Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-11-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Bitcoin expert Christine Menedis and I have a great talk about DJT declaring a crypto strategic reserve...what does it all mean. Former State Senator Baertschiger on the crying over Fed spending cuts, why Oregon is so business unfriendly.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClauserDrilling.com. PureTalk.com for details. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on Southern Oregon's home for conservative talk. Mornings on KMED at 99.3 KBXG. Call Bill at 770-5633 at 770-KMED. Here's Bill Maier.

11 minutes after 7. Now Friday night there was an executive order issued out of the White House establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve, actually moving closer to cryptocurrency. And it would appear to be greasing the skids to making cryptocurrency a bigger part of financial life here in the United States. I will be the first to say that I don't particularly understand it and maybe I'm one of those guys that is not really impressed with this because I don't understand it and maybe that's the reason. At least I know I'm talking against myself right now but that's why I thought I would invite Christine Menendez on.

She's a Bitcoin expert and author of the forthcoming book, Why the World Doesn't Make Sense. Christine, how are you doing this morning? Welcome. I'm doing great. Great to talk to you. Okay. Why the world doesn't make sense.

Okay. I don't know. I'll give you a couple of ideas in because there's a lot of stupid people in charge, but I could be wrong. What are you thinking? Let's hear about that. Look, it's, it's a question everybody's asked themselves, right? We've all felt it. For me, you know, it comes down to one simple thing. It's a, it's a loss of

truth. You know, these truths that at one point were self-evident and from that we've, we've lost liberty and it's important that Americans help understand not just how to regain it, but how to regain it so that we can build what's next and empowering people. And so what you realize is that what seems like a lot of the big themes driving the world today that may seem really disparate, right? Whether it's money or civics or politics, globalism, war, Russia, they're all really coming down to the same thing, right? It's this understanding of the individual versus the collective, freedom versus control, or to put it into Bitcoin and crypto terms, decentralization versus centralization. So it's really simply about truth.

And I'm always kind of torn between the centralization and of course the distributed to the individual kind of power structure because in some respects I would dare say that when it comes to government power it's great to have it not as heavily centralized as it once was. But on the other hand there's also another side of me that says our culture hasn't necessarily been helped by the atomization of rampant ultra-individualism. So I'm kind of talking against a kind of I feel like there's a tension between the two. Would you agree on something like that or maybe not? I think it comes down to a more fundamental issue, which is that we have allowed a lot

of words in our society, not only to be misunderstood but misdefined and taught in a certain way. And I would argue that the individual is one of those, right? And so what we see today as hyper individualism isn't actually the freedom that comes with the recognition of individual sovereignty, it's the slavery that comes from allowing us to be dictated by the ill. Yeah, well individual sovereignty within the rules or the selections being made for you at the state level, right? That kind of thing, right? Yeah, yes, you are free to practice

democracy as we let you, you know, that kind of thing. Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, I would argue, you know, we need to really understand once again what the individual actually is, and in doing so, I think it's need to really understand once again what the individual actually is. And in doing so, I think it's the exact opposite. So we need to return to an understanding of the individual and the sovereignty and freedoms that come with it. All right. Now let me talk a little bit about your background, how you got involved in cryptocurrency.

Maybe you could give us a small primer on how to understand this, because I'm looking at it as mathematical computations that are dependent on a lot of things working in order to make it happen. But why don't you help me out here, okay? Sure. Well, I guess to the first part of your question, I got involved in 2017. I'd love to say it was a lot earlier than that, but you know, as they say, got here as fast as I could. But for me, I was really drawn, I was curious about a lot of

the philosophical implications. And once I kind of took a dive down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, it really grabbed me. And what you start to understand is that, to your point, I think a lot of people kind of get wrapped up in what ultimately is the how right the Cryptography and the blockchain none of that really matters what matters is really simple to understand that Bitcoin is a way to store wealth without the need to constantly battle the erosion of value that's caused by government money, right? And so it's the hardest form of private money or market money because what happens with government money right- and so it's the hardest form of private money or market money. Because

what happens with government money well the temptation is too large right we've all seen it especially this last couple decades. It's just too easy to keep printing it and printing money leads to the basement in the basement roads purchasing

power. So Bitcoin really simply. Is a form of money that holds value over time. And that's why you're seeing, you know, this so-called smart money around the world, whether it's individuals, family offices, businesses, pension funds, institutions, and yes, now governments allocate a portion of their portfolios to Bitcoin. It's a role, it's a recognition of its role as a financial safe haven in an unpredictable world. And

