May 19, 2025 • 27 mins
The bond market is screaming a warning that few want to hear. America's national debt has reached crisis levels, with interest rates pushing 6% as investors grow increasingly uncertain about our ability to repay our obligations. This isn't fearmongering—it's basic math that transcends political divides.
Currently, we're spending about 6% of our gross domestic product just to service our debt. As interest rates continue to climb, this figure will inevitably rise, crowding out essential government functions and eventually forcing draconian cuts that nobody is prepared to face. The time for honest conversation is now, before we reach the point of catastrophe.
We've been collectively lying to ourselves about entitlements like Social Security for generations. When established under Roosevelt, Social Security had 139 workers contributing for every one beneficiary. Today, that ratio has collapsed to just two workers per retiree. The math simply doesn't work, yet we cling to the comfortable fiction that we've "earned" these benefits through our contributions.
Solutions exist, but they demand political courage that seems in short supply. We need to return to pre-COVID spending levels across government programs, acknowledge that the top 20% of earners fund virtually all government operations, and consider monetizing federal assets in a responsible, regulated manner. Most importantly, we need to grow up as a nation and face uncomfortable truths with maturity.
As a practitioner of Stoic philosophy, I believe that life has no value without virtue, and there is no virtue in believing our own lies. Whether through Stoicism or religion, we need guiding principles that keep us honest with ourselves and others. Our elected officials must prioritize doing their jobs over keeping their jobs, and citizens must be willing to listen rather than plugging their ears to unpleasant realities.
America stands at a crossroads. We can continue down our current path of self-deception until crisis becomes catastrophe, or we can face facts with courage, moderation, and wisdom. The choice is ours, but time is running short.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, it's me, herbie.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Spiritual Agnostic, and
today we're going to talk aboutlying to ourselves, and it's
time to grow up.
Now, before I really get rightinto it, I want to just.
I'm going to be speaking to acrisis that we're all facing,
(00:23):
and that is such a tired word.
Everything seems to be a crisis.
We have a tendency in our lives, in our world, in our social
media, in our news mediaeverything is a crisis, a crisis
of this and a crisis of that.
A crisis something is a crisiswhen it directly threatens life
in the immediate.
When it directly threatens lifein the immediate, either in the
(00:44):
immediate future or presently,or it is an existential threat,
something that's going to wipeus out altogether.
All the other crises are justproblems, and most problems as
I've said many, many timesbecause I subscribe to the Tao
is that most problems solvethemselves.
As Lao Tzu famously said 600years before Christ was born,
(01:08):
it's better to be busy, it'sbetter to sorry about that.
Let me correct what I just saidit is better to do nothing than
to be busy doing nothing, andthat's pretty much characterizes
, for example, our entireCongress.
They're busy doing nothingbecause they're missing the real
crisis.
We're all missing the realcrisis.
We've been lying to ourselvesfor a very long time and if we
(01:29):
don't grow up right now, we arefacing a very, very, very
serious threat.
Now I want to resist the urgeto catastrophize the threat.
Okay, it's not going to happentoday, and it's probably not
going to happen tomorrow, andit's probably not going to
happen for the next couple ofyears, but we are facing an
(01:52):
existential crisis, and thatcrisis is our debt, and I know
that that's a very tired subject, but we're not treating it and
talking about it like adults,and we're engaged and when I say
we, I mean everybody, fromPresident Trump on down in both
parties and everywhere.
Very, very, very few people arehaving adult discussions about
(02:13):
this, and it all starts with thepremise that there are certain
things that are untouchable, andwhen something is viewed as
something that you are entitledto, that's the word we use.
Instead of untouchable, we usethe word entitlement.
And when we feel entitled to abenefit and the biggest
entitlement of all and I'm goingto use the one that I get,
which is Social Security andSocial Security is viewed as an
(02:35):
entitlement, it means that thoseof us who paid into it, which
is probably every single personlistening to me now feel
entitled to it because we viewit as a quasi-pension plan.
That was a lie.
It was never a pension plan andwe all know this.
Let's start our process ofgrowing up by acknowledging that
(02:57):
there's an enormous differencebetween what a politician
promises and what the reality is.
And when Franklin Roosevelt setup the trust fund for social
security to give the impressionthat people were making
contributions to their ownpension plan in order to get
benefits when they reached theage of 65, which he set that age
(03:17):
because in those days theaverage person only lived to be
63.
This was a great big giant congame.
To be 63.
This was a great big giant congame.
And what basically it was?
It was just another welfareprogram.
There were 139 active workerspaying in taxes at the time for
every one person old enough andstill alive to collect benefits.
But today there are only twoworkers for every one retiree
(03:40):
and we are borrowing enormousamounts of money and playing all
kinds of accounting games tomake the trust fund look solvent
and pretty soon we're going tobe out of tricks.
Now the reason that I you knowI'm saying this and who am I?
I'm just some stinker on aspiritual agnostic podcast which
, you know, makes me feelnebulous.
(04:02):
To begin with, I understand andI'm, you know, not an expert
per se.
I don't have a PhD in economics, although I was in finance for
40 years, so I do have a strongunderstanding.
But there is a big giantwarning sign out there that's
telling us all what the truth is, and everybody who knows knows
what it's saying.
And either way and it's notbeing reported by the media on
(04:23):
the right or left, with very fewexceptions, and the exceptions
are viewed as fringe and we tendto ignore it because we're not
behaving like grownups.
America needs to grow up.
In fact, that should be thetitle of this show.
America needs to grow up.
And I don't mean to preach atyou, but we need to face a very
simple fact Right now, interestrates, and they're not set by
(04:45):
the Federal Reserve.
Those of you who think that thechairman of the Federal Reserve
declares the interest rate andthat's it.
That's not how it works.
The market declares theinterest rate.
He only sets the rate that theUnited States will pay until, of
course, it has to pay more.
Right now, the interest rate ispushing 6% long-term.
Now what that means is that allof the people who are buying
(05:07):
American US government bonds inthe world and won't touch them
okay these long-term bondsbecause they're not entirely
sure if we're going to be ableto pay the bonds when they come
due.
