Peak Prosperity - Get Ready for the Return of Punishing Inflation

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

The US government has racked up $12 trillion in debt over the past four years. What will you do when it’s racking up $12 trillion every four months? Because that’s where we’re headed. Meanwhile, global financial conditions are as easy as they’ve ever been. What’s the emergency you ask? Good question…

Nothing in this program should be considered investment advice. It is for educational purposes only. Please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full. They seem to think that inflation and potentially hyperinflation is going to be this this Goldilocks scenario coming out the other side of it. And if you've got enough assets and your pockets are lying like theirs are and you feel like you're in the protected class, yeah, it may be fine for you, but it's going to be absolute misery on every, on the other 98% of the population. The following is the audio version of a video released at peakprosperity.com.

Visit peakprosperity.com to watch the video and to find other insightful content, such as articles, discussion forums, and exclusive subscriber-only content. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this edition of Finance U. I am Chris Martinson, CEO of Peak Financial Investing and, of course, Peak Prosperity, back with Paul Kuyker of Kuyker Wealth Management. Hey, Peak Prosperity, back with Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hey, Paul. Good to be back with you here. Hi, Chris. It's an honor and exciting. I love the fellowship. So good to be back. Me too. Me too. Now, you were just out in Vegas, but you also you live in Georgia. And there was a hurricane that just kind of came through and we're getting a lot of conflicting reports.

I thought I'd talk about it. I think it has some bearing potentially on the election, obviously the people in the region, of course, which is just, it just looks horrific what's going on there. But the vibe I'm getting, people where I am interacting with people, Paul, are starting to get, it's like becoming unavoidably obvious that their government doesn't work for them. Well, if you're Ukrainian, you know, you get lots of love and attention. But I mean, it's kind of like if the government was our parents, they married a new spouse, and they're putting all their attention on their kids, not their own. That's exactly what's taking place. Yeah. So what are you seeing down there? What, what are people talking about? So one thing, you know, Asheville is about two, two hours and 15 minutes from where we are,

but you know, a lot of Western North Carolina is damaged an hour and a half from here. So, you know, uh, I was talking with a lady this morning, her son's a lineman, got a lot of friends that have gone up there to work. Everyone's saying the news media is not being honest about what's taking place there. I mean, it's devastating. They're saying it's going to be months before they have power restored fully. But more than anything, another report came in. Local construction crew individual decides to volunteer. He's like, look, we're pulling off our jobs.

I'm taking my crew up there. So they're driving in without stating the road because in the text, they talk about the road that's in there. And they pull up on a house that's collapsed off the side of the road. Nobody's been there. So this is 48 hours after the impact event. They're just starting to work their way in. So they get out just to check and they hear somebody and they dig six people that they found alive that had been buried and trapped in, in the debris for 48 hours. So praise God that they found six people. Yes.

Yes. Can you imagine? I can't even imagine being trapped for 48 minutes. No, I couldn't. And, and you know, for the sake of,

of, you know, this was a text from somebody without, I don't know if i have the right to share it from that standpoint and not know who it is but all you could see was the crew when they found one person was covered in mud you know up to the face there's other reports that we're getting from an individual that's got a brother that's up there and he was just you know in disbelief is what he's seeing because there's bodies in trees

is what he's claiming as people were swept away 10, 12 feet off the ground because of the fact that the water subsided and it's just an absolute war zone. Another individual on a crew came up on a particular area and they were just in disbelief because they said there were naked children running around trying to find their parents. And there was a 100-foot ravine in an area where houses used to be. Like, it's just an absolute war zone. They're all angry because, you know, it was three days later that the government didn't, you know, even announced it from that standpoint or acknowledged it. There's not been any major help coming in from the outside on the government. And, you know, and I was talking today, this morning with one

individual, you know, Zelensky shows up and we give them $8 billion, you know, well if you take eight billion dollars and 450 000 a house the math is just stunning but it's 17 777 houses that you could rebuild for for eight billion dollars so we're sending all this money overseas and and we're not even focusing on the individuals you know this this was this i mean thousand year flood uh right? Didn't even come close to what happened to these individuals in Western North Carolina, Asheville, those areas. So, and even in Augusta, Georgia, you know, my son-in-law and daughter actually with us right now, my son-in-law was in his apartment. Katie was in Vegas with us on business, not with us, but she was on business, just happened

to be there at the same time. And so he couldn't get within a mile of his apartment for 48 hours after because there were so many trees and roads and everything down. So, I mean, even even Augusta, people aren't talking a lot about. It's just been a trail of devastation. It's it is heartbreaking. It's sinful. And I am so angry over the fact that our government isn't mobilizing everything that they can to focus on our own family and our own citizens to help these people out in this area. You know, and I mean, look, here's my thing. A lot of those countries, a lot of those counties

outside of Asheville and all those other areas are red. If you really care about the meeting, the American people, and you want to bring us together, then go mobilize everything that you can to help those individuals in that area. And maybe you got a chance of changing their vote if you really care that much about the American people. But we're just not seeing that action from a government standpoint, not at all.

No, no. In fact, I'll go further. Federal government, federal government. Yeah, well, maybe the state could be doing a little more, too. I heard on Saturday, Tennessee sent 800 of their guardsmen to the Middle East on Saturday when eastern Tennessee is also getting is just needs help. Right. So, yeah, I don't even know what's happening anymore. But I'll go further and suggest that if somebody in D.C. is playing politics saying, well, those are kind of red states. That's where deplorables live. That's where hillbillies live. And J.D. Vance wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy or whatever's in their little heads.

Like if they're thinking on that level, they've already lost the plot line and what it means to be a human. Yeah. You set that stuff aside during an emergency. Go ahead and root for Alabama versus, you you know auburn just go for it but if the stands collapse those all those fans will be in there helping each other right away because that's what you do as long as you're not a ruined human being right right but i'll go further ashville is very blue it's it's got a lot of woo hippie stuff i speak fluent hippie you know i understand what's going on but i just want to point out that I think that this is instructive for anybody who thinks that Kamala's on their team and they're on her team, that they just showed you everything you need to know that

they don't have a team. They'll use you cynically to get what they want, but then in a pinch, they'll just forget about you. Paul, I think they hold us with contempt. That's how it registers for me. I really do too, Chris. I don't know any other way to explain it. I believe that they're so encircled in their feedback loop and in the halls of power, and they're so disconnected from the reality of the average person that we're just, we're just minions out there. Hey, this, it's terrible that that happened, but you know, they, they don't even, there is no care. There's no love for the American people. There's no desire to come together. And I think you had pointed out yesterday on the last day or so, you know, some of these individuals that are coming out and being

like, maybe this is God's judgment on those people, right? You know, for being that way and actually joyous over the fact that this happened. If you have any love for humanity whatsoever, it doesn't matter, you know, who or what backstory you have with somebody. When tragedy like that hits, we help each other, right? We help each other, right? We help each other. And, um, you know, so it's, it's, it just tells you, like you said, what's in the halls of power and how they could care less about the American people. And it's clear as day to me that they're globalist, right? They care more about opening the borders and allowing criminals to come in. They care more about sending money overseas,

and they care more about putting their globalist agenda. And I don't think they care to see the fall of America to the people. I just don't. I've got another story that I could talk about, Clanton Albuquerque, which is off this subject, but we're seeing continued deterioration in this country where, you know, even before this and the lack of just stepping up and the lack of putting the resources in, and we saw it out in Hawaii with what took place. I mean, there's stories there and the major media is not covering it. I mean, the major media obviously doesn't seem to care either. Well, that's absolutely right. And, um, and, and, and so, you know,

