Shaun Newman Podcast - #903 - Tom Luongo & Alex Krainer #20

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

We discuss alliances forming in the Balkans, Israel/Iran, Russia/Ukraine and quality vs quantity. Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast.Alex Krainer is a Croatian national, former hedge fund manager, author and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] Money SummitWebsite: ExpatMoneySummit.com

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He hosts the Gold Goats and Guns podcast. The second is a Croatian national, former hedge fund manager, author, and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. I'm talking about Tom Luongo and Alex Craneer. So buckle up, here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Tom Luongo, Alex Criner. Gents, welcome back. Hey, Sean.

I hope you enjoyed your vacation and all of that. Good to join the squad again, gentlemen. Thank you for organizing, Sean. And, well, warm greetings to everybody watching and listening. Alex, we're going to start with you. That's where Tom wants to go. I'm good with it. Where would you like to begin?

It's been a stretch. It's been almost two months, I think, since we like. last talked. A lot has gone on. I'm curious where you want to begin. I'll let you take the floor. Okay. So there's no shortage of news, of events that are going to probably turn out important in shaping the future of the world, humanity and everything. But I think it's going to be very, very bumpy. And so one thing that is concerning me kind of deeply is the situation in the Middle East. And I'm not talking just about Israel-Palestine issue.

I'm talking about a strange escalation going on between Turkey and Israel. Because it seems that they are like on an irreversible collision course. And this has been going on for months now, pretty much since December of last year, when the Turks played the dirty games. with the HTS, with the new and improved Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front, to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. But now it seems that the action is kind of shifting to Cyprus.

And it's not much of action, but they're clearly rigging the place for like a crisis. crisis flashpoint. And so what's been going on apparently is that the Israelis have been immigrating to the island and they've been buying loads of properties and businesses and and real estate in both the Greek, the southern Cyprus, the Greek part and the Turkish part. And apparently the Turks are alarmed in that they have upped the priority of cyprus as a you know question of national security and they are they're going to be boosting military presence there from current 40,000 troops to more than 100,000 troops and at the same time Greece is preparing for war against turkey

So Greece is currently spending 3.8% of their GDP on re-arming, on armaments, on, you know, weapons, ammunition, submarines, helicopters, missiles, all of this stuff, air defenses. And they're doing so, well, obviously with the help of NATO, but also in cooperation with Israel. And NATO, I'm sorry, both Greece and Turkey are part of NATO. So, nominally, they should be allied. And then the things get super complicated because, you know, the Brits are allied with Israel, but they're also allied with Turkey, and they're also allied with Greece. and the United States is kind of on very bad terms with the Turks,

but they're on good terms with Israelis, and they're on good terms with the Kurds. And so the whole thing is like a morass. It's a mess. And then, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I have to also tie in the Balkans because, you know, I've already spoken about the Balkans being rigged for war. and that's a you know British presence in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria.

We've somehow, I mean, we, when I say we, I mean Croatia, we've somehow ended up in a military alliance with Albania and Bulgaria, which makes no sense whatsoever. they'll be like if the United States went into a military alliance with like Nigeria or or I don't know I don't know who man it's it's hard to even it's hard to even convey the the absurdity of the situation but basically Croatia Albania Bulgaria and now the Turks have some kind of a military pact with Albania and it seems that the idea is to get themselves an ally in a future clash against Greece. It's, you know, you couldn't make it up. But, you know, of course, obviously, wherever these things are being brewed up, there's always the Brits right in the middle. except at this point, I don't know if even the Brits understand what the hell they're doing. You know, they're like pitting everybody against everybody, but I don't think that they control the

consequences. You know, like if something blows up, I very much doubt that they, you know, that they can easily control the fallout. So, you know, there's no telling what might happen. Anyway, so that's what's kind of worrying me at the moment because then the Middle East and the Balkans could kind of spill into each other as the new front in the World War. And obviously the idea is to draw in the Russians and in the Middle East, the ideas to draw in the Turks, sorry, the Iranians.

