$10T Money Print! (Uncut) 04-23-2025

$10T Money Print! Fed’s New Plan Will Dwarf Bernanke Era

Gold keeps going higher and higher. What does this tell us about gold? And more importantly, what does it tell us about what’s going on with the dollar? Here to talk about this and more is Lawrence Leopard. He’s a managing partner over at EMA, but he’s also now a bestselling author.

He is out with his first book, The Big Print, What Happened to America and how sound money will fix it. I read it. It’s fantastic.

It’s on my coffee table in New York City now. And what a title, Larry. Sound money.

Yeah. Nice to be with you again. Yeah.

Sound money. We need it. And gold is the alarm bell, you know, or the canary, right? I mean, it’s just relentless how it’s trading up and it obviously is signaling the serious monetary dysfunction that the world is experiencing.

And ironically, the book talked a lot about that. Fortunately, I got the book out in time because I think it’s coming pretty soon, this big print. I was going to say perfect timing for the book.

I was sad to hear that this is a one-shot deal for you because you’re a great writer. It’s a fantastic book, easy read. But I think I like how you said you wrote this because, you know, if you’re in Bitcoin, you read the book, you get it.

If you’re a gold bug, you read the book, you get it. But for folks not in, you know, in these camps, they’re not even familiar with the notion of what is sound money. And it really serves as an educational tool, Larry.

Thank you. Yeah, that’s I’m glad you said that’s really was a goal. I want average people to understand why they’ve been taken advantage of with fiat money.

And we all get it. And I tested it with a lot of average people. And I mean, give you an example.

First person I gave it to came back and said, what’s the Federal Reserve? I said, OK, I got to explain this. Right. And so and so I tried to write it so you could hand it to any citizen.

They could read it and they would go, oh, my goodness, I now see why inflation is eating us alive and I see what’s broken. And by the way, I think I know how to fix it, which is gold and Bitcoin. So, Larry, let’s talk about the underpinnings of this gold move, though, because even some gold bugs are nervous, you know, looking at this run up.

I mean, is it sustainable? It’s a great question. I don’t know the answer. You know, certainly when when a market goes parabolic like this, often it corrects significantly.

But we just don’t know. I mean, you know, if it is a case of people truly losing faith in fiat currencies, it could be very sustainable, could go much higher, you know, using a lot of the traditional metrics. Gold is still quite undervalued compared to all the money we’ve printed.

But one just doesn’t really know what the path is. I think, you know, would it surprise me at all to have gold correct back down into the high 20, you know, twenty eight hundred, twenty nine hundred? No, not at all. But I don’t think we’re going back to the 2070 that we broke out of last March.

I mean, the fact of the matter is we are now in a gold bull market very clearly. And I think over the over the course of many years, it’s going to be much higher pricing because it still has quite a ways to go to catch up with all the money we printed. Let’s talk about the pressure on the dollar.

Does President Trump want a lower dollar and why? Yeah, I think he does very badly. I think percent does, too. And percent is even they’ve even said kind of in code that they want to remain the reserve currency, but they want the dollar price lower.

And really, you have to get the dollar price lower if you want to, you know, balance trade. And so I think that is part of their policy objective, what is being called maybe a Mar-a-Lago accord, which would be to push the dollar lower. Of course, China wants to keep their currency weak as well so they can continue to export to us.

So we’ve got a little bit of a currency and not a little bit. We’ve got a big currency and trade war going on. There was a guy on Twitter who had a really great comment.

He said China and America are getting divorced and trade are the kids. It’s really it’s kind of a mess. That brings up a solid point, Larry.

You can have a lower dollar but still remain the reserve currency? I think you can to a degree. I mean, the reserve currency is a function of who’s transacting and what. I mean, first of all, we are slipping in terms of reserve currency status.

We used to be 95% of all oil trades. Now we’re 65%. And countries are trading in their own currencies.

But let’s face it, the dollar still is the most liquid, widely used currency for most trades. And that’s not going to disappear overnight. But we could have it be weaker against all the other currencies.

