(00:41:15) Podcast Clip of The National Debt Conspiracy

00:00:00
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
00:00:29
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. And friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists, We're not too high faluting to admit it tonight. We are in debt, right like we all, oh someone a little bit.
00:00:54
Speaker 4: Of money, a debt of gratitude at the very least to you conspiracy realists. We love and owe our lives.
00:01:01
Speaker 2: Too, Yes, and to our government to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars.
00:01:08
Speaker 4: You guys heard of this talk of people saying, you know what, maybe I'm just not going to pay taxes this year.
00:01:12
Speaker 2: I'm just not going to do it.
00:01:14
Speaker 3: I hear that every year from all all imaginable demographics.
00:01:19
Speaker 4: Actually I saw it as a headline and it just kind of seemed like a little bit of like a like, really, that's okay, who's saying this? And it's not just like how it you know, typically it is also like and but also before you do that, please consider that it's illegal.
00:01:33
Speaker 2: Or also social security, or that you are.
00:01:36
Speaker 3: Not a billionaire nor a financial stakeholder in the grand scheme of things. Now, as we know, some of us in the crowd tonight are are technically billionaire, so thanks for tuning in. Some of us are broken. Most of us, most people in the show, in the crowd tonight are mainly getting by. And that's because debt is a reality. Debt has his dorically preceded war. Ancient and modern nations alike, all hinge on this concept of help me out here, Guys, who owes whom?
00:02:12
Speaker 4: Or whom owes who? Who's on first? Is the question that I have.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: They got to get that style guide out.
00:02:20
Speaker 3: Yeah that's true.
00:02:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think we're on the same page, though. Yeah, somebody owes somebody something most of the time.
00:02:27
Speaker 3: Right, And while we're breaking out ev and Strunk, that's a shout out for maybe twelve people. If you live, that's a shout out for ten people. Now, if you live in the United States who've heard the term national debt right, Like, in general, it means there's a discrepancy between the income of a nation state and its current expenditures, not to be confused with a deficit, which we'll get into. But could you guys share with us the first time you remember in your life hearing the term national debt in mainstream media.
00:03:09
Speaker 4: I guess in my mind I have always sort of construed it with the deficit. And we're gonna obviously get into the distinction between those two things today. But you know, probably in the late nineties, when I maybe started paying a little more attention to the news.
00:03:26
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, George H. W. Bush, when I remember hearing about that, and when SNL was really skewing him pretty hard, I didn't really understand some of the references. So I remember asking my dad about it, and then him showing me some of the stuff and actually putting the news on for me a couple of times. How are we talking?
00:03:44
Speaker 4: Read my lips, Read my lips.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: No new taxis that's the era? Yes?
00:03:48
Speaker 3: Yeah? Right?
00:03:49
Speaker 4: And he got punks for that.
00:03:50
Speaker 3: Too, he did because he went back on his campaign promise. But also I don't do this often, but I'll share a brief anecdote my biological father, this time around a bit of a Colonel Kurtz character, and I remember, similar to you guys in that era. I asked the old colonel, Hey, do you think it's possible that I'll ever be a millionaire? And the guy looked at me and he had a cigar, which was weird, and he said, he said, you know what, a little sort of a we could all be millionaires tomorrow. You ever heard about inflation? And then he just kept driving and he switched the radio to a ballgame.
00:04:34
Speaker 2: Man, your dad is so baller.
00:04:37
Speaker 4: Big guess, I guess adjusted for inflation, some folks might have been millionaires at one point or another. And does it count as being a millionaire if throughout the course of your life you've earned exactly one million dollars thresholds?
00:04:53
Speaker 3: No, excellent question, because this is what we're this is what we're exploring. For a while back, I can't remember which episode it was, we started saying national debt. Come on, everybody throws those two words around together, But what exactly is it? Why is it such a big deal? And we started looking into it, and we found that all opinions historically are sharply divided. Some people will tell you the system is rigged, and others will go further it will argue there is not only a conspiracy afoot, but disaster ahead. I don't know. Maybe that's our gold open adjusted for inflation.
00:05:34
Speaker 4: Indeed, let's take a quick break and we'll jump into all the nuts and bolts of national debt.
00:05:45
Speaker 3: Here are the facts, all right, what is debt? What is it?
00:05:54
Speaker 2: You take on spending that you don't currently have. Debt just means you owe some buddy something for using it whatever it is, one hundred percent.
00:06:05
Speaker 4: But I also, you know, I remember growing up this idea of good debt. You want to have a little debt, carry a little bit, It helps build your credit. It's all paying into the system. You know that we all participate in the idea of you know, building that financial reputation.
00:06:21
Speaker 3: I guess you can call it.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: I agree, But that's that's so that other institutions will be more inclined to let you borrow more money so that you can be further in debt.
00:06:30
Speaker 3: Oh, now we're talking leverage. Yeah, debt is This might feel like an obvious question, but it is an important origin story. Debt is just an obligation, as we're saying, or a liability to pay someone or something, some entity, or to render goods and services wholly or partially at some point in time.
00:06:57
Speaker 4: Everybody, we pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.
00:07:00
Speaker 3: Nailed it, bro. Everybody understands the basic concept, even if everyone doesn't agree on who owes whom or whom owes who or the specifics involved. We're having a little wordplay there. But there are different kind of debts, right, different definitions or striations, right, different little rings on the dendo chronology of debt as a concept.
00:07:28
Speaker 4: Does American legal tender still have that little note about good for all debts public and private?
00:07:35
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it's our favorite coupon, so yeah it should. Let's pull out our cash, guys.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: Let's see this note is legal tender for all debts public and private.
00:07:48
Speaker 3: Tiring you go ty, I'd love to do some counterfeit, you know, DPRK supernotes that just say this is legal tender for some debts public of branding.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: This is for marketable and non marketable securities. However, intragovernmental debt will not do.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: Oh, we're not even going to get to it's outside of the scope of this, But we're not even going to get to the biggest denominations of US paper currency that are not allowed to be traded by you, the average person. I mean, look, if you are listening tonight as an individual, you may have run into a situation where you owe money on a mortgage and you have to pay X amount of dollars every every month properly over a certain period of time. Thirty fifty years, perhaps fifty is the new pitch, and that's going to that's a very terrible idea. Check out our Rent to Own episode. You might have a credit card which usually is going to have an egregious interest rate, you serious interest rate, and if you were an individual, well you can get in some serious hot water. You can get jammed up if you fall behind or you default on those payments, if you go bankrupt, it's bad for you.