beyond that I think the other thing that's really important understand is that it's incredibly scarce right which goes to its hardness and its down this the entire value of the network. And it's one point six trillion dollar market cap

where we sit today. It essentially hanging out there is a bounty for anyone capable of hacking it. But all these years no one has been able to do so, not an individual, not a government. And so as the digital world increasingly replaced

with the analog, you need a digital goal, not just personally, but as a nation, you need a strategy. And so I think that's what the president gave us at least the beginnings of this past week. What did he actually establish? Because I've looked through the Constitution several times over the years, Christine, and I see absolutely no authority for any president, Trump or anyone else who might be president, to establish a Bitcoin or any other coin strategic

reserve. What do you say? So I think it goes to, and this is a little bit where I have an issue with what he did, but let's break down first what was done. Okay. So the order seeded a Bitcoin only reserves, separated out crypto. That's a check in the right box. It did so with existing Bitcoin. The government has not gone out to date and bought additional Bitcoin, right? We already own about 200,000 plus from civil and criminal asset forfeiture.

Yeah, Bitcoin that was seized. So we actually already have some. Bitcoin that was seized. We have about 200,000. And so what it said is, okay, we're going to put all this into a strategic reserve. The EO says that the US will not sell this Bitcoin. And then it does authorize budget neutral strategies to acquire new Bitcoin and it specifically directs treasury and commerce secretaries to come up with a plan to do so. Now my issue with this is that I actually don't think that this is something that should be a strategic asset, right? We do have, and they are constitutional, we do have strategic reserves.

But strategic reserves are really, they're for commodities, right? Oil, gold, things like that, right? Oil, gold, exactly. We don't put companies or tech, which is why it was right to not include crypto into this. Bitcoin is a commodity and it is a strategic commodity- but I would argue that it's place is actually a

kind of gold as a monetary reserve asset now this is not something that constitutionally the president can do. Via an executive order all he can do is this first step of saying. It's a strategic asset and it needs to be recognized as such. Now

Congress I believe should then take the additional step. And in rather than nearly securing it as a strategic- reserve asset. And make it a monetary reserve asset because yes it is a strategic commodity. But it's also an

asset that's capable of backing financial stability. And confidence. In a way that really these strategic reserve assets aren't so once you understand that it is akin to gold, I believe that that's the next step that Congress should take. And then additionally, the Fed would need to recognize it in the same way, enabling use back in monetary operations.

Yeah, Christine, I find it interesting that you've looked at gold's price, which has been kind of churning higher and it's kind of now in that $2,900, $2,950 kind of trading range. It's been pretty narrow for a number of weeks now. And we hear about gold being shipped into the United States right now. London has been doing a lot of this and central banks have been buying this because I think that this is an indicator that war is coming in one form or another and people are kind of you know moving assets around right now it's just my opinion but as to Bitcoin being a monetary asset this is where I'm to me it's a speculative asset and I'll tell you why when I think of a monetary asset I usually think of something which is

relatively steady and not particularly volatile. Now, I have watched in just the last couple of weeks, Bitcoin soar to $109,000, dipped down to $69,000 not too long ago. And now this morning, as we were talking, it's about $80,000. And I see something that is that volatile as not being a particularly good example of a monetary asset. So where am I on that? Wrong or right?

What is your opinion on it? I would argue obviously the other side of that. I completely disagree with that. I think what you're seeing right now is that Bitcoin is a very young asset. And so what's happening is it's a saying that sounds a little silly, but it's actually very meaningful. It's going to trade as a risk asset until the day that it doesn't. And so there are times when Bitcoin as a young asset is trading as tech, right?

And so it's building upon principles like network effects, and it's growing, and it's entrenching itself in the system. But as the U. S. prints money you'll notice Bitcoin separates itself in a trades like gold. And so in we were to enter into a situation like great geopolitical

instability like you're talking about. What would happen the U. S. would need to print money to finance that war war is not possible without fiat an incredible printing of dollars in debasing of currency because nobody wants to go back. To their people and say we need some more cash from you to go fight this war war is incredibly unpopular.

