You Can’t Have Government Programs Without Waste, Fraud, and Abuse (Uncut) 02-20-2025

You Can’t Have Government Programs Without Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

you make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners one minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next boom your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your benty are you with me the revolution Starts Now starts now we have to pass the bill so that you can uh find out what is in it turn those machines back on you are about to enter the Peter Shi show help me the money if we lose Freedom here there’s no place to escape to this is the last stand on Earth Peters ship show is on I don’t

know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness your money your stories your freedom the Peter ship [Music] show today’s podcast is sponsored by Shopify Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell any where giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for just big business sign up for a $1 per month trial at shopify.com Gold all lowercase the Peter shift [Music] show okay I want to start off uh this evening’s podcast by talking a little bit about Doge the Department of

government efficiency and you know when Trump first proposed Doge I really kind of dismissed it because when it was originally proposed it was going to be completely separate from the US government it was going to be more like a private Think Tank and it reminded me a lot of the grace commission which was something that Ronald Reagan put together in his first term and you know a lot of the the Trump campaign uh was I think based on a lot of the Reagan campaign because Ronald Reagan uh when he ran he was going to

eliminate government agencies and departments like the department of energy and the Department of Education but he was also going to Washington to drain the swamp and to get rid of waste Fraud and Abuse and and so Donald Trump ran on on a similar platform uh on those issues and so I thought that Doge would be more like the grace commission which did identify a lot of cuts to government spending and it made the recommendations to Congress and they fell on deaf years and and nothing got cut and and so there

was no real cuts to government spending under under Reagan now of course the problem wasn’t nearly as acute as it is now when Reagan came to office in 1980 uh you know we still only had what 30% to 40% debt to GDP uh so it the the problem was there it was growing but it was in its infancy compared to where it is right now in fact the national debt didn’t even hit a trillion until sometime uh you know during uh Reagan’s first term it got to a trillion I mean now it’s uh almost 37 trillion uh so it’s a far bigger problem that needs a

much you know more Draconian solution yet we never even got a solution uh when uh Reagan was President and because politically it was a non-starter nobody really wanted to cut anything and so I was not very optimistic about about Doge but my opinion has evolved somewhat on on Doge and what they will be able to accomplish based on the fact that Trump has actually made it an official part of the government I mean it’s operating right out the white house uh and it the the representatives of do actually have

authority a granted to them uh by the president to go through uh uh various uh agencies and departments and try to eliminate what they can uh without Congressional approval uh spending that is determined to be wasteful fraudulent abusive and they’re actually making quite a bit of progress now while I think that they are going to be able to make some Cuts far more than anything that we saw with the grace commission I don’t think it’s going to be nearly enough to get us out of jail as far as you paying for the tax cuts I

think that even if uh they can come up with a billion dollar um or not a billion a trillion a trillion dollars worth of cuts which I you know I don’t even see how they can get anywhere close to that right now I’m looking at the um at National Debt Clock and they now they have a doge uh window up there a doge clock so according to uh usdebtclock.org um the Doge boys have found ways to eliminate $114 billion dollar worth of spending which in a $7.2 trillion budget which is what we got you know is about

one and a half percent assuming they these cuts are actually all uh eliminated I mean maybe these are just expenditures that have been identified that they’re hoping to get rid of I’m not really sure uh but you know they’re GNA find if you actually have smart people uh who are dedicated and committed and not beholden right to some bureaucratic establishment you get people like Elon Musk and his team in there they are going to find waste Fraud and Abuse I mean anybody who believes that that’s not there is

completely naive and doesn’t understand government you can’t have a government program that isn’t wasteful that isn’t abused and that isn’t uh the subject of fraud I mean that is par for the course it is impossible to have programs that do not have that that’s why you want to minimize the amount of government you have because anything the government decides to do is going to be subject to waste Fraud and Abuse that’s why it’s very inefficient process that’s why you want to completely limit what the

government does because so much is going to be wasted uh so much is going to be stolen right uh there’s G to be so much graft and kickbacks I mean that is the nature of government there’s nothing you could do about it right so all you could do is is minimize it and yeah they’re going to be able to find some of the waste Fraud and Abuse they’re not going to be able to get all of it unless you’re G to you know cut it out from the root unless you’re going to eliminate the entire agency or the program uh

you’re going to get some of the waste Fraud and Abuse but you’re not going to get all of it you know some of the stuff that looks so ridiculous uh and and if they’re pulling off scams this easy you can only imagine the stuff that’s harder to f Fair it out but you know now they’re talking about looking at the Social Security um Administration and they’re seeing that checks are being mailed out uh to people who have been dead for decades in many cases multiple decades I mean and some of the the ages are

obviously you know completely farsal because you’re talking two 300 years um they didn’t even have social security until 1933 and and so uh nobody that was born before the Civil War uh you know probably even lived old enough to collect it I mean maybe May yeah I mean maybe if someone was born in 1850 you they they got it you know in the in the mid-30s you know but but but certainly they got people in there that were born uh during the Revolutionary War so obviously that’s just complete fraud I mean I don’t even know where they’re

