Peak Prosperity - Is This Trump’s Secret Plan?

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

After just three weeks I am confident that very few people realize the true extent of the revolution that’s under way in the US.There will be whole new opportunities as a result, and a slew of new risks. If I’m right in my assessment, our job won’t be one of skating to where the puck is going to be, but performing on-the-fly quantum calculations to try and guess where it’s going to transpose itself on the ice.Click Here for Part 2

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. Is this Trump's secret plan? And if so, man, you'd better get ready. Hello, everyone. Dr. Chris Martinson of Peak Prosperity here with you. And I have to talk to you about something that I think could change everything. Look, after just three weeks of the Trump administration, I'm confident that too few people really appreciate the extent of the revolution that's actually underway now look there's going to be

whole new opportunities as a result of this revolution there's going to be new risks but if i'm right in our assessment here if i'm right our job is not going to be one of trying to figure out how to skate to where the puck is going to be as the old old saying goes it's going to be trying to perform on the fly quantum calculations to figure out where the puck is going to transpose itself on the ice, in the arena, maybe out in the parking lot. I don't know. And it all begins with money. It's essential context. You have to understand this context to understand where we are. So let's get to this. It begins here with this idea of money. As I have carefully and repeatedly chronicled over

the years our system of money has a math problem one that stems from its built-in flaw which is that every dollar is loaned into existence look that's just how the system is built better or worse it's what we got now skipping a lot of wonky complexity and cutting right to the chase here. Now, because the principal component of that loan, the principal balance, that's conjured into existence within our banking system. But the interest component is not. And that's why there is always more debt than money in the system. So here we are. We're peeking at the latest money in the system. So here we are.

We're peeking at the latest data from the U.S. Federal Reserve. M2 is a very broad definition of money. It's everything you're checking accounts. It's cash. It's all kinds of stuff. Money in the blue line at the bottom. Debt in green on the top, which is all debt, not liabilities, just debt in the United States. Auto loans, student loans, corporate corporate debt federal debt that's over

100 trillion dollars but as you can see money is just about 20 trillion dollars now because money is created at the same time that debt is created when you extinguish the debt you extinguish the money how do you extinguish 100 trillion dollars of debt with 20 trillion of money it's an impossibility so so that's the situation we're in so what does that mean well this this is where i think we're going to get to the heart of why trump is doing what he's doing because somebody had to this system was destined to break at some point. Now that green line right there, at over a hundred trillion, all of that has to be paid back at some point in the future. But as you can see, total debt never really actually goes down. That one little bump in 08,

09, that almost ruined the whole world. It only ever gets larger and larger. But, well, now let's look at it this way. It doesn't really matter, you might say. Chris, it doesn't matter if my debt is growing larger as long as my income is growing larger faster. Okay. Now, at the national level, this is national debt, national money. At the national level, our income is not quite exactly right, but it's close enough, is gross domestic product, okay, or GDP. So if we add GDP into this chart, it looks like this now. Now we have a red line in there. As you can see, GDP and money kind of track each other, kind of makes sense intuitively, but debt is pulling away from both GDP and from money, okay? So, uh-oh, that's the problem. That's the math problem right there. And as bad as this looks, I'med liabilities in the U.S. in the form of Social Security, Medicare, pensions, things like that,

right? Now, when we add those back onto this pile of debt, so that's IOUs plus debt, we'll call them collectively IOUs. When we add all those IOUs up, we get a number that's somewhere between 150 and 250 trillion dollars of debt and unfunded liabilities now redalio's firm bridgewater associates added this all up in 2018 i haven't seen an update yet love to see one total ious of the united states which is government debt on the bottom in the dark blue then pension liabilities i'm sorry private debt in red pension liabilities in green other mandatory government in gray i bet that's gone really big since 018 right medicare and then social security and that's clocks in at i don't know 1150 1200 percent of gdp that cannot be paid back it just there's no way so the way to interpret this chart right here

is not that it well first one thing let's look at as a distinct before and after kink in it right there around 2008 let me get my little laser pointer out so we can track along this kink right here goes up like this it was bad and sort of trundling along and getting worse but 2008-9 that really scared the banker class the wall street class and so they initiated this whole new thing where they just like off we went and started printing more and more and it's going up like this i'd love to see it since then because i bet it's just gone like that i don't think it's flattened out like uh ray dalio's firm was thinking it might back in 2018 but of course that was a pre-covid world

right so how could they have foreseen this coming i'm not saying they did a bad job estimating just circumstances if anything that that kinked higher faster okay all right now before the great financial crisis the overall levels levels they were bad enough right clocking in and about what's that let's call that 700 of gdp look uh there is that level of indebtedness there is no historical record of any major country ever digging itself out from under a pile of ius that large but instead of saying wow we better start addressing that it's already going to be painful if we had decided to address this when the great financial crisis gave us our warning shot that said, you better fix this. If we had taken that moment, we would have fallen off the equivalent of maybe four rungs up a stepladder.