Anyhow, there you go. That's what I thought I'd mentioned, and I have no idea where this goes. And I don't know that anybody can predict how things unfold from here. But, you know, it's really, it's absurd to be creating all these, you know, arson attack against peace. arson attacks because they're multiple. If you don't know how things are going to play out, which then tells me that the arsonists are extremely desperate. They are losing so badly that they are ready to just set everything on fire on a on like a long shot chance of them whizzling out.

like slithering somehow out of this. And then, you know, coming back and say like, hey, we're the peacemaker. We speak with British accent. We're very sophisticated and we'll make all you primitive violent people come to the table and will teach you how to negotiate and resolve your differences in a civilized manner. Yeah.

Say the pirates after they plundered everything. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Sir Francis Drake, you know. So, yeah, so Alex, I think you're, you're onto something. I think your final statement, as you went through all that, I think is the most salient point,

which is that they are in burn it all down mode. I think that's really the most, I think that's, I mean, you're seeing it in what they're doing to the UK. They're literally liquidating the UK ahead of any, you know, saying, look, Okay, Trump, if you think you're going to, you know, defend the U.S. and then try and save the Commonwealth, because it's clear that that's part of what's going on here, we're just going to burn it all down. They're talking about an IMF bailout for the UK. They're talking about an IMF bailout for France. Germany is now talking about not being able to pay their pensions. It's clear that they need war and they need chaos in order to justify that which they want to do

anyway, which is to burn down the current system that they have in Europe. Repudiated all the debt that in existence, reissue it all is a digital debt against, you know, issued by the ECB and the European Commission and do away with national sovereignty. And of course, the pushback against that is global. And everybody's like, well, if you want to do that, that's fine. But just keep us out of it. That's, that was what Trump clearly said. in Alaska and he said in Washington. He said it so forcefully that Rome Powell changed monetary

policy in the United States away from the 2% inflation target, which was a big globalist no-no. Did anybody miss that? We'll have to talk about that in greater terms. But everything you just talked about in relation to Turkey, I really think that it's, I mean, think about this, Netanyahu just admitted to the genocides. Just, you know, after having never acknowledged the Armenian genocide or any of the others in the past because he didn't want to anger Turkey. Now he's like angering Turkey. So we have to ask ourselves the question, what's changed? And Erdogan has been, is now in a very desperate, I think he's in a very desperate situation.

We talked about this the last time you and I were on a show together. We were on CryptoRich together. We talked about this a little bit, right? that he's being kind of forced into moves all around the Mediterranean to try and re, hang, maybe rejigger his neo-Ottoman dreams, but all he's doing is spreading himself thin. And I don't have, again, like you, I don't have a crystal ball as to how this plays out,

but I think chaos is the plan. Yeah, it does seem that chaos is the plan. And I think Erdogan has got himself so deep into it. He's so submerged that it doesn't seem that they themselves know what to do. But the conflict against Israel and or Turkey seems like it's almost inevitable. And all he can master is every so often come out. rail a little bit against Israel because of the, you know, because of the atrocities, but he doesn't do anything about it ever.

Right. Right. Right. I mean, not that he doesn't do anything about it. He aids and abets it with everything that Turkey has done in this conflict, including taking down Bashar al-Assad's government, which was practically the only counterweight to Israel in that region. And he burned the land bridge between Hezbollah and Iran. I mean, he has carried, he hasn't carried water for Israel. He built an aqueduct for Israel. And now he's railing because the Israelis are, I think the only reason he's doing

is obviously because the Turkish public is probably desperately hoping that he might actually do something about it, but it's been three years almost. He hasn't done squat. So that, you know, that tells you. I mean, how many Palestinians have to die if you actually mean what you're saying? How many? Like half of them, 80%. You're a... The sad truth, Alex, is that this is the point. about the entire and again i'm not this is this is just pure like outsider well i look at this and i just see it this way what's happening in gaza is of course you know unconscionable but at the end of the day no one's coming to their defense at the end of the day nobody's coming to their defense that is true that is and that that this is the this has been the this has been the dirty secret of the middle east for

