into the stock market.

475
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:07,120
It's going to give you, you know, guaranteed returns,

476
00:32:07,261 --> 00:32:08,320
zero risk basically.

477
00:32:09,140 --> 00:32:10,860
You know, they would see these things like this.

478
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,261
And so I would love for, you know, just for you to give you

479
00:32:14,261 --> 00:32:18,761
kind of a wide berth here to make the case for why, you know,

480
00:32:18,761 --> 00:32:22,200
why these guys are wrong and why Christians who take their faith seriously

481
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,680
should think differently about gold.

482
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:26,800
So you have the floor.

483
00:32:27,241 --> 00:32:28,320
Okay, thanks, Jory.

484
00:32:28,420 --> 00:32:30,600
But just to clarify, what's the third group?

485
00:32:31,140 --> 00:32:34,480
Yeah, so the third group, and this is, again, you'll understand.

486
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:36,980
The third group are people who are into, for our audiences,

487
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,400
people who are into Bitcoin who are not yet Christians.

488
00:32:39,900 --> 00:32:43,220
And so for them, we're trying to, quote, unquote, Jesus pill them,

489
00:32:43,300 --> 00:32:44,860
show them the value proposition of Jesus

490
00:32:44,860 --> 00:32:46,820
because they already get the value proposition of Bitcoin.

491
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:48,880
So continue.

492
00:32:49,761 --> 00:32:50,020
All right.

493
00:32:50,020 --> 00:32:56,200
So why are you and I not, quote, unquote, mortal enemies, as you said when we started?

494
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:02,160
Because we have to get to the essence of what both of these things are.

495
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:26,041
Gold and Bitcoin share the most crucial element which is I have the ability to have liquid money that is not contained within a corrupt financial system Yeah there no counter That is what they share And that is free

496
00:33:26,141 --> 00:33:27,501
I don't care about dollar price.

497
00:33:27,561 --> 00:33:28,841
I don't care about volatility.

498
00:33:28,841 --> 00:33:36,021
I don't care about any of that in comparison to the central role they hold.

499
00:33:36,021 --> 00:33:50,861
So if I can accomplish having the ability to have liquid money outside the system, well, why should I care whether it's Bitcoin or gold?

500
00:33:50,861 --> 00:33:55,701
Well, there are reasons to have both of them, and I have both of them.

501
00:33:55,801 --> 00:34:08,221
I have both of them because Bitcoin unquestionably is because of blockchain technology, the fact that it is absolute dead cold.

502
00:34:08,341 --> 00:34:12,701
It cannot grow to any more than 21 million Bitcoin, some number.

503
00:34:14,041 --> 00:34:16,481
Supply constraint, that's beautiful.

504
00:34:17,041 --> 00:34:18,841
That is what is gold.

505
00:34:18,841 --> 00:34:22,221
Well, there's only so much of it that's ever been mined, period.

506
00:34:22,401 --> 00:34:24,921
There's only so much of it in the Earth's crust, period.

507
00:34:26,861 --> 00:34:36,401
The only real supply concern you might have going forward would be mining gold on asteroids or other planets.

508
00:34:36,561 --> 00:34:38,921
I mean, that's a real thing going forward.

509
00:34:39,641 --> 00:34:46,201
But we're still a fair amount of ways from that where you begin to materially impact the supply.

510
00:34:46,201 --> 00:34:56,241
And we don't even know, okay, well, we assume that there's gold on asteroids, but what is the cost of trying to get it off an asteroid?

511
00:34:57,321 --> 00:34:59,241
It's pretty bad here.

512
00:34:59,701 --> 00:35:03,621
So both of them have natural supply constraints.

513
00:35:04,461 --> 00:35:09,681
That's how you handcuff politicians who don't know what supply constraint means.

514
00:35:09,681 --> 00:35:09,961
Yeah.

515
00:35:10,241 --> 00:35:10,461
Right?

516
00:35:10,901 --> 00:35:11,021
Yeah.

517
00:35:11,021 --> 00:35:17,401
We're just trying to take away from them the ability to, like, they no longer can create as much money as they want to.

518
00:35:17,561 --> 00:35:29,561
The amount of money in the system is no longer beholden to or no longer, you know, basically able to be dictated by a group of people in the same way as it can be with gold or with Bitcoin.

519
00:35:30,401 --> 00:35:33,941
And, yeah, they can print all the money they want.

520
00:35:34,141 --> 00:35:40,261
But since they cannot control the price of Bitcoin, buy and print it all you want.

521
00:35:40,261 --> 00:35:42,101
Well, Bitcoin's going to go to $500,000.

522
00:35:42,241 --> 00:35:42,421
Yep.

523
00:35:42,981 --> 00:35:44,081
I mean, it's that simple.

524
00:35:44,381 --> 00:35:44,521
Yep.

525
00:35:44,581 --> 00:35:46,741
So there's the handcuff element of it.

526
00:35:46,741 --> 00:35:52,201
The gold part of it is, well, why hasn't gold done this a long time ago?

527
00:35:52,761 --> 00:36:00,261
Well, then we got to get into what are the elements of the pricing mechanism for gold.

528
00:36:00,361 --> 00:36:02,101
Well, a lot of it has to do with the futures market.

529
00:36:02,441 --> 00:36:02,561
Yep.

530
00:36:02,581 --> 00:36:08,361
And the futures market and the gold lending market, all of this is right out of Chicago and London.

531
00:36:08,681 --> 00:36:08,841
Yep.

532
00:36:08,841 --> 00:36:23,101
there is hyper geopolitical government pressure and participation in those markets that have kept gold from blasting to the moon.

533
00:36:23,581 --> 00:36:25,441
And can you talk about that a little bit?

534
00:36:25,521 --> 00:36:30,001
What are some of those pressures and why is it that governments want to suppress the price of gold?

535
00:36:30,001 --> 00:36:31,401
And what have been the mechanisms?

536
00:36:31,541 --> 00:36:35,201
You mentioned the futures market, but how else do they suppress the market?

537
00:36:35,201 --> 00:36:40,961
Well, the blending of gold and silver, they don't have.

538
00:36:41,501 --> 00:36:50,941
So, like, what is going on right this minute is, if it doesn't take much, just look at the financial literature of the last week or so, what's been one of the stories?

539
00:36:51,921 --> 00:36:59,861
LBMA, London, billion banks don't have the silver to deliver versus those future contracts.

540
00:36:59,861 --> 00:37:04,701
Now, typically in the past, you had a bunch of financial institutions that were all involved.

541
00:37:05,321 --> 00:37:08,101
They're not going to take delivery, so it doesn't matter.

542
00:37:09,101 --> 00:37:17,901
And we can move the price around with just flood the futures market with, I want to open interest this.

543
00:37:18,061 --> 00:37:24,501
Well, yeah, it's going to cost the government so much, but it doesn't matter because it'll suppress the price of silver, suppress the price of gold.

544
00:37:24,621 --> 00:37:29,161
And that's more important to us than whatever we might lose on a given trade.

545
00:37:29,161 --> 00:37:29,561
Sure.

546
00:37:29,861 --> 00:37:32,781
And does Wall Street and Chicago and London like that?

547
00:37:32,901 --> 00:37:33,841
Sure, that's business.

548
00:37:34,001 --> 00:37:40,261
That means, yeah, we're writing tickets left, right, and center with these crazy people from a central bank or a government.