I mean, to me, you know, Brent is a friend of mine, and I really respect him and his dollar milkshake theory. But, you know, these are all fiat currency pieces of paper. And where the dollar is against the other ones, I mean, that’s going to move around all the time.

The crosses that matter to me are the dollar against gold, the dollar against silver, the dollar against Bitcoin, because those are the things that can’t be printed. And it’s funny the way all these countries take turns printing. Like right now, China’s printing like crazy.

We’re not. But, you know, I think that’ll change. You think we will ramp up those printing presses? I absolutely do.

And that’s really the thesis of the book. You know, the book’s title, as you know, is The Big Print. And really, we’ve had two big prints already.

We had one in 08, and we had another in 2020. And I think another one’s coming. And as the book lays out, this is just because of what I call Stein’s Law, that if something can’t go on forever, it will end.

We cannot grow debt faster than GDP forever without there eventually being either a collapse of the system or demand for massive, you know, growth in the money supply, which really is inflation. And the Federal Reserve’s third mandate, the unwritten one, is financial stability. And when financial stability gets threatened, they run to the printer, and they will this time as well.

And it’s interesting, they kind of, in a way that the administration kind of ran to the printer, or financial stability got threatened, and they changed. I mean, remember on, you know, the big dip on April 7th, when the stock market got absolutely crushed, you know, the bond went from, it went up 80, the 10-year bond, which is the basis of the financial system, you know, the core layer of the financial system went up, you know, 70 basis points very, very quickly to the mid-fours. And, you know, I think Besant went to Trump and said, hey, you know, you’ve got to reverse these tariffs or put a 90-day, you know, hold on these tariffs, or else we’re going to lose the bond market.

So it’s, you know, you can see the threats are growing to the bond market, to the stock market, and then by, you know, by extension to the currencies, right, the dollar is through 100. It was, the dollar started the year at 109. It’s down 11% in a quarter.

That’s, that’s a big move. So. Well, you’re bringing up an important point that there are rumblings that the Fed already has a bailout prepared to the tune of, you know, 2 trillion.

I mean, any insights there? Is the bailout ready to go? Yeah, I think so. I don’t know. And we don’t know what they’ll call it.

And they’ve got a lot of sneaky ways of doing it. You know, they’ve been, they talked about, the Brookings Institute had a paper where they said they’re going to maybe issue swap lines to the hedge funds that are involved in the basis trade. And that’s a long story, but what it basically means is that the hedge funds are buying treasury notes, and we’ve got to roll over 7 trillion of treasury notes this year.

Hedge funds are buying them, and the Fed is more or less saying, look, if you get underwater in that trade, we’ll send money to you, which is a printer. You know, they’re talking about taking away the supplementary leverage ratio for the banks, which some people have called QE infinity for the banks. And that’s just an accounting rule that would allow the banks to buy bonds.

I mean, the problem the U.S. has, Daniela, and you know this, is we’re just in so much debt, and we’ve got to roll all that debt over. And, you know, the buyers are getting scarce. And so, you know, we’re starting to look like an emerging economy.

I mean, you know, when you have, I mean, things are happening that should not happen to the world reserve currency. What are those? The stock market’s going down, the bond market’s going down, and our currency’s going down all at once. And that hasn’t happened in a long, long time, if ever, in recent memory.

And the countries that have that happening, they’re generally emerging market countries with currency problem, you know, with a debt problem and a currency problem. And so, it’s now happening to the world’s reserve currency. And, you know, everyone thought it couldn’t because we are the dollar milkshake and the cleanest dirty shirt.

But guess what? You know, if you pursue, you know, third world currency, you know, policies, you get third world currency results, right? And that’s what’s happening. Yeah, well, that’s what terrifies me, Larry. And it kind of has me screaming, saying, when are we really going to take the debt? I know we take the debt seriously.

But I mean, the powers that be, and maybe they do, and they don’t want to show it. But what are they going to do about this debt problem? It’s not even a problem. Yeah, Danielle, it’s the elephant in the room.

It amazed me. We had a presidential election last year never even got discussed. I mean, I don’t think they’re going to deal with it until a crisis occurs.

