and we are live welcome to episode 25 to the unknown pod runaway inflation in the eighth
commandment we'll get to that shortly i am joined today my name is jordan bush i'm the executive
director of tgfb media which exists to help christians understand and use bitcoin for the
glory of god and the good of people everywhere today i am joined by one third of the island boys
Ryan, go ahead and introduce yourself
and then we'll tell everybody
we're our derelict compatriots.
Yeah, I'm Ryan Finley,
entrepreneur, dad of six.
I just recently spoke at the
Bitcoin is for Everyone up in Portland.
Low time preference parenting.
That was a talk.
And yeah, it was good to be here, Jordan.
It was a great talk.
Yes, as we mentioned, Ryan,
thank you for being here.
Thank you for taking seriously your commitment.
We've got some other guys who are like,
I'm taking my daughter to college and I'm going to visit my wife's family in Europe. Okay. Like
again, what kind of excuses are these really? I don't understand. But again, so we do want to
announce that we're opening open casting calls to replace them. So Ash and Ash and Matt are
nowhere to be found. So if you'd like to be considered, please send us your resume
and we'll be happy to consider them in a timely manner. Again, today we're going to be talking
about runaway inflation in the eighth commandment. What in the world do those things have to do with
one another? Hopefully, if you've been around these parts for a little bit, you know what those
two things have in common, but we'll get to that. So Ryan, why in the world are we doing this
episode? Why did you think this is your choice? So why did you think this was something that we
ought to talk about? Yeah. I mean, I think we had another CPI report that came out today. And again,
I think the numbers came out or the numbers are running a little hot still.
And like my base case is we're going to have to keep printing mounds of money and inflation is going to be high from here on out.
There's no there's no I don't think they're going to be able to stop the amount of money that they're that they need to print.
And but the perniciousness of it, I would say the majority of people haven't thought deeply about it or or understand how it works.
and our government straight up lies to the people.
Our presidents lie.
They blame inflation on everything but its actual cause,
which is our money being debased by the Federal Reserve
just endlessly printing it.
And there's also everything's obscure.
So we're going to bring up some of the examples
of how you at home can track inflation
in some of the things you buy.
But yeah.
It's very, very destructive and it impacts everything and it's only going to get worse.
So, yeah, I think this is a really important talk.
Yeah, this is something where, again, there's lots of, well, maybe not lots, there's a number of different understandings of what inflation is.
Some people would describe it as the increase in prices over time.
Again, there is truth in that to a degree.
But then another way to think about inflation is just the overall increase of units in the
monetary system.
So the increase in monetary units that are out there to be spent, as that number goes
up, that is another sense in which inflation can be measured.
And it's by far in the day and age that we live, it's the one that's less understood and
less emphasized.
You're going to find this principle everywhere.
Once you start looking for it, once you see it, is a lot of the explanations for things are very superficial.
And the explanations and the solutions that people and governments and institutions are willing to discuss are these very superficial solutions that actually won't resolve any of the underlying causes for the situation that we find ourselves in.
And so once you, again, once you start looking for that, you start to see it everywhere.
And so, again, a lot of the things that we're going to talk about, just because the monetary base has grown very quickly through the issuance of new money as debt that then gets paid back, basically, there is so much more currency units out there that it just increases necessarily the price of everything that can't be created as quickly as the currency units themselves.
and since they're created literally instantaneously, most of them digitally,
there is no time between when they're created
or very little time between when they're created
and when their effect starts to be felt in the economy.
So one of the things we're going to start doing, we have a ton.
We have a ton.
This is going to be a great little quick hitter.
Find your tweets of just about inflation.
So the first thing that we're going to do here
is we're going to look at one of the most surprising but reliable ways
to observe inflation is what, Ryan?
Ground beef.
Now, again, this might sound insane to you, but it is, in fact, true.
So here we go.
Some guy I found on Twitter, we won't even mention.
Let's just cut off that.
Let's cut off his name there.
In 2020, the Federal Reserve increased the U.S. dollar money supply by 42%.
since 2020 ground beef prices have gone up 45 percent ground beef is the most accurate picture
of inflation we have so that when you so when you see ground beef prices going up respond
accordingly buy bitcoin ryan i'll let you unpack unpack that anything else you want to mention
i don't know if it was lynn alden who first mentioned it she uh i know that she's tweeted
about it i think we're going to share another tweet but she called it like the big the big mac
index and i was like i was i thought it was such an incredible example um anyways she she explains
that it's very difficult to hide inflation in ground beef because it it represents i mean it's
there's so many um different parts of our economy and so many inputs that go into ground beef you
got transportation you got land labor oil yeah uh seed costs like just butcher costs like everything
There's just a ton of, and so it's very difficult.
And then at the end of the day, it's like, how do you reduce?
I mean, obviously there are some ways that they've reduced the quality of some beef.
But I just go a step further and track the price of local grass-fed ground beef.
But you can do whatever you want.
I mean, at the end of the day, it's still difficult to hide inflation in the price of beef.
So, yeah, this is something where, again, there are ways, and we're going to talk about one of them, which is shrinkflation.
There's different ways to try to hide the true inflation that's going on.
So, here's a few different ways that you can handle inflation.
So, inflation just means that everything, the price of the goods themselves go up.
And so then correspondingly, the price that these providers are having to charge in order to continue to make the margin that they need to in order to operate and remain profitable, they just basically pass that inflation rate along to their customers.
