A New Golden Era (Uncut) 02-24-2025

A New Golden Era: The Roadmap to Economic Resilience

All right, welcome everyone. This is a, I’m going to call it a special edition. The reason I’m saying that is it’s kind of dark here in Washington state, and I’m talking to Ed Gustley, who will introduce himself in a moment, but Ed and I’ve known each other for several years.

He’s pretty high up the food chain in Indonesia, and one of my subscribers connected us, and we’ve remained in contact ever since. Ed, why don’t you give us your background, and I’m going to come back with a couple of questions, and we’ll start the interview or the conversation. Well, good.

It’s good to see you, David, and thank you for inviting me onto your podcast. Hopefully, I can illuminate some of the things that we’re seeing, or as your audience is probably questioning, or not sure, or pondering. By way of background, I’m the co-founder and managing director of Panetta Capital, and our focus is on the strategic deployment of capital, benefiting the growth opportunities among the 10 economies of ASEAN in Southeast Asia.

I’m based in Jakarta, and I’ve been in the region now for 33 years, originally from the United States and grew up in Ohio, but my whole career has been international, investment banking, corporate, and policy advisory work. I had served as the U.S. senior advisor to four presidents and finance ministers in Indonesia, which actually began post-1998, the fall of President Suharto, and the collapse of the Indonesia economy, which had to be reconstituted through a degree of IMF and World Bank help, and to kick-start the economy, we had to restructure the banking sector, capital markets, the top 100 corporates, and additional government agencies, kind of like what we’re beginning to see in the United States. So, if anyone from DOGE is listening, we have a lot of counsel and advice to be of help to the United States in that regards.

The crisis that hit Indonesia from 1998, IMF measured at 10 times the magnitude of the U.S. Great Depression on society. So, it was a major reset, and since then, Indonesia went from a $110 billion economy in 1998 to $1.4 trillion today, and it’s the largest economy in Southeast Asia. On a purchasing power parity, it enters the top 10 of the G20, and in the next 20-25 years, it is forecasted to be probably within the next top five or top six economies in the world.

So, we’ll hold out judgment whether Indonesia can grow to that size, but certainly, in my experience out here, helping to rebuild where I’ve been asked to, and certainly take part in the private sector of mobilizing capital for opportunities, it has a very good future. And just in general, if you look at the 10 economies of Southeast Asia, it represents 680 million people. The mean age is 30, so you see what is green can only grow and what is ripe can only rot in certain parts of the world, and this part of the world is very green, and it can make mistakes and recover, which we’ve seen.

But in general, it’s on the right trajectory, and just to give you a context, majority of this young demographic dividend has never walked into a bank. Everything is done via mobile or digital, and as we begin to look at what is the next 20-25 years going out, I think this area, and certainly Indonesia, will be very promising if it can get the right signals from the international financial system, which seems to be in a transition of resetting, and whether that reset will erupt or will it take a, we’re hoping, a glided path toward whatever that next platform will be in the context of what we’re seeing going from a unipolar world to this multipolar world. So, in a nutshell, that’s what we see things, and again, kind of my career arc has been, if I were to sum it up, is simplifying complexity to deliver the impossible, and I think that’s where we are right now.

Very good, extensive background, and I’m really happy that we’re able to connect. So, really, what we want to talk about is something you sent me recently, and that was how you see the reset potentially taking place. I couldn’t poke a lot of holes in, and I’m kind of known to be level-headed, a deep thinker, never know it all, trying to be alert at all, but you proposed some ideas that align with the way I think we might align with the growing debt debacle, and there are ways to mitigate it, and what you outlined to me was really, made sense.

So, we decided, hey, let’s get on this. So, here it is, night in Washington State and morning in Jakarta, and we are connected. So, go ahead and outline your basic premise for the audience on how you see this reset potentially taking place.

