The Dam Just BROKE! Insiders are Rushing into GOLD (Uncut) 03-14-2025

The Dam Just BROKE! Insiders are Rushing into GOLD | Alasdair Macleod

I would personally think that 3000 that could be some consolidation run about that 3000 level. It’s a view. I wouldn’t sell on the basis of that.

That’s going to you know, it’s going to consolidate and it might tip back and you might be able to do this that the other thing why because if I sell gold on buying dollars, I don’t want to buy dollars for goodness sake. I want to get the hell out of them. So, you know, that’s the emphasis I would put on it.

Ukraine is over and it’s just a question of Trump or his representatives meeting Putin, Putin and his representatives and agreeing to an outcome at night. The outcome I can tell you now, it could be purely in the lines of Russia’s demand. You’re watching Capital Cause and my name is Danny.

Today’s guest is fan favorite Alistair McLeod. Alistair. Thank you so much for coming on the show, my friend.

My pleasure, Danny. Yeah, let’s just dive right in here Alistair. Lots of things to talk about.

Obviously the collapsing markets. I want to get your take as to whether or not you think that we will see a continuation to the downside or is is the bottom a lot closer think and also gold gold and the emptying out of the LBMA. I want to get your thoughts on that and then we can touch on some geopolitics perhaps towards the end as it relates to European and American relations as with respect to Ukraine.

So definitely lots of stuff to let you start it off wherever you’d like to start up for you right now. What is most topical on your radar screen? Well, most topical is the evidence that the credit bubble is bursting and of course we see this particularly with the valuation of stocks. I mean the the extremes whereby people were chasing stocks on the momentum basis has now come to an end.

You look at indices and particularly the tech indices. I mean, it’s a disaster and not only that look at Bitcoin Bitcoin correlates with the Nasdaq pretty well because you know, it’s the same cohort of investors chasing, you know, those markets. I mean the point about the point about, you know, the credit bubble is that this is the largest credit bubble in history and the easiest way to understand that I mean most people don’t understand that we are in a credit bubble, but if you tell them that we’re in a debt bubble are that makes sense, right? But credit is the other side of debt.

Credit equals debt always always it’s two sides of a balance sheet. So if you got maximum debt around then obviously you got maximum credit around and credit tends to run in cycles and you know, the what the Austrian economy is called the business cycle. In fact is actually driven by bank credit and it’s when banks not so much destroy credit because it’s the only way to credit can be destroyed is basically through defaults if you like what they will tend to do is they’ll tend to move their lending away from the private sector to safety and the regulators say that the safest place to lend of course is short-term to your government, which is why you know, the government is selling so many t-bills.

So, you know, we have that crisis now. I think the thing that has tripped it is particularly growing evidence that the global economy is slowing the US economy is slowing. I mean, I think it was Atlanta Fed produced some quite alarming figures the other day last week suggesting that you know, in the last quarter or the fourth quarter, whatever things have actually slowed very very sharply and we’re now in a recession.

If we have another quarter like that, it’s going to be a technical recession or official recession. But I mean, they’re only saying half the story Danny because if you take the budget deficit, which is roughly six and a half percent of GDP out of GDP, you’re then left with the private sector and on the Congressional Budget Office’s own figures total GDP. They expect in this current year to be growing at four and a half percent.

So on their figures, the private sector is already contracting by 2% and that’s in nominal terms. And then if you put in inflation adjusted or just CPI adjusted, you know, let’s not use any fancy numbers just the official numbers then quite clearly. It’s contracting at the rate of about 5%.

Now that by any definition is sort of verging on a slump. So that is the background to it. And I think I think investors are beginning to get sort of concerned that this indeed is the case.

I mean, they’ve ignored it so far. They’ve ignored it because of greed. I mean, you got all this credit, right? And the other thing, of course, if you look at the FINRA numbers for margin accounts, that’s now close to a trillion, you know, a trillion dollars of leverage in the US stock market and the bulk of that, I guess, we don’t know for certain, but the bulk of that, I guess, was sort of chasing fancy tech stocks.

So, you know, this bubble when it bursts, I think could be rather nasty. And the other point I would make about it is that not only do we have a mega, mega, mega credit bubble bursting, we also have smooth-hauling Mark-II tariffs being brought in by Trump and already you see, you know, the new prime minister in Canada saying, you know, we’re going to hit back with our own tariffs and all the rest of it. This is what happened in 1930.