getting these birthdays but I’m sure what is going on in Social Security uh and it has been going on obviously for quite some time is that people die of natural causes or whatever they die they were collecting Social Security you know a lot of people now just have direct deposit it’s pretty easy the Social Security money goes directly into your bank account so you don’t even have a check that you got to take down to a bank it just goes right into your bank account let’s say you know my father’s

getting Social Security and he passes away uh and you know his bank account is still open uh maybe I don’t tell the bank that my dad’s dead how how does the bank know um and if the Social Security Administration I’m not really sure what the procedure is who’s supposed to tell the Social Security Administration that somebody who’s collecting Social Security died or even if they hadn’t collected it right once they get to the age of Eligibility maybe the the checks just start coming automatically I don’t

know but assuming you know my father is getting Social Security direct deposit and he Di um I got his ATM card I know his pin and I see that the Social Security checks keep coming and I just spend the money right I I don’t say I don’t tell anybody and I’m sure that this is going on rampid throughout the country that people are just collecting Social Security uh for for their dead parents or maybe even their grandparents who knows maybe maybe uh somebody dies and his son collects Social Security and

then that guy dies and the grandson collects the social security for both of them right and nobody tells anybody and nobody probably feels bad about it I mean people don’t necessarily see the victim in this crime it’s not like you know if you rob somebody you you know you know that you’ve taken money from another person right you know you may feel bad about that you may feel a little guilty I mean a lot of people won’t steal from somebody else because they they can recognize that that’s wrong but money from the government a

lot of people don’t even look at that as as wrong because they they look at the government as this unlimited you know just pot of money they just has money out of thin air so who’s the loser it’s a victimless crime as far as most people are concerned I mean the government is spending s trillion dollar a year what’s an extra 10 grand or whatever it is for one guy’s Social Security he probably doesn’t even care I mean who the deficit is two trillion a year three trillion a year what’s an extra 10 or 20 grand I

mean who cares right in fact a lot of people may rationalize it like well you know I’m helping the economy I take that Social Security money and I go out and spend it it’s my own stimulus it’s my own QE right I’m taking the money and I’m spending it and everybody is winning and so why should I you know upset this apple cart by uh by telling the Social Security Administration that the person who’s entitled of this money uh is dead and you know we’ve created a a a country of people who think they’re entitled to

free stuff I mean nobody who’s on welfare has qualms about cashing those checks uh and so you know once people are of the mindset that the government owes them something that they are entitled to something well then they’re entitled to that too what what is the difference right I mean so what you know they made a mistake uh you know and especially if a lot of other people are uh benefiting from the same mistake you know you might feel like a fool if you’re the one that that says you don’t want the money because if one person

calls up the Social Security Administration and says hey you know my dad died uh stop sending the checks but if he knows that a lot of other people whose dads have also died they’re getting their checks I mean they’re not what they’re doing is not going to make a big difference in the scheme of things so they might as well cash their check especially when people are struggling to get by um you know imagine how much more difficult it would be if all these people who are collecting Social Security checks for dead people if they

didn’t have that money right where H how would they survive know I just read again that the uh Social Security delinquencies Now are at a 13 or 14e high but the last time the social security credit card delinquencies but the last time they were this High we were in a Great Recession and so normally in order to get to a point where people can’t make their credit card payments you’re in a recession now I think we are in a recession and that’s why people can’t make their payments but if we’re not in a recession now just

imagine how much worse it’s going to be I already talked about on the podcast that um people you have a record number of people record number of people who are making their minimum payment on their credit card I mean who the hell would do that uh unless you had to especially when credit card interest rates are 24% you know you’ve got record high interest rates you would want to pay that balance down as quickly as possible the fact that a record number of people are making the minimum payment shows you how how you know bad

they are you know I was listening to uh Walmart I guess they report earnings tomorrow and they were talking about it and I think Walmart had recently uh mentioned that the biggest growth in their customer base is coming from households that make over $100,000 a year now if higher income households are now shopping at Walmart what does that tell you right I mean they’re trading down to Walmart they don’t really want to go to Walmart it’s just that they can’t afford more expensive stores and so they’re they now got no choice they

got to go shopping at Walmart um that that that that is a sign of distress the fact that Walmart is earning more money because wealthier people are now shopping there now can you imagine their their normal customers who were not wealthy who were shopping at Walmart now what are they doing right now now when they shop at Walmart it’s mostly food that they buy Because by the time they finish filling up the grocery they got no money left over for anything else and then they’re they’re using credit so a

lot of people are probably only getting by because they got a dead person’s uh social security check but hopefully they can find a way you know uh to solve a very simple problem and you know get some verification you know I guess anybody I would say anybody who’s even over the age of 90 I mean I mean not that many people even make it to 90 let alone 100 110 120 but certainly I said look at 90 we’re going to send something out and we need some proof that the guy’s still alive you know you got you gotta go into