In other words, a long-termbond is anything 10 years or
longer, and if, when you 6% earnfor 10 years.
So let's say you buy a bond,every bond is issued in a
(05:28):
thousand dollar denomination anda bond is another word for a
loan.
A bond and a loan are the samething.
So if 6% interest means you get$60 a year of interest on every
thousand dollar bond, so over10 years you'll collect $600 of
interest and you should get your$1,000 back.
But what the markets are sayingis what the Federal Reserve
(05:49):
wants to pay, which is around 4%, is not going to be enough.
It's demanding 6% and it'sticking up.
It's ticking up little bylittle, little by little.
It's ticking up and soon it'sgoing to be 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%.
It's going to happen because weare not seriously dealing with
our debt whatsoever.
Now I don't want to go in.
(06:11):
That's where I'm going to stopon how to deal with the debt,
because this is not a financialpodcast, but we're not dealing
with this as grownups.
This is a simple sign tounderstand.
This is the crisis, not theclimate, not the transsexual
thing, not anything else youcould perceive as a crisis.
You know, just the crisis thatwe will not be here in 10 years
(06:33):
talking about the United Statesif we don't deal with this and
soon is our.
Well, I'll give you a goodexample.
Right now, we're spending about6% of our gross domestic
product.
That means $6 out of every $100we earn.
Okay, as a country, we arepaying just on the interest on
(06:56):
our debt.
When it goes up to 7%, 8%, 9%,10%, it begins crowding out
everything else and soon, if wedon't deal with it, we're going
to be in a terrible position ofhaving to make draconian cuts
and of the kind that people justaren't prepared to deal with.
You know, we can either grow upand act like grownups and this
(07:17):
comes down to the four pillarsof stoicism, justice, courage,
moderation and wisdom.
Someone has to step up who andthat someone really, I think,
needs to be the president,someone with credibility or all
of us together.
Grow up and face the simplefact when your outgo exceeds
(07:37):
your income, the upkeep will beyour downfall.
It's as simple as that.
And there are other solutions.
It doesn't necessarily meanraising taxes on everybody and
it doesn't mean cutting areother solutions.
It doesn't necessarily meanraising taxes on everybody and
it doesn't mean cuttingeverybody's spending.
It could be things like, forexample, monetizing the assets
of the United States.
I don't want to go into whatthat means.
That's a political debate butwe're going to have to get very,
very, very serious about it andit worries me and concerns me
(08:01):
because, like you, I havechildren and grandchildren and
I'd like them all to live a longand prosperous life.
And as long as we continue tolie to ourselves—now look, if
you're saying to yourself Idon't lie to myself, yes, you do
the one person who will alwaysbelieve your lies is you.
And we all lie to ourselves.
We tell ourselves we can dothings we cannot do.
We tell ourselves that we makepromises that we have no
(08:24):
intention of keeping.
We walk into someone's housesto have, let's say, we're
invited to dinner and we don'treally like it, but we force it
down and say it was delicious.
We see a baby that moreresembles a gargoyle than
somebody that's adorable, butwho doesn't say what a beautiful
baby, even though plenty ofbabies are the furthest thing
(08:44):
from beautiful, but you say itanyway.
We all tell lies and then weall tell ourselves the same lie
because we want to say it withconviction and belief.
So when you tell a lie, at thesame time you're lying to
yourself, unless you're asociopath.
That's the difference between asociopath and an ordinary liar.
A sociopath, you know, is avery misunderstood term.
(09:07):
A sociopath and a psychopathare two different things and
when I was in prison I dealtwith lots of sociopaths.
Sociopathy, in my opinion andagain, I am not a psychologist,
but in my firsthand observationof the most damaged part of
society, I can safely tell youthat sociopathy is a defense
mechanism for these people whoare born literally onto the
(09:27):
street by mothers who arealready addicts and non-existent
fathers and they're forced tofend for themselves.
So it's every man and everywoman for themselves, and that's
sociopathy.
In order to live with yourself,you have to let go of the lies
that you're constantly tellingto get through the day.
So you tell yourself thatthey're true and you don't care.
And when it's pointed out thatit's a lie that was yesterday,
(09:50):
today's a new day you shrug offyour past like it's not there,
there's no shame attached to it,because it's the only way to
survive in the environment thatyou're in.
On the other hand, thepsychopath looks at you the same
way you would look at a packageof hamburger no empathy, no
feeling, no connection and wouldkill you as soon as look at you
.
That's the distinction, okay,not to say every psychopath
(10:10):
murders everybody they see, butthey're capable of it.
We're not all sociopaths arecapable of murder.
There's a limit to sociopathy.
Sociopathy is more than I, foryears, was worried I was a
sociopath.
I'll tell you a true story.
I thought I was a sociopath.
I thought to myself how can Ido that?
When I came to grips with thecrime that I committed, I was
(10:31):
absolutely positive, or at leastsee, that's a lie.
I tell myself too.
Let absolutely positive, or atleast yeah, that's see, that's a
lie.
I tell myself too.
Let me rephrase that.
So I'm not trying to solicitany kind of uh, sympathy or
anything else.
I just want to make this veryclear.
I I was extremely worried that Iwas a sociopath.
I just couldn't understand howI could have made the decisions
I made and done what I did andhurt the people that I hurt,
(10:54):
people that I genuinely,genuinely liked and, a few cases
, loved, and did it to them tomy own benefit.
Why would I do that?
I must be a sociopath.
And this really, really, reallyaided me until finally I met a
professional who sat me down andlooked me in the eye and said
you know, you have a lot ofproblems, but you're not a
sociopath.
And I said how can you say thatso surely?
(11:23):
He said, because if you're asociopath you wouldn't care.
And I found that incrediblyfreeing.
So once I realized and acceptedI'm not a sociopath, just a
horribly dinged and damagedhuman being who made some
terrible mistakes.
But the one thing I was reallyreally good at was lying with
conviction.
I could lie to myself like likenobody's business.
Maybe you can too.
And when I say when, when Iwould sell what the fraud that I
committed, it boils down to, Isold possibility is fact, okay.
