Peak Prosperity - The Fed Is Getting Ready To Torch The Dollar

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

We’ve come to the end of the road. There’s no more ‘can-kicking’ to be done. The US is now in the exponential blow-off phase of fiscal irresponsibility and the Fed is out of options. Save the Dollar or save the Treasury bond market. The BRICS have long-since figured this out. Now it’s time for Western investors to catch on.

Hello everybody, Chris Martinson here, and today we're going to be talking about finance and economics as part of Finance U. Remember, anything that you see in this video and all resources available at our websites or affiliated websites are not intended as or construed as financial advice. This is for educational purposes. Remember, if you have a financial decision, please consult a financial professional. We are not attorneys. We're not CPAs. We are not financial managers. As well, we do our best to be accurate and everything we represent is as accurate as we know it to be. Now, let's turn to our program. The problem is the hangover that's coming as soon as this party is over is going to damage the lives of tremendous numbers of people

and especially retirees, who are just thoroughly enjoying this right now because they're cruising, they're spending time chasing their families, they're believing the mainstream media and the Wall Street narrative, not understanding the damage that's coming their way. Welcome, everyone, to this episode of Finance University. Chris Martinson, CEO of both Peak Prosperity and Peak Financial Investing with Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hey, Paul, seems like we've been seeing each other a lot lately. We have. We have. Happy Wednesday to you. And what a great weekend with the webinar, all the great information. That was well done, Chris. It was fun to be a part of.

Well, for people who don't know, Paul's talking about we just had a webinar on the great taking. It's protecting your wealth from the great taking. This is from somebody named Brent. It worked, he wrote. What a great six-hour webinar. I have five pages of notes. Thank you, double exclamation points. We got lots of really good feedback on our end, and this is our first chance to talk since the webinar. How's it going on your end?

On my end, it's been absolutely wonderful. The feedback, just talking about all the strategies on how to maximize everything that we can as far as the planning. So it's been wonderful. I had eight meetings between Monday and Tuesday with people who had already, we were in the planning phase, coupling the recommendation phase, and between me and staff. I didn't have all those eight, or the other advisors, but it was great. So they were excited to have some answers for, you know, what answers we have know that we're paying attention, looking out for them and structuring things. So it's great. And our team sat down after the information I picked up on, on Friday about the SIPC coverage,

the extra information that we discovered. So we're, we're already in place, maneuvering things around and scheduling conversations with clients. So it's been enjoyable. Well, two things have really come out in the feedback we've gotten. First, a number of people said, well, thank you for finally going deeper because they'd seen like 10 reviews of The Great Taking, but none of them went deeper than the book itself. So they were just, you know, it's just, you get more reiteration of what you'd already seen. And so we went deeper. Obviously, we had a lawyer there who had a sort of a different take on it.

And then we had Suzanne talking plumbing and you and Damien talking about the strategies and the Gold Corps folks. So that was part two is people saying, thank you for saying what we can do about it, because everybody sort of sets the problem up and then walks away. And that's what I like about working with you. It's tricky, but you dove right in and said, all right, it is what it is. Let's figure out what we can do about this. Really important to take those steps. Well, and it's my honor. And you know what, it's interesting. I think I was talking on the webinar. You know, some of the information, the research came in on Friday, and I stole a line from my attorney who's been doing the work.

He said, Paul, this has been like three and a half years of college and six to nine months, you know, and working a full-time job. So, you know, we got a little bit more information, and that wrapped up a few pieces to help us structure accounts to protect people, you know, and we're going to continue to work and see if there's ways that we can find that are smart and wise and a lot more efficient. So it's, it's been something that, you know, is a lot of work, but that's what we have to do as a fiduciary and, and helping people navigate. And then of course, too, you know, I spent some time just talking about the emotions that we deal with and, you know, trying to focus on the big picture and plan and really think through kind of where you want to be. So that really resonated with a lot of people, too,

because it's, you know, like my experience that I shared, it's terrifying when you first hear this information. It just really is. It's overwhelming. Yeah, paralyzing. Yeah. Paralyzing. Well, good news.

At the time that we're recording this, which was just a few days after the webinar, it's almost done being processed. It's going to be up at peak prosperity. So for anybody who didn't get a chance to attend, you can always get a ticket and watch it it's going to be there in our permanent queue for a long time for people who who want to take advantage of the assets we have at peak prosperity so that's what we do problem definition but solutions really more about solutions so paul i got to talk about solutions because crazy stuff is going on out there and um i don't know you know they say uh when you when you encounter belieftering material, you might go through the five stages of grief, right? So that would be somebody in Kubler-Ross's model encountering a diagnosis of an imminent death.

For themselves, that's pretty belief-altering material. And they go through, come out of denial, you go into anger, you get to a little bargaining, maybe a little depression, and then acceptance. You go through those five stages. I might be at the bargaining stage. I don't know. But I just bargained with Costco again this morning, ordered some more silver up, right? That's part of my feel-good behavior set because a couple of things. Because of this, Paul.

All right, let me just full screen that. Screw it, I'll put myself in the corner so this is two lines on here from the daily shot that's I believe that's at sober look on twitter and the purple line is federal interest payments and those are billions of dollars on the left so when you say a thousand billion on that left axis of course that's a trillion and the black line is defense spending I'm not sure why it's important that interest is now larger than defense, but defense is the largest. Why do I say defense? It's really an offense budget. Defense would be a fraction of that. But right. By the way, the black line, Paul, that's why we can't have nice things.