So we’ve got exactly the same combination, but this time it’s actually a lot more violent. This is not good. So I am extremely pessimistic on the outlook for stocks.

I think that they will fall so much that stocks value is collateral, will start, if you like, upsetting the banking system. And, you know, we already have the commercial real estate disaster in America. I also think that, I mean, obviously the Fed is going to do what it can to try and rescue this situation.

But the extent to which it does it is going to undermine the dollar. So what are the foreigners going to do? The foreigners are going to say, you know, we don’t want our dollars anymore. It’s quite simple.

Now, their own currencies, I have to say, are in a similarly powerless condition. So what do they do? I mean, the only thing they do is just get out of credit and get into real money, which is gold. And so a brief summary of the current situation as I see it.

Yeah, there’s this idea floating around that this could be planned for lack of a better term, i.e., let’s bring down the stock market so we can bring down the 10-year yield. I’ve got the two charts here overlaid on top of each other. I’ll let you take a look here and get your take, but here you’ve got, okay, so here you have the, you’ve got the 10-year here with the red and green bars.

And then in red, you have the NASDAQ and you can see they both kind of move in tandem, especially here towards the later end of 2024 up until recent days. So what do you make of that? Could this be an indirect way to bring down interest rates? No, that fails. Your problem is that, you know, when you get falling asset values, and by that I mean particularly financial asset values, then the response, if you like, as you suggest, is for the Fed to lower interest rates.

But when you have greater risk than from the point of view of an investor, and here I’m particularly thinking about foreigners, you know, who are holding dollars, and we got, what, over 33 trillion dollars of financial assets and deposits and all the rest of it, held by foreigners. As far as they’re concerned, they are not being compensated for the risk of holding those dollars. They need higher bond yields in order to compensate for the risk.

So this idea that, you know, that the Fed can actually manipulate interest rates down, I mean, they can try it, but they’ll kill the dollar if they do so. So I think any sort of, you know, conspiracy thought or whatever, that there is some sort of plan behind all this. I forget it.

These guys aren’t in control. I think it’s as simple as that. Yeah, Trump the other day said that it was the globalists that were behind the market crash.

And then the day after, he said that we are going to go through a transitionary period. Secretary of Treasury Scott Besant also said the same thing, that we are entering a detox period. So to me, that seems, if they’re admitting that we’re due for some bad times, it must be really bad.

Because crisis management 101 tells you that you always want to downplay how bad it really is, not to stoke panic, right? Yeah, no, that’s right. I mean, Besant is right. You know, this is somewhat different.

But I think he’s being probably, I mean, not most economical with the truth. I think that’s probably too strong a statement. That’s a word.

I mean, Danny, the thing to bear in mind, as I said earlier, this is the biggest credit bubble in history. And it’s going pop. And it’s doing so in exactly the same circumstances that we saw between 1929 and 1932.

That’s actually all you need to know. And the idea that, you know, anyone can sort of manufacture this or some wicked globalist is, you know, has decided that it’s, you know, it’s time to pull the plug or all the rest is actually rubbish because these guys haven’t got a clue. You’re beginning to see some appreciation of the dangers.

And interestingly, according to the World Gold Council’s most recent figures for the last few weeks, at long last, some funds in the West are beginning to buy gold, gold ETFs. Until then, I mean, the interest in gold in gold ETFs has been virtually zero. We’re now beginning to see that.

And I think it’s probably some of the larger funds realizing, you know, the sort of, if you like, the risk in their portfolio is actually got pretty high. And this is something they need to sort of, if you like, offset the bet. So it’s not just the mainstream ETFs like GLD and SIL and SLV.

It’s some of the, I think it’s the Sprott ones, right? It’s the PSLV one, the PHYS one. If you look at institutional buying, I’ll pull up chart here in a second. But if you look at institutional buying from either of those two ETFs, it’s skyrocketing.

Whereas if you look at GLD and SLV, it’s not. So there does appear to be a preference in terms of where capital is flown to. Yeah.

Well, I think with GLD, I think we ought to bear in mind that the authorized participants, as they’re called in the prospectus, aren’t above borrowing shares and then liquidating them to get hold of the physical. So I think we have to be slightly cautious about, you know, taking those figures on face value. I mean, I would suspect that if you remove that factor from it, you would actually see that GLD is growing.

But it is interesting what you say, that it seems to be certainly spreading into, let’s say, the better quality second line ETFs. If you’re looking for great deals on gold and silver coins and bars from a company that you can trust, then you’ve got to check out the good folks over at PIMBEX. This year, I’ve really gotten to know these guys.

