The National Debt Conspiracy

Oof -- debt. People have it, companies have it, and a lot of countries do, too. In the US, the national debt becomes a hot-button issue every time elections roll around. But how does debt work when the country that owes the debt literally makes the rules around finance? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel explore the dizzying (and sometimes terrifying) story of national debt.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
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,

(00:52):
oh someone a little bit.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Of money, a debt of gratitude at the very least
to you conspiracy realists. We love and owe our lives.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Too, Yes, and to our government to the tune of
a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
You guys heard of this talk of people saying, you
know what, maybe I'm just not going to pay taxes
this year.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm just not going to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I hear that every year from all all imaginable demographics.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Or also social security, or that you are.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
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.

(01:59):
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?

Speaker 4 (02:12):
Or whom owes who? Who's on first? Is the question
that I have.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
They got to get that style guide out.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah that's true.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
Yeah, I think I think we're on the same page, though. Yeah,
somebody owes somebody something most of the time.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
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

(02:47):
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.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
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?

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Read my lips, Read my lips.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
No new taxis that's the era? Yes?

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah? Right?

Speaker 4 (03:49):
And he got punks for that.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
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,

(04:10):
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

(04:30):
driving and he switched the radio to a ballgame.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Man, your dad is so baller.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
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?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
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

(05:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Indeed, let's take a quick break and we'll jump into
all the nuts and bolts of national debt.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Here are the facts, all right, what is debt? What
is it?

Speaker 2 (05:54):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
I guess you can call it.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
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

(06:55):
some point in time.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Everybody, we pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
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

(07:27):
of debt as a concept.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
Does American legal tender still have that little note about
good for all debts public and private?

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Well, I mean it's our favorite coupon, so yeah it should.
Let's pull out our cash, guys.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Let's see this note is legal tender for all debts
public and private.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
This is for marketable and non marketable securities. However, intragovernmental
debt will not do.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
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

(08:29):
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.

(08:51):
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.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
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

(09:33):
to quote our cea of credit reports, Friends and neighbors.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Stay tuned for upcoming our upcoming episode on the credit
concept and the conspiracies involved.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
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.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
At a certain level. It's so ephemeral.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
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

(10:43):
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

(11:05):
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

(11:29):
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

(11:49):
up bending the rules for themselves, but with consequences for
the public at large.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
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?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
If you owe yourself, it starts to you know that
whole robbing Peter to pay Paul turn a phrase starts
to become real appropriate.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
But Peter, But Peter and Paul are the same person exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
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.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
So that's such a good feeling.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
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

(13:19):
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

(13:40):
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

(14:02):
you receive. And usually in most modern democracies, your government's
primary means of income is taxation.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
So in this case we're talking about debt to GDP ratios.
That's exciting stuff.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
That's insane. Two percentage of that I think twelve percent,
maybe it's more at this point zonned by foreign nations individuals.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
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,

(15:14):
is different from the national debt. The national debt becomes
a result of the.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Deficit growing and growing and growing.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
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?

Speaker 2 (15:53):
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

(16:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
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

(16:51):
the amount of money owed. It does.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
Just look it up. It's been since the late nineties,
early two thousands since we've last had a surplus.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah Clinton.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
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,

(17:24):
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.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
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

(18:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
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

(18:46):
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

(19:09):
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.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Well, that's the politicization of it too. I mean, you
do that to suit your policy goals.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
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

(19:52):
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.

(20:13):
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

(20:35):
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

(20:56):
stuff hidden. And those two little words national and debt,
well we always.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
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

(21:37):
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?

Speaker 4 (21:54):
I hope. So here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
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,

(22:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Because who's going to stop you, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I for helping everybody out in World War Two.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
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

(23:29):
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,

(23:51):
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

(24:12):
since World War Two has more or less kept its
currency stable.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
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

(24:50):
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?

Speaker 2 (25:03):
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,

(25:23):
all of those economies equal the amount of money of
the usos. That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
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

(25:52):
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.

(26:12):
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

(26:36):
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.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
I've heard the name, but I have not read it.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
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

(27:16):
War One. Germany is another example.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, USS are right, But in Afghanistan, we certainly done that.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
There are any news about Afghanistan right now?

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Actually, what's the news? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (27:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
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,

(28:11):
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.

Speaker 4 (28:32):
So what you're saying is we should all get out
of the stock market entirely, Matt.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
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

(28:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
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

(29:31):
tons of historical anecdotes about this stagflation, recession, depression, collapse.
Let's go to the Brookings Institution. They sum it up
pretty well.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
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.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
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

(31:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
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

(31:46):
once said I was severely adequate.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
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

(32:22):
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

(32:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
In cash, gonna say the credit card was declined.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Wait, and I've got these pieces of paper with with
pyramids on them.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
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.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
Remember that, do you accept loose diamonds?