So, some of the moves we’re seeing under the Trump administration, and he did make some moves in his first term, but this time around, I think they’ve got a solid game plan that they’ve been allowed to really prod and plan out, and as I would say, their ability to get the right people on the right seat of the bus to execute, and so this period is really about execution and to move so quick that it keeps your adversaries on the back foot. I think part of that, what we’re seeing is movements, whether we’re looking at a reset of how to address the $34 trillion deficit that we have, or moving away from multilateralism to Trump’s approach, which is bilateral relationships, which gives him leverage to play the ends against the middle to see what he can get for the United States in this context, and part of that is, how do you begin to write down the debt? When we look at the projections, even if we have the ability, as our current U.S. Treasury Secretary has said, his sweet spot is to see inflation at around 3%, economic growth at 3%, and the budget deficit never to exceed 3% on an annual basis. Those are all great numbers, but you’re not able to grow quick enough to bring down the debt, nor are you able to inflate the currency to make that debt even smaller than it currently is in the context, and so what we learned during the Asia financial crisis, and certainly my work with Indonesia, is there is going to be a degree of resetting and potential, quote, haircuts, haircuts meaning discounts on redeemability of bonds and other forms of debt instruments, in return for potentially upside in the form of equity or other types of avenues that would allow for the crystallization of those assumed paper losses to be greater for you to accept the future value of.

So having said that, I think my comments to you were about, if we were looking at resetting, this could involve the move to a digital system, and that digital system would be the next platform, and one of the reasons I feel that we certainly are moving on it is because what I’ve seen in the work that I’ve done, both with central banks and finance ministries, is there is a long-term game plan to move to a digital system of currency, and part of that, if you remember, was tested a few years ago in some small island nations coming up with their own digital currency. I believe the first was tested in the Caymans or the Bahamas, and a few others were testing it out. Certainly the digitization of the Chinese yuan was another beta testing of that, but what we’re beginning to see and then conversations around, well, what if we move to a digital currency backed by precious metals to give it some validity in that process? I think we’re seeing elements of that.

For example, the paper trading in Comex and the calling for deliverables of gold in large quantities, for example, just looking at my notes, the U.S. recently took possession of approximately 30 million ounces of physical gold. That doesn’t send a good signal that you have a lot of confidence in the current international financial system or banking system. Something is being prepared, and we’re not sure what that is.

So you have a recall of physical gold holdings, and so that fits into the narrative of Trump’s approach moving away from multilateralism to bilateral discussions. His focus on leveling the playing field with trade. I could see a situation whereby, for example, give China and its holding of U.S. Treasury bonds.

In the past, it was a little over a trillion. I think the current assessment is they still hold about $800 billion worth of Treasury bonds. I could see a situation where you’re offsetting those Treasury bonds with respect to the discount associated with the trade deficit and redeeming those bonds for digital 100-year bonds.

Depending on what that deficit is in trade would determine the discount of redeemability for the existing bonds, which would then be swapped out for 100-year U.S. dollar digital bonds backed by, let’s say, precious metals or gold. That is the scenario that, again, crystal ball thinking could potentially occur. We’ll have to see more movements and calculated signals from the U.S. government if that is afoot.

Of course, no one wants to give away their hand in that process for fear of completely disrupting markets. But I could see this in quiet, behind-the-doors discussion whereby you are seeing certain bilateral relationships being called upon to offset the trade with the redemption of U.S. bonds commensurate either with the discount of where we are on the trade deficit in return for receiving those digital bonds. I do believe we will be issuing 100-year digital bonds for the simple fact that Trump was very upset that under the low interest rate environment where it was around 2 percent that he indicated we didn’t take advantage of refinancing our deficit at that 2 percent interest rates and issuing 100-year bonds.

He planted that seed. Now it comes to the point of, why do I feel this is going to move in that direction? Well, if you look at Indonesia, Indonesia has just recently announced that it wants to open up its own state-owned bullion bank to provide precious metal deposits for its citizens. That is significant because, as you know, Indonesia is a gold producer.