And so this is where kind of the misunderstanding of, oh, businesses are going to pay more.
It's like that never is going to happen.
With limited exception, that is not going to be the primary way that this thing goes down.
if there is increases in costs that are going to be passed along to the consumer.
And so in this case, you can see, again, the monetary supply went up 42%,
and the cost of ground beef went up even more because, again, there is just loss.
There's other increases that go up.
So your cost of fuel probably went up during this time period.
Your cost of labor probably went up a little bit.
And so all of those little things affect the end product.
And so again, this isn't magic.
Like this is something I really think is important.
Like prices aren't magic.
They have everything to do with what's going on
in the process of making something,
the delivery of the product that's being made.
But again, we mentioned one of the ways
that you can hide some of this inflation
and that's to actually change the product itself.
So for instance, you could have like,
let's say you're going to a grocery store
and they're selling, let's say it's like a 90% ground beef,
90% meat and then there's like some fat in there as well, which again, you want some fat.
But let's say normally the store is selling 90% and you get accustomed to paying whatever it is,
let's say $5 a pound or $6 a pound for ground beef that's like that. One of the ways that
businesses recognize that their customers don't like to see prices go up. And so one of the ways
that they can try to avoid having to raise prices
is by saying, all right,
well, we're going to drop the quality of the meat
from 90% to 85%.
And it'll still be listed there.
They'll still show you right there.
If you're paying attention, you'll notice.
But a lot of people won't be paying attention.
And so they'll just keep buying it
and they'll see, oh, it's the same price.
So that's good.
In reality, it's something more subtle has happened.
The product itself has changed
and it's gotten worse
in the name of keeping the price the same.
And so this is, you mentioned Lynn. We have Lynn, here we go, mentioning, here's a chart of the U.S. Consumer Price Index. So the CPI is the short way to put that. U.S. broad money supply per capita and the Big Mac prices from 1990 to 2020 normalized to 100 in 1990.
So you can see here, so CPI is blue.
This is the consumer price index, the official numbers, which are pretty much always wrong and lying right to your face in order to cover the government's rear end.
That's the CPI.
The broad money, so this is how much money, the orange.
Incredible, they chose Bitcoin colors.
Broad money per capita, and then the Big Mac price.
So the Big Mac price is way above, significantly above, is it double?
Let's see what it is.
not quite yeah there was another it's it's gone up an enormous yeah i think i think it's gone up
even i want to say it was like i saw one tweet it's like 13 or 14 a year um yeah it's even yeah
yeah so again this was to 2020 so this is i mean again another five years since then so it's going
to be much higher than this uh and so yeah our astronaut did it yeah exactly yeah ryan uh replied
do her in Astro.
Did it?
So that's,
that's another one.
Um,
again,
there,
there's a hundred things.
So follow Lynn Alden.
Lynn Alden is a fantastic resource for inflation related things.
Parker Lewis,
as it relates to meat is another,
uh,
great person to follow.
Parker has been following,
uh,
the meat,
not at Kirkland.
What's the,
is it,
um,
fresh market.
I think next to him,
this,
this actually isn't that ample.
So he's been,
he's been following fresh market.
Yeah.
He's been yelling from the rooftops as well.
Cause it's just,
it's the easiest.
It's yeah.
So many of the price increases are obfuscated in supermarkets because they shrink the packages.
It's all sorts of, they reduce the quality, which again, it just hides it.
The CPI, the basket's always changing.
Again, you can't trust it at all.
Like every time it makes the numbers look bad, they just change the basket to.
and then at the end of the day
you know inflation is stealing money from everyone
and that obviously when the word gets out about that
people bring out the pitchforks
so politicians come out
and they you know come up with 100 different scapegoats
it's the greedy billionaires
it's the greedy grocery store owners
right I mean I think they have a 2% margin
on their goods at a grocery store
and with a straight face
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this, this is something where I got an example of this. He's like, well,
I mean, how can you really say that the CPI is lying? Well, here, here's an example. You can go
back and you can look at the way that the CPI was calculated. Uh, and you can go through and read
what the things like, what things that they include. Um, and one of the things that they,
I can't remember. One of the things that they mentioned was initially the CPI, I believe,
I believe, I think steak was actually on there. It was like some, like a better cut of beef.
and now they just do it with ground beef.
And so they act like, so it's easier to disguise,
even though, oh, this is both beef technically,
but it's a big difference between the steak and ground beef.
And so to try to just draw an equivalence between those things
in order to hide inflation, it's just wrong.
It's just immoral.
You're actually lying by doing that.
But here's an example.
This is just from the last 12 months,
a little bit less than 12 months here,
or I guess a little bit more.
So this beef loin, New York steak, boneless USDA choice was $49.
For about, you know, almost the same weight was $49.24 a year ago.
It's $78.03.
I saw a beef tenderloin today at the grocery store.
And I had to do, I literally walked by it, saw the price, then walked back and assumed that I had misread it.
Because it was a beef tenderloin.
It was a good-sized one.
I believe it was $119 or $120.
It was something absurd.
I was like, how is this possible that this is this much?
We just bought a quarter cow with some family of ours.
We bought a quarter cow between three families, okay?
And I believe we spent $700 for that.
So you're talking $8,500 for the whole cow.
It's just bonkers.
These numbers are just crazy.
I remember a few years ago when I believe a cow was like $2,500.
An entire cow.
And now we're like four times that.
That's nuts.
So that's Parker.
Go follow him.
Then we've got this one here.