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Yeah, I am. I’m pulling it up right now. But in the meantime, I have a question from one of my Substack readers.

This is from Jane A. Kane, and she wants to know, could Mr. McLeod review parallels leading to the Great Depression and today? I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Review.

You broke up at that point. Oh, sorry. Review.

Could Mr. McLeod review parallels leading to the Great Depression and today? Right. Sure, absolutely. I mean, as I said earlier, you know, you’ve got the two big, big factors are that in the late 1920s, we had a credit bubble.

That was the Roaring Twenties, you know, and you had the same psychology that we’ve seen recently in high-tech stocks. I mean, you know, the stories about how, you know, sort of, you know, you go and have your boots cleaned and the young lad cleaning your boot or the lift attendant would tell you what the hot tip is today. You know, it’s the same sort of psychology in the market and I mean Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed by the House of Representatives in I think it was around about May 1929.

It then went up to the Senate and eventually it was signed into law by President Hoover in I think about a year later in 1930. So you do have this coincidence, if you like, of the credit bubble bursting and the protectionism that came with it in the form of tariffs to try and protect domestic industry. Now, what is President Trump doing? He’s doing exactly the same thing and I think the more the market falls, I suspect that what he will do is he will harden his stance on tariffs, you know, because he’s determined to protect American industry.

Yeah, he’s up the tariff. He’s up the Canadian tariffs all the way up to 50% as of this morning. Here are the charts.

Yeah. I can’t keep up with it. Well, it is coming in fast and heavy.

So here are the charts that I was telling you about. Okay, so this is institutional ownership of GLD. You’ve got volume of ownership of institutions here in green and then you’ve got the price of GLD, which should mimic the gold price here in black, the black line, which you’ll notice the price goes up, but the ownership stays flat.

Yeah, yeah. Now you look at PHYS. It’s a much different story.

It seems to kind of track alongside the price movement up. So there does appear to be some preference away from the custodians based out of London, which in this case, I believe is HSBC and JP Morgan. Yeah.

I mean, what’s interesting in that is that Eric Sprott, I think, you know, has got a wonderful name amongst those who follow gold, you know, sort of have some sort of understanding, if you like, of the difference between credit and real money. I’ve probably been quite kind about their knowledge there because most of them are just gold bugs, as it were. But I think if you’re looking to diversify out of a portfolio, which is invested in, you know, the normal stuff, then, you know, I think Eric Sprott’s name probably is one that’s on your radar and he’s got a good reputation.

He’s also got a good reputation as a stock picker. I mean, certainly in Canadian mines. I mean, because he’s been chairman of this, that and the other thing.

He knows all the managers. He understands the, you know, the geology and all the rest of it. And I’m sure that he gets a lot of quasi inside information, as it were, from, you know, from his position and from and he can evaluate it from that knowledge.

So, and of course, he’s very much in the van when it comes to financing, exploration and all the rest of it. So, you know, if you want to buy into this sector and you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing, follow Eric. You know, it’s a no-brainer, really.

Yeah, interesting. Next question is from Delta Bravo. He wants to know, gold and silver, what near-term levels do you anticipate over the next two to six months? Do you foresee a near-term blow off top? What level? And could a precious metals peak coincide with the general equities market to a market bust? Well, the first thing I would say is it’s not gold and silver going up so much.

I mean, there is an element of that. You can’t disentangle it, but it’s basically paper currencies going down. And this is actually what the central banks see.

The reason that central banks are buying gold is that they’re actually selling fiat. And, you know, that is a very important point to understand. Ultimately, when everybody understands that it’s fiat going down and not prices rising, and we’re not just talking gold at this stage, but we’re also talking about, you know, groceries and everything else, then the currency is doomed.

So we are on the beginning of that curve as well. In fact, we were on the beginning of that from 1971, you know, when we started in 71 with $35 an ounce. And we’re now close to $3,000.

But I mean, obviously, the way people think, they’re not thinking like that. So they’re trading it as if it was a stock or, you know, whatever. And I would personally think that $3,000, there could be some consolidation around about that $3,000 level.

It’s a view. I wouldn’t sell on the basis that it’s going to consolidate and it might tip back and you might be able to do this, that and the other thing. Why? Because if I sell gold, I’m buying dollars.

I don’t want to buy dollars. For goodness sake, I want to get the hell out of them. So, you know, that’s the emphasis I’ve put on it.

