MarkZ (Uncut) 02-03-2025
Coffee with MarkZ. 02/03/2025
Hello all. Stuart, isn’t that curious? We got a plate full today. Hello, Sister Sledge.
Hello, Twitch Bejeweled Lab Man. Hello, Jett. Hello, Oki and LSU.
Hello, Eric Soba. J Hart, Patricia. Wait, yesterday was your husband’s 79th.
Hopefully it was an awesome birthday, Patricia. Dylan’s going to do the big 16. Wow, Steve, that is awesome.
Oh, man. How many of you guys remember your 16th? That feeling of freedom. Is he fortunate enough to have done everything dead on the days, et cetera, and get his license today? Or is he going to be stuck in that, couldn’t get the permit, blah, blah, blah, stuff? Listen, just to put note, the Iraq Department did pass.
Yep, we’re going to talk about that one. What now? Hello, Digital Soldier. Yeah, I’m not surprised.
Hello, Bob. See, Bob just said activity was a very high level and continues to be, and I normally receive a daily call from West Palm Beach, but did not yesterday. No, it is a good sign, Bob.
Let’s just say they’re running in overdrive right now. Hello, Easy Does It. Jay and Amy.
Daughter Sydney is going to celebrate her 52nd. Well, I hope the young lady enjoys it. Never thought I’d get to say that.
When did this happen? Hello, Raz. Joanie Dow. I knew the Dow was going to take a ugly hit.
Hello, Ray. Oh, man, isn’t that awesome? Hello, Mark, I’m really digging drinking your coffee. Aren’t they good? It’s like a treat, a fun little extra in the morning.
It costs more to have real quality, but I’m loving it. We’re almost out of the torture phase. I don’t think it’s going to be bloody torture anymore.
It’s the good stuff now. Hello, Dink. How about this Canadian tariffs? Now, I think it may actually improve things, and we’re going to talk a little bit on that, Dink.
A lot of people seem confused. Why are we having tariffs? Why are we having trade wars? Isn’t the golden age? Isn’t it about to hit us? Isn’t all this money flowing around the world? We’re going to talk about it. I think everybody needs a little bit of a reality check that Christ hasn’t returned yet, so until then, we’ve still got a lot of stuff to fix, and trade imbalances is a big part.
The U.S. has been giving away and screwing their workers for many decades, and it’s time to balance, and other countries have been taking advantage of it. We became the enabler, and they became the junkie, and it’s time to change the relationship for everybody’s good, but we’re going to dive into it. Don’t worry.
Ooh, I need to stay a little bit focused. It’s fast. How fast can stock market sentiment change in an instant? Look at today.
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Hello, Graham. Saying fire is three. Not yet, Graham.
Just wait. Gonna be a lot of back and forth, a lot of values popping in. Just stay calm.
We still have to keep our hands and our arms and legs inside the ride at all times. Spot gold at a record 20. Oh, man, I’ve not even looked at that this morning to see how gold is responding flight level.
Let’s update that and see where we’re at this morning. It seems everybody else is checking the values right now as well. Yeah, get mode two being prepared.
There’s a lot going on. At 2832.10, silver at 3155. Huey, not quite.
That’s one we’ll see if we can get Andy to explain that on Wednesday. Blazing truth was shocked last night when I checked out my crypto portfolio. They went on a buying spree.
That’s another one you’ve got to stay calm because it is going to fluctuate. Sonnetha, Ontario government stopped sales of US liquor starting tomorrow. Plus, Ontario government sent out NSF checks to Ontarians.
NSF checks. What’s an NSF check? National Safety and Food. That’s what it means here in the US.
About time. Thank you for that. Much appreciated.
Hello, C. Maldonado. Hello, Irenka. Hello.
No, non-sufficient funds. Oh, wow. That makes sense.
Like NSF and banking. Obviously, I’ve spent more time in the restaurant world than I have bouncing checks. Phoenix.
Hello, Greg. They will be working. That’s right.
It started. US government has their first full week back at work since pre-COVID right now. Elsie’s birthday.
Happy birthday, Ms. Young. Elsie did it. Waiting another minute or two.
Waiting for the ads to wrap up. I started a minute or two late, so that means the Twitch people are going to be stuck. I will have to let you guys know I was so busy reading about Chuck Schumer’s recent developments and uncomfortable position that he has put himself in.
Kind of a little distracted, and I looked up, and it was already a couple of minutes after the top of the hour, and I had to rush. Craigslist has an ad for crisis actors in Utah for February 2nd through 6th. Just this whole need for, I mean, just think about how crazy that is.
Britt saying, just read an article a few minutes ago that said Trump dismissed the tariffs on Canada. I don’t know if it’s true. I mean, stop, drop, and think about this.
Everybody’s upset. Everybody’s panties in our water, whatever it is. Mankini is crunched up and strangling you, and you listen to some of the Canadian politicians.
It’s pretty simple. Trump asked for two reasonable things. Control your side of the border because we do have a lot of drugs flowing from the north to the south.
It has become a very porous one. We have a lot of immigrants, illegal immigrants, coming from Canada into the US. All he’s asking, make it more secure, do your part, what you’re already supposed to be doing for your own people anyways, make it more secure, and make a plan to either take care of yourselves militarily or pay for the military aid we give you.
All we’re asking for you to do is pay your own bills, do your job, no tariffs needed. We do have a majorly unbalanced trade relationship with Canada. We have an unbalanced trade relationship, period.
It all stems back to the Bush senior Clinton days, to the GAFTAs, NAFTAs. Obama doubled down with the Pacific Trade Rim. I’m trying to remember exactly what it was called.
They gave away our workers. They get to move stuff here with no tariffs. Anything we send out, big tariffs.