(11:45):
And and I I'm telling you Iwould have passed a polygraph, I
think I've never.
Well, that's not true.
I took polygraphs way back in1975 and 76.
And I got my top secretsecurity clearance at the
National Security Agency.
But anyway, since then I'venever taken a polygraph,
although you know, like I'mpositive, I think that I would
(12:05):
have passed it because I believethe lies I was telling Nobody.
That's why they don't let youuse polygraphs in court, because
a good liar believes their ownlies.
Okay, or maybe I shouldrephrase that and say a horrible
liar believes their own lies.
But regardless, I was a liar whobelieved my own lies.
When I would tell people thatthings were about to happen and
that they were a sure thing, Ibelieved it.
(12:26):
I believed it with all my heart.
I believed it because I had tobelieve it, and that's how it
relates to our national problem.
I believed my lies because Iknew that if they weren't true,
the whole world was going toimplode on my head, and I was
such a risk taker as anentrepreneur and I was so far
out there that I couldn't bringmyself to the truth.
And so I told lies that Ibelieve to other people who
(12:49):
believe me because of theconviction that I have in
telling them.
And, unfortunately for them, Iwas gifted, through either God
or genetic accident, withsuperior intellect.
And now, when you and when I say, it doesn't mean I think I'm
superior to you or anyone else.
It means I have a very high IQ.
I know what it is, I'm nevergoing to discuss it, I'm not
going to get into it, but let'sjust say it's above average.
(13:12):
And when you have a high IQcombined with an ability to lie
to yourself like a rug, then thebottom line is you are a
dangerous liar and I was adangerous liar and I still could
be a dangerous liar, which iswhy I adopted stoicism as my
central guiding philosophy andwhy I encourage people to either
adopt stoicism or religion,preferably religion.
(13:33):
If you can summon faith.
Religion is is where is is theplace to go, because it makes,
in my view, the least um demandupon you for it's.
Once you get past the initialhurdle of believing in the
invisible god, then acceptingall the messages and the lessons
is much, much lessintellectually taxing, if, if
(13:53):
you can understand myperspective, whereas if you
become like I am a Stoic.
Well, you know, at least in mycase, I have to read and reread
Stoic philosophy from the famousStoics of the past,
particularly Marcus Aurelius andZeno and Epictetus, and there
have been lots, lots and lotsand lots.
I just you know I am not anexpert.
(14:14):
There are plenty of people withYouTube channels and podcasts
who are experts in lots and lots.
I am not an expert.
There are plenty of people withYouTube channels and podcasts
who are experts in stoicism.
I am a practitioner and dabblerwho does not hold himself out
to be an expert other than tounderstand.
Basically, it means that lifecan have no value if it has no
virtue, and there is no virtuein believing your own lies.
And we as a country need togrow up and accept that we've
(14:35):
been lying to ourselves about alot of things.
We've been lying to ourselvesthat we can spend money we don't
have and not worry about itlater.
And I know this is a repetitivelie that's been told for
decades and I know that the endnever seems to come and so all
the doomsayers always look sillyand stupid.
And when I opened this podcast,I said I want to resist the
(14:56):
urge to catastrophize.
I don't think the catastropheis imminent, but it is
inevitable.
And the reason that people say,well, it hasn't happened yet
and that's kind of another lie.
We tell ourselves, well, it'sprobably not going to happen
because it hasn't happened yetand they've been talking about
this forever and ever.
This is all just a big lie, wetell ourselves.
Because if we really got downand we examined this and the
nitty gritty economic facts ofit all.
(15:17):
We have options of how to dealwith it, but we're not dealing
with any of those options nowand if we don't pretty soon.
And we have to stop tellingourselves pretty lies and we
have to stop being hypocritesand we're all hypocrites.
You know I can go to, forexample, the Second Amendment
gun rally and meet a whole bunchof people wearing MAGA hats and
(15:38):
support the Second Amendment,which I support as well.
I've been to Second Amendmentgun rallies.
I freely share with you.
It's a good group of people.
I enjoy being with them.
But they're also very, veryMAGA and they'll say all day
long we've got to get this allunder control.
And then I'll say to them well,you realize this is going to
mean major changes to socialsecurity.
And that's where they shutright down.
Well, I paid into it, it's my,you know, it's a.
(15:59):
They don't want to hear it.
They shut their mind.
It's like their little childrenstanding in the corner of the
room with their fingers in theair going la, la, la, la, la, la
, la, la Cause they don't wantto hear what their parents are
saying.
Child, okay, I don't mean topreach at everybody and I know
I'm a little bit harsh today,but we are at a crossroads and
the reason that it comes uptoday is because of the big,
(16:24):
beautiful bill that PresidentTrump is trying to put through
the Congress, which is woefullyshort on any of the alternatives
that are going to be necessaryin order to fix this problem.
Now I'm cautiously optimisticthat there are people in the
Trump administration, inparticular, secretary Bessent
and Secretary Ludnick atCommerce, who understand that
the only way we're going to getout of this really probably
(16:44):
realistically, without having todo draconian cuts in benefits
that people have come to relyupon and I'm not talking about
the cheaters, I'm talking aboutthe we're going to have to do
two things.
Number one is on the spendingside.
We're going to have to bringspending back to where it was in
the 2019 levels pre-COVID.
Covid added a lot of things andmade us all feel like we were
(17:05):
entitled to benefits and when Isay we again, I'm not
necessarily speaking to you, I'mtalking as a broad population
but a lot of benefits.
The requirements got lower andlower to allow more and more
people on in response to lockingpeople in their homes so they
couldn't make enough money.
So a lot of people startedreceiving all kinds of benefits,
either in cash or materiallyfrom the government that they're
now used to receiving, thathave to go away because COVID is
(17:27):
over period, not trimmed, nottaken back a little bit Like,
for example, in the budgetthat's being proposed that
they're debating in the Housetoday.
There are some serious cuts andsome benefits, but not to
pre-COVID levels.
Medicaid I'll use that example.