If you if you ever on like a really bad train line or you're wondering why the TSA couldn't staff up for the volume of people trying to get through that airport, it's because of that black line. There's a cost to having a defense budget that's as large as the rest of the world's combined. But leaving that aside, that purple line, that's

federal interest payments, and this, we are at that stage, Paul, in that exponential growth story where this is it this is the slowly then all at one stage this is the all at one stage so things are moving fast and i don't know there's nothing the federal reserve can do about this except to lower interest rates yeah how do you lower interest rates if you're the Fed? Well, you print money. You buy bonds in the open market. You print money. They're going to have to print money, Paul. I just see money printing. It's either that or that purple line blows up and the federal government

goes out of business and everything's ruined. That's not going to happen. So all they can do is print money. Money printing. That's all they can do. Inflation. And that's my biggest concern because inflation is an equal opportunity bringer of misery for the citizenry. And in that inflation, our infrastructure is not going to be reinvested into as much as it has been in the past. So, yeah, we're at the suddenly and then all at once. And I wasn't able to gather all the resources. But, you know, after the weekend, Father's Day, kind of traveling, coming in, catching up on Monday, Tuesday, I started picking up, studying what's taking place with the BRICS in the unit. And there really seems to be all at once movement to find an alternative to the, to the U S dollar. And then was reading some transcripts of Putin over the weekend said that, that there's nobody in the West that is trustworthy anymore. Like, right.

Nobody in the West that's trustworthy. So you, you couple our government, you know, reaching the point where they're just going to have to print money to cover this and the rest of the world at the same time, if they are to the point that they're rapidly moving, maybe at the suddenly part to find an alternative to the US dollar, that's going to be a completely different environment for investors to navigate in. It's going to be a completely different environment for businesses to manage cash flow. Like Chris, you know business, you've been around it as a good businessman you know a lot of good businesses fail for lack of cash flow management not necessarily profitability so

if if we are at the verge of this you know unfolding over the next two three four five six seven years it doesn't matter necessarily where mathematics say it's coming although we don't know exactly what the timing will be forces could kick that can down the road a little bit. What has worked for the past 25, 30 years is certainly not going to work for the next 10 to 15. Well, this is where all the pieces come together, of course, and that's why I talk about things the way I do, Paul, because, you know, I have to talk about a lot of things all at once, which is why one of my more recent scouting reports I was talking about how isn't it odd timing that, you know, there's all this saber rattling going on. Tensions are rising and that, you know, we're clearly entering a huge fiscal nightmare on the federal government side.

And what do they do? Well, they decide it's time to extend the selective service registration, make that automatic. And that's the House and the Senate, not to be outdone, decided, let's include women in that. So now we're talking about why now, Paul, would they suddenly say, you know, be a good idea to tighten up our potential draft prospects here in the United States for men and women? You know, to me me war is failed diplomacy i see a failure of politics i look at our with very few exceptions in our political sphere right now in the united states we are shot through with weak people and they make hard times and they're busy doing it yes deficit spending as if there's no like there's zero constraints spending it on stuff that ordinary people would not share this

priority list you know business people obviously wouldn't not having a secure border on and on and on right so i just think people have to be ready for this but but at a minimum you got to be ready for what this implies right here this chart is telling you without any doubt whatsoever that the federal reserve is gonna have to print money and if you don't have to take just my word for it, this just came out this morning from James Lavish over here on Twitter, saying in today's updated Congressional Budget Report, the CBO, estimates that the Fed's holdings of U.S. Treasuries will more than double

from the current $4.4 trillion to $9.2 trillion by 2034. So over the next 10 years, they're just looking at, well, if that's 10 years, yeah, $400 billion or $500 billion a year is going to have to just be monetized to get on this track. Now, this is the CBO. The Fed can do whatever the heck it wants to do. It could double it tonight if it wanted to. But it's going to do. It could double it tonight if it wanted to, but it's going to do that. And so that's why I think people need to be battle tested for inflation way beyond anything we've seen so

far. That's what's coming because they're caught between that rock and a hard place. Yes. When we say save the bond market, save the dollar, what do we mean? Well, if you want to save the bond market, what do you do? Well, you do this, right? You just start doubling your balance sheet, and the Federal Reserve is just, well, what does it mean, double your balance sheet? Well, that's easy. What that means is that the Fed is going to print money, not money. God, Mike Maloney should be slapping me. It's currency, okay?

Yeah. Right? Because money, Paul, has three of those three characteristics, unit of medium exchange and oh store of value so we don't have money because the dollar doesn't have number three it's missing okay so the fed's going to print this currency in whatever quantities necessary to try and keep the price of bonds low enough so the federal government can keep going that just means they'll just like that old gif of spanky from Little Rascals just throwing money out the window. That's the Fed. They're going to throw money out the window, currency.

And so we're just like, listen, everything's going to get very, very expensive going forward. It is. And just how it is. Well, and Chris, too, I'll share this data with you, the market here on Zero Hedge, and hopefully I can share the screen well, but there's an added benefit for them saving the bond market is because of the fact that they'll be saving the banks by default in that situation as well. So can you see the screen?

I sure can. So what this is, and I'm going to make it a little bit larger. Hopefully that'll work. This is unrealized losses on investment securities for banks. So going back to 2008, even at the worst part of the crisis, you know, yeah, you had a little bit of a blip compared to where we are right now. But we're sitting around $517 billion in unrealized losses on the books of these banks. So, you know, of course, obviously, we probably don't have this quote, mark to market accounting, there must be some type of suspension in there right now. Because normally, in the past, this would have made a big difference. There were a lot of local

banks that were taken down in 2008, because their real estate was upside down. So I don't know all of the mechanics behind it, but the reality is this is a pretty big deal that's lurking under the surface of the market right now. And it just, it's another data point that shares that balance between, are we in a Goldilocks scenario or are we in the last gasps of an economy that's been manipulated to the point that that there are huge risks that at some point soon are going to be coming, not bubbling, but roaring to the surface? Now, I'm willing to bet I've seen this chart, but I haven't chased down its provenance. My best guess is this is coming out of FDIC data, but I don't know. If it is, that's just going to

be mark to market on marketable securities is my best guess. It's not going to include commercial real estate losses and those spiking delinquencies that we've seen on credit cards and auto loans. That's my best guess. It does not include the rest of that stuff. Correct. Yeah, those are investment securities. That's just on investment securities. With the commercial real estate losses that are out there, I bet you you could double that. It's way beyond the capital position of these banks. Oh, absolutely. Way beyond.