Maya Angelou said it best when somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time. It saves a lot of trouble in life. I think they've shown us over and over again who they are, and it brings us really around to why, Paul, I care so much about people being financially educated and having their wealth, whatever they've got stored up, safely managed and put aside because these people, I'm convinced convinced are going to wreck the financial system the money system and they don't care they they don't care somehow they think that they'll be immune to it or they got theirs you know congress people doing their little insider trading and

stashing it in the caymans whatever their story is i think they feel immune to this whole thing so they actually they don't care uh which means the chance of somehow pulling this out and having it all work out without some sort of a big accident, I think is low at this point. So I'm not a futurist. People sometimes accuse me of being a futurist. I'm a trend extrapolator. If you throw a ball to third base and it's halfway there, I'm going to guess it's going to third base right that's right it's really not not rocket science okay let's talk about the trends we have trends right now where every time there's even a slight hiccup the federal reserve prints more money and when they print more money and the u.s government gets into an emergency and then it ratchets up its spending and the spending stays there. You have to print more money. So we're caught in this thing.

And you watch how the inflation is just destroying families right now, eating through things. Right. And I'm sure a lot of people there in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, Paul, probably didn't have deep pantries because they couldn't afford to have them. Right. Or other sort of buffers that would have been really of a big help during an emergency like this, because most people cling in, right? But they don't care. And they're gonna keep doing that. So it's not a prediction, like a futurist would make. It's just saying, they're gonna keep doing this until they can't. Right. They don't have another playbook, Chris, they don't have

another playbook. And they're not strong enough mentally to assess their situation, admit they're wrong and adapt. Right. Like that's, that's one thing. It's like the Bible says, if you, if you'll confess your sins, God's faithful and just to forgive you. Well, you got to confess them first and you got to admit that we've erred and we're in the wrong direction. And that takes courage, right? Because you have to be comfortable in who you are to accept the fact that we've erred and we're in the wrong direction. And that takes courage, right? Because you have to be comfortable in who you are to accept the fact that we screwed something up, right? Because it hurts when we admit that we've made wrong. Then you got to be strong enough in who you are. And

that's why if our eyes are on the Lord, it's so important. And who you are, hey, he loves me no matter what, right? You don't need the approval of people. Weak people need the approval and, you know, somebody in the ear telling them how great they are. And when they're in a feedback loop like that, I don't see any way that they're going to change this direction. And there's no way that even those of us that are prepared are going to come through this unscathed at this point. That's the conclusion I've come to.

But the difference between having maybe three or four stitches and some bumps and bruises versus getting your arm taken off financially or your leg taken off financially because of their foolish behavior and your willingness through this passive investing to just put your faith in them, because that's what's happening. If you're a passive investor right now, you have to have faith that things are going to work out you've made a decision you've made a choice who knows whether that's going to be the best thing to do for the next 12 to 24 months or the worst thing to do but the reality is

you're putting a hundred percent of your faith in this administration and those politicians that are watching out for themselves if you're being passive so active management I believe is ridiculously important in this period of time from risk management. And you have to be willing to make a little bit of, hey, so what if I don't quite make as much over the next six months? Now, we've got to play the game by the rules that are forced upon us. But that's the only path that I can see that gives us a chance to get out of this relatively unscathed and in a position to where we can help our communities individually and our own families. And first, you know, when a crisis hits in an airplane, cover your own mouth before you cover your kids.

Right. So because if you're functional and you're thinking you can take care of them, that's what we're going to have to do individually with the resources that we've been able to accumulate. Because that's the only way to get through the times that are coming, because I don't think this trajectory is going to be changed. Even if the election goes to Trump from that standpoint, they've laid out so many cards that are out there and so many people in their places, it's going to take time to change it. I think that's a better path, but it's not going to be an instant perfect path where all of this goes away immediately. So I was at this rally, Rescue the Republic, right? It was in Washington, D.C.

And, you know, great honor. I was, you know, I was sandwiched in between Jordan Peterson and I think Colonel McGregor came came after it. Anyway, like, wow, that's awesome. That was awesome. But I was so excited. Yeah, that was good. That was good. But, you know, I was like, well, what am I going to talk about? You know, people are talking about freedom of speech, all this. And I went for something more foundational. I decided I had to talk about where we are financially because, you know, we're at this place now. Well, hold on. I'm going to pull this other one. Then I'll get to this one, because this is really astonishing. Like sometimes, you know, like I like to say, like in an investigation, when I'm doing one, sometimes there's just that one piece of evidence.

It's all you need. And then the whole rest of the story falls apart. Right. And because you can't get past that one thing and sometimes that's all you need is that one thing. Right. To really settle this down. Let me see. Where where is this because this this to me is pretty astonishing where we are as a nation so i tried i didn't have a monitor i could do much with so i had to um uh just talk through this it's not that one it's just how much debt our country has right now uh and how fast it's accumulating so this this red box, this is our entire first 220 years up, taking us up through about 2010, right? This whole thing. And we accumulated $11 trillion in debt. So I talked through this chart. And then we've added $11 trillion just since 2020. It's actually $12

trillion now, coming up on four years. So here the question if we're doing 11 trillion or now 12 trillion in four years then what do we do when we're doing oh this is again this is me saying if the pitch is thrown to third base it's going to third base right just trend extrapolating this trend i don't see any break in this trend we are going parabolic right so i'm going to just guess that carries on, right? The next question is, well, what do we do as people when we suddenly are confronted with the headline that says, wow, the United States just added $12 trillion in four months, and then $12 trillion in four weeks, and then it's $12 trillion in four days, and then they start lopping zeros off and

and because you know they have to start printing trillion dollar notes and crazy stuff happens and we're zimbabwe um that's the path we're on just it's it's what we're on so i think that that needs to be discussed neither can that neither party's really talking about this at this point but you know and i kind of wish somebody would because because we we have to be able to look our young in the i don't know how you would take that chart put it in front of a high school student of average intelligence and they'll get it they're like that doesn't pencil out and then say yes but here's the plan here's here's how we make this right nobody has that plan paul no federal reserve doesn't have a plan. If they

do, they're keeping it a real close secret, you know? No. Yeah, if they're talking about it, they're not even taking a chance to let it get out to the American people, keeping it slow. But I think, Chris, we've reached the point that there's no way that you can stop that without massive deflation occurring and massive bankruptcies of companies, which will inevitably come in the end anyway. But if we just had 10% deflation at this point in the period of time, how many business models are running so just in time, month to month in their payment? And yeah, they may be maximizing profits, but they've got all kinds of leverage in there. And then that could blow the system up, you know, and their argument, they, they tell you around the edges, Oh, if we don't do this, we're going

to have another great depression. Well, you know, I mean, that was horrible to go through, but it was far better for the populist in the, you know, in the fifties and sixties, you know, coming out of the other side of that, when the power was wrestled out of the top, you know, in the 50s and 60s, you know, coming out of the other side of that, when the power was wrestled out of the top, you know, two to 3% spread across the American populace. So I don't see any way out of this. And, you know, for whatever reason, they seem to think that inflation and potentially hyperinflation is going to be this, this Goldilocks scenario coming out the other side of it. And if you've got enough assets and your pockets are lined like theirs are and you feel like you're in the protected class, yeah, it may be fine for you, but it's going to be absolute misery on the other 98% of the population.