Everyone's shrieking on theleft side of the equation that
they're going to destroyMedicaid.
No, no, they're not evenbringing it back to pre-COVID
(17:49):
levels.
And Medicaid was expandedbecause a lot of people couldn't
work.
But those people are back towork now and they have health
insurance through their jobs andwe're getting off the hook easy
because they don't have toprovide health insurance,
because we put these people onthe Medicaid rolls and this all
has to come off.
Sorry, time to grow up.
Time to face facts.
Covid is over.
You're working, you can gethealth insurance through your
job.
Maybe it means a deduction fromyour paycheck Too bad, from
(18:11):
your paycheck, too bad.
That's what it is.
Time to grow up America.
Time to grow up America.
Also, we have to understand stopbelieving that we're paying
anything for what we're taking,unless you're in the top 20, the
top 20% of our country pays100% of the taxes.
Now I know that there areplenty of charts that say it's
the top 40% that pay 100% of thetaxes.
(18:31):
I say the top 20% and I'll tellyou why.
Because if you're not in thetop 20%, you are receiving, in
one form or another, morebenefit than you are paying in
taxes after netting out yourrefund and everything else.
When you do the math and youlook at what the government is
doing for you as opposed to whatyou were actually paying in
taxes in terms of benefit youreceive and it doesn't have to
(18:52):
be a check that you receive inthe mail.
It can be infrastructure aroundwhere you live, it can show up
in a lot of different ways, butwe are all receiving more
benefit than what we are payingin, unless we are in the top 20%
.
And the top 1% pays almost allof that.
So this idea that we can tax therich out of this, get over it.
Unless you're in the top 20%,you're not really paying for
(19:13):
what you're getting now, letalone what you're going to get
down the road when you retireand we have to grow up, but we
can do this.
So now, the happy side of theequation is that the United
States has enormous assets, butwe're going to have to monetize
those assets.
All that federal land, allthose offshore drilling rights,
all those things are going tohave to be systematically
carefully.
Those things are going to haveto be systematically carefully,
(19:35):
thoughtfully, regulatorilycontrolled, but sold off so that
we can pay our bills.
Okay, but I'm not going to gointo that, that's fine.
I said I wasn't going to gofinancial and I'm not going to
go financial.
The bottom line is this thereare plenty of people who know
what to do, but they're notgoing to be able to do it
because they don't have thecourage to do it.
So I have two messages today.
To close with Number one if, bysome unbelievable miracles, some
(20:01):
of you have shared this withsomebody who is holding a
federal elective office, eitherin the House of Representatives
or a senator, grow some cojones,male or female, and tell the
truth.
Stop worrying about you know,getting reelected.
You weren't sent there to bereelected.
You were sent there to dosomething and we're facing a
critical crisis.
Grow up, be an adult.
Have some virtue and value inyour life.
(20:22):
Tell the people the truth.
People need to hear the truth,the real, honest to God, no
kidding unvarnished.
They can deal with it when theyknow what all the options are.
This is not a catastrophe, yetcan deal with it when they know
what all the options are.
This is not a catastrophe, yetit's a crisis.
The end of a crisis is thecatastrophe.
We are headed towards acatastrophe, but we're not there
yet.
While we're still only incrisis and the bond markets are
(20:44):
telling us that we are, we'regetting to Argentina level
spending levels.
This is how serious this is,okay, but no, with maybe Ron
Johnson and Ron Paul the twoRons that might be it and a few
people in the House ofRepresentatives and what's
called the Freedom Caucus, andthose are the only people
telling remotely the truth, andeven they really aren't looking
(21:04):
at all the alternatives that areavailable to us.
We need to have an opendiscussion, okay, but first it
begins with courage, and then wehave to bring in moderation.
We don't have to get freaky now.
We have time to act, and thenwe have to use our wisdom.
Okay, wisdom, all right, andnot worry.
Stop worrying about keepingyour job and start worrying
(21:27):
about doing your job is what Itell the people in Congress and,
as for the rest of us, stopplugging your fingers in the air
and going la la, la, la, la lala because you don't want to
hear it.
Stop it.
Adults, real adults, listen,don't just hear, pardon me.
They listen and they hear it.
It registers.
(21:49):
We must stop lying to ourselves.
I mean, you're always going tolie to yourself.
Like you know, your baby'spretty and all that kind of good
stuff.
That's great.
No one's telling you not to lieto yourself.
I'm telling you to stop lyingto yourself about things that
could bring the end of us.
Okay, we have to look at thingsin a grown-up way and we're
behaving like a nation ofadolescents and we have to stop
(22:11):
that.
Okay, time to grow up and wehave to stop that.
Okay, time to grow up.
It's time to mature, time tobring back those values that we
once had, where we could have aserious public discussion
without a complete and totalmeltdown and accusations that
range from racism to sexism totransgenderism.
If there's such a, I don't knowwhat they call that Transphobia
sorry, I don't, by the way justas a digression.
(22:34):
A phobia is when you're afraidof something and I don't really
understand the term transphobia.
Is anyone afraid oftranssexuals?
I'm not afraid of them.
You know I have serious issueswith the movement, but fear I
don't know.
Homophobia I'm not afraid.
A I don't care what gays do,and B I'm not afraid.
We have to get more carefulwith our English, but I digress.
(22:54):
This is just a little pet peeveof mine.
I feel like, especially if youonly speak one language for
crying out loud, speak itcorrectly, but anyway, that's,
that's just a herbophobia, and Iknow that there are plenty of
people who think I'm a bigstinker for even saying that.
But so I apologize, but notreally, cause I think if you
only speak one language, forChrist's sake.
Anyway, we all have ourjudgmental moments, but that
doesn't make us either good orbad, it just makes us who we are
(23:17):
.
And you don't have to likeeverybody.
I mean you don't have to likeme, you just have to.
I hope, think there's somevalue to what I'm saying Now.
In the long term, after we growup and become adults and deal
with all this, we're going tohave to deal with how to not
have it happen again, and theanswer to that is what I've
invented in Antipolitism andpublished in A Radical Reset,
which is available to you onAmazon.