It would have been painful, but we would have dusted ourselves off and gotten on with things. Instead, the Federal Reserve completely, completely reneged on its duty to this country and enabled this big bailout. And of course, they enabled the bailouts to happen at the government level and the rest is history. And now we're at a place where instead of falling off the fourth rung, if this when exactly, let me be more specific, when this pile of IOUs crashes to the ground. That'll be like falling off the 20th rung of a step ladder, I mean of an extension ladder. So this is going to be really painful, okay? Now, the conclusion that every single honest financier comes to when they stare at a chart like this and you ask them, how do we pay that back? They'll

tell you honestly, well, we can't, which means there's only one question left to resolve at the national and international level, which is this, who is going to eat the losses? Now, prior to Trump getting elected, I would have told you, I know the answer to that question. It's the little people, right? The Federal Reserve would have conspired with their banking buddies and they would have just printed more money and they would have said, oh, we have to. It's an important emergency. Can't you see? And next thing you know, eggs are, you know, twelve dollars a dozen and they shrug and go, oh, that's a mysterious thing.

It's not. That's called spreading the losses to the little people. They print money to pay off the debts to themselves and their buddies. And then everybody else has to pay the cost of that in the form of inflation. Okay, that's been the game. After Trump getting elected, that's not the game anymore. It might be, but it's not the game anymore. We're watching Trump and his administration come in and do the right things for the right reasons.

The right answer to who's going to eat the losses is not the people of this country who built it. And I hate to tell you this, Wall Street and all your private equity folks out there and all your hedge fund managers is sophisticated and as well paid as your jobs are. You're not the people who built this country. You do not deserve to be bailed out at the expense of the firemen and the teachers and the HVAC repairman and the carpenters and the plumbers. The people who built this country, who paid into the social security system, do not deserve and should not be penalized because our financial class couldn't figure out how to keep its pants on. Really, honestly, this is an orgy of awfulness going on right here.

OK, all right. So here's what it's always been prior to Trump getting elected. Maybe it still will be. I hope not, but I think not. And that's why I'm going to be talking about this, especially in part two, a whole new game as a foot. And it's going to have enormous implications. If you are a business person, if you are somebody responsible for your household household finances if you have wealth you're trying to preserve you absolutely need this

context you're going to need this information all right look prior to trump getting elected this is a very simple game i always know how it how it ends they privatize the gains from the good years bankers give themselves big bonuses right yeah but then things would go bad and then they slip the bill for their bad decisions to the public during the inevitable panics that happened because they do stupid things. Right. And that's called, you know, bailouts. Right. So that's been the game. I don't think we have the public appetite, the political appetite for that. And it's a whole new game in town and i don't think so the bankers have been happy keeping this scheme going for a long time because they always knew in their heart of hearts that when this blows up you can count on the politicians bailing them out i don't think they can anymore now this could change everything in a skinny minute all right now but but those robberies that i've been talking about here where you know they're getting bailed out with TARP and stuff during the great financial crisis.

Those robberies, as magnificent as they were, involving trillions paid out, right? Those are anthills compared to this Everest of IOUs right here in this chart. Okay? Now, what, what, what, what, pray tell, is going to happen when, not if, but when that mountain collapses? Now, it's going to be dark days, my friends, really very dark days. That's why I preach resilience. That's why I think everybody should plant a garden. That's why you should have gold and silver.

Like, this is just paper promises, and we have, they can't, they can't be paid back, so they won't be. So we're getting to the point of trying to resolve the question, who's going to eat the losses. And the answer today is different than before Trump got elected. I hope, I think it is. So, okay, now how did we get here? Can I let you in on a secret? I know of the most extraordinary community you can find on the internet. And it happens to be at peak prosperity We have thousands of people dedicated to figuring out what's going on in the world wrestling with the subjects having completely free speech and

Figuring out what we want to do about the world as we form friendships and as we average up with each other It's an amazing place. Free-flowing ideas, great exchange, very civil. Any topic is up for discussion as long as it's related to how do we become resilient, how do we secure our wealth, how do we become better connected to community, how are we going to develop as human beings. That has an emotional component, spiritual component, financial component, community, skills, knowledge, all of this is up for grabs. This is one of the most important times in all of history. Huge changes are afoot. Some people are going to make those changes relatively facilely. They're going to nimbly dodge into the future and be fine. Other people are going to be crushed by what's coming. The difference?