And commercial real estate is an absolute nightmare right now in the reports that I'm hearing all around the country, right? And how this hasn't made a large impact right now, maybe it's just because of the liquidity that's in the system or, you know, but you've got a narrowing market to where it keeps getting more narrow and more narrow, where you've got a handful of stocks that are surrounded around this generative AI theme that are causing all this euphoria. And the market seems to be in this blow off move, which looked like it was going to be a good possibility. The question is, does it last into July or does it last into the election? The problem is the hangover that's coming as soon as this party is over is going to

damage the lives of tremendous numbers of people and especially retirees who who are just thoroughly enjoying this right now because they they're they're you know cruising they're spending time chasing their families they're believing the mainstream media and the wall street narrative not understanding the damage that's coming their way you know the because nobody can tell them exactly when it's going to happen. I can't tell you exactly when it's going to happen. It's impossible to pick the market top and somebody's going to be lucky enough to, to, you know, state today's the day in hindsight,

but that's going to be pure luck because when you get into a situation like this, it's, it's, it's driven on human emotions and the tulip mania, other things you shared about Isaac Newton, right, who just absolutely sucked into that. In the South Sea bubble, yeah. You got taken to the cleaner. South Sea bubble. So, you know, it's sad what's coming. But for those that we have the opportunity to make a difference in, and that's what you're doing out there, hopefully we can warn as many people and help them navigate what happens initially and then the inflationary holocaust that comes on the other side of that.

Yeah, well, speaking of those bubbles, this caught me off guard a little bit. The Wall Street Journal, which is just a relentless cheerleader for all things crazy, actually, look at this headline, NVIDIA's ascent to most valuable company, Echoes.com. Boom. So they're actually caught. There's like, well, with NVIDIA now being the world's most profitable, I mean, most richly capitalized company in the world, like worth more,

worth more than any other country in the world, a company in the world, like worth more, worth more than any other country in the world, a company in the world in all of history. It's that's, yeah, they are priced for not just perfection, Paul, but the kinds of growth that don't make any sense. Like you can't, like it's really hard to put their current market valuation into a spreadsheet. And then the assumptions you have to make in terms of profitability, they literally like approach infinity, it gets really crazy. It's pretty astonishing. So they do. And the sad part about this is Chris is you've got you've got investors at the margin that are chasing this. And I think you have a lot of window dressing by funds going into the to the end of the quarter,

because we're coming up on July, so the top 10 holdings are going to be disclosed. But the problem with indexing is you have price insensitive buyers, like 35% of the dollars that, I don't know the exact number, approximately 35% of the dollars are going into the top seven stocks or the top five stocks. And I wish I knew exactly what it was for NVIDIA. But the large amount of money that you put out of your 401k into the S&P 500, because I want to buy an index, because the index has been the best place to be since January 1st, 2008, and it's gaining momentum, that's buying NVIDIA stock, whether you want to do

it or not. So people don't think that deeply, but 401ks are automatically in there. So I think we're going to see a major turn in this once you see unemployment start to creep up a little bit and gain a little bit of momentum, because that's going to tighten people's contributions through the 401k money flows that go into the index. So you've got to... Well, let's talk about that refresh recession real quick was it you i was talking to it might have been nick but at any rate somebody in georgia saying that um that they had just gone down to a dealership and and asked the question like how how's business and they said it's like somebody flicked a light switch off yes so that was

actually me we were talking about right okay my truck was running a little hot. So, you know, just in case I checked the air filter. So I stop in and I've seen the guy at the local auto parts shop and I'm like, you guys are dead. And he's like, he's like, yeah, I said, how long has it been? And he started sharing. He said, even back in 2008, we didn't flip the switch off as quickly as it's happened now. He said, and then he goes into this whole rant about, you know, people can't afford to eat. They can't afford their taxes. They can't afford their insurance. And he said, it's sad because the people, the few people that are coming in here to buy things right now are having to repair something. And they're complaining about how they don't have the money to do this, but they've got to repair their car to make the, keep their job. And they're,

and they're just falling behind. So, I mean, it started a whole conversation in there, you know, and, and, and I'm always asking when I go somewhere local, because the North Georgia area is kind of like the, uh, people are calling it the Aspen of Atlanta, right? Like everybody's wanting to come into this area. Now, is that true? I don't know. But we tend to be the latest to recover when things take off. And especially in 2008, we were the latest to slow down. So I always pay real close attention. But everywhere I go, just in the past couple of weeks, there's a major impact. And I had called the local lumber supply that I get lumber from yesterday, Chris.

And I didn't get a chance to tell you this, but I picked up the phone and I called. So I'm putting four board fence around a lot of our, where the house is going to be. So my son-in-law is getting ready to go to medical school. They're living with us. He said, Hey Paul, if you'll get another bundle of five quarter by 16, I'll put some up next week. And I'm like, Oh, I love you Tyler. That's great. So I called him. I said, Hey, you know, no rush next week. If you'll bring it over, drop it off on Monday, Tuesday. Tyler will start working on it Wednesday. And Jamie at the local place, he said, Paul, he said, we are absolutely dead.