Seriously unbalanced, lopsided. Even if we have a revaluation and a reset tomorrow, we still have major trade imbalances that need fixed before it happens again. Or we’re going to get all this money and all the jobs that continue to stay out of America.
We’re not going to have manufacturing. Every country should be doing this. Of course, every other country, not every other country, most other countries are already sitting in the cat seat.
They’ve already got the top view because they got better trade deals than we do. We have shitty trade deals. He’s fixing that.
He’s leveling the playing field. He’s not asking for something unreasonable. He’s asking for it to be fair.
When you have been the one receiving everything and not giving anything, though, you kind of get butthurt. You got used to it. Lots of freebies.
Now the freebies are over. He’s not asking for anything unreasonable, Canada, at all. For Canadians that suddenly start paying for more things, Americans start paying for more things, it’s all about your government not wanting the freebies to stop.
That’s the painful truth of it. We can sugarcoat it. We can put a little whipped cream around the turd, but it’s still a turd.
That’s how it works. I love this. Tanya, happy birthday, my twin Tina.
Happy birthday to Tina and Tanya because I happen to know how this works on the twin thing. Bill, a lot of upset people about the USAID agency getting shut down. Originally started by JFK, it has gone seriously astray.
It’s another one to talk about today. Oh, you love this one. See where Janet Yellen received $7 million speaking fees for Wall Street.
Isn’t that cool? All right, a little bit of a late start, but let’s get to it. Your news time. We should probably start with what we can find in the news and then get to what we’re hearing and what happened over the weekend.
Iraqi Parliament approves budget amendments clearing the path for Kurdistan oil exports. For those that have not done the math, that is about $20 million more a day in revenue, about 400,000 barrels of oil that was not going into the budget that was being sold that now goes into the budget. That is over $10 billion per year, largely offsetting any budget deficit that was occurring in Iraq.
They’ve also agreed and funded salaries. Enormous breakthrough over the weekend. What’s next, though? After that, after the adjusting, after the agreeing, now it is time to send the budget tables and finish those this week.
And the plan is to finish them this week. Probably my best example for you guys, you’ve gone in, you’re at the car lot, you’ve agreed to a vehicle. You said, okay, this is it.
Finally, it made up my mind. It’s going to cost me this. I’ve got five grand to put down.
Whatever it is, you’re going to buy a new car. They bought the new. They’ve agreed to buy the car.
Now it’s time to sit in the finance cubicle and work through the details and sign all the papers. That’s where we’re at in the budget process right now. Decisions have been made.
Color’s been picked out. Car’s been picked out. It’s available.
It’s about to be delivered. Now you’ve got to sit in the little office and sign all the little fees and initial each page and all that. That is where we’re at in the process.
A lot of people were expecting a rate this morning after the weekend. I cautioned them that they were foolish and they were just a little ahead of themselves to stay calm. Enormous things happened over the weekend.
Great things happened over the weekend. Not time to go to the bank yet. We’ve got a little more to cover, and then I’ve got to tell you some, well, interesting banking things.
Iraq and the oil race towards America meet the top exporters. Well, things have changed. Now that Canada is saying, hey, we’re going to add on energy, it’s going to start costing you more.
The U.S. said no problem. We’ll just buy it from Iraq. Iraq is going to fill that gap for oil to our refineries, which is going to increase how much they are allowed to sell per day, a couple hundred thousand more barrels, as they replace what was coming from Canada.
It makes Iraq more stable, more prosperous. It’s going to hurt a little bit on the Canadian side unless they start selling to China because they’re not going to be able to replace those values unless they discount them somewhere else. It’s like Trudeau.
Even on his way out the door, he’s still screwing Canadians because he doesn’t want to do the right thing, not because they don’t know they need to, but because he hates Donald Trump. Because they hate Donald Trump. They are perfectly willing to throw Canadians and American citizens under the bus because they hate Donald Trump.
Greg, the Iraqi parliament voted on Sunday on the draft law of the First Amendment of the federal general budget law. Yeah, isn’t it exciting? Now we just need to finish the budget tables. Al Mashadani to the Iranians.
Resolve your differences with America through dialogue. I thought that the Iraqi parliament speaker is visiting his counterpart in Iran. Iran is like, oh crap, what are we going to do? Iraq has become the go-to center for calm, stability, and negotiating between the U.S. and the Middle East.
And his suggestion? Sit down with them. It’s time you sit down and have some open dialogue and say, you know, oops, what has been in the past is in the past. How do we move forward? I loved it.
Just some really fun stuff happening in the Middle East. Iraq’s doing so well and has so much commodity, still has a rate of 13.10. Why do they need to change it? Because they’re not doing that great. I mean, they’re doing great.
They’re bringing in money, but it’s a rentier economy, meaning it’s not sustainable. Any fluctuation in price and they’re screwed. So they need to properly represent that.
So internationally, they can move to an exporter of finished goods, full economy, and not be at the whim of political change or oil prices. This is very important for Iraq to change the rate. I know that seems like a really short explanation, but we’ll be diving into that a lot throughout the week this week.
It’s going to be a fun week. It is also time to start thinking about what it might look like when we exchange. I’m going to try my best outside of Iraq to start bringing fewer news stories so we can do more Q&A time this week because a lot of people are concerned.
Did you hear about the pilot for the PAT helicopter was an employee of Biden? Oh, yeah, we got all that to talk about. We got a lot to talk about. Talk, we’re getting to it.
Let me finish getting through some of the other stories. We’re going to get into the chatter. Okay, we don’t actually need to do any of that right now.
Let’s get into the chatter. Let’s break out the notes. We already talked about the salaries paid.
Now it is time for the budget tables. They said they will expedite them. They will take care of them this week is what we are hearing.
