Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/29/26: Imminent Iran Attack, Rand Paul Vs Rubio On Venezuela, Dollar Collapse, Trump Accounts For Babies

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Sachs warning on imminent Iran attack, Rand Paul Vs Rubio on Venezuela, dollar collapsing, Trump baby accounts.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Where do we have Crystal? Indeed, we do. So a lot of military assets moving back to the Gulf region, Jeffrey Sacks is saying that new war with Iran is imminent. So we will take a look at that. At the same time, Marco Rubio was on the Hill testifying and taking a lot of heat from Rand Paul, among others. You'll definitely want to see that. We've got a bunch of economic news in particular.

We're going to start with a dire warning from Peter Schiff, who called the 2008 crash correctly, who is once again sounding the alarm bells. Trump also out with his new Trump accounts for all the babies out there. Pretty interesting play. There's a lot to say about that one. I'll discuss it. I'll discuss it. Yes.

As a personal finance nerd and as someone whose child will benefit from the Trump account, I will break down the Trump account forever. We've got new video of Alex Pruddy that was taken 11 days before he was ultimately murdered. That has gotten a lot of attention. We also have a bunch of new developments there. The agents involved have apparently been put on leave. We've got some updates in the investigation. We've also got another wild one.

The FBI raided the Fulton County election headquarters in the context of Trump's wild 2020 Stop the Steel delusions. Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, was there lurking at the scene. What the hell is going on? Nobody should feel comfortable with whatever is unfolding there. And we've also got polling in the show. Poor whites actually turning on Trump. It's kind of an undernoticed trend, but that's been a corporate. part of his base that seems to be very unhappy with his economic stewardship, among other things.

I mean, it makes perfect sense. Just hasn't gotten a lot of attention. Yeah, that's right. All right. So before we get to that, we have a couple of housekeeping things. So because technically, the way that we do it for the AMA, we're not able to do it this week. However, remember, on the Friday show, they do take AMA questions. So on locals, there's an AMA link and you can leave your questions there. That will count as the AMA for this week. Remember, it's available to all premium subscribers. And then second, Spotify. is close to being fixed. We have narrowed down what the problem is for Spotify video for our premium subscribers,

which is a good reminder, by the way, if you can help support us, breaking points.com. As we have noted, all of the controversial topics that we cover, many of them get demonetized or underranked in the algorithm. And we've especially seen that in recent days in coverage with ICE, which is what makes it most important to get premium support. So breakingpoints.com, if you're able to support the show. But let's go ahead and start with Iran. So a lot of moving parts whenever it comes to Iran.

Another attack appears imminent. And that is definitely the analysis of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, we've always rely on. Here he is from an interview just yesterday on the Glendizent Show. Let's take a listen. I think it's clear. Well, for Israel, this has been a 30-year effort to overthrow the Iranian government. The United States basically does what Israel says. And so Israel has been pulling the United States into war with Iran and attempting to do that endlessly.

It did that last summer. The goal was to create regime change, to have an overthrow. That didn't work. The U.S. then has been using economic instruments, what our Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, called economic statecraft, but he laid out the deliberate measures by the United States to destroy the Iranian economy. The idea, again, was regime change. That didn't work. And so now we have a carrier-task strike group on its way to attack Iran. So an attack is imminent, I think. The goal here has never been negotiation. Whenever there has been negotiation, Israel has jumped up and down saying

don't negotiate. Of course, a nuclear agreement was reached with Iran a decade ago. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA. It was actually ratified by the UN Security Council resolution 2231 on the 20th of July 2015. Then Trump ripped it up in his first term. So there's never been any desire by Israel to have a negotiated settlement. And since the United States does what Israel tells it to do, there has never been a readiness of the United States to have real negotiations. So I think this is very important for his analysis in the overall context. And as we begin to see things moving behind the scenes, a lot of this is backed up. Let's put the next one, please Mac, up on the screen.

Truth Social, that kind of came not out of nowhere per se if you've been paying attention, but of course it's been a lot else going on in the news. Donald Trump, a massive armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet headed by the great aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, that's sent to Venezuela, like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary. Hopefully Iran will quickly come to the table and negotiate a fair and equitable deal. No nuclear weapons, one that is good for all parties.

Time is running out. It is truly of the essence. As I told Iran before, make a deal. They didn't. There was Operation Midnight Hammer. The next attack will be far worse. Don't make that happen again. I really think everyone should sit with this for a second because the justification

of Mid-Mindhammer was that we would wipe out all of Iran's nuclear facilities. Thus, no deal. We've eliminated the threat. And yet here we are some six months later. And now the criticism is, oh, well, we have to strike Iran because they won't make a deal on nuclear weapons. But wait, you told us that you had eliminated their nuclear capacity. So why does there need to be some deal? It's all fake. Oh, what it traces back to is Israel actually moved the goalposts. And they said, now it's no longer about nuclear facilities, nuclear fission or nuclear production. Now it's about long range or regional range missiles. Now, again, keep that in mind is that regional range missiles are ones that are no threat

to the United States. They'll say that it's a threat to our bases or any of that. IRL, what is it really a threat to? To Israel. And then even then, they're saying that with a nuclear threat that could potentially be attached. Again, they said that it was all destroyed. So either they lied, which I obviously always said that they did on nuclear facility, the nuclear facilities and actually eradicating them,

or they told the truth, and they're moving the goalpost. And let's also not forget, all of this was precipitated with nothing to do with nukes. It's not like there was some breakout period or any of that. Like, again, they were falsely claiming in the days up to Midnight Hammer. This was all precipitated by protests in Iran, which, again, by all accounts, even from so-called democracy activists in Iran, are telling us that have been quelled by the regime, and largely the regime remains solidly in power.