We have Freeport McMoran, one of the largest gold and copper mines in eastern Indonesia on the island of West Papua, shared with Papua New Guinea. We never really have an accountability of how much gold is ever pulled out of there, but we have a degree of how much copper is because it is processed and exported. So we are looking at the ability to start moving toward, if we do not believe that the U.S. dollar will hold its value and purchasing power, then what is to replace it? Signals are to me that when a country like Indonesia decides to set up its own bullion bank to begin to offer security for gold deposits and also precious metal account savings plans, that is a very strong signal that either Indonesia is hedging its bets on the system abruptly imploding or alternatively is part of the long-term international financial system reset, which is this transition.

So those are my thoughts that you and I had discussed about and happy to listen to your take on it. Sure. A couple things.

I want to come back to the second one. I want to stay with the precious metals. So there’s people that are concerned about a central bank digital currency.

They’re concerned that they don’t want it centralized. They want something that is private. And I think that could definitely be accomplished.

We already obviously have a lot of privately maintained cryptocurrencies. Very few of them are gold or silver backed. But here’s my point, Ed.

There are states in the union that have stated that they will not adopt a CBDC. And yet we have stuff like the Texas Depository, which I got somewhat involved with. I’m fairly well connected, as you know.

And I was asked to contribute my two cents worth when that discussion was going back and forth. So with that in mind, what’s your thoughts on maybe some of these states going into a state depository, issuing a digital gold-backed currency, let’s say, as an alternative perhaps or in line with the coin of the realm? So I’ve been following at the state level what’s taking place in the treasuries of these states, setting up their own bullion banks and making precious metals, gold and silver, money in the standpoint that they have to be settled for any currency one to one. I think in the last 10 years, we’ve gone from Texas and I think Utah leading the way to over two dozen now, if I’m not mistaken, states who have approved or are in the process of approving legislation for that cause.

And again, that is a, should I say, an alternative to any of these states wanting to adhere to a central bank digital currency. So they’re going to do that. And I think it’s a good thing.

And the response from the U.S. government could be two alternatives. One is, again, they’re going to continue to push with a CBDC. Or alternatively, we could see the unwinding of the Federal Reserve.

And that would then be an issue of going back to monetary policy under the purview of the U.S. Treasury. So that would be very good. The question, though, is with the states is, will that be fully segregated and accounted for of the gold backing a digital currency? Or is it going to be kind of where we are today, not knowing how much gold we truly have if we go back to a gold standard? And the only way I can see the states being effective in their implementation of a digital currency is to make sure that it is one to one for redemption of paper money.

But if the digital currency is only 10, 20 or 40 percent backed of its value, I see that as counterproductive. It has to be one to one. I agree.

Just a side note, you may recall, I was actually there when the governor of Utah signed into law that you could use gold and silver throughout the state for any transaction. The parties agreed. Monumentals Exchange, Stephan Gleason, has been instrumental.

And just a note for the public, I think I put on my Twitter feed that I’m on the Administrative Board for Citizens for Sound Money that’s focused on that whole idea. And as you stated, many states have come to the fore over the last several years and it continues to grow. So, you know, the states rights thing is something that I have said in the past could be, I say could be a way to bring about, let’s say, a sound or more sound monetary system.

I’m going to pivot a bit unless you want to add on to that. But my pivot is to Judy Sheldon, Dr. Sheldon, and I interviewed her as good as gold on her proposal to use gold. And her idea is to back the long bond with gold and have some type of measure at the end that you can either redeem in gold or gold equivalent.

You can say anything you want, but bring that up in your thinking, because I think it’s starting to put gold into the front of a lot of Americans thinking that really never thought about gold. So maybe I can take a step back, but also link it to what President Trump wants to be. He’s already throw the spaghetti at the wall.

So you have to understand Trump’s approach is throw spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks in that 24 hour news cycle. But when you peel it back, there’s truth to what he intends to do. And let me go back to his announcement of setting up a sovereign wealth fund.

The sovereign wealth fund, and back to my premise of US Treasury going back and being in charge of monetary policy, would be the ability to aggregate all of the assets of the United States, which would then back any form of digital currency offered. And that can involve our gold and silver and precious metals reserves. It can be our national forests and lands, which have zero value on the books, but can be valued at a degree of what current market prices are.