So what happens the government prints money and at that point Bitcoin gains in value because of its underlying monetary properties. So to understand Bitcoin really is about understanding the fundamentals of money right what makes money scarce what makes it hard why is sound hard money superior right so what is it about gold

before Bitcoin. Gold had the greatest what we call a stock to flow ratio which really means nothing more than it's the circulating supply versus point. Gold had the greatest what we call a stock to flow ratio which really means nothing more than it's the circulating supply versus the flow of new production and so you want to make something as

scarce as possible and today gold was that and so you'll notice the stability of gold right the price may rise and fall but the purchasing power of gold is the same. The example people love to give is an ounce of gold today buys you a five-man suit and an ounce of gold 100, 200, 500 years ago,

but the exact same equivalent item. Yeah, pretty much the same. Yeah, you're right. So I think a lot of time people forget that we base things in dollars. We don't look at the world in Bitcoin. And so when you flip it, you start to understand how these hard monetary properties exist and come out and play an important role as we move forward in the world. You know, the part that kind of concerns me is that you're saying that we need the digital because we need to get away from the analog, except that the analog, the ability to touch, store, and especially not to have it out on the web in one form or another, seems to me to be kind of a good thing these days. Because in a matter of war and such like that, I could imagine that one EMP taking down the web in a country,

there goes your Bitcoin or maybe even your ability to access such such things. Any thoughts to that you know if you're for using it as an asset that way? Yes so before I agree with you which I strongly agree with you, taking down Bitcoin in one country might prevent your accessing it but it cannot take down the network and therefore your value is preserved underneath. Not very helpful when you can't access it, but I did just want to clarify that. Now, I am actually a huge proponent as well of gold. I like hard assets, period.

And I think we should be stacking them, not trading one for another. Yeah, because I always get kind of feeling, this feeling like we're everything, everybody's conditioning everything into the cloud, everything into the cloud, everything into a network. And then I guess we're going to have to live in the network. And of course, I'm 63 years old.

Maybe I'm just looking at this from a OK boomer kind of thing. I'm distrusting. I'm distrusting. And I can't help. Trump was saying that it was a scam, cryptocurrency, just a few years ago. Now it's okay. Now, I can't help but think that part of this is that $50 million in TechPro cryptocurrency backers was donated to his campaign. I can't help but think that has something to do with this.

Would that be fair? I don't know to what extent he understands this, but I will say this. I think that these things are not mutually exclusive wanting to and appreciating an analog world and understanding the reality that our forms of money are changing and that as money itself becomes digitally native

and not merely represented digitally. There needs to be an alternative that exists in that realm that can represent freedom otherwise what you end up with is you end up with stable coins and CBDC and centralized crypto which is extremely dangerous for our freedom and so it's law great this realm exists We have to have an element within that realm where we can preserve our freedom and where we can freely trade outside of you know of government overreach. And so I think that's the role

of Bitcoin not that I would advocate for moving all things on chain and into a digital realm. But it's here and so let's acknowledge that in that sense we then need a digital asset that can represent freedom just as gold is incredibly important in the analog world- to represent those same- market money properties. And so that's why you know as now we have this executive order right to what happens well. You can't legislate by EO all the time it doesn't work it's not constitutional so what's going to happen this thing's- ultimately gonna get tossed over to Congress. And what Congress does with it really matters. So aside from whether or not Congress takes the additional monetary reserve

step that I believe they should. They're going to have to figure out how to pay for additional bitcoin because most in Congress agree with the administration that we should purchase additional bitcoin. So what concerns me is that the leading

Bitcoin Act right now is out there by Cynthia Lummis, who has been a phenomenal senator in favor of advocating for Bitcoin. But to my mind, she's advocating for a very dangerous position that's starting to get supported across the board. And that is she says, look, we're holding a lot of gold on our balance sheet. And if you look at that gold, it's valued. At 42 bucks, right? 42 dollars, something like that? Yeah. And so she's saying, let's revalue the asset and sell the difference and use that money to buy Bitcoin.

I think that's incredibly dangerous. Again, I don't think you should trade one hard asset for another. The goal is to get off the fraud of government money and to stack as many hard assets as possible, both within the analog and the digital. So you're not either Bitcoin or gold or assets like that. You're saying both. Everything needs to be part of this. I'm saying everything needs to be both. And so what I think they should do to pay for this

in a budget neutral way is what the executive order actually authorizes, which is, look, other than gold, treasury's got a ton of assets on its balance sheet. And so let's monetize some of those to pay for funding of additional Bitcoin, right? So we have physical assets like real estate, you're out West. I mean, the government owns what, 640 plus million acres? I it's, what, 28, 29% of the country's landmass. Yeah. And the highest use for that landmass right now appears to be burning it in the summertime.

