The Global Financial System & Our Money are Broken (Uncut) 02-26-2025

The Global Financial System & Our Money are Broken with Lawrence Lepard

We got on a fiat monetary standard and it got worse and it’s kind of gotten progressively worse most recent being you know quantitative easing and 0% interest rates and you know bank bailouts and so on and so forth that have just Basically changed the financial rules of the game in a way that is extremely unfair To anyone who doesn’t know how to play that game, you know which is to say average citizens get screwed by inflation and And the financial people and government people who know how to game the system they get wealthier And so, you know America was founded on the principle that you know Kind of equal opportunity for all and we’re not really we’re not really living up to that in the financial sphere On this episode or the finance podcast of the pleasure. Welcome back Larry Leppard So Larry is the managing partner of equity management associates been a professional investment manager for multiple decades He’s a vocal advocate for sound money and he’s really recently released the book the big prints What happened to America and how sound money will fix it, which we can see on the screen. It’s very nice But yeah, Larry, thanks so much for coming the book.

Oh, thanks Anthony. Nice to be back with you again. That’s Always enjoy our conversations Yeah, looking forward to speaking if we look at maybe we can start on an easy question.

What happened to America? Maybe not so easy Well, no, it’s pretty simple actually we we got we got on a fiat monetary standard and it got worse And it’s kind of gotten progressively worse There are a lot of steps along the way but if you want to you know the big ones were the printing of the greenback in the Civil War and then the Federal Reserve in 1913 and probably the biggest one was going off the gold standard or the gold exchange standard of 71 because that’s when inflation really started to take off and became a serious problem and You know even after that then there were various additional steps most recent being, you know quantitative easing and zero percent interest rates and you know bank bailouts and so on and so forth that have just Basically changed the financial rules of the game in a way that is extremely unfair To anyone who doesn’t know how to play that game, you know which is to say average citizens get screwed by inflation and The financial people and government people who know how to game the system they get wealthier And so, you know America was founded on the principle that you know Kind of equal opportunity for all and we’re not really we’re not really living up to that in the financial sphere So that’s that’s kind of the thesis And yeah, it seems like you know, if we look back it’s to the Fed. It’s the Greenspan put it’s all these Oh seems to be all these different steps that have evolved since right 70s where you know, Bresson would sort of was abolished and it just seems to have slowly crawled and crawled as you say and then It just kept getting worse and worse and they modernized the Commodities Act they got rid of Glass-Steagall You know, they bailed out LTCM. I mean at each step of the way we just kind of Made the financial system more friendly to the bankers and insiders and less friendly to everybody else Because it’s the everybody else that pays for the inflation through higher grocery prices and so forth So and the book details that there’s kind of I mean just to give a little overview The first half of the book is the problem, you know why I I wrote the book because I felt like You know what? It was going on in America is not really fully understood by many people and it’s going on the world really a lot of people Just don’t understand why they know something is not right.

They know the inflation hurts them They get all that but they don’t know why you know, and the politicians say well, it’s a greedy corporation. That’s not true It’s not the greedy corporation. So And I thought well, I’m gonna lay out and explain how we got to this position We’re in and you know all the steps along the way and then of course the second half of the book is really the solution you know, so the first half of the books actually kind of depressing like Shits broken and you know, we’re all kind of hurting and but it’s facts I mean, it’s just and I’ve got a lot of charts in there to support it The second half of the book is a good news that you know We’ve got these technologies that are coming along and we’ve got decentralization.

We’ve got the Internet We get a lot of positive things happening and that old system is going to die and a new better system is going to emerge And that’s we’re in that process right now a big change that some have referred to it as a fourth turning which is kind of a change of the rules and so You know, I’m very optimistic about where we’re going and how much better it’s going to get But the book was actually also meant to help people kind of address getting through you know The change the period of change between this old system that worked in one way and the new system That’s going to work in a completely different way Right, so and obviously Bitcoin is a big part of that and so I’ve explained in great detail What Bitcoin is how it works what you know? What what people need to consider and why it really is the best way to protect themselves and protect yourself And and you’re not only protecting yourself financially. You’re also making a vote for a fairer system You know, so that’s kind of the background Yeah, okay. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

And if I if I look back at it as well if we um, you know Sorry, I’m sort of still in the historical mode 2008 seemed to be the big shift where it was like, yeah This is that they bailed out the banks. Yeah. Yeah, that was you know The title of the book is the big print and I believe that we have another big print in our future Really almost just because of mathematics I mean the way they’re growing with that you have to print the underlying base money or else the thing collapses But we’ve actually already had two big prints I mean more notable ones we’ve had more before this but the first one was really 2008 and that was a big one you know Fed balance sheet went up three or four X and three and now almost 4x and It took a bunch of years to do that.