Also news stories, not just my contacts that work in Iraqi banking and government, but also from the press in Iraq saying they are dealing with the budget or the budget tables this week. We already talked some about Nasser and money, why the tariffs because we still have to fix the trade imbalances. Otherwise, we will just suck cash out of our own and give it to the other countries.
We have to fix that. Ideally around the world, guys, you would have about dead even trade exports and imports in a country. We have nowhere close to that in the U.S. anymore.
We used to be a net exporter. Now we import entirely too much. It is unsustainable.
It is unsustainable in any country in any economy. That was one of the things. But now let’s get into banking.
Bank contacts this weekend. You know what they did? They spent their weekend training preparing for fundamental monetary and banking changes, not specific to their bank. In other words, let’s just pick some bank names out of thin air.
You guys, well, all right. Like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, HSB, Chase, whatever. It wasn’t specific to their internal banking.
They were preparing and getting educated. Now they did not share what they were getting educated on. The only response I got is that they were training and learning and preparing for a fundamental monetary and banking changes.
Sorry, I’m looking at my notes to make certain I get it right because this is what they received. So they’re learning about a new banking system. The comment was assets will be much more important.
But I did not get more details over exactly what that means. Does that mean like new money? Does that mean rainbow currency? Does that mean, hey, we’re going to go back? I don’t know those details. But I found it extremely encouraging because this is one of the major banks that we’ve all considered to be part of this.
Found it very encouraging that that is what they were learning. And they were told very specifically that this is not individual to their bank. This is an entire worldwide and countrywide change to banking.
I wish I’d been in that room to learn. I mean, really wish I would have learned. Excuse me, been in that room.
Trisha, do you have any idea how idiotic and stupid that is and sounds? Too many of these people in here know me in real life. They’ve hugged me. They have pinched me.
Hell, there’s one in here that changed my diaper. I’m not Harvey Weinstein. And whoever’s saying it is a brain dead idiot or just really misinformed.
One of the two. But, of course, if I really were, then that’s what I would say, right? That I’m not. It’s all.
I mean, how do you even deal with something that stupid? It’s stupid and it’s wrong. There. How was that? Did I handle that right? I think I handled that right.
I mean, it’s absolutely idiotic. Has that ever occurred? 90% of the time, guys, things are exactly what they appear to be. I did hear XRP was used for a seven-figure loan.
Aussie, they know it’s a new system. They don’t use the same terms we use. They do know it will use quantum banking.
They do know it’ll use new computer systems, but they don’t call it the same things we call it. And as to what they’re being trained on or learning, I don’t know. That’s the part that really chafes me right now because I don’t know exactly what they trained in.
Or were educated on. They may not have trained on a single thing. They may have just been educated on what to expect out of a new system.
Todd, that’s crazy. We all know Mark’s actually JFK Jr. in a mask. On the weekends, when I wasn’t rolling around in the wheelchair, I was playing Joe Biden.
That’s why I had such a tough time on the steps. I can’t believe that mess, too. Texas artists, I don’t know when it’s going to go.
To me, with the progress we have seen in the last days and the trainings or education seminars that were going on in a number of banks around the country, I don’t think we’ve got to wait that long. Dinard, dude. I’d just say ignore those comments, Mark.
Let them live in the stench of their ignorance. That’s what I normally do. I’m just stunned that people are naive and ignorant enough to believe it.
Batman and Robin. All I can say is you should be horribly embarrassed if you believed that I was Harvey. Yeah, all right.
Anyways, let’s get back to it. Reading a few of these oceans. Oceans, Razor Mark.
They’re trying to poke their head. Don’t poke the bear. But I am really looking forward to… I don’t know.
Do I just live and let live? Or post-RV, do I really go on a rampage with slander suits? Nah. Live and let live. I’ve been awfully wrong about things in my past.
I really thought, in order to take care of those nasty terrorists after 9-11, that, I mean, they suckered me in. Yeah, we’re going to need to blow up things in Afghanistan because a bunch of terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. I mean, it made no sense.
So, you got to give them the time of day to allow them to figure it out, too. Big Papa D. The use of tariffs is perfect offering to get rid of income taxes while reducing government spending. The crooks do not want this.
No, they do not. They are unhappy, and that is some of the stuff we got to get into. Legitimately fake news.
White House debunks the Democrat freak out over DOJ access to secure spaces as Musk drops red pills over USAID biolabs. This whole organization, they were doing and funding illegal, constitutionally illegal, against American laws, and funding gain-of-function, and he dropped the receipts. USAID funneled $53 million to EcoHealth Alliance, which then used U.S. taxpayer funds to support gain-of-function research on coronavirus and Wuhan lab research that likely led to the creation of COVID-19.
These are some of the things that USAID was spending on. So, it is time for an accounting. That’s all.
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Invite them in. Heck, they may find out that you were being screwed by your paper supplier, that the folks over at Dunder Mifflin were charging you too much for your office supplies, but you don’t know because you never let anybody do the research.
Oh, it gets even better with DOJ over the weekend. Musk reveals Treasury has been auto-paying everyone, even known terrorist groups. He even found out they were auto-paying him, that nobody had to approve it.
Once it got put in, they never went back and looked. Are we supposed to be doing this? Are we not supposed to be doing this? All we know is we were told to approve every payment. We’re not allowed to question it.
Let’s see. The DOJ team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career, not even once.
So they’re melting down. They are very, very unhappy because they’ve already found over a billion dollars in contract cancellations that should have not been being paid, but we were still paying them because that’s what we do. We have billions and billions.