And that crisis is likely to be a combination of very, very high inflation or collapsing, you know, stock and bond markets. And, you know, I’m not sure how that will unfold. But, you know, as I said to you before we started recording, I’m very glad I got the book out when I did, because it feels like it’s coming right now.

I mean, things are really happening. These moves in gold and, you know, the bonds and stocks, these are not insignificant moves. Two points.

It does feel like it’s really happening. I feel we’re having a hard time labeling what it is. But everyone I speak to in my circle, Larry, the experts like you, all, you know, are using the word some sort of reset.

It feels like some sort of reset is coming. Does it feel like that to you? It really does. And that’s what needs to happen.

And I think it probably will happen. But typically, in a government, you have to have a real crisis before a reset happens. One positive thing, I mean, Secretary Besant last summer gave a speech where he said he understood the problems with the world monetary system.

And he felt like something akin to Bretton Woods, the last big monetary conference was called for. And if it happened, he wanted to have a seat at the table. So I think he’s very aware of the underlying issue.

And I think he’s prepared, you know, and thinking about how to solve it. And there are some who would even argue that maybe they’re thinking about a reset to gold. I mean, I thought it was interesting over the weekend that Trump tweeted that he who has the gold makes the rules.

And then in turn, I’ve also noticed a lot of gold flowing from overseas back into the United States, which, you know, one could argue, maybe they’re trying to refill Fort Knox. I’m of the opinion that Fort Knox was raided by Johnson to support the London gold pool in the 60s. I mean, there’s gold in Fort Knox.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m just not sure all of it’s there, that I think it was raided at some point. So yeah, it’s possible that Trump and the center thinking gold reset.

And, and, and frankly, they should be. I mean, that, you know, the solution to the problem, the book describes this as a chapter 22 is policy response and talks about what we should do. I mean, there’s a way out of this problem.

You know, currency crises are not rare. They’ve happened all over the world for 100 years. And the positive thing is that when you solve them, things get better.

I did a pod with a guy who grew up in Argentina in 1991, his parents were buying food every, you know, every time they got paid as quickly as they could, because prices were going up so fast. And of course, currency failed, and they reset to the dollar. He said a year later, Larry, everything was fine.

You know, so if we go back to sound money, and that’s what the book talks about, we can repair this. This is not, if we don’t get into a shooting war, and we don’t totally crater the economy, this is not doom and gloom. There’s a solution here.

But, it’s not, you know, we’re not going to solve it by printing more money. We’ve got to solve it. I mean, and by the way, going back to sound money, it’ll be a one time painful event for some.

You mentioned inflation before. That was the other point I want to bring up. Your book spends a big portion dedicated to it.

What happens to prices in the scenario you’re describing, Larry? Are we going to get lower prices? Well, yes, no, not in the short term. I mean, really, there’s no, mathematically, there’s no way to not have a serious inflation, which is why I think betting on, you know, sound money assets right now is kind of a no brainer bet. And that is, why is that true? It’s true because it’s just too much debt, and the debt needs to be devalued against the currency.

The only way to devalue the debt against the currency is to write the currency up, which is effectively inflated. So, if we do this reset, we’re going to have a very painful one time high rate of inflation. Having said that, we would then, I think people would be able to tolerate it if they knew that on a go forward basis after the reset, there would be zero inflation, because we would be on a sound money standard.

And so, what I’m advocating for is a one time reset, as opposed to another 10 or 15 years of pain, you know, where we just get inflated away 10%, 7%, 15%, you know, whatever it is, right? And, you know, this reset would not be simple. I mean, it would be hard. But again, you know, I think people can take pain if they feel like the future will be better.

And a sound money future would clearly be better, in my opinion. Let’s play out the scenario that a reset tied to gold backed by gold is being planned. What does that do to gold prices? Oh, gosh, it takes them to much, much higher levels.

I mean, you know, there have been many gold standards run over the years. And some, you know, you don’t have to have 100% backing of the currency by gold, but typically, you have to have at least 40% backing. And that would imply a gold price of $15, $20, $25, you know, $1,000 an ounce.