But it you know, there was a lot of a lot of money printed in that The last big print as we all know is the covert event where in under two years they grew the money supply by 40% so that was an even bigger print in a shorter period of time and so I’ve likened the progression here to being somewhat like childbirth where the contractions are getting, you know quicker and they’re getting stronger And I think we’re gonna have another big print you know as we hit the wall here on the current level of debt that we have and I Can’t say with any certainty one that’s going to happen because nobody can see the future But I you know, I do though mathematically it has to happen and I think it’ll happen over the next year or two. So Yeah, okay It is um, you know, it’s quite it’s quite scary I think that’s on the horizon But it does it does seem that you know How long can this thing survive because it seems as you said people are saying 2008 is the collapse of it and they started Printing and in 2020 Yeah, but you know, can they not just do this again and you know print a bucket load of cash and then Whether the whole thing blows up or not It’s really an open debate and they could reset the currency a lot of things that could happen but one thing you do know is they do have to print a boatload of cash and you do know that that will create Inflation and so, you know at a minimum you can put yourself on the right side of history by being in inflation protecting protection assets Whether it leads to you know Hyperinflation and blow up a complete change of the system and at what pace or some kind of a monetary reset not us really No, I mean, that’s it’s impossible to predict but you know historically there’s a good chart in the book by a money manager who did a study that showed when company countries get to a debt-to-GDP ratio of about a hundred and thirty to Hundred thirty percent the size of the total debt outstanding compared to the size of the GDP tends to lead to very high inflation or a currency event as in hyperinflation or a reset and so And it’s like 11 case in last hundred years was like 11 out of 11 cases that happen And by the way, we’re at about a hundred twenty five percent debt to GDP So it’s really a problem And and you know, I mean can we kick the can for a few more years? Sure, of course we can but can we kick it for 10 or 15 more years? I don’t think so There’s another chart in the book That shows just a recent debt growth, which is rather stunning, you know in the last four years We added 11 trillion to the outstanding federal debt of the United States. It took us 220 years to create the first 11 trillion So, you know the the pace is accelerating.

I mean another thing it’s not in the book because it came out after the book was written is That the US federal deficit for the first two two months of fiscal 2025 was up 64 percent Year over year compared to 2024. So, you know those people who think it’s going to get better That’s certainly not what’s happening based on those numbers and you know I’m somewhat sympathetic to the notion that those will help, you know that the government Department of Government efficiency that Elon is pushing so hard on You know and they found some inefficient things and they will definitely cut expenses But my belief is that we’re way too far gone for him to have to solve it completely I mean it could have an impact at the margin, but it’s not going to solve it because 80% the government spend 6.75 trillion dollars a year 80% of that are in areas that are kind of considered sacred You know Social Security Medicare defense and one the interest costs you got to pay the interest or else you’re going to default. So So they’re talking about the part they can cut is 20% and that’s like 1.3 trillion dollars Well, the deficits running at a 2.4 trillion dollar rate right now So even if you wiped out the other 20% you’d still have a deficit.

So so it’s a really deep deep problem and You know, we’ve seen this this is not something new we’ve seen this historically in smaller countries We know what happens in those countries. They have currency crises. They have high inflation.

They have hyperinflation in some cases But we haven’t seen before the reason why this is such a scary and interesting experiment Is we’ve never seen the country with the world’s reserve currency Behaving in such an irresponsible fashion. We’ve never seen that before but here we are We have that’s what we have so it’s a problem Yeah, and I think yeah, you know There’s some great books on sort of the collapse of empires and they talk about I think the dead the debt debt GDP They also talk about military spends being Extremely. I would say It’s a great point you bring up and I think one of the things that is often underappreciated You know the u.s. I Believe wasted eight trillion dollars in the Middle East post 9-11 You know chasing phantom weapons of mass destruction and securing oil and so on and so forth over eight trillion dollars I mean, there’s your problem right there.