So we have a pool of assets that on the US balance sheet carries a value of zero. Gold is already being discussed about being reevaluated that the US government holds. So you can start to see, okay, they’re going to reevaluate these assets, they’re going to bundle and pull that into a sovereign wealth fund.

And then perhaps that sovereign wealth fund will then go to Treasury and saying issue currency against that backed by these assets. That’s one way of looking at this. And why I think that’s important, it goes back to what people don’t understand the history of President Kennedy with Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno.

And this dates back to the late 50s before Kennedy, but Sukarno was in charge of the non-aligned movement of developing countries. This consisted over 100 countries who did not want to be aligned with the Soviet bloc, nor did they wanted to be aligned with the US Western NATO bloc. They wanted to remain independent and being able to do business with both spheres of influence.

Sukarno was appointed to be the trustee of the gold of all of these 100 countries. President Kennedy gets into office, Sukarno and JFK have a very good relationship. They come to meetings of the mind that to begin to alleviate the poverty of these developing nations, the best thing to do would to pull their gold reserves together and issue what was called the Kennedy bond against those gold reserves.

And that those funds would then be used and redistributed to help with economic development and building within these nations. What people also don’t know is that there was a Kennedy dollar issued through US Treasury, backed by these Kennedy bonds. And those dollars had red ink printed on them to distinguish them from Federal Reserve dollars.

Now this of course upset the banking system and I think it’ll become to light within the recent document drop on the JFK files that indicated that there were certainly those within the international banking system that were not for what JFK was trying to do was to move the monetary policy and the issuance of US dollars to US Treasury away from Federal Reserve. His executive order was issued six months prior to his assassination. When President Johnson took over office, the first executive order he rescinded was this Kennedy bond executive order.

And that broke up what was this initiative of the Anonoline Movement countries led by Indonesia’s President Soekarno as the trustee of the gold, which was going to be then backing these Kennedy bonds for those funds to flow back. The fallout of that was two years later, the World Bank was set up and the ADB, Asian Development Bank was set up to do that purpose of focusing on economic development. So that’s an interesting historical perspective that most don’t have.

Certainly, I’ve learned to appreciate it and understand it. But when I look at that, and I look at the context of what’s happening in the US right now, I can see what President Trump is throwing out as a sovereign fund backed by US assets, which have not been valued yet, pulling into that base, and then issuing a US Treasury digital bond, like I said, 100-year note, if you will, backed by those assets, including whatever gold reserves or precious metals that we have as part of the mix. I don’t think our gold reserves are sufficient enough to back it one-to-one, but certainly the rest of the United States assets could do that.

And then we’re on sound money trajectory, David, as you’ve mentioned. Right. I’m going to go ahead and move back slightly.

I think both our audience are sophisticated enough to know that the way the Constitution was set up was the Treasury was supposed to be in charge of them. And on Christmas Day, or evening rather, 1913, the Federal Reserve was voted into existence, which really usurped the power of what the Constitution stated, which is for the Treasury to handle the money. So Kennedy came back with Executive Order 1110 and put basically the ball back into the Treasury.

And I have my desk drawers been pulled out, but I don’t want to fumble here, and show the United States note. So in today’s quote-unquote money in our currency, it says Federal Reserve note at the top. These say United States note, to back you up.

But what I want to make clear for people that may not be sophisticated as most of our audience is that it’s supposed to be with the Treasury. It hasn’t been for a long time. Ron Paul and many others have talked about auditing the Fed or getting rid of the Fed.

But it’s easier said than done, because if it were to occur, you have to be very careful on how you do it. And that’s what you’re outlining here, is we have a debt obligation. We must meet that debt obligation.

We might need to take a haircut. But as long as, as you outlined, it’s done in an ethical man-to-man, I’m going to really make sense for all parties involved. Because let’s face it, there’s not just the United States debt, which is number one, but there’s debt in Europe, there’s debt all over the place.