And as far as silver is concerned, I think with the gold silver ratio close to 90, that to my mind is far, far too high. Silver does have a monetary role. There is absolutely nothing in the price for monetary role at the moment.

But I think when you get the collapse of currencies, silver has got two advantages. Firstly, it’s, you know, somebody said it’s the poor man’s gold. I think that’s actually, you know, a sort of a reasonable description for the role of silver in terms of being useful for smaller transactions.

I think that’s the first thing. The second thing is that if you think that the politicians might try and ban ownership of gold and politicians are stupid, let’s face it, you know, when it comes to economics, they are on a completely different agenda. They will do the most stupid things in economic terms.

So I think it would be a bold man who rules that out. But then you ask the question, okay, if they ban ownership of gold, are they like you to do so with silver? And I think the answer is no, because it’s not regarded as a monetary metal anymore. So on that basis, there is some justification for going for silver.

And my view is that I mean, traditionally, when you get a rise in the price of gold, silver tends to rise about twice as fast. The problem with silver is that when gold stops rising, it falls, you know, probably not only twice as fast, but it keeps on falling when gold goes nowhere. So that’s the sort of problem you got with silver.

But having said that, it’s got left way, way behind and we’ve had particularly if you ignore the, you know, sort of selling of ETFs about five years ago, silver ETFs. We’ve had about seven years of supply deficiency. That’s according to the Silver Institute’s numbers.

And I think it’s also been a very managed commodity. I point the finger at China for managing the silver price and, you know, whether I’m right or wrong, I have no doubt that it has been very, very suppressed and on that basis, I think the suppression has probably come to an end and I also think that the bullion banks, they’re desperate to try and bring their shorts in. I mean, it’s interesting.

I think to some extent the sudden premiums that we saw on Comex and we saw the price rise something like $200 while open interest fell 75,000 contracts. I mean, that’s a bear squeeze and who are the bears? The bears are the establishment. They are being squeezed and I think they want out of this short position.

So that is another factor which is likely to really affect the price. I think, you know, I think it was DB was the name of your correspondent. If we get up to that sort of $3,000 level, then there could be some panicking on the short side as it were because it’s not really the longs who have been buying futures too much.

I mean, I think it’s you know, it’s shifted a little bit because I see open interest on Comex has risen to just close to 500,000 contracts. I mean, that’s not overbought by any means and we can go another hundred thousand contracts of the 600,000 contract level before you say this market is overbought. So yeah, I mean, I think there’s quite a lot of bear squeeze potential still in there and 3,000 could be a Rubicon.

I think for quite a lot of the bullion bank traders interesting position. Yeah, fascinating. What of what of Switzerland though? Switzerland is also seeing massive deliveries as well on their gold into the United States.

The common denominator seems like this United States is sucking up all the gold worldwide. Is this like you said just a flight for safety in terms of confidence in the US relative to the rest of the world? No, I don’t think it’s a flight to safety. I think what it is.

It’s it’s it’s two things. I mean firstly Comex has had stands for deliveries over the last four years to last December of over 2,000 2,000 tons. I mean, we’re talking about a lot for a contract that was never ever meant really to be used as a means of acquiring bullion.

And if you look at the pace at which these stands for delivery have continued since January the first is continued at roughly four times the rate of last year. I mean if we continue at this current pace, we’re going to see 2,000 tons standing for delivery in this year alone now, where’s that going to come from? And I think this is what this is. That is I think a factor if you like behind the squeeze on the establishment because the establishment doesn’t deliver when you get a stand for delivery, you know, you make every excuse not to deliver.

So, you know, you’ve got this backlog if you like of, you know, sort of well, they’ll worry we’ll give you a piece of paper saying that yes, it is yours after all sort of thing, but you know, well, you know, we got logistical problems. We can’t get your gold to you just at the moment, you know, we’ll let you know and you don’t hear anything and you chase and you say, oh, well, there’s been a slight problem here. Well, you know all this rubbish so you get that delay.

Now that delay means that there has been this backlog building up of gold yet to be delivered and the only cure for this. I think has been this bear squeeze whereby the premium on the futures has generated an arbitrage a very profitable arbitrage. I mean as much as $50 an ounce whereby, you know bullion, which is, you know, so let’s say part of the global liquidity including in the faults of the Bank of England has just being sucked into into coma into the Comex warehouses.

I am but that’s what it is. I think it’s purely the huge great premium has created an arbitrage. Yeah, fascinating stuff here.