That’s why we have so much debt If we hadn’t done that we’d spent that on infrastructure or efficiency or you know nuclear power or other areas It would you know benefit the country We’d be much it would be in a much better position than we are today right now We’re a very bad position because we wasted that eight trillion dollars Yeah, I agree and I think the interest actually is is the mate it’s not not so I think from that book I remember it’s not actually that the debt is the interest Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean you you’re bringing me to kind of the point of the debt doom loop So the problem is when you have a government that’s running deficits and they have a large burden of debt It’s one thing when the interest rates are low They can you know, they’re paying a small amount of interest and maybe that doesn’t blow out the deficit But when Jay Powell started to raise rates post in 19 and 2022 post the Kovats, you know money printing he rapidly raised them very very, you know, very quickly raise them up into the fives and and what that did was it took the US federal government’s interest expense and took it from 400 billion to a run rate right now between 1.3 and 1.4 trillion So, you know that that’s just money. We’re paying on all the old debt.

We have not not to mention the new debt and so So they you know that that made the budget deficit grow and you know 1.3 trillion is is half the deficit run rate today and Sadly, you know, it’s going to get worse because you know, okay So you can see there’s kind of a reflexive loop here if interest rates go up The cost of the debt is higher if the cost of the debt is higher the budget deficit federal deficit is higher If the federal deficit is higher, they’ve got to sell more bonds And the bonds that represents supply in the market for bonds, which the interest rate is driven by supply and demand So you got to sell more if you got the same demand the interest rates going to go up more So, okay Now you got a higher interest rate and guess what that makes your deficit even bigger Which means you got to sell more bonds. You can see where I’m going here It’s a negative feedback loop that gets worse and worse and worse So that’s kind of what I believe we’re on the cusp of and that’s why The way what I refer to is what we’re in right now and people don’t want to admit this nobody likes these words I’m not trying to be a you know, the doomsayer panic artist, but just based on looking at historical patterns We’re kind of in a sovereign debt crisis I mean the you the US federal government is really almost technically bankrupt now You know, there are those who say we can solve it. We can cut all these expenses We can raise taxes and maybe we can maybe we can but if we go in that direction We’re gonna have a really big economic slowdown Because you know, the stock market is very heavily You know, it’s a big part of you know, giving people confidence.

They know their stock accounts are good They can has they have confidence to spend if the government starts spending less and everything turns over and rolls over You know, then we’re gonna see, you know, we’re gonna see a real big downturn and by the way downturns Tend to blow out the budget deficit as well You know, so in oh wait in 2000 when that bubble burst the budget deficit went up like six percent You know of GDP and in oh wait when that one burst it went up like another nine percent So, you know, so they’re really I mean the policy makers in Washington DC are kind of trapped and and that’s sad, but it’s just what it is and All we can do all us investors and people who are trying to save for our futures can do Is as I say own things the government can’t print Because Because the government sadly is gonna have to print more money. Yeah, and it seems like the feds trapped as well You know, that’s right. Yeah, I want to put interest rates down but then the bond market starting to sort of revolt That’s exactly right And what they might do is they might revert to something what people know and some people know but it’s called yield curve control You know this debt to GDP ratio that we have we had this once before We had it coming out of World War two and because we spent a lot of money to win the war that we didn’t have we borrowed it and spent it and And the government was smart enough back then to figure out that if interest rates run up They were gonna have a real problem.