Who they surround themselves with. And that's where the Peak Prosperity community can come in. I invite you to become a member, and I can't wait to meet you. Now that the astonishing truths about the depths of the corruption, right, and waste is being revealed by the doge activities and all of that, it's clear that our national finances were being administered by raccoons and dunces and thieves. OK, and outside of a very, very tiny handful of thoughtful leaders possessing common sense, you know, we had Ron Paul, the OG of reason and common sense. We have now Thomas Massey, a few others. I don't mean to leave them out, but you can count them on two hands at this point. Nobody said or did anything about this exceedingly obvious math problem right here.

I mean, it's just completely obvious that this is a predicament, like this can't be paid back. Now we can talk about it. That alone, my friends, changes everything, which is good. All right. Now, nobody really actually had a plan for the nation, but it seems far too many of them, you know, of course, had a plan for their own personal self enrichment. More on that later, especially in part two of this. We'll be talking about that a little bit more. Let's talk about that raccoonery for a second. Let's turn to this because this is kind of funny. Maxine Waters, who I'm sorry to make you listen to her because this is awful. She is probably one of the

least qualified, most odious people, although she has stiff competition up there on Capitol Hill. Here she is talking to chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, who, by the way, is looking a little haggard these days. And I think we can read into that a little bit. I think he's under tremendous strain because something's about to happen that's big. And we can detect that in the gold flows. We can detect that in Treasury statements by Scott Bassett. We'll get more of that in just a second. But listen to this astonishing exchange. Musk comes knocking at the Fed's door. You going to let him in? I don't have anything for you on that. Would you like to tell us today that you won't let Doge into the Federal Reserve

or have access to the systems and the data? Okay. Be still my beating heart and not in a good way. The Federal Reserve has been entrusted with the most sacred thing at what you've been doing with the public's money? Because every time the Federal Reserve prints money, they steal from everybody. It's an extraordinary power, and that ought to come with extraordinary oversight. Would it shock you to find out that the Federal Reserve has never been audited in its entire history? The the entity entrusted with operating the nation's printing press has complete opaqueness about where, when and how it sends that money about. The chance that there isn't some of that, some of that being sent to offshore Cayman's accounts isn't being funneled into preferred political candidates.

The chance that it's not going to places it shouldn't go is zero. But Maxine Waters is mad that maybe Elon would take a look at that. Let's find out why she's concerned. So we don't I don't have any we've had no no contact. And I don't really have I have nothing for you to report today on that. Well, you know what happened to Treasury and you know what happened over to CFPB and the people of this country are being violated because all of our privacy is. Yeah, Maxine, we were being violated and there was no lube involved. We all were violated. And you know that. And we were violated by you

and everybody like you who was ripping off the public blind and wanted it kept hidden. And you're scared now that it might be revealed the extent to which you personally. Committed fraud and were part of the waste and abuse of the American people's money. Been taken up by Elon Musk and Trump, and we don't know what all they have on us. Did you just say the quiet part out loud, Maxine? Anyway, let's audit the Fed. I mean, why not? Let's do this, right? So look, for all the years of my life, nobody in power has ever dared to do anything about, you know, this big problem. Right. They prefer to kick the can down the road. You know, one more one more term, one more administration, one more quarter, you know, anything.

But but now because, you know, now is always a bad time for incumbents, you know. So, listen, my current thinking goes like this. It certainly must be true that other smart people in the halls of power and in the halls of finance can grok the simple arguments presented here. Right. They have to know even better than we do. That the fiscal situation is a train wreck is coming and it cannot be avoided. But you know what? Hey, look, it was all destined to implode for one reason or another, and not because we'll finally reach the absolute mathematical limit, right? Which is, I guess, when 100% of tax revenues go to just paying the interest alone. Like that's the math limit. Way before then, you know what happens?