Of course, they just started, guys. They’re days into this, and they’ve already found billions of dollars of waste, not trillions yet, but billions, money that wasn’t supposed to be going out that was going out. How is this a bad thing? It’s kind of like when you go through your bills and you realize you’re paying for two Netflix accounts, a lot of stuff that you don’t even use or can’t use because you never went in and cleaned up your automatic charges, your credit card charges, what the kids may have done when they signed up for a video game, all those things, but it’s become taboo in the United States to go back and clean those up.
Well, that just changed, and there are a lot of unhappy, unhappy bureaucrats out there because one of two things, either some of their contacts and family members or friends that were getting those payments, or it just points out how absolutely inept they were at their job. So either one of those, you probably don’t really want broadcast all over the news. Archer mad, I’m glad you enjoyed that one.
Ever see the squirrel with, oh yeah, no, no, no. I saw it, it was funny. Don’t know if it’s germane to our conversation today, but it was a cute picture here.
See if I can pull it up for you. This is the Streams or the official Mark Z squirrel mascot. And the squirrels, what would you call it? You’re not really care, let’s call you the caretaker.
Sent a picture with a bub of teeth, look at it holding the nuts. I think I grew up with this squirrel. I think he was in my shop class.
He’s a good squirrel. Scott, yes, once HCL is complete, we do expect it to be days, which is really cool because HCL could well actually be complete. A major roadblock was removed yesterday.
That does not mean it is finished yet. I made the comment yesterday and boy, I think I upset a lot of people, but it’s true. So what next? It’s gonna be a very important week to watch as the budget tables go forth.
The framework is agreed to, now we just need a few more rubber stamps this week. Column Jaws, ooh, I like that one. He can be jaws, he can be part of us helping to overthrow the world, like you remember, like James Bond, but a good jaws.
Tommy, the reality is hitting the UK as you said it will. People pulling out their gold, but there’s a shortfall in gold held as many at once taking it out. Yeah, the LB, the London Metals, actually LME, London’s Metal Exchange, is seeing a massive outflow as it’s flowing and going into vaults in the comics, going to foreign countries.
A lot of the contracts are actually being called for delivery. Yeah, it didn’t take a rocket science to figure out the UK has screwed themselves financially, but so has Japan. The US, awfully close.
You didn’t miss any fun bank stories this morning though. There was a good one from the Redemption folks, but that’s in the news, just go back and watch it. Let’s see, Melanie Hines had her contact in Iraq said HCL was done over the weekend.
What did she miss? The truth? We got awfully close other than that. No, it was extremely positive. I do not blame people for being extremely optimistic about what happened over the weekend, and theoretically HCL is now done.
There are a few little pieces to finish as we wrap the boat. Go back to my example this morning, very beginning of the show. Think of it as buying a car, and HCL is the car.
We’ve now agreed to the price. We’ve agreed to the down payment. We’ve agreed to the cut.
We’ve agreed to the exact car we’re picking up. Now it’s time to sit down in the finance office and initial all the little paragraphs, sign everything we’re supposed to sign so that we can walk out the door with the keys and the title. You just had a few overzealous gurus over the weekend, and they have every right to be excited.
It is extremely exciting. I’m loving this one, Dave. I’m offering free, shallow, Folgers-approved precious metal storage.
Just send your metals to me. I will bury them for you. No, I’m not going to tell you where I put them, though.
Jay Branch, with all the news you heard this weekend, what’s your gut telling you time-wise? I don’t know for certain. All I can do is tell you my best gut guess. I’ll feel a little better later in the day when I get updates, hopefully get updates out of Reno.
All I have so far are my Asian and my European contacts for the day, so I want to find out what they’re talking about here on the West Coast before I solidify my current opinion. But from everything I’m seeing, my guess is, oh, there’s more training next weekend for my wealth management slash exchange personnel. So they get another weekend.
They’ve got to be at work for at least part of a day. Could that be the one? We know that we have a few budget things to square away this week in budget tables. I don’t know.
I’m feeling really good about next weekend. It doesn’t mean it’s the day. It just means I’m feeling really good about it.
Set medic, very much, very much still expect. Oh. All right, there’s something I can’t say.
Yeah, very much expected to still go with it. Angel, the UK is screwed. EU stripped us of our industrial base and the US owns our natural resources.
Yeah, US isn’t much better. We’re just not as far down that road to rot, Angel, so it’s going to be easier for us to bounce back. We still have a lot of the factories in close to ready-to-go condition.
We’ve resuscitating a couple of shipbuilding facilities far faster, far faster. A lot of the regulatory red tape disappeared suddenly last week or about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. Something happened in the world somewhere around the third week of January and everything changed in the US and they have fast-tracked getting employees in, builders, repair, putting more shipyards back to work, still factories, you name it.
The US is, Trump sat down. His team has reached out to key leaders in the manufacturing industrial world and they’ve been very quietly working together. All the naysayers are out there saying, oh God, he does tariffs, it’s going to screw America for decades.
It’s going to take us 10, 20 years to come back up to speed. No, they’re doing it at a mind-boggling speed. The EU needs to do the same, but unfortunately, your leadership will not do it.
Just like German leadership continues to bend the German people and manufacturers over. What they did with gas and agreements, heck, what the US did to you guys went, well, I believe that the US and CIA and intelligence at least knew about, condoned, or helped operate the Nord Stream bombings, et cetera, so they’ve cut off gas. It has devastated you guys’ aluminum industry in the UK and in Germany.
Every time we sit around, every time we turn around, Europe is screwing its manufacturing base. And when you screw your manufacturing base, you screw your long-term wealth and your middle class. Stefan, shipyards, just two different shipyards.