00:09:11
Speaker 4: Well yeah, but even like going defaulting on a debt like that will be a mark on your credit that can take a long time to remedy. Getting a collection taken out against you, for example, those are things that take take a good bit of work to get to drop off of your credit report. Yeah, we're not even talking. I would even gotten into the whole math and magic to quote our cea of credit reports, Friends and neighbors.
00:09:39
Speaker 3: Stay tuned for upcoming our upcoming episode on the credit concept and the conspiracies involved.
00:09:49
Speaker 2: You know, well that's maybe one of the cruxes of this entire episode, that concept of math and magic. And once you go up the ladder of monies and wealth like far enough, then you realize, oh, this is a big old game, so we can play.
00:10:06
Speaker 4: At a certain level. It's so ephemeral.
00:10:08
Speaker 2: Right, well, well there are advanced tactics, and then there are master tactics, and you know, leavers, you can pull institutions. There all these things that you can do once you have enough of the money stuff.
00:10:21
Speaker 3: Yeah. Agree, The rules change as you higher up on the socioeconomic pyramid. So a billionaire owing money is way different from the average person sweat in next month's light build. High net worth individuals are going to tend to have access to all sorts of financial instruments and tactics the ordinary person simply cannot afford or simply is not aware of. You can also leverage existing capital or assets, so your debt becomes as we're saying, a much more fluid, abstract concept at that time. Plus, if you can afford a legal team, you can jam up. You can jam up creditors forever, you know what I mean, you can bury them under paperwork. But gets even weirder when we move past billionaires human individuals and talked about financial institutions or large corporations or for our purposes tonight, Nation States. I think we could agree, guys, that history has proven time and time again the rules around debt get very muddy when politics and global economy get involved. Like when the people who decide how debt is defined are in charge of deciding how they pay that debt, they often end up bending the rules for themselves, but with consequences for the public at large.
00:11:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it gets super weird when you realize that a portion of the debt that let's say the United States owes it actually owes itself.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:12:08
Speaker 2: So then you just your mind starts to boggle and go, well, then who's in charge of that and who says what's real and what's not and how much is owed? And how does it matter that it gets paid back?
00:12:20
Speaker 4: If you owe yourself, it starts to you know that whole robbing Peter to pay Paul turn a phrase starts to become real appropriate.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: But Peter, But Peter and Paul are the same person exactly.
00:12:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just two different passports. But check the biometrics. In the United States, debt does matter, right. The vast majority of people have to go into debt at one point or another. That is how the system is constructed. Well, you've got student loans. Actually, it just paid mine off.
00:12:55
Speaker 4: So that's such a good feeling.
00:12:57
Speaker 3: It's so weird man housing mortgage, right, that's a big one. Vehicles, medical expenses. One of the top drivers of bankruptcy in the States. Yeah, and in other country is the concept of medical debt would seem absurd because it is inherently absurd, right, and your earlier point, our credit system is built to require you to get in some sort of debt to establish your stakes in the game. So please stay tuned for a credit score episode. But if we scope out, if we look at the world at large, modern and ancient, we'll see that it literally it runs on the concept of debt. Every country has some sort of national debt, total amount of money that a government owes to its creditors. Here in the US, that's primarily going to be the public. It results from borrowing to cover your deficit, which is different when you're the money you're spending exceeds the money you receive. And usually in most modern democracies, your government's primary means of income is taxation.
00:14:14
Speaker 2: So in this case we're talking about debt to GDP ratios. That's exciting stuff.
00:14:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the US, if you look at the latest reports and estimates from November of twenty twenty five, we're recording this on November seventeenth, Uncle Sam owes a collection of people, mainly the US public and some to itself. It owes thirty eight trillion US dollars.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: That's insane. Two percentage of that I think twelve percent, maybe it's more at this point zonned by foreign nations individuals.
00:14:54
Speaker 3: So it's the individual part is worrisome. The foreign government part is actually xenophon. Yeah, that's that's an advantage of the system. And to go back to the original question there, the annual budget deficit we are spending more than we make, is different from the national debt. The national debt becomes a result of the.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Deficit growing and growing and growing.
00:15:25
Speaker 4: So that handful of billion bucks that we just gave to was it Argentina? Oh yeah, yeah, that's a loan and that goes on the ledger.
00:15:34
Speaker 3: Hmmm, we'll get to some crypto in a second. Yeah, it's a it's a books we're talking as well, right, yeah, yeah, well it's a favor. Also, if you own the printing press, you decide what the books will publish, you know what I mean. That's the situation we're in. Who watches the watchmen?
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Well, just to stay in deficit or second at least according to who is this reporting it? This is Investipedia, who knows, but they have numbers from a congressional committee who is looking at spending from April twenty twenty five, and they mentioned that the US debt to GDP ratio earlier this year was one hundred and eighteen point eight percent, which means we are overspending what the entirety of the US makes by eighteen point eight percent.
00:16:28
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we have to note here, that's a great segue to this. We have to note here the US national debt, any nation states overall debt, can be leveraged, politicized, weaponized, indeed, for all sorts of things. So when one political party is in charge, the other is going to inevitably criticize the amount of money owed. It does.
00:16:53
Speaker 4: Just look it up. It's been since the late nineties, early two thousands since we've last had a surplus.
00:17:01
Speaker 2: Yeah Clinton.
00:17:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you if you are in power and you want to cut a certain program or attack a certain demographic, all you got to do is shout about fiscal security and deficits and debt. If you want to throw a bunch of money into a big project, a war, then you as the government, since you make the rules, you can loosen those rules or throw them out entirely until the consequences catch up with you. It reminds me of like if we all went to a dim Sum restaurant. You guys like dim Sum, love it? Yeah, it's okay to say no, that's what we're up board.
00:17:43
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't love all dim Sum, I don't love all the offerings, but either there, you know, I love a dumpling of anything stripe.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:17:51
Speaker 3: Thinking of the model of a dim Sum restaurant, right, every you've got a big table of people, always go in a group, right, and you're ordering things that add up and everybody's got different interests, they got different dumplings they like, and eventually coming around on different carts. Right, eventually the bill comes due. But what if we are the owners of the dim sum restaurant. While we're eating at the dim sum restaurant, it becomes easier for us to say, ah, just more dumplets. We'll catch up later.