Well, things that people in western North Carolina are learning the hard way right now, that same level of callous disregard is being brought to every front, every front, and this and monetarily as well. And so look at this. So we discussed this briefly before we came on air here. But this is a chart, Paul, US deficit is a percent of GDP. So right where you see that flat horizontal line, that zero zero. And if it's got a little black upward intrusion, that means we were running a cash surplus in that period of time. And red means a cash deficit. And this is from 1948 all the way on through. And the recessions are circled in blue, but they also very conveniently show us that recession, you see the lower lows.

It took bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger interventions. So I'm going to predict, as a futurist, that this ball is going to third base, and the next one is going to be even larger and even larger. That's how it goes. But every time that happens, Paul, it has huge implications for what happens with our wealth, with our portfolios. I think that that chart, this is kind of a couple of jumps, but maybe you can fill in the steps for people. I think that chart says you can't be a passive investor coming into this period of time because it's going to be so dramatically out insane what the next intervention is going to have to be and do. This is completely uncharted territory.

But here's the problem with passive, and it's so interesting when I still have the conversation with passive. Wall Street doesn't want you to have gold in your portfolio, but yet that's the number one performing asset class overall since the year 2000. And so they're not going to make any changes to adapt to that. They're going to be like deer in the headlights, and they're going to be frozen. Well, let's just keep doing what works. Don't ever sell.

The market continues to go up. And it may, but that asset class in a hyperinflationary scenario may go up. But if it doesn't go up as much as the cost of living and everything else, you know, you're better to own the stocks than cash, but the right ones can make a huge difference for you and your family and come out of this. And so, yeah, I do not believe that passive investing is going to be the way to go through this because here's what I've seen in the past. And this is the psychological impact. And I told people, this is one of the reasons when they get into retirement, why or close to retirement is so important to have a strategy that you can stay the course on. So I have seen 26 years of working with people in retirement. Hey, I'm working. I'm 40 years old. If the market goes down 50%, so what? Quite frankly, it's not that big a deal. As long as you keep saving in there from a long-term standpoint, you're going to be okay. Well, what these same people think is, hey, passive investing

has been great for me, right? I'm going to go into retirement. If the market drops, I'm going to hold on to it. But there's a mental shift that takes place when somebody retires. All of a sudden, six to 12 months later, they're like, you know, I don't know how I had time to work. And oh, I'm really enjoying this. I don't ever want to have to go back to work. So when you see a big decline like occurs in 2008, if you're going to be a passive investor, the worst thing you can do is puke out at the bottom. The worst thing that you can do, especially in retirement if you're a passive investor, is puke out at the bottom. But that fear of having to go back to work and losing things, people underestimate that mental shift. So, you know, I've never, I really haven't pushed so much the younger investors running active,

but I am now because I think this is going to be so bad that everybody needs to be active in their risk management. They need to be adaptable. They need to understand you're not going to pick the top and you're not going to pick the bottom. And sometimes, like the conversation I'm having with my kids, like, guys, you're in your 20s. Keep your debt low. Save money. And what's coming? I don't know exactly when it's going to be and how long this it's going to because there's always diminishing returns, it's going to be devastating on those people who are putting their faith in our government leaders that are in control right now, that have been in control eight of the past 12 years, and thinking that they're going to be able to get us out of this. Because we're a lot worse right now than what we were 20 years ago because of these same government policies. Well, indeed. And yeah, so again, let me skip forward. So this is from the Congressional

Budget Office, which came out, I think, in February of this year. Yeah, February 2024. They said, well, this is current law baseline. You know, deficits are going to go from one point seven trillion out to two point five seven nine trillion over the next 10 years. So that's 20 trillion dollars of new debt, which takes us from 35 to 55. But this comes from Brian Riedel and he does good work. And he said, yeah, but you know what? This is really optimistic because the CBO is making some assumptions. He said, let's assume instead that Congress doesn't manage to cut discretionary spending to 5.1% of GDP and that the 2017 tax cuts don't actually expire on

schedule. Just pretty reasonable DC assumptions. Well, now we're going from 1.8 all the way to $3.6 trillion of deficit, which, by the way, is closing in on 100% of current tax receipts, right? So, I mean, this is probably realistic. This is what we have in store. Again, I don't know how to sit down a high school student and explain why, how our generations left them up. Anything other than this is a problem. I mean, this is a predicament. But if this happens, Paul, so I look at this, and if I'm you, I'm like, oh, I've got to have some real hard conversations with my retirees because that's, all that red, that's inflation. Yes. So that's what that is, as far as I can tell.

No, it is. There's no other way around it. And this doesn't include a war or a recession. Those are extra, right? Yeah. Those are always extra. That's going to supercharge to the downside of that chart. Yes. Well, and then two, look, our government's openly lying to the American people, the ones that can vote them out. How do you think they're lying to the rest of the world that doesn't have the ability to vote them out? Right. Right. So so we go back to the BRICS conference that's coming up this month.

Now, are they going to make an announcement of the unit? I don't know. But it keeps getting louder and louder and they're taking steps in that direction. So all of a sudden, if there's an alternative where the rest of the world doesn't have to consume all of the debt that we're accumulating out there right now because they're trapped in a system that they don't like and they don't trust anymore, then that's going to further supercharge the damage that it's going to do to the American people. It really is. And Paul, here's how serious it is. I just looked this up. The Taliban is formally seeking invitation to come to the summit. Really? Yep. Wow. But the European Association, EU and the UAE might finalize free trade agreements at the BRIC. So

actual real stuff is happening. This is being held in russia in the united states right now you might think russia is this pariah state everybody hates them nobody will do business with them but actually they're they they've had to hold off new countries from coming and you see at the bottom bricks is might might induct 10 other new countries after the summit the summit's full everybody wants to be there it's going to be a really big deal and it's really hard to find like i this was just a uh a search i did paul like what's going on with the bricks and look around like i got voice of america i got interfax i got the moscow times and i got watcher guru like there's no new york times washington post like our media is busy not talking about this uh which tells you a little bit about what you need to know about how important it might actually be.

That's right. I pay very close attention to what they're not talking about and what they don't say, quite frankly. So, yeah, I mean, you have that going. And quite frankly, now there's a collective and an opportunity. And one of the arguments that people had talked about, the BRICS not, you know, the analysts said, the BRICS are not going to be able to come together with their own currency because they can't trust each other, right? Well, the U.S. is certainly not a beacon of trust in any way whatsoever. But nor are they respecting the rule of law.