you know we don’t mind saying that you’re Social Security but you got to prove that you’re still living right I mean how hard could that be to prove that you’re alive um so you know they may be able to make some Cuts in Social Security after all but the problem is there’s a lot of people who are legitimately going to be going on Social Security every year and uh you know so the net may still be that Social Security spending increases especially if we get the the budget that Trump is uh supporting uh you know in the house I

think the Senate is having more trouble but I think it’s making progress in the house uh where you have no tax on Social Security benefits that is a massive increase in in Social Security benefits you know part of this new bill that Trump is uh you know promoting and and hoping to you know help push across the Finish Line includes uh a an increase of four trillion or five trillion in the debt ceiling which will only get the government through another year or two so it’s not like that’s even that big an

increase but Donald Trump wants an increase in the debt ceiling and that is very unfortunate because I I if Trump is 100% committed to making big cuts in government spending and he doesn’t have to worry about court challenges because right now you got all these lawsuits that uh Congress or very you know people are filing to try to say Trump doesn’t have the authority to cut this right you can’t Congress has appropriated this money and you got to spend it right you can’t decide you’re not going to spend

it the power of the purse resks with the Congress and you got to spend what we appropriate and you can’t unilaterally get rid of programs that we’ve passed we need to do that right and and you know they they may have a point and and and and a lot of these cuts may end up not even holding uh because some Court throws them out but what Trump could do and no court could stop him is just refus to sign that increase in the debt ceiling just say right now look the buck stocks with me right we’re not we’re not

raising the debt ceiling I think I mentioned this on the last podcast and and then you know there’s no court uh Congress has got a cut spending dramatically right now but you know that would uh accelerate a lot of painful reductions in government spending necessary uh pain constructive pain uh pain that would be worth uh enduring for the big benefits that would acre and not in the very distant future but in the you know relatively near future uh but that’s not going to happen anyway I got a quick commercial break uh so stick

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for any government to be efficient see in the private center private sector uh if you own a business you have every incentive to be efficient because whatever money you save means you have a bigger profit so you earn more money if you’re efficient so yeah I’m Gonna Save money wherever I can plus if I’m in competition and I’m not being efficient and my competition is they can undercut me they can offer a lower price and I’m going to lose customers so you have all sorts of Market forces and self-interest

that drive efficiencies even in Charities right if I’m running a charity um I’m going to be efficient because Charities will you know come out with reports and they’ll show how much they spend on their overhead and how much actually goes to the intended recipients of the charity and if you don’t show that you’re doing a good job and that you’re running a type ship and that most of the donations go to uh the people that you’re trying to help people aren’t going to donate to your charity they’re going to donate to another

charity right they’re going to donate to a charity that is efficient with their charitable donations right they don’t want their donations just to go to a bloated bureaucracy they want them to help what you know whatever cause the charity has you know decided it’s going to help and so Charities compete right for don donation dollars and so they have to do a good job or they’re they’re not going to get any money right so in the private sector you have a natural uh uh way to cut down on on on waste but in

government no one gives a damn if you waste money there’s no penalty if you’re a government bureaucrat your salary is the same whether you waste money or not in fact there’s actually a perverse incentive to excessively spend money because a lot of times the Way Washington works is an agency or a department Whatever Gets a budget and then the following year they base the next Budget on what you spent the prior year so if you were efficient and saved money let’s say I was allocated $10 million but I only spent

eight the following year they’re going to say oh this program only spent 8 million okay well let’s not give him 10 million well you know we’ll give him we’ll give him eight now you got less money so now you got a smaller budget you’re G to have a smaller staff you’re not as as important right because you you’re in control of a smaller pot of money nobody wants that right everybody that has a job in Washington wants to have more responsibility they want a bigger agency department they want a bigger budget if for any other reason

you know the the bigger your budget the more you could steal for yourself right I mean there’s there’s a lot of incentive there too and we know that they’re uncovering a lot of that it’s going to be great to have uh some investigations of some of these people who got rich uh running all these programs right but you don’t want to do that so what you want to do is Max out whatever you got right whatever you’ve been allocated just spend it because that way next year you’ll get at least that amount if not more in fact people

say that towards the end of every fiscal year that’s when it’s great to sell stuff to the government because they’re just spending whatever they haven’t spent like if there’s any money they haven’t spent and they’re getting close to the end of the like the year they just rush to buy whatever they can right because they just want to spend the money so that they can show that they spent it so they can get a bigger budget in the following year so it’s a perverse incentive to be wasteful that’s government right so that’s that’s why we

got to keep government to an absolute minimum but abuse of course everybody is going to abuse use a government program without a doubt right and and that’s what the government doesn’t understand they don’t understand the concept of moral hazard or the principle that you get less of what you tax and you get more of what you subsidize so there’s first let me think about moral hazard right I mean how people will uh change their circumstances to qualify for a program so let’s say the government decides that