00:18:22
Speaker 2: And in this case, it's kind of choosing which parts you want to yell about when we're talking about the debt. Right in this scenario, I didn't order the chicken feet. Yeah, well it's I was thinking about this this morning, guys, And I don't know if you've noticed this, but it feels as though, at least from the political from the politicalization of debt that I've seen in the news, you've got people clamoring that it's entitlements, so the things that we're going to talk about here, you know, like medicare, medicaid and social security, versus people who think the big problem is military spending, which is part of discretionary spending. But there's there doesn't seem to be a lot of people who are going, wow, yeah, we are actually spending a lot of money in both of these sectors. And there needs to be like some braining in of all of this stuff. It seems like it is the thing you're talking about. Ben. You pick and choose what's the bad part of debt, and that's the one we're gonna hammer.
00:19:16
Speaker 4: Well, that's the politicization of it too. I mean, you do that to suit your policy goals.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: Right, yes, but there's no policy person at least that I could find out there that is just saying all of this stuff is getting out of hand.
00:19:30
Speaker 3: There are a couple and everybody else is super duper mad at them. No, nobody wants to Nobody wants to stand up at the dim sum restaurant and say, I think we've had enough dumplings. That's why I think the analogy holds. Nobody wants to be the fun police, and sometimes you need them. I mean, that's why, going back to the earlier point, that's why economists the the adherence of the dismal science. That's why they tend to focus less on absolute debt and more on ratios like the Genie indets or a country's debt to gross domestic product ratios. So the idea here is that all right, guys, country grows right and so as a country grows, you got more people paying taxes, more businesses paying taxes, so the economy rolls along and the government makes more money off of these taxes, and then it can start paying down its debt. That's they're paying interest. That's the idea that is claimed in textbooks. And just so you know, as we'll see, economists fight about this stuff all the time. But I think even without getting into the weeds, this shows us right that there is a lot of bizarre stuff hidden. And those two little words national and debt, well we always.
00:21:02
Speaker 4: Hear to talk about what would happen if China called the debt in you know, how that could potentially tank the dollar. And maybe I'm speaking in too broad terms there, but that's just one that comes to minds.
00:21:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you there, man, I mean shout out to the petro dollar as well. We got to get into this. With everything we just said in mind, we are not economic experts. I would argue there are actually very few with this in mind. It's no surprise that people think the system is broken or maybe even purposely rigged. So what's the truth of the matter. Are there conspiracies at play? Let's say we take a break for a word from our sponsor, which might be a financial company, and then tive in, Oh my gosh, is it going to be a financial company?
00:21:54
Speaker 4: I hope. So here's where it gets crazy.
00:22:03
Speaker 3: Yes, there are serious problems with the concept of national debt, at least the way it's handled in the United States. And we got to say there are more than a few historical factors of play here.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: Well, I guess you know, the US when it began, it borrowed some money to fight ye old revolution to become a country, right, but that was only to the tune of several million dollars. Yeah, and we need to fill up our war chest. Well, yeah, and those debts were paid down pretty quickly, and then a lot of years happened, and then there was this World War One thing, and you know, some money's changed hands of debts, got a crew. Then they paid back down a little bit. But then once we got to World War Two, that's post you know, the Great Depression and everything. That's post what is an eighteen seventy three panic with the railroad system. But around World War two is when debts in this country began to accrew like crazy.
00:23:01
Speaker 3: Because who's going to stop you, you know, and.
00:23:04
Speaker 2: I for helping everybody out in World War Two.
00:23:08
Speaker 3: And I appreciate the new about the providence of money in the United States. Hamilton the musical spends a little time alluding to this post World War Two, when the Allies won and it was kind of a pyrrhic victory for most of the world because stuff was wrecked left and right. Because of its geographical advantage, the US enjoyed a catbird seat in global finance. So now fast forward twenty twenty five, well over half a century, the US dollar has been a de facto global reserve currency. And also Nixon played a role in making the petro dollar, which is a big part of this. So that means that even if you are a rival country and you hate United States, you're gonna have a boffin in the back room that says, hey, let's put some investments into US dollars. It's a safe haven because the United States since World War Two has more or less kept its currency stable.
00:24:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, somehow, even after ending the gold standard in nineteen thirty three, which is very odd, right, and then linking it to oil essentially, not really, not officially.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: Maybe well shout out to Nixon again. I mean second, the second point here that we have to get to is that might makes right. The US currently has the largest debt in the world, but it also has the world's most dangerous military. So if push comes to shove and everybody stops acting nice and someone says, hey, we got to pay the bill at this dim sum restaurant, can everyone else really make Uncle Sam follow the rules?
00:25:03
Speaker 2: I know, right? Well, yeah, I was reading Jazir about how the US debt total is equal to the value of the entire value of the economies of China plus Japan, plus India, plus Germany and plus the UK. All of that, all of those economies equal the amount of money of the usos. That's crazy.
00:25:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was thinking back in two thousand and two, some of our fellow conspiracy realists, we may remember, that's during the Houseyon days of one of the Bush presidencies. Vice President Dick Cheney RIP is sitting down with the Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neil, and they're talking turkey about a second round of tax cuts, because there was another round of tax cuts preceding this in two thousand and one. Buddy, the Treasury sect he is saying, look, Penis, Dick Richard, whatever, We're already running one hundred and fifty eight billion dollar deficit. Our nation could be careading toward a financial crisis. And then Chaney allegedly dismissed this and he said, simply, deficits don't matter. Really, I mean, we make the rules, we run the bank, so do we have to follow the bank's rules. The US can disregard financial norms, it can ignore the rules, it can bend them. I mean the US, this country has, can and will force other countries into debt. I'd like to give a shout out to Confessions of an Economic hit Man. Remember that book.
00:26:52
Speaker 4: I've heard the name, but I have not read it.
00:26:54
Speaker 3: If you don't want to start kinetic war, you can pull some levers. Right. If you're a big enough fish in the sea, and you can drive another country into hyperinflation, you can wreck its economy, you can push it to a terrible place. Venezuela is one example. Currently post World War One. Germany is another example.