(23:37):
Go over to Amazon and pick upyour copy of A Radical Reset on
either Kindle, paperback orhardcover and read about
Antipolitism and how it willstop this disaster from ever
happening again.
And also, if you would and youknow like they always say, like
share blah, blah, blah, blah,pass it along.
(24:00):
I don't know, that always feelsso rote to me.
I mean, you know that I wantyou to share this podcast.
Of course I want you to sharethis podcast because I have such
a teeny, tiny audience andlisten.
The key to all of this is hangin there for a very long time
and keep doing it, which isexactly what I intend to do.
So, with that in mind mind, Iwill talk to you in two days.
In the meantime, enjoy your dayand try not to be offended that
I came on so strong today andunderstand what I was trying to
(24:20):
say.
I hope you do and until thenext time, may God bless you all
and God bless America.
Take care.
Hey everybody, it's me, herbie.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Spiritual Agnostic, and
today we're going to talk aboutlying to ourselves, and it's
time to grow up.
Now, before I really get rightinto it, I want to just.
I'm going to be speaking to acrisis that we're all facing,
(00:23):
and that is such a tired word.
Everything seems to be a crisis.
We have a tendency in our lives, in our world, in our social
media, in our news mediaeverything is a crisis, a crisis
of this and a crisis of that.
A crisis something is a crisiswhen it directly threatens life
in the immediate.
When it directly threatens lifein the immediate, either in the
(00:44):
immediate future or presently,or it is an existential threat,
something that's going to wipeus out altogether.
All the other crises are justproblems, and most problems as
I've said many, many timesbecause I subscribe to the Tao
is that most problems solvethemselves.
As Lao Tzu famously said 600years before Christ was born,
(01:08):
it's better to be busy, it'sbetter to sorry about that.
Let me correct what I just saidit is better to do nothing than
to be busy doing nothing, andthat's pretty much characterizes
, for example, our entireCongress.
They're busy doing nothingbecause they're missing the real
crisis.
We're all missing the realcrisis.
We've been lying to ourselvesfor a very long time and if we
(01:29):
don't grow up right now, we arefacing a very, very, very
serious threat.
Now I want to resist the urgeto catastrophize the threat.
Okay, it's not going to happentoday, and it's probably not
going to happen tomorrow, andit's probably not going to
happen for the next couple ofyears, but we are facing an
(01:52):
existential crisis, and thatcrisis is our debt, and I know
that that's a very tired subject, but we're not treating it and
talking about it like adults,and we're engaged and when I say
we, I mean everybody, fromPresident Trump on down in both
parties and everywhere.
Very, very, very few people arehaving adult discussions about
(02:13):
this, and it all starts with thepremise that there are certain
things that are untouchable, andwhen something is viewed as
something that you are entitledto, that's the word we use.
Instead of untouchable, we usethe word entitlement.
And when we feel entitled to abenefit and the biggest
entitlement of all and I'm goingto use the one that I get,
which is Social Security andSocial Security is viewed as an
(02:35):
entitlement, it means that thoseof us who paid into it, which
is probably every single personlistening to me now feel
entitled to it because we viewit as a quasi-pension plan.
That was a lie.
It was never a pension plan andwe all know this.
Let's start our process ofgrowing up by acknowledging that
(02:57):
there's an enormous differencebetween what a politician
promises and what the reality is.
And when Franklin Roosevelt setup the trust fund for social
security to give the impressionthat people were making
contributions to their ownpension plan in order to get
benefits when they reached theage of 65, which he set that age
(03:17):
because in those days theaverage person only lived to be
63.
This was a great big giant congame.
To be 63.
This was a great big giant congame.
And what basically it was?
It was just another welfareprogram.
There were 139 active workerspaying in taxes at the time for
every one person old enough andstill alive to collect benefits.
But today there are only twoworkers for every one retiree
(03:40):
and we are borrowing enormousamounts of money and playing all
kinds of accounting games tomake the trust fund look solvent
and pretty soon we're going tobe out of tricks.
Now the reason that I you knowI'm saying this and who am I?
I'm just some stinker on aspiritual agnostic podcast which
, you know, makes me feelnebulous.
(04:02):
To begin with, I understand andI'm, you know, not an expert
per se.
I don't have a PhD in economics, although I was in finance for
40 years, so I do have a strongunderstanding.
But there is a big giantwarning sign out there that's
telling us all what the truth is, and everybody who knows knows
what it's saying.
And either way and it's notbeing reported by the media on
(04:23):
the right or left, with very fewexceptions, and the exceptions
are viewed as fringe and we tendto ignore it because we're not
behaving like grownups.
America needs to grow up.
In fact, that should be thetitle of this show.
America needs to grow up.
And I don't mean to preach atyou, but we need to face a very
simple fact Right now, interestrates, and they're not set by
(04:45):
the Federal Reserve.
Those of you who think that thechairman of the Federal Reserve
declares the interest rate andthat's it.
That's not how it works.
The market declares theinterest rate.
He only sets the rate that theUnited States will pay until, of
course, it has to pay more.
Right now, the interest rate ispushing 6% long-term.
Now what that means is that allof the people who are buying
(05:07):
American US government bonds inthe world and won't touch them
okay these long-term bondsbecause they're not entirely
sure if we're going to be ableto pay the bonds when they come
due.
In other words, a long-termbond is anything 10 years or
longer, and if, when you 6% earnfor 10 years.
So let's say you buy a bond,every bond is issued in a
(05:28):
thousand dollar denomination anda bond is another word for a
loan.
A bond and a loan are the samething.
So if 6% interest means you get$60 a year of interest on every
thousand dollar bond, so over10 years you'll collect $600 of
interest and you should get your$1,000 back.
But what the markets are sayingis what the Federal Reserve
(05:49):
wants to pay, which is around 4%, is not going to be enough.
It's demanding 6% and it'sticking up.
It's ticking up little bylittle, little by little.
It's ticking up and soon it'sgoing to be 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%.
It's going to happen because weare not seriously dealing with
our debt whatsoever.
Now I don't want to go in.