Yeah, sadly. We've got infrastructure, natural resources. We've got mortgage-backed securities. Heck, we've got corporate holdings that the government took through, talk about unconstitutional bailouts and things like that. So we have access to things that should be shed back into the private sector. Would you then suggest that this stuff go into a sovereign wealth fund? Because I know Scott Bessent has been talking about this, Treasury Secretary. And when he talks about it, I take him as seriously as a heart attack on that kind of stuff. Oh absolutely. Look I personally do not like a sovereign wealth fund. I think it's unconstitutional with 10th Amendment issues at best. I believe that what's

being proposed is radically different than what the court in the past has upheld under tax and spending. Because now we're talking about via the sovereign wealth fund actually holding securities, right? Stakes of companies in exchange for market access. TikTok is the perfect example of this, right? It's a public-private partnership on steroids. So to me, it's incredibly unconstitutional and... Yeah, I blanch every time I hear someone say public-private partnership, every time.

Because I know essentially that the costs get socialized to the public and the profits usually get privatized. Usually is how that's worked. Look, the government was never meant to get into bed with private business. If you think about what is the power of the federal government, it's powers that we lent it. We never lent that power to the federal government in our constitution.

Now, having said that, I do think we're gonna get one. So that was an earlier EO, the time's gonna run out, and here in late April, early May, they're supposed to come back with a plan to have an EO, and like you say, the Treasury Secretary is a huge proponent of it. So it becomes a question of what type of sovereign wealth fund are they going to give us? Is it going to be independent or Treasury controlled? Yeah, I understand why they want to do it because they have to do something to generate some wealth in this system right now because,

you know, you can't just keep importing cheap Chinese goods and exporting dollars, right? That's not working. It's not going to work for much longer. That's why they want to do this, I imagine. Well, that's exactly why they want to do it. They want to do it because nobody is willing to confront their continued spending. Just look at the reconciliation bill going through Congress right now. Nobody even wants to add a rescission bill to it for all of the fraud that's been found by Doe's.

They want to keep the money. Besant said the other day talking to the New York Economic Club, he said, hey, Republicans like to spend money. We just want to spend it slower. Oh, okay. So yeah, that's why I vote for Republicans, you know. I don't care if you vote for if you spend it on fraud, but just spend it on fraud slowly. Yeah, that's what we like. You know, talk about something that just makes you want to put your head in your head. So I think the problem is, yeah, look, you've got a country that's broke, like absolutely broke and we're dealing with the consequences of this engineered financial system that we've

been talking about. And so to your point, path forward. Now requires this multifaceted approach it's not just enough to have. Those in the elimination of waste fraud and abuse we've got to have deep spending cuts that got to come from Congress we have to

have strong economic growth we've got to have a forward looking revenue model. And then I think this is back to where gold Bitcoin come in we ultimately need to transition back to a sound monetary system. And without all of those things working in concert we ultimately need to transition back to a sound monetary system.

And without all of those things working in concert, we've got some hard times ahead of us. Boy, interesting. I had a feeling I was just going to say that everything you were going to say was nonsense, but I agree with you more than I disagree. Okay? So that's good. I'll win you over eventually. Yeah, you win me over. Right. But Christine Mendez is a Bitcoin expert, author of the forthcoming book, Why the World Doesn't Make Sense. We're trying to make sense of that this morning. We've had a caller that's been holding on here for a while, hopefully on topic.

Heidi, do you want to talk with Christine? Good morning. Welcome. I did, Bill. Michael Shaw here. Yeah, Michael, you're with Christine. Go ahead. Yeah.

So I can agree with a lot of what she said about getting things fixed within this country, but I am still of the opinion that all cryptocurrency is just a fallacy. So you've got something that was created out of nothing by some guy that no one knows who in the heck he is anywhere in the world, and it's backed by absolutely nothing. So what's to stop me from introducing the Magic Mike money and Bill introducing the bouncing Bill buck and Jane introducing the jumping Jane jingle. So you end up with 18 million different cryptocurrencies and none of them are backed by anything. You know it's's an interesting question. And let me toss that over to Christine. Christine, what would you say to Michael's concern?

Well, it's very valid, Michael, and it's exactly why I think so many people are against crypto. And by the way, I'm going to put myself in that box. Crypto is not money. It may be tech, it may be a venture play if you want to you know put a bet on the networks and the applications built on top of them. But here's the thing and here's why Bitcoin is different right so let me start by saying that there's- there's three concepts critical to