They weaponize the rule of law. But the unit and that decentralized you know 40 gold backing that solves that problem because it's a decentralized system so china can't take it over russia can't take it over india can't take it over they go in based on terms of agreement and then you use basically the blockchain to to be able to implement that it's a brilliant strategy with today's technology and something that I would assume as soon as it's introduced, I'm hoping that we can buy it individually. If not, there's ways to get exposure to it through currencies of other countries. But that's a viable alternative to the U.S. dollar, which is further going to exacerbate our

situation. Well, this is fascinating because these other countries, everything I read, you know, you alerted me to the unit. I've been reading about it. And then if they even if they don't get the unit, I don't think they'll be able to formally adopt it here at this meeting. I think it's too soon, but there's elements of it. And one of them is this thing called Enbridge, which allows it's the money bridge, the Enbridge and it allows uh in this article i was reading say a somebody in thailand and they converse in the thai bot and they want to sell to somebody in kyrgyzstan right different currency they can do a uh they don't i don't even have to go through my bank i could be a producer and a consumer or vice versa in these two countries and they just trade

and they settle up in their own currencies. It's an astonishing thing, but they specifically said this is decentralized because they knew that getting around the trust is going to be really important. And the way you do that is you don't say, oh, we're king dollar. You all have to use us and abide by our rules because it wouldn't get off the ground. So they very intelligently, I think, had said, why don't we build a distributed system where we don't have to trust each other? It's in the system, right? The system has verification and that's good enough, right?

I think that's going to take off like gangbusters because people don't really want to be under the heel of somebody else, if possible. It's weird. And think about all the people that are gatekeepers that are charging a fee in between international transactions right now, which is the banks. So if you can do that, regardless of currency between individuals, manufacturer to retailer, that's more efficient, it's fast, and it keeps more money in the pocket of the individuals doing the business, which trickles down to the consumer in the end. It's far better. Absolutely.

Well, I just heard from Michael Yan the other day, and he was trying to, he wanted to buy some gold, and his bank, which he'd used forever, was making it hard, and he had new Know Your Customer, new KYC stuff, and it was going to take weeks, and this and that. Finally, he just did it in some digital currency and it was like habit, right? So the banks are making it hard. Like they're putting themselves out of business, I think, unless it's part of some 3D chess I don't understand. But it's part of the crappening. I mean, I have in my bank account, one of our affiliates wired money to my business account five days ago.

And we're just waiting. It'll clear sometime in the next few days. It's not an emergency at all. But I'm just like, that's, yeah. Five days on a wire? Wow. Wow. Well, I guess with interest rates being a little higher, that's five.

If you do that to enough people, you're increasing your bottom line in there and blaming it on something else. Five days is, because wire is supposed to be settled same day. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, the banks are I call it the Airbnb strategy. We'll just keep being crappy to our customers until our business model folds. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, what alternatives do we have out there? Right. Like the 2008 took your small, your smaller local banks. So now the bigger banks are larger, more powerful. I mean, they're, they've monopolized the industry. Yeah. We've got a few regionals and a few things here, but if you're doing business across the nation, you pretty much have to, to go through those gatekeepers. So they're in a position to

do whatever they want to do, really. All right. Hey, we got it. I got to make sure we have time to get to this. So this is Anne Vandersteel writing. This would be October 2nd, saying crushing supply chain crisis. Reminder that the ILA, the International Longshoremen Association, listen, they want more money, but they're also demanding a ban on automation or semi-automation. And with the federal Taft-Hartley Act, presidents can take executive action in labor issues, she says here, that threaten U.S. national security by imposing an 80-day period where the workers have to show up. So some sort of arbitration gets kicked off. But Biden has said he will not intervene on Sunday. It's collective bargaining. I do not believe in Taft-Hartley. Oh, what a difference a day makes or two. And President Joe Biden's administration heaped pressure on U.S.

Port employers to raise their offer to secure a labor deal. So they did take sides with the Longshoremen's Association. Really, it's an interesting, semi-messy sort of a situation. And I'm kind of of two minds about it, Paul. Listen, automation is going to happen, I guess. But think this through from a national security standpoint. What if every one of our ports is automated? We're super efficient. It's like three times more efficient or something.

That sounds good. Oh, no. Malware. You know, some port worker accidentally opened that email and, you know, clicked the link. And now the whole thing's frozen or the power goes out. Like if all of a sudden you said, wow, our whole machinery kind of broke down. What do we do? What do you do? Do you just take a big pickup truck, go to Home Depot, and load guys in and hope they're going to know how to unload ports? I actually think there's certain things that if you automate it, I think you make yourself vulnerable to people forgetting

how to do those jobs. And maybe they shouldn't be completely automated. Well, and that's a skill set to be able to unload, offload, do it safely, operate, maintain that equipment. So you got a very good point. I would much rather have human beings doing it with automation helping, but not fully automated. Because now you're at the mercy of some hacker anywhere around the world that can shut things down. But I also think that we should keep it to a point where you have a backup switch to where you could do it without that automation. It might not quite be as efficient, but be able to get it out. That's just prudent. There are some areas you got to make investments into. And look, we're just in time inventory around the world now. So if they're shut down for 15 or 20

days, that's going to up in everything. Well, yeah. Let's look at this this this was just in the epoch times just um nice little nice little graphic uh the size of the circle is this number of containers teus uh as they're called that's a 20 foot storage container that come in new york philly jersey that's at five million are coming in yeah and anyway so tens of millions of of containers uh per year and so even just a day or two i'm reading paul really starts to bollock things up but a week is gonna make a real mess out of things for a while um so this could have real economic impact so of course all the u.s stock market seems to care about right now is something about the yen. I don't know. Whatever. But the markets are not are not pricing this in. They're not pricing in any Middle East, you know, threats. They're not pricing in anything. They're pricing

in something else. But I think this is we're we're day three of this port strike. And I'm not I can't find anything that says that their conversations are even happening at this point. I haven't seen anything from that, but I will tell you what's interesting, just from the port strike and even locally. So one of our local grocery stores is based out of North Carolina. The headquarters was decimated. Was that Ingalls? Ingalls, yes.

So Holly went in. Holly went in, no fresh meat, no fresh produce. You know, you had your canned goods in there and I was giving her a hard time. I'm like, Holly, she's used the cash that I had in the car for her. So she goes in, it's like cash only. And she's like, I was like $10 short and they took a local check. You know, they'll take local checks, but I'm like, okay, we're going to have a conversation about emergency planning and things like that again. And you just get sidetracked. We all do it. But that's just on a minor scale.

But I'm hearing reports here locally of fear because of what's happened in North Carolina, the limiting of supplies due to what's taking place in Ingalls. They're saying Costco is just getting hammered right now close to us with people are going and purchasing extra supplies because of the port strike and their fear of that with everything else that's going around in the Georgia and the southeast. Well, you know what always disappoints me a little on some level, Paul, when I see these people with their big Costco emergency purchases is it's not just the lack of forethought, like, you know, have a deep pantry and we can all do that, uh, over time. It's that usually half the cart is filled up with water. Yeah. Now, when I was growing up, there was no such thing as buying water. Right. You know, I just wasn't a thing. And I'm like, these people are like, how could I persist without, without water? Um, and, and I know how instructive this is. Like, people who live the way you do are my followers who've been following my advice. And I know there's some of them that I haven't heard from yet in Western North Carolina, but unless their house got swept away, they're food, right? They'll have water filters, right? So it means that you're not dependent on having, you'll get some plastic jugs of water from Costco in order to have water, even if your water goes out, right?