Does it inconvenience you if we take it out there today? We've done nothing today. And I'm like, really? So I didn't have time to carry that conversation a little bit further, but I haven't heard him say that in 10 years. I mean, usually you have to call and it's a week later before they get it, so I'm always trying to think ahead. So those are two different businesses in the area just in the past week who've seen the economic spigots or the money spigots shut off quickly. Wow. Yeah, no, I think that.

And let's look at this real quick too, because that sort of comports with this, although Florida may be its own thing with its insurance and other issues it has, but the Florida market downturn, housing market downturn in Florida getting crazy, writes Nick Geerly here. Their zip codes were inventories nearly tripled from its levels last year. Here's one north of Tampa, which has been formerly pretty hot, Port Richey, 248% growth in listings. So it's just, when you see the, we saw this in 08, right? First thing is inventory piles up and then prices sort of stagnate, Saturn 5 failing to clear the launchpad style, and then prices start to come down and all off it goes. So maybe this clears out on its own. Maybe the Fed somehow crams interest rates down.

Maybe the economy turns around. But I'm getting more and more of these signs, Paul, like the lumber story, like the auto story. This is starting to pile up a little bit. In our own region, I've actually had first-time and a long-time contractors reach out and say, hey, how's that project of yours going? Really? Yeah, people who wouldn't return calls just last year or whatever. So it's happening. You've got to read the vibes

a little bit. But the Fed's going to do everything it can to prevent that in an election year, because remember, they're nonpolitical. So I think they're going to have to try and cut rates, but I'm reasonably certain that's just going to make all kinds of things, including oil and other commodities, just start to get very expensive. Because as you mentioned, the rest of the world is onto it. Bears, this is such an

important point. We do not have money. We have a faith-based debt-based currency. It's faith-based. It says so right on there. You pull out one of those little pieces of paper paul says full faith in credit it says so it's right in the contract full faith and credit right well faith in what well our ability to repay you in more of these units well okay what does that mean means we're just going to print them up so they've lost the

rest of the world is losing faith that is such a big deal when somebody like putin says there's nobody in the west you can trust anymore and i don't know if you caught this but the last three days before recording this uh we saw nato jens stoltenberg hanging out with blinken promising that ukraine's going to join nato and that we're going to do more and that they have to spend more money and so they're just ramping up the war spending over there in Europe right now, obviously ratcheting tensions. And so the odds of the rest of the world just sitting, it's over. Like this is the new era. And it's going to be very tricky to figure out how to invest in this new era. So much is going to be changing. It really is. And I'm just, I'm just grateful by God's grace that years and years ago, we put in the structure, we put in the structure to have,

have something forces to adapt our attention in a repeatable and consistent manner so that we have decision points where, where we know now's the time is a prudent decision to take other steps in this direction or take other steps to run for the door or take a step. Because really we're going to have to dance through the streets while Rome's burning down as American citizens when this takes place. I mean, that's a horrible analogy, but it is what it is. So we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and do our best to fight through this as investors for ourselves and our family and our communities, because the weak men that are in

control. And that's one of the things I've always kind of had conversations with my children about. I said, one thing I've learned as an adult and dealing in the world is trust people to be who they are, right? Like, you know, people have tendencies and it is what it is. So, you know, if you know, this person's going to steal from you on a job, then you have to trust if you have to use them, they're going to steal from you on a job and you'd really don't want to use them, but you shouldn't get upset over the fact that they did something that you know, they're going to do. So, you know, the fact that Putin came out over the weekend and especially with the backdrop that the bricks are meeting and they're like hey we

basically just all want to get along and he's coming out and saying look there's nobody in the west that we can trust anymore there's nobody in the west that means we're unpredictable and the most dangerous situation is unpredictable outside of the fact that we seem to be trying to tell the rest of the world to bow down to us and do what it is that we expect them to do. And they're all working together in the interim period to find an alternative to us. And I think, Chris, like you said, it's just the weakness. Jordan Peterson made the comment the first time I heard it. I chewed on it for a week or so.

He said weak men are the most dangerous men. Well, I always thought a weak man is not dangerous because the reality is you know you're not going to end up in a fight with them because and then as he further explained the more i thought about it's not no a weak man's going to hit you from behind a weak man's going to steal from you there's no way that they have the strength of character to rein in their emotions and their desires and, and, and that, or their pride, right? Like burn the world down instead of admitting that you're wrong about something. I mean, we've, we've seen that you've documented that with all the information that you've

put out since COVID first, you know, so it's a dangerous time. It is. And it's, it's terrifying and thrilling at the same time, because those that are, that are courageous enough to adapt through it are the gate that's as powerful or as deadly as somebody who betrays you from within, right? Right. That weak man you're talking about, that person who lacks the integrity, you know, who doesn't really believe in something enough to stand for anything and so undermines everything like who doesn't know how to build. So they just tear stuff down. So against that backdrop, it's no surprise to me to be seeing stuff like this. This just came out on June 18th here, which is that Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia all now have expressed interest in joining BRICS. Really? Yep. Combined GDP on a purchasing power basis, PPP of 7.72 trillion, possess obviously strong manufacturing capabilities. But it's this whole region now, all this in blue. And so they're saying, yeah, you know, maybe it makes sense to join this bloc with china being right here obviously so um you know they're they're

yeah it makes a lot of sense um for people to want to join forces with somebody who they think they can trust or who will treat them well or will because you know in a business deal you got to make you got to trust and you know you have contracts to try and you know manage the the trust to the extent you can't but um but you know if somebody goes all the way to the point of writing a treaty, writing a contract with you, and then violates it, it doesn't take too many of those to say, I can't do business with this person anymore or that entity. Just how it is.