years that no one wanted to admit. Everybody wanted to use the Palestinians as their geopolitical pawn and like it or not, and I'm not defending Israel in this case, but it's being taken off the table. And for lack of a better term, and it's terrible, it's awful, it's disgusting. It's, I can't, you, I don't know how to describe it in words, right? Obviously, but it's strategically is what's happening. And no one is lifting a finger. Trump's not lifting a finger. Oh, yeah. Well, sorry.

There's one group who is coming to their defense, and there's the Houthis, the Houthis in Yemen. Yeah. But that's not enough. It should be the Palestinians in Jordan. It should be the Turks. It should be the Egyptians. It should be the whole Arab world.

It should be the United States putting pressure on Israel to stop. It should be the United States. It should be Britain. It should be everyone. It's just amazing. It's just amazing to see. You know, ultimately, this situation has been created as it is over decades now. And I think that in the end, everybody's responsible.

responsible, but I think that ultimately it's again the British establishment who is far and away the most responsible because they created Israel in the first place with, you know, knowing it was going to go like this. Of course. The whole, the whole region sadly has to be like I just this is going to be these aftershocks of again, if the United States, is moving out of the region and the Russians are trying to move out of the region, right? And the British are trying to keep them in the region. Then that's really, I don't think it needs to be more complicated than that in, you know, in strategic terms. That's why we're being asked to come back into this and, oh, my God, there's an atrocity

that needs to be dealt with. And the United States is saying, look, I'm not going to do it. And at the same time, like, you know, no one wants to be that, no one wants to be in that position, but this is the, but this is the reality of it because the Russians could could put in, they have tremendous influence in Israel and they're not doing anything about it either. So it's almost like this is just what has to play out as sad and as, as, as evil and as this, it's unfortunately what has to happen. And I think it may have to happen in such a way that everybody burns out all of their, their, their, um, their, their, um, their, their, they're,

assets in the region. I mean, the way. Oh, yeah. By the way. I mean, one last thing. The way you stop, quote, unquote, Israel from expanding in the region is to turn the whole world, is allow themselves to turn the whole world against them, which is what's happening right now. Yeah. Well, they're doing a great job themselves. I mean, they don't even need any help in that. But, you know, the actually one thing I forgot is that there's another thing, Bruce. up there because the Iranians are convinced that Israel is going to launch another attack on them. And, you know, they've been talking about this might happen very, very soon. They were talking about within this month, which means within August, now we're 27th August. So that would put it in the next four days. But whatever, you know, it might be. The Iranians are convinced that an attack is coming.

And the Israelis are talking about going back to attacking Iran as well. And pretty much everybody in the region is convinced that Israel is going to go back to attacking Iran again. Except at this time in Iran, there's more and more people saying, look, we don't have to passively sit here and wait for the attack. if a clash is inevitable, we should maybe be the first ones to strike. And so one of the people advocating this is a general who is the advisor of the Supreme Leader. I forget his name. But he's saying, we should launch the first attack.

And then that attack should be such that there will be no further retaliation from Israel, meaning that it would be absolutely overwhelmed. And another thing that came out of all that is that apparently Iran has enough drones and missiles to pretty much continuously pelt Israel for two years straight. We've seen what they've done in 12 days. And they haven't even used their biggest missiles. They haven't used their baddest weapon. So now imagine if they go, if they start and, you know, the conveyor belt of missiles and drones just carries on for two years.

Then Israel becomes, you know, starts looking like Gaza is looking now, and then that's pretty much the end of Israel. So that could, you know, that could change the situation. But then, you know, what happens then? What, you know, do the Americans just sit back and watch? Not that they can do a whole lot, but they could launch a nuclear attack on Iran. And does NATO sit back and watch? Do the Brits sit back and watch?