So they so they actually said, you know what? We’re gonna just cap these interest rates we’re gonna cap this short end, you know three eighths of a point in the long at two and a half percent and so they did it and And it ended up a lot of people end up selling their bonds the government the Fed balance sheet grew enormously during that time frame But then in that case what saved them was when the war was over the demographics were pretty good So all those guys came back and started, you know getting married having babies, you know buying houses buying cars You know and we grew our way out of that problem because we were a young still relatively young industrial economy You know and we needed a lot of stuff and so, you know GDP grew rapidly and the debt to GDP came down and then they were able to let the interest rate market go free again They didn’t have to you know, use yield group control after a certain period of time But but yes, I mean I could see a situation where in this time around The government is forced into doing some form of yield curve control because they just can’t have higher rates if they do Things are gonna break Yeah, but I guess if the u.s. Has to do that, then you can you’re a bit concerned about the rest of the rest of the Well, that’s right. I mean, it’s look they’re all you know, this is not a u.s. Centric or a u.s. Only problem I mean, you’ve got it in spades in the UK I mean, you know, you saw the guilt crisis a couple of falls ago I mean, it’s all these all these governments have made too many promises That’s the problem and they just can’t fulfill the promises in real terms or if they do fulfill them they can they can fulfill them in monetary terms because it can always print money to do it, but That the base is the value of each money monetary unit So and this is why I mean so I say we’re in a sovereign debt crisis people say why I’m gonna prove it What’s what’s your evidence to support that? I’ll tell you my first first and most important evidence is gold’s at a record high and going up Consistently and Bitcoin is very close to a record high So the two monetary assets that the government can’t print are performing extremely well Against those things that governments can print to me. That’s a really big clue That you know that we are in a sovereign debt crisis and the money is at risk and fiat money is at risk So Yeah, and if I look at the you know, the UK it’s sort of stuck in this and I think this is probably the u.s Will face as well stuck in this situation where okay, they they’re worried about printing So they you know, they’re still printing but they don’t want to try and print as much but then so then they go the other way and raise tax, but that’s the opposite because then that just destroys growth and Yes, and You know and they you know, they’re very creative I mean they figure a lot of ways to print and not call it printing like that You know when the when Silicon Valley Bank blew up, you know They bailed it out basically and print a lot of money to do it and you know, they called it the you know term Term lending facility.

They’ve had some fancy name for it and said it wasn’t QE. It wasn’t printing money, but it was It was and and and they’ll do that again, I mean they’ll create things that that they say are not printing money But they are printing money. I mean They just because they have to without the money there the whole thing collapses Yeah, there’s been a lot of talk of sort of doge Auditing Fort Knox and actually going in and then repairing the goals and to the actual price.

Do you see that as being something? Fascinated by everything that’s going on the gold market I don’t think your listeners followed but you know the LBMA has been shipping a large amount of gold to the comics on the comic is doing that because a lot of people are taking delivery off the comic because they’re worried that the gold is not really there and You know those of us in the gold community are very suspicious of the feds Claim that we have 261 million ounces of gold did Fort Knox West Point in Denver and San Francisco And the reason we’re skeptical is because since 1953 it hasn’t been audited and you know They ran a gold pool in London gold pool from 61 to 68 and you know Some of it easily could have been sold into that and you know, it’s a big honeypot that maybe the government tapped We just don’t know but the fact that you know It hasn’t been audited and the excuse by the way a lot of people have asked for that on Paul and others over the years and The excuse was always it would be too expensive to audit it, which is just hilarious to me I mean you got a government spending, you know, six hundred and six point seven five trillion dollars You know, I mean just counting a bunch of ours. I mean that you know, maybe it would cost a couple hundred grand but Compared to some of the other things government spends money on it may not be a bad use of the money. So You know the sense got percent the Treasury Secretary just came out this morning and said he’s sure the gold is there now That to me was like a tell because he knows that people are worried about it And so he felt like yeah, because generally speaking they wouldn’t even talk about it, right? This is they don’t I mean government officials are loath to talk about gold because they know it doesn’t help their case So the fact that he had to say something indicates to me that he’s getting questions about it, right? So that’s point one Point two he parroted what has always been a line where I’m sure the gold is there I’m not worried about it, which of course, you know, he’s an official of the government He kind of has to say that but you know And then he went further and even said and any senator is welcome to come take a look at well I hope somebody takes him up on that And it’ll be somewhat tough to find, you know Somebody can go down and do it and and probably more importantly the tougher thing is actually the gold may be there But what you don’t know is what’s happened in the exchange stabilization fund what’s happened in the Federal Reserve’s dealings with the Federal Reserve is authorized to deal with central banks banks Large entities all over the world and what you don’t know is what how many times over has the gold been sold? How many people think they own gold but don’t? I kind of compare it to a game of musical chairs where those of us who are in the gold community Have watched this for years as they’ve sold more and more paper claims to the same ounce in our opinion And whether it’s ten claims per ounce of you know that we hold or a hundred It doesn’t matter if suddenly everybody starts to doubt the trustworthiness of the people who hold the gold It says yeah, I get it.