A critical mass of attentive insiders they begin getting nervous they side eye each other they sidle towards the exits uh at first it's relatively calm you know with some you know it's a little bit nervous but eventually other people start to notice like why are all those people heading out the door and then that shuffle kind of turns into running which then becomes a stampede. And that's when the panic sets in. And the exit doors in this story are far too small to accommodate everyone, as is always the case when nations print themselves into oblivion. The losses are going to be legendary.

OK, unless. And this is brand new. Something that's never happened before in my lifetime for the very first time we have a president who has made it clear that he's interested in doing the right things and he instructed all of his staff to follow along has the department of education spent more per pupil and yet somehow helped the u.s get to the 40th spot out of 40 countries and close it down, right? Don't reform it. You don't argue with stakeholders. You don't hold meetings about reforms. You don't have bipartisan commissions to issue 300-page reports two years down the

line. You don't fight that entrenched bureaucracy. You just shut it down. Was USAID running a vast sea of schemes and scams and corrupt party dealings on the taxpayer dime? Shut it down. And that's the right thing to do. I've never had it's never happened in my lifetime that we have a president who's just doing the right things because they're the right things to do. That any common sense person would arrive at the same conclusion, right? You know, we're entrenched bureaucrats violating your directives and sending money to posh hotels, you know. Well, fire him. How about this? Not news, unfortunately, but but how about this?

We had Elon Trump. Sorry, Elon Musk came out with Trump and said, you know, it looks like it looks like. Medicare has sent two point seven trillion dollars overseas, supposed to be for U.S. citizens, two point seven trillion gone. It is the most colossal and stunning waste. Fraud ever. And but it turns out we knew this because they ran a report back in that came out in June 27, 2024 by the GAO. This right here, if we, Maxine Waters and people like you, Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, right? Mitch McConnell, all you people like, oh, I'm so offended that we should be looking into these things. When this report came out, full stop, really? $2.7 trillion.

That's 10% of our public facing debt at the federal level. Because that is a public and then a and then an intragovernmental component. That's a that's huge. $2.7 trillion. Really? That was just being vacuumed out of the country somewhere and and fixing this and this should have been bipartisan in immediate and they didn't even care nobody said anything about this at the time that i'm aware of if they did they did it so quietly i didn't hear about it okay so so that's that's astonishing so all right oh hey also we're going to get the release of the long overdue assassination files for JFK, RFK, MLK, right? Clearly, the right thing to do, the right thing is to release them. And that's exactly what Trump has ordered. And I hope they come out and I hope we don't have too many raccoons in that process trying to, like, you know, soften that, blunt that, take control of that.

But let me ask you this. Assuming I'm right, assuming that the pattern suggests that trump wants to do the right things for the nation and given the fact that the only question remaining over a precarious fiscal disorder is who's going to eat the losses what do you think the right answer to that is who should eat those losses right you're Trump, you know, you direct your new Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, to do the right thing. Now, what do you suppose, what do you suppose that is? I have an idea. Look, our biggest, most important job over these next few years is going to be to calculate where we think the puck is going to reappear on the ice or in the arena or maybe out in the parking lot.

Like, this is such a big deal. We can't, we're going to have to try and predict where things are going. We can't track them anymore. All right. Well, that's what I'm exploring in part two for my subscribers. I'm going to be looking at, um, the fact, I think this is our only chance, right? Really to set this straight, unless the whole ship of state is going to just go down in some glorious flaming heap at some point in the future. And it involves these sorts of things. There's a

restructuring. There's a little movement to really call the Fed to question. But there's some big, big movements. We got to talk about this. Look, there's no right answers to this. I don't know what the answer is. What's the right thing when it comes to the fiscal monetary situation? I'd love to hear your answers. It's a really thorny problem. I don't have the answers, but I'm convinced we're going to find out soon. It's connected to the recent moves in gold, as I mentioned, from Europe to the US.

It's the Haggard appearance of Jay Powell as part of this. Federal Reserve Chairman at recent hearings here, right? But big things are afoot. And here I'm going to give you my best example analysis of what I think those things actually are. So with that, thanks very much for listening. Please come by peakprosperity.com if you've been following this out in the public zone and you want to see what I'm thinking. That's for my subscribers.

And I put a lot of thought into this as I do every one of my weekly pieces. Well, biweekly. Oh, every day this past couple of weeks. You know how it is. Times get busy. All right, with that, thanks very much for listening. Let me know what you think about this. What would you do if you were going to do the right thing

when you're trying to answer the question, who should eat the losses? Thanks very much for listening. Bye for now.