I want to ask you one last question on the topic of gold. Could it be possible that the Bank of England may have secretly defaulted Simon Hunt kind of alluded to this possibility in my last interview with him. So I want to see what you have to say about that.

Could we have actually seen a default on the Bank of England or see one coming up pretty soon? Yeah. Well, I think I think what what I think what Simon was referring to was that it shouldn’t take eight weeks, you know, which came out in this set of Financial Times article. It should it shouldn’t take eight weeks in order to deliver, you know, couple hundred tons of gold or whatever whatever now, you know, I’m not too sure about that.

I think I think to say that the bank is effectively defaulting. I think is probably wrong. I think it’s a it’s more a logistical problem.

The bank has the gold there of that. I’m absolutely certain. I don’t know who owns it.

It may be twice owned. I mean, that could be a problem. I mean, for example, if let us say you have leased gold and you effectively possess it.

You are the owner over the duration of the lease. Then unless there’s something in the wording of the contract that you have in the Bank of England, ie that it must remain stored in the Bank of England, then you can take it out. I don’t know whether there is that wording.

I would have thought I mean, you know, for goodness sake if I was running the bullion operation, I mean knowing that in earlier times gold had been leased and it had disappeared and not returned. I mean, this was the point that Frank Veneroso was making it, you know, in Lima in 2002. I mean upwards of 10,000 tons.

He reckoned had probably disappeared from the Central Bank’s vaults. So there’s a lot of this double counting and of course when you start taking gold out of the Bank of England’s vaults, you know, the double counting becomes a bit of a problem, right? So I think rather than saying that the Bank of England is defaulting. I think what we could be seeing is the beginning of the collapse of the entire system.

And I was very interested in an article which I can’t remember who did it now, but you know, which sort of talked about, you know, leased gold being re-hypothecated, re-hypothecated, re-hypothecated since, you know, one ton of gold becomes a hundred as it were. And as you unwind that, I was Jim Rickards. That’s who was saying this.

But as you unwind that, then obviously they’re going to be some very, very serious consequences. And so we could see this as being the beginning of the demise of the paper gold system. Now, if that is the case, then because it is central in terms of collateral, you know, tier one asset, whatever you like to describe it as, then this has ramifications for the whole of the derivative industry.

And we’re talking then, we’re talking about, you know, hundreds of trillions of obligations, which, you know, if you like, rest on this point of the pyramid with gold being the solid point at the bottom, you know, and the rest of it is all sort of on top, like the extra pyramid, if you like. So this is something that we do need to watch very carefully and particularly in conjunction with the bursting of the credit bubble. I mean, the whole thing is all happening at the same time, which means that, you know, if you like, the financial landscape could evolve extremely rapidly with everybody wondering what the hell’s going on and where is my wealth gone? My wealth has disappeared.

So, no, these are very, very interesting times and I think it is very, very important for people to follow very carefully, credible analysts, you know, who understand this sort of thing, you know, subscribe to sub-stacks like yours and dare I say mine. If this is a very difficult time, Danny, I really do think it is and I think that people are going to get very, very hurt. Yeah, definitely.

Speaking of people getting hurt and the notion of when goods stop being traded, bullets start getting traded. You’re starting to see this war fever build up in your side of the pond, Alistair. You’re hearing countries along the lines of Sweden talking about conscription by the end of the year, Estonia calling for the same thing, Poland asking for nukes, the UK asking for boots on the ground as a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

What are you, are we heading towards a European, another European war in the next couple of years? I hope not. The way I look at it is that the Europeans are running around like headless chickens, you know, with America saying, you know, we’re no longer interested in this. The whole of the previous administration was trying to have a war against Russia.

We’re calling a stop to it. That policy has failed, you know, I mean, the idea of a proxy war basically pushing through Ukraine to try and get at Russia’s underbelly, forget it. That’s now not going to work.

So we’re going to just make peace with the Russians. And as for you Ukrainians, I’m terribly sorry, you’re not part of that deal. And as far as the Europeans are concerned, we’re no longer interested in being, if you like, the linchpin of NATO, you can make your own damn arrangements.

And that’s basically what Trump is saying. And so this has come as a huge shock to people who haven’t got a clue about, you know, defense, about, you know, defending their countries. I mean, it’s been so low on the list of priorities because thank you, America.

Thank you for doing it for us. We don’t need to worry about it. We can go and spend, you know, money in our budgets on, you know, sort of unemployed and work this and work that.