it’s going to come up with a certain needs-based program where if you earn less than $22,000 a month you qualify for this benefit whatever the benefit is and let’s say that benefit has a value of 500 bucks you know whatever it is so if you earn less than $2,000 a month you can sign up for this government program you’ll get $500 worth of benefits right well let’s say I earn $2,200 a month well I I don’t qualify right now what if I go to my employer and I sayl cut back my hours I don’t want to earn $2,200 a

month I want to earn $1,900 a month so cut back my hours I won’t work as much now you haven’t broken the law right there there’s no fraud there you know you’re just you decided to work less but now you qualify for the $500 benefit so now you’re getting 1,900 from your employer and you’re getting 500 from the government that’s 2400 you’re $200 better off and you don’t have to work as hard right so I I I didn’t commit fraud that that’s not illegal to work less and then qualify for a program but I’m

certainly abusing the program because the program was intended to help people who earned less than 2,000 a month and I earned more so in theory I didn’t need the help but I changed my circumstances so I could get the help right people want government benefits and they will uh do things that’s why when the government let’s say they figure out okay how many people earn less than $2,000 a month and they want to know how many people are going to qualify for this program so they can budget it and then it ends up that they end up

spending way more than they thought because it turns out a lot more people earned uh less than $22,000 a month yes because the minute you establish that as the cut off people change their circumstance now some people would commit fraud right they would cut back their hours and then they’d get a job under the table for cash right so they didn’t report it now that would be fraud but that happens too right because the government opens up this Pandora’s box of you know fraud and it’s much easier and one of the reasons it’s so easy to

steal from the government is they don’t complain like if you steal from somebody in the private sector you know they’re going to complain because it’s their money they’re going to notice it right away they’re going to do something about it the government doesn’t care less they a they’re so huge they don’t even notice it but it’s not your money if you’re a government bureaucrat and somebody is stealing money by getting a a benefit that they’re not entitled to it doesn’t cost you anything I mean and you’re

going to knock your brains out trying to figure it out why you’re not gonna get a reward or a bonus because you you you found some fraud going on so it just happens it’s it’s it’s so easy it’s an easy target right to steal from the government it’s so much easier to get away with it and it takes a lot less effort than stealing you know in the private sector you know here’s another example too of that where you know not just moral hazard but getting more of what you subsidize so if the government taxes

something right they get less of it right whatever the government taxes there’s going to be less of it right if if the government uh you know put a tax you know on uh on dancing right if they said you want to go out dancing uh and it’s it’s a $100 tax right not as many people are going to go dancing because they don’t want to pay the $100 tax I mean I guess some people if they really love dancing so much that they’re going to pay $100 to go dance uh they’ll do it right but if the government the

government you know taxed you $100 for dancing fewer people would go dancing but on the other hand if they decided to pay everybody $100 to go out and go dancing a lot of people who didn’t even like dancing would start going to dance clubs to get their $100 right so if the government pays you to do something you’ll do more of it if they tax you for doing something you’ll do less of it now of course that that applies to the income tax they’re taxing you for working so you know at a point you don’t

work as much because the government is discouraging you from working because they’re taxing work well when they pay you not to work right when they subsidize you and they give you money not to work well you know they get more people not working because they want to collect the money and one of the best examples of that is what happened uh with the welfare program Aid to families with defendent children which was a creature of the Linda Johnson Great Society uh where the government said oh you know we have all these women who are

trying to raise children without a father the father’s gone you know he just left them or maybe they don’t even know who the father is whatever but you got a woman and she’s got a kid and there’s no man to to to go out and work while she’s trying to take care of the kid oh this is terrible so let’s have a program for women who are trying to raise children without fathers let’s give them money but you know the women who are married and they have a father well you know they don’t need the money because they got a man in the house who

can go out and work and so they’re not in trouble we want to help these poor women who uh you know don’t have a man yet they have a child right so we’re going to give money to women who don’t have husbands uh but have children well lo and behold what happened there was an explosion in the number of women who had children and no husbands in fact if a woman got pregnant and the guy like hey let me marry you she would like no no don’t marry me I can’t afford it I’m gonna lose my welfare just you know just you know stay away right and

now women started to have more children not just if you had one children child you know they gave you more money so the more children you had the more money you got and so now women started having more children and so the whole budget blew apart right because when they passed this bill there was a certain number of women who were raising uh children without fathers but after the program was created there was an explosion in the number of single women with children because they were incentivizing it they

were paying for you have all these generations of young women growing up and having babies themselves when they’re 13 14 15 they have their own babies and now the government sets them up in a house gives them money right I mean it was like a way of life uh in in these uh you know intergenerational families of fatherless uh households all subsidized all paid for by the US government you know before this started uh in African-American Community it was very rare uh for African-American families to break up a a and for

children to be raised without a father and you know and part of the problem of all these children raised without a father especially boys it’s difficult for a woman without a father husband to discipline teenage boys you know to raise these boys into men without a father they’re far more likely to get involved in crime uh you know and stuff like that when there’s no uh father figure in the home to Reign them in it’s very difficult you know when these kids get to be 13 14 15 they’re a lot stronger than their mother it’s very

hard for a mother to control 14 15 16 year old son you need a you need a man in the house to do that but the the government chased out all the men you know here is a a crazy statistic that shows you how much damage the government can do to a family so I looked it up and I I should have looked up the statistics on on what percentage of um um African-American uh children grew up without fathers back in the 1920s 1930s I know it was very small and it was about the same as for you know white families but as of today