And if I could see an off-state reset in quotation marks, but really we need that. But we need to do it in a sane manner without a bunch of, well, if we just close down the Fed day of tomorrow, everything’s sunk. You don’t know.

We have to use our heads. We have to have a plan. We have to execute it properly.

And we have to involve our counterparties. So maybe I got a little winded on that, but I just want to make it clear, because someone’s going to find this and they’re not going to know. But what’s interesting, I’ll drone on a little bit longer, Ed, but you know, I start on the internet.

I mean, hardly anyone knew that the Federal Reserve was a private banking consortium. And now almost anyone that’s been on the internet for more than six months knows that as a fact. But you go back 25 years or so, and probably three or 4% of the population knew that.

Now probably 90% of the population knows that. So we have some political clout in the realm of what is the right thing to do with the United States and who is actually in charge of our assets and how should it be allocated. And of course, going with the Treasury would be far superior than, let’s say, a banking alliance that is quasi-governmental at this point.

I won’t deny it. I mean, I studied the Fed for quite some time. But anyway, I don’t want to go too far, but certainly add some color to that.

And thank you for letting me pause a little bit. I just want to make it very clear that some people may be confused of what you said about Kennedy, which is spot on. And it really concerns me because Trump purportedly, I haven’t been in the Oval Office in a while, but he had a picture of Andrew Jackson on the wall, which as we know, would indicate that his thinking may be back to the U.S. Treasury handling our monetary affairs.

So back to you. I think you’re spot on. I do feel there’s a transition taking place.

Just to also note, there’s only two central banks in the world which are not in private hands. That is North Korea and Iran. So our two known adversaries as well.

So figure that out. But back in 1933, under Roosevelt, the confiscation of gold from U.S. citizens was at $20.50 per ounce. And then they revalued it at $35 an ounce.

And to many, that was just massive criminal theft. So my concern is, we’ve had 30 million ounces of gold physically moved from London to the U.S. and other countries are calling their gold reserves back on their own sovereign soil. And if we do go back to a digital-backed currency, you know, will they make the owning of physical gold prevented by law? You know, that’s a real issue.

My take would be most likely not because there’s a number of ways to control the purchase and sale of gold. And right now, if you look at the retail consumers, they’re not really participating in gold the way we would expect. There is not an uptick in gold coins being hoarded at this moment in time.

So that I don’t see potentially being the issue. But what I do see the issue, and like you have indicated, is how do you acknowledge that we have a problem? Number two, what is the recommended solution to that? And are you able to manage that transition in such a way that those who feel you’re taking food off their table do not retaliate in a scorched earth way? And I think that’s critical on how you do this dance. I think of all presidents that we have, perhaps President Trump is probably more in tune with how to deal with creditors, having been involved in a number of bankruptcy filings and proceedings and debt workouts and negotiations.

So I think he has the psychology and the mindset to know how to deal with an aggrieved creditor in this regards, or a party who does believe that you are taking food off their table. What is the alternative solution? And how is it going to be better for me? I think that is something that is going to have to play out. But if they do have that transition plan and everyone a part of it realizes that they’re going to have to give up something in order to benefit from the long-term value, then it takes someone like President Trump, who’s been in those negotiations and has evolved himself in those circles before.

I don’t think it’s going to be led by bureaucrats in any context. Great, thank you. Let’s look at the topic du jour, and that is, of course, the Fort Knox Gold.

I’ve done a couple of interviews recently, and of course, some people aren’t aware that they have the impression. In fact, I’ve heard a couple well-known podcasters state the facts, and that’s okay. It’s our specialty.

I’m not claiming I know everything, but the statement’s been all of the gold of the United States is at Fort Knox, and of course, that’s simply not true. There’s some in West Point, there’s Denver, there’s the New York Fed, and there’s some that the Mint holds. But regardless, we need to audit it.

And then if we audit it, what we need to know is what I said on an interview, the location doesn’t prove ownership. I might be storing some of my gold in Indonesia with Ed Gustley. Your house doesn’t prove.