00:27:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, USS are right, But in Afghanistan, we certainly done that.
00:27:27
Speaker 3: There are any news about Afghanistan right now?
00:27:29
Speaker 2: Actually, what's the news? Yeah?
00:27:32
Speaker 3: Right now? The economy of Afghanistan is in some serious trouble. Nine to ten families are forced to skip meals or sell off their stuff or take on debt to survive because of the economy is spirally right on.
00:27:50
Speaker 2: We're close behind, right. Don't you guys think when the AI bubble bursts here in about six months? I mean really, you think back like when the major things that are being invested in in a country collapse, like with the railroads back in eighteen seventy three, or I don't know, the stock market and how it collapsed after everybody bought in and it was only like nine years, eight or nine years after the stock market was a thing, it collapsed and everybody was losing money. Eight billion dollars just disappeared. And now we're all deciding that this AI thing is the thing, and we're all invested, just like in the dot com bubble. I don't know.
00:28:32
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is we should all get out of the stock market entirely, Matt.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: No, I'm just saying you can pressure. What what we're talking about here is like pressuring a country to over exert themselves when it comes to spending on things, and in this case, we're talking about private money. And then you know the in this case, the United States getting government dollars to invest in this AI infrastructure thing, whatever it is and whatever it becomes, and if it all just collapses and falls apart, then the US government and the public is also on the hook. Yeah.
00:29:08
Speaker 3: True. The issue is the envelope can only be pushed so far. Historically, the bill always comes due. That is why so many people continually worry that if a public lets a debt for a nation get too high, we will reach a crisis moment with dire consequences. There are tons of historical anecdotes about this stagflation, recession, depression, collapse. Let's go to the Brookings Institution. They sum it up pretty well.
00:29:44
Speaker 4: Yes, the Brookings Institution points out the national debt can lead to higher interest rates, which increases borrowing costs for individuals and businesses, and it may crowd out private investment. Additionally, persistent debt growth can burden future generation with financial obligations, potentially leading to a fiscal crisis if not addressed.
00:30:05
Speaker 3: Ooh, I'm shivering. I'm thinking of the Philip Larkin pull up. You know, man hands misery odd to man. Oh, and then I.
00:30:14
Speaker 4: Mean, we just had a FED adjustment, right, we did, And some of the news around that had to do with this really only benefits people that are that have wealth now and that it could potentially down the line be negative for younger people. And this idea of accruing wealth and generational wealth is becoming less and less possible.
00:30:37
Speaker 3: Things are more expensive while your dollars are losing value. It's a pretty distressing time to be a young human in the United States.
00:30:46
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, especially because one of the big parts of this whole credit thing is that countries have credit too, like a credit score, a credit rating. Right, And we talked a long time ago. I think it was twenty eleven when the US first got downgraded by one of the big institutions. It was like Moody's maybe else, I think that's Fitch back in twenty eleven. Then Standard of Poorers downgraded US in twenty twenty three, then Moody's I think last year downgraded US, and then this year in May, Moody's downgraded the United States credit rating from triple A to double A. One.
00:31:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, which sounds so up to at academic but does have real world consequences. Also, I love the name standard and poor. I think it's just very brutally written. There's never a good, there's never a great. There's standard and poor. Reminds me of an old German girlfriend of mine who once said I was severely adequate.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: Ay, well, well that's the person. That's kind of how it is for everybody, except for whoever it is that is lending money OH to you to recruit to accrue the in.
00:32:00
Speaker 3: Oh at various times. History is again littered with so many precedents here, Different governments and empires since evenings of old have messed with the money a little too much. In some cases they have hoarded it right, like back when money was tied to a tangible asset, or in other cases, especially in the world of fiat currency, they just said, forget it, print more money. What could go wrong? Everything? And right now. The reason we're doing this episode is because a lot of people, very smart observers, in some cases very ideologically driven experts. They're arguing the current US government is going down the same terrifying all too well paved path. Could a collapse be on the way? How much debt can Uncle Sam get before somewhat at the dim sum restaurant runs the credit card or ask for payment.
00:32:58
Speaker 2: In cash, gonna say the credit card was declined.
00:33:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. And then Uncle Sam, you know, if history proves anything, Uncle Sam will say, well, I have a tank outside. Yeah, I've got several guns.
00:33:14
Speaker 2: Wait, and I've got these pieces of paper with with pyramids on them.
00:33:19
Speaker 3: They have my watch, a nice watch. Here's my here's my secret little card to a fancy place on a boat. Sorry, guys, I just found my secret card from earlier.
00:33:30
Speaker 4: Remember that, do you accept loose diamonds?
00:33:35
Speaker 3: Love a loose diamonds reference? Right? So okay in the present day, gotta love a loose diamond's reference.
00:33:42
Speaker 4: It's so shady. Why he's just rolling around in there, just lose.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: You have a bag of loose diamonds anyways, the sound of always in a little velvet, black velvet bagged. Yeah, you know, I like give.
00:33:54
Speaker 2: Me the tingle.
00:33:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are nice shout out to a SMR. Okay, So I would say most people in the United States, regardless of demographic, if you're an adult, you're properly familiar with the controversy surrounding some recent legislation. One big beautiful bill that's the street name. It lays out the core financial principles and goals of the second Trump administration, the current motus, and the tax cuts are a big part of this. So the tax cuts involved, experts agree, may add another three trillion dollars to the US.
00:34:34
Speaker 4: Debt, but that's okay because the tax cuts are for the super rich, and that wealth will just trickle down to the rest of us and make the economy better overall. So it's worth it. Is this not kind of Reaganomics.
00:34:48
Speaker 3: Horse and sparrow. Yeah, they rebranded. It is trickled down. But the original idea was you feed the horse, the horse poops, and now the sparrow has something to eat. We are the sparrow eating all the Yeah, you are the sparrow. And so the modern GOP to your point, Nol in particular has long been a champion of tax cuts, and the argument is you cut taxes on individuals and businesses, that means you encourage entrepreneurship, you give businesses a chance to grow, you throw high octane fiscal fuel into the gas tank of the economy. We're not saying this is correct. This is an argument people make historically and at this level of finance. Those theories pretty much become articles of faith. You know, guys, I was thinking about this really like studying a lot of old school economics and their later ideological descendants. Often at this level, economists can seem a lot less like academics or scientists and a lot more like priests from differing denominations. You know what I mean. It's it's a religious argument at some point.