549
00:37:40,521 --> 00:37:41,261
What do we care?

550
00:37:41,341 --> 00:37:42,961
We're making money on the trade.

551
00:37:44,281 --> 00:37:47,261
That all works until something happens.

552
00:37:47,621 --> 00:37:56,461
To me, the most important event over the last five years was the confiscation of the Russian foreign reserves.

553
00:37:57,321 --> 00:37:58,141
February 2022?

554
00:37:58,641 --> 00:37:59,121
Is that what that was?

555
00:37:59,121 --> 00:37:59,981
I think so.

556
00:38:00,261 --> 00:38:15,581
And when you do that, the whole world goes, are you seriously telling me that those guys just took $300 billion of your reserves that were in their financial system and said, sorry, you don't get to have them anymore?

557
00:38:16,501 --> 00:38:21,601
Okay, well, if that's the rules of the game, then I'm going to go change what I'm doing.

558
00:38:21,601 --> 00:38:26,281
I cannot trust the Western governments and their banking system.

559
00:38:26,601 --> 00:38:29,061
And if I can't trust them, what can I trust?

560
00:38:29,121 --> 00:38:32,001
What are the BRICS doing right now?

561
00:38:32,301 --> 00:38:35,001
They are very, very focused on physical gold.

562
00:38:35,421 --> 00:38:37,501
And don't take my word for it.

563
00:38:37,521 --> 00:38:42,201
Go look on the internet and go look at who has been making these major purchases of gold,

564
00:38:42,541 --> 00:38:46,381
certainly over the last three or four years.

565
00:38:46,841 --> 00:38:50,361
But go back to the turn of the century with the dot-com stuff,

566
00:38:50,841 --> 00:38:54,841
meltdown of Enron, meltdown of Worldcon, all 08.

567
00:38:55,981 --> 00:38:57,601
It's the Russian central bank.

568
00:38:57,681 --> 00:38:58,921
It's the Chinese central bank.

569
00:38:58,921 --> 00:39:01,421
And these are huge buyers.

570
00:39:03,181 --> 00:39:06,821
So why is this taking so long?

571
00:39:08,601 --> 00:39:22,501
It's just been, it's taken a while for the system to actually get to the point where it's like, oh my gosh, we're actually going to have to come up with this, what we promised we had and we actually don't have it.

572
00:39:23,181 --> 00:39:26,261
So that's, I think that's the major driver of silver prices right now.

573
00:39:26,261 --> 00:39:29,641
It doesn't mean that we can't have a 20% sell-off.

574
00:39:29,941 --> 00:39:32,381
It doesn't mean whether gold or silver.

575
00:39:33,461 --> 00:39:46,281
But I would tell you that I think until you get some material, I mean really, really material change of government and government spending, deficit spending,

576
00:39:46,281 --> 00:39:52,941
then the if you go back and look at the historical relationship between the price of gold

577
00:39:52,941 --> 00:40:00,281
and how much credit has been created by the united states for that equilibrium to be right

578
00:40:00,281 --> 00:40:08,781
yeah i wrote a piece in 2019 before all the covet insanity of of credit creation and at that time

579
00:40:08,781 --> 00:40:13,361
the right number solved for X was $7,000 an ounce.

580
00:40:13,361 --> 00:40:16,421
That would balance the historical relationship

581
00:40:16,421 --> 00:40:20,421
between the market value of the gold

582
00:40:20,421 --> 00:40:21,701
owned by the United States

583
00:40:21,701 --> 00:40:25,841
and our credit issuance.

584
00:40:26,381 --> 00:40:27,881
Well, now that number's larger.

585
00:40:28,861 --> 00:40:31,661
So what's the equilibrium number?

586
00:40:32,281 --> 00:40:33,621
It's a five-figure number.

587
00:40:33,741 --> 00:40:36,361
I don't know what that five-figure number is precisely,

588
00:40:36,921 --> 00:40:38,061
but that's what it would be.

589
00:40:38,061 --> 00:40:46,901
so so oh my gosh i missed it at 40 what did you say 4300 300 some yeah you know if you don't own

590
00:40:46,901 --> 00:40:52,001
any you need to own some now the bitcoin same thing yeah you don't own any bitcoin you need

591
00:40:52,001 --> 00:40:59,001
to own some now yeah uh if you've got some sure you can then you can fiddle around with well i'm

592
00:40:59,001 --> 00:41:04,481
going to wait till the old trades is 3500 and i'll buy some more i need bitcoin at 75 000 yeah

593
00:41:04,481 --> 00:41:06,961
If it only if you already own it.

594
00:41:07,141 --> 00:41:09,541
If you don't own it, today is the day you need to take it.

595
00:41:09,541 --> 00:41:09,981
Today is great.

596
00:41:10,681 --> 00:41:28,101
Okay, so talk to us because I remember one of the most shocking moments of my entire life happened sometime in the last five years, probably in the last two or three, when I found out that the United States is valuing their gold at like $40 an ounce.

597
00:41:28,241 --> 00:41:29,481
Can you speak to that?

598
00:41:30,021 --> 00:41:31,141
How did that happen?

599
00:41:31,581 --> 00:41:32,161
How is that?

600
00:41:32,461 --> 00:41:33,641
That makes no sense.

601
00:41:33,641 --> 00:41:37,141
I know the United States weren't alone in doing that.

602
00:41:37,421 --> 00:41:41,321
So if you can kind of unpack why that was the case and why that's still the case today.

603
00:41:41,961 --> 00:41:43,741
Well, it actually was accurate, right?

604
00:41:44,261 --> 00:41:48,121
Until August 1571, because it was Bretton Woods.

605
00:41:48,521 --> 00:41:53,201
It was agreed upon $40 an ounce dollar price.

606
00:41:53,601 --> 00:41:56,341
And that was going to be the lock-in for around the world.

607
00:41:56,441 --> 00:41:57,861
Everybody could trust that price, et cetera.

608
00:41:58,861 --> 00:42:03,221
Again, the United States, Nixon, August 1571 says,

609
00:42:03,221 --> 00:42:06,661
we're just kidding about trading gold for dollars.

610
00:42:08,481 --> 00:42:09,041
What?

611
00:42:09,301 --> 00:42:15,581
You know, that's right up there with we're just going to take 300 billion of Russian foreign reserves.

612
00:42:15,861 --> 00:42:18,221
Same sort of world changing.

613
00:42:18,641 --> 00:42:21,821
We're in a totally different world now.

614
00:42:22,641 --> 00:42:24,101
That's what happened in August of 71.

615
00:42:24,101 --> 00:42:33,861
So on the books, if you look at, say, July of 71, the United States has 8,200 tons of gold at $42 an ounce.

616
00:42:34,001 --> 00:42:36,141
Therefore, the asset is worth this.

617
00:42:37,521 --> 00:42:42,981
Why did they never change the dollar price of how they carried it on the books?

618
00:42:43,781 --> 00:42:48,841
I think there are various and sundry explanations to that.

619
00:42:48,841 --> 00:42:51,161
my general explanation is

620
00:42:51,161 --> 00:42:53,261
kind of the Warren Buffett

621
00:42:53,261 --> 00:42:54,961
David Bonson

622
00:42:54,961 --> 00:42:58,501
what's the guy in Nashville again?