It's, oh, Jesus, you know, this is going to get really. ugly it seems it seems and and what we can hope is that the the natural tendency of the iranians to engage in a little bit of chest thumping um they're known for this and they they do that and then um is what's at play here so what you're what you're describing and i don't put it past the Brits and the Israelis to start to restart the war. I don't put it past them at all. Right. And what I'm hoping is if I were Iran, I would, you know, unfortunately, again,

have to take another page out of Putin's book and take the punch in the mouth. Because the way you keep the Americans on side, especially even with Donald Trump in the White House, is to not start it. I mean, ultimately, that's where this goes, where what Trump, how Trump handled the first clash between them, was to say, effectively is to say exactly what he said to the Europeans. You want to go to war, go to war. You know, and I will defend, we'll defend you from the counterattack as best we can. But, you know, that's as far as we can go.

And if we don't have the Patriots, you know, we don't have the supply of defense. defensive weapons to do so this time. I mean, is all of this just bluff and buster? Is all of this just, again, another one of those moments of, can we create the milieu in which everybody is so paranoid about somebody doing something dumb that somebody makes a mistake and goes off half-cocked? And for those of you who don't know what half-cocked actually means,

it means it's it's a referral just this is an interesting a little bit of history because it's another one of those English things about about the Enfield rifle and why there's a halfcock position on the Enfield rifle the British the British battle rifle that you know that subjugated more brown people and than any other weapon on the planet right in history there's a halfcock position on the infield rifle I know I have one and that you know The half-cock position is to ensure that if the rifle is dropped or anything else, or on the, on the, it's a bold action rifle on the bolt, that the striker doesn't hit the thing. And if the round and the chamber, and it goes off. So going off half-cocked is actually a British term.

And it's, you know, there's all these little things about how the infield rifle has evolved over the years that shows you just how much time in the field that actually. spent and how it was iteratively improved in order to do its main job. That's, this is, I think, the danger that we're facing. I think, Alex, you've outlined it brilliantly. This is the danger. I don't have any probabilities for you, so whether or not that any of that's going to come to pass, other than to say that the two men who have the most control over the escalatory ladder of this entire thing, Putin and Trump don't want it. And they're the ones ultimately that are going to decide how far all of this goes.

And that all of these little ants are looking at the giant and you all baby, to use your metaphor, shaking up the ant jar. And the giant just comes in and just steps on the jar and that's enough of that. Or the jar just falls on the ground. They all fight amongst themselves and the giant walks in the other. the direction he goes dude this is not my problem and um i'm that's what i'm hoping for i mean that's why i think we would all hope for right i i actually do have probabilities for you if you if you want to know what they are it's uh it's 50 50 percent either either it's going to happen or it won't

Alex can i can i can i you in your opening um opening statements you were talking about Croatia and the alliances that you're both laughing. I've been thinking about this since I should have just butted in and asked right away because I feel like I'm going to take us right back to the start. But you said Croatia's got alliances now with Albania and you mentioned one other. And then you made reference to the U.S. Like basically aligning itself with, I think he said, Nigeria. I'm trying to understand why that is such a foreign alliance to have.

Because when I look on a map, Croatian, Albania, you know, in the grand scheme of the world, aren't that far apart. And I was wondering, like, just if you could explain that, just a bit more to my simple mind. Because, you know, when you were saying that, I was going to say, like, Canada aligning itself with Europe instead of the United States. Like, is that how far out of the realm it is? No, it's much farther. It's much farther because, you know, Canada does have certain cultural. And it has certain bonds with Europe, you know. It's the European powers that created Canada.

You know, Canadian Prime Minister swears an oath of allegiance to the British king. Correct. Parts of Canada are francophone. So they, you know, they have some kind of a cultural connection with France. With France and so on. So there's, you know, like there are certain overlaps. politically, culturally, economically, probably financial, you know, all of that.