00:36:03
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, no, you're right, You're absolutely right. I can see the logic there, freeing up money so that it could be invested by somebody who wants to start a new business, right, I get that. That is. I think it's a bit pie in the sky because generally, at least the philosophies in the of the religion thing that we're discussing here, or that you would never use your own money to invest in a business, you would borrow money to begin a new entrepreneurial pursuit. Right. So, ultimately, if you are saving people money via their taxes, if it's an individual, you're probably not actually creating more jobs or more businesses by saving an individual taxes. You're doing at the savings, yes, because the money is used to stimulate the economy. In that way to create more businesses actually come from a lending institution when someone decides to do that thing.
00:37:04
Speaker 4: Right, let's see, that's more or less my understanding as well.
00:37:08
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, and that's where we see the badger in the bag here, right, Something that sounds good might just be window dressing. This is why economists argue beat me here, Dylan, please, all the time. So much of their discourse is argumentative, but we do see precedent historically.
00:37:31
Speaker 4: Well, an economic policy is its own kind of philosophy too, right, there's a philosophical, almost religious quality to it, like you were saying, Ben, So it's not like that argument implies that there really is no cut and dry right answer, and that there's all these factions and then you have to argue then or wonder about the motivations, whether it's political or whether it's actually the best interest of the individual the consumer. And the answer is nine almost always know.
00:38:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:38:01
Speaker 3: That's a great point that takes us back to if we're really breaking it down, then the argument a lot of people are ultimately making is what is best for me? And how can I sell it to everybody else? How can I convince everyone that what is actually good for me primarily is somehow also good for you. That is, that's part of the great game. But it doesn't go right. There's so many disasters, Latin American debt crisis throughout the nineteen eighties, which some of us may remember, the Greek government debt crisis, the intervention multiple times of things like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Sometimes they go in and they're saying, hey, we're gonna stabilize the affected economy, or more realistically, we're going to make them vassal states in practice resource or six traction. It's just nasty. It's so weird. But now, like historically the US could do tons of tax cuts right, the bill would always come to things often went wrong. But if we look at the new tax cut initiative, we'll see things are different. Foreign investors are already kind of shook. The US has upended the global trade system, their trade wars, their tariffs or are their tariffs? Or what day is it? Or how long is two weeks? People like certitude and investors don't have that. Usually, Like look no further than the Middle East or the African sphere. When there's a big conflict, a lot of high fluting institutions, and indeed other nation states, they'll pump up the US dollar, they'll invest in it because they feel like it is a what we call a safe haven. They feel like your money will retain value if it's in US dollars versus you know, rubles or what have you. But now people aren't so on board with Uncle Sam. They don't like the coupons as much as they did. And for any of these plans to work, the dollar has to be the best coupon ever.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not. Whoops, I'm just looking at the times that the debt ceiling has been raised and just how much it's ballooned since twenty fifteen. Guys, it's insane. It's crazy how much it ballooned during the whole COVID thing. Oh yeah, it went from twenty two point seven trillion dollars to in twenty twenty one, twenty eight point four trillion dollars. So so, like, just think about that change in the debt because there was so much money being spent. Well, then you go back to the housing recession and the collapse of that market and all that stuff. Those bailouts were to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars where the government just printed money and gave it to these banking institutions. Like, that's insane that that can be an action taken and then everybody still is okay when it comes to like the dollar still is worth as much as it was worth, or maybe a little bit less. You're talking about a fraction of a fraction. It's insane that that can happen and that we can all just continue to function and you know, pour billions and billions of dollars into all these different places and bail out other countries and then just act like everything's the same.
00:41:51
Speaker 4: I mean, if you know, if we had all reached our credit limits on our various credit cards and couldn't afford to pay our minimums anymore, they're not going to give us any more credit.
00:42:00
Speaker 2: We could just hold a meeting and then say well, hey, our debt means it is higher now, right.
00:42:08
Speaker 4: War Yeah, I mean, I guess the analogy is that you can always, as an individual, request a credit line increase, but you're only going to get granted that if you're in good standing, you know, and you pay your bills, and you're certainly not if you're like in default. You know they're not going to give you extend more. But it just seems like the same rules that apply to human beings just don't apply to these larger systems.
00:42:32
Speaker 2: Because do you have an exact numerical value for the amount of interest that the US pays every year on the these debts. It was something like thirty three and eighty billion dollars or in that ballpark that we pay every year. And then so just imagine if you only ever paid the interest on your credit card, right exactly right.
00:42:55
Speaker 3: Like if the principle continues to accrue.
00:42:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's almost a trill nine hundred and seventy billion in interest on the national debt and fiscally year twenty twenty five.
00:43:05
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait'll say that again.
00:43:07
Speaker 4: Nine hundred and seventy billion in interest on the national debt in fiscal year twenty twenty five. Last year it was eight hundred and eighty billion.
00:43:17
Speaker 3: Holy lord, okay, and that's US dollars. That's not ben Bucks, Nol Nichols, or map money. I do want to I do propose an exercise here, folks, just to get a scale of this. As we pause for a word from our sponsor, start counting to one trillion, and please do let us know when you get there, let us know how long it took. Shout out to our favorite subreddit they did the math.
00:43:46
Speaker 2: Oh heck. Yeah. Well, and also keep in mind as you're doing that, that the national debt is growing this year by sixty eighty four hundred and twelve dollars and thirty four cents per second that you are counting. So just imagine that in your mind.
00:44:03
Speaker 3: And try to count to a trillion.
00:44:10
Speaker 5: Or back.
00:44:10
Speaker 4: Guys, apparently it would take like the rest of your life.
00:44:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's beyond. Everybody starts drinking water, take some supplements, do some calistenics. This question is Look, this is a matter of reframing our axioms. So the question has never really been, at least in the United States, how do we eliminate debt and never ever owe anything again? How do we stay in the black ink? The US government, as we alluded to previously, has flirted with budget surpluses in the past, but someone always wants more money for some thing, and so when you have well over three hundred and twenty million people in the conversation, that extra money disappears virtually overnight. So instead the usual question becomes, you know, how far can we push the envelope how much debt piles up before triggers a financial crisis. So the question is are these recent concerns valid or is this, as we were saying, politicization or is it alarmism, fear mongering. I don't know, man. It's a lot of money though. Yeah, and just that number, by the way, i'd been goofball.