623
00:42:59,501 --> 00:43:00,081
Ramsey.

624
00:43:00,801 --> 00:43:01,661
Yeah, Dave Ramsey.

625
00:43:02,061 --> 00:43:04,701
Come on, that was a long time ago.

626
00:43:05,161 --> 00:43:07,301
Yeah, sure, it's nice for historical

627
00:43:07,301 --> 00:43:09,881
but let's get serious

628
00:43:09,881 --> 00:43:11,101
we're in the 21st century.

629
00:43:11,641 --> 00:43:12,341
We call this,

630
00:43:12,461 --> 00:43:13,161
Lewis would call this

631
00:43:13,161 --> 00:43:14,441
chronological snobbery

632
00:43:14,441 --> 00:43:15,521
is what you're saying.

633
00:43:15,561 --> 00:43:16,541
That's exactly right.

634
00:43:16,661 --> 00:43:17,481
That's exactly right.

635
00:43:17,481 --> 00:43:22,341
And I have asked the fight, laugh, face guys, and I'd ask anybody.

636
00:43:23,021 --> 00:43:23,421
I'm not.

637
00:43:23,881 --> 00:43:25,861
David Bonson is a Christian brother.

638
00:43:26,041 --> 00:43:27,901
Dave Ramsey is a Christian brother.

639
00:43:28,201 --> 00:43:32,621
I would love to be on a stage and debate them anywhere, anytime.

640
00:43:33,581 --> 00:43:37,481
And now, of course, they're going to have, I don't know what they're going to say now.

641
00:43:37,721 --> 00:43:39,001
Their advice was terrible.

642
00:43:39,401 --> 00:43:40,501
Absolutely terrible.

643
00:43:40,901 --> 00:43:42,961
Hey, bring your Bitcoin little brother with you, too.

644
00:43:43,281 --> 00:43:44,381
What are you getting on that stage, okay?

645
00:43:45,581 --> 00:43:46,061
Absolutely.

646
00:43:47,481 --> 00:43:47,961
Absolutely.

647
00:43:48,501 --> 00:43:48,981
Yeah.

648
00:43:49,121 --> 00:43:50,081
So that's going on.

649
00:43:50,161 --> 00:43:52,581
So they just decided to peg it at $40.

650
00:43:53,061 --> 00:43:53,141
Okay.

651
00:43:53,301 --> 00:43:56,601
And that initially, now again, you could argue that's even dubious because then you go back

652
00:43:56,601 --> 00:44:01,001
to 1913, you go back to these different points where they've pegged the dollar to a certain

653
00:44:01,001 --> 00:44:01,661
ratio of gold.

654
00:44:01,821 --> 00:44:03,161
Even that's totally arbitrary.

655
00:44:03,741 --> 00:44:05,621
Like none of that is based in reality.

656
00:44:05,821 --> 00:44:11,401
It's again, it's a government or a financial institution trying to exercise a level of

657
00:44:11,401 --> 00:44:17,141
control that only belongs to God, you know, in, in, in order to set a price for, you know, uh,

658
00:44:17,141 --> 00:44:22,141
for purposes that basically are convenient for them. That's really what this is. But so,

659
00:44:22,261 --> 00:44:29,181
so every other country though, even since 1971 has since marked their gold to market. What is the,

660
00:44:29,301 --> 00:44:33,641
what is the, you know, to the market price, what is the motivation for the United States to,

661
00:44:33,801 --> 00:44:38,021
to be kind of the lone outlier, or at least one of the lone outliers who have not yet valued their,

662
00:44:38,021 --> 00:44:39,621
their goal to the market price.

663
00:44:40,221 --> 00:44:49,961
Again, I think it's really the mindset has to get rid of it and to not elevate it to its proper position.

664
00:44:50,181 --> 00:44:50,381
Sure.

665
00:44:50,821 --> 00:44:52,261
And I think that's changing.

666
00:44:52,521 --> 00:44:56,901
I think that Trump and Bissett are going to market to market.

667
00:44:57,541 --> 00:44:57,721
Really?

668
00:44:57,721 --> 00:45:00,781
Today, oh, yeah, that's a matter of time.

669
00:45:00,901 --> 00:45:00,961
Yeah.

670
00:45:00,961 --> 00:45:16,861
I don't know what their agenda is, but you can sort of see as they've gone forward since he got there in January of this year, they are slowly figuring out what they need to do, what's next.

671
00:45:17,581 --> 00:45:19,921
And that's going to be one of the next things that happened.

672
00:45:19,981 --> 00:45:25,181
Because you're going to talk about an asset that will be a trillion-dollar asset.

673
00:45:25,181 --> 00:45:37,601
And if you really let it go, and imagine moving the decimal point one to the right, so it's not 4,200, it's 42,000.

674
00:45:37,721 --> 00:45:40,981
All of a sudden, the U.S. has a $10 trillion asset.

675
00:45:41,761 --> 00:45:42,841
Well, wait a minute.

676
00:45:42,941 --> 00:45:52,641
If I've got a $10 trillion asset versus the debt pile I have, now the debt pile doesn't look so hopelessly impossible.

677
00:45:52,641 --> 00:46:17,901
Yeah. So this has been something that has been talked about, you know, like we could just revalue gold. Guys like Luke Groman have talked about this. You know, we could the United States could just revalue gold at $50,000 an ounce. And then all of a sudden, again, it's totally ridiculous and arbitrary. But like, again, it would it would at least conceptually on paper make their their debts not look as bad. And so that would try to buy back some credibility.

678
00:46:17,901 --> 00:46:25,441
right well and i don't want to just arbitrarily revalue it but yeah but when i say let it go what

679
00:46:25,441 --> 00:46:31,161
i mean is let the market actually figure out what this thing is worth yep and i think if you do that

680
00:46:31,161 --> 00:46:37,081
and again go back to the do what historically has been the relationship between what the dollar

681
00:46:37,081 --> 00:46:40,441
price of gold is and the amount of credit that has been issued by the united states

682
00:46:40,441 --> 00:46:42,961
Let that market price clear.

683
00:46:43,421 --> 00:46:52,321
And right now, I think that marketplace clears, I would guess, more along the lines of the $15,000 to $20,000 an ounce.

684
00:46:52,461 --> 00:46:55,561
And that assumes no more going forward.

685
00:46:56,481 --> 00:46:59,541
And I can't make that assumption based on anything.

686
00:46:59,761 --> 00:47:01,141
Even with Trump, right?

687
00:47:01,481 --> 00:47:03,721
I think Trump and Bissette are doing some good things.

688
00:47:03,721 --> 00:47:10,361
here's why i really think they're going to let gold's price go is because they do want to do

689
00:47:10,361 --> 00:47:16,401
some things that would require more government spending yeah maybe arguably in the long run

690
00:47:16,401 --> 00:47:22,781
they actually are going to shut washington down um which if that actually really came to pass

691
00:47:22,781 --> 00:47:27,741
then bitcoin bitcoin and gold are going to go down in dollar price right yeah i mean they're

692
00:47:27,741 --> 00:47:31,961
they're gonna because it's oh they're actually financially responsible fiscally responsible

693
00:47:31,961 --> 00:47:49,741
Yeah. But then you're like, all right, is this going to be allowed to happen? You know, because like if you actually drain the swamp, like some of the there's so many of these people who I mean, so many departments and so many of these different things that have just all of their incentives are to keep that thing open and for business.