Bitcoin. That really check the boxes for sound and sovereign money- as we see it in a digital age. And those are self custody trust. And then what we call the difficulty adjustment. So when we think about, let me back up and throw something else that you separately here, and then we can talk about whichever part of these, you

know, you want. But if you look at what makes money, right, what are the fundamentals of money? Well, money's got to be acceptable. It's got to be durable, right? It's got to be able to withstand the wear and tear of handling. Also has to be divisible, right? It's got to be divisible, it's got to be recognizable, it's got to be portable, and it's got to be scarce, okay? So Bitcoin has solved all of those issues. Now gold solved a lot of them, but gold still had issues with divisibility, weight, and portability. And so what did we introduce in the world we introduced paper currencies. Right and we said

well we're going to have an underlying monetary system that followed. But we're going to use paper currencies to get rid of those issues and of course paper currencies evolved into. A paper monetary system- Bitcoin doesn't have

those issues and so if you look at the design of Bitcoin. It's fundamentally different. Than any of these other cryptos and so this brings us back to these other issues of self custody trust and difficulty adjustment on top of it so all I'll throw in you know let's talk about. Let's talk about the difficulty adjustment right because I. I kind of think this is one of the most fascinating things about Bitcoin that

really goes to your point. So. If you understand not just the laws of economics but human nature. History has taught us that if something is valuable we're going to do anything possible to produce more of it per game right. And so what is

Bitcoin Bitcoin is. Enforced we're going to do anything possible to produce more of it per gain. And so what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is enforced scarcity. We needed a way to prevent this from being issued too quickly, flooding the market, and therefore devaluing the money. So with Bitcoin... And if I understand correctly, Christine, there is absolutely a limit to how many bitcoins can be made, period? It's mathematical computation, right? There are, right. So about every 10 minutes, bitcoins are released. And so it began with 50 coins in the first four years, and then every four years after that, the number decreases. And so the result of that is that there's 21 million. It's a hard cap scarcity. Um, and the first 20 will

actually have been fully released by this year, 2025, but that last million is going to take roughly another hundred years. And so if you, if you think about this, right, going back to human nature, if the number of coins is hard coded, what is somebody going to try and tamper with the block time and say, okay, well, instead of every 10 minutes, let's speed that up. Well, this is where the brilliance of the network comes in, is that it takes these principles that are the exact opposite of what your concerns were and relate to like good fiscal policy and hard sound money and said, well, if there was ever going to be. A you know an incentive for doing so for increasing these block times.

It's going to happen because especially as more and more people choose to hold it it becomes more more valuable but instead what do we see. The processing power rises and so it becomes more difficult to release those ten coins every

single time. And so it ensures that not only can you not change the time period, but every time you try and scan the network, the network becomes more secure. And so if you stop and think about that for a second, we don't have anything else cryptography-wise in the digital realm that acts like that. All right. Michael, what do you think about what Christine said? Some of the answers to your concerns. Does that answer any of it?

Yeah, not really. Oh, okay. Because basically what she's saying is what other crypto fans have said for years. And being a business owner, I deal with hard assets all the time. What's the value of our products that we're selling, our services that we're selling and such.

And I still don't see anywhere in there that's going to stop somebody or lots of somebody's of introducing other crypto. There is no... Oh, no, there's nothing that's going to stop. You're not going to stop somebody from introducing other crypto. The point is that it doesn't matter because those cryptos will fail to gain adoption and traction because most of them are upon these schemes. And so I don't think you're going to stop that. All right. Hey, Michael, I appreciate the call there.

So as far as, so you're not looking at Bitcoin then as used as purchasing to purchase something because it takes too long to do a transaction in Bitcoin, right? It doesn't doesn't make a lot of sense, correct? For the most part. Hello? Are you talking to Michael or me? I was talking to you. Talking to you.

Oh, well, we have what's called the Lightning Network, which actually addresses that issue on Bitcoin. So you can use it for purchases. Look, I personally think its value is as a store of money. I don't recommend it for purchases right now. I realize I'm going to get hate mail from Bitcoiners for saying that. But aren't there other cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and others that may be more appropriately used for purchases, a little more designed for that, for everyday use,

so to speak? There are a lot of cryptos that are specifically designed for that. And this is where I think we've reached the point where you can't not care anymore and stick your head in the sand because something very dangerous is happening. So while Bitcoin is a tool for freedom, we have a lot of other crypto ripple that you just mentioned being one of them that are tools for control. And these tools are what are starting to enter our financial system right now and to create the backbone of our financial system. And so it becomes incredibly dangerous where we as people as citizens of this country allow this transition to take place. Now on the one hand, do we need to move spend onto blockchain rails? Yes.

The reality is, Swift is broken. Beyond that, the US has weaponized it, and we live in a global economy. Bitcoin, I'm sorry, not Bitcoin, but using stablecoins can send payments across borders in two to three seconds. Visa and MasterCard for years now have been doing. Pilot programs with Solana which is another great- payments platform. But the concern is is that as we

allow the stable points in what's happening is. They are in effect centralized right so they are controlled by the issuer there's nothing decentralized about them just because they're on block chain. And so that means that the issuer. There's nothing decentralized about them just because they're on blockchain. And so that means that the issuer of these stablecoins can choose to either deny payment

for something. We've reinserted that third party that Bitcoin intentionally removed. Yeah. And the whole idea of using money as a cudgel, like the United States does, if a country does what we don't like, we're going to beat you over the head with the dollar, right? You know, that kind of thing. Absolutely. And that's what we're trying to get away from, in essence.