This is the McDouble.
We not just the Big Mac index Let look at the McDouble index Let see if we can play this If you listening to an audio McDouble went from 99 cents to
a few years later.
2018 is
$1.45.
How are you guys?
$2.05.
$2.19
$2.49.
$3.99.
Current times.
$3.49.
What was the date on the last one?
I missed it.
This last one, you can't see the date, but it's $4.49 in McDouble.
It's 350% peak and less.
479 in Boulder City, Nevada, as of through about in 23.
It's over $5.
Yeah, it looks like over $5 in 2023.
So you're talking over, you know, basically 500% increase in the span of 10 years.
This is, again, man, just so unsustainable.
And again, it's something that's super tangible for a lot of people.
You know, McDonald's has sold billions of hamburgers.
But yeah, it is.
Yeah.
It hits different when you see it like that.
Yeah.
I just encourage people to pick an item.
The one that I follow the most is there's an organic 15-pack of hamburger patties at Costco.
And I want to say it was like 2018.
So I guess it's been seven years ago.
uh but maybe it was maybe it was closer than 2020 but it was i remember paying 16 18 bucks for that
there's like 15 patties in it so you know it's about a dollar a patty it just hit 29.99 so
you just keep watching it though like so i mean if at the current pace i bet you know within a year
it'll be 33 34 and it's just going to keep 10 plus per year um unless you know and obviously
there's i was talking to somebody earlier today there's you know there are some supply
yeah driven issues it's not always 100 because because sometimes it'll spike it'll be it won't
just be 10% like, um, it won't just because it won't be just because of, um, the increase in
the money supply. Sometimes with, you know, storms feed, like we're, we have, we had a bad, uh, summer
in the West and there's less, uh, hay available. So feed's going to be more expensive. So that's
going to increase, um, beef prices even more than normal, um, next year. So, yeah, again,
it's not the only it's not the only factor but it is an enormous factor that that's kind of what
you're getting at i meant to mention that earlier so yeah again you're gonna have the what about
people who are always gonna be you're like that doesn't tell the whole story it's a correct we
understand that like david again this is still yeah it's by far the biggest factor um especially
over time it it's a it's an enormous factor uh here we have another one from a not quite friend
of the program hopefully someday become friend of the program uh balaji uh shared this one with
Campbell's Soup Index. Let's see. He calls this one the single best long-run measure of food
inflation, and it's gone vertical. Look, man, forget Bitcoin. Look at the returns. If you're
investing in Campbell's Soup, baby. So you're looking at now, again, the data on this is really
interesting when this started to go parabolic. Where did this happen? Oh, yeah, the 70s.
What happened in the early 1970s?
Oh, yeah. What happened in 1971?
Yeah, yeah.
It's very interesting.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say, yeah, there's so many charts like this that just as soon as 1971 came around and we went off the gold standard for good, prices just went vertical.
I mean, the other thing you can see is where you see interest rates.
I mean, you see basically through here.
I mean, again, interest rates being low basically makes the price of everything go up.
You can see a lot of these things.
Just look at these gap ups during COVID.
Gap up here as well.
Again, this is just something where, so again, now it's over $1.24.
You're talking 10 cents this thing was for a long time.
Look how it stayed steady.
Yeah.
This is what's so fascinating, right?
When you have a stable, scarce currency, you do get price stability.
And the crazy thing is I think we did, we were having monetary debasement during those years.
It wasn't like we weren't having any.
Yeah.
It's just that there was way more restraint and the amount of debasement was very low.
So it was like, it was kind of like they're trying to boil everyone, you're boiling in a frog kind of level.
Like, so you didn't really notice it because we're supposed, we should be having deflation.
So the price of this Campbell soup, if you have sound money, instead of 10 cents, it should go down, you know, it could go down to like 2 cents or something like, because of innovation and coming up with like, yeah, just new technology.
It's going to keep driving the price down.