694
00:47:49,741 --> 00:47:53,461
even though again we all know it's it's doomed over the long term over the long haul

695
00:47:53,461 --> 00:47:58,161
all right i mean this is it's best beset is an interesting figure uh for those i mean i'm guessing

696
00:47:58,161 --> 00:48:03,901
most people know this but beset uh made his nickel uh helping short the helping uh george

697
00:48:03,901 --> 00:48:09,861
soro short the pound so if there's somebody who if there's somebody who understands what it what's

698
00:48:09,861 --> 00:48:17,221
required to basically take you know take down uh you know a a humongous you know global dominating

699
00:48:17,221 --> 00:48:22,061
currency unit, uh, you know, to see the writing on the wall, uh, his, his friendliness with Bitcoin,

700
00:48:22,061 --> 00:48:26,561
uh, has always fascinated me since I, since I heard about it. Um, because you just think about

701
00:48:26,561 --> 00:48:31,181
like, if, if he sees this thing, uh, going down, he basically sees, you know, there's, there's no

702
00:48:31,181 --> 00:48:35,401
hope for this thing. Then, you know, he, he's an interesting person. He's got institutional

703
00:48:35,401 --> 00:48:41,181
knowledge that few others, you know, would have. Um, so yeah, it would be, I would imagine he'd be

704
00:48:41,181 --> 00:48:49,521
long gold too. He is. He's personally long and he's an advocate for both Bitcoin and gold in

705
00:48:49,521 --> 00:48:54,321
the White House. And he's the secretary of the treasury. Yeah. Yeah. So again, so these guys,

706
00:48:54,421 --> 00:49:00,021
so guys like Bonson, guys like Ramsey, again, we talked about this. These are not first principles

707
00:49:00,021 --> 00:49:06,141
thinkers when it comes to money and economics. They're great, brilliant guys on a whole host of

708
00:49:06,141 --> 00:49:13,821
other points. They are expert system gamers. They've figured out, hey, this is the system

709
00:49:13,821 --> 00:49:18,801
that's been in place for 50 years. The problem, though, is when you confuse that for having some

710
00:49:18,801 --> 00:49:24,241
sort of first principles knowledge of the world over a much longer time horizon and how it's

711
00:49:24,241 --> 00:49:29,221
worked for how and why it's worked the way that it's worked. And so I think this is the blind

712
00:49:29,221 --> 00:49:33,381
spot that they have in the trap that they've fallen into. And by extension, they're bringing

713
00:49:33,381 --> 00:49:40,741
a lot of people with them. Correct. Absolutely. So what are some of the things that you or some

714
00:49:40,741 --> 00:49:45,101
of the kind of your approaches for having this conversation with people? I'm sure, again,

715
00:49:45,161 --> 00:49:51,001
just like with Bitcoin, the best argument is just the price. For a lot of people, seeing its price

716
00:49:51,001 --> 00:49:54,901
go up is the thing that gets their attention. But what are some of the other conversations that you

717
00:49:54,901 --> 00:50:12,901
have with people to try to help them see the value proposition of gold over the long time Sure So you and I did the podcast whatever it was a debate with CrossPolitik in April in Moscow

718
00:50:13,281 --> 00:50:13,561
Yep.

719
00:50:13,921 --> 00:50:20,961
And prior to that, in September of 23, I did just a CrossPolitik show.

720
00:50:21,081 --> 00:50:21,441
That's right.

721
00:50:21,441 --> 00:50:30,441
Um, and my, uh, my point then was like, do not get spooled up about what the dollar price is of these assets.

722
00:50:30,441 --> 00:50:43,561
What you're the most important thing, especially for a, uh, individual Christian, an individual Christian or individual Christian family to whom God has bequeathed a lot of, uh, material worldly wealth.

723
00:50:43,561 --> 00:50:50,721
or certainly Christian churches that have giant cash balances.

724
00:50:51,841 --> 00:50:56,461
All three of those entities, and they can be small.

725
00:50:56,561 --> 00:50:58,541
I don't care about the size so much.

726
00:50:58,901 --> 00:51:01,661
The only reason size matters is because if you're somebody

727
00:51:01,661 --> 00:51:04,541
that has a material impact on the culture

728
00:51:04,541 --> 00:51:07,701
and you have all of your assets sitting in the system,

729
00:51:08,221 --> 00:51:09,221
you're a fool.

730
00:51:09,801 --> 00:51:12,661
And I mean that not to be...

731
00:51:12,661 --> 00:51:17,441
You're being a fool if you think, what happens if Trump doesn't come back?

732
00:51:17,801 --> 00:51:27,741
Do you think these orcs, these Antifa orcs, are going to spend five seconds thinking about the sanctity of your cash balance at a bank?

733
00:51:27,821 --> 00:51:29,481
No, they're going to figure out how to take it.

734
00:51:30,541 --> 00:51:32,341
So what does gold and Bitcoin do?

735
00:51:32,641 --> 00:51:39,301
It allows you to lower the risk of that sort of event occurring.

736
00:51:40,341 --> 00:51:41,801
What are you talking about, Jim?

737
00:51:41,801 --> 00:51:42,461
That's ridiculous.

738
00:51:42,461 --> 00:51:49,761
that'll never happen. Go look at what happened in 2013 on the island of Cyprus. Cyprus is an EU

739
00:51:49,761 --> 00:51:57,841
member. Their two banks were functionally insolvent because their core asset was Greek sovereign debt,

740
00:51:58,041 --> 00:52:03,361
AAA rated by every rating agency, and they were trading at 30 or 40 cents on the dollar.

741
00:52:04,061 --> 00:52:08,421
You know, anything about fractional reserve banking, if you have your core asset is at 30

742
00:52:08,421 --> 00:52:10,821
on the dollar, you are insolvent.

743
00:52:11,201 --> 00:52:11,281
Yeah.

744
00:52:11,501 --> 00:52:14,841
That means you can't pay your depositors what you owe them.

745
00:52:15,521 --> 00:52:17,441
They went to the ECB.

746
00:52:17,921 --> 00:52:19,161
You're going to have to help us out.

747
00:52:19,221 --> 00:52:22,741
The ECB, which essentially is the Germans, said, no, we're not going to do it.

748
00:52:23,061 --> 00:52:24,241
Well, what are we supposed to do?

749
00:52:24,441 --> 00:52:27,681
What you're going to do is you're going to bail in your depositors.

750
00:52:28,201 --> 00:52:29,181
What does that mean?

751
00:52:29,181 --> 00:52:35,361
That means that if it's any amount over the insured amount, which over there I think is

752
00:52:35,361 --> 00:52:43,081
100,000 euros. Yeah. Any amount over the insured amount was free game for the two Cypriot banks

753
00:52:43,081 --> 00:52:50,121
to go to their depositors and say, hey, depositor, you've got $10 million in euros in our bank.

754
00:52:50,561 --> 00:52:56,681
Yes, the first 100,000, rest assured, that's insured. Now let's talk about the 900 and

755
00:52:56,681 --> 00:53:05,341
9,900,000 euros that remain. Yeah. Long story short, the haircut for those depositors was

756
00:53:05,341 --> 00:53:06,681
50%.