So there are pretext upon pretext, just like with the Venezuela operation. They said it was about drugs, and now it's about law enforcement. It's all fake. This is regime change. This is straight up and down regime change. And what's worse, again, this time, there's no organized movement against it. And in fact, you have multiple voices telling the president, including Lindsey Graham and other influential ones, Sir, the way to take eyes off of all of the problems with ICE, with Epstein, and all that, is to pursue the Great Democracy Project.

here in Iran. All signs currently point. Now, look, listen, he's done this before. You never know, but considering the fact that we literally kidnapped Maduro, you know, in the middle of the night and executed a massive regime change operation with no congressional, you know, authorization or anything, we cannot rule any of this out. It could be bluster. It also could not be. And this is 10, I mean, 100 times more dangerous than what could happen with Venezuela. Yeah. Well, and he clearly is framing it as another Venezuela-type operation, which tells you a lot about his psychology and how he thinks of it. I mean, your analysis there is really worth underscoring because in the same way that Venezuela was about the drugs, and then it wasn't about the drugs, and then it was about machine guns,

and then, you know, it's about the oil. We had the same thing here. Originally, it's supposed to be about the nukes. Then it's not about the nukes. It's about, oh, my God, you're being so mean to these protesters. Now it's back to it's about the nukes, but also, by the way, we are not going to, you know, part of any negotiation with you requires you to give up these ballistic missiles, which no sovereign nation would agree. I mean, the Iranians would be insane to agree to that. So it seems like a poison pill designed, and we already know the negotiations have broken down, designed to lead directly to war, which is why Jeffrey Sachs and others are analyzing that, you know, this looks like that's where we're heading. Let's go ahead and put the CNN tear sheet

up on the screen because we have some reporting from them that is worth breaking down. So they say that President Trump is weighing a major new strike on Iran after preliminary discussions between Washington and Tehran over limiting the country's nuclear program and ballistic missile production failed to make progress. It's a rapid refocusing of the administration's publicly framed objectives for Iran comes only weeks after Trump seriously considered military action. He framed as potential aid for nationwide protests in Iran. Protesters had faced violent crackdowns. Trump on Wednesday posts on true social demanding Iran come to the table. options he is now considering include U.S. military airstrikes aimed at Iran's leaders and the security officials believe to be responsible for the killings as well as strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and

government institutions. The sources said Trump has not made a final decision on how to proceed, but he believes his military options have been expanded from earlier this month now that a U.S. carrier strike group is in the region. And we've been saying it for weeks now that, you know, they're high on their own supply. They think Venezuela was a great, like, political and military coup. He loved the coverage of it. He loved the spectacle of it. And he's trying to figure out how to achieve the same type of result in Iran. Yes. Matt, can we please go ahead and put the Barack Ravid report that I sent earlier this morning? This is very important. And I can explain a little bit what's going on is that the Saudi and Israeli ministers of defense. Defense or military officials visited Washington yesterday. Now, the reason why reportedly behind the scenes, Israel's military chief is only in Washington for one reason to provide what? A target list to the United States military. Also, to coordinate any potential response because as we all saw,

the reason they're obsessed with Iranian ballistic missiles is because those ballistic missiles massively penetrated, you know, their supposedly phenomenal missile shield and actually caused huge amounts of damage. Don't forget that, you know, it took the full force of the U.S. military, 25% of all of our interceptors in the entire world just in the so-called 12-day war. And there was still huge damage in downtown Tel Aviv and all across of Israel, including to many of their military targets. Now, the Saudis are very likely here in Washington reading behind the scenes in that not only do they want to prevent some sort of of attack, but let's say they think that it is inevitable. They in no way want their airspace to be

used as some sort of staging ground or overfly so that they can deny complicity in any attack on Iran because that would potentially invite ballistic missiles and other things being sent their way if U.S. military assets were to use their airspace staging ground or any of their own military intelligence. So you can read behind the scenes here and see that things and the clock us all starting to turn. Mack, please put the next one that I sent up here on the screen. This is also highly relevant. And so we've talked about the Armada and about the carrier strike group.

This is the Ossent account that I sent. Multiple aerial refueling tanks have departed from Peace Air National Guard Base in New Hampshire, preparing to cross the Atlantic, towing a flight of six growler electronic warfare aircraft from the Naval Air Station Air Base in Spain, likely with the final destination to the Middle So these aerial refueling tankers were critical part of the Midnight Hammer mission. It is, in fact, one of the logistical things that you really need to mount a full-scale, multiple strike operation against Iran. All of the pieces are being moved in such a way that it could happen.

Now, again, a lot of this that we saw also happened the last time that Trump supposedly chickened out, you know, tacoed on Iran, but only for the first time. But as I repeatedly warned, the main reason, in my opinion, why nothing happened, was because that this carrier was in the South China Sea and the rest of the naval assets were down in the Caribbean. Just to show you that the United States military is not invincible, is that if you actually do want to do something, you have to pick and choose.

There are discrete choices. We cannot simply blanket across the globe. And all of our focus here on Iran is involving tens of thousands of troops, something that our own Secretary of State made very clear yesterday when testifying on Capitol Hill, guys, let's Mac please play A3, just to show you the way that this is being described, tens of thousands of American troops in the region and poised for this. We have 30 to 40,000 American troops stationed across eight or nine facilities in that region. All are within the reach, theoretically, not theoretically in reality, all are within the reach of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs and Iranian short-term ballistic missiles,

short range of ballistic missiles that threaten our troop presence. We have to have enough force and power in the region just on a baseline to defend against that possibility, that at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region. The president always reserves the preemptive defensive option. In essence, if we have indications that, in fact, they're going to attack our troops in the region, to defend our personnel in the region. We also have security agreements, the defense of Israel plan and others, that requires to have a force posture in the region to defend against that.

And so I think it's wise and prudent to have a force posture within the region that could respond and potentially, not necessarily what's going to happen, but if necessary, preemptibly prevent the attack against thousands of American servicemen and other facilities in the region and our allies. I hope it doesn't come to that. But that's, I think, what you're seeing now is the ability to posture assets in the region to defend against what could be an Iranian threat. So, I mean, as I said, they're going to say, oh, it's a threat to us because we got all these bases there. Well, why do we have all these bases there? Because of that. It's a circular logic.

Yet another justification, right? A new justification. Well, we think they may attack us. There is zero indication of that, okay? Us and Israel, we are the belligerents in the region. They're the ones that really needs to be, you know, concerned and striking up defensive positions. I mean, I think we also need to remember that reporting from last time when Trump pulled back, you know, which we support the taco. We are in full support of many Trump tacos, pro taco, especially in this instance. But there was a report that the Israelis actually like, yo, we're not ready yet. And, you know, last time, a lot of the indications, which you wouldn't hear in Western press, but what it looked like happened is that the Iranians were able to significantly penetrate Israel's missile defense systems. They were running low on

interceptors. And they were like, hey, we got to negotiate some sort of a peace deal for now so that we can rebuild our supplies. You know, and this is part of the military assets that are being moved to the region as well is more missile defense systems, not just to protect us, but also to protect the Israelis, which is what we always do. So I think that was the reason for the delay. That was the reason for the original ceasefire. That was the reason for the delay in the plans. And now that you have all of these assets coming in and, you know, the Israelis come into town to give us the target list, it's looking, it's looking pretty grim here. I mean, it's, it's looking like, And Trump needs some sort of political win, and he thinks that war is great for his image here.