Well, we’ve got, just to let you know, we have 14,000 islands that make up Indonesia. Just pick one. Okay.

So can you comment what you think might take place if we do this audit, or at least this look-see, and it is there or it isn’t there? And if it isn’t there, would it be wise to let the people know right off the bat that it isn’t? What are your thoughts? Well, that’s a good question. I mean, so if it’s not there, then where is it? And so you better have that question answered before you go in. So you can say, well, it’s in a secure place because, you know, we had homeland security threats receive that over the years on Fort Knox, and so we moved it many years ago.

Well, where did you move it? It’s safe. Don’t worry. It’s secure.

I mean, that’s all they can say. Now, having said that, if they’re able to do a proper audit wherever it is, you know, again, how believable will it be? And the fact that we’re not on a gold standard, people are saying, well, we’re not on a gold standard, so if we don’t have it, we don’t have it. Then it goes back to what I was prefacing about, well, we have a sovereign wealth fund which has assets of the U.S. government on behalf of the people as part of that asset pool, and it’s a quantum of, you know, three or five or 10x of whatever gold reserves you have.

So don’t worry. Yeah, thank you for that. I was not trying to lead you, but you gave me the answer.

You answered the way I would think about it. So here’s the other forecasting, and this is not conspiracy, but I do think, and I put this out there a few years ago when there was a conference I was at, and I remember the gentleman talking about the exploration and mining of nearby asteroids. Now, some people will roll their eyes, but, you know, 10 years ago, this was very serious.

It had money backing it. The board of directors of that particular firm had what I would call the national intelligence individuals on its boards, generals and everything else, to make it look like it was a real bona fide entity, and they were going to go after that. In fact, I think James Cameron, the film director and producer, had funds into it.

In a nutshell, the company’s focus was to begin to explore and to begin to mine nearby asteroids, and NASA has a complete catalog of what the valuation of those nearby asteroids are based on its mineral compositions, and one of the asteroids, for example, had critical minerals and expected gold values and others that valued that asteroid at over $10 trillion, and people are rolling their eyes in the audience like, how can that be? Well, it was a great website to pick on this asteroid. This is NASA’s estimation on its satellite and other ability to identify what the mineral compositions were, and the list goes on and on, you know, from a billion to 10 trillion, whatever. The question is, well, if you bring any of those minerals back, let’s say in the next 20 or 30 years, it’s going to distort markets.

You know, you flood the market with these types of minerals and the price goes down, but what people weren’t thinking about was that these minerals, including minerals on the moon, which has helium-3, which is a reactant for fusion reactors, and only takes two former space shuttle payloads to bring back that helium-3 and power all the energy needs for the United States. So when you begin to think about this, I’m also thinking about what is the next asset pool that we are looking at, and I think it will be the collateralization of space, and that could be collateralization of minerals and elements on the moon, of nearby asteroids, but those minerals and assets will not be brought back to Earth. They will be used to build space-based assets once we figure that out over the next 50 years.

So the only reason I inject that is once we find a way to, today, aggregate all of the U.S. government assets into a sovereign wealth fund, certainly they will be greater than any gold found or not found at Fort Knox. That should back any form of digital currency issued by the U.S. Treasury, not by the Federal Reserve, or alternatively to be allowed to be shared or be a part of any state-backed digital currency in that context. So this goes back to sound money.

The reason I throw the space-based asset collateralization example out there is I think if you look in the next 50 years, once we’ve monetized these assets on Earth, we have to look at the next frontier, and that frontier will be space, and I think the U.S. will lead in that category, and in order to do that, it will need assets to collateralize, to issue debt against, and raise capital. So those are, if I were looking at the next, say, 50 to 100 years, which would make sense that we would have the necessary confidence to issue a 100-year bond backed by our existing pool of assets if we’re able to do that into some sort of vehicle or arrangement that allows for those assets to be pulled together to allow for the offsetting of our $34 trillion current deficit, or at least cutting deals on a bilateral basis to bring down that number as much as we can, just like we’re looking for efficiencies and cuttings within our own budget as we speak today through DOJ. I think those are all Trump’s goodwill measures that we’re doing everything we can to cut, but in the meantime, we’re going to need other partners to come along and share that pain in order to benefit from the upside.