I got a claim on it But I just didn’t why don’t you just give me the ounce and once you deliver it? Well, that’s like the musical chair game where the music stops. Everyone looks for a chair and there aren’t enough chairs So yeah, that’s that’s kind of going on in the background But I you know to be fair I’ve seen this stuff before and they’ll find the gold somehow No, they’ll probably hold it all together I mean, I think at some point that scheme could blow up But I would I would not be prepared to say that at some point is right now I mean having said that there is kind of smoke coming out of the windows I mean, though the lease rates are high the delivery times are long You know, there’s a Swiss refiner that recently said they you know They didn’t have the ability to sell any bars in the next for the next six weeks eight weeks I mean, so there is you know, there’s notable tightness in the gold market right now, which again, I think that reflects the notion that More and more people big sophisticated investors wealthy individuals countries all the above are beginning to recognize that we are in a sovereign debt crisis and They’re beginning to think to themselves. How does one protect against that and the oldest form of money that can’t be debased as gold.

I mean Certainly central banks have got that. I don’t have the charts right in front of me But if you Google I mean find them pretty easily Central bank buying of gold has been very large and consistent and growing the last five years So, you know and central bankers are monetary wizards who kind of watch things very carefully and so the fact that they’re doing that that’s a tell you know that they They think it would benefit their country to own more gold rather than less. They’re not selling their gold There are other times when central banks have sold been net sellers of gold, but that’s not true at all right now No, they’re making record buys.

So So it feels to me like there’s a you know, there’s a knowledge and a trend coming where you know sound money assets gold Which is analog sound money And Bitcoin which is digital sound money are gonna perform pretty well I mean, I you know I know that I’m Bloomberg the analysts are saying that the $2,900 gold price are projecting a year out It’s 22 that this is kind of a blip and it’ll get solved and go back down I’m like, what are you guys thinking? I mean, I get a year out. It’s gonna be for I Think it’s three four five years out. It could be 10,000 ounce I mean, it’s you know There’s a lot of demand behind this and when a gold market gets a gold bull market gets going it tends to really multiply in Value say similar to Bitcoin in that way so Yeah, do you see they’re being sort of divide I guess Globally because I’ve heard an argument that maybe it’s because people have worried about tariffs.

They’re trying to sort of get there That’s fair and that’s that could be a part of it It could be part of why the truck people trying to bring it back to the United States because of the tariffs But I’m not sure that’s the whole story. I think that’s a possible explanation for part of it But I also think there’s more to it than that. I think it I think it’s other stuff as well Okay, and then what why so, you know, you have a sort of component of both gold and Bitcoin But why did why you think that Bitcoin could be more of a solution? Well, so I mean bitcoins are better bitcoins better than gold in terms of sound money I mean gold is old-fashioned sound money and it has the benefit of Been around for 5,000 years.

Everybody knows what it is And it’s not very volatile in terms of its price, you know The biggest drawdown ever was right after 1980. It was like in the low 30s As you know Bitcoin has had multiple drawdowns of over 70% three or four of them And that’s because we’re in early days in the adoption curve and it’s either going to the moon or it’s dead The emotions on it are quite extreme But you know Bitcoin enjoys a couple of really substantial advantages over gold one Verified you’d see the blockchain somebody say this is my address you can look at it go. Oh, yeah, you do have it.

I get it to You can move it very quickly. You know, you can in ten minutes you can do a transaction I mean try doing that with gold. You got to load it onto an airplane or boat and it’s heavy You got to verify it and there’s been a lot of fake gold out there.

There’ve been guys who and They’re bleached in China where they were taking tungsten, which is close to the same weight and coating it with gold It’s a gold bar, but it was really a tungsten bar with a gold wrapper on top of it You know that and and you can lie about how much of it you have because it’s it’s centralized not distributed Whereas Bitcoin is distributed not centralized So everyone can look at the entire blockchain and know where the coins are and how many are in each address and so on and so Forth that’s verified on a regular basis. So, you know China claims they have a certain amount of gold I think they have more than the claim They have we claim we have a certain amount of gold. I think we have less than we say we have I mean It’s just a more opaque market and you know when Bitcoin got invented they created triple entry accounting You know a debit and a credit but also a third entry which is somebody can look at it You know the ability to see it from outside the system You know, you can go and see the address and see that the money is really there which is a very powerful idea Yeah, no, definitely and I guess you know, do you see sovereign? Do you think sovereign support have bought Bitcoin because I guess I don’t know if you’ve there’s a Well, we know El Salvador did we know Bhutan has we know? You know the u.s. Hopefully hasn’t sold the 200,000 coins.