48% of African-American children grow up in homes without a father 48% almost half now during slavery slavery right only about a third of African-American slave children born into slavery only about a third of them grew up without their fathers right because you know maybe they got sold off or their you know father’s you know maybe the the master sold the father or something or sold the kid I don’t know but it was rare right 2third of the uh slave children grew up in a home on a plantation with their

pairs with their father now I’m not condoning slavery by any stretch of imagination my point is the US government through the welfare state did more damage to the family than slavery families were more intact when they were slaves than when they were entrapped in the welfare state I mean think about that uh and again I’m not saying that returning to slavery is the way to solve the problem I’m just pointing out how much damage the government has done that even the slaves didn’t slave owners didn’t do this much

damage when it came to breaking up the family uh that the welfare state did and the incentives created by the government to pay women not to have husbands not to have fathers and to have you know multiple children all by themselves uh because uh the government paid them so all of this is abused all these government programs and that by their very nature so nobody should be surprised that they’re finding this and I and and what’s great about it is a lot of people don’t know this a lot of people don’t realize how bad the

government is they’re finding out they’re finally getting eyes open right uh to to the corruption the criminality uh that is involved in government I’ve always said the worst people the most corrupt people go to government they’re attracted to government and even if they’re not corrupt when they go they get corrupted while they’re there and that’s the only reason they can stay there because if you’re not corrupt if you’re not you know you’re not you’re going to you’re you’re not going to stay in Washington

you’re going to leave it’s either going to discust you you’re going to get get out or you won’t be able to stay there because the more corrupt people are going to are going to get your jobs and they’re going to beat you in the elections anyway I got one more commercial uh so stick around coming right back you know that feeling before a first date you’re double-checking your outfit maybe getting a fresh haircut making sure your car is clean you want to make a great first impression right well confidence starts with feeling your

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from head to toe with Mando go to shop.com and use the promo code gold okay anyway so I was just trying to look on chat GPT for some of these statistics uh for children growing up in fatherless households uh before the Great Society programs and I’m not you know according to chat GPC for white families it was 10 to 15% and black families was 20 to 25% I don’t know if those are accurate numbers numb uh but clearly uh the numbers have moved up dramatically uh over time particularly for African-American and that even the

10 to 20% or 20% number would be an improvement over uh what what was uh what was experienc during slavery uh but now uh it is way worse uh just with that statistic I mean obviously there are other many other aspects of lives where you they’re better off uh but with that one particular uh it’s wor and of course that has created a lot of other socioeconomic problems um that have been the result of uh of children growing up without without fathers uh uh the extra crime uh and and and all sorts of things

that have have followed uh from from that of course they haven’t even ended that program I think they’ve tweaked it a bit it’s not as bad as it used to be uh but it’s still ongoing today and it still continues to do a lot of uh of a lot of damage anyway earlier today we got the FED minutes the fomc minutes that came out and you know one of the the interesting things about the the minutes is that they repeatedly spoke about the need to kind of be patient and um you know hold off on any additional rate

Cuts uh they said that they wanted to maintain their restrictive stand longer and not cut until they have more signs more evidence that inflation is going back down to 2% now first of all right now there’s no sign that it’s going down to 2% because it’s going in the other direction so they shouldn’t even be saying we’re looking for more signs they should be saying we’re looking for our first sign or they should be saying we’re looking for signs that the current Trend towards higher inflation is trans

right you they’re not they’re not they’re not really saying how bad it is uh but they’re saying that you know they they’re looking for for for a sign that inflation is coming down well they they’re not going to find one but the interesting part is that they continue to uh emphasize that their current policy stance is restrictive it’s not restrictive that is the problem see they think that they have restrictive monetary policy and so they just assume that this restriction is going to lead to lower inflation in the future so

they’re just sitting back and waiting for it to happen but the reality is the policy that is in place right now is stimulative it’s not restrictive it is fueling the inflation fire it is not putting it out and so while they’re waiting for inflation to go down it’s going to go up what they’re not talking about in the minutes is Raising interest rates is the possibility that they made a mistake or the possibility that their current policy rate is not restrictive because they they can’t even consider

that that’s a possibility but debt continues to increase at all levels in the economy that is a sign that credit is too loose remember inflation is an expansion of the supply of money and the supply of credit so if credit is expanding you are putting upward pressure on prices and if your interest rates are still so low that credit is expanding you are pursuing an inflationary policy you need to raise rates high enough to contract credit so that people don’t borrow money because it’s too expensive to borrow money but

people keep borrowing it because it’s cheap and if you look at a real rate of inflation in fact not even the real rate look at the current nominal rate of inflation right the last month had inflation up a half a percent in one month or prices that’s 6% inflation if you annualize that if you annualize the last three months of inflation it’s 5% the FED funds rate is four and a quarter so if your fed funds rate is lower than your inflation rate well by definition that’s stimulative right because interest rates are negative right you’re