I’ve got a subjective question for you, Ed. You know I respect your thinking and it’s purely subjective, but what is your take if or when we go into this reset and people know we’ve got this much gold, we’re sending it back to the U.S. Treasury, we’re basically on a sound financial basis that everyone understands, the tax code is simplified, in other words, the reset is basically beneficial to all, not just the United States, but worldwide. We’re basically transparent, we know who’s who in the zoo, and things really can move forward.

Do you think that that kind of a quote-unquote reset would give a huge relief to the political strain that we’re feeling at this time, and a lot of it has to do with the worry, concern, and fate of the monetary powers the way they exist now? I think it will, because what it does is it eliminates the discussion of, let’s say, the BRICS, which has been obviously rising in stature, determining that they may issue their own currency or any equivalent of that. Just to give you an example, the BRICS in my estimation is nothing more than an extension of the non-aligned movement that started the 1950s, which was led, as I mentioned, by Indonesia and also India. Again, Kennedy was an endorsement of and wanted to issue Kennedy bonds against that.

Well, fast forward today, the BRICS are trying to position themselves as a hedge against the collapse of the U.S. dollar and international monetary system. They are trying to create a second lane of redundancy should that happen. Now, the question is, will they be able to mobilize quickly in a fashion that will allow that to happen? My answer is not in the next maybe 10 to 15 years.

So maybe that is the window we are looking at that is being started under the Trump administration to put the necessary building blocks in place to account for what is the value of assets that we do have, to put them in a vehicle, which is, for lack of a better term, a sovereign wealth bond or a sovereign entity that can be ring-fenced and not be subjugated to deficit spending against it, nor the issuance of fiat currency against it. So that goes back to sound money. Would that give a sigh of relief to the world? Absolutely.

Would it ensure that the U.S. is the reserve currency going forward? Absolutely. Could we see a multipolar currency issued? Perhaps. We have special drawing rights at the World Bank, which is the calculus that all member countries are able to draw against when they need funding from the World Bank as a member, and that special drawing right is a basket of currencies.

So there is nothing that would stop a basket of sovereign assets being pulled together to form the basis of a digital currency that would be allowed to create that necessary redundancy to our existing system. So the question, as we started off this conversation, is how do you manage that transition? And I think all the things that we’re seeing, the rumblings, the market commentary and fear, the hedging of other countries, is this going to be a smooth transition? Is it going to be or is it going to come to an abrupt end? But I do think that level heads will prevail. I do believe that these conversations are taking place at a very high level and very deep behind the scenes.

I’ll give you an example. The current Indonesian president, President Prabowo, launched his 2045 Golden Era Indonesia plan. And so that’s the next 20 years of how he envisions taking Indonesia, which has been growing at about a five percent rate, up to eight percent.

If we can get up to eight percent of GDP growth, then a lot of the still issues and concerns that we have with regards to economic wealth and distribution will be resolved. Funny enough, when Trump made his inauguration speech, he talked about the golden era of the United States. Now, I’ve been involved at the highest level of policy advisory and inside cabinet meetings on both sides of the pond.

And I can tell you that when you have presidents articulating a vision and using very similar terms for that vision, that is not a coincidence. I think that is, like anything else, it’s programming and social engineering of what to expect in the next 10 to 20 years. And what we’re going through right now is jockeying for position on the chessboard.

Who is going to benefit from this if they position themselves right? Who is feeling that someone’s taking food off their table and is going to have to counter that? And if we can find a way to bring them inside the tent, realize that everyone is going to have to share some pain for what we expect as part of this reset. And our leadership able to articulate that and convince the general public that, yeah, we have to roll up our sleeves, but this is the vision we have and we will do our best to be transparent, to be accountable, to demonstrate and build the necessary trust and goodwill to make that plan happen, then I think that’s what we’re going to begin to see. But right now there’s a lot of market noise.