One of them actually made the news. I believe it was Charleston, South Carolina, as they are increasing, starting to, they’ve taken over an older facility and they have started producing ship parts already or sending all the equipment they’re gonna be producing, large parts for the government and for commercial shipping. And there’s another one that’s happening, but I’m not allowed to give the location yet.
It’ll be in the news soon. I’m reading these, gonna bring, I don’t think, Jeff Demers, I don’t think we need a Black Swan event anymore. I think we would have needed one if it occurred before Trump, but I really don’t think we need one now.
BHGA, for a long time, Charlie said that the RV would happen on a Thursday. It’s possible. It’s one of the two dates that is most likely, I’ve been told, I’ve been told the absolute most likely will be on a Saturday night, Sunday morning, meaning like somewhere between 11 p.m. Eastern on a Saturday and 2 a.m. in the morning on a Sunday, somewhere in that three-hour period is where the banking is the quietest around the world.
And that is, I was told, logistically the easiest time to do it. Could that have changed? I was told another easy time to do it because the system also does an update on Thursday evenings and then another one on Saturday evening. They do one kind of like close down the week before the weekend and then they kind of reset so that bankers don’t have to work too hard on a Friday or at least that’s what I call it.
I’ve been told the second most reasonable time to do it would be a Thursday afternoon. Doesn’t mean that they gotta do it on any of those. Could be a Tuesday morning.
Tommy, what is your reasoning? Just interested. Don’t think the RV will occur until after March 4th. Just curious in the timing.
What makes you think that? Nader’s post wasn’t happy with all the tariffs. He’ll get them. He’ll understand them soon.
You’ve got to negotiate from a position of strength, not one of weakness. Let’s talk a little bit about that one. Actually, this one’s a better one to talk about first.
Panama says it will not renew Belt and Road Agreement with China after Rubio visit. One trade war already done, already over with. We’re just trying to secure the hubbub with Panama Canal.
Look, this is all Trump was asking for from the beginning. He wanted us to be treated fairly and he felt like it was a national security risk to have China running the Panama Canal and the ports at both ends. It would allow for, I mean, who knows? What’s being searched, what’s not being searched, what’s being transported.
They could have moved all kinds of missiles through the Panama Canal so that they could put them in commercial boats and shipping all around the US. I mean, we needed to secure that for our own peace of mind. Plus, we were being screwed.
We were paying considerably higher than Chinese. All of our companies, trade companies, were operating at a disadvantage. All he did, all he did was level the playing field.
That’s all he’s done here. And bam, there you go. Level playing field with Panama.
Now, let’s get into it. Which US products? Some eggs, some lumber. They are going to load up.
Things that we’ll have to pay more coming out of Canada. Now, if you’re in Canada, they’re tariffing our cigars or cigarettes or tobacco or nicotine-containing products. Alcohol’s kind of back and forth.
I’ve not looked at the exact numbers. I know that they used to be pretty dead even as far as what Canada sent us. And we say Canada, so that’s pretty much a tit-for-tat.
Just change what you drink. Instead of drinking Crown, drink Jim Bean. If you’re in Canada, drink Crown and don’t drink Jim Bean.
Easy enough to work around. It’s also good for your domestic liquor producers, beer producers, et cetera, because now they sell more and they sell fewer imports, so the money stays local. If you’re in the US, that means the folks down at the Latrobe Brewery get to make a little money and hire a few more employees.
That’s how that one works, guys. Tariffs aren’t all bad. They do cause a temporary as the world shifts.
You just change your buying habits. I’m reading a few of these. There’s going to be a lot more talk on the Canadian tariffs, guys.
This is a raw wound. We’re still dealing with the bleeding. Pilots of the Black Hawk was Biden’s White House social aid.
Went to university at Chapel Hill. Bright, attractive. I mean, they’ve given us all the other things going with her.
She did seem to have really nice hair. Attractive, not well. I’m certain her family misses her dearly, but when I look at and I read, I’m wondering if she didn’t set the altimeter and then I find out she only had 450 flight hours when flying a Black Hawk.
I’m kind of blown away. With a nighttime training mission with night vision goggles. There’s no way they would let me do something like that.
I had over 2000 hours before I had to stop getting in a plane. Well, I didn’t have to stop. Just my plane’s a low wing.
Couldn’t get in or out of it anymore. I’m blown away. The more I read on this one, the altimeter, she thought she was about 200 feet.
She was actually about three and a quarter. Confusion during training. Why in the world would they let you train in some of the busiest airspace and in the national capital? There are so many failures here, but largely it appears that it was a not properly trained or experienced pilot and that’s always tough because that’s 99% of the time when there is a flight issue, it’s exactly that.
Even when there’s a mechanical issue, often the fatalities are because the pilot didn’t handle it as well as they could. And that’s why training is so important. You train, you train, you train, you train, you train.
Could this have been something as simple as elevation? Could they have not gone in and reset the altimeter properly so they were off? I mean, it’s not unusual when you’re flying closer to sea level, depending on where the aircraft’s been before, that your altimeter can be 200 feet off. So had she just not re-zeroed her altimeter when she took off for the area, the elevation where she was leaving? I know we always do it every time we land in general aviation as part of the check. We’re resetting the altimeter before we take off so that we don’t pierce airspace, et cetera.
But then I find out that, boy, was she really loved and liked. She even got to escort Jimmy Carter. She was a liaison.
I don’t know how you work for the military and still have time to go to all these dignitary functions. Not certain. She may have been a great pilot, not a very experienced pilot.
Somebody else out there is gonna go, four and 50 hours, man, that’s a lot of hours. It’s not a lot of hours for a military pilot, guys. Not a lot of hours.
I mean, we’ve still got all the conspiracy theories. Oh, it was remote. I mean, if you look at it, I mean, it almost looked like, it almost looked like somebody remote controlled it and flew it into a jet.