I mean, you know, it’s allowed Europe to become horribly socialistic without actually regarding the defense of its borders as a priority. And now suddenly, wow, we’ve got a problem. And I mean, their behavior shows just complete ignorance.

And bear in mind that Ursula von der Leyen, when she was defense secretary in a German government, I mean, this is what, ten years ago, whatever, she had her soldiers on parade with broomsticks instead of rifles. Why? Because she screwed up the ordering of the logistics, if you like, of getting weapons in for, you know, no rifles. So, you know, you go around on parade with broomsticks.

I mean, you know, this is, I mean, quite honestly, we defended ourselves better in the Middle Ages with cutlasses, swords, and pipes. No, I mean, don’t get me on this one, Danny. I mean, it is total incompetence.

And these guys have got no idea whatsoever what they’re doing. I think I would say that it increases the risk of a mistake. I mean, particularly when you got Macron running around saying, I’ve got nuclear weapons and I can give you cover and all, you know, could this be a trick by the United States to militarize Europe, i.e. get the population militarized? Because I brought this up in a previous talk, if you were to want to offload this war to Europe, meaning clean your hands of it, but still want to use Europe as a puppet, as a vassal state to fight your war with Russia while you go focus over there in the Indo-Pacific against Iran and China, wouldn’t you want to like stage an altercation like between Trump and Zelensky to get people feeling patriotic, patriotic about being European as opposed to if you were just to do it outright, there may have been some pushback.

No, I don’t buy that line at all. I mean, basically the war, Ukraine is over and it’s just a question of Trump or his representatives meeting Putin and his representatives and agreeing to an outcome. But the outcome, I can tell you now, it would be purely in the lines of Russia’s demands because, I mean, the whole thing has been a complete disaster from America’s point of view.

And because Europe has not bothered to divvy up in terms of defense and all the rest of it, you know, they’re just puppets. And as far, I mean, if you like, there’s one thing which will support this as far as the Americans are concerned, by forcing the Europeans to spend their own money on defense, basically it’s going to mean the orders for American defense manufacturers, it’s just going to go through the roof. Because who else can we buy this stuff from? Russia? No.

China? No. I mean, that’s where we should go because they’ve got the best kit. But, you know, the fact is that out of this, as far as, you know, whether this, you know, you could say whether it’s planned or not, I don’t think it is.

But I think, you know, America, the American defense industry will be laughing, laughing at the Europeans because where else are they going to go? What price can we charge these guys? We’ve got, we’ve got Germany, France, Italy, Britain and all the rest of it suddenly clamoring for our kit. A motivated buyer. So this is where it gets a little complicated.

The US is trying to form some sort of partnership or at least get things going on into a positive direction with Russia. Trump is very adversarial towards Iran. Russia has a partnership with Iran.

They even signed a defense pact a little while ago. They even attempted to set up a meeting between the two with Russia as the mediator. I believe that was denied on the part of Iran.

A couple of days ago, you had military drills between Russia, China and Iran in the, right off the coast of, right off the coast of Iran. Yeah. So how do you, how do you untangle that web? I wish I had like a visual to show you, but you’ve got the US trying to cozy up with Russia, but not cozy up, but get, you know, move things in the right direction.

But then Russia still has their partnership with Iran, which is still adversarial with the United States as is, I don’t want to say China is to the same degree, but certainly not in the same way that they’re trying to move things over there with Russia. So how do you think they approach that? What do you think is going on there? Well, I think there’s probably a hope in the Trump camp that by coming to terms with Russia and taking sanctions off, which is the other important thing we haven’t mentioned so far, that trade with Russia will begin to normalize and you probably find that Russia won’t face American sanctions. I mean, there’s a thought.

Now, the reason I would do that if I was in Trump’s shoes, quite simply, is to try and drive a wedge between Russia and China. Yeah, you know, you sanction China and you don’t sanction Russia. And you say to Russia, you know, come on, let’s talk business.

And the other thing is that, I mean, once these Europeans get off their high horse and actually see some sense, the potential for Germany in particular, I think, is extremely positive and not only that, but what is left of Ukraine, I think, could be rebuilt really quite quickly, maybe with Chinese help, but it will be a bridge, if you like, in trade between Russia and Western Europe. I mean, as it has in the past, in the sense of gas pipelines and so on and so forth. All that, I think, will be reinstated.

I think that you’ll probably find that the European leadership, you know, once they accept this reality, they will allow trade to resume. I mean, I’ll still say, you know, the Russians are, you know, dangerous and we, you know, they’ll come out with all that sort of stuff. But I think, I think, you know, the practical side of it will be that trade, trading will begin to resume.