And we'll get everybody talking about something other than Americans being executed in the street in Minneapolis. Let's put the Iranian response, please, Mac, A5. The Islamic Republic of Iran responds with the Trump-style statement. Last time, the U.S. blundered into wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, it squandered over, squandered over $7 trillion and lost more than 7,000 American lives. Iran stands ready for dialogue based on mutual respect and interest. but if pushed, it will defend itself and respond like never before. Look, we have no idea. Remember, the Iranians also kind of tacoed last time around because, you know, they fired these missiles.

Again, I support it. This is a good thing. They fired these 13 missiles at the Doha base. They basically gave us a heads up. We shot them down and everybody just kind of walked away. Everybody gets to live. Great. Good.

Face save. Everybody's cool. This time around, though, as we saw with Israel, remember with Israel, they did and were able to inflict some major damage upon that country. Let's put A6 up here on the screen, Netanyahu ahead of this saying, quote, Netanyahu repeats the warning against Iran making a grave mistake of attacking Israel. So look, these are all just breadcrumbs. We have no idea how they will all end up.

But the stage is set, just like it was for Maduro, is that at any point, the situate, the rip cord can be pulled and something extraordinary could happen. Except this time we're talking about a country with 90 million people with multiple different ethnic groups. We've got democracy protesters. We've got the regime elements themselves, all of whom are highly armed. And yeah, from a basic strategic perspective, you can understand how watching Venezuela, how can you ever, ever give up anything that could potentially stave off some sort of attack like this? If you are in any way an aggressor state or an oppositional state to the United States, their ballistic missile threat is the only guarantee. guarantee of not becoming an Israeli rump state. And by the way, that's what the Israelis and

apparently the Americans want for them. So they either surrender now, which look, it's possible. It's possible that they may do so, that they're supposedly so weak. But part of the problem is that we always know is that the goalposts always move. And basically, as we saw during the 12-day war, even though they said that it was over, the end result is always the same. These people will stop at nothing for regime change. They will flagrantly lie about it. And the net result will be Syria. I mean, that is the modal outcome, Syria and Libya,

even in instances where the United States has not put, so boots on the ground or any of that. And this also is not Venezuela. You don't have, you know, a similar, at least for now, a situation where there's at least some element in the regime that we may be willing to play, you know, you also are going to have. Look, if the United States comes in and takes out,

an Iranian leader, the Ayatollah or any of the IRGC officials like, are they really just going to take it lying down maybe for five months, maybe for six months. But after that, collapse, you know, it took, what, 12, 14 years, something like that for Assad to collapse. So it can take a long time. They will obviously, just like with Venezuela, they'll do mission accomplished.

They've tried to learn the lesson of no boots on the ground. But honestly, that can invite even more or even as much chaos as when we do. So we will see how this situation unfolds, but we did want to. But we had to start the show with this because this is so important to keep your eye on. It can come literally out of nowhere. Remember, allegedly, things were calming down with Venezuela. And the next thing, you know, Maduro is on his way to the United States. So everybody pay very close attention.

Well, and there's one other piece that I just want to mention here. And this is, again, not to take away anything from the, you know, the legitimate protest. There's no doubt that the Iranian government is unpopular with a large segment of the population. What percent that is, I don't know. But there is a large segment of the population that is very unhappy. Scott Besson at Davos all but admitted, bragged about the economic pressure, the economic warfare that the U.S. has been waging against Iran and the increased pressure. It's important to understand this was something else that actually Jeffrey Sacks laid out in that interview with Glenn Deeson.

The recent Scott Bessent became so wealthy and what he became known for was working with George Soros in the 90s to attack the British pound successfully, by the way. So this is a guy who knows about attacking currencies and what triggered, what was the like igniting force behind these protests. It was a currency collapse. And then, you know, spread more broadly. And obviously there are a lot of reasons that people in Iran are dissatisfied with their government. But that was the precipitating force. Then you also had, you know, the Israelis and others bragging about massad agents into the streets alongside the protesters. Like, we can't be Polyanish. And imagine that the U.S. and Israel were not involved at all that they were totally hands off. No, they were trying to engineer this level of

pressure. And this has been, you know, acute in this instance, these tactics that are being deployed, but this has been the long-term strategy of the U.S. So, you know, that's worth putting out there, just in terms of thinking about they've tried a variety of techniques in order to try to effectuate some sort of regime change or just regime collapse with, the Israelis would be perfectly happy with because then that state is a mass. They would love that. Yeah. And they no longer have, you know, any sort of challenge for regional hegemony. They would be perfectly happy with that. So there have been a variety of techniques that have been tried. And this may be the latest effort. Now, Trump, it appears,

is very reluctant to actually get in in the, you know, Iraq war sense and boots on the ground, etc. And in Venezuela, so far, he's been able to pull that off of just doing this decapitation strike and then having Delci Rodriguez in place and having her play ball with him and, you know, do whatever he wanted her to do with the oil. Again, Maduro was willing to do those things. We put that aside. Iran is more, it's more difficult. I mean, even just from the military perspective, Caracas is right on the water. Tehran is not, right? And it's, yeah, it's closer by. And Tehran is not right on any sort of body of what. You have to overfly the country in order to get to Tehran. So even just from a military perspective, it is more complex. You are always risking that there is some sort of conflagration that American service members died. There was a close call, actually, in Venezuela and that operation where a helicopter was nearly disabled or was disabled and there had to be a rescue. Those sorts of things create so much risk. Military operations are not always going to go perfectly 100% of the time.

Iran is not Venezuela, right? They are not identical countries. There are totally different political forces to be reckoned with here. So it is an extremely, extremely dangerous game that they are playing. 100%. New Year, new goals. And in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt.

And I'm Joel. We are from the how to money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you can control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to mind games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the mailroom podcast. Each January guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix, what's broken. But what if the real work isn't. physical at all. To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Polter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience, helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.

Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy as in compassion. If you want this to be the year, you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. And now let's get to Venezuela. There were some great moments between Senator Rand Paul and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Venezuela. Here's Senator Paul pressing him on the Venezuela operations. Let's take a lesson. So I would ask you, if a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed

our president and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war? Well, I think your question is about the – and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career. So let me – no matter who's in charge. So I will point to two things. The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture. someone we don't recognize as a head of state, indicted in the United States,

wanted with a $50 million ballot. My question would be if it only took four hours to take our president. It's very short. Nobody dies on the other side. Nobody dies on our side. It's perfect. Would it be an act of war? We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.

But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies. Few casualties. They're in and out. Boom. It's a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war.

I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate, and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president. So I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument. One-way arguments that don't rebound, that you can't apply to yourselves that cannot be universally applicable are bad arguments. I mean, he's obviously right. And the fact that Rubio can't even respond. There are a lot of moments here for Mr. Rubio where there was some. mask off here. Next one is on Cuba. This is about regime change in Cuba. He would not rule it out. Let's take a listen. Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba?