Well, correct. And instantaneously, if you're not concerned about the rule of law and its ability to manage that process, because, you know, you put it into right handshakes go away. We become a weak nation and self-centered. So a handshake goes away because you, you know, no longer do you care about being a man of your word. So contracts come into play. So then if you break a contract, you've got the legal system. And that's one thing that's been great about the United States. That's one thing that separated us. We had the rule of law that there were consequences if you broke that contract. Well, now the legal system has been gamed in so many different ways and weaponized.

You know, if, if, if you're willing to walk out of a written contract, then now every single contract that you have, if you walk away from one, that means none of them are binding anymore. You can't trust them, especially if there's no pain of staying the same and allowing the U.S. to abuse our position as a global reserve currency. And that's the reason why things seem to be accelerating. And it may take longer than we anticipate that it will, but it's moving in that direction with such a rapid speed that I'm shocked after watching it closely like I have over the past, what, 14 years now, 2010 is when I really started looking into it. So interesting times that we find ourselves in, Chris. Well, it is. I know a lot of things can get sort of rewritten on the stage, but there's a sense of something missing in the story is that sense of honor. I don't know why it drives me, but it does.

My word is really important to me. So I just I just think about it's not just the written. If you can't trust us on the written side, but think about how the United States has displayed itself on the other side of the equation. So what I'm thinking of in particular, I was talking with a gentleman who was in Special Forces in one of the branches and spent a lot of time in theater in Afghanistan.

And, you know, we're there 20 years. And this guy was there for a number of years and had developed all of these really deep, intimate friendships with the interpreters, right? So these are Afghanis who speak English and Afghani.

And we made promises to them. And then we just left. And we left all of these people behind. And the story at the time was like, oh, we didn't. How are we going to? We couldn't. It was just too much. We didn't know how to bring these people.

And we couldn't. It was just too hard. Right. And so we left them to really grisly fates. And that, obviously, I would say was a major foul. That was out of integrity. completely, 100%, no question. But then just a couple of years later, here we are just, you know, flying anybody who wants to across the border, right? So clearly it wasn't a problem of taking an unvetted person because we couldn't run a proper vetting process,

even though we'd been in relationship with some of these interpreters for more than a decade. Like we knew them, like there were people who could vouch for them, right? And their families. And just that whole thing where you can't add up the story anymore. And I think that's the hard part here. And so I'm having that same difficulty trying to add up what's happening in what I call the markets. And I put two sets of air quotes around them now, Paul, because, and I don't want to see a shadow in every bush, but I will tell you there's things happening in the markets that I can't explain through any normal fundamental mechanism. It has something else is going on in there,

and it's not normal price discovery between buyers and sellers. Let me put it that way. No, in the 26 years that way. Um, no, no, that there in the 26 years that I've been doing this, there's nothing normal about what's taking place in the markets right now. Emotion has absolutely taken over. And one of the things I try to pay attention to is even my own emotions. So just over the past couple of weeks, you know, don't get me wrong. Our tools are on offense. We're having to play the game by the rules that are forced upon us. But we're not all in right now because there's just not enough.

There's not enough strength and broadening across the market to where we can be all in. We're exposed to some really popular places right now. And, you know, and I am concerned about that. But, you know, I have felt this kind of sense of panics. Like, are we completely wrong with what the market's moving? What am I missing? and I am concerned about that, but, you know, I have felt this kind of sense of panics, like, are we completely wrong with what the market's moving? What am I missing? You know, so I've just dug in every spare moment I have to really look at everything and, and like the scales of justice, weigh it out. Okay. So that's one of the things I have to write down as positives and negatives.

And you go look at the negatives that are under the surface and the actual numbers, not the propaganda, not the synchronized statements coming out of the mainstream media, not the lying with the numbers from the now that it's like, you know, a jury was beyond the shadow of a doubt. But the reality is, is the one thing that the average person's paying attention to is, hey, what the index doing? What's the index doing? Well, yeah, those index may be going up right now on the technicality over this narrowing of the market. But as soon as that, as soon as that story runs out, then you've, you've got the great probability of a Wiley coyote moment coming on the other side of it. Now, maybe the rest of the economy heals up to the point that all the other companies take off. And, you know, some people, you know, their salaries go up enough to where they've got all this extra money left over the, that they can spend and they reduce their debt levels.

I mean, that's perfection is going to have to be accomplished for that outcome to take place. And weak people rarely, weak leaders rarely find the path of perfection because they're so used to having to use manipulation and lies to get to where they need to be. Their worldview is so distorted that it's the manipulation that comes through. And when you manipulate things, it rarely ends up in the way that God designed it to be. So maybe it happens. We can't say that it doesn't, but if they don't pull off perfection, it's going to damage the lives of a lot of people, and especially the baby boomers who are way too complacent in the risks

and the greed that their emotions are pulling them into right now in their investment portfolios? Yeah, well, that's why I decry the manipulations. I understand why they think they need to do it. It's never a good time. Or they're worried that a little downside will turn into an avalanche because, you know, there's too many imbalances built up and they wouldn't want that avalanche to, you know, take out the the village below there's always some sort of a reason but they're really just self-serving reasons for why why now is a good time to intervene and of course you get power from that i'm sure it feels really awesome if you're a fed trader out there working out of aurora illinois you know you get to go tell people whisper at a party yeah yeah did you see that rescue off the off the 50 day the other day

yeah that was me see that rescue off the 50 day the other day? Yeah, that was me. That must be fun. I really hope those conversations aren't taking place behind the scenes, but it would not surprise me one bit at all. Yeah, but here's an impact of that, right? So this is oil, right? And you can see here, we're range bound between, so this is what you got down here. This is 60 all the way down here. So this is 65 to, say, 80.