I mean, the number is significantly higher than we are today. So, you know, and it could go higher, you know, it depends. I mean, probably before we do the reset, there’ll be some more money printing.

So all that new money printed will only make that number a higher number. So, you know, my personal target for gold, Danielle, is I think we easily hit $5,000, you know, maybe, you know, this year, but certainly in the next several years. Yeah, and then I think after that, we hit $10,000.

Beyond that, it gets very fuzzy. I mean, we really don’t know what the, you know, what the policies they’re going to pursue are, you know, I mean, it, I mean, you know, if we get, if we get a Stephanie Kelton as our Treasury Secretary, she’s the MMT woman, gold’s going to infinity. Well, no, I just, you know, having covered this market for so long, you know, talk of $5,000 gold just seemed insane, right? And now here we are.

I mean, you know, at this pace, it could happen very easily. It’ll be there by year end at this pace. I don’t think we’re going to get there this year.

But, you know, none of us really know. And, you know, it’s a very chaotic situation. And the problem most investors have is that they’re looking at the last 40 years, and they didn’t see any kind of chaos like this.

I mean, everyone bought the dip in the stock market and everything was deflationary. And you and I and all the gold people we’ve known for a long, long time, these pressures have been building. I kind of compare it to like an avalanche.

I mean, the snow just keeps on falling and the thing looks stable, right? That’s how the economy look. That’s how the markets look. But, you know, snow keeps falling and the cornice gets bigger and bigger.

And then eventually, you know, you get enough, you know, another flake falls, and that’s it. And it triggers it. And boom, the whole thing resets.

And that’s kind of, it feels to me like that’s kind of where we are. What role does Bitcoin play for you in this equation? Yeah, so as you guys all know, I’m a lover of Bitcoin as well as gold. I love them both.

I hate it when people in both camps argue with each other because they’re both right for different reasons. Gold is right because it’s 5,000 year old money. It’s analog.

It can’t be debated, can’t be debased other than just what comes out of the ground, etc. And so it’s fantastic. And I own a lot of gold and all my older clients own gold because it’s less volatile and it’s the thing that protects them.

Bitcoin is a emerging form of sound money. It’s an emerging monetary technology. They developed something called digital scarcity, which no one thought they could do.

And I believe it’s sound enough to eventually qualify as being a form of digital gold. And because it’s being adopted, they both enjoy the fact that governments are printing money and so therefore they’re getting more valuable. In the case of Bitcoin, it also enjoys the fact that we live in a digital world and adoption is growing.

So right now, very few people own Bitcoin. But I think as time goes by, just as in the beginning, very few people use the internet and we all use the internet. It’s a very similar model in my view.

And so I think more and more people are going to adopt Bitcoin because it’s easy to move around, it’s easy to store, it’s easy to verify, etc. And so to me, it is emerging as a digital form of gold. And if you look at its performance over 16 years, it’s really crushed gold.

And I think it will continue to outperform gold. But the price you pay for that outperformance is extremely volatile. And people who go to buy it, you know, have to be prepared to see it go down 50 or 60%.

And it does that. It’s done it repeatedly. So, you know, I always recommend to my clients that you’d be nuts not to have some of it because it’s got so much asymmetry and upside.

But you buy, you know, by the level, by 5%, 10%, you pick your number, but by the level, which you know, that if it goes down 50%, you’re not going to freak out and sell it. You’re just going to, in fact, you might buy some more, or you’re going to wait four years, because every four years, it’ll be at a new high. Historically, that’s what’s happened.

So I think it’s very important to understand that. But a lot of people, you know, close their minds to it. And people I respect, people who are good economists like Peter Schiff, they just don’t seem to get it.

And I’ve tried multiple times to convince him and others of it. But, you know, Frank and Jooster, who I have a lot of respect for, and they’re just not there yet. And I think, you know, I would suggest to them, read my book and understand the arguments behind it.

I mean, to me, there is a risk. The biggest risk of Bitcoin is technology. You know, and it’s the reason why I was always skeptical of it.

I thought this is a computer and computers blow up. And so, you know, we all know computers are unstable to some degree. How can you have money based on computers? Well, as it turns out, because it’s distributed, because there are a lot of nodes, a lot of miners, etc.