So there's just a lot I think is instructive in this. And at a minimum, I think everybody listening to this really needs to consider basic preparations, having to be able to solve for food, warmth, water on your own for a period of time, or have a buffer so that, you know, two, three weeks is not a problem. Evie and I were adding it up. We think we could go a couple of years at this point because we have six cows in a field, right? I was adding it up. Like, how long does it take to eat a cow? You know, it takes time.

It turns out. It does. And we're blessed, and we have spring water. So very different situation from many other people i understand but that gives us that a sense of peace right that means that if an emergency happened and we had townspeople who weren't in that similar situation we could help you know we'd be we'd be a plus column person not a minus minus column person needing the assistance. So that's, I think, instructive.

I think it's time for people to really start considering that. I know you help people. That's one of the things you do when you're talking through portfolios and wealth. And what do you do? And it's not money because none are so poor as those who only have money. I know you take them through and you ask them questions like, tell me about your house, where you live. Are you resilient? You know, these are important topics for these times, I think.

They are. And really, really, and I don't mean it this way. The asset management is not easy. I mean, it's stressful, right? But we've got rules in place. We've got strategies. We put a lot of thought into that. To an extent, that's the area where I can dance through the streets while Rome is burning to the ground.

And it's not going to be perfect, but the area that I feel like we bring a tremendous amount of value in that planning process is I'm like, look, okay, these are the assets that you need positioned to make sure that you can support yourself in retirement, hedge against inflation. These are the things, but you've done a good job saving or you're a little bit ahead or where here is, these are areas now you need to go get a minimum three months food food in place buy you a couple years worth of freeze-dried food for your family store it from long-term standpoint look at it as insurance you know make sure you've got communications with your family you know cell uh satellite phones things like for the people that

can afford to do it if not i love setting those plans out in place because there's so, like you said, there's peace of mind, there's peace of mind with it. And if tragedy comes, which all of us are going to experience tragedy, whether it's economically or death of a loved one or something like that in the future, and you're better prepared for it, you survive it and can get through it much more resilient than the other side. And that's, you know, following you over the years, Chris, you've, you've helped teach me that and everything with the work that you've done. I've just been able to take it and apply it to working with individuals in the financial world, because what's taking place right now in North Carolina is a warning. That's what I was telling my wife. This is a warning for all of us. Okay. And I'll tell you one thing that this changed my mind on is I had, I had kept

larger amounts of cash on hand just from a safety standpoint. Well, when interest rates got a little bit higher, I was like, well, I don't quite need that much cash. Cause I got to thinking about how digitally connected we are. If the banking system goes down, you don't have to worry about making payments or anything like that. And that may be the case if there's a two or three week bank holiday. But at the same time, you know, this is a wake up call for us individually, locally. And I have enough where we could go buy food. But the reality is, is if there's if there's a regional grid down, you've got to be able to have cash to transact in today's business now because that's that you just still have to have it. Government doesn't want you to have some. But, you know, if you didn't have a local check, if you're an out of towner and you're

trying to go into Ingalls and that's the only place that you can get something and your credit card only, they're not taking a check from out of town. And if you don't have cash, what are you going to do? So I think this is a good warning for people to pay attention to. And you so very eloquently pointed that out. Well, that's one of the reasons I've always believed in cash is specifically for that kind of an emergency right there. But now that I've come full circle on it, Paul, I have to say that just because my government doesn't want me to have cash, my stubborn gene is kicking in. I'm going to get some cash. I had let mine get drawn down. I told Holly, I was like, I'm making a bank run, you know, tomorrow when I get a chance to pick up some more cash. I had let mine get drawn down. I told Holly, I was like, I'm making a bank run, you know, tomorrow when I get a chance to pick up some more cash. Yeah. Hey, speaking of cash, Paul, I know

you had a chart that will compliment this, but this is looking at global money supply as of 9-24, September 24th, 2024, up 7.3 globally, $7.3 trillion of new cash. Everybody's screaming about, oh, it's too tight, it's restrictive, the Fed should cut rates. $7.3 trillion in new cash. And by the way, this is September. October 24th is going to be even more because China just unleashed a giant monetary bazooka. Rates are getting cut all over the place. Do you have a chart

about that um something but but yes this whole idea i just want people to understand that you know why are stocks resilient right now it's easy there's all this liquidity right somebody's printing money and throwing it out into the markets like spanky from the little rascals throwing cash out the window right they sure are yeah are. Yeah. As far as looking at that, and I can show that other chart, but I'll share this one here. This is from the Mad King. It's basically showing global central bank impulse and the percent of countries cutting rates and basically putting money in is about 78%. So I know this chart may be a little bit harder to see, but this was updated September 25th. And you can just see the sheer vertical move that's taking place right there well the chart that you have

does a little bit better than the other chart that I have is showing but let me pull this up and see because what it does do a good job is point out the fact that liquidity I'm going to zoom this in just a little bit so it's easier to see, excess liquidity has rarely been higher than where we are right now, outside of the year 2000, 2020, and today. So this is just excess liquidity, which is a leading indicator. You can push that forward to six months. I mean, they're literally in a panic attack to fuel this economy right now. And it started with that first rate cut and the market's giddy over it for now. But the question is, is it going to work this time? Right. 2001, it didn't work. That was right before everything came apart. We had a 47% market decline from 2001 to 2003, 2020, it worked.

You know, the market was higher, but now we got to put, look how far the distance between 2001 and 2020. And that was 19 years before they had to do that again. And here we are less than four years later, and they're having to put that much in there. So, and to give credit to the article, it was, it's a premium article on zero hedge. Liquidity doesn't get much stronger than this.

And that was authored by Simon White, which is the Bloomberg macro strategist. So this guy knows what he's talking about. I understand why they shove liquidity in the markets or precious markets, keep stocks going up and to the right. And just to put this in perspective, though, 20 years ago, Paul, there was a lot more broad distribution of ownership of financial assets. And today it's hyper concentrated. So every time the Fed does this emergency, we have to reliquify because it's an emergency. It's always an emergency. But wouldn't you know it? You end up with more concentration of wealth in the hands of the point.1%, let alone the 1%, right? And when it falls into the hands of the 0.1%, you know, you end up with people like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban. These aren't, you know what? I kind of wish these guys didn't have all that Fed liquidity to throw their weight around, you know, because I don't admire what they're doing with it. I mean, money is power.

The Fed prints power out of thin air and preferentially stuffs it into the portfolios of a very few number of people. And then they go out and these people are busy setting policy around the world. Nobody voted for them, you know, all that. So I'm not I'm not OK with that. And it's also social engineering in the sense, Paul, that the Fed is basically saying, look, we never want prices to asset prices to correct to the downside because we have our reasons. Therefore, we think that the next generation should have to pay top dollar to begin their investing career, which is, you know, better than anybody. That is no way to start your career in investing, having to pay at the top. But the Fed's insisted for over a decade now we should only ever be at a top, you know?