Maybe she was, maybe she was actually Harvey Weinstein, right? That’s totally a joke, guys. Absolutely inappropriate because the young lady and the crew is dead with many passengers. Yeah, I mean, just night vision goggles and a Blackhawk, one of the most lit night skies in the world.
I mean, that, I can think of, I mean, it’s a lot of stupid crap. Well, Blackhawk pilots use the headset that links the pilot to the helio for flight adjustments. TikTok, lots of years in service and not a lot of stick time.
What is, guys, I’ve not talked to, it’s just not a discussion I’ve had with any military pilots in a while. How much flight time are they getting? Is the government funding enough? Are we putting all of our money into drones and active duty pilots? Unless they fly a lot of missions, are they just not getting flight time? I mean, I’m curious. I don’t know this answer.
So if any of you guys are recently active military in flight or, I’m curious, how much flight are you guys getting? Flight time. That’s all the reasons you need. Those hours were over five years.
It’s not a lot. At least to me, it doesn’t feel like a lot because we did a lot more hours back in the day. Uh-oh, a one-month pause on tariffs with Mexico bounced the stock market.
I did not hear that. Is that breaking news? Now, on a positive note, Mr. Hegseth, Pete Hegseth, Identity Months Dead at DOD. They have cleaned house.
Now, I do enjoy this, and it does give me a good opportunity to remind. New guidance from the U.S. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, revealed the following. Going forward, DOD, Department of Defense, Components, and Military Departments will not use official resources to include man hours to host celebrations or events related to Cultural Awareness Months, including National African American Black History, Women’s History, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
Oh, wow, is that really a thing? And National American Indian Heritage Month service members and civilians remain permitted to attend these events in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours. He continued, our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s war-fighting mission. Our military is for fighting wars.
Efforts to divide the force, to put one group ahead of another, erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution. He goes into more. Our diversity is not our strength, Hegseth said.
Our unity and our shared purpose is our strength. We will be a merit-based and color-blind. That reminds me of something that I think is, well, very germane right now.
Let me pull that one up. Oh, wait, that one’s not it. Ah, here we go.
This is the one that I was looking for. It’s time to pull out a little Martin Luther King on the left. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
This is exactly what Hegseth has said. You shouldn’t be judged by your sexual preference. You shouldn’t be judged by your color, your religion.
You should be judged by the content of your character, your merits, and your work ethic. In other words, they need to be colorblind. They need to weigh and measure everybody based on their capabilities.
Loved it. Sunshine, will Trump build oil refineries in the US? I’m being told that he has, that they have already approved of expansions to existing refineries. Isn’t that exciting? I think that’s exciting.
Barbara, you do have to ask you, while she was off at all these White House functions, was she perhaps missing some of her training? I don’t know. She may have nailed every training. She could have been the sharpest pilot, period.
It could have had nothing to do with it. I’m just saying from looking from outside as a pilot, knowing what she or the Tower was saying her attitude was, it just doesn’t check out. I’m reading a few of these.
Stephanie, it’s good to see you in New Zealand. That’s a great, great question. Who was the trainer? That’s probably what we need to know next.
If there was a trainer with her, a student pilot had an accident, now suddenly it’s not as, still doesn’t change, tremendous accident, but it is suddenly more understandable, right? Student pilot. So was the, perhaps the student pilot was perfectly capable and the instructor wasn’t? I don’t know. Yep, there we go.
Fox News, Trump announced to one month pause on Mexican tariffs. So you have to ask yourself, pup Grammy, if Trump announced a one month pause on Mexican tariffs, you have to ask yourself why. What did Mexico agree to? Or did Trump just take one look at the market that was nosediving and said, you know, this doesn’t look good in my first two weeks.
I think I’m going to slow the roll here just a touch, pause some tariffs, boost the market. Or did Mexico reach out and say, you know, this is a game we really don’t want to play. Let’s work out a deal.
Get your people here. We’ll send our people there and let’s get this worked out now over the next couple of weeks. Let’s work out all the details, figure out which cartels you are going after and gave them their, gave the U.S. permission, said, hey, okay, fine.
Let’s work with it. Let’s go clean house on the cartels. I don’t, short of that, I honestly don’t think.
Try SEAD, send it on. I don’t think anything short of any of those would have been a reason for him to pause those tariffs. What do you guys think it is? 1,000 yard.
I heard another Blackhawk pilot say that a minimum of 1,000 hours per year to remain qualified. Yeah, I, maybe she was just getting qualified as a Blackhawk pilot. I mean, you gotta do it one time.
I mean, you gotta learn. You gotta be a new pilot at some point or you’ll never be an old pilot. No name.
They immediately released the names of the two males in the helicopter and waited to release the girl’s name. Why? Because she was closely related to the Biden family. Meaning she appears, they just given her like a medal of, some kind of medal of honor or something too for all the functions she helped them with and stuff like that.
So I mean, it’s because of that close relationship, which then makes you wonder, they held the name because they were worried that it would smell like an impropriety, which makes you wonder if it smells like an impropriety because it was an impropriety or were they just afraid it would have the appearance of one and there was never an impropriety. Mexico president agreed to employ 10,000 military at the border to stop drugs and illegals into the U.S. There you go. 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the U.S. border.
Th-37 Terry, my brother from another mother. Mexico looks to be playing ball with Trump. Silver going up and down.
I don’t know. Let’s take a look. It was going up this morning.
I don’t know where it’s at this morning. Now that the news pivot, it’s suddenly coming down. It’s lost two cents today.
Two cents. It’s at 3147 according to Miles Franklin. Gold up 18 though.