but with low monetary debasement it just it it silently just took away all the gains from
innovation and kind of kept the price somewhat steady and again it makes it the pernicious part
about it is people it made it kind of hard to to see see it happen uh then the gloves came off in
1971 and then they really started ripping uh and printing enormous amounts of money
um i mean the other thing i mean just it's staggering to think about like look at this
chart look at 1929 okay 1929 the great depression one of the critical worst you know financial
events in you know recent u.s definitely u.s history uh look at the price it didn't even budge
no one down it was a little bit staggering right and again this like you're underlying you're
underlying the underlying uh denominator for your for your nation for your for your country it
matters immensely. And we have the average Christian, the average person has no conception
of these things and it matters a ton. It's a big part of why we're doing what we're doing is,
again, even independent of Bitcoin, these are real problems that are basically the Christians
will be facing, the church will be facing, people trying to minister will be facing,
people trying to operate businesses and other nonprofit organizations are all going to have
to deal with and reckon with these realities, there's no escaping them. And again, if you just
stick your head in the ground and, or just get frustrated, get angry about them, again, it's
great to know about this and to be angry. Okay, great. But if you don't have some way to avoid
getting eviscerated by them, it really doesn't do you any good to hear, to talk about these things,
right and and and just to reinforce what we were just talking about you know so money supply went
up 40 what was it i'm trying to remember it was from 2020 to 2025 it was money supply went up 40
40 was it 40 something 46 or something like that and ground beef basically went up about the same
amount yeah 42 45 i think yeah and so you're like oh well then maybe that was just a one-off thing
like again the Campbell soup yeah 2020 the price was 84 cents yeah like if you zoom in you don't
need to but it was 84 cents and and now it's a dollar 24 so that's a 47 increase oh what are the
odds yeah right yeah again you just it's hard to like it's just a Campbell soup the same size little
tin can it's just tomatoes yep it went up the same amount as the money was debased well in the same
And the crazy thing is it's, it's actually worse. Cause again, the, the, it's possible that the,
you know, like I would, I would almost guarantee you that the, the material that the can is made
out of is actually worse materials. Uh, I was out in Portland with you guys last week for the
Bitcoin is for everyone, uh, conference. And, uh, at the bar, I went over to the bar and as,
as a, you know, good Christian does, uh, I asked if they had any root beer and, uh, I'm a, I'm a
sucker for like a good root beer. And so they said, Oh yeah, we've got root beer. This lady pulled out
a can. It was a can of root beer. It was the best can I've ever held in my entire life. You could
just tell it was a, it was a little bit heavier. It was like sturdier. And I just thought to myself,
this is, this is crazy. Like I've never felt a can like this. And then the root beer was
outrageous. It was delicious. It was really good. But again, a lot of these things, if you can,
you find stuff from this era, they were stronger. You know, they were stronger, better, and a bunch
of different ways. And so over time, that's another example of shrinkflation. It's not that
we're getting the, it's not even that the same thing costs the same amount. It's a worse version
of the thing still costs one more. We could do a show on like every single,
like every item in a grocery store and what the impact has been on it. Like this is such a random
one, but we buy cases of a Costco bottled water. Do you remember when they went from the old school,
it was super thick and then all of a sudden one day you go in there and it was it was it was after
2020 i i'm almost almost sure that it was like they reduced the amount of plastic in each bottle by a
half and you like grab it and you literally can crush like if you have any sort of grip strength
you can just crush the bottle like yeah i mean they just reduce because again you know plastic
is an oil-based product well like oil prices went way up and they're trying to figure out a way to
cut costs they sent the you know the bean counters to figure out ways to cut corners and uh yeah
thinner glass material anything they can do to try to hide the hide the inflation yeah and again and
this is like the dollar 50 hot dog yeah yep we mentioned that we mentioned just like yeah yeah
no we mentioned what the ground beef is again the temptation is to cut corners right this is we we
read, when we were writing Think I'm for Bitcoin, we read Gary North's book, Honest Money. And he
talked about how this was something that happened all the time with wine. So as monetary debasement
happened, the winemaker would be tempted to introduce a little bit of water into his wine
in order to make it go farther and allow him to sell more of it and to make the same amount of
profit that he was accustomed to making. And so again, it's this hidden tax that incentivizes you,
that forces you basically to try to either be content with making less or in so doing tempts
you to look for shortcuts in ways that are, in order to protect yourself, it basically tempts you
to choose your own good over the good of your neighbor and over the glory of God by loving
your neighbor. And so this is a huge deal. And so this is kind of what we were getting at with the
title, again, is just looking at the, in reality, like inflation, at least monetary inflation,
it is this theft. It's plain and simple. They're never going to describe it in those terms because
that will, you know, nobody, people would freak out, but that's the reality of what they're,
they know what they're doing. They're stealing from you because they know that they're passive
aggressive. They know if they were to basically ask you to, you know, try to raise taxes here,
we need to do this. We think it's going to cost more, you know, we'll raise taxes. You wouldn't
do it. And so this is, this is just throughout, it's a passive aggressive way of getting the same
result, uh, you know, without having to raise taxes and do something that would be unpopular
politically with this, they can obfuscate, they can make me basically make up all kinds of reasons.
They can blame it on their political predecessor. They can blame it on, you know, whatever else
they want to blame it on,
anything other than the truth.
And so again, this is a huge deal.
This has all kinds of downstream consequences
and it's unsustainable for the long term.
Yeah, a couple of years ago
when we had the big,
oh, I don't want to steal Lawrence Lippard's thing,
but because I still think the big print
is actually coming,
but the COVID print,
they printed seven or nine trillion.
I can't remember which.
Yeah.
It was something like, it was over $7 trillion of money and just dumped it out into the marketplace.
I actually made a post locally in my community, and I was warning all the small businesses to pay really close attention to all their input costs for all the goods and services that they offer.
Because what the Federal Reserve, what our government counts on is they actually count on small businesses not paying attention and to not pass on those costs.
so they print the massive amount of money and if everyone in concert if there was like some index
that basically went out and and all businesses just raised their prices 40 percent all the
politicians would be thrown out of office and we would have abolished the federal reserve
decades ago yeah but it never happens and i'll so i'll give you an example so i know that like
hops costs like to make beer it went up significantly i mean i don't know yeah i'm not gonna pull up
the numbers but like i went into one of our local breweries and i said hey you guys probably need i
know that your your costs just went up significantly you need to adjust your prices um and sure enough
like several you know whatever it was within a month or so they they raised the price of each
beer a dollar because it wasn't just that their prices went up 20 it was like 40 or it was very
quickly the um anyways all that to say a lot of businesses and a lot of individuals they just take
it in the chin.
They try as hard as they can not to raise prices because they don want to hurt their customers and they don want to seem greedy and all this kind of stuff um but yeah i mean the most loving thing to do is to raise your prices so you don go out of business and you don disappear and sadly if you look at all the
businesses that went out of went out over the last several years a lot of them it was just because
they didn't adjust quickly enough yep you have huge corporations like starbucks when their their
cost of milk goes up it's like instantaneous they're across the board all the drink prices go
up because they're not just going to take that hit.