Regime change? Yes. Oh, no. I think we would love to see the regime there change. We would like to, that doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see it change. I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government. I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current regime. Yeah, but that's statutory. The Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. embargo on Cuba is codified. It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo. So he will not rule out regime change in Cuba. It started off talking about Iran, refuses to say that it is an act of war. This is it. I mean, this is the Donro doctrine fully in effect. But in order to the Iran, let's just take the Iran situation again as why it's very important. They wanted to do something. Couldn't do it. A bunch of naval assets down here in Caribbean, a bunch of naval assets in the South China Sea.

Now, what they're basically trying to do, this is the basic equivalent of world policemen, like pure 2005 neoconservatism without any of the democracy. It's just the idea. It's like the famous Jonah Goldberg quote. Like every once in a while, the United States should go out and just overthrow a dictator just to show that we can, right? And that's effectively like what this means. What this ignores is the economic situation that we're all currently in. It ignores the fact that it's no longer the unipolar moment that we have, not just a rising China, a very capable China. We have multiple strategic allies who are thinking very differently about their own security situation. India comes to mind. Japan, South Korea, all of these countries. We have a totally different global economy. And ironically, you know, this time around, the Europeans are all in on Venezuela and regime change. By the way, France just took a step yesterday to trying to put even more regime pressure on Iran.

just so everybody understands where they're coming from. But the rest of the world, a much more powerful rest of the world, which had very little say in global affairs back in 2003, they don't think so different. They think very differently than the rest of these people. So you could see very clearly how this could all come to a head and invite global chaos, not even just regional chaos like we had during Iraq. And then what do we do? We have to pick and choose. And worse, this one would be entirely of our own. It would be a war of choice just like Iraq was, and we all know how that worked out.

Yeah. Well, if you put Iran and Venezuela and Cuba and Greenland and even Canada, I mean, I think they're actually serious about the like annexing Canada thing. They keep talking about the Alberta separatists. Like, I think they are, they do not believe in this principle that we've all sort of taken for granted the idea of sovereignty. They don't believe in that. And you put that together with the Board of Peace, which is meant to replace the UN. Like, Trump wants himself to be the undisputed emperor of the world. It's not enough to have multilateral institutions that are dominated by the U.S.

That the U.S. like, by and large, 90% of the time controls. He wants to have 100% of control. He wants to be the chairman of the board, as he's putting himself in terms of the, quote unquote, Board of Peace, which was originally sold as just being about God. And then, you know, lo and behold, once the documents come out, no, no, no, this is a total replacement for the UN that puts me as the lifetime king. And, yeah, you other countries can join, especially if you give me a billion dollars that I can do whatever I want with. But if you piss me off, I'm going to kick you off, which he already did with Canada. You know, Mark Carney stepped out

a line and went and did a deal with Chinese. He's like, all right, you're out then. Forget about it. He has total control. He has absolute veto power. That is the way he wants to. to run the world. I mean, he said it himself that the only check on his, on what he does, there's no legal institution either here or internationally. It's just his own mind, his own quote unquote morality. And so, you know, Cuba, there's again a parallel here with Iran where they tried to use economic pressure to collapse the regime hasn't succeeded yet. That's what they're trying to do with Cuba. They're blocking, you know, Venezuelan and other oil from reaching Cuba, that country is already because of, you know, a variety of reasons, but predominantly because

of our decades-long economic warfare against Cuba, the conditions truly are incredibly dire. It would not be surprising if just the economic warfare worked out. But that's the tactic they're deploying now. And if that doesn't succeed, then they'll try another tactic, just like what we have seen them cycling through with regard to Iran. Yeah, very important, as you said, and just to continue to keep an eye a little bit on Venezuela. there's weird stuff that is currently happening. Can we put A10 up here on the screen? Delci Rodriguez now claiming that she has, quote, had enough of U.S. interference and U.S. orders.

How much K-Fave is going on here? We have no idea. You know, is she a collaborator? To me, it seems very likely. She's probably the one that sold him out. We don't really know for sure. What we do generally kind of know is that this oil scheme seems to, be going very well for Venezuela and for the United States. And in fact, Rubio was asked about this

and these oil funds, which are currently in a Qatari bank account and how exactly they're all going to be administered. So A9, Mac, can you go ahead and roll it? Earlier, you testified that the funds are being held short-term in Qatar and then we'll move to a treasury-blocked account. What is the statutory authority for the administration relying on Qatar to hold the funds? It's not our funds. The funds are in an account that's owned and signed. It's an account that belongs to Venezuela, but it has U.S. sanctions as a blocking mechanism on it. You're saying it's Venezuela's money, but it does sound like, according to the E.O., according to the president's statements, you are in charge of that money. How do, what authority are you relying on to be in charge almost in a sort of receivership kind of arrangement of how funds are both received and expensive? for a foreign country, like, wouldn't you have to come to Congress to establish that kind of

relationship? Well, no, because the money never interests our hands. We don't, we only control the disbursement of the money. We don't control the actual money in the sense of, like it comes into our bank account. Do you think that you have somewhere in the statute or the Constitution the authority to control disbursements of a foreign country? Well, they've agreed to this. So, yeah, I mean, this is why I think that the Del C. Rodriguez thing is kind of a k-fave. Remember, they're going to be massively enriched the Maduro regime. By the way, current reports that are coming out from Venezuela are that all of the Maduro gangs continue to roam the streets and to control security checkpoints. So if anything, the regime is going to be quite a bit stronger.

Again, not that they ever particularly cared about democracy in Venezuela. And then the very last thing that we had to put up here is this new CNN report, A12, shall we? So CNN had this report. They say, it remains to be seen how the Venezuelan people will respond to a more overt CIA presence in the country post Maduro. For years, Maduro cast the CIA as a convenient boogeyman, repeatedly accusing the agency without evidence of attempting to topple his regime as he clung to power. Now the CIA has helped supplant Maduro and his boys to help manage the Trump administration's dealing with Venezuela new leadership. So without evidence, he claimed that the CIA was trying to topple him. and the next paragraph, they say, and the CIA did toppled up.

Yeah. So that wacky Maduro don't know where he gets these crazy ideas from. Oh, I don't know. Not a Maduro stand or anything, but, you know, it's not wrong. I mean, we haven't tried to coup them for like how long now at this point. I mean, the first Trump administration, we all had the whole Juan Guido thing and some failed, what did they call it? They didn't call it Bay of Pigs. They called it.