It’s sitting right now according to Miles Franklin at 2825.60, which means probably closer to 2830 on most other sites. Let’s see. Justin, Garrett, you guys are making my day.
I’m gonna start coming in here and not studying any news and let you all tell me what the news is and I mean that in a very good, positive way. I love how you guys dig. You find out what’s really going on, not just what somebody’s telling you is going on.
Justin, President Trump’s crypto czar, David Sachs, the whole press conference tomorrow to discuss securing America as a leader in the digital asset ecosystem. Oh, that’ll be good. I’ve always enjoyed reading a lot of that David Sachs stuff.
Yeah, Mexico has as many soldiers. I mean, they may have to borrow a few from the cartels, but from new search, new autonomous Black Hawk helicopter system draws scrutiny in the wake of the DC crash rave and it certainly has hit all over the little pieces where they’ve been working on and testing them. I’m sorry, guys.
I’m just busy looking at these. 98C. There will be a come to Jesus moment when that happens, right? No sense looking at silver prices until the JP Morgan and Bank of America collapse and are unable to suppress the price.
It’s gonna come unglued then on metals. It’s gonna be an exciting day for us. It’s gonna really suck for most.
Evelyn. No, they held the name of my friend’s friend. His name is Casey and he’s a male and left a sweet wife and three sons.
She sent me a photo of his sweet family. Evelyn, that’s what worries me when we’re all poking at these things from the outside without full knowledge. It doesn’t take into account folks like that that have lost and it’s gotta be upsetting to them.
We will get to the truth. Lilypad just spoke with the president, Claudia Scheinenbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation where she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican soldiers on the border separating Mexico and the US.
I assume that is a Trump statement, not Lilypad. Although, Lilypad, if you got those connections, we need to talk about getting you in here to help us pull together information. I’m trying to keep up with these because it is just ripping.
Diane T. They pulled from a number of different sites. Diane, they do more due diligence. They take a much safer approach on the pricing so it doesn’t swing as wildly.
They look at more sources. London Meters Exchange, Shanghai Metals Exchange, contracts, et cetera. They do a much deeper dive than a lot of the metals companies out there.
They trail a little, but they also trail when it pivots, meaning if it starts coming down, their numbers aren’t gonna come down quite as quickly. If it weren’t for shipping and arbitrage, you could actually make money playing the swings between the different companies that report too quickly and the ones that report too slowly. Guys, if you sent anything over the weekend and you didn’t get a response, I erased it like I do every weekend.
I have a handful of people’s stuff that I will read over the weekend because they really, really, really help me with the news. Everybody else, I don’t even open your email. I just erase it because it’s the weekend and I’ve said over and over and over, don’t email me on the weekend, that everybody deserves a break.
I’m only asking for a day and a half. Bejeweled, 10,000, why not 30,000? Because that’s a lot of resources. To send, feed, equip 10,000 that quickly to immediately send them, Bejeweled, it’s really logistically not the easiest thing to do, but it does show a huge sign of cooperation.
Dude, do you think all the protests in the country will bring about martial law? I think it could be, dude. I keep being told that martial law is only gonna happen in certain areas for certain amounts of time for operations to clean up. I’ve been told over and over and over that it is not the whole country going into a complete lockdown for 10 days, that they’re not shutting off your power, shutting off your internet.
They are simply controlling your newsfeeds, et cetera, so they can share the truth like they would in any national emergency so that we get the truth of it. Hey, Pete, I sent 20 emails. Now I’m, you’re killing me, Pete.
Yeah, I just, I don’t know how to get it through to people. Stop sending them on the weekend. There are a few guys.
There are a few that do. They help me with information through the weekend and totally okay. And they know it’s okay because I respond to them.
Yeah, Mexico has to clean up, do the goal. A lot of countries have to suddenly clean up, and they know they do. They know they should have cleaned up a long time ago.
I mean, the Mexican people deserve better from their government. They deserve the government that gave a damn. I mean, how would you like to be living in some of these areas controlled by the cartels where, let’s just say, you trip going out a door and you fall against the wrong person or you bump into a cartel member’s crush and next thing you know, your whole family’s killed.
It’s not unusual. That level of fear. And with that comes human trafficking and all the other things that go with it.
The Mexican people deserve a government that will work with whoever it takes, American government, Chinese government, Russian government, whoever, to go in and clean it up so that they are safe and secure. And it looks like it’s finally going to happen. Looks like you’re about to have your El Salvador moment, with or without your president’s help.
From Ms. Scheinbaum. Trad. Next is the budget tables.
Budget tables are finally moving forward. It’s an exciting day, guys. It’s an exciting day in Iraq.
I mean, the mood is fantastic. I know that I had some very excited contacts over the weekend. I mean, just downright giddy.
Very excited about this week and the amounts of projects, progress, et cetera, that will suddenly just explode. And they do. They hope that means they get a new value with the budget tables.
Boy, Schumer’s having a bad time. Schumer is having a bad one here. There’s a good article on this one you guys should read.
Let me see if I can bring it in for you all. Let me clean up the link. They did it over the American Greatness site, which is always, I mean, they do a really, really thoughtful deeper dive, guys.
Not for the people that just want the news story. These are for people that want more of the details and what goes on behind the scenes. Not news light, or at least not in my opinion.
Schumer under investigation while Trump reshapes Washington. This is all about his threats. Do you guys remember him screaming, I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you guys will pay the price.
Encouraging people to rise up, encouraging people to turn on MAGA, you name it. It seems that rhetoric he’s now under investigation for, and he should have been. Just like if Trump would have said, go to the Capitol and fight, go shake down those two judges, then they would have been very right to remove them, but he never said any of those.