It's what we're trying to get away from. And so what's happening is under the guise of Bitcoin, this other stuff is slipping through. And this is where people need to get educated and separate it and say, no, I am not okay with this happening over here. And by the way, a lot of this is political talking points. The president came out and said, you're not going to have a CBDC. Well, that's great. But if you look at the actions that they're taking, we're moving closer and closer and closer towards a backdoor CBDC. You know, I agree with you. I'm glad you noticed that and said it because I'm thinking, boy, you know, the moment that they say we're not going to have a CBDC is like, oh yeah, they're going to have a central

bank digital currency. You bet they will. Okay. No, they absolutely are. Yeah. All right. They absolutely are. All right.

Christine Menendez, Bitcoin expert, author of the forthcoming book, Why the World Doesn't Make Sense. You can find out more about Christine, read up and enjoy some of her YouTube videos and just get educated there. Christine Menendez, it's it's Menetes right? Did I get that right? Menetes. Menetes, pardon me. Okay, we'll get it correct there. But M-E-N-E-D-I-S, her name.com. I'll get that all up there. And Christine, a pleasure. I will have you back and it wasn't nonsensical. All right, I appreciate the call and the talk. I look forward to it. I enjoyed it. All right. Thank you now. 742 at KMED. the and paint presents the travel report on KMED.com. Check it for changing road conditions, road cams,

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Try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash free. That's ziprecruiter.com slash free. Hi, I'm Matt Stone with Stone Heating and Air and I'm on KMED. Quarter before eight. Joining me right now, former state senator Herman Bearchigger who was out there I think I think he's bought five or six Bitcoin just in the last few minutes. How you doing this morning Herman? Welcome back. Yeah I got him out of a Cheerios box. Yeah you know the thing is that that was interesting talk there because like I said Trump is getting he's kind of jumping in all feet first on this on this cryptocurrency strategic reserve I don't know I still can't look

at Bitcoin at this point I could be completely off base I guess and you and I have talked about money for a lot over a lot of time over the years there money is generally speaking though what people will accept as value. It usually has to do with what is consensus about that. So I don't know, maybe she's right about that with crypto being that wealth preservation for long term, but it doesn't ring true to the same extent with me. I don't know about you. I'm going to have to let a little more water go under the bridge. You think so? Yes. I still like seeing something that says this is legal tender.

The other aspect of this too is that it behaves more like a speculative asset and there's nothing wrong with a speculative asset out there. I think that the market's going to look pretty good for this one. I'm going to buy some of it and then I'm going to find some greater fool to buy it later on, that kind of thing. But I just don't know if it's the store of value yet. And we could be proven wrong on this. I don't know. I've heard too many horror stories of so. I've just, I got other things to do with my investments and they've been proceeding along fairly decently. I think that's what I will stay with. I wanted to kick things around with you a little bit.

The one thing I can help but notice that our Southern Oregon media is very big on doing a lot of news coverage of people getting together and protesting the Trump administration and especially amplifying the cries over cuts in federal spending. You've probably noticed that too, right? No doubt. Oh yeah, you know, and I, it's just, I'm just, Americans need a reality check. They really do, Bill. So when you look at history, nations that get in this far of debt, the outcome is never good, never good. I could absolutely say never good. History tells us that.

So Trump's approach is a three-pronged approach. The first prong is we've got to stop deficit spending. In other words, we have to stop spending more than we take in. And you also have to generate more wealth. That's a part of it too. And I think that's why Besant was talking about the sovereign wealth fund, which I was talking to the last guest about too. So that's the first problem. The second problem are these tariffs. And as I mentioned before, tariff wars always seem to work themselves out.

But Trump looks at it as another source of income, because first we have to stop the deficit spending, then we have to start reducing the deficit. So that's going to take more. So the second prong is the tariffs, that that'll help reduce it, he's hoping. And the third is to generate an economy by bringing businesses back to the United States, which will bring more gross domestic product, which will equate to more income taxes, which will also bring that down. We got to bring that national debt down to somewhere 30 or 40% of the gross domestic product. It's almost 130 percent right now.