757
00:53:06,681 --> 00:53:09,281
You woke up one day

758
00:53:09,281 --> 00:53:10,921
and you lost 50%.

759
00:53:10,921 --> 00:53:11,541
You were given,

760
00:53:12,221 --> 00:53:14,801
you thought you had 10 million euros,

761
00:53:14,961 --> 00:53:16,341
you really only had five,

762
00:53:16,661 --> 00:53:18,581
and they gave you 5 million euros worth

763
00:53:18,581 --> 00:53:20,141
of new bank stock.

764
00:53:21,141 --> 00:53:22,501
Well, nobody wants that.

765
00:53:23,161 --> 00:53:24,541
If I'm a Christian church,

766
00:53:24,641 --> 00:53:26,561
that God is blessed with assets,

767
00:53:26,941 --> 00:53:27,841
growing congregation,

768
00:53:28,041 --> 00:53:28,801
da-da-da-da-da-da,

769
00:53:29,481 --> 00:53:31,661
you're out of your mind

770
00:53:31,661 --> 00:53:32,501
if you don't think

771
00:53:32,501 --> 00:53:37,361
a socialist, communist, progressive government,

772
00:53:37,581 --> 00:53:39,521
you don't have a target on your back.

773
00:53:40,101 --> 00:53:41,641
If you're a Christian family,

774
00:53:42,301 --> 00:53:44,321
if you're a Christian family that, again,

775
00:53:44,601 --> 00:53:48,121
God's given you a lot of material wealth,

776
00:53:48,721 --> 00:53:49,981
don't be foolish.

777
00:53:50,341 --> 00:53:53,721
Get some of it off the grid by buying Bitcoin

778
00:53:53,721 --> 00:53:55,221
and buying physical gold.

779
00:53:56,121 --> 00:53:57,021
Push back.

780
00:53:57,521 --> 00:53:59,101
Well, if they come after that,

781
00:53:59,161 --> 00:54:00,141
they'll come after this too.

782
00:54:00,321 --> 00:54:02,481
Okay, but did I buy you some time

783
00:54:02,481 --> 00:54:08,061
time. Did I buy you some time? Because the first thing they've got to worry about is what are we

784
00:54:08,061 --> 00:54:12,161
going to do about all these accounts at JP Morgan? What are we going to do about all these accounts

785
00:54:12,161 --> 00:54:19,481
at Regions Bank? They're going to have bigger fish to fry first than some guy with, you know,

786
00:54:19,521 --> 00:54:24,581
five million or church with $5 million worth of Bitcoin. They don't have time to fool with that

787
00:54:24,581 --> 00:54:31,081
yet. They will, they'll get there. But if I've got time to move around beforehand, I've at least

788
00:54:31,081 --> 00:54:35,761
on that. Yes. It's the same argument. It's the same insane people who make the argument, oh,

789
00:54:35,881 --> 00:54:39,981
what is your second amendment going to do against the U S government? It's like, Hey,

790
00:54:40,181 --> 00:54:47,341
go research the Vietnam war. Like Vietnam has way less guns than the South. Let's say for instance,

791
00:54:47,681 --> 00:54:50,901
and like, again, the United States wasn't able to take them. They weren't able to defeat them

792
00:54:50,901 --> 00:54:56,381
just because of the nature of, you know, an armed public. It's, it's not as easy to take down as,

793
00:54:56,541 --> 00:55:00,421
you know, as people think that it is. And so it's a similar, similar argument for gold. Like if you,

794
00:55:00,421 --> 00:55:05,101
you know, they're not going to be coming after the people with, you know, again, the average person,

795
00:55:05,401 --> 00:55:09,701
$50,000 worth of gold. Like, I'm sorry, you're just, you're not even on their radar. It just

796
00:55:09,701 --> 00:55:14,221
doesn't even, and like people will go to executive order 6102 and they'll be like, look, what if they

797
00:55:14,221 --> 00:55:19,041
make it? It's like, listen, they were going after large institutions in like wealthy people. They

798
00:55:19,041 --> 00:55:23,961
weren't going door to door, like to try to get every nickel, every golden nickel from every little,

799
00:55:24,061 --> 00:55:28,421
like that. It's just crazy. All right. I think another thing that's really important that I'm,

800
00:55:28,421 --> 00:55:34,501
I'm like working on, you know, articles in, uh, you know, basically a longer form piece as well

801
00:55:34,501 --> 00:55:39,321
to try to help people. Cause I think like the issue behind the issue, the issue underneath

802
00:55:39,321 --> 00:55:46,661
these issues is, is just like how to properly think about government. And I think the average,

803
00:55:46,801 --> 00:55:51,661
the average person just has a conception of government, like a Christian conception of

804
00:55:51,661 --> 00:55:55,721
government. The average Christian, when they think about government, boom, they go, they run right to

805
00:55:55,721 --> 00:56:00,321
Romans 13. And they're like, listen, the government, like God has ordained the government.

806
00:56:00,321 --> 00:56:07,061
And so like, they just uncritically suck that down and don't stop for a second to think about,

807
00:56:07,181 --> 00:56:11,921
wait, is, does this mean like, does this verse talk about the fact that governments can just

808
00:56:11,921 --> 00:56:17,521
create whatever reality on whatever front that they want to? And because they've got this rope,

809
00:56:17,601 --> 00:56:22,001
this magic blank check of Romans 13, it's just, they can just do whatever they want to. And it's

810
00:56:22,001 --> 00:56:27,641
like, well, obviously not. The apostle Paul was put to death because he disobeyed the government.

811
00:56:28,421 --> 00:56:33,401
And so I just think for the vast majority of Christians, they never, because they've lived

812
00:56:33,401 --> 00:56:38,281
in peacetime, they've been Christians at peacetime or what they thought was peacetime. They haven't

813
00:56:38,281 --> 00:56:43,661
really thought critically about like, but wait a second, where do we draw the line? And so I think

814
00:56:43,661 --> 00:56:49,681
something like COVID was a very helpful exercise in helping facilitate this conversation for a whole

815
00:56:49,681 --> 00:56:53,521
generation of people who hadn't had cause to think about it, or at least they didn't realize

816
00:56:53,521 --> 00:56:57,581
they had cause to think about it. And I think that, again, something like, you could talk about

817
00:56:57,581 --> 00:57:02,381
central bank digital currencies, even more, a lot of the things that you're talking about,

818
00:57:02,721 --> 00:57:05,941
these are things, these are reasons why Christians should be thinking critically.