So somewhere in that zone, it's just been held there for, oh, a couple years now, right? And so the problem is, Paul, that that's creating a condition where we're not getting a lot of what we call nuclear baseload of drilling, which is offshore, which is the big fields, things like that. Just recently and for other reasons, but we're seeing whole chunks of the North Sea fields actually being decommissioned right now because UK, in its infinite wisdom, decided to pass a huge, nasty tax 30 tax on profits and so they just decommissioned their first uh uh platform they towed it in and they blew it up and took it apart right and so it's gone and they're decommissioning stuff over there because they can't operate at these current levels plus that tax so these decisions are being made but also we're not deep sea projects are just

not undergoing right now. And that's where we would get more stuff out of the ground. And then meanwhile, you look at where we really are in the U.S. story, really shocking to me. Somebody did a whole ground-up thing, big long paper. I fell down that rabbit hole. And it turns out that in the Marcellus, which is an amazing play, Paul, if the Marcellus Shale was a country, it's the third largest gas play in the world right it's a magnificent play however uh like all things they added up all the tier one acreage and calculated this and that and

you have to make some assumptions about drill rates but sort of carrying on as as we are the tier one acreage is gone by 2027. And so this is kind of an interesting thing because now we get into Tier 2 acreage. It's still there, but now you have to spend more to get less. That's the nature of Tier 2 acreage compared to Tier 1. Tier 1 is the tasty, creamy nougat stuff. Tier 2, eh, you know. So you look at all of that, and then what is Europe doing, right? Currently, Russia is still their number one gas supplier.

Number one. And what they're going to get it from the U.S. Well, not after 2027 or not, because we're going to wake up and get religion. At that point, we're going to go, oh, we need this. And I don't know why Europe doesn't understand that the United States will renege on any promise it made implied or explicit or implicit we'll do that that's what putin said right they should know this i don't understand to the life of me i can't understand why germans consistently fall for this idea that we're that we we're going to treat them any differently than we've treated them in the past which is which is when it's convenient we'll be friends right it's just and i wish it wasn't that way i wish it wasn't i wish that we

had the state department that we had when i was growing up right there were adults in there serious adults i don't know if you saw the jeffrey sacks tucker carlson interview but jeffrey sacks to me represents the kind of serious person who understands that you have interests and I have interests and we're going to have to figure out how to make those line up, right? Yes. That's diplomacy. Hey, I watched that interview and that's one of the, I hate to say most enjoyable, but it is because he's speaking the truth in a manner that we understand the way things should operate. Mutually beneficial. Let's work this out together. Let's pay attention to the details.

That was a great interview, Chris. Yeah. Well, we don't have that at present, so that's why I do think people need to get ready for this in their own personal lives. I know you have a farm. I have a farm. Farm. Whatever. I mean, we grow stuff.

Yes. farm i have a farm farm whatever i mean we we grow stuff you know yes uh and i know not everybody can do that but i think your portfolios need to be reflective of this reality this is this is just i just i mean to get back to it i can't for the life of me there is no i don't see a resolution for this paul there's no this this says brace for impact that's what this chart says to me it sure does right and i don't know if that impact is this year or next year or tonight or five years from now. I don't know. But but it's absolutely this says that we have a fiscal and then a monetary train wreck on the way. So, well, and we've reached the point of, of diminishing returns. So housing prices have not come down yet. There's, there's an unbelievable amounts of angst and frustration with the younger

generations over the fact that they just cannot afford a home and rental prices are so high. So, so that hasn't snapped yet. You drive interest rates to zero. You're just going to further fuel this bubble. So we need house prices to come down. Well, if house prices don't come down, at what point do people say, I'm just not going to work unless you pay me more because salaries are going to have to go up if house prices stay sideways unless we literally just end up with the baby boomers that own everything and the few institutions that are buying houses, well, then that puts us at risk with a government that's needing to find taxation anywhere to where estate taxes just absolutely rip it out of their hands when this generation passes away,

especially if those end up being changed. So something's got to break. Corporate profits can't stay at a magnificent high. So yes, something is going to break, but if they slam rates to zero and house prices surge again and food prices surge again and the cost of everything goes up, then that's going to be absolutely devastating for the average individual. And that's going to further drive the bricks away from us. So you're right. We don't know when this happens, but something's going to break sooner rather than later.

And that's why it's so important, and the work that you do is to be ready for it and to have a plan in place. And I changed my sign back here behind me, and I don't know if people can see it, but invest your plan, not your emotions, because your emotions can take over when things start to change. And for a lot of people, they're going to go through all of those emotions. And it's important to surround yourself with people who've already are aware of this, have worked their way through it. They've dealt with their emotions and they can roll up their sleeves and go to work and work a plan, you know,

in the midst of all the chaos and the things that will be coming. That's how we're going to get through this is being courageous, trying our best to put our emotions in place, and really thinking about the steps we'll take before we have to take them. That's what I try to spend a lot of time communicating to people is, hey, I want to put this on your radar. We're not necessarily going to have to deal with this now, but if this and this happens, this is the path we're going to have to make or the adaptation we're going to have to have in the plan. And you may not necessarily like it, so let's hope we

don't get there, but you need to be mentally ready for it. So that way they're able to make quick decisions and they're moving two or three steps ahead of everybody else. Cause the reality is, you know, I love our fishing trips in Yellowstone, but, but I've never been face to face with a grizzly. I don't want to be face to face with a grizzly, but that's the one thing that absolutely terrifies me. So I'm like, I always tell my buddies, I'm like, I love y'all,

but I am two steps ahead of you. If that thing starts, you know, coming our way, I I'm going to stand there and fight. But the reality is if you're two steps ahead, you have the chance of survival when, when the average person that's not paying attention, doesn't. And the guys, I wouldn't leave my friends behind. I'd stand there and do my best to, to best to help protect the situation. But that's a good analogy for people to understand. You know, you get the tip of that fly rod right on the nose of that bear. It'll stop. Don't worry.