(06:11):
That's where I'm going to stopon how to deal with the debt,
because this is not a financialpodcast, but we're not dealing
with this as grownups.
This is a simple sign tounderstand.
This is the crisis, not theclimate, not the transsexual
thing, not anything else youcould perceive as a crisis.
You know, just the crisis thatwe will not be here in 10 years
(06:33):
talking about the United Statesif we don't deal with this and
soon is our.
Well, I'll give you a goodexample.
Right now, we're spending about6% of our gross domestic
product.
That means $6 out of every $100we earn.
Okay, as a country, we arepaying just on the interest on
(06:56):
our debt.
When it goes up to 7%, 8%, 9%,10%, it begins crowding out
everything else and soon, if wedon't deal with it, we're going
to be in a terrible position ofhaving to make draconian cuts
and of the kind that people justaren't prepared to deal with.
You know, we can either grow upand act like grownups and this
(07:17):
comes down to the four pillarsof stoicism, justice, courage,
moderation and wisdom.
Someone has to step up who andthat someone really, I think,
needs to be the president,someone with credibility or all
of us together.
Grow up and face the simplefact when your outgo exceeds
(07:37):
your income, the upkeep will beyour downfall.
It's as simple as that.
And there are other solutions.
It doesn't necessarily meanraising taxes on everybody and
it doesn't mean cutting areother solutions.
It doesn't necessarily meanraising taxes on everybody and
it doesn't mean cuttingeverybody's spending.
It could be things like, forexample, monetizing the assets
of the United States.
I don't want to go into whatthat means.
That's a political debate butwe're going to have to get very,
very, very serious about it andit worries me and concerns me
(08:01):
because, like you, I havechildren and grandchildren and
I'd like them all to live a longand prosperous life.
And as long as we continue tolie to ourselves—now look, if
you're saying to yourself Idon't lie to myself, yes, you do
the one person who will alwaysbelieve your lies is you.
And we all lie to ourselves.
We tell ourselves we can dothings we cannot do.
We tell ourselves that we makepromises that we have no
(08:24):
intention of keeping.
We walk into someone's housesto have, let's say, we're
invited to dinner and we don'treally like it, but we force it
down and say it was delicious.
We see a baby that moreresembles a gargoyle than
somebody that's adorable, butwho doesn't say what a beautiful
baby, even though plenty ofbabies are the furthest thing
(08:44):
from beautiful, but you say itanyway.
We all tell lies and then weall tell ourselves the same lie
because we want to say it withconviction and belief.
So when you tell a lie, at thesame time you're lying to
yourself, unless you're asociopath.
That's the difference between asociopath and an ordinary liar.
A sociopath, you know, is avery misunderstood term.
(09:07):
A sociopath and a psychopathare two different things and
when I was in prison I dealtwith lots of sociopaths.
Sociopathy, in my opinion andagain, I am not a psychologist,
but in my firsthand observationof the most damaged part of
society, I can safely tell youthat sociopathy is a defense
mechanism for these people whoare born literally onto the
(09:27):
street by mothers who arealready addicts and non-existent
fathers and they're forced tofend for themselves.
So it's every man and everywoman for themselves, and that's
sociopathy.
In order to live with yourself,you have to let go of the lies
that you're constantly tellingto get through the day.
So you tell yourself thatthey're true and you don't care.
And when it's pointed out thatit's a lie that was yesterday,
(09:50):
today's a new day you shrug offyour past like it's not there,
there's no shame attached to it,because it's the only way to
survive in the environment thatyou're in.
On the other hand, thepsychopath looks at you the same
way you would look at a packageof hamburger no empathy, no
feeling, no connection and wouldkill you as soon as look at you
.
That's the distinction, okay,not to say every psychopath
(10:10):
murders everybody they see, butthey're capable of it.
We're not all sociopaths arecapable of murder.
There's a limit to sociopathy.
Sociopathy is more than I, foryears, was worried I was a
sociopath.
I'll tell you a true story.
I thought I was a sociopath.
I thought to myself how can Ido that?
When I came to grips with thecrime that I committed, I was
(10:31):
absolutely positive, or at leastsee, that's a lie.
I tell myself too.
Let absolutely positive, or atleast yeah, that's see, that's a
lie.
I tell myself too.
Let me rephrase that.
So I'm not trying to solicitany kind of uh, sympathy or
anything else.
I just want to make this veryclear.
I I was extremely worried that Iwas a sociopath.
I just couldn't understand howI could have made the decisions
I made and done what I did andhurt the people that I hurt,
(10:54):
people that I genuinely,genuinely liked and, a few cases
, loved, and did it to them tomy own benefit.
Why would I do that?
I must be a sociopath.
And this really, really, reallyaided me until finally I met a
professional who sat me down andlooked me in the eye and said
you know, you have a lot ofproblems, but you're not a
sociopath.
And I said how can you say thatso surely?
(11:23):
He said, because if you're asociopath you wouldn't care.
And I found that incrediblyfreeing.
So once I realized and acceptedI'm not a sociopath, just a
horribly dinged and damagedhuman being who made some
terrible mistakes.
But the one thing I was reallyreally good at was lying with
conviction.
I could lie to myself like likenobody's business.
Maybe you can too.
And when I say when, when Iwould sell what the fraud that I
committed, it boils down to, Isold possibility is fact, okay.
(11:45):
And and I I'm telling you Iwould have passed a polygraph, I
think I've never.
Well, that's not true.
I took polygraphs way back in1975 and 76.
And I got my top secretsecurity clearance at the
National Security Agency.
But anyway, since then I'venever taken a polygraph,
although you know, like I'mpositive, I think that I would
(12:05):
have passed it because I believethe lies I was telling Nobody.
That's why they don't let youuse polygraphs in court, because
a good liar believes their ownlies.
Okay, or maybe I shouldrephrase that and say a horrible
liar believes their own lies.
But regardless, I was a liar whobelieved my own lies.
When I would tell people thatthings were about to happen and
that they were a sure thing, Ibelieved it.
(12:26):
I believed it with all my heart.