I know. Well, and they won't plateau. Effectively, what it does is it suspends the normal cycle that we have had throughout history through humanity, where you make bad decisions, you suffer some consequences. So the best way I can explain it is Holly and I read a book when we were, when our children were young, it's called how to train up a child. And I've forgotten most of what the book is called, but it was biblically, biblically, biblically, goodness gracious. I got tongue twisted. Easy for you to say, Paul. I know that's supposed to be easy for me to say, but, um, so the argument was you want to, you, you want to discipline your kids in a controlled environment, right? So you can over discipline

kind of in a way I'm not talking about beat your kids to death, but you make sure that there's consequences to minor decisions so that they learn that there are consequences to foolish decisions. Cause if you don't do that, you're going to have kids that are grown up. If you bail them out of everything, then all of a sudden they're going to do something that's so catastrophic that they end up in jail for the rest of their life or they're addicted to drugs, things of that nature. So that made a lot of sense to me. Well, what the government's doing is they're bailing out this foolish behavior of these individuals that are just barring themselves into oblivion.

Those businesses would not stand if we had normal economic cycles. So what that does is it punishes the prudent and it punishes the prudent and then tempts them into joining that foolish bandwagon, right? Let's be passive and put our faith in somebody else. There's a period of time that that worked. There was a period of time that that was a wise thing. But where we are now, the consequences of failure are going to be too great to bear. And it doesn't matter how successful a strategy is if consequences of failure are too great

to bear. So what you have to do is throw all of history out the window and say, this time is completely different. And, you know, we'll just point this out. Biden and his mental state and Kamala Harris and her, they're the most brilliant people on the face of the earth. Or you have to say, well, the people behind them are the most brilliant people and they're not going to allow this to happen. And there's just not enough evidence to show that that's a wise path. So we have to take control.

If you can't find somebody that you trust to work with, you're going to have to figure it out yourself. Not because, you know, or find somebody like us that runs a risk management strategy. Not that we're going to have the answer to everything. We're going to roll up our sleeves and go to work and do the best that we can to get you through it as unscathed as possible. But here's the point. There's going to be scars and bumps and bruises, but hey, if we can come through it with a couple of stitches, then we've got the next generation we can tell stories about that, hey, we made the right decision in the period of time and decided to be prudent, opened our eyes and accepted the truth that the path that we're headed on isn't right. We've got to do everything that we can do to get off this path individually if we can't pull the country off of it. Yeah, well said. You know,

my main critique of a lot of people in power right now, Paul, is that they just lack appropriate context to be in the positions they're in, right? So when I see somebody like a John Kerry say, oh, you know, the First Amendment is really a giant impediment to being able to lead effectively, I'm like, wow, you do not have enough context to be in that position because you do not understand that actually countries without free speech are all poorer than us and countries with free speech do better. Right. And there's a reason for that. And there's context and there's philosophy and there's books and there's studies and you could deepen that understanding. So that means his understanding of that concept is not even it's like veneer grade you know it's just this little surficial thing and and i'm sure it plays in the echo chambers he goes and talks in but it's it's just it's just poppycock right so um you know

i these i think everybody kind of needs to just prepare for the idea that they don't know what else to do at this point i showed you that chart pa, of like just a sea of red ink as far as the eye can see. Nobody has a clue what to do about that because to do something about that would mean my fellow Americans, we live beyond our means for a while. We did some stuff we shouldn't have done. We're going to have to tighten our belts. We're going to have to live below our means for a little while. You're going to experience this as job losses.

You're going to experience this as austerity. It's not going to feel good, but we have to do it for our kids and grandkids, right? Nobody's saying that, right? No. And they're not going to. So that means they keep going until it goes, you know, and then we have to deal with that. So, yeah. And that's what makes it really hard to navigate it. That's why, look, nobody can perfectly time the markets. And unfortunately, we've got to play the game by the rules that are forced upon us. And that's such a sad resignation to the situation we're in, but it's the truth of how we have to do it, right? Because if we're

too cautious, then you run the risk of being sucked in at the last time or you run the risk of losing purchasing power if you're too aggressive and you're blind. So we've got to navigate this as best we can and we've got to be adaptable and we've got to roll up our sleeves and understand, hey, we'll figure perfection out later. But the reality of what we're walking into is like handing somebody a basketball to shoot at the goal for the first time ever. They're not going to hit that goal that often. And what I mean by that is I'm not saying that from a risk management standpoint, that's the type of environment we're walking into. There is no historical precedence for where we're going outside of countries like Argentina and things of that nature. And, you know, it's like, I'm actually picked up and wanting to read Furfowl's book on the collapse of Argentina in 2001 again, just because there was a lot to

learn in that if this is a slow degradation of society before our currency collapses, it feels like we're very, very close to that. It does. It does. There's a couple of terms for that that have been sort of popularized where people sort of scatological terms, but, you know, to describe this process of things just all getting, you know, what, what are your, but he described that Furfel talked about that sort of just things just got, you know, not good over time and you can just feel it. So this happens now, Paul, every time I travel, literally every time my plane is either delayed or there's people around me with delayed flights and it's because the plane didn't get there on time or atc couldn't manage to like route things properly anymore or mechanics didn't show up or crew didn't show up something right we used to know how to be able to

run a run run airlines right and we've but i i see that in a lot of different areas of life where it's just like something that has gotten hard. It's just hard somehow to do what used to be ordinary. And I'm just watching, and particularly in the medical space, really hard what I'm seeing going on there right now. And that's a whole separate conversation. So with that, you know, we know what they're fighting. I think they're fighting this. We have two lines here. We've got U.S. retail sales, which normally, if you see my little red thing, this is the zero mark. If we're above the zero mark, retail sales are growing. And these aren't inflation adjusted,

so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Right. But you can see here in the blue is restaurants, the NRA's restaurants performance index. And they normally track each other. Sales are up. Restaurants are up. People are out there buying their spending. But you see this big dive here, Paul, coming off of 2007 into 2008. That's people are not going to restaurants. They're still buying stuff. But there's this air gap here. Right. Turned out that the restaurants were kind of a leading indicator. People aren't going around to restaurants.

And then, oops, you know, all of a sudden we have, you know, the great financial crisis. COVID's its own thing here. Yeah. Look what's happened here of late coming into the end of 2024. We have this huge gap opening up again. Restaurants is way below zero, right? And retail sales are just sort of hanging out for a minute. But it could be one

of these wiley coyote moments so i think they're scared of any recession probably in an election season you know for sure that we know they don't like them then but um paul i i think they're fighting i think they've got the same data we do which is you know we better print and print hard and um maybe maybe we won't have a recession, or we can make a soft landing or whatever the story is. But they're fighting. And I don't know if they can fight this one, based on the people I talked to and how they're feeling about things. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine if the war in the Middle East spins out and doesn't turn into a global war, but then you've got oil prices that spike, you know, like they did in 2008,

summer of 2008, that could be the death knell for the consumer because inflation has not gone away. Or this port strike. We have so many open and weak spots from an economic standpoint that it won't take much to derail the expected outcome that it seems that they're trying to shoot for just anecdotal evidence. But when Holly and I, uh, went to Vegas for that short anniversary kind of get together, um, I'd use my points. I was like, Hey, let's just go. That was just, that was just like what a few days ago, right? You just, yeah, we got back, we got back Sunday

night. We got there Wednesday and got back Sunday night. And, you know, I unplugged for three days. And it's like you feel like you lost three years by the time you start trying to catch up. So, so many things have happened. But one of the things that we decided to do is because I use some points. And I'm like, if I don't ever use these points, we'll go. So, we basically went on the trip for free. I said, let's eat because we're a little bit of food stumps. I like good food.