819
00:57:06,321 --> 00:57:12,361
The scriptures do have an incredible wealth of resources for how to think about situations like

820
00:57:12,361 --> 00:57:19,381
these. And we have multiple, dozens of examples of the people of God standing up against oppressive

821
00:57:19,381 --> 00:57:26,181
governments and insane governments that try to make themselves gods and try to force their

822
00:57:26,181 --> 00:57:33,361
citizens to treat them as all omnipotent gods. The scriptures have a bunch of examples of that,

823
00:57:33,441 --> 00:57:39,621
and we have examples of how the people of God answered. And it wasn't simply to genuflect while

824
00:57:39,621 --> 00:57:46,341
you quote Romans 13. So I think that this is something that the church really needs this

825
00:57:46,341 --> 00:57:51,961
conversation more than ever, at least in the American context. And I think that's something

826
00:57:51,961 --> 00:57:57,481
that's going to be, I'm encouraged really, again, it's just like we see the same thing with Israel,

827
00:57:57,581 --> 00:58:02,901
right? Israel, the way that they woke up to reality and the way that they were really able

828
00:58:02,901 --> 00:58:08,661
to see what time it was, was through pain. And so for a lot of people, it's taken the events of

829
00:58:08,661 --> 00:58:13,421
COVID or it's taken the events of, it's going to take the hyperinflation or at least whatever you

830
00:58:13,421 --> 00:58:17,161
want to call the inflation that we're experiencing, which is really, if you're looking to anything of

831
00:58:17,161 --> 00:58:23,901
value, 15, 20%, you know, 10, 15, 20% over the last few years here, it's going to take that level

832
00:58:23,901 --> 00:58:29,781
of pain to wake them up to this reality. And, you know, philosophy, as much as it pains me,

833
00:58:29,781 --> 00:58:33,301
is not, you know, it's not going to be sufficient for the average person. It's going to take real

834
00:58:33,301 --> 00:58:40,241
world pain. And so again, it's always does. Yeah, it's always what's required. Yeah, exactly.

835
00:58:40,241 --> 00:58:45,441
Exactly. But so for, I mean, just for maybe, you know, we're coming up on an hour mark here.

836
00:58:45,541 --> 00:58:50,721
So like for people who are, again, they're looking at this price. I mean, I've seen video of people

837
00:58:50,721 --> 00:58:55,301
from, I think New York City and then also other places around the world, there's long lines to

838
00:58:55,301 --> 00:58:59,481
the gold shop. People who are, I would imagine the vast majority of them are buying. I'm sure

839
00:58:59,481 --> 00:59:03,141
you have some insane people who are selling, like they're looking at this and they're thinking,

840
00:59:03,281 --> 00:59:08,201
hey, this is good news. My gold, this gold coin or these gold coins that my grandfather left me

841
00:59:08,201 --> 00:59:10,061
have doubled or tripled in value.

842
00:59:10,921 --> 00:59:12,221
What would be your,

843
00:59:12,461 --> 00:59:13,961
what you would say to these people

844
00:59:13,961 --> 00:59:16,581
beyond what you've already said?

845
00:59:17,741 --> 00:59:18,321
Well, again,

846
00:59:18,601 --> 00:59:21,501
do not focus on dollar price,

847
00:59:21,821 --> 00:59:25,101
especially if you're a Bonson, Ramsey,

848
00:59:25,561 --> 00:59:27,561
Buffett guy

849
00:59:27,561 --> 00:59:29,121
and you hadn't gotten anywhere near this.

850
00:59:29,121 --> 00:59:30,621
You've got to rethink

851
00:59:30,621 --> 00:59:32,961
what we're really talking about.

852
00:59:33,241 --> 00:59:34,861
What we're talking about is,

853
00:59:35,561 --> 00:59:36,681
in Goal's case,

854
00:59:36,681 --> 00:59:42,661
since the dawn of God's creation in the Garden of Eden.

855
00:59:42,661 --> 00:59:47,781
This has been pointed out as something he put in the creation

856
00:59:47,781 --> 00:59:53,041
that would be a standard of value

857
00:59:53,041 --> 00:59:56,721
that has morphed into value all over the world

858
00:59:56,721 --> 01:00:01,601
from then to this day where gold is actual money.

859
01:00:02,161 --> 01:00:03,621
What do I mean when I say that?

860
01:00:03,721 --> 01:00:05,861
I mean a unit of account, a unit of exchange,

861
01:00:05,861 --> 01:00:08,721
but also a store of value and a store of labor.

862
01:00:08,921 --> 01:00:10,961
You cannot say that about the U.S. dollar.

863
01:00:11,241 --> 01:00:12,661
You can't say it about the yen.

864
01:00:12,841 --> 01:00:14,121
You can't say it about the euro.

865
01:00:14,501 --> 01:00:15,281
You say, what do you mean?

866
01:00:15,361 --> 01:00:17,121
Why, isn't my labor stored there?

867
01:00:17,841 --> 01:00:27,361
Well, no, because it gets depreciated by the fact that there is no handcuffs on these government entities to prevent flooding the supply of it.

868
01:00:27,361 --> 01:00:27,501
Yeah.

869
01:00:27,501 --> 01:00:35,301
Because they do something else on the debt side, and all they're trying to do is balance the supply of the credits and the debits.

870
01:00:35,301 --> 01:00:44,401
Well, if I put all of my labor into a fiat currency, well, I'm going to get whatever that fiat currency does.

871
01:00:44,841 --> 01:00:59,221
And we know from the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost 99% of its purchasing power, whereas gold has not lost its purchasing power.

872
01:00:59,221 --> 01:01:17,461
Yeah. Bitcoin, the only issue I have with Bitcoin, at least right now, which doesn't mean it's always going to have that problem. You and I have talked about this, is that if I overlay Bitcoin's price performance with the NASDAQ price performance, I'm getting the same volatility statistics.

873
01:01:17,461 --> 01:01:21,901
So it doesn't mean that's always going to be true.

874
01:01:22,041 --> 01:01:34,781
In fact, I am hoping and wanting to see Bitcoin zig when the NASDAQ zags, especially Bitcoin hold its value when the NASDAQ goes down 25%.

875
01:01:34,781 --> 01:01:36,341
That will be a great day.

876
01:01:36,901 --> 01:01:45,441
But that's why I say, even for the Bitcoin maxi guy, I'm just saying, look, I'm not telling you to get out of Bitcoin.

877
01:01:45,441 --> 01:01:52,541
If your volatility appetite is great, yes, you should have more of it.

878
01:01:52,641 --> 01:01:55,041
Just don't have zero of gold.

879
01:01:55,541 --> 01:01:59,641
And I would say to the gold now, that's silly to say zero in Bitcoin.

880
01:02:00,461 --> 01:02:12,661
Because it would be irrational to say that the advent of blockchain technology and how the, what's his name?

881
01:02:13,501 --> 01:02:14,121
Satoshi Neto.

882
01:02:14,121 --> 01:02:14,601
Satoshi Neto, yeah.

883
01:02:14,601 --> 01:02:18,201
How he designed the thing was absolutely brilliant.

884
01:02:18,481 --> 01:02:29,161
And he did everything he was supposed to do to make essentially an intangible form of what gold actually is.

885
01:02:29,521 --> 01:02:31,701
So why would you not want to own both of those?

886
01:02:31,701 --> 01:02:40,381
And my point to the wealthy, again, I keep saying wealthy only because those guys are the most vulnerable.

887
01:02:40,761 --> 01:02:43,101
Not because I care about them more.

888
01:02:43,101 --> 01:02:47,561
It's I want the small family that's got five grand to put into one gold coin.

889
01:02:47,701 --> 01:02:49,221
I want him to do that too.

890
01:02:49,541 --> 01:02:52,781
Or even less wealth to get silver.

891
01:02:53,721 --> 01:02:59,241
Have something where you're not, or small amounts, 0.0005 of a Bitcoin.

892
01:02:59,861 --> 01:03:02,021
Get this stuff because you've got to do it.

893
01:03:02,341 --> 01:03:10,001
For the underlying reason, it's the same irrespective of what your wealth profile has.