There’s a lot of internationally folks upset with the Trump administration and its approach simply because that’s President Trump’s negotiating style. Drop the grenade in the middle of the room with all your bankers on one side, watch them scatter, force errors of your adversaries so they can’t respond the way they think they want to respond or have they plan to respond, but force them to the table to sit down and make real decisions in a hastened way that hopefully at the end will benefit the United States in the outcomes that they envision that they want to have. So I think that’s what’s taking place.

And to your point, will gold be a part of that? Back to Fort Knox, if there’s no gold, they’re going to have to spin it, but the rest of the U.S. assets are a magnitude of five to ten of whatever gold we could have, so don’t worry. Okay. Well, you’ve covered everything that we outlined in our conversation prior to doing the podcast.

Is there anything you’d like to summarize or state before we close out? Well, there’s a reason why they call President Trump bumpy Trumpy. And, you know, having done both sovereign and corporate debt restructuring during the financial crisis of 98 and seeing how the strategy and tactics employed in negotiations and the reconstitution of an economy, of a political system, of a financial system in this part of the world, I think gives me some degree of benefit and insight as to President Trump and his administration’s approach to this and what we’re seeing. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun to watch, and it certainly is not going to be without pain.

But I think what we were beginning to see on a global scale is this transition taking place. As I mentioned, Indonesia has its golden era. Trump announced that it’ll be a golden era for the United States.

That term golden continues to pop up. I think it crystallizes people in the understanding that gold has been used as sound money for 6,000 years. Bitcoin has been used as cryptocurrencies for the last 15 years.

I put my bet on sound money before I would put it on digital. But there will be some sort of marriage between the two that gives the necessary comfort and confirmation that how we reset this will be sound money and assets. Will gold and precious metals be a part of it? Yes, it’ll be part of that portfolio, but the portfolio has to be constituted way larger in value than just precious metals.

I think that will be a part of the themes and the priorities and the actions that we begin to see coming out once we begin to settle this fever and commotion taking place. If that does take place, then I do see other coordinated efforts among like-minded countries that the United States and that Trump has negotiated good bilateral relationships with to be a part of that system. Like anything else, do you want to be inside the tent or do you want to be on the outside of the tent? If you are on the outside of the tent, then it might be very difficult for you.

It also speaks to this re-approachment with Russia and certainly China and recognizing their role in this process. Very good, Ed. Well, it’s been enlightening.

I’m sure we’re going to get some interesting comments and I think we should probably revisit this. I don’t know, maybe six months from now, I don’t know, but I think there’ll be a lot to talk about as we go into the golden age and it gets better defined. But I think you outlined it very, very well and I think you gave a level-headed, clear-thinking approach that I think could give comfort.

That’s why I asked that subjective question because even at the level of people that really don’t think about finance or international finance or anything like that, there’s sort of this underlying feeling that people have, kind of like the Matrix movie. You know that something’s wrong, you felt it your entire life, but you don’t know what it is. It’s sort of like this debt-based Ponzi scheme that we call financial system.

And I think once we can let out that, oh, we admitted it, we took care of it, we’re moving forward. So, I’ll leave it at that. Ed, I’m sure we’re going to revisit this topic probably, I’m guessing, six months from now and see how far down the road we’ve gotten.

And if something happens more rapidly, which it seems like these, I’ll call them bombs in quotation marks from the administration, are rapid fire at this point, it may be as soon as a couple, three months. So, I’m not saying it’s going to be six months, it could be much earlier, but I really like to revisit the topic as we further the approach to what the Great Reset. Well, I appreciate you having me on.

It was great to see you and catch up. And like I said, I’m looking forward to our next conversation and see where we’re at. I mean, the last thing I would say is look at the situation driving down the road with your headlights hitting a deer.

Everyone’s kind of like, what do we do? And everyone’s looking for answers. But level heads will prevail. You know, make sure that your own financial situation is sound, do the best you can, grab some popcorn, watch the show and see how this plays out.

All right, Ed. Thank you so much. Thank you, David.