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Love a loose diamonds reference? Right? So okay in the
present day, gotta love a loose diamond's reference.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's so shady. Why he's just rolling around in there,
just lose.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Me the tingle.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
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

(34:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
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,

(35:10):
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

(35:32):
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

(35:55):
like priests from differing denominations. You know what I mean.
It's it's a religious argument at some point.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
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

(36:25):
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

(36:49):
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.

Speaker 4 (37:04):
Right, let's see, that's more or less my understanding as well.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
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.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
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

(37:53):
political or whether it's actually the best interest of the
individual the consumer. And the answer is nine almost always know.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
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,

(38:26):
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

(38:48):
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

(39:12):
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

(39:32):
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,

(39:56):
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

(40:19):
much as they did. And for any of these plans
to work, the dollar has to be the best coupon ever.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
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

(40:51):
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

(41:12):
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.

(41:34):
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.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
We could just hold a meeting and then say well, hey,
our debt means it is higher now, right.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Like if the principle continues to accrue.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
Yeah, it's almost a trill nine hundred and seventy billion
in interest on the national debt and fiscally year twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Wait wait, wait'll say that again.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
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

(43:39):
let us know when you get there, let us know
how long it took. Shout out to our favorite subreddit
they did the math.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
And try to count to a trillion.

Speaker 5 (44:10):
Or back.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
Guys, apparently it would take like the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
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

(44:35):
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

(44:56):
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,

(45:17):
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.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
It would take you thirty thousand plus years to count
to a trillion, So many, many, many lifetimes.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
But keep going. I believe in you.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
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,

(46:00):
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

(46:25):
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

(46:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Fewer public services, fewer public expenditures.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
But wouldn't that mean there would be way more in
that time.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Got it, So the government itself can't move forward with
a ton of huge, crazy spending no matter what the
public is going.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
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.

(48:28):
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

(48:49):
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

(49:14):
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,

(49:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
So if you're sure that money is just printed so.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
That's insane. Right now, intragovernmental debt as of November twelfth,
twenty twenty five, is seven trillion, four hundred and ninety
two billion.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Free the living room or whatever.

Speaker 5 (51:06):
You know what.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
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.

(51:31):
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

(51:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
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

(52:36):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
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

(53:21):
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

(53:44):
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,

(54:06):
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

(54:28):
his own dumb ideas and theory.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Theoretically, the creature from Jekyl Island is here.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
To help, right right. Shout out to nineteen thirteen and
Jackal Island's nice if you get a chance.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
It is lovely, and they have trains to go through there,
and you can have so many secret meetings on those trains.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
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

(55:10):
if they end up bowing to the pressure of any
particular king of the Hill, they lose public trust, we
get rotten policy.

Speaker 4 (55:19):
Is that what just happened?

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Do you think? I mean?

Speaker 4 (55:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
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

(55:56):
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

(56:17):
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,

(56:38):
or Zimbabwe as well.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, sometimes you can manipulate Atlas into doing some stuff
with his shoulders, you know, shrugging a little bit.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
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,

(57:08):
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

(57:30):
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,

(57:56):
Dan Harmon. Yeah, yes, guys.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Do we know much about the Fed funds market? The
Federal funds market? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
I'm not much for gambling, but I got a little
blackjack money saved up. Let's get in.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Hell and mainly Dylan and Knowle.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
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

(58:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
So many FBO branches.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
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

(59:42):
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

(01:00:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Now, what is the Council of Foreign Relations again? Didn't
we do an episode on that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Mmm?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Counsel you, it makes recommendations. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
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

(01:01:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
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

(01:02:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I really thought you were gonna say, Rudy Giuliani, But okay,
he's been in the chat.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Putin VP him.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
I don't believe it. That sounds way too mister robot
to me.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
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

(01:03:30):
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,

(01:03:53):
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,

(01:04:14):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Yeah, well, let's uh, let's talk about this thing the
White House put out called Strengthening American Leadership in Digital
Financial Technology.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
Hm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
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,

(01:05:08):
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,

(01:05:30):
and that has a big list about how to use
that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Tally ho.

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
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

(01:05:57):
to a lot of that wealth being generated for the
Trump family.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Right, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
No, it's almost like this guy's you know, not an
and for the rest of us, I don't know, just saying.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Founder of finance.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
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

(01:06:47):
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

(01:07:12):
everybody against doing for all of modern history. We're not
telling you what to think, but we are telling you
what's happening.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
No, no, we're just done giving you the lay of
the lamp.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
Just counseling some relations domestic foreign.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Sure it wasn't on the Island. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
I mean also, how much of this is propaganda and
smoking mirrors?

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):
And for sure it's fun to think about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
No, it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
It's just the scene from the Shining We know the
what we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Yeah, with the bear suit. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
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

(01:08:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
You unless your country has spent decades preparing for this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
All right, name three?

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
You love me?

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Yeah, yep. I think it's like B, R, I and C. No,
those are that's too many.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
M Oh. The brick countries are not ready. Brick is
not ready for this one Bhutand maybe well so.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
We think they're not ready. I don't know, man, I.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
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.

(01:09:52):
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