I believed it because I had tobelieve it, and that's how it
relates to our national problem.
I believed my lies because Iknew that if they weren't true,
the whole world was going toimplode on my head, and I was
such a risk taker as anentrepreneur and I was so far
out there that I couldn't bringmyself to the truth.
And so I told lies that Ibelieve to other people who
(12:49):
believe me because of theconviction that I have in
telling them.
And, unfortunately for them, Iwas gifted, through either God
or genetic accident, withsuperior intellect.
And now, when you and when I say, it doesn't mean I think I'm
superior to you or anyone else.
It means I have a very high IQ.
I know what it is, I'm nevergoing to discuss it, I'm not
going to get into it, but let'sjust say it's above average.
(13:12):
And when you have a high IQcombined with an ability to lie
to yourself like a rug, then thebottom line is you are a
dangerous liar and I was adangerous liar and I still could
be a dangerous liar, which iswhy I adopted stoicism as my
central guiding philosophy andwhy I encourage people to either
adopt stoicism or religion,preferably religion.
(13:33):
If you can summon faith.
Religion is is where is is theplace to go, because it makes,
in my view, the least um demandupon you for it's.
Once you get past the initialhurdle of believing in the
invisible god, then acceptingall the messages and the lessons
is much, much lessintellectually taxing, if, if
(13:53):
you can understand myperspective, whereas if you
become like I am a Stoic.
Well, you know, at least in mycase, I have to read and reread
Stoic philosophy from the famousStoics of the past,
particularly Marcus Aurelius andZeno and Epictetus, and there
have been lots, lots and lotsand lots.
I just you know I am not anexpert.
(14:14):
There are plenty of people withYouTube channels and podcasts
who are experts in lots and lots.
I am not an expert.
There are plenty of people withYouTube channels and podcasts
who are experts in stoicism.
I am a practitioner and dabblerwho does not hold himself out
to be an expert other than tounderstand.
Basically, it means that lifecan have no value if it has no
virtue, and there is no virtuein believing your own lies.
And we as a country need togrow up and accept that we've
(14:35):
been lying to ourselves about alot of things.
We've been lying to ourselvesthat we can spend money we don't
have and not worry about itlater.
And I know this is a repetitivelie that's been told for
decades and I know that the endnever seems to come and so all
the doomsayers always look sillyand stupid.
And when I opened this podcast,I said I want to resist the
(14:56):
urge to catastrophize.
I don't think the catastropheis imminent, but it is
inevitable.
And the reason that people say,well, it hasn't happened yet
and that's kind of another lie.
We tell ourselves, well, it'sprobably not going to happen
because it hasn't happened yetand they've been talking about
this forever and ever.
This is all just a big lie, wetell ourselves.
Because if we really got downand we examined this and the
nitty gritty economic facts ofit all.
(15:17):
We have options of how to dealwith it, but we're not dealing
with any of those options nowand if we don't pretty soon.
And we have to stop tellingourselves pretty lies and we
have to stop being hypocritesand we're all hypocrites.
You know I can go to, forexample, the Second Amendment
gun rally and meet a whole bunchof people wearing MAGA hats and
(15:38):
support the Second Amendment,which I support as well.
I've been to Second Amendmentgun rallies.
I freely share with you.
It's a good group of people.
I enjoy being with them.
But they're also very, veryMAGA and they'll say all day
long we've got to get this allunder control.
And then I'll say to them well,you realize this is going to
mean major changes to socialsecurity.
And that's where they shutright down.
Well, I paid into it, it's my,you know, it's a.
(15:59):
They don't want to hear it.
They shut their mind.
It's like their little childrenstanding in the corner of the
room with their fingers in theair going la, la, la, la, la, la
, la, la Cause they don't wantto hear what their parents are
saying.
Child, okay, I don't mean topreach at everybody and I know
I'm a little bit harsh today,but we are at a crossroads and
the reason that it comes uptoday is because of the big,
(16:24):
beautiful bill that PresidentTrump is trying to put through
the Congress, which is woefullyshort on any of the alternatives
that are going to be necessaryin order to fix this problem.
Now I'm cautiously optimisticthat there are people in the
Trump administration, inparticular, secretary Bessent
and Secretary Ludnick atCommerce, who understand that
the only way we're going to getout of this really probably
(16:44):
realistically, without having todo draconian cuts in benefits
that people have come to relyupon and I'm not talking about
the cheaters, I'm talking aboutthe we're going to have to do
two things.
Number one is on the spendingside.
We're going to have to bringspending back to where it was in
the 2019 levels pre-COVID.
Covid added a lot of things andmade us all feel like we were
(17:05):
entitled to benefits and when Isay we again, I'm not
necessarily speaking to you, I'mtalking as a broad population
but a lot of benefits.
The requirements got lower andlower to allow more and more
people on in response to lockingpeople in their homes so they
couldn't make enough money.
So a lot of people startedreceiving all kinds of benefits,
either in cash or materiallyfrom the government that they're
now used to receiving, thathave to go away because COVID is
(17:27):
over period, not trimmed, nottaken back a little bit Like,
for example, in the budgetthat's being proposed that
they're debating in the Housetoday.
There are some serious cuts andsome benefits, but not to
pre-COVID levels.
Medicaid I'll use that example.
Everyone's shrieking on theleft side of the equation that
they're going to destroyMedicaid.
No, no, they're not evenbringing it back to pre-COVID
(17:49):
levels.
And Medicaid was expandedbecause a lot of people couldn't
work.
But those people are back towork now and they have health
insurance through their jobs andwe're getting off the hook easy
because they don't have toprovide health insurance,
because we put these people onthe Medicaid rolls and this all
has to come off.
Sorry, time to grow up.
Time to face facts.
Covid is over.
You're working, you can gethealth insurance through your
job.
Maybe it means a deduction fromyour paycheck Too bad, from
(18:11):
your paycheck, too bad.
That's what it is.
Time to grow up America.
Time to grow up America.
Also, we have to understand stopbelieving that we're paying
anything for what we're taking,unless you're in the top 20, the
top 20% of our country pays100% of the taxes.