Hey, did you hear the story? So I don't know if I ever told you a story. Speaking of that, when my son was at Montana State University, I was in the fly shop in Gardner, Montana. And I was talking about the grizzlies and he said, Hey, a friend of his had been back in the Lamar river Valley about five miles back in there and had camped the night and a grizzly charged him. He didn't have bear spray. He didn't have a gun. All he did was point the fly rod at the grizzly and it stopped at the end of

his fly rod. This is what they told us in the, in the fly shop, huffed around a couple of times and turned around and walked off and the guy said that he had told the guide there that he had stood there and then not sure if he passed out or not but the next thing he remembers is he's you know kind of laid on the ground so that's i'm like you're not helping me i want to go fishing today and i'm by myself so that's the last story that you should have told me oh man well um yeah i i've seen a grizzly from a distance and that was that was good it was good check well this is actually an important point too is this idea and we asked this in the webinar towards the end which is and i'm running into this more and we asked this in the webinar towards the end which

is and i'm running into this more and more with people who who go straight from denial to paralysis right they're not really sure they don't know they don't know and then it's like seems like too much they get overwhelmed and so the reason people won't make decisions and take actions right now is because of what's on the poster over your head there right the emotions take over real quick and i get it you know it's it's it seems like this is oh it's overwhelming at times but you know you still got to make decisions i think that it's just why it's so important you got to be around people who who've already processed through that on some level you know yes um and so i'm lucky i get to talk to you. I talked to Nick. I talked a lot. I have a whole community of people who have sort of already been there, done that. And we understand

what's coming. And so you just have to take action. You just have to, because no decision is a decision at this stage of the game. That's right. That's right. And emotional decisions are going to lead people in all kinds of directions. Like they, they, they see the potential for the great taking and they bolt for the exits before they think in all kinds of directions. Like they see the potential for the great taking and they bolt for the exits before they think about the consequences of that. On the other side, you've got people that are really struggling right now

and they're like, stick my fingers in my ears. I'm desperate. So I'm going to go gamble on NVIDIA stock because I feel like I'm running behind and everybody else is doing it. So this is where I should be. And both of those extremes can be absolutely life-threatening financially. So that's why it's so important for people.

And that's what I keep pointing to when somebody gets emotions, you know, look, I know you feel like we don't have time, but you can take a week to start really thinking through this. So I try to slow a lot of people down that their emotions are, you know, are overwhelming them. And then other people you have to try to speed up because they don't want to look at this. So it's always interesting when you're when you're working with people on on trying to help point the path of wisdom to them.

Indeed, now, while we were talking uh yay we just crossed the 35 trillion dollar mark did we really yeah yeah 35 35 trillion huh hate to say how old i am but I can remember when it was a lot less than that. Yikes. Here's the sad part. I went to see a client whose wife passed away, and I've worked with for 22 years in Atlanta, and I took a wrong turn and ended up on a couple of streets, and the roads were were bad you know i hear about infrastructure we don't have anything to show for that tremendous amount of debt outside of the stock market that's that's

outside of reality you know it's not like i mean don't get me wrong our infrastructure in some places is good but it could be so much better you know the efficiency of high-speed railways we've got some infrastructure that could be updated that could be so much more efficient for the citizenry. And it's just heartbreaking that we've crossed that level this fast. And, I mean, how long ago was it that we crossed the $30 trillion mark and the $31 and the $32? This seems to be getting faster and faster. Yeah. So let me see if I can find this real quick, because I'm not sure if I can. Well, I mean, that would suffice. But let me just see if I can find this one thing here. many examples of this so so you know this is something i talk about too with um i'm really

worried that this next war if we get into one right because weak leadership all that and they're running the old model paul they're saying well you know world war one then we bounce back world war two we bounce back and the united states has these two big moats called the atlantic and pacific oceans and so it hasn't really struck us and so it was kind of like, you know, from a selfish perspective, like not a bad thing. Right. And my concern is that this time we're going to be conducting a war at a time when there's just not the energy, the vitality, the resources there to rebuild. So my prediction is that the next war, that's the high mark of human progress. And it just sort of slips down ever since.

And part of that is because, you know, just because it's cost effective and because we have the wrong story in our minds, like, oh, you know, when that bridge falls down, we'll replace it, you know. And our bridges are designed, Paul, to last 50 years. And if you're lucky, you get 70 out of them, but never really 100. So contrast that with once upon a time people managed to get their stuff together here's the san martin bridge in toledo right um in spain right 13th century that's built in the 13th century wow

right 700 years later can you imagine building a bridge with a 700 year lifespan that would i would have such a different feeling about this if we had that but we don't we have this sort of infrastructure that requires constant replacement so there's a anybody who has a home already knows this there's a maintenance budget right it's just like that thing is just falling apart all the time it's just looking for a reason for water to get in and wreck everything it's just a constant got to repaint patch repair that's just the nature of the business but when you build stuff that's designed to fall apart in 50 years you've set yourself on a treadmill right literally every single thing we call infrastructure in the u.s is going to have to be rebuilt in the next hundred years hundred percent every pipe every bridge every crosswalk all of it every road but you can build you can