894
01:03:10,001 --> 01:03:18,181
But for the wealthy church and for the wealthy family or individual that is Christian, open your eyes.

895
01:03:18,321 --> 01:03:19,481
You are a target.

896
01:03:19,981 --> 01:03:21,701
Don't act like this has never happened.

897
01:03:21,841 --> 01:03:30,241
It has happened in the recent past in 2013, and it is on the books in the United States in the form of the Dodd-Frank law.

898
01:03:30,661 --> 01:03:32,181
Go to Title II of Dodd-Frank.

899
01:03:32,381 --> 01:03:34,901
You will see there bail-in law.

900
01:03:35,281 --> 01:03:39,461
So if you are over, and you know what a lot of people are doing too.

901
01:03:39,461 --> 01:03:41,621
Oh, well, I'm going to get around that.

902
01:03:41,741 --> 01:03:48,501
I've got $10 million, so what I will do is I'll open 40 different CDs with 40 different banks.

903
01:03:49,341 --> 01:04:00,761
To which my response is, do you seriously believe that the FDIC, if we got into the situation where they had to provide the insurance, is going to pay you on 40 accounts?

904
01:04:00,821 --> 01:04:01,801
They're not going to do that.

905
01:04:02,041 --> 01:04:04,521
They're going to say, no, sir, you're a rich guy.

906
01:04:04,521 --> 01:04:10,701
don't you're not in that that just betrays a lack of understanding of fdic go go do the deep dive on

907
01:04:10,701 --> 01:04:14,521
that one it's not going to be there when at least it is in the way the third saying it's going to be

908
01:04:14,521 --> 01:04:21,001
there um yeah and so this is man i would i would encourage you go go uh research gold again this

909
01:04:21,001 --> 01:04:25,941
is something and go go get some gold like if this it is something that makes sense uh even just over

910
01:04:25,941 --> 01:04:30,041
even you know if you do as like an insurance policy this is what i just tell i tell people

911
01:04:30,041 --> 01:04:34,321
all the time like this this is something it makes sense to own there are because again if for no

912
01:04:34,321 --> 01:04:40,021
other reason than there are still tons of people in the United States who understand and value gold

913
01:04:40,021 --> 01:04:43,921
and who are going to be, you're going to be able to use it to pay for things, you know, if,

914
01:04:44,281 --> 01:04:49,021
if something crazy happened. I think the, you know, due to the monetary debasement there,

915
01:04:49,221 --> 01:04:54,661
you know, there's people have less and less money. And what they do have is bound up in things like

916
01:04:54,661 --> 01:05:00,221
their stock portfolios are bound up within, you know, bound up within their homes. And so there's

917
01:05:00,221 --> 01:05:05,141
less and less people who do have, you know, a meaningful amount of liquid resources. Uh, but I

918
01:05:05,141 --> 01:05:09,541
do think that, you know, it is something that people need to take seriously. Uh, because again,

919
01:05:09,661 --> 01:05:15,961
we, we live in insane times. Uh, when, when you have a treasury secretary saying things like debt

920
01:05:15,961 --> 01:05:20,121
is just money we owe ourselves, uh, you know, you've gone, you have entered into the, into the,

921
01:05:20,661 --> 01:05:26,721
you know, into the crazy town. So, uh, Jim really appreciate your, your time. Um, actually the one,

922
01:05:26,721 --> 01:05:29,881
the one other thing I did want to push back on and just in terms of the,

923
01:05:29,881 --> 01:05:32,541
the Genesis, you know, the usage of gold, the one thing,

924
01:05:32,541 --> 01:05:36,421
and I didn't say this when we were talking because I, I just, I was like, ah,

925
01:05:36,661 --> 01:05:37,921
or when we were had the debate,

926
01:05:37,921 --> 01:05:41,221
the thing that came to me afterwards was just thinking about, so that,

927
01:05:41,301 --> 01:05:45,041
the way that I look at that was not, I wasn't, I don't read Genesis.

928
01:05:45,321 --> 01:05:48,381
I believe it's, is it one, what is it? One or two, two, two,

929
01:05:48,521 --> 01:05:49,741
Genesis two, when it mentions that,

930
01:05:49,821 --> 01:05:54,801
I don't necessarily see that as like, this is God saying, uh, you know,

931
01:05:54,801 --> 01:06:00,881
that, that gold is that people should use gold. I look at that as, okay. So Moses who wrote the

932
01:06:00,881 --> 01:06:05,661
Pentateuch, he's writing to a people, you know, however many thousands of years later after Genesis

933
01:06:05,661 --> 01:06:09,101
happens, like he writes them and he's telling them, Hey, he's like, Hey, just so you know,

934
01:06:09,101 --> 01:06:14,581
because now by that point, gold actually is like gold's used pretty much ubiquitously in that time.

935
01:06:15,041 --> 01:06:18,781
And so he's just basically saying, Hey, just by virtue of a, you know, just to let you know,

936
01:06:18,861 --> 01:06:24,021
like, you know, gold existed and it was back then and it was in this place. They had really good gold

937
01:06:24,021 --> 01:06:28,501
here. And so it's like, and so you could argue there's some relationship between that and kind

938
01:06:28,501 --> 01:06:33,421
of what you were, you were arguing. Uh, but like, I, I think that, I mean, cause again, you, I do

939
01:06:33,421 --> 01:06:37,981
think God, like God created everything. And I think that God created gold to be used for this,

940
01:06:37,981 --> 01:06:39,881
this purpose. Um,

941
01:06:39,922 --> 01:06:46,662
I read something that there's some scientists who think that all of the gold that exists on Earth came via this asteroid.

942
01:06:47,502 --> 01:06:49,422
And so that's super interesting to me too.

943
01:06:50,262 --> 01:06:58,622
God literally sent an asteroid with this thing that was proven to be the best money that's existed on Earth.

944
01:06:58,622 --> 01:07:00,942
And so, yeah, so that would be one thing.

945
01:07:01,022 --> 01:07:02,482
But again, the broader point still stands.

946
01:07:02,482 --> 01:07:14,562
I think this is a good gift, a good tool that facilitates just transactions between people, which allows societies to be built.

947
01:07:14,642 --> 01:07:22,402
This is another thing I point out is that every civilization you would ever want to be part of has been founded upon scarce money at the very least.

948
01:07:22,582 --> 01:07:26,642
And in all the ones you would actually want to live in, gold and silver.

949
01:07:26,642 --> 01:07:38,242
And so to look at and think that we have arrived and we no longer need this dumb rock, I just think is chronological snobbery to the highest degree.

950
01:07:38,782 --> 01:07:40,182
It's not knowing what time it is.

951
01:07:40,242 --> 01:07:40,982
It's despising.

952
01:07:41,082 --> 01:07:42,222
It's breaking the fifth commandment.

953
01:07:42,322 --> 01:07:48,782
It's despising your fathers, which we know does not just apply to our physical, biological fathers.

954
01:07:49,542 --> 01:07:51,342
Do not fall prey to this.

955
01:07:51,342 --> 01:07:56,342
This is a danger, and I think that we would be fools

956
01:07:56,342 --> 01:08:00,102
to not take seriously the history

957
01:08:00,102 --> 01:08:03,002
and the way that gold has protected people

958
01:08:03,002 --> 01:08:05,322
from totalitarian governments

959
01:08:05,322 --> 01:08:07,222
and a whole host of other threats.