00:45:28
Speaker 4: It would take you thirty thousand plus years to count to a trillion, So many, many, many lifetimes.
00:45:33
Speaker 3: But keep going. I believe in you.
00:45:37
Speaker 2: Something really weird. I just noticed here, guys, I'm looking at more of the Investipedia stuff, and they've got a really cool thing you can find if you want to look it up. It is US national debt by year, and in this I've just never seen this part of it before. After World War Two, the US was in debt to the tune of twohundred and fifty nine billion, two hundred and sixty nine billion over of course of two years there in ninety forty five nineteen forty six. Then the Cold War began officially, at least according to them. We know the Cold War was just a thing. That was flowing through World War Two, but nineteen forty seven, so two hundred and fifty eight billion. But the thing that happened in forty eight and forty nine is that there was a recession in the United States, and the US national debt in nineteen forty seven, two hundred and fifty eight billion jumps down to two hundred and fifty two billion in nineteen forty eight, then only rises to two hundred and fifty three billion in nineteen forty nine. Those two years forty and forty nine, the US is in a recession. I didn't Maybe somebody can call in or write in and explain to us, how does the debt level off when the US is experiencing a recession, which theoretically would constitute less money being generated. Right, there's there's problems with the money, But then somehow the national debt only barely inches forward.
00:47:05
Speaker 3: Fewer public services, fewer public expenditures.
00:47:09
Speaker 2: But wouldn't that mean there would be way more in that time.
00:47:12
Speaker 3: Period crisis situation. Though they're staunching the wound. So I don't understand price is still going up a little bit, or the debt's still going up a little bit. But people are a lot less likely to have crazy boondoggle quagmire funding ideas they get approved.
00:47:30
Speaker 2: Got it, So the government itself can't move forward with a ton of huge, crazy spending no matter what the public is going.
00:47:37
Speaker 3: Through, unless they get a charismatic guy in a back room who is like, finger guns, deficits don't matter, print more money the poor. Thanks for the beep dilling.
00:47:50
Speaker 2: And then the crazy part. We're talking about how war ends up stimulating the economy. Nineteen fifty what's that, guys? What happens in nineteen fifty Korean Dad stuff? Yeah, Korean war and the debt starts going way back up. Hey, but the economy is boosted, so.
00:48:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get under the hood. First off, shout out to ridiculous history. Two hundred and forty eight billion in nineteen forty six is about four point twelve trillion today, So it's still a lot of money, even if to forty eight billion for some reason, sounds like a low amount of money to you, a fellow conspiracy realists. We are and have always been talking about almost unreal amounts of currency or value. If we look at the US national debt today, we got to differentiate between like total debt and public debt. Public debt is about eighty percent of Uncle Sam's tally marks. The public debt is owed to individuals, you know, shout out to anybody buying treasury bomb companies, some foreign governments fewer than you think, and investors. The other twenty percent is really interesting. It's inter governmental stuff. It is your government owing itself through various agencies and the Federal Reserve. So I'd love to hear you guys think about this. I was trying to come up with a microcosmic analogy. Imagine that you're in your house and someone is telling you, hey, your kitchen owes your living room a million dollars, and you're like, wait, this is all my house though, right, so I can just kind of ignore that for this week. It's not like somebody else from across the cul de sac is going to ride in on a tank, yell and pay back the living room, free the kitchen from its debt or whatever.
00:49:53
Speaker 2: That's funny. Yeah, that would be a weird situation. So that's what's happening. Our government. It's just borrowing money from itself to pay for things. But if it's wait, but it's only twenty percent of the debt.
00:50:09
Speaker 3: Only twenty percent that we know of, and this is complicated by you know, black bag projects. You might lose a palette of a billion dollars or so in the wrong neighborhood of the Middle East. Governments can feasibly roll over debt indefinitely and do not technically have to repay it, unlike a personal credit card.
00:50:31
Speaker 2: So if you're sure that money is just printed so.
00:50:34
Speaker 3: Yet well generate, just generated is a better word. Yeah, I love it because if the US issues debt in its own currency, it doesn't have to default on that debt unless it chooses to, which is so ridiculous.
00:50:53
Speaker 2: That's insane. Right now, intragovernmental debt as of November twelfth, twenty twenty five, is seven trillion, four hundred and ninety two billion.
00:51:03
Speaker 3: Free the living room or whatever.
00:51:06
Speaker 5: You know what.
00:51:07
Speaker 3: No one No one gives it, thank you dolling. No one's gonna really do anything historically, you know, as long as the government can, like we're saying, pay it's it's interest rate and not does it have to touch the principle the word tickety boo, you know, if the economy keeps growing. Yeah, if the economy keeps growing, We're tickety ya. If the economy keeps growing, then as long as it maintains a rate of growth that is higher than the interest rate, are the money you murkiley, Oh, then the government's effective interest rate cost becomes negative. If a dollar becomes more powerful, more valuable, and ultimately you're saving money and you just kick the can down the road into the future forever. Right. I did my two terms. I don't care. Good luck next generations. Shout out to gen Z by the way, jeez.
00:52:14
Speaker 2: It's nuts that the debt is currently projected to be like we're gonna hit another I think thirty nine trillion another milestone like early next year. Oh yeah, and then it's not before exactly, and depending on what happens, we're gonna hit forty definitely next year. I don't think we've hit the gross national debt per household yet, but as of November fifth, twenty twenty five, according to this source here, this is the debt dashboard from the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress. It's currently two hundred and eighty eight thousand, one hundred and one dollars. So if we if the bill came due and everybody had to pay that would be your share.
00:52:57
Speaker 3: And by the way, because we did look into this, no, folks, you cannot write to the government and say I want to pay my share and not be involved any longer. They will take your money as a donation y, which is again so illegal the way it's happening, but the for the night debt. But everybody's at this dim sum table together and it's very difficult for you to stand up and ask the server to split your part of the bill. They're not playing that game. So we're chicken fee for everybody. Well, luckily, luckily, there is one in this analogy, there's one guy at the table who's supposed to keep all of us calm. It's the Federal Reserve. Their job is just keep things on the rails economy wise. They set the interest rate, which we had an analogy about earlier. And know to your earlier question, this can spell triumph or disaster for all sorts of stakeholders. You know, it's historically it's true. Given administration in the US gets a little too big for their dungarees, the Fed calls it to heal. They pull a woo nelly move, and when everything works out because they are a quasi private quote unquote independent outfit. They can save Uncle Sam from his own dumb ideas and theory.