I don't remember something akin to that that was like, you know, embarrassed. Anyway, there was a whole failed plot during the first Trump regime. as well. And so I love it. That crazy Maduro with his paranoid delusions thing, and the CIA is out to get him. Anyway, when the CIA came and took him out now, now, yeah, oh my God. It's, okay. How do you write this stuff and, like, have zero self-awareness? Because that's what they do. Look, I know these people. You know, how does an editor look at this and not be like, you know, these two lines that are right next to each other kind of contradict each other and don't really make sense at least space them out a little bit in terms of the article? I don't know. For all the talk about how the press is anti-Trump and all that, and that can be true on like a character level, they do not object to the core, like, project of not just U.S. Empire, but of the idea that anything that we do is legitimate, anything that other people do is illegitimate. They are completely unable to, like, put yourself in another person's shoes or to see things from the other. You see this with Russia.

You see in the Ukraine situation. It's a NATO. It just, it never ends. And, like, if there's any core project that I try to instill with. all these people is it's like the Iran thing. They're like, well, why don't they just give up their ballistic missiles? I'm like, well, would you? What would you do? You just watch the Venezuela thing. What would you do? Same with North Korea. I mean, during that whole deal, oh, Kim Jong-un, he just won't give up these nooks. I'm like, yeah, why would he? I'm like,

literally, the Kim family is one of the most vindicated people in all of his, or the most vindicated family in all of history. Not saying they're good people. They killed a shitload. All right. They're bad. They're bad dictators, et cetera. Pure strategic logic, they were correct. Okay, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un all dedicated themselves to a single project. We will secure a nuclear weapon as a credible deterrent against the United States. They get to sleep very happy in their compounds of luxury while they watch basketball or whatever. And yes, their people suffer. But we can't do anything about it.

And this is the core reason why. That's probably the most important lesson for any person who's in opposition to the United States to learn. Pakistan, India, you really think those countries wouldn't have been way more severe. rarely messed with if they didn't have nukes. It is the only reason why they're allowed to exist. And so I think that that's just, I mean, again, very, very important lesson. And if you want to survive in the long run, you should probably get a nuclear weapon. I wish it worth the case. I'm an advocate of non-proliferation. However, you know, the logic is extremely simple at this point. Yeah. I mean, I can't even really say, like, I would like in an ideal world at some point in the future

to advocate for non-proliferation, but for each of these individual countries, I mean, for Iran, the most sensible thing at this point would be for them to race to a bomb. Like, that would be the smartest play. And nobody should be surprised if that is the path that they ultimately pursue. But this also underscores the reason why Trump's approach here is so incredibly dangerous because, you know, we live in a nuclear world. We live in a world where we can completely annihilate each other. And so if we are going back to these, you know, like East India Company type colonialism and the law of the jungle and might makes right. We are doing so in an era of the possibility of complete and utter annihilation. Like, we should be very clear that that's what we're playing with. And I'm not here saying

that that's happening tomorrow or whatever, but that is what we are playing with right now. New year, new goals. And in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary. than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week, we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically person?

swayed someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mill. director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the mailroom podcast. Each January guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix, what's broken? But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Polter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience, helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and compassion. If you want this to be the year, you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. All right, turning now to the economy, some major developments.

whenever it comes to the status of the U.S. dollar. We did see a very noteworthy clip here from Peter Schiff, who has been very prescient on major collapses. He was on Fox business dropping some truth bombs. Here's what he had to say. And the world is now pulling the rug out from under the U.S. The dollar's going to collapse. The dollar is going to be replaced by gold.

Central banks are buying gold to back up their currencies. They're getting rid of dollars. They're getting rid of treasuries. We are headed for an economic crisis, again, that will make the two, 2008 financial crisis looked like a Sunday school picnic. The biggest difference between the crisis that we're about to have and the one we had back then is this one is all in America. All right. So all of this is part and parcel, as we've said here in the past, of a major movement against the dollar. Now, I want to be very clear. Even when we say dollar crash, we're talking

about like 0.6, 1% or whatever drop. But what this generally can mean in a longer term trend, especially as we started here with global affairs, with wars, with what's going on with Venezuela, the Greenland situation, some reporting that actually behind the scenes, the Danes and the EU had threatened the United States with massively selling off big portions of our debt, is instability of reserve currency and the simultaneous spike in gold could lead to some sort of event like this. Peter Schiff is effectively echoing Ray Dalio thought, and I don't even really agree necessarily, but I do think it is important. to air this type of perspective in the midst of all this gold insanity that I certainly don't fully understand. Let's go ahead and cue up Ray Dalio, who has been talking about this now for quite some time of video that he put out just yesterday. Matt, can we take a listen? It's the beginning of the end of the monetary system as we know it. It's not just the U.S. dollar.

It's the Fiat monetary currencies. So the UK, the Euro, Japan, China all have similar debt problems and so on and are dealing with the same interrelationships, which is the reason you're seeing gold being chosen by the central banks. They want a currency. Gold has always been the main currency, and it's the only non-fayat currency, in other words, not the currency that can't be printed, that they want. And so that's why you're seeing central banks move and sovereign wealth funds move to gold. And that's the nature of the shift of the monetary system. So, I mean, effectively what he's saying is about a flight from U.S. Reserve status in the midst of

global instability. So again, I don't fully buy a lot of gold bug arguments and gold standard stuff that I think can go to kookery very, very quickly. But it is undeniable that this massive price spike in gold is not connected deeply. to the actions of the Trump administration and of the United States, especially in the last, you know, year or so under the under Donald Trump, the tariff regime, global instability. And it could be, you know, about flight to, it's usually what it really signals.

And this is why I think he's talking about collapse. It's not just about currency, but about flight to safety away from U.S. assets. And what that broadly means is about lack of strength and faith in the overall U.S. economy, which, of course, is what all of our 401K, you know, rely on all of our retirement accounts. Everybody's just general ability to buy and trade with foreign goods. It's going to make exports, you know, very different in terms of our relationship manufacturing, inputs, all those types of things.

So that's why I do think it is still interesting. We do have to, you know, I like to pay attention to the dahlios and the shifts of the world, even though I don't necessarily 100% agree per se, but like you can't look at the current movement in the gold market and say it doesn't show something. it's definitely showing us something. And we're all just trying to figure out what that is. Dahlio has a theory of the cycles that societies go through that is worth engaging with as well.

And in his view, we've now moved from phase five to phase six, which is basically like imminent civil war and some sort of mass turmoil. And, you know, I think there are signs that we could be heading towards that. We'll talk more in the block about Minneapolis and what's going on there, the sort of face-saving moves that Trump is engaging in now to sort of step back from the brink. I think that's all very good. I'm glad to see it because the temperature has been so incredibly high that, you know, I've been quite worried about it spiraling out of control. It doesn't mean it's not going to spiral out of control, but at least maybe there's a step back from the brink right at this moment. You know, my understanding of what this Trump administration is doing right now, and Trump himself,

and Scott Bessent and others have sort of indicated this, they've laid out their strategy, etc. Trump was asked about the decline of the dollar. And when the dollar declines, you know, most of the things that we all buy at this point are imported from abroad. So if the dollar isn't buying as many goods abroad, that means everything's getting more expensive for you. That means whatever you've got in your savings account or whatever wages you're earning, they're not going as far, right? So for your average person who doesn't own a lot of assets, The dollar's decline is, it's really bad, right? It takes away your purchasing power.