Okay. There's nothing there's nothing creating a bond between Croatia and Albania. We don't speak the same language, not even remotely. We're not the same people at all. We've never had, that I know of, any kind of an alliance ever.

even when we were both in the part of the communist bloc there was never any kind of an exchange that we were allies that you know we were called you know Albania was pretty much like North Korea today was like an autarchy and so different language different religion well you know a lot of a lot of Albanians are Catholic but a lot of them are Muslim Generally, there are, you know, while you might have intermarriages between Croats and Serbs, and we speak the same language, there's very seldom any intermarriages between Croats and Albanians or Serbs and Albanians. It's almost, they are a culture and a group unto themselves. And I'm not aware of any shared interests that we have with Albania that would say, like, okay, you know what the most logical, the most effective thing that we should do is conclude a military pact with Albania, a mutual defense pact. There's nothing. But, you know, we were at war against Serbia 35 years ago.

But today, if you ask people in Croatia, and probably in Serbia as well, does it make sense to have a military alliance with Serbia or vice versa, you know, if you ask Serbs? I think that a lot of people would say yes, because you can see why it should make sense. And then the other, the third country that we were put in the military alliance with, in addition to Albania is Bulgaria, another one that we have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with. Bulgarians are apparently Slavic people and our languages are kind of similar, but not, you know, like, the difference between Bulgarian and Croatian might be as the difference between in Italian and Portuguese. They draw from the same roots, but they're very different. You know,

we, you just kind of understand a little bit of what they're saying. Whereas between Croatia and Serbia, it's almost, it's like difference between English and England and English in the United States. So it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You know, the only reason why we would be in that alliance is because that alliance then surround Serbia from east, west and south. You know, Croatia to the west, Bulgaria to the east, and Albania to the south. There's no other reason. And so obviously somebody is rigging the place for a war.

And that's somebody, you know, I sound like I have an axe to grind against the Brits. I don't. It's just that if you read, if you pay attention, if you look at what they're doing, all the roads go back to London. You know, in February this year, United Kingdom signed a military cooperation agreement with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is another thing that you saw like,

what? Why? What sense does that make? And then, you know, I was having fun with an internet search. I think I did it in Google. And I started the search with the UK signs a military cooperation agreement with. And then shit started coming up. Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Ukraine, Bosnia, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan.

It's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. A whole bunch. And sure enough, you know, like you look it up, you go to the UK.gov website and you see all these, they have this military defense agreements with practically everybody, with Italy, I think, even, with France, with Sweden. It's just insane. And you ask yourself, like, who is doing this and why? And then, you know, you go and read history and you realize that Britain has been a consummate

dealer in secret treaties with everybody as they needed. for the last 200 years. You know, they've been, you know, like they go somewhere and they sign a secret treaty that nobody knows about. And then they also have a secret treaty with their enemy. And then they go like, hey, let's you and him fight. And so it's, it seems that for the last 200 years or maybe more, there's always a common denominator to practically every war that's been fought.

not for 200 years, for longer. And it's always the city of London. And if you look at the war in Ukraine today, this has been, the groundwork has been prepared by the neocons in the United States. I think it's not right to say the United States, but the neocon faction in the United States, you know, people who are close to Obama and Biden regimes. They'd be laying the groundwork for that war. But 15th November 2021, Boris Johnson makes a speech at the Mansion House in the city of London,

all the dignitaries, you know, White Thai. And he pretty much announces the war. And then that very same time, you know, Britain starts deploying troops to Poland, to Germany, to the Baltic States, hundreds of military vehicle, tanks, artillery pieces and all this. And they're saying, well, you know, our European friends have to realize that, you know, a choice is shortly coming. This is exactly the words that Boris Johnson used. The choice is shortly coming where, you know, our European friends are going to have to choose between mainlining Russian hydrocarbons in giant big pipelines or standing up for freedom and democracy and whatever in Ukraine. So he's pretty much announcing the war.