He said, peaceful, peaceful, always peaceful. Over and over. But that is not what the other side, I mean, if Chuck Schumer hadn’t said those things about Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, do you think the man would have shown up, traveled all the way from California to attempt to murder Kavanaugh? That’s the rhetoric that they have been using.
Oh my God, I wonder how many people died because of Maxine Waters. Bobby, no, I haven’t been sunbathing. I need to get to sunbathing.
I’ve been to colonies 20 miles down a kale trail in Central Mexico in missionary work. They need help. The government takes all and gives nothing.
Yeah, how do you run with that one? Sovereign is sovereign, and people probably don’t want to give that up. If you were born in Mexico, you’re probably proud of Mexico. If you were born and raised in Canada, you’re probably proud of your country.
You probably don’t want it to change. Mexico probably don’t want Mexico to become something else. Canada probably wants it to stay Canada.
Most Canadians anyways, and I respect that. But when your government gets to the point where it’s untenable, when it no longer secures the best interests of the people, you have a responsibility to change said government or overthrow said government. At least that’s what we believe.
It’s what our constitution tells us. It’s what our Declaration of Independence tells us. And we assume the same of all other countries and all other people, that you have a moral obligation to change that or overthrow that.
Either way, it’s a change, right? How do you feel about it? If we have anybody from Mexico proper in here, sound off. I really want to hear your thoughts on this one. Same thing in Canada.
I really want to hear your thoughts on this one. What do you do? Would you rather restructure your countries where they care about you, or do you think that that’s impossible? You think you don’t have enough strong leaders and you need the outside help? Do you need an America? Do you want it? Would you rather be a state than have to worry about it? I don’t know that answer for me. I can tell you that if I were a Canadian, I would not want to become a state.
I would want to fix the country. I would want better relations, but I’d want to fix it. If I were born and raised in Mexico, I wouldn’t want to become another state in America.
I would want to fix it. If I were in Greenland, I’d want to become a state. Why the difference? The number of people, the population, the weather.
Greenland is one that really needs it because of growth seasons and everything else, security, population size. If I were them, I’d want to become a state. You’re not big enough.
Without becoming a major rentier economy, meaning all you do is strip all the resources from your country and sell them so that you can afford military and all those things. It just wouldn’t make much sense. Mexico is big enough and diverse enough.
Canada is big enough and diversified enough, even if they do have poor growing seasons, that they can sustain themselves. Bond news. No fresh bond news this morning yet.
Mirna Cairo. Mark, what are your thoughts on Puerto Rico’s governor? I like her. I like her.
I’ll probably be sitting down with her sometime in the next month or so, too, possibly, in the works. She is really pushing for an upgrade of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, like pushing really hard. And she’s pushing for even health safety for restaurants to go to American Standards as well, which I would love it.
She’s really pushing for places to come up to American Standards for American Disabilities Act, which they’re already supposed to adhere to, but they don’t. She seems absolutely fixated on infrastructure and streamlining government, and they desperately need it. Personally, I think she is trying to push towards becoming, preparing, starting the process to prepare for Puerto Rico to become a state.
That’s what I think I’m seeing. God’s chosen. I don’t think I’d quite call it a surrender, but yeah.
All of her wonderful, wonderful globalist words fell on deaf ears. Dave, same problem with Australia. I mean, you do.
You got to ask yourself, is there enough leadership? Is there something that can be rescued? Some companies, just like countries, they are too fundamentally broken to fix them. You just have to change the system altogether, and you have to ask yourself, whatever country you’re in, are you in that position? In the U.S., are we in that position? In the U.K., are you in that position? Is there any government structure that is worth saving or not? Or is it better just to toss it all out and start with a clean slate? Why am I still talking? Dear God, you guys should have set me up mods. I am so sorry.
America’s SMO has 50,000 population, another great example that they really can’t stand on their own. Puerto Rico could stand on its own as a country, but it would require major, major investment in agricultural manufacturing, and they would have to work out some very serious deals for national security. They would need to make certain, whichever big countries there are, and what makes the most sense of where they’re at, of course, would be to agree to house a number of American bases and naval bases or sub bases to provide, in other words, they should say, okay, fine, this section of land, it’s yours for your air base, your naval base, your whatever, free of charge, no land lease.
Then they get to make the tax revenue, the revenue, and that creates security for them. Another one of those, I get in trouble with a lot of Puerto Ricans, I haven’t studied, just locals. Some very much understand it, that have traveled more, some don’t.
The national security, it is too valuable. Its strategic location is too valuable. Somebody will take it and dominate it.
HM7, and I do, this is, to me, is very important, guys. When we see all these and we make all of our funny memes and whatever, and we talk about Canada becoming a state or Mexico becoming a state, this is something we need to remember. HM54, love Mexico too, beautiful people and countryside, great food to all, great food.
Corruption is everywhere in the world, just like here, exactly. Some of it’s just not as pretty. I love that one, Michael.
Jeez, Mark, wrap it up and get on the phone for that Dayton rate. All right, I’m getting on it. Have a great day.
I will see you guys this evening. Thank you. Oh, we gotta sing happy birthday.
Dylan, Sydney, Elsie, Tina, wait. Yeah, Tina and Tony, anybody else sound off? So they tell me it’s your birthday. Well, happy birthday, darling.
May you live, may you love, make all your dreams come true. Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to your mom, Diane.
Now, Jeff, is it yours or are you just reminding me to sing? Just in case it’s yours, happy birthday. Again, no bond update. That’ll be like the fifth time I think I’ve said it today.
For all you folks joining late, you missed it, meaning you missed that we didn’t have a bond update. Really quiet. All right, guys, see you this evening.
Hopefully we will have moving news. Mondays aren’t quite as quiet as Friday nights, but they tend to be pretty quiet. See you guys this evening.