you’re you’re you’re getting paid to borrow money remember I said earlier uh the government gets more of what they subsidize if they’re going to pay me to borrow money if they’re going to say hey borrow money at 4% and pay it back when inflation is 5% I’m getting free money there’s no real cost to borrowing so more people are going to borrow if the government’s going to pay you to borrow what they need to do is ratchet up interest rates to make borrowing expensive so fewer people will do it but

they don’t have the guts to actually choke off all that debt fuel consumption because they know that it will produce a recession and they don’t want that so they don’t really want to fight inflation so they just pretend that they that they’re accommodative policy is restrictive uh and meanwhile inflation as obvious is going to keep getting worse the question is when are they going to do something about it or when is the market going to realize that they can’t do something about it because so far you know the market seems to accept

at least superficially uh you know that that they got it under control now another thing they mentioned in there was that they’re getting close to tapering their quantitative tightening which is something that you know I’ve been saying for a while they’re going to stop the quantitative tightening but I think stopping the the the the tightening is just the first step to launching the next round of QE and again they’ve said that they can’t do that unless they’re at the zero bound I think that’s just their own

policy that they can change whenever they want just like they adopted the 2% inflation Target you know by the way you know New Zealand The Reserve Bank in New Zealand just cut rates 50 basis points uh last night I think they’re at like three and a half or something I forget exactly but they’ve cut now I think by 150 basis points they’ve had three 50 basis points cut so they were up above five but it was New Zealand that initially came up with the 2% uh ceiling but they couldn’t they couldn’t quite meet it right because they they

wanted to have bigger deficits because they they’re running budget deficits now in New Zealand you know they had gotten rid of them for a while but they actually raised their ceiling to a two two to three% range so now the Reserve Bank of New Zealand that started out with a 2% ceiling now has a 2% floor right they now have a target range of inflation from two to three so two used to be the ceiling now it’s the floor of this new range right this just got changed over time but the government actually changed it they actually had to

change the Reserve Act because the ACT actually stated that there was a 2% ceiling uh but there was some political pressure to change that to enable bigger deficits to enable higher inflation as if higher inflation is a good thing it’s not they would have been better off had they left the ceiling intact but you know that gets in the way of free stuff from the government and so the public doesn’t really understand what free stuff from the government costs and so if it means they have to have higher

inflation to get that free stuff well that’s that’s something that they’re willing to accept uh but it’s interesting that they’re now at two to three perc and we’re saying we’re at 2% but you know we’re really got that from New Zealand and so when is the US government going to admit that well 2% is not the target it’s three that’s coming that that is going to happen uh but of course they’re not going to be able to meet three either because the inflation rate is going to be much higher than that and you know Donald

Trump and I was watching his speech just before I started doing this podcast Donald Trump was doing a speech uh down in Miami and of course since he’s in Florida you had to you know throw some uh fresh meat to the Bitcoin Crowd by talking about Bitcoin I noticed he got the price to go up a little bit talking about how how much Bitcoin went up after he was elected you know takes credit for that this is great we’re g to make the US the crypto Capital you know I really hope we’re not the crypto Capital

because whoever’s the crypto Capital loses right because whoever has the most crypto When the Music Stops is the big loser and of course whatever country squanders more of its resources on the Bitcoin bubble and crypto and blah and all that you know is The Biggest Loser because that money could have been invested productively instead it’s it’s squandered um but and you know he said um you know while I was President he repeated that stuff you know about how we had the greatest economy in the history of America when I

was President he said people were amazed they couldn’t believe great it was you know it’s like you know I don’t know if he actually believes believes um believes that stuff um but um he he said again in that that if he had been reelected we would have had no inflation problem that inflation was low it was 1% when he left and if he had stayed here it would have stayed down there forgetting about the fact that inflation really started to rise in the final months of his uh presidency and the worst year of inflation under Biden

was the very first year that he was in office and of course a lot of that inflation was uh Trump now Trump is already basically saying because you know the Democrats are trying to you know hold him responsible for the bad inflation numbers we get we just got for January and Trump is like hey I’ve only been here for three weeks this is Biden’s inflation right and he’s going to be blaming these bad inflation numbers right he’s going to be calling it Biden inflation for most of the year I guarantee you that come June July

we’re still getting bad inflation numbers he’s goingon to say hey look I’ve only been here six months right we’re still dealing with Biden inflation well for the first six months when Biden was President he was still dealing with Trump inflation right the very the worst year of that Biden had was his very first year right a a and so for Trump to say had I been reelected we would have had no inflation it’s a complete you know lie right of course we we we would have had inflation and we’re going to

have a lot more inflation even though we’re getting these Cuts uh uh from Doge it’s not going to be enough given the enormity of the problem that we have uh and the the the size of the cuts relative to the rest of the budget right even if they’re substantial they’re not going to be enough uh to undo the even the tax cuts that they’re proposing right they’re there you know the the only cuts that they’re probably going to make are are these Doge Cuts right Congress isn’t going to vote for cuts uh