00:54:32
Speaker 2: Theoretically, the creature from Jekyl Island is here.
00:54:34
Speaker 3: To help, right right. Shout out to nineteen thirteen and Jackal Island's nice if you get a chance.
00:54:40
Speaker 2: It is lovely, and they have trains to go through there, and you can have so many secret meetings on those trains.
00:54:48
Speaker 3: Sea Island. I I yeah, I had a good time. But what happens if the Fed? Then, to the questions we were were alluding to, what happens if the federal Reserve gets compromised. It is literally their job to fight with Congress and the executive branch all the time. So if they end up bowing to the pressure of any particular king of the Hill, they lose public trust, we get rotten policy.
00:55:19
Speaker 4: Is that what just happened?
00:55:20
Speaker 2: Do you think? I mean?
00:55:20
Speaker 4: There was a big old clash and the President, even just as recently as a couple of days ago, said that the head of the FED was on his way out talking a big game in terms of you know, this guy being ineffective. But didn't they ultimately cave to Trump's pressure.
00:55:34
Speaker 3: To lower the interest over the interest rates. Yeah, the threat of being declared politically P and G persona on grata. Yeah, let's imagine someone does get to the Fed. What if they force the Fed to keep interest rates artificially low? Or what if they go they send the FED on a shopping spree to buy up government debt. What's the name of that old game show supermarket sweet to get stone chair shout out the Black Monday Murders supermarket sweep as well. The idea is that if you take control of a regulatory body like the FED, you can make it do things that are good for you in the short term but lead to mid term problems like inflation hyperinflation. So in Germany in the twenties it's a huge economic factor. Indeed that led to World War Two where Germany's parted it, or then more recently in Venezuela Confessions of an Economic Hitman, or Zimbabwe as well.
00:56:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes you can manipulate Atlas into doing some stuff with his shoulders, you know, shrugging a little bit.
00:56:47
Speaker 3: Sure, yes, yes, it's beautiful reference. I mean also this may sound sort of arcane and finances magic, which it kind of is, but it does have immediate consequences for everybody who uses the world's former favorite coupon. You know, when the dollar loses value, things become more expensive, the the a buying power of every buck you possess plummets. It reminds me of you guys, remember those old stories about people having the whole German notes to the store and wheelbarrows because the value was plummeting that much. Or how the the butcher the baker would take your take your currency and then place it down on the ground and just cut a slice of bread around it. That would be what your dollar could buy. I know it's silly, but it's terrifyingy like a candy cigarette. Shout out that, Dan Harmon. Yeah, yes, guys.
00:58:00
Speaker 2: Do we know much about the Fed funds market? The Federal funds market? I don't know.
00:58:06
Speaker 3: I'm not much for gambling, but I got a little blackjack money saved up. Let's get in.
00:58:12
Speaker 2: I didn't know much about it until I just searched it up right now. I was just trying to figure out who are the folks that are actually putting money down when the Fed, you know, when the central bank is issuing out money and that kind of stuff.
00:58:29
Speaker 3: Hell and mainly Dylan and Knowle.
00:58:31
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's really interesting. It's weird, guys. I feel like this is a whole other episode here. Oh yeah, just to really point out and say, hey, there's the institution, the organization, the company, the whatever that is the thing that is funding wars and doing all the stuff, because what the heck is it. I don't know what some of these things are, and it looks like they're's. It looks so complicated to me. Maybe we could find somebody in finance to come on and then find a way to make it not sound like a finance episode.
00:59:10
Speaker 3: We'd have to be careful. We'd want to Vin diagram some of the board members. They know each other, bump up, up up up.
00:59:19
Speaker 2: So many FBO branches.
00:59:22
Speaker 3: And also folks like Richard Haass, the president of the CFR Council on Foreign Relations. He started Pauline in recent news the thirty eight trillion US national debt a quote national security crisis, who was recently in an interview with Fortune where he said, look, there's a dramatic fall off the cliff Elman Louise scenario where the Treasury tries to sell t bills or bonds and no one buys them, or some other rival power could coerce the FED into doing something untoward, leading to inflation or collapse, or the second scenario, debt keeps rising and then you can't spend as much money on defense and US leverage gets weakened abroad. That's what hass is saying. And again he is a CFR salary man, So take his statements with a wheelbarrow of doutchemarks.
01:00:26
Speaker 2: Now, what is the Council of Foreign Relations again? Didn't we do an episode on that?
01:00:31
Speaker 3: Mmm?
01:00:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of a advisory group, right, you know, they're just they're just people who know things better, I think, keep tabs on stuff foreign relations wise, They.
01:00:46
Speaker 4: Counsel you, it makes recommendations. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
01:00:52
Speaker 2: Well there. You know, there's that other thing that's kind of in the air here that we talked about Liberation Day where they got everybody together and they were celebrating their unity essentially in how they view the world and what they want the new world order to be. The new new World Order and that whole thing about changing the way stuff is traded and the money that backs those trades and the currency in which they trade could get That could probably complicate things here if we're talking about this situation.
01:01:25
Speaker 3: If I wasn't the US, I would want my country to be the reserve currency holder what I mean, Yeah, I'd want the one to be cool. I'd want the again to be the thing everybody buys.
01:01:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you'd have to get a whole bunch of other countries that also make, you know, large global trades together and get everybody on the same page for that.
01:01:49
Speaker 3: I'm an extrovert, I'm gregarious. Hey, I can sell a door door to door, right, that's what they're doing, you know, And folks don't. That's a beautiful point, Matt Foot. Folks don't agree on why this is happening exactly, and political polarization gets blamed pretty often, but I think most folks can agree this national debt stuff is a problem. What does a future hold? Some conspiracy theorists think they've figured it out. You guys, you know him, you know him. We've got a returning guest. Moscow has entered the chat. Russia, Russia, Russia.
01:02:31
Speaker 2: I really thought you were gonna say, Rudy Giuliani, But okay, he's been in the chat.