960
01:08:07,222 --> 01:08:09,662
So, Jim, really appreciate you.

961
01:08:09,662 --> 01:08:20,790
Grateful for your friendship and for just your time coming on the podcast Tell people where they can find more about you and ALPS and then we go from there Yeah so ALPS A as in the

962
01:08:20,790 --> 01:08:28,130
European Mountain Range, that name came from our original partners, which is Liechtenstein Precious

963
01:08:28,130 --> 01:08:34,470
Metals, built by two families from scratch. They purposely wanted to get out of the banking system.

964
01:08:34,470 --> 01:08:37,830
They did so, and they have their own vault, their own.

965
01:08:38,050 --> 01:08:42,830
All Lloyds of London insured, so it's not like that you, oh, gosh,

966
01:08:42,870 --> 01:08:44,650
I put it with these guys and never saw them again.

967
01:08:44,810 --> 01:08:45,890
That's not how it works.

968
01:08:46,090 --> 01:08:48,870
It is fully insured.

969
01:08:49,070 --> 01:08:52,310
If anything goes wrong or they do what they're not supposed to do,

970
01:08:52,710 --> 01:08:56,010
Lloyds will pay you, will make you whole.

971
01:08:56,370 --> 01:08:57,870
The same for United States.

972
01:08:59,130 --> 01:09:03,510
Guys, my partner is Texas Precious Metals in the little town of Shiner, Texas,

973
01:09:03,510 --> 01:09:06,410
It's about halfway between San Antonio and Houston.

974
01:09:07,710 --> 01:09:11,490
Christian family, the Caspers, built that from scratch.

975
01:09:11,710 --> 01:09:16,250
It is a state-of-the-art, probably the state-of-the-art vault in the world right now.

976
01:09:17,090 --> 01:09:19,670
Trading, storage, all of that.

977
01:09:20,810 --> 01:09:23,270
I was just there last week.

978
01:09:24,730 --> 01:09:29,810
The value amount of gold and silver that are in our vault now is $7 billion.

979
01:09:29,810 --> 01:09:37,450
So there is no size that we can't handle, institutional, family, office, or church.

980
01:09:37,450 --> 01:09:44,930
And again, that's my main message is the churches have got to think about, they have to understand

981
01:09:44,930 --> 01:09:55,578
how God has made them They have to understand we are in a fallen world where we have targets on our back and we got to do something about it So Alps Freshest Metals Group

982
01:09:55,578 --> 01:10:03,658
So the website, www.alpspmg.com.

983
01:10:05,018 --> 01:10:08,458
Or the best way to get in touch with me

984
01:10:08,458 --> 01:10:12,938
is my telephone, 251-377-2197.

985
01:10:13,038 --> 01:10:15,478
It really is because that's always on me.

986
01:10:15,498 --> 01:10:19,778
and it's easy to have conversations and all the email back and forth.

987
01:10:19,998 --> 01:10:22,138
But all that's on the website as well.

988
01:10:22,698 --> 01:10:25,178
It's a very Spartan website on purpose.

989
01:10:26,018 --> 01:10:32,858
We're not trying to get into competition with guys that sell gold coins on the Internet and stuff.

990
01:10:33,118 --> 01:10:38,698
I can and do and beat those guys in competition, and I just don't want to set it up that way.

991
01:10:38,698 --> 01:10:44,858
I think it's a very personal, especially when you're talking about a church elder board.

992
01:10:44,858 --> 01:10:46,858
This is a personal conversation.

993
01:10:46,998 --> 01:10:53,578
I need to have face-to-face with them or certainly a family office or individual.

994
01:10:54,078 --> 01:11:00,718
But I have small accounts, too, all over the place where they bought 1,000, 2,000 silver coins.

995
01:11:00,918 --> 01:11:04,818
We will do that business, too, and beat what you could do on the Internet.

996
01:11:05,698 --> 01:11:12,178
So hopefully we can add value certainly to Christian brothers and sisters.

997
01:11:12,178 --> 01:11:16,678
And if they're not a Christian brother or sister, we can add value to those guys too.

998
01:11:16,678 --> 01:11:17,678
Sure.

999
01:11:17,678 --> 01:11:18,678
Great.

1000
01:11:18,678 --> 01:11:19,678
And so, just real quick on that front.

1001
01:11:19,678 --> 01:11:33,906
So I mean you guys there are these vaults you know there a vault in Lichtenstein and there also a vault in Texas Is this something where customers can ask to take possession If they want to get their gold sent to them or something like that that still an option

1002
01:11:34,406 --> 01:11:35,446
Oh, absolutely.

1003
01:11:35,806 --> 01:11:37,346
The man of second you asked for.

1004
01:11:37,506 --> 01:11:37,666
Sure.

1005
01:11:37,846 --> 01:11:41,666
Compare and contrast, I have a million dollars worth of gold in the vault.

1006
01:11:42,006 --> 01:11:42,166
Sure.

1007
01:11:42,646 --> 01:11:45,226
Jim, we want to take it out because we built our own vault.

1008
01:11:45,226 --> 01:11:49,106
Fine, Al-Hai, do you want to pick it up, or do you want us to ship it to you?

1009
01:11:49,106 --> 01:11:52,686
Go try to get a million dollars in cash out of any bank anywhere.

1010
01:11:53,126 --> 01:11:54,426
They will tell you no.

1011
01:11:55,526 --> 01:11:58,726
And so with you guys, there's no re-hypothecation.

1012
01:11:59,146 --> 01:12:00,066
You guys are zero.

1013
01:12:00,486 --> 01:12:00,706
Zero.

1014
01:12:00,966 --> 01:12:01,146
Zero.

1015
01:12:01,346 --> 01:12:08,306
We are bailment custodians, and we are paid a fee to take care of your gold and silver.

1016
01:12:08,646 --> 01:12:09,986
Our job is to take care of it.

1017
01:12:10,306 --> 01:12:11,486
We have no other job.

1018
01:12:11,906 --> 01:12:12,026
Yep.

1019
01:12:12,826 --> 01:12:13,226
All right.

1020
01:12:13,326 --> 01:12:13,566
Cool.

1021
01:12:13,726 --> 01:12:14,926
Jim, really appreciate you.

1022
01:12:15,046 --> 01:12:18,466
And we will chat with you hopefully sometime in the near future here.

1023
01:12:18,466 --> 01:12:27,126
Again, if we see gold get up to those five-figure prices that you're presuming will bring you back as a prophet and a son of a prophet.

1024
01:12:27,766 --> 01:12:37,706
And then, again, for the rest of the audience, go find some information from Jim and then go like, subscribe, and all the different places to help other people find these resources.

1025
01:12:38,106 --> 01:12:38,846
We're grateful for you.

1026
01:12:38,906 --> 01:12:41,186
We'll see you on the next episode of the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.

1027
01:12:41,386 --> 01:12:43,126
Well, thank you so much, Jordan.

1028
01:12:43,186 --> 01:12:43,926
You're very kind.

1029
01:12:44,046 --> 01:12:46,666
And it's, as I say, a true honor to be on your program.

1030
01:12:47,146 --> 01:12:47,686
Well, thank you.

1031
01:12:48,466 --> 01:12:48,946
You got it.