I mean, Russia is a very powerful economy. I mean, don’t believe what the Western economists say, who I think probably fed disinformation by the West. But I mean, you know, I’ve said for a long time that, you know, Russia actually, with 13% income tax, rising to 15% if you’re a high owner, corporation tax similar to ours in the West, and I mean, at high interest rates, you know, you’d think that’s terrible.

But if you look at the rate of inflation, it’s around about 8-10%. Wages are through the roof in Russia. So people, you know, are earning, you know, sort of 20% extra or even more every year.

And so what they’re doing is they’re saving. So you’ve got actually good old-fashioned economy, you know, with driven, savings driven as much as anything. It’s just the numbers are a bit sort of bizarre as far as we’re concerned, in terms of, you know, the debasement of the currency and so on.

They could go on the gold standard tomorrow. It would cause them no pain and it would stabilize an awful lot of stuff. But this is an economy which you will want to trade with.

And as soon as, sooner Europe wakes up to this, the better for Europe. And I think that the implications for peace in Ukraine is that, you know, there will be a new future for Ukraine once this is out of the way, but it’s got to be agreed basically between America and Russia. And I think, you know, the side benefit is that it could distract Russia, if you like, from her very, very close relationship with China, which is really based on practicality.

I mean, they don’t necessarily love each other. Yeah, they do have like these ceremonial ceremonies of friendship and they’ve tried to really drill down that they, that their relationship is tight and everything else. But it’s, I don’t know, do you actually think that they would take a chance on the United States and over China, given that China is more of an autocracy, meaning that they’re more predictable? You know, the rulership today will most likely be the rulership in 10 years from now.

Whereas with the U.S., it’s kind of uncertain who you get four years from now. I think, I mean, I think that it’s going to be virtually impossible to put a wedge between Russia and China. I mean, I think what you could do is you could distract the partnership, if you like.

But the fact of the matter is that China is an enormous consumer of Russian resources. And not only that, but Russia is an enormous consumer of Chinese technology, which is now well ahead of America’s. I mean, that’s the reality of the situation.

I mean, it is fascinating. We sort of still think of Russia as being, you know, sort of something that emerged from the Soviet Union, you know, with you know, people poor and, you know, the babushkas being sort of horribly fat and living off potatoes and all the rest of it. But no, if you go to Moscow, it’s a Western city, if you like, in the sense that it’s got a, you know, it’s got a vibrancy to it, which it’s never really had before.

Things over there aren’t too bad. They really are not. I mean, all you have to stomach, I think, is you just got to mind your Ps and Qs when it comes to talking about politics.

That is also true in China, obviously, but I think even to a greater extent in China. But if you can stomach that, then, you know, the place to open the new business, if you want to do it, could well be Russia. So that, I think, means that we end up moving into a new era as it were.

But having said that, I think the legacy, welfare-driven nations in the West have got huge, huge great problems, not least, if I can come back to it, to the, you know, the bursting of the credit bubble. That is going to be really, I think, terrible in terms of undermining financial values and not only financial values, but also undermining currencies. So at some stage, I think Russia and China are going to have to consider protecting their own currencies from that fallout.

And that’s probably where the next division is going to be, if you like, between the Asian hegemons and the West. Yeah, very interesting times. Another point of, another intersection is Syria.

You did have this, you know, you did have these big massacres ongoing in Syria right now from the Takfiris and Wahhabis towards the minorities, i.e. the Druze, and I don’t believe the Druze, but more so the Alawites and in some cases the Christians. And now there’s talk that they could see a coastal partition of Syria for the minority groups administered by the U.S. and Russia. Now, it does appear like we’re seeing a carving up of Syria.

It seems like Syria is getting balkanized, so to speak, but you do have another access point there where the Russians and the Americans have begun working with each other on a big project there in the Middle East, where I presume the Russians get to keep their military bases and seaports. Well, yes, I mean, Russia has got a seaport there, which is very, very important to it. I mean, it’s not vital, but it is important to it.

It could move, it could move down to Egypt, I guess, or Libya. But, and of course, America is, dare I say, stealing all Syrian oil from the oil fields in the Northeast, working with the Turks there too, who hate the Kurds, who want to take over Northern Syria. I mean, Erdogan still got this, you know, Ottoman Empire in his mind, I think.