So yeah, and this is, I mean, yeah, again, as we mentioned, that's the best possible
case scenario.
The best case scenario is that the providers are honest enough where they say, hey, we
can't continue to offer what we have been given these constraints.
And so we're going to go out of business.
Again, there's plenty of other ways that they can go, you know, they can choose to prioritize
their own existence by staying in business, by cheapening the materials. There's a fantastic
video. Oh, I have to find it. It's basically, it's this video called why the FDA knowingly
approves of dangerous drugs. And it basically comes to, it make a lot, there's a number of
different factors, but like they basically, they started, they were making drugs in one place.
And then they basically started making them someplace else, making them in India.
And they know, they know categorically that like a good percentage of these drugs are dangerous.
And yet the cost like both to their own reputation or whatever to basically to not having access to these drugs is such that they continue to approve.
And like this one, the video talks about a journalist who went through basically there was a whistleblower working for the company.
Then there was a journalist who took that information and followed up.
And basically, they found there's a ton of corruption on the ground in India where basically they knew what was going on.
They were cut into the profits.
And so they basically just kind of pushed it under the rug.
and then even on the side,
the American journalist
who was kind of doing this
investigatory research,
just basically,
he kind of talked about it
with one of his employers
and there was some relationship
between them and a media conglomerate
to where they kind of
pushed it under the rug too.
Like this regulatory body
that was supposed to be
providing accountability
to these pharmaceutical companies.
They're basically all in bed together.
They're all just acting in such a way that is against the best interests of people.
And then they even talked about to a further degree that the United States, we still get the best, not great drugs.
There's plenty of other drugs that are basically that are shipped.
The worst versions of these are sent to the poorest people on earth, people who can't afford to get the better stuff.
And so the whole thing is just incredibly corrupt.
And again, all of this is entirely predictable.
One of my favorite sayings is that logic is a time machine.
Like you can predict all of these things.
You could have predicted all of them 20, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, if
you saw the baseline trajectory of doing some of these things.
And so this is where, I mean, so this is why some of these things matter a ton.
I think, Ryan, one of the things I want to do, I want to show this video that was put
together by uh this this son of some random guy i i met one time his name was uh elijah finley he's
like yeah we'll see but uh he uh he basically is working together with marty on this uh series of
videos and they posted one the other day about the creation of the federal reserve that kind of talks
about these things i really feel like i think this one might have been ed it was it was but still he's
working on yeah he's working on these but this will be how i just worked with you guys haven't
seen this. This is, I mean, you
kind of got to see it. That went viral.
Yeah. Millions
and millions of videos.
2.1 million on
people. People are
waking up. That was another reason why
I wanted to talk about this today. Like, it's
getting difficult for them to hide it
and it's only going to get worse.
Yeah. Here we go. Jekyll Island,
November 1910. Seven
bankers meeting in secret to create
America's central bank. We just
can't call it that.
The 1907 panic nearly destroyed us.
Banks failed.
Fortunes vanished.
We want to control America's money supply.
Create booms, trigger busts, and profit from both.
And how will we do that?
We'll create money from nothing, loan it to the government, and charge interest.
Legal counterfeiting, my friends.
But there's a cost.
Every dollar we print steals value from existing dollars.
It's a hidden tax that flows directly to us.
And it gets worse.
If we ever get off the gold standard, governments can print money for wars.
Endless wars become possible.
And profitable.
Since Americans hate central banks, we'll call it the Federal Reserve.
Sounds governmental, doesn't it?
It's not.
The president will appoint board members, but we'll pick who he appoints.
We'll have 12 retail banks. Looks decentralized, democratic even. But New York banks control them all. That's us.
You're probably wondering how we're going to get this through Congress.
December 23rd, 1913. Most of Congress home for Christmas. Perfect timing for passing unpopular legislation.
I'll publicly oppose our own bill in Congress. They'll pass it thinking they beat Wall Street.
We'll fund university chairs, write the textbooks.
They'll teach our system as economic science.
Beautiful.
Every American born after this will inherit debt on money we created from nothing.
Generational servitude.
The Federal Reserve.
Not federal.
No reserves.
But everyone will think it's their government protecting them.
Good afternoon.
yeah so again this is this is what we're talking about this is the source of a lot of these things
is again because governments can print money out of thin air again they're they're going to continue
to do it because it gives them power because it gives them control uh and because they can make
themselves a ton of money in the short term again a lot of these things are presented as if they're
in our interest when in reality they're in the interest of a very small group of people uh who
who, you know, benefit both personally and professionally.
Yeah. And where the, where this is going, like why we,
we sound a little bit arrogant talking about, you know, predicting the future.
Look at our debt, look at the national debt,
look at the interest expense on the debt,
and then look at the unfunded liabilities that the U S government has.
And it's, it's, I don't know,
it's over a hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities.
It's an astronomical amount of money.
and yeah, at the end of the day,
they're not going to default on that debt.
They're going to pay it.
It's just, they're going to pay it in newly printed money.
And so it's going to continually debase everyone's money.
And yeah, so we can expect higher inflation
every year from here on out.
And this is one of the things to that point
about us being arrogant about, you know,
talking about these things,
talking confidently about these things.
One of the, again, I understand that objection
to a certain degree,
because there's verses that talk about,
oh, who are you?