I think they’ve solved that problem. And so I no longer worry about it technically blowing up. But that if you want to have if you want to complain against Bitcoin, you complain that the technology might blow up.

I don’t think it will. The other thing that could happen is if people lost interest in it. But there’s no evidence of that happening every year, more and more people are buying it.

So to me, it’s it’s something that, you know, every investor who’s looking aggressively to grow their wealth should have. By the way, in my most recent quarterly report, I talked about the fact that, you know, I want people people ask me, why are gold stocks performing so poorly? Junior gold stocks. And I said, you know, one of the possible theories for that is that in the past, if you wanted to have alpha on top of gold, you bought gold stocks because they outperform gold.

But, you know, 20 and 30 year olds aren’t buying gold stocks anymore. If they want alpha, if they want monetary debasement alpha, they’re buying Bitcoin. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That does make a lot of sense.

And yeah, I think yeah, I think gold stocks are still great. I own a ton of them. They’re going to do really, really well.

I’m just suggesting that it’s that some of the demand has gotten sucked away by Bitcoin. Interesting. Yeah.

Larry, last point I want to end on, but it’s a big one. Is this Trump versus Powell? How does it go down? And more importantly, do you think the Fed’s independence is at risk? Yeah. So I really don’t know the answer to that.

I don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to say. They’ve asked for a ruling on it. My sense is Powell is a tough guy and he’s going to stand tough and he’s not going to cave into Trump.

I actually think it’s I actually think it’s a little bit of a moot point, because what I think is going on is percent is going to force Powell’s hand. I mean, Powell, if the financial system gets unstable and starts to come unglued. Right.

Powell is going to say, forget the inflation mandate. I’ve got to keep the ATMs running. It’s an emergency.

I have to do it. That’s so Powell really needs the political cover to do what we all needs to be no needs to be done. And I think percent lit the fuse to create the explosion that’s going to have to cause Powell to do the big print.

So that’s kind of how I see it going down and all the other stuff is just kind of political posturing back and forth. I don’t think Powell’s going to give in. I don’t think Trump’s going to give in.

Right. You summed that up so brilliantly. It’s like the power play of two brains.

Right. And I think you’re right. I think that Powell at one point is going to have to put a floor in and they’re going to have to do the lower rates.

Oh, there’s no doubt. I mean, look, when the long bond goes through 5 percent and the dollar is falling into the 80s and the stock market is down 30 or 40 percent. I mean, in the covid example, the stock market was down 32 percent and Powell panicked and printed like crazy.

Stock market right now is down round numbers, just around 20 percent. I mean, another 20 percent down with an economy falling apart. No shipments from China, you know, unemployment rising, et cetera.

Well, they’re going to change the tune. The mandate is going to become we’ve got to we’ve got to support the economy and we’ve got to worry about our unemployment mandate. And yes, there’s an inflation risk, but we’ll have to deal with that.

That’s that’s I can hear him saying it. He’ll he’ll pivot just like he did before. So so that’s coming.

But, you know, it’s going to take a little bit more pain and percent is out there making sure that we administer the pain. Yeah, it almost sounds like more printing than helicopter Ben Bernanke. Oh, oh, I don’t have to be.

So each time it gets bigger. Right. We know that.

I mean, Bernanke printed two, three trillion in three, four years, proper and five trillion in 18 months. And, you know, this one, I think this will be between seven and 10. You know, I mean, they’ll have to do yield curve control.

I mean, if they did that tire, U.S. bond market is thirty seven trillion dollars. If they bought their balance sheet, six point seven five, they bought the entire bond market. The balance sheet would go up for X. I mean, the thing the point I’m trying to make, Danielle, that’s most important is all of these things are inflationary.

How inflationary? We don’t know. But if you live in an inflationary world, you know, the mistake the average investor is making is they’re thinking the last 40 years is going to continue. And it’s not.

We now live in an inflationary world. And so that was the point of the book. I’m trying to tell the average citizen, get yourself ready for serious inflation because it’s coming.