They have and they’re talking about a strategic crypto reserve from I Was the Middle East in December and we subsequently learned that what I heard is a rumor there is in fact true Which is that the United Arab Emirates? Has been Huddling Bitcoin so has Oman so have the Saudis From what I hear coming out of Putin and he’s talked positively about it thinks you can’t stop it And you watch the hash rate over in Russia. I think there’s a decent chance that they’re accumulating it The one I think is kind of missing the boat and I could be wrong on this the very smart people But it’s China because it typically been very hostile towards it and they’ve been huge buyers of gold And so I my sense is that they’ve made the bet on gold and have probably ignored Bitcoin I’d like to see us You know in some kind of a currency recent event, which I think will happen have to happen could to deal with a terrible inflation That’s downstream here and some kind of a currency, you know recent event. I’d like to see us just skip gold and go to Bitcoin I think it would give us a strategic advantage over, you know, China Russia and Middle East But you know as a practical matter Probably a lot of people who are just like no gold is tried and true.

Let’s go there. So What to see how it unfolds? Yeah, yeah and I guess a lot of people say that you need constant increases of the money supply to have growth in your economy is Is that true or is that a myth? No, it is. Well, well, okay.

Let’s talk about that. It’s It’s complicated and the book talks about this. Okay, so the Keynesian model Suggests that you have to continually grow the money supply and You have to have a certain level of inflation or else you run the risk of falling into a deflationary collapse like the Great Depression And that model is wrong.

That’s a lie It’s not true, but they’ve sold it to us because it benefits government and it benefits financiers who are generally Keynesians Deflation is actually a very good thing and something you want because what it means is you buy Deflation suggests that your economy is getting more efficient You can buy more for less in the future and that savers are rewarded not debtors It’s the natural state of economies it’s the way the United States was in the 1900s or 1800s when we’re on the gold standard and It’s the really the highlight of Jeff Booth’s book where he says, you know Deflation is the natural condition of a well-functioning economy. Things should get more efficient cheaper, etc over time The problem is the monetary system we’re running is structured with debt and more debt on top of the old debt And so it’s set up in a way that actually requires inflation because if you had deflation the debts would go bad and so the the conflict here is we’re trying to run an inflationary, you know a Deflationary economy where the technology is allowing us to do more for less and cheaper and faster We’re trying to run that on top of a monetary system. It needs just the opposite of that Constant inflation or else they’re gonna die.

And so so it’s it’s really a challenge, you know to integrate those two thoughts but You know, I I think that over time The sound money side is going to win out because I think what will happen is the inflation You know, we’re in the 70s in my view. We’ve got a big one one big wave of inflation. They raise rates.

They tamed it They’ll now start probably start cutting. We’ll get some more on you know, unemployment and some rule will get broken solidly When it was broken, but that trades right back to what started at and you know, they’ll just They’ll start printing. No, they’ll have to Because if they let it die, I mean that that just doesn’t serve their interests Those are of anyone’s interest and so what the government always kind of figures out.

It’s a it’s a it’s easier to Explain away than the inflation than it is to explain away an economic collapse You know like like the depression so So I think there’s a very high probability. We will have a serious inflation in our future And you don’t see any way that maybe they could you know doge comes in it’s very successful it sort of almost resets the I Guess the current system, you know, maybe AI has this large amount of growth that sort of helps us grow out of there Yeah Look I mean another thing. I mean a lot of things you could save the system.

I mean cutting expenses, you know raising taxes Although the recessionary, you know a huge burst of productivity growth would definitely help I mean if you know and AI is certainly poised to make the world a better place and do a lot of cool stuff Yeah, I kind of reminds me though of the dot-com in 2000 the dot-com bubble 2000 shows around for and participate in and At the time, you know It was like the Internet’s just going to completely change the world and you can’t make money and you know Can’t lose money investing in any internet project. We don’t have enough fiber We’ll never have enough fiber the traffic is going to go exponential from now until forever And and that was how you know Cisco went up as much as it did and all the other stocks went up as much as They did and you know what they got ahead of themselves and there were some really stupid ideas brought out and finance and they failed But the Internet didn’t go away, you know some of the high-flying stocks did but it reconsolidated down to the lower level and We were able to add, you know You know, we from there. We kind of went forward.

So Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, it took 10 years to get back to the highs of many of those. That’s right Some of them didn’t make it back and what really happened actually there was a change in the leadership I mean when in 2000 when that bubble started bursting, you know, Amazon was just a bookseller It was kind of a dream Google was still early search.

There were other forms of search And Facebook, I don’t think even existed until a little bit later You know a lot of the businesses that became real businesses on the internet You know, we were a long way from having zoom and from being able to talk halfway around the world, you know on our computer right You know, but you could see stuff was coming. I mean you knew You knew there would be new technologies coming that this internet thing had just changed the rules of the game in a big way but it kind of it kind of outran the excitement, you know after a week or so and You know, you’ve got to continue to keep it interesting or else you lose your audience Yeah, definitely and I think that’s the thing it was sort of slowly then quickly all at once but if we you know Could this also just create another? Similar system where the Bitcoin is, you know Extremely well off sort of these overlords almost and then the rest of the people who didn’t jump on the bandwagon Sort of struggle. Do you see the rest of that? See? I don’t think so I mean, yes that obviously people who own Bitcoin are gonna be better off but they’re gonna sell some we’re gonna sell their Bitcoin They’re just gonna get more widely distributed and as that occurs and by the way, it’s not too late to get in And so as that occurs You know, it’s gonna become money for everybody It always has been money for everybody and the thing is I think it’s really great about it Anthony is it’s fairly distributed in the sense that nobody has an advantage over anybody else.

Nobody. It’s it’s a fair system And that’s that’s you know and human beings, you know You know smart, you know ethical human beings you know want fairness in society as much as they can because it just makes society better and This is a this is a mathematical machine for creating fairness in the money, which is we’ve never seen it before That’s a huge innovation. So You know and Back in 2000.

I mean, I couldn’t see what was gonna happen I mean, I knew the internet was important. I knew it’s gonna change things. I knew businesses would emerge I didn’t know what they were You know, I mean the eBay came along.

I mean that was a good idea, you know Online swap meet kind of thing. I mean there were and there were a number of them There’s so many of them that grew out of it and this I think the same will be true of the Bitcoin space that you know, they’re gonna be all kinds of obvious implications and applications for For this kind of money and when the layer 2 network starts working really well I’ll be zapping each other’s stuff and you know, it’s gonna it’s gonna get really good But it’s gonna take time to have the infrastructure built between here and there right now Yeah, I’ve heard you talk a lot about how you know, it might be It does sound like it could be quite difficult to shift away from you know fear to sound money But on the other side, there’s this, uh, you know something quite great Yeah, I think that’s right I mean, it’s the transition period is going to be a rocky and bumpy period I sadly I think there’s any way to avoid that. I think some of people old bonds are gonna really have a hard time you know because You know, the the problem is it’s just a classic old problem We’ve just we’ve made too many commitments too many debt commitments.

We can’t honor So they have to be debased in real terms or the debt has to collapse. I mean Hold the debt the debt goes bankrupt. It’s worthless.

I mean, you know, I often I In the past compared the US government to like the family That is taking out credit cards and using the new credit line on the new credit card to make the minimum payments on their old Credit cards and that works until you find you can’t get any more credit cards And then and then you suddenly you guys start paying the debt back and your income You know that family may not have the income to do it and and that’s kind of the United States I mean having the World Reserve currency we could just keep taking out credit cards and run up debt and people would pay for it but now People are kind of moving away from the dollar. They’re starting to choose gold as an alternative You know the US bond market is not I mean a lot of the US bond market has shifted towards the short-term end of the curve and The reason that’s rumored that that’s occurring is that you know foreigners and others don’t want to buy 10-year government bonds because they recognize The government’s got a print money and they’re gonna get debased You know the the real if you look at the game the way it’s constructed right now The biggest sucker at the table is anyone who would buy a long-term bond Because well, they may be getting 5% interest But they don’t realize it’s just how debased the currency will become in the next 10 years or 15 years. It’s gonna be terrible And so they won’t get their money back on a real basis Yeah, and that does sound similar to sort of post-war and that’s I think yeah I’m sure the u.s. As well.