so what you know whatever uh the the do Doge uh Department could can Ram through will get but I don’t think Congress is going to really vote to cut anything else they they never do you know and uh they’re you know the Democrats are certainly not going to support it and the Republicans may need some democratic votes to get this stuff through because there’s going to be some conservative Republic Republicans that aren’t going to want to vote for these huge deficits so the only way to get these bills over

the finish line is going to be to attract some Democrats and they’re going to want something for that support because they don’t give a damn about the size of the deficits they’ll they’ll just make them bigger uh so the only Cuts we’re probably going to get or whatever Cuts we can get out of the executive branch and it’s not going to be enough know by the way one of the interesting things that they are talking about right now is doing an audit of the gold in Fort Knox and I mean that could open up a hell of

a can of worms first of all the last time that the gold was audited was 1953 1953 not many Americans alive today were alive the last time there was an audit of the US Gold Holdings so how do we know that the US government still has all the gold that they claim to have well we don’t know I mean maybe they don’t have it may maybe it’s been leased out maybe it’s been sold who the hell knows right maybe some of it’s been stolen nobody knows now of course it doesn’t really matter in a sense that it used to matter because back in the 1950s

when they were auditing the Holdings people who held Federal Reserve notes wanted to know that the goal was there because that’s what those notes were I went over that this on the podcast Federal Reserve notes were promises to pay gold they were promises to pay dollars which were defined by a weight of gold so if you had $35 and you were you know uh uh let’s say uh uh uh the French government and you had $35 in reserves you were entitled to an ounce of gold well you weren’t going to take the US

government’s word for it you you wanted to see some independent Audits and so there were audits of the government’s gold Holdings so you know okay yeah they’ve got enough gold to back up their notes you know it’ be like if somebody writes you a check and you want to know what their balance is hey you just wrote me a $10,000 check can I see your bank balance do you actually have enough money or is this check going to bounce right that’s what our creditors wanted to know I got your Federal Reserve Note

you know do you have the gold right that that that you’re obligated to pay well you know during the 1960s when we really started to run up these big deficits for the Great Society programs war on poverty uh the Vietnam War the the the Space Race All That crap that we were spending money on that we didn’t have taxes and we started running these deficits we weren’t really doing any audits because we knew right that we didn’t have enough gold we didn’t have enough gold to make good on our notes because we we had to have enough gold to

give everybody with $35 an ounce and clearly we didn’t have enough and you know as the 1960s progressed right a lot of our foreign creditors you know figured it out for themselves right they see all these deficits they see all the money we’re spending and they’re like there’s no way they got the gold this is and you know and so I’m just going to cash in now while I can right I don’t I don’t want to be the last man stuck uh I want to cash in my my Federal Reserve notes now and get dollars right I don’t want to wait uh and be so right

when you know I want I want to hurry up and get my goal while I can and so that’s when you started to see like Charles the gal and and others were it was like a run on the bank everybody was taking their Federal Reserve not and saying give me my gold and that’s when Nixon you know he tried to slow it down he devalued the dollar twice okay we don’t have enough we can’t do it at 35 how about 37 and and our creditor said I want my gold even at 37 I don’t blink you got it and then we went you know we devalued a couple times

we got to 42 and then we said screw it we we you know let’s shut the goal window right that that was the only way to stop it well once we left the goal standard in 1971 it really didn’t matter how much gold we had because nobody had was entitled to any any of it I mean nobody who owns Federal Reserve notes now believes that they’re entitled to any gold right it doesn’t matter how much gold we have it’s irrelevant because you can’t get any gold for your your Federal Reserve notes now the relevance might be that’s

our Reserve to support the dollar right because other countries have their reserves in dollars or they have it in Euros or Yen or Pounds or other currencies the United States hardly has any foreign exchange reserves hardly any but what we do have in theory is a big horde of gold and so what that gold would enable us to do if the dollar really started to fall right and we wanted to defend it we could take gold and sell it and buy back dollars right we can you know use our gold to buy back our our notes right but

if we don’t actually have that gold right if it turns out that that gold isn’t there all hell’s going to break loose right there are some people who think well that’ll be bad for gold if we don’t have it no no no it’ll be phenomenal for gold if we don’t have it if the United States doesn’t have that gold that we claim to have gold prices are going to go ballistic and the dollar is going to tank because that means we are defenseless we have no reserves of anything in order to defend the dollar it means the US government needs to buy

gold well where’s the price going to go if the government doesn’t have the gold that everybody thought it had right so that is a big deal and because if we don’t have our gold that doesn’t just mean there’s more gold in the world it just means that the gold uh that that China has the gold that uh India has the gold that Russia has the gold that Saudi Arabia has is the gold that we used to have right that’s probably where a lot of these countries got their gold if we sold ours right it’s not like this just

just this big supplies somewhere floating around right it it’s accounted for we’ve just been overcounting it which means there’s not as much gold in the world as we thought right because the US government’s Gold’s not there now maybe China has more than they’re letting us know that’s that’s the other speculation we have less and China has more so we’ll find that out in theory uh if uh if we have audit although you know you might be afraid if they actually send some Auditors down to to Fort Knox

and they get into the vaults and you know there’s just cobwebs down there are they actually going to come out and tell us that I mean because again uh it’s going to be a financial disaster now you know of course immediately when you know Elon Musk posts something about that and Michael sailor comes out and and a Bitcoin fixes this right the idea is well you know if they had a Bitcoin Reserve uh we wouldn’t have this problem because everybody would know exactly how much Bitcoin they have you know if the