You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
It's like, okay, great.
Yeah, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
That is true to a point.
At the same time, you see King David, right?
When King David, he's starting to lament
and get discouraged when he thinks about
the prosperity of the wicked.
And then his, and the end of,
I can't remember which psalm this is,
but at the end, he draws consolation
from the fact that he remembers their end.
He remembers that you can only deny
sowing and reaping for so long until the chickens come home to roost. And so like, we're just
basically talking about like what we're, what we're describing is, listen, you can deny reality
for so long, but you can't do it forever. It's going to collapse. And again, actions have
consequences. There's consequences to the things that they're doing. And again, this isn't the
first time this has happened. This has happened in numerous countries all over the world. And we can
see, you know, patterns emerging that, that, you know, basically demonstrate this reality and,
where this is going. Let's see. Here's another one from Lynn Alden here. Let's do this one.
Lynn Alden. Here we go. If supply chain disruptions were the main driver of price
inflation rather than the growth of the money supply, then aggregate prices should go back down
to their pre-COVID baseline rather than remain at a permanent higher plateau and above trend.
So this is consumer price index for all consumers. It just continues to go up.
there is no real going down that was in the middle of so that was back in 2023 right or yeah
when you wrote that that was uh first it was putin price hike according to biden that's why the prices
were blowing up not the 40 increase in the money supply it was putin and then it was the covid
covid price you have shock or whatever it was i can't remember the the terminology but there
were several excuses during that little period that they blamed it all on uh and you know greedy
greedy uh grocery store owners that was also so i think those were the top three yeah um
yeah sadly too many people just watch they watch the news and they accept oh okay yeah
yeah it was this and then they turn around oh that's a bummer um and again the thing that just
drives me nuts is just, again, show me your incentives. Look at the incentives. Governments
are incentivized to, and we've seen this, everyone could give because we've had Trump and Biden.
Everyone can pick their examples. They can cherry pick their examples. Politicians lie to your face.
They lie directly to your face over and over and over again to try to protect themselves,
to suit their own interests. And so a lot of this is happening in all these places.
If you tell people something that whoever the president is doesn't want to hear, they'll fire you and they'll find somebody else to parrot the words that they want you to say.
This is the reality everywhere.
I was listening to the podcast that Marty Bent, friend of the program, recorded with David Collum and Rudy Havenstein.
Who is Haverstein?
I can't remember which one it is.
Havenstein, I think.
Havenstein.
Just a glorious, glorious interview.
Well done.
And, uh, and they just talk about, at one point, I can't remember if it was Dave or Rudy, basically asked, when was the last time that a powerful person actually went to jail?
Like really, there really had consequences for their actions.
When was the last time to have him?
And then basically they came out and said that it was like Ken, Ken Lay back when Enron happened.
And, and so this makes me talking about, Hey, yeah, he kind of reached the end of his usefulness.
You know, the whole thing actually blew up.
It was going to be difficult for him to come back.
they were saying he was the he was the largest political donor to george w bush um so again
conceivably had a lot of political cachet uh that that didn't help him but again since then they
were just trying to think like who really who really gets caught who really gets caught and
nobody and that includes i mean you could argue epstein you can argue that he died if you think
he died uh but then you have somebody like they're literally talking about releasing gillaine maxwell
like that didn't they are and he moved i think i saw yeah didn't they today or something yeah it
was just the last couple days they moved her to like a uh you know a swankier prison basically
and are considering like they're considering pardoning her they're considering pardoning
diddy like p p diddy for all that like it is it is absurd like i mean just the the brazenness
of the corruption that we're seeing is bonkers.
It is crazy.
And again, you're going to get to the point.
There's one of these tweets.
Let me see if I can find it.
It basically talks about how,
let me see if I can find it.
It talks about how these things usually end with pitchforks.
I can't think of where it is.
Basically, that was kind of the idea.
Just basically, these things don't end well.
They don't like happily reversed.
It's like, no, these end, a lot of revolutions happen because of currency devaluation.
You can observe this, look at the history and observe it.
Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, the little saying by, I think it was Henry Ford, he famously said that if people knew what was going on in the financial system, they would revolt on the streets the next day.
yeah this is like and that was like 100 that was over 100 years ago yeah 120 like 120 years ago
that this has been going on and yeah but ryan but ryan we're so much smarter now we're so much
better now you know like it's it's what c.s lewis called chronological chronological snobbery
basically that like we're we're smarter we're better now than we were than people were 100
years ago or a few hundred it's it's like nothing changes like it's almost as if there's consequences
is to allowing the government to educate all of our kids because they i in general i would say the
majority of kids you know educated by the government don't question things very much
like you know what i mean they're just they in general they're just trusting that the government
is always looking out for them yeah um yeah yeah here's another example this is from the aforementioned
column, Dave column. I got this from Rudy Havenstein's sub stack. It captures my frustration.
Do not show me a plot that goes back just a few years. Do not show me a plot without inflation
correction. Do not bother to show me some technical jargon. Show me the history. So there's this
image. When I see housing charts that only go back 10 years, it's like, guys, come on. Like,
this is one of these, when you have to be smarter than this, you have to be smarter than the data.
You have to question the data that you're being presented. You have to ask, why am I being shown
this.
Why?
Oh we need we need wisdom Like we need we need to be able to to back out and just think about the technological progress
and innovation that's been made
over the last like 150 years.