Let's eat at all the nicest restaurants that we could find. And so anyway, I was amazed because we'd wake up on Thursday morning, and I'm like, hey, let's go to this place. I bet we can't get a reservation. Not only were we able to get a reservation, but we were able to get the best seat in the house. And at the last minute, there was tons of people in Vegas. I was amazed at how many people were out there, but the servers and the waiters and the people in the restaurants were like, yeah, there are people still coming, but we're a lot slower than what we've been before. And they were telling me, you know, just, just two years ago, if you didn't plan reservations

before you got out there to the seats that we were in, you could get in the restaurant, but not necessarily in the seats that we were in. And so get in the restaurant, but not necessarily in the seats that we were in. And so I was amazed about that. It was kind of nice because we just figure out wherever we want to go. And we only ended up eating two meals a day because we'd eat such a nice lunch and such a big dinner. We were full to lunch the next day.

But I can see that. So you show that chart. I hadn't seen that chart before I go out there. And just this week, I experienced that there's a slowdown and hearing it from the servers in Vegas where people spend whatever they want to spend. There it is. There's Paul getting a seat with Holly. Yeah. Right here. You wouldn't have gotten a seat here, right? In 2022, right? Not at all. Here you can, because that's a big erosion in performance index there. And to sort of also complete, Not at all. The Rabobank said, quote, the two-year yield is so far below the Fed's fund rate, we almost don't need to bother having a Fed funds rate at this point in time.

Meaning that, you know, the Fed funds rate is way up here at five something. And here's the two-year rate at three, five, five. It's like a full point, almost two full points below. This is an extraordinary erosion right here. And every time you have the two-year taking out the Fed's fund rate, this is wider than at any point in time. It even took out the worst of it right before the 2008 crisis started. So this is also signaling something's coming. And maybe not. Maybe this time's different, Paul. I don't know. But we're having lots of signs here that say, be careful. We really are. And I'm not seeing

that chart. That's a big deal with that spread. So that set the record on the spread, right? Yep, it did. Yeah. And the Fed will follow. So that's people like, oh, do you think the Fed's going to keep cutting? I'm like, I know they are because of this chart. I know they are because they follow. You notice, I mean, you can see here, so the Fed fund rate is this sort of chunky blue thing, but notice the green line is going up first, and then the blue line follows, right? Same thing, green falls, and then the Fed follows. So the two-year rate, as far as I'm concerned, is the Fed funds rate. They just come out, they hold a meeting, they have a nice dessert trolley.

Jerome Powell says some magic oracle words. He mumbles not as badly as maybe Greenspan did. And then they say, oh, here's what we decided. B.S. The market decided for them weeks prior, typically. So, yeah. And the reality is they just let the market decide it because the bond market traders are the smartest guys in the room. They are. They just they have such small margin for error and such, I mean, small profits on what they're managing compared to what stock guys are. So if they just did away with that, but then they wouldn't have jobs, they wouldn't have,

you know, the Fed wouldn't have jobs, but the free market is a far better way to go about it. It is. Well, I think that we are one oil shock away from just almost completely repeating the 1970s. Remember, we had this inflationary pulse. It started to come back down. And then we had the, you know, the Arab oil embargo. And then, you know, the cost of oil ended up shooting through and feeding through prices. All we are is like one sunk oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz away from a doubling, tripling of oil prices. And then same dynamic.

It'll rhyme pretty closely. And there's not much the fed can do about that you know that's just a price shock that has its own dynamic and it's not inflation per se but it will be supercharged by all that liquidity that's out there it'll be supercharged and and with computer trading and how fast the money's going to pile into the oil space but the government could do something about that if they hadn't drained our strategic petroleum reserves to zero and they had incentivized investment into oil and the production of and the transportation thereof and the pipelines. So there's no excuse when it comes. We've allowed it to happen to ourself.

And again, that's just another weak area. It's like, you know, we had one situation where I was surprised at how safe Vegas was. I didn't feel threatened in any one area, but there was one interesting person, you know, so, so I kind of shifted Holly behind me, uh, paid attention to them and, and protected myself and any open weak spots as much as possible. We're not trying to protect ourselves as weak. There's so many weak spots for our enemies to hit us inside of, you know, as a country now that, that we're just, it's, it's the only way I know to explain it is just arrogance. There's a belief with our leaders that nobody will ever stand up to us. And that's a bully and bullies always get stood up to at some point and by the way um the eia recently had to uh

energy information uh agency they they had to uh downgrade the amount of oil they said had been coming out of the ground oh really like i predicted that they would have yep you did because they were just yeah they were they just sort of like i don't, they just kept marching it up and it was weird. So with the corrected figures now, what we're seeing in the lower 48 here is this, Paul, where basically starting back here in, let's call that, I don't know, October of 23, we're almost, this is July of 24 because this is pretty lagged data. These are all estimates down here. So this is what the EIA is sort of estimating. But even with that downward revision, they're saying coming out to March of 25, basically flat production. And this belies that whole

concept that, you know, we have this massive increasing spike. This is just lower 48 oil production, so it doesn't include alaska um but yeah it's that's that's not consistent with this concept that we have like forever amounts and this is going to be a story that's really going to cotton on to people over the next year or two yeah we got plenty we got lots but we don't have as much we can't forever increase it um and the eia will catch up with that uh i i'm convinced that they've also been playing politics with the numbers um saying stuff that they wanted to say it just didn't fit because you know you and i were looking at like how do you get more oil come out of the ground with

so many fewer rigs i know there's some rig efficiencies that have happened but how do you get 40 rig efficiencies when they're typically squeaking two percent out of these things you know it's just it didn't make sense. No. So I think reality will catch up and, you know, we'll get there and then people will go, oh, yeah, maybe we should have, like, done something smarter with all that oil. Yeah. But, you know, it'll come. In a painful way, but it'll come.

What else do I need to talk about here? We're going to have a food webinar at some point i'll be telling people about that talking about you know at peak prosperity and um how we can uh it's a complicated topic but you know what i have paul the whole center of the grocery store looks like poison to me now i used to shop happily in there and put things in and now i just look at i'm like oh this is not not good you you know. And so that has its own impacts. And I'm still very happy with, not happy with, but when I talk to people about the great taking, Paul, you know how many people just don't know about it at all still? And the great taking for anybody listening this far into this who maybe also don't know about it, it's a

trigger. It's a legal trigger that's been installed that might get pulled someday maybe not but why install one if you don't intend to pull it and what that trigger would do under certain circumstances is enable the legal lawful if you can use those terms with this seizing of everybody's assets to satisfy some black hole that the derivatives guys and gals got into trouble with is basically the story. So I'm starting to refocus on that, Paul, really dedicating into that. I think more people need to know about that because it's just starting to stack up that this is a more and more of a possibility as we get more and more extended into this craziness we're looking at. So thank you for