01:02:35
Speaker 4: Man he's a lurker, that guy. Yeah, now it's true. Just this past September, a guy named Anton Kobayakov, who's a senior advisor to President Vladimir.
01:02:46
Speaker 2: Putin VP him.
01:02:48
Speaker 4: That's the one claim that the there is in fact a US conspiracy to illegally wipe out thirty five trillion of that debt via crypto and the gold market. H that's some of those off the books things we were talking about earlier.
01:03:06
Speaker 2: I don't believe it. That sounds way too mister robot to me.
01:03:10
Speaker 3: Well again, let me sell you a door here, says Kobyakov. He says that Washington is doing just what we described with historical precedent, planning to rewrite the rules of global trade markets, positioning them as alternatives to the traditional order of global currency. So he's saying, look, and when he was saying this, it's September eighth, twenty twenty five, so not that long ago. And he says, look, the US is going to take a big part of its national debt and it's going to put that debt in stable coins. It will devalue the dollar, it will start from scratch, and he says, this is going to screw everyone over, but we're not sure. I don't know how the math maths, to be honest, like the idea here is kind of burning the village of global currency to save the village, or to save America's primacy. And obviously, of course, you know, Nola, I love that you pointed out this guy is a senior advisor to our buddy V. Poot, So he's got a horse in the race for sure. I don't think he's the guy who would come out and say, you know, what's great whatever the US does.
01:04:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, let's uh, let's talk about this thing the White House put out called Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.
01:04:44
Speaker 3: Hm.
01:04:45
Speaker 2: Uh oh. You gotta love a paper like this, a huge PDF that starts with all the acronyms. Oh my goodness, there's a lot of I'll just read a tiny bit of this. This is directly from Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, as it says on this piece of paper from January twenty third, twenty twenty five, says, the digital asset industry plays a crucial role in innovation and economic development in the US, as well as our nation's international leadership. It is therefore the policy of this administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy, and that has a big list about how to use that stuff.
01:05:33
Speaker 3: Tally ho.
01:05:34
Speaker 4: Hmmm, yeah, well, we certainly know that the president himself, through his sons, has made quite a killing on crypto. So I mean, I don't know, yeah, thing, it does seem that way, and it does. Also, you know, he pardoned the finance guy and then when asked about it, said he didn't know who he was. But also that individual whose name is escaping me, you know, personally contributed to a lot of that wealth being generated for the Trump family.
01:06:02
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know.
01:06:03
Speaker 4: No, it's almost like this guy's you know, not an and for the rest of us, I don't know, just saying.
01:06:07
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm going to yes, Andy here, and I like that you're getting on board because we can all agree. We have no idea who that guy is. Chengping Tao got no idea, I barely I don't know English.
01:06:22
Speaker 2: Founder of finance.
01:06:23
Speaker 3: That's the one I plead. The fifth point. I'm going to start a new kind of bitcoin called fifth Point, the stableist of coins, The Stableist of coins. A lot of this stuff at this point does sound conspiratorial. That's fair to say as a matter of fact, just as we record on November seventeenth, twenty twenty five, JP Morgan again the bank, not the dead guy. They just argued that America's path out of the thirty eight trillion dollar national debt crisis likely involves pushing up inflation and eroding fed independence, so compromising the federal Reserve, which is just, you know, a few minutes ago, exactly what economists warned everybody against doing for all of modern history. We're not telling you what to think, but we are telling you what's happening.
01:07:20
Speaker 4: No, no, we're just done giving you the lay of the lamp.
01:07:23
Speaker 3: Just counseling some relations domestic foreign.
01:07:28
Speaker 2: Acting in an advisory capacity, talking about relations. Guys. I just got another I got another alert for a strange thing that has become an alert blowing bubba. I have alerts for that.
01:07:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, read about this. I want to ask you guys off air. I mean, it's kind of outside the scope of this one. Maybe no, I all know they kept it in a home if you want to you know, or we're.
01:07:58
Speaker 2: Sure it wasn't on the Island. Okay.
01:08:01
Speaker 3: I mean also, how much of this is propaganda and smoking mirrors?
01:08:06
Speaker 4: And for sure it's fun to think about.
01:08:09
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
01:08:13
Speaker 3: It's just the scene from the Shining We know the what we're talking about.
01:08:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, with the bear suit. Yeah.
01:08:23
Speaker 3: So one thing is for sure, the debt adds up. The rules are different for nations and billionaires, but no one is truly inoculated against the system. And the pickle of it is the real badger in the bag is that the United States is so big and so entrenched in the global financial system that, just like China, a crisis here is automatically, without fail, a crisis everywhere. That is true, no matter who you vote for, no matter what you buy at the grocery store, no matter where you live, whatever your neck of the global wood is, this will affect.
01:09:01
Speaker 2: You unless your country has spent decades preparing for this moment.
01:09:07
Speaker 3: All right, name three?
01:09:10
Speaker 2: You love me?
01:09:12
Speaker 3: Yeah?
01:09:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. I think it's like B, R, I and C. No, those are that's too many.
01:09:20
Speaker 3: M Oh. The brick countries are not ready. Brick is not ready for this one Bhutand maybe well so.
01:09:27
Speaker 2: We think they're not ready. I don't know, man, I.
01:09:30
Speaker 3: Don't think they're ready. I don't know China is ready, but the bree or not? Okay, Bhutad though shout out to Bhutad. I can't wait to go one day more than anything. Again, no matter where you live, this will affect you, and that appears to be the real stuff. They don't want you to know. We ran a little long, folks. We can't thank you enough for spending the only real currency on this world, your time with us. So we want to hear your thought. You can always write to us via email. The void rights back. You can always give us a call and you can find us right now on the lines.
01:10:09
Speaker 4: Please do find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group here's where it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube where we have video content galore for YouTube or rules. If you don't want to find us in those places, you can head over to Instagram and TikTok or work Conspiracy Stuff Show.
01:10:26
Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three three std WYTK. Go ahead and call in now before this whole thing comes crumbling down. When you do, give yourself a nickname and let us know if we can use your name and message on the air, and really those are the only rules. You got three minutes, say whatever you want. If you want to send us an email, we are.
01:10:47
Speaker 3: Where we're going. We don't need rules. Check us out, folks. We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void rights back, So join us out here in the dark. Email us for free conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
01:11:25
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.