And like we're at the most unaffordable,
like housing's the most unaffordable
it's ever been in history in 2025.
So like not like all the innovation,
all the progress has all been wiped out and stolen like it should be cheaper and like that at
any time in history to produce a house for someone like shelter over a person's head so that they can
live and in in fact we've made it the most expensive in history that's absolutely that's
absolutely insane and when you think about what we're capable of doing and then yeah somehow you're
like how like it's obviously it's not just the monetary debasement the monetary debasement is a
huge component of it um broken government government taking bribes like i mean there's
there's uh there's obviously other things that are contributing to it but yeah it's it's kind
of breathtaking when you really when you really sit back and think how in the world are we at this
place now ryan we've talked a lot about food in this episode so maybe some people are home they're
sitting there going, well, hey, you're just talking about food. It's really bad when it
comes to food, but I mean, listen, probably everything else is still great, right? No,
that's not how that works. Here we go. Charlie Bilello, price increases over the last five years.
This is as of today. Price increases over the last five years. CPI on new cars. This is, again,
the official numbers. This is the official numbers on these things, which actually everyone
acknowledges aren't real. CPI on new cars, 21%. Okay. So you're talking 4% a year.
at least. No, what is that? Yeah. Five times four, yeah. So 4%, everyone knows that's not right.
But family health insurance, 24%. So 6% a year there. CPI food at home, 24%.
CPI shelter, almost 28%. CPI food away from home, 30%. Used cars, used cars are up 32.9%.
CPI electricity, almost 38%.
Transportation, 43.4%.
Gasoline, 43.9%.
Home prices, 51.6%.
Gas utilities, 56.1%.
Fuel oil, 57.7%.
Auto insurance, 60.5%.
And a dozen eggs.
Now, again, this is where there's more to do with like in addition to the CPI.
Burn flu.
Yeah, exactly.
I've got more situational stuff, but a dozen eggs is up 150%, 157%.
So again, this is broad.
This is happening everywhere.
This isn't just something you can just isolate and point to.
Oh, this is just because there was a bird flu in the Midwest.
It's just not that.
There's something more systemic going on, and it's not sustainable.
Let's see here.
We've got this one as well from Peter Schmidt.
Go ahead.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's just interesting.
I just noticed that the things that are hard to print are the highest.
Correct.
Yep.
Fuel, gas, home prices.
Yeah.
Although, yeah, obviously the home prices also, there's some external factors going into that too.
But, yeah.
Definitely.
Here we go.
So this is from Peter Schmidt at The 92ers.
Courtesy of a recent Substack post by the aforementioned Rudy Havenstein.
Insights from the Raven of Zurich.
State bankruptcy is a one-time surgical intervention,
while inflation is a permanent poisoning of the very bloodstream of a society.
He was correct.
Again.
So this is like, what is the, is it leukemia?
It's like when you have cancer in your blood?
We're pretty sure.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it is.
So yeah, this is effectively leukemia.
We're going through monetary leukemia.
We're just kind of being killed a little bit at a time.
So these are adult milestones.
So from in 1983, over 80% of people, 80% of 30-year-olds were living on their own.
Now in 2023, we're down to about 63%.
30-year-olds in 1983 who had been married, that we were almost at 80%.
Now we're down somewhere in the 40%.
live with a child that was at 60, a little bit under 60% in 1983, and now is right down near 30%.
And then own their own home. It was about 50% in 1983, and it's closer to 30% in 2023.
So again, you have this basic infantilization of the people. Delayed adolescence is what you're
experiencing. You're seeing more and more. We experienced this when we were in Uruguay. We
were living in Uruguay for a number of years. It was totally common because of these same dynamics
to live with your parents until you're around 40. You know, late, like 30s, 40s, totally normal.
And then, you know, people would get married later. They'd have kids later. You'd have kids
in your late 30s, early 40s. And that was just totally, totally a normal thing because of, you
know, the fact that it's just, it's so expensive to kind of get life underneath of your feet
where you can afford to live it on your own without needing to rely on your parents.
Yeah.
These charts should be a huge signal that there's an enormous amount of sickness in our country.
Those aren't charts of health.
And they're just getting worse.
At the end of the day, it kills optimism.
You look at that and they're like, which one of those looks like it's going to be better next year?
And I was like, no, the answer is none of them.
The same thing with our financial picture.
Yeah, it's really frustrating.
And yet, are our leaders talking about actually solving these issues?
And they're not.
I mean, we had Musk give it a Hail Mary effort through Doge to try to trim just a little bit of the fat off a government.
At least half the country revolted.
And here, I'm going to be fair here.
neither the Republicans or Democrats have an,
politicians have an appetite for any sort of cuts.
Like there's a, I don't know,
any, any cut to any government program
in a politician's own district,
they'll silently go and try to lobby to,
to get to, to stay.
That's the reality.
Like nobody wants, neither side.
And so that's why it, I mean,
effectively it was all for nothing
and the budget is going to be completely blown out.
I think we'll be over $2 trillion deficit for the year.
I think that's what we're on pace for.
Yep.
Just going to be worse.
It will be worse next year.
So I think we're at the terminal stage.
Everyone's basically just giving up on fixing this.
Yeah.
It's because, I mean, realistically, you can't get away from the black hole.