Yeah, when you're that way, any nation that gets to 120, 130 percent, you're getting into that tipping zone very much a danger zone. And I think we've been able to paper it over for the time being, no pun intended, because of being the world's reserve currency. But there have been pressures from around the world for other people to de-dollarize. And Trump says, well, no one's gonna de-dollarize. Well, he can't really make that choice for other people. They will decide.

And unfortunately, there's some economists that still believe that we can inflate ourselves out of this situation. So what that means is inflate your economy. And so that generates more volumes of money and more volumes of money. That'll bring down the deficit. That'll, you know. Well, it brings down the appearance of the deficit by comparison,

you know, that kind of thing. But the thing is, look at what's been going on since the 2008 great recession, you know, that big contagion that ended up being blocked up, you know, that some of the biggest bailouts and then through Covid. All they've done is inflate and inflate and inflate. But what it's done is created asset bubbles here in housing, then in stocks, and in housing again. And, you know, it's working for some, but it's not working for most people. Would that be a fair assessment where we find ourselves right now? Well, just point to a country in history that has tried to inflate themselves out of debt

and see how it's wound up. I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't, I think that's very dangerous. So, back to, you know, I mean, I was just looking at the front page of the Capitol Press, which is an ad. Yeah, but it's kind of it. It talks a lot about what Salem is up to right now. Right? Yeah, but it says Trump up. Hey, Herman. Still there?

Hello, Herman? Hello. Yeah, Herman, we lost you there for a little bit. Sorry about that. So you were on the front page of the Capitol Press. The Capitol Press said something about Trump and then we lost you. Go ahead. Okay.

So it says, Trump ups tariffs, promises more, farm groups fret. So, if that's a good example of, yes, we agree with Trump about the national debt, we agree, but don't touch my program. That's like everybody else. I know that Channel 12 ended up going down to, what was it, Callahan, California, a little town, right? 60 people show up and say that we're protesting the Trump, we're protesting the cuts on fire, we're protesting the Trump, we're protesting the cuts on on fire, we're protesting the cuts to the VA. And I think we're back to this thing like, all

right, if you're not willing to take any cuts in spending then what is your plan? Isn't that what you start asking everybody? All the critics I keep saying what is your plan, Herman? And there's never any answer except just keep doing what we've been doing. Well I really believe, I truly believe people just don't comprehend how much money, and for every trillion dollars is about $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. So if we could just get people to understanding how much money, you know, I've had multiple conversations and that's why I said, you know, 37, it's 37 trillion, 37, 37, that's not a lot of money.

It's under 40, it's under 100, it can't be that much money. Most of us can't even, you know, conceptualize a million dollars, much less 37 trillion. I think I have to look this up and I may be wrong, but I think Reagan, when we reached a trillion, he said that if he took a dollar bill and put it back to back, it reached to the moon and back. If I remember right, I got to look that up. Anyway, it's a lot of money, but I don't think people realize, and I don't think they realize the long term consequences. You know, and I have to agree with Mr. Musk. You know, it's it's gotta get fixed. Can you imagine, Bill, you had a business that grosses a million dollars, but you owed a million two hundred and seventy thousand. Would that be a healthy business?

No, you would be considered underwater. Exactly. So this is what we're experiencing at a high level. Trump realized he's the first president to actually realize everybody else has just been too scared to address the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think Trump realizes that we have no choice but to do some work on it. And the thing is, though, is that, and I'm going to use a term, in fact, I think I'm going to talk about this Saturday at the Patriots Conference, but the rain falls on the just

and the unjust, you know? And everybody, I think, is going to be affected by this. And do you think that Oregon will ultimately be affected more than some other states? Maybe we're more dependent on those inflows of hot government cash than other states. What would you say to that, having been in the state legislature? Well, Oregon's an expensive state to live in. And let me give you some statistics. This is the 25th, actually late 24th statistics.

So economic outlook rank, they rank the states. This is done by ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange. And I'm a graduate from their academy. It's pretty bipartisan. It numbers are numbers, They're just facts. And they do a very good job. So economic outlook for Oregon, 42. One being great, 50 being not so great.

So income tax rate, we're 49. So almost at the bottom. Almost at the bottom. We have a very high regressive income tax. Yes, we do. Exactly. Corporate income tax rate, 49. Tax progressivity, 49. And that means you start taxing people at a very low rate, okay?