US dollar was still backed by gold it the way it should be redeemable we would have an audit right because people would care the reason that we’re not auditing it is because it’s not backed by goal right now right so there’s been no reason to have the audit uh but Bitcoin doesn’t fix that yeah sure everybody knows how much Bitcoin you have but who cares the Bitcoin is worthless what difference does it make yeah I can audit it so what you’re auditing nothing you know at least when you audit gold you’re

auditing something and yeah you have to have trusted third parties that can come in there and verify uh that the gold is there um but you know you have private companies you know you could have multiple unrelated third parties that could do audits independent Audits and you know it would work it did work the reason that we stopped auditing is because we defaulted you know and then at that point uh there was no point but if there’s no goal Gold’s going a lot higher it’s another reason to buy it right now right don’t

wait matter of fact gold is at a record high it hit a record high today I don’t know if it’s said a new record high right now no it’s 2936 but it got over 2940 this evening and last night and and intraday it traded over I think it almost got to 2945 I think maybe 2943 is was the new record high but gold puts in a new record high almost every day now I mean you know it has a pullback once in a while silver almost got back above $33 again today got to about 3290 something and then it’s pulled back right now it’s

around I don’t know 3260 3270 again silver is the steel right Gold’s a buy silver is a steel right at this price I mean I remember when gold when gold got to 2,000 silver peaked out got it didn’t even get to 2,000 and silver got up to $50 in in 2011 Gold got to 19900 gold is 50% higher than it was then and silver is 40% lower uh so silver is a steel but again gold stocks H Ashante uh gold um Anglo Ashante came out very good earnings really good earnings today uh but they did warn um that next year production would

be less than they thought and the stock opened down um like eight and a half percent it didn’t close down eight and a half% it closed down like three and a half percent but they were great earnings uh you know earnings grew I mean I think free C cash flow was up 900% earnings were up like 80 90% from last year they increased their dividend like 250% I mean great numbers the stocks at 11 times earnings but the stock went down because they said oh we’re going to have lower production I’m UNS sure why the production is going to

be down but you know Wall Street always overreacts to lower production because usually there’s a reason that production is is being delayed but it’s not being uh ended right whatever gold they don’t produce is still in the ground that gold is still there so if Angelo Asante doesn’t pull that ground that gold out of the ground in 2025 maybe they pull it out in 2026 and you know what they’ll probably make even more money on that gold selling it in 2026 than they do selling it in 2025 so that that the

annual production is not that important unless they tell you oh we’re restating our reserves right we thought we had uh this much gold and it turns out we don’t we have a lot less gold than we thought that is a big deal but if they don’t reduce their reserves if they just say look this mine is having the difficulty we have to spend some money on some repairs there’s going to be a delay and so we’re not going to get the gold out of the ground as fast as we thought who cares I mean maybe it’s the present

value of money but that’s going to be offset I think by the future increase in the price of gold but again most of these analysts just think the price of gold is going to go down in the future they’re like oh crap they’re not going to get it out of the ground right now in time to sell it at 2900 you know they’re gonna they’re not going to get it out for a couple years and the price is going to be way down by then right that’s the Outlook that everybody has so you still have these companies reporting

good earnings and the stock going down when the stocks were already cheap before they got the good earnings and they should have gone up now look I don’t know exactly when this is going to change again I’m just telling people take advantage of this opportunity while you can uh load up on the europacific capital uh go fund epig GX no europacific wait EUR Pacific igx Europe Pacific GX GI I Europe Pacific gol fund EPG iix that’s the symbol I I keep for EPG iix is the no load symbol for the gold fund or talk to the Reps at

eac.edu this show and I’m going to be talking about this explosive move up in the gold stocks and I hope as many people in my audience have already bought them by the time I I Del that news uh that it’s not oh crap I should have bought you know I would have could have should have just buy now and so that when I report how much these stocks have gone up that you’ll you’ll own them uh before then again so go to erac.com uh and uh and buy them you can buy them right on the fund on the website if you

don’t if you don’t have a brokerage account uh anyway that’s it for tonight uh don’t forget uh like the podcast subscribe to my YouTube channel still trying to get up to that 600,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel make sure and get our our newsletters at shifts sovereign. I think I’m going to do another podcast again on Sunday night uh so make sure and be there live for uh a Sunday night uh Peter shift Show podcast bye for now