OK, let’s you just raised a great point. The biggest mistake is we’re we’re assuming the next 40 years will continue getting yourself ready. So for you, it obviously involves own gold, own Bitcoin, physical gold, physical silver, Bitcoin.

In my case, I’ve got gold mining stocks, silver mining stocks. I run a fund that does those things. Real estate actually kind of works.

I mean, the government can’t print it, but they do tax it heavily, you know, property tax. Yeah. I mean, I just I know a lot of people my age and I’m 67 who are, you know, all in on stocks because it’s the thing to do.

It’s worked since 08. It’s worked. And I think that the conditions have changed and people need to really rethink that allocation.

And if I could just add one thing, you know, I was speaking with people who wanted to get in a three thousand dollar goal, but they thought I can’t do three thousand dollars an ounce. And it’s hard to, you know, inform folks, well, you know, that that three thousand dollars is going to be in the rearview mirror soon. I’ve got a great analogy on this.

I’ve used this on other parts. I really I like this analogy. If you indulge me, so please.

OK, so gold. So the financial system, the monetary system is currently constructed as the Titanic. OK, I mean, it’s it’s you can’t print forever.

They’re going to have to inflate. It’s going down. Eventually it might even fail.

1. Gold is a seat in a lifeboat and Bitcoin is a seat in a lifeboat. So I bought gold at a thousand dollars an ounce.

I bought it lower than that. Three hundred ounce way back in 2000. But I bought some of the thousand ounce and now it’s three thousand.

And as I say, I have friends say, I can’t pay three. You paid one. OK, fine.

Or Bitcoin today. I can’t pay eighty five. You paid ten thousand.

OK, fine. But OK, so I got my seat for one thousand or ten thousand. But I have a seat in a lifeboat.

It’s you know, it’s three thousand a seat or eighty five thousand a seat bid to you. What do you want? You want to stay on the Titanic? You want to get a lifeboat? Because I mean, I think the money I mean, and that’s perhaps a bit extreme. I mean, I’m not sure the monetary system is going to completely fail.

We’re going to go. The boat’s going to sink and we’re going to go to hyperinflation. But I do know with a high level of confidence that we are going to have more inflation.

And so if you believe we’re going to have more inflation as I do, I still think we’re relatively early in both of those moves. I can see much higher numbers for both of those assets. So even what’s their counterargument to folks who say, well, the tariffs will actually lead to deflationary environment? Yeah.

So I don’t see how tariffs can lead to a deflationary environment. I mean, eventually, you know, they could help the government balance its budget, but they really slow everything down. And, you know, yes, I mean, they are deflationary in the sense that the smooth hauling tariffs in the 30s were deflationary and they really crushed the economy.

I guess the bet I’m making, Daniela, is that if we get into that kind of a crushed economy, the way the Fed will deal with it will be to print money. So yes, there’s a way out of this without inflation, and that is let the economy just collapse and have widespread bankruptcies, widespread failures, you know, etc. But that doesn’t really lead to balancing the budget, you know, because in these downturns, you know, social payments go up, tax receipts go down.

I mean, I just don’t see, you know, I’m kind of at a loss for how to think of a scenario where the government doesn’t print a lot of money. I just don’t see it. Well said, Larry.

Like I said, get his book. I actually think this book should be in all high schools, Larry. I also think it’s a great gift to give your friends and family who want to learn because it’s written, like I said, in a very easy to read.

I love how you said you made your wife read it first, right? Yeah, she was my test case. She doesn’t know anything about this stuff. She’s a writer and, you know, an ad exec.

And so monetary stuff, she’s like, that’s your department. I said, great, you’re gonna read this. It appeals to all levels, the big print, what happened to America and how sound money will fix it, get that copy.

And we spoke so much about gold buying. As always, I invite you to reach out to my colleagues at ITM Trading. Reach out to us and we can help you build a strategy based on physical gold and silver and tell them Daniela sent you and they’ll take extra great care of you.

Larry, thank you for your time. Oh, thank you, Danielle. I always enjoy our conversations.

I do as well. And I’d like to see great guys like you succeed. So like I said, get that book, folks, and we’ll see you soon.