It makes you poor. If you are a very wealthy person who is an asset owner, it actually can be beneficial. It also is beneficial, and this is part of their part of why they're moving in this direction, I think, intentionally. It also is beneficial in terms of making your exports more competitive. So if you do want to rebuild, you know, in the manufacturing basin, this is something you're prioritizing. this would be something that you would do. And so for people who own those capital producing assets, it also is beneficial. The other reason to do this is because we have a massive amount of debt.

So if you make the dollar value like those dollars worth less, then it is easier to pay off that debt. And that has also been, you know, something that has been, yeah, this is a tactic that's been deployed over any number of years now. Chinese currency manipulation is very common. Yeah, exactly. So I think that is what is going on. So, you know, when Trump comes out and he gets asked about the dollar's decline and he's like, I'm happy with it. Like I'm happy with where the dollars is. I think you should take his word for it that that is actually their plan. And you need to understand what that means for you, for what's in your savings account, for what's in your, you know, ability to purchase. And that is a plan directly to make you poor. So that's one piece. The other piece is this question of selling American, right? Not. purchasing American, not buying American bonds, offloading treasury bonds, not holding as much in terms of dollar reserves, central banks have reduced their amount of dollar reserves. That is a separate piece, which really reflects the sort of, you know, the shrinking power of the U.S., the fact that a lot of countries are very unhappy with us in the way we run the

global financial system, the increasing realization that we are not in the unipolar moment any more countries wanting to protect themselves from, you know, our ability to completely manipulate their financial system. And I, you know, the part of Peter Schiff's analysis there that I'm skeptical of is I don't know that it happens in this big collapse all at once, but you can see this sort of slow and steady erosion moving in a direction away from the U.S. being the central player in, and, you know, the one and only central player in the global financial system. Yeah, right. And by the way, as we speak, gold is currently a 50. 500 per ounce. It's insane. I mean, I literally, I mean, not only not sit and like this, but everyone's

calling it safe haven. And yeah, you're right. I mean, this is again why I also general, look, the gold bugs, you know, many of them are also invested. And that's why I'm always a little bit skeptical sometimes of their analysis. But they have good critiques of the global financial system. And I think one of the things that, you know, you're pointing to, uh, is if we look at the way that empires kind of fade away, is that this is kind of, uh, sometimes can be canary in the coal mine. Usually what happens is a great war. Unfortunately, what we just talked about was a war with Iran, you know, so who knows? It could be certain of something. So you see instability. Then you have an outbreak of a great war. And immediately afterwards, usually what happens is you don't immediately acknowledge.

You're like, oh, well, we're no longer an empire. But you slowly within the next decade, you know, find yourself no longer, let's say, the pound sterling no longer as powerful as it once was. And you, you know, watch your empire kind of fade from 1919 all the way up until the 19. That's usually what the story can look like. Let's look like. Let's see the Roman Empire, any of these others, if you study this. But internally also, a key part of strength is not just how you trade abroad, but what happens to you at home. So yesterday we talked, sorry, two days ago, we talked about the long-term unemployment rate. We also have this AI data spending that's all been happening. You know, we haven't covered it in quite some time, but it is still like a massive monolith of all of our GDP per capita spend. And and we're also beginning to see the effects of this in the white collar marketplace. So can we put B4, please, up on the screen? This is a massively influential story.

Amazon is set to ax another 16,000 corporate jobs. The cuts will bring the total number of layoffs to 30,000 over the last three months and a higher spending on AI. And they said organization changes, reducing layers, removing bureaucracy. Most U.S.-based employees would be giving in 90 days to look for a new role internally or offered severance pay.

And the cuts basically from 30,000 all appears to be part of the AI and how it would reduce the Amazon headcount, which they previewed last year in their investor letter. And this is, you know, the second round that we've seen already. If you total it up back to 2023, it's like tens of thousands, actually, that have been laid off from Amazon. So I think it's really, really important for people to pay attention, you know, in these white-collar tech-more-focused workplaces because that can be a precursor to what's happening to you. And so if we have high unemployment, then we're after going to be thinking also about our own domestic

federal interest rate policy and how that interacts with the globe, safe. Like this is where chaos, I'm not saying it's the Great Depression, but you can see why the Great Depression was so massively influential, where we had to balance not only what was happening here, but with the global system itself and how that unleashed, you know, an insane war in a second world war. Yeah. And from the sound of it, P is very unhappy about all of this development, so, which I understand. So if you can hear that, sorry, that's baby life.

That is baby life. They don't care about the microphone. In fact, she likes the microphone. She likes to come and to play with it whenever it. That's adorable. There we go. Let's go ahead and put B3 up because I actually think this relates to the Trump account block that we're about to do here. So I really had to sit with this one for a while to figure out

whether this was meaningful in any way. But basically, people have been sharing this chart. And this isn't like a new invention that people use, but people track the stock market not only valued in U.S. dollars, but also, okay, compared to the value of gold. And so this person says, if you measure the stock market in gold instead of in dollars, the U.S. stock market has basically collapsed. Now, I mean, this makes logical sense when you consider how much gold has gone up in price. It has vastly exceeded the, you know, returns, the increase in returns on the stock market. So that's the relationship that is being tracked here. And what this points to is that, in a sense, some of the stock market gains are a bit of an illusion. Because if the dollars are worth less

and you're valuing it in dollars, then it stands to reach. that, you know, your store of value is not staying at the same level. So that's what this chart is trying to establish. And like I said, this will kind of shift us into this Trump account thing, because what this administration has said is, first of all, they're very interested in stock market performance. It's the one thing that really causes Trump to, you know, I think it's a reason he backed down from his Greenland threats because he saw the market reacting and he didn't like that and whatever. And they really talk about as we move into this AI era. rather than having more progressive taxation, rather than having public ownership of the AI technology,

rather than having some sort of universal basic income, their view is, well, why don't we just get everybody more invested in the stock market? And so then when Nvidia goes up, you guys, you commenters out there, we'll sort of, you know, get the second order gains from whatever your holdings are in the stock market. That seems to be their view of how to handle the shift to the AI economy where the idea is that you are going to be out of a job and, you know, you're going to have an even greater consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. We're already starting to see in some isolated instances like what we just covered with Amazon that job loss. We're seeing an impact, you know, on college grads right now.