We're at the point where you're being sucked into the black hole.
even i mean we've talked about this before but they were at the point where this year the interest
on the on the debt surpassed the the military budget defense budget it's just like i mean we're
just so out of touch with reality you can't even you can't even imagine uh and again like the the
measures that are being talked about are just too little too late i mean like the the one the one
that was actually interesting was the you know trying to buy bitcoin to pay down the debt uh
yeah again it's it still is possible there's still i mean you had uh besant today scott besant
uh who just what did he get moved to he was the treasury secretary and now they made him something
else uh i don't know i can't it was like they announced it yesterday or something yes or
yesterday or the day before or something i don't know but but yeah i mean he he certainly is aware
of these things he's you know values bitcoin says it's one of the most important things in in the
world today. And so again, he's got his, it seems like he has his eye on it, but you know, whether
or not they're going to actually do it and follow through on that, especially once it gets beyond the
Trump administration. I mean, that's something that is, you know, yet to be seen, but, and then
even if it did, like, even if it did, like, let's, I mean, the crazy thing is like, what if Bitcoin
does go to a million dollars? Do you think for a second that the United States is just going to
sell it in order to pay down their debt? Like, I don't, I don't have, I don't have any expectation
Because at that point, if it becomes like this strategic instrument, then they're just going to hold on to it forever and, you know, I don't know, take out loans again or something crazy.
Like they're just.
The dollar is doomed.
Yeah.
How long it lasts.
I mean, we're going to still use it.
I don't know.
It always takes longer for things to come home to roost.
Yeah.
Um, you know, I think we've heard a lot of people talk like people will, like any country
that has really, really high inflation, they still use that, you know, their country's
native currency, but they won't save in it.
They'll save in anything but the currency.
So I think the U S is probably going to, it's going to be something similar to that.
Um, but yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it is doomed.
And, um, I mean, I, I'll, I think we'll predict, I mean, I'll predict that we do some sort
of transition that involved bitcoin at some point i think it's the it would be in our best interest
um i think more americans own bitcoin now than gold yep uh and that's only increasing so it's
we have all the incentives for the u.s to encourage um bitcoin to be like a national
savings instrument yep you know as we as our dollar collapses in the years and decades ahead
Yeah. So, so we don't totally get wiped out. Yeah. I'm, I'm just like waiting. I'm waiting
to see which state is going to be the first one to buy Bitcoin for their citizens. Like I'm like
waiting for, for that kind of thing. Like who, when is that going to happen? Uh, who's it going
to be? Is it going to be a country first? Because again, this is, there are certain things where
there's a first mover advantage, right? And, and again, the reason this matters, if you're a
Christian, you're trying to understand this, think about it like the logic of repentance. Okay.
so Jesus comes
okay and he sends John the Baptist
as his forerunner
and so John starts going before him
and starts declaring the need for people to repent
hey the kingdom of heaven is at hand
like boom
this reckoning is coming
it's not time for games
stop playing games and prepare
because God is getting ready to send
the Messiah who's going to judge the world
in righteousness
and so you start to see people
who like repent and they start to stop playing games.
They start doing these things.
And it's something very, again,
not to compare the seriousness of these things,
but there's something very similar with Bitcoin.
Like this, fiat currencies are a delusion.
The idea that this same piece of paper,
we can write a hundred on it
and it's worth a hundred times more.
Like it's a total shell game.
It's a total emperor's new clothes thing.
Everybody knows this.
If you think about this for five minutes,
we've just all been gaslit into thinking that it's normal.
It's not, it never will be.
And so the first person who wakes up in first, you know, the first people, this is why the first people who adopted Bitcoin 15 years ago are billionaires now.
People who have adopted it after that continue to be wealthy.
And this is going to click with certain countries.
It's already clicked with El Salvador.
It's starting to click with the United States.
but the first ones to really get and see the hopelessness of the fiat system
and to turn on the money printers in order to buy Bitcoin,
those are going to be the ones who are going to benefit to a disproportionate degree.
And so it's just super interesting to think about who is going to do that.
At what point is it going to happen?
I think we could still be far away from it.
But again, if you told me that there's, you know, if you told me that some Middle Eastern country, if you told me that, you know, there's, again, the difficulty with something like Russia or China is they don't like Bitcoin because it's outside of their control.
And then they also extremely, extraordinarily value things like gold and, you know, well, basically gold because they can still, they can mine it, they can find it, they can purchase it, they value it.
But at some point in the near future, you're going to have countries who recognize, wait a second, we recognize that this is super valuable.
And you're telling me that we can take this stranded energy that we have.
We have all this excess energy that is just literally being wasted.
And we can mine Bitcoin with this or we can just utilize our printers in order to buy this scarce asset that they'll run out of some for sale.
and basically the price of it will go through the roof.
People will wake up to that calculus.
Individuals are already doing it.
Businesses are already doing it.
But it really is going to get wild once nations start getting to that point.
Yeah.
I wonder if the center is muted.
Am I?
Can you hear me?
Well, we're right here at the audience, anyhow.
So, Ryan, I'll greet everyone for Ryan.
And thank you guys for tuning into another episode of To the Unknown Pod, episode 25 in the books.
We look forward to seeing you later this week on Thursday for another episode.
So we are grateful for you guys.
Again, what do we do about these things?
You go buy Bitcoin.
That's what we do with these things.
What do we do?
What do we do about a currency that is being printed ad absurdum?
You go and take money and buy something that can't be printed.
So go buy Bitcoin.
Go understand Bitcoin more.
Share these links, videos.
with people in your lives in as non-annoying of a way as possible.
And we'll see you on the next episode of To The Unknown Pod.