even agreeing to look at it as a financial planner, advisor, and confidant. No, it was my honor. And I actually was terrified by the research, but so glad that we put the time in there, you doing the research, all the connections that we made through that process. But I was thinking to myself the other day, I cannot become complacent on the great taking risk because we don't want it to be one of those things that comes up. We're concerned about it and then we don't think about it and we become lax. So, you know, we talked about it as a team. Look, we got to make sure that we're doing everything we can do to keep our clients from being low hanging fruit. And the reality is it's a conversation that we

have to have with people. So I'm really glad that you're kind of bringing thathanging fruit. And the reality is it's a conversation that we have to have with people. So I'm really glad that you're kind of bringing that back out again. And for those of you out there that aren't familiar with what Chris is saying about the great taking, I highly recommend that you follow that series. He does, as Chris always does, does a phenomenal job putting it together, bringing people in, the research, the experts, the professionals, the attorneys, and giving you the information to help you make educated decisions to protect yourself. Well, thanks for that. I really think, Paul, this next year, we're going to need risk-managed strategies. We're going to need

to be nimble. We're going to need to really have our eye on the ball because there's a lot of moving balls out there. And we may have to pivot. And I honestly don't know which way. It could be pivoting towards deflation. That is a whole set of implications. It could be pivoting towards much more rapid, if not hyperinflation. But one way or the other, I think we're going to have to pivot at some point in the next year. This whole kick the can thing, I think, has kind of run out of road, but I've been surprised in the past. Well, you know what's interesting? I was thinking the other day, my thesis has been that we're going to get a 30%, 40%, 50% market decline. And then we see the response out of the central banks that really breaks inflation out of the bag. But I keep questioning myself.

I'm like, okay, this is the magnitude of the cuts on a global scale, the magnitude of what Japan did the other day, the magnitude, you know, all of this panicked action across the board, liquidity being, you know, the third highest that it's been on record at this point. You know, have they already started the panic? And are we going to see that big market climb? I still think that we are, but I'm questioning that thesis because I think it's wise to question the thesis. We don't want to just be locked into it. Like you're always looking for information until you find that one thing that you just can't overcome. And then you start looking in another direction, you know, just to be open-minded because, because we're going to have to be, when you're going forward, our head's got to be on a swivel looking for the best opportunity and to protect ourselves. And that's where we are right now as a team.

That's what we're talking about. And I'll tell you, for those of you, you may be isolated in an area. I've had, I've been blessed with the opportunity to talk to people across the country and, and people are like, Hey, I'm in an area and I don't really tell people that I'm concerned that you're not alone, you're not alone. And Chris, you did a great job yesterday, you know, laying out the benefits of being a peak member and joining the community. For those of you, you know, like you said, you got a 30-day money-back-free trial, no questions asked. If you're thinking about it, there's a community of people that care,

they love, they're diverse, they're smart, and they want what's best for this country and they're willing to help people. And I think, you know, we're seeing this dividing line in a country where people are turning selfish and closed minded to let's protect ourselves and do what's best for this country. And that's everybody who's a peak member and participating that I have met are those people. You know, you mentioned it earlier on that with God, we find the humility to say, you know, if I'm wrong, I've got to just square up and face that. The highest form of integrity I know about, Paul, there's a lot of different versions of integrity, right? Mean what you say, say what you mean. But the highest version is you are standing in full integrity when you are willing to be completely reeducated at any moment. And that includes the idea that you are so solid in yourself and you're so solid in your relationship with other that if it turns out you're completely wrong about everything, you kind of go, okay, well, the right thing to do is to admit that and go this way.

That's integrity right there. I've never heard it explained that way. Yeah. I've never heard it explained that way, Chris. You're so good at explaining things like that. But, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I got that from my mentor, and he was right. It took me a while.

I was pondering that for a while. Completely reeducated. What? You know, but when you're willing to to like set down everything you thought you knew because you get that new information that it wasn't right then that is integrity to be able to set that aside explain how you got it wrong right it's kind of like you know like like paula saying sorry always has three parts right you say you say you're sorry and and an acknowledgement of the harm that happened right two you got to atone for

that in some way can you make it right or you know and if you can't what can you do to make it righter and then three you have to explain how it's not going to happen again right what what changes have been put in place to make sure that that thing that happened doesn't happen again right so so that's i think people are gravitating to wanting that level of authenticity, integrity, all of that. So that's who's rallying around the various standards that are out there.

That's who showed up at Rescue the Republic right there. I mean, everybody who's attracting people to that crowd, they all stand for something and have that integrity to say, yeah, this could be risky, but I'm going to do it

anyway. So, you know, I'm hopeful that we'll, we'll get this, but man, people are going to have to get a little bit more active, keep the head on the swivel and just don't lose your money along the way. Cause they're going to try hard to, to, um, demoralize and crush us. That's right. Well, and the worst part is obviously their, uh, their God is money because they believe that's the answer to everything. Let's just, let's just money, money, money. That'll solve all the problems. It's not, we know that they haven't figured that out yet, but we know that.

And, uh, one last thing I want to say, I do want to say, I was so excited when I saw you walk out after Jordan Peterson and in between where you did at rescue the Republic, I was just like, yes. And I've had so many people that were so excited and just thrilled for you to be there and a chance to get your message out and communicate to people. So we were, I didn't get to go, but we were all, and the people I've talked to were all just kind of cheering on. And several people, you know, listened to every word and said said you did such a good job of explaining that chart that you did you know they were kind of just shocked about uh hey i knew and i know i've been listening to chris but i don't know why it just it it the seed he's been planting started producing fruit in me and i finally the scales popped off my eyes and i realized what he's

been trying to tell us for some time so um, you know, there were a lot of people that got a lot of benefit out of that. I'm glad to hear that. You know, my only disappointment was the two burly guys with the earpieces saying you have to speak behind the bulletproof glass. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be pacing around out on the stage with a microphone, you know, but they made me stand behind this glass that was this thick you know uh i did anyway so i bet that was kind of weird wasn't it yeah it was kind of weird you know sometimes they put like a like like i've seen even at some recent rallies they'll put some some line blockers one or two this was a wall it was like being in an aquarium there were there

were each of these panels was probably i I don't know, two feet wide. Wow. And there were nine of them coming. I mean, there was no, like, we were walled off from the entire audience. So it didn't feel quite right, but do what they tell you. I did pray. I spent a lot of time praying for the protection of everybody that went there. Because, you know, I mean.

Well, it worked. I did. So I don't know that my prayers worked. I'm sure there were a lot of prayers that were out there, but I did. I'm like petitioning the Lord, please protect everybody that goes and, and, you know, bless them with wisdom to share a message that'll reach and turn the hearts of the people of our country. Yeah. I do think people will look back in a couple of years and say that was a, an important moment. So I'm really glad for the organizers to have put that together. Um, and it took a lot of effort. So I'm glad they did it. And so

here we are. This brings us to the end of our time, Paul. So for everybody who's interested in talking with Paul or somebody on his team, just go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, a simple form to fill out there. And somebody will be in touch with you in 48 business hours and get the process started. And if that's just a conversation that you want to have, that's perfectly fine. This is no obligation. Just give Paul and his team a call. They want to help. They're very helpful.

And we're here to be in service. So with that, thanks very much, Paul. It's my honor. Look forward to seeing you soon, Chris. All right. Until then, bye, everybody. And we'll see you when we get back and looking forward to it. Until then, bye for now.