build you can build in ways that last 700 years if you want we just didn't want to that's right if you want with the character instead of doing just enough for maximum profitability, it's character and pride. And I'm doing this as a lasting, making something that will impact generations ahead, but that doesn't seem to be, you know, and we've had enough growth in the United States that to an extent it makes sense. You've got to get it done as fast as you can, but the reality is come back to it okay i got this done i got the infrastructure in place now let's go perfect it and let's make it excellent and we've just not done that unfortunately we've chased no but that's all yeah and that's all that's just capital that's going to have to be poured back into the project of just maintaining what we have let alone growing and getting more

of it we're going to have to put a significant amount of effort back in to just keeping what we've got right and get that on the replacement cycle that's why you know people like oh you know we can wind is cheaper than coal like not once you factor in replacing those things i don't know if you saw this outrageous uh tornado video just came out this past week and it was beautiful the lighting was perfect but this thing was just romping through a wind field and it was just oh it was just toppling towers every which way as it went they were just shredded um you know so they're all gonna have to get replaced right it's just part of the deal but even if the tornado didn't speed things along every 20 30 years you got to replace 100 of those things so i thought that isn't really factored in i don't think our

leadership has thought that through no i'll bet you china's has thought it through oh i bet they have that's probably the reason why they've been buying all kinds of coal aren't they building a tremendous number of coal plants and buying as much coal as they possibly can yeah and copper and oil and all the rest of it yeah they get it they do get it so yeah so because we're not going to be those people though we're not going to think ahead i guarantee you this gets down to printing this is all that's the that's how they solve this just printing you'll like this if i can hang on let me find the right page so michael air which both of us like him yes oh yeah sure do so i don't know if you can see this as good as i'm hoping

that it will but let me share my screen with you here um that's you and i yeah that that should be it okay you can see that's the kobisi letter Let me go back and start. It's central banks during the next recession. I don't know. I'll try to enlarge it and see if that makes it too large. Is that a little bit better, or is that too large? That's awesome. That's great. That's great.

Have you ever stood next to one of those hydro outflows before? No, I have not. The closest I've been is the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and that was just absolutely. Yeah. I think it was probably 25 years ago I was there. So I've never. Have you stood by one of those? Yeah, I've been. Not that close.

Not like that. But, I mean, close enough. And it is just, it is such a powerful, it is just roaring out of there, you know? I imagine it would be like being near, I've never been to a rocket launch, but I imagine it's probably that same, you know, visceral, you feel it more than you hear it kind of a sensation. I would love to go to a rocket launch as well. That's something I, and the bad thing is I'm close enough to Florida

where I could go down there and watch something. I've just never taken the time to do it. Yeah. Well, I would like to. I would really like to see one of those star lifters go off. You know, those look very impressive. And, you know, all the well wishes for the people who chose to ride the Boeing Adventure up to the space station. Apparently they're stuck there now.

They're having some quality issues with the return flight. I don't mean to laugh. That's terrible. But isn't that issue, quality issues synonymous with Boeing now from? Totally. Got him. Did you see they had the, they had the Boeing CEO and they were, you know, Josh Hawley's asking him some tough questions, you know, Congress barks, no bite. But anyway, got the guy to admit on stand, like, have you gone after whistleblowers? Like, yeah, yeah, sadly, you know, there's been some examples of that. You know,

it's just right there. Like, people who are worried about quality, yeah, we kind of, yeah, we went after them. You know, what are you going to do? It's just so, it's so broken. I cannot imagine a CEO in the 50s just sort of shrugging and going, oh, yeah, you know, it happens. No.

I would say they probably would have been removed from their position and hauled to the jail back in the 50s because I think justice mattered a little bit more than it does now. Yep. Yep. And by the way, when I just queried 13th century bridge here on in in Twitter, you come up with all sorts of examples. You know, here's one from England. Here's one in Belgium. This is the one we looked at. Here's one in Switzerland. Look at that beauty. That's beautiful. Wow. Look at that. That's not much of an arch at all.

And that thing's been parked there for, they say, legends. Yeah. Wow. I don't know if we even have the know-how to do that anymore. It's just, what an astonishing thing. Yeah, to do it during that century without what we consider all the modern tools and conveniences we have today, that's incredible. It really is. Well, that's what gives me hope.

People can do incredible things when they want to. They can. Let's figure out how to do that again. I'm pretty excited for that. So, well, with that, I have to run here. I've got another interview coming up, Paul. But anybody who wants to talk with Paul and his amazing team team better hurry up and get on the dance card because it's quite full these days. But go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, fill out a simple form.

Somebody at Paul's team will get back to you within 48 hours, usually less, and something will get scheduled. So again, Paul, the conversations have been going well, I trust. They have been, Chris. It's been enjoyable. We've been able to help a lot of people, scenario planning. We've been getting great feedback from individuals. And I gotta tell you, I mean, I mean, this, the people that we're meeting, that they're, they're unbelievably good. They care about this country. They're, they're why they're looking for the path of wisdom it's

it's been such an honor to meet every single person that i've met and have the conversations and and uh so so yeah it's been very enjoyable and and you talking about easy to get up and run in when you know you're you're helping make a difference in the lives of people that i'm so fortunate to have the opportunity to do this. Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for all the work you're doing. We're getting just fantastic feedback and I'm so glad you can help people and have the experience to know how to how to manage to that poster over your head there. So I'm glad glad for that too. I've already had to tackle my emotions in the past and have the panic attack. So it does help me help people navigate through tough decisions. It really does.

Well, good. Well, thanks. And until next time, Paul, take care. Thanks, Chris. Look forward to seeing you again. Hello, Chris Martinson. I'm the CEO of Peak Prosperity and also Peak Financial Investing. And after watching that, you're probably wondering, well, what do I do with my money? Look, you both deserve and need somebody who can talk to you about what's really going on in this world, understand the situation as it is, not be steering you towards certain things that don't make sense

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