So you're a poor person and you're paying a big chunk of your income to the state very quickly, unlike other states. Okay. Exactly. All right. Property tax burden 33. Let's see, gross receipts tax or activity tax 49. As state inheritance tax 50. We have the worst inheritance tax? Really? Yes, we're the worst in inheritance tax, 50. And of course, we're not a right to work state. We're 50 on that too. All right. So, Oregon finds itself in kind of a pickle right now, which is maybe why we hear so much hissy-fitting coming out of Salem right now here, Herman, because the way the state is set up with its tax structure and its desire to spend lots of money for very progressive programs, the rug's about

to be pulled out. Is that a fair assessment, what we're looking at, and why there's so much anger and violence talk, you know, coming from the other side on this one. This is why big business is not interested in moving and relocating into Oregon. This is why Intel is going to Ohio because it's not just the tax rates on the company, it's the tax rates on the company's employees. That's a very interesting point. You know when I moved down from the state of Oregon, when I moved here in 1991 is when

I moved to the Rogue Valley, Herman. I came from Seattle. I was working in Seattle and Olympia, Washington in those days. And I didn't realize how much money, how much less money I was going to get in my paycheck moving from Washington to Oregon. Washington had more consumption taxes rather than income taxes and I came down here it's like all of a sudden the same amount of money that I was doing okay in Seattle I was starving in Medford because I came down at the same pay rate and I didn't realize that. You maxed out at $125,000 in Oregon and that's 10% then.

Right. And that's yeah and so that's you know in a couple is $250,000 it's 10% but also if you look at the progressive chart people that make 50 or $60,000 are still paying a lot of income debt. They're not paying 10%, but they're still paying 6 or 7%. That's right. So, you know, it's the progress of the progressivity. So that's why we don't have...

Go up to Portland. If you rewind the clock back to the 50s and 60s, Portland was loaded with manufacturing. I mean sheer manufacturing. When did it start changing and why? Do you imagine? Yeah, and it's all gone. It's all gone. And that's because it's too expensive for big, you know, and that's why Intel is going and, you know, namely, you

know, our temper industry is gutted. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, it's just gutted and it's going to stay where it's going to stay for that's just the reality. No, who's, you know, I hear people saying, oh, now Trump's in, we're going to go cut more trees and utilize our national forest. But who in their right mind is going to dump $20 or $50 million into a new sawmill on a promise that the federal government is going to supply them with logs?

It wouldn't seem to make a lot of sense, but is there any talk though in the grand scheme of things in Oregon realizing that Oregon does have a state competitive problem and that if it really wants to take care of its other problems including homelessness and how we're going to provide free medical care to everybody which the voters stupidly voted for you know again you know that kind of thing there's gonna have to be a change in the state somehow. Right? The Oregon State Legislature and the Executive Branch and all the bureaucrats and all, they don't think that way. They still think redistribution of wealth is the way to go. And they forget we have to create the wealth to be able to

redistribute it. Well, we're number 49 in education, number 49 in jobs, number 49 in taxation, number 49—this is like, you know, on the bad side of the scale here. I don't know. Is there a possibility, you think though, that the Trump economic programs at the federal level may be a come to Jesus moment for Oregon's legislature? No, they're just going to constantly outline, oh this is hurting, people don't have medical, they don't have this, they don't have that, they don't have this. Look at the homeless problem, we don't have housing. I mean, I'm looking at the housing problem. I mean, the

governor on one hand says, oh we need to build all these houses, and then on the other hand, she signs bills to make it harder to build houses and less affordable to build houses. It's the most bizarre behavior. I just, sometimes I think that it's a dream. Sometimes Sometimes though, there is a case. We've noticed that there have been a lot of Democrats over time that were looking at what their party was doing and realizing that the party had lost its way. Maybe we'll see that here. You know, I wish I could enjoy your optimism, but after the last governor, the governatorial election we had, I've lost it. You know, I've watched the polls swing so much and then at the last

minute, you know, I watched Tina Kotec gather up about $30 million, most of it from outside the state of Oregon. That gave her over $20 to spend on every registered Democrat, and boom, that poll was all swung and look who they voted for. Now, I'm hearing that there's talk about some reform coming from the federal government on election rules. There may be something to do. There may be some help at some point. That would be very helpful to have an, in my opinion, to have an honest election in Oregon.

All right. Herman, I always appreciate the talk and all right, you go there and stack your Bitcoin. We'll talk next week, all right? I'll see you later, Bill. Yeah. And remember, everyone's going to be taking some pain. This is KMED, KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford, KPXG, Grants Pass. spray on bed liner product to legacy protective coatings and join the fast growing nationwide network of dealers. Our new legacy bed liners are the latest innovations and improvements in spray on bed liner technology. Stop by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority and let our seasoned team of professionals give

your truck the protection it needs with a legacy spray on bed liner. Matt here with the Josephine County Republican Party. It's time for Patriots to Unite.