Yeah, they had big inflation in that time frame to the bondholders got killed, you know Yep, so Larry thanks so much for your time. We’ve sort of all different places. Yes.

All right I’ll start a bit but thank you very much. I really enjoyed talking to you and you know, let me just if again again It’s the book You know, just so just again on a description of the book You know the I wrote it to make it it’s because there are a lot of great bitcoin books written, right? I mean the Bitcoin standard is the best one ever and when Lynn Alden’s is kind of close behind it as is Jeff’s and Those are great books I’ve given them to people but sadly, you know average Americans They’re a little too textbook II for average Americans So I’ve tried to make this a little bit more of a narrative a little bit more fun I’ve told more personal stories and anecdotes and I’ve kept it simple Because what I want, you know, if we want to get to a sound money system, which I do We’ve got to get a big political movement saying we need sound money. We want to get a big political movement That means you got to get a lot of people And there are a lot of people who aren’t really interested in focusing on money or finance or anything related to this But my hope is that I think this book is a really good tool For introducing them to the system and how the financial system and how broken it is and then getting them to think about okay Yeah, given that what can I do to make it better, you know, and that’s that’s the Bitcoin choice And so so that’s so it’s kind of targeted at you know Just anybody who is interested in learning more, you know Anyone who’s suffering from inflation or anyone who’s interested in learning more about what’s going on in this fourth turning? This is a good book to you know, I think to educate them.

So that was the goal Yep, and is that the message you want people to take away from the book in the conversation? It really is. Yeah, it really is. I mean, I hope obviously, you know, I want to sell a lot of books make a little money I mean, yeah, it’s a brother.

You don’t make much money on selling books There’s the margins are really skinny Amazon and the printers take most the money But more importantly what I really would like to do is I really want to change the narrative and get you know a sound money movement I want to get the sound money thing out of just the shadows of gold and Bitcoin guys and girls and into the broader conversation of this is what we got to do if we want to have a productive society and A lot of the problems that we solve or we’re Suffering from can be solved by going back to the sound money, you know system. So That’s the real takeaway. And so if you buy it, you’ll like it Hopefully you buy more of me give me your friends you pass it around, you know Just I mean we got it, you know, we got to get a consensus to go in this direction And I think the books a good tool I mean, that’s I’ve you know, I wrote it and I’ve gotten feedback on it that you know, it does it does that mission? So that’s hopefully, you know, everyone will if you you know, if you’re Bitcoin you believe in Bitcoin, you don’t need to read this book I mean, you’ll you’ll learn some history in the first half because I go deep on the history of how we got here But in the second half, you’ll know everything I’m writing about the difficulty adjustment all of it But but what I think you’ll find is I think you know once you read you’ll say, you know, this is the book I could give to that friend of mine who’s a skeptic and They might read it and go.

Oh, you know what? I see. He’s got a point. You know what I mean? That’s it’s worth considering.

So I think the book falls into the bucket of because I you know, I Counterobjections, I have a chapter called skepticism that my wife helped me, right? I mean, I just you know, I really kind of come at it from every angle Because you know people are afraid of this stuff and I understand why I mean Sam Bankman free didn’t do any of us any favors Right. He the crypto stuff is bad and it’s distracting, you know, it’s not Bitcoin as you and I both know so But but this book dealt deals with all that and You know, I’m one of the best reviews I got an Amazon I read the guy said something was very similar He said if you give this to somebody and they really take the time to read it and they don’t come out of this thing Wanting to own Bitcoin. They’re crazy Because because I just I come at it from every single angle the case for it That’s kind of like I’m just trying to pound it into their head like you should buy some Bitcoin You know so Yeah, definitely hopefully they do so, um, yep Exactly but uh, yep.

Thanks again for your time though. Oh good. Thank you.

Enjoy talking to you. Hey everyone Thank you for listening. You really appreciate the support if you got value out of this I’d really appreciate if you could like subscribe or comment, you know good or bad feedback I’m always open to that but it really helps to the channel as I said before only about 14% of people actually subscribe to this Channel, so if you were to that it would really help it could mean we could continue to grow If not, thanks for watching and see you on the next show and you also might like This video right here.

Alright. Thanks again