Now I know that there areplenty of charts that say it's
the top 40% that pay 100% of thetaxes.
(18:31):
I say the top 20% and I'll tellyou why.
Because if you're not in thetop 20%, you are receiving, in
one form or another, morebenefit than you are paying in
taxes after netting out yourrefund and everything else.
When you do the math and youlook at what the government is
doing for you as opposed to whatyou were actually paying in
taxes in terms of benefit youreceive and it doesn't have to
(18:52):
be a check that you receive inthe mail.
It can be infrastructure aroundwhere you live, it can show up
in a lot of different ways, butwe are all receiving more
benefit than what we are payingin, unless we are in the top 20%
.
And the top 1% pays almost allof that.
So this idea that we can tax therich out of this, get over it.
Unless you're in the top 20%,you're not really paying for
(19:13):
what you're getting now, letalone what you're going to get
down the road when you retireand we have to grow up, but we
can do this.
So now, the happy side of theequation is that the United
States has enormous assets, butwe're going to have to monetize
those assets.
All that federal land, allthose offshore drilling rights,
all those things are going tohave to be systematically
carefully.
Those things are going to haveto be systematically carefully,
(19:35):
thoughtfully, regulatorilycontrolled, but sold off so that
we can pay our bills.
Okay, but I'm not going to gointo that, that's fine.
I said I wasn't going to gofinancial and I'm not going to
go financial.
The bottom line is this thereare plenty of people who know
what to do, but they're notgoing to be able to do it
because they don't have thecourage to do it.
So I have two messages today.
To close with Number one if, bysome unbelievable miracles, some
(20:01):
of you have shared this withsomebody who is holding a
federal elective office, eitherin the House of Representatives
or a senator, grow some cojones,male or female, and tell the
truth.
Stop worrying about you know,getting reelected.
You weren't sent there to bereelected.
You were sent there to dosomething and we're facing a
critical crisis.
Grow up, be an adult.
Have some virtue and value inyour life.
(20:22):
Tell the people the truth.
People need to hear the truth,the real, honest to God, no
kidding unvarnished.
They can deal with it when theyknow what all the options are.
This is not a catastrophe, yetcan deal with it when they know
what all the options are.
This is not a catastrophe, yetit's a crisis.
The end of a crisis is thecatastrophe.
We are headed towards acatastrophe, but we're not there
yet.
While we're still only incrisis and the bond markets are
(20:44):
telling us that we are, we'regetting to Argentina level
spending levels.
This is how serious this is,okay, but no, with maybe Ron
Johnson and Ron Paul the twoRons that might be it and a few
people in the House ofRepresentatives and what's
called the Freedom Caucus, andthose are the only people
telling remotely the truth, andeven they really aren't looking
(21:04):
at all the alternatives that areavailable to us.
We need to have an opendiscussion, okay, but first it
begins with courage, and then wehave to bring in moderation.
We don't have to get freaky now.
We have time to act, and thenwe have to use our wisdom.
Okay, wisdom, all right, andnot worry.
Stop worrying about keepingyour job and start worrying
(21:27):
about doing your job is what Itell the people in Congress and,
as for the rest of us, stopplugging your fingers in the air
and going la la, la, la, la lala because you don't want to
hear it.
Stop it.
Adults, real adults, listen,don't just hear, pardon me.
They listen and they hear it.
It registers.
(21:49):
We must stop lying to ourselves.
I mean, you're always going tolie to yourself.
Like you know, your baby'spretty and all that kind of good
stuff.
That's great.
No one's telling you not to lieto yourself.
I'm telling you to stop lyingto yourself about things that
could bring the end of us.
Okay, we have to look at thingsin a grown-up way and we're
behaving like a nation ofadolescents and we have to stop
(22:11):
that.
Okay, time to grow up and wehave to stop that.
Okay, time to grow up.
It's time to mature, time tobring back those values that we
once had, where we could have aserious public discussion
without a complete and totalmeltdown and accusations that
range from racism to sexism totransgenderism.
If there's such a, I don't knowwhat they call that Transphobia
sorry, I don't, by the way justas a digression.
(22:34):
A phobia is when you're afraidof something and I don't really
understand the term transphobia.
Is anyone afraid oftranssexuals?
I'm not afraid of them.
You know I have serious issueswith the movement, but fear I
don't know.
Homophobia I'm not afraid.
A I don't care what gays do,and B I'm not afraid.
We have to get more carefulwith our English, but I digress.
(22:54):
This is just a little pet peeveof mine.
I feel like, especially if youonly speak one language for
crying out loud, speak itcorrectly, but anyway, that's,
that's just a herbophobia, and Iknow that there are plenty of
people who think I'm a bigstinker for even saying that.
But so I apologize, but notreally, cause I think if you
only speak one language, forChrist's sake.
Anyway, we all have ourjudgmental moments, but that
doesn't make us either good orbad, it just makes us who we are
(23:17):
.
And you don't have to likeeverybody.
I mean you don't have to likeme, you just have to.
I hope, think there's somevalue to what I'm saying Now.
In the long term, after we growup and become adults and deal
with all this, we're going tohave to deal with how to not
have it happen again, and theanswer to that is what I've
invented in Antipolitism andpublished in A Radical Reset,
which is available to you onAmazon.
(23:37):
Go over to Amazon and pick upyour copy of A Radical Reset on
either Kindle, paperback orhardcover and read about
Antipolitism and how it willstop this disaster from ever
happening again.
And also, if you would and youknow like they always say, like
share blah, blah, blah, blah,pass it along.
(24:00):
I don't know, that always feelsso rote to me.
I mean, you know that I wantyou to share this podcast.
Of course I want you to sharethis podcast because I have such
a teeny, tiny audience andlisten.
The key to all of this is hangin there for a very long time
and keep doing it, which isexactly what I intend to do.
So, with that in mind mind, Iwill talk to you in two days.
In the meantime, enjoy your dayand try not to be offended that
I came on so strong today andunderstand what I was trying to
(24:20):
say.
I hope you do and until thenext time, may God bless you all
and God bless America.
Take care.
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