And so that is the direction that they think they should push things in. And I think that is the, you know, the sort of genesis of the idea of these Trump accounts and these investments, for babies which are being piloted now. New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt, and I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money,

we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild.

Listen to Mind Games on the e-games. iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the mailroom podcast. Each January guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix, what's broken? But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Polter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught the name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally

bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy as in compassion. If you want this to be the year, you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you get your favorite shows. Yeah, that's a great actually transition because there's a lot going on here with these Trump accounts.

Trump yesterday announced them. Before we get into it, it's something that had been passed in the big, beautiful bill. What they effectively do is they set up like a child custodial account, which will be funded with $1,000 from the United States government. Now various philanthropies, people like Michael Dell and others, have announced that they also will be giving some money. So it could actually be more like 1,250. The accounts will be very tightly controlled by the government and will solely invest in low-cost index funds. But I think what's important, you know, and if you're watching this continuously,

this will make more sense, is that what happened is that in order to potentially to prop up stock gains, you actually have kind of a circular share where the government itself will be purchasing index funds in companies, which of course is going to have some sort of distortionary effect on the overall price if you have i mean i don't know how many millions of children were born in 2025 whenever all of these will be when when these who will qualify for this but it in and of itself like when they buy is going to be important for the overall price for the index and kind of a faith in the u.s this is somewhat common sometimes in sovereign wealth funds and all that so it's not in a completely extraordinary thing but it has not generally happened here in the history of the united states but it's also

being sold as a way for parents and for children why these accounts and all that are great and to be clear, I do not in any way object to giving children who are born in the United States money, but I do have some problems with the way that this account is set up. So with all of that being said, here's Donald Trump announcing and talking about the Trump account yesterday. Let's take a listen. Perhaps no provision of the Great Big Beautiful Bill will prove more consequential than Trump accounts under this program, the U.S. government will automatically create a tax-free investment account for every newborn American child, something that nobody really would have even thought of.

There were some brilliant people that thought of it for a long time. They're here with us today. We're going to introduce a couple of them. But nobody really, I mean, I've had friends that top people in business. They came up to me, whose idea was this? This is great. They said, I never thought of that. We'll fund those personal accounts with a seed contribution of $1,000, which will compound

and grow over the course of their lives. grow into very, very substantial numbers. Parents, employers, churches, states, and loved ones will also be able to add up to $5,000 in additional money for those accounts. And with every modest contribution, Trump accounts should reach at least $50,000 in value by the time the child turns 18 and could be very substantially more than that. Today there's 110 million Americans who basically have no plan for their future. They never did have a plan and they don't know what they're going to do at retirement.

This idea, the Trump account, solves that problem or a good part of it because you're basically making an investment, not just in an individual that's born, in their family. The burden of a family to educate or help a child launch can be really difficult, particularly you have a large one. Think about this. And this moment, and this moment. money, you can't touch for 18 years. Let the power of the world's large economy go to work for a child for 18 years and stand back in awe and see what happens if you can't touch it and you let it do its thing. What I love about this is it's better than Social Security. It really is. Okay, so let's talk about this. And I want him to pay very

close attention to the words he said. You can't touch it for 18 years. I am a huge believer in compound interest and set, forget it, an investment and I wish way more people would do it. And if it leads to more general interest and I think that that's fine. But, but, and I think this is very important, the key theory behind this is that these accounts, which not only can be given from the government, but that you yourself as a family can invest in, will be transferred as custod of total control account of this account at age 18. That's where, I don't know, Crystal, I start to get a little bit scared. I actually looked into this when my daughter was born and decided to instead put money in the 529 plan instead of something called an Utma. It's like, I'm not going to.

Basically, it's a similar style account with very little restrictions, but the child gets total custody of set account at either 18 or 21, depending on the state that you created in. The issue with that account is they get total control over this account. Now, everyone says, oh, you should raise your child so that that's not going to be a problem. Well, I mean, it's just a basic thing where I think, you know, even as I am learning, there's only so much that you can do. And also, I think my parents were great parents. If you had given me $50,000 when I was age of 18, I was an idiot, okay? Literally an idiot. Well, with a very underdeveloped brain. And I think that that is where I'm starting to get a little bit afraid. So some of my

friends in the financial industry have told me I'm freaking out too much. They're like, It's much more like a retirement account because if you do pull it out before the age of retirement from the Trump account, you're going to have to pay taxes and penalties. But do children who are age 18 really think hard about taxes and penalties? Or do they say a shitload of free money? Like if you see $50,000 and they're like, oh, but you're going to have to pay 40%. They're like, oh, I don't care.

I'll just pull it out and spend it on whatever I want. And you as a parent can't necessarily do much about it. So for me, I would like to see government-funded, let's say, 529 plans with strict things that you could take that money out of, for example, either college education, college-related types expenses, first-time down payment, but the rest of the money, the money basically should be up to, I think, either the parent or should be created in such a way, to not just incentivize, but to create strict control. There's a reason why, if you look at inherited wealth across the world and even the richest families in America today,

they don't just give trust fund accounts to 18-year-olds. And when they do, it's usually a disaster. They write very strict instructions about the type of things that money can and should be spent on. And then, let's say when you're age 30 and you're much more mature and you're developed, then maybe you can have like total control and spending over that account. But that is my biggest fear is that this will turn, it's a well-intentioned thing about the lessons of compound interest. But unfortunately, because of lack of financial literacy, is that probably 18 years from now, there will be a huge number of people who will just take all the money out, taxes and penalties.

and there's not enough of an incentive or even really rules that are built in to encourage and make sure that the money is spent in a way that we as a society, since it is taxpayer money, is going to be spent, again, responsibly. So, yes, some of it's on the parents, of course, I believe, in financial literacy and in education. But there are reasons why people do not do this. And that's the biggest worry that I have about this account. So the question for me is also around, you know, we have a finite reason. We don't do a lot of social spending. So what are the alternatives here? And who is this primarily going to benefit? The way this is structured is the government gives you that first $1,000. And then you're on your own. So it is similar to a $529 plan where, you know, it's tax advantage money. So you can put in, what is it, $5,000 a year. And so for parents who have an extra $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000, depending on how many kids they have, they can put that in. And that's a tremendous benefit to them. So it's predominantly going to benefit people who are at least middle or upper middle or wealthy, same as with 529s. And that is real spending. So there's no taxes being paid on its tax advantage. And so that is