Some say that Putin wants to be like Peter the Great. I think that Erdogan wants to be like Kemal Ataturk, you know, a great, great leader of Ottoman interests. I think that Syria is a really appalling tragedy and, dare I say it, I think it was really, it all started with Obama because he prosecuted this war against Syria, which fortunately the Brits refused to join.

I mean, there’s one thing that David Cameron did, I think, was entirely sensible. He put it to a vote in the House of Commons. House of Commons said no.

So he’s told Obama, no, don’t count us in. And, you know, we then get all the sort of propaganda about, you know, the brutality of, you know, the then leader’s name temporarily escapes me. The whole, you know, yeah, the whole of that thing, the whole of that thing, you know, there was sort of, we’re all given propaganda now to support our wars in the Middle East, but the reality is that Assad actually ruled over a country in an Arab fashion, which is necessarily brutal, I have to say, to our eyes, but he kept a balance between the different religious factions.

So you could be a Christian. You could be an Alawite. You could be a Shiite, whatever.

I mean, there was no stigma attached to this. There was none of this antipathy, if you like, based on religion. And now, of course, he’s being pushed out.

You know, the current leadership is ex-extremist. I mean, real extremist, ex-ISIS. And, you know, they’re saying, we’re going to, you know, it’s people’s religion, all this rubbish.

First thing they do is they, you know, it doesn’t matter what the man at the top says. I think his number two has a degree from somewhere in Islamic law. Now, if I remember correctly, Islamic law is cutting off hands and beheading people.

What he said was he’s barring his soldiers and officials of taking videos of what they do. Yeah. So it’s like, well, he’s not, you know, I think he gave like a slight condemnation because he had to.

But the main takeaway was, hey guys, stop taking videos of this. You got to be, like, if you want to do this stuff, don’t record yourself committing mass murder. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think it’s, I think the whole thing is an absolute tragedy. And remember that Syria had a very nasty earthquake, as did southern Turkey at that time, you know, the people that have been visited by just disaster after disaster, most of which is man-made, unfortunately.

So I feel very sorry for them and not just them, but also this has been a problem throughout the Middle East because America has decided to pursue wars against these nations. And the result is that we’ve all got, you know, refugee problems, immigration problems. We’ve got, you know, I mean, Germany is swamped with them, which has destabilized Germany politically from its sort of rather cozy, social democratic approach.

And of course, you know, this country has got a huge, huge great problem with immigrants, you know, coming across the channel, you know, in their thousands, hundreds of thousands. I mean, it’s all down to destabilizing wars by, guess who, America, supported by our special relationship. You know, the Brits are stupid enough to go along with this sort of thing.

The only one they didn’t go along with was Syria, but we still got lots of Syrians coming in. I mean, you know, Danny, this is, we’ve lived through crazy times and it’s, you know, it’s payback time, I think. Well, I think that’s all I have on the docket for today here, Alistair.

Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap things up? Well, I think we’ve probably covered just about everything. But what I would say is that, you know, I would really encourage anyone, anyone viewing this to think very, very seriously about, you know, the value of their currencies and what is happening. Understand the economic background.

Don’t just follow the tame government scientists. Don’t believe in any of the statistics that come out of government. I mean, they’re so self-serving as to be completely useless and misleading.

Make up your own minds and I can tell you I see an awful lot of danger to wealth. I see it being destroyed. It’s not good.

I mean, the only people who are going to come out of this, I think, with any wealth intact are people who hold real money, which is gold and silver, particularly gold. As has often been the case on many occasions. Well, Alistair, it’s been a pleasure having you on.

Where can people find you if they want to read, see, or hear more? Well, I have my own Substack, like you, and it’s alistairmcleod.substack.com, but if you Google McLeod Finance Substack, I’m sure you’ll come across it. And like you, I have, you know, sort of, if you like, free subscribers, and I also have paid subscribers, and paid subscribers won’t surprise you, get a far greater service than the free subscribers. So I encourage you to become paid.

That’s typically how it goes. Well, hey, thank you so much for coming on, Alistair. If you’d like to support the channel similarly, you can also check out our Substack at capitalcosm.substack.com, as well as, also check out Alistair’s Substack.

And yeah, hit the like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video, comment, go Alistair, go in the comment section. If you agree with Alistair’s analysis, if you disagreed with anything that we said today, I’d like to know. Go ahead and drop me a comment and tell me what you disagree on.

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So with all that said, thank you guys for watching, and I will catch you in the next episode. Bye, y’all.