real spending. And it's going once again to benefit people who are already comparatively privileged. So if you care about something like, you know, reducing inequality, which I think even if you don't give a shit about inequality from like a moral perspective, I think everyone should really be very concerned about inequality from like a society surviving perspective. If you care about that, this is not going to do anything to solve that. In fact, because of the structure of it, it could actually increase that level of inequality. The other thing to point out is, you know, even with quote unquote, just $1,000 going to all of these babies, that's still a very expensive program that costs a lot of money. There are a lot of other things that you could do

with that program, something like, you know, universal child care that would have a more broad-based benefit and would go further to, you know, helping to ease the burden for people who need it the most, but still have, still be a universal program. So I have some issues with it because of, you know, the opportunity cost of what this money could otherwise go to and because of who it ultimately ends up being a somewhat regressive program because of the structure of it. Now, again, similar to 529s, which is for people who don't know, That's this tax advantage college saving program where you can put money in. And again, it's, you know, tax advantage. And so people who are upper middle class or better off typically are investing in those

and they're getting the benefit from it, people who are poor and don't have that extra cash. Obviously, they're not benefiting from it. So there's that. And then, you know, on a broader ideological plane, this gets to what I was talking about before in terms of the Trump administration's plan for dealing with the reality of an AI future in which people don't have jobs where there's a massive labor disruption and there are many fewer jobs. And you have the world's first trillionaires. And you have this incredible wealth and power, the likes of which we cannot even comprehend, consolidated in the hands of a few. And their answer to that is basically the stock market is, look, we're going to, you know, we're going to keep in, you know, we're going to keep in. inflating the stock market and pushing this line goes up and up and up as much as we possibly can.

And so we're going to give you some ways to increase your access and exposure. So you feel like as invidia goes up or as Elon Musk's wealth or whoever else, as their wealth skyrockets, you feel like at least you were getting some piece of that. Now, is that going to be adequate to overcome the fact that you're going to have these massive labor disruptions, et cetera? I think that's very unlikely. But that's the broader sort of like ideological or policy scheme that I think that these Trump accounts really fit into. And then the last thing, sorry, I know I'm going on for a long time, but I thought a lot about this too. The last thing is with Trump, you know, everything is about the corruption and is about the like cronyism. You already have a bunch of companies that have

sidled up to the table, some of whom have, you know, are facing lawsuit, DOJ lawsuits, or regulatory action who are like, hey, we love Mr. Trump. What a brilliant. brilliant idea. You know, we're going to donate some to these Trump accounts as well. So it's yet another avenue for companies to curry favor with Trump himself. Yeah, that's true. And we saw that with Diza. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, and there's still questions about like, well, what are these going to be invested in? They're saying, you know, high quality index funds. If so, that's relatively neutral. But you could imagine them gaming the system with that to prop up to be able to shovel government money to their friends and allies. I don't think anyone would

put that past them. So, you know, there's a lot of questions of like direct cronyism and potential corruption here as well. There's a lot of problems. And this is kind of what I'm getting at. And this is where, you know, the libertarians always get mad at me because they're like, oh, you don't believe in freedom of choice. I'm like, well, there's a reason why the vast majority of people with means don't just hand an 18 year old a shit load of money. It's because we generally have to try and decide, like, what are the types of things that we're trying to incentivize? This gets to your point. This is why I've also just ultimately turned against this idea of UBI as well, because they're like, well, for 18 years, by the way, you know, if, you know,

If you want to do the compound math, you know, for $1,000 compounding, depending on what it will come to, it's like $18,000, which again, if you withdraw at age 18 after penalty and tax, inflation adjusted, not exactly a ton of money. Like, yeah, maybe, like, how much does an used car go for these days? Like $25,000, right? And so, okay, so you could buy half of a used car, like, great. I mean, what you're trying to get at also is that at the same time, if you don't do anything about the general cost of living, about housing, about the actual like structural, let's say educational inflation. If the stock market is going to return 7% on average over here, but health care, inflation for education is going to be like 25, 30%, even a 529, you're still losing money in the long

run considering how much the overall tuition. So it doesn't deal with any of the cost structure. It's kind of a libertarian ideology, right? And so it gets to this idea of like compounding interest, which again, is phenomenal and is great. And I think people should take advantage. but also when it's taxpayer dollars, we should also have somewhat of a say,

not in the structure around us and in terms of the way that the money is spent. And so just broadly, like, looking at all this, I'm going to take advantage of it. All right, I'm not above taking free money from the government. I definitely will take it. But it's not really something

I'm going to be like plowing a whole bunch of money into. And the only real reason from one of my friends who talks about this is that in some ways, it's a good workaround for rich, because a lot of rich people are obsessed. with putting money in their kids Roth IRAs. And you can only put money into a Roth IRA if your child is working. So people come up with all kinds of elaborate schemes to put their kids on payroll so that they can

fund their Roth IRA. He's like, well, you know, the big brain way to do this is to like max out these Trump accounts. And then when your kid turns 18, you roll it all in to a Roth IRA and they can become retire with 10 million. Now, I'm sure, you know, very financially illiterate, wealthier households will take advantage of that. It sounds like a good loophole.

though, you have to tell the 18-year-old, and they have to agree to this, which you may or may not, you know, you don't know that for sure. But in general, like, this stuff is really only used by 20-something percent of households. And that is also kind of the bigger problem that surrounds this entire thing. So that's your, you know, your diatribe here on the Trump account. I'm much more of a fan of 529, of funding 529 while, by the way, simultaneously doing something about the overall costs, making sure that it's highly structurally incentivized towards down payments, towards things that are very, you know, child care expenses, let's say, or let's say that, you know, whenever you have a child, you can take money from that as replacement income

if you or your wife want to stay home, right? Like, these are the types of things that you, if you put and set it in these specific ways, then you can highly incentivize exactly the type of behavior, which we think is important instead of, you know, pumping money, into whatever the S&P 500 stock is and then giving it to an 18-year-old who's probably going to go blow it on something incredibly stupid. So there's a lot of dumb ways. And the other thing is it assumes line goes up forever. And maybe it does.

We've kind of got news to that. You never know. But it means that you're putting your child's future in the hands of like the whims of the market and investing Americans even more in this, you know, rigged casino that is the stock market. So that to your point about it being very ideological, very libertarian, that is the philosophy that undergirds this. And, you know, we'll see.

We'll see how that goes. Yeah. I mean, by the way, all that being said, if you had a kid this year like me, take the money. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, take it. All right. Open it, incentivize it.

Take the dollars because we pay too much in fucking taxes to it not least, you know, get the crumbs whenever they do occasionally. Yeah, take that $1,000 from Palantir. I'm going to take my thousand bucks and I'm going to give it to her and I'm going to say, have some fun when you're eating. Okay. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back.

Prices, they're still high and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to money on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or, wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real?

If you can control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

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