And then the head of the British Army at the time General Sir Nick Carter publicly announces that Britain has to get ready to fight a war against the United against Russia. So it's, you know, and so if you look at this event, you see that the, you know, the main cheerleader, the main instigator always appears to be the city of London, whereas the Biden administration even is kind of dragging their feet, in fact. And you have many statements of British officials who are annoyed because the Americans are cautious because they are, the Americans are saying, well, you know, let's be careful. This could trigger World War III. And then the Brits go like, well, I, don't worry about it. The Russians will never dare to use the nukes. Like, let's just go all out,

you know. And then they're saying it is very, very, very important that the Americans follow our lead, you know, like Gordon Brown and people like that. And so, you know, there isn't a document that said like, we're in charge. This is our war. But if you look at the public statements of British generals, prime ministers, defense ministers, all of these people, you see that they're pushing for war. They're pushing for escalation. And then not to mention, you know, when the Russians and the Ukraine,

were on the verge of signing peace that was acceptable to both sides and where the Russians said, if you commit to never entering NATO and to being a neutral country, then we're withdrawing our troops to the February 23, 2022 borders, meaning we're not withdrawing from Crimea, but withdrawing from everywhere else. And so Ukrainians accepted this. The Russians thought this was all great. And it was a question of organizing a summit between Zelensky and Putin to sign the treaty. And then Boris Johnson goes to Ukraine and says, don't sign anything.

Fight it out. Have a war and continue to fight. And then you find there's distinct project alchemy, which was formed almost as soon as the war started, 24th February 2020, where the Brits are saying pretty much, you know, like a little cabal of former, not former, of intelligence and military officials who are saying the most important imperative is to assure that Ukraine keeps fighting, that the war continues that, you know, they don't sign any kind of, this is not coming from the United States. Nothing of this sort is coming from the United States.

United States is kind of being dragged in there to provide missiles, to provide tanks, to do this, to do that, you know, targeting satellite information. But it's kind of, it's almost passive. Whereas the active, the organizer, the instigator, the cheerleader, They're always the city of London. Anyway, so that's everything today. The Balkans, the Middle East, Armenia, Azerbaijan, you name it, India, Pakistan. All of these wars crises, it's all being pushed from the same source.

Yeah, no, I agree. And it's crazy to think that anybody honestly thinks that this is the Americans pushing this. Because if the Americans really wanted this war, there's a faction within the United States that clearly is in cahoots with the Brits on this. And in effect, to put it in the, that neo-conservativism isn't really a, isn't an American thing. It's everywhere. It's all through Europe. This is the way Martin Armstrong likes to talk about it.

Like the neocons are everywhere. And they're in charge in the EU. They're in charge in the UK. They were in charge under the Biden Hunter. They're not in charge in the United States now. And now we're seeing the fall out of this. They're in charge in Israel. Right.

So and remember that neoconservatives ultimately are Trotskyites. Yeah. They come directly, directly down. They're directly. downstream of Trotsky, who was a British asset, most likely a British asset, and a permanent revolutionary, because the goal, of course, was the job is never done until we've taken over the world because we have to instantiate communism everywhere. That was Trotsky's line. Doesn't matter whether it's Trotsky's line or the British's. We have to establish, you know, peace and democracy

and piracy the world over, which is really what they're doing. That's, you know, this is, this is the framework and this is the mindset of these people and they will not stop until they are taken off the board you we have to what we have to understand fundamentally is that these people will never stop until they are bankrupted and discredited and destroyed and put in jail and more agreed absolutely absolutely this morning Donald Trump came out with a big screed against George Soros. Now threatening him with Rico and everything else. I know if you saw that. His ex post, his, uh, Twitter. No, I didn't see that. That's, that's a huge frigging like screed against George Soros. I tweeted it out saying, you know, I want to live just long. I want for George Soros to live just

long enough for his son, Alexander, to be bankrupted and destroyed and have all of his money scattered to the four winds and his son sent to prison. Then he can get whacked the upside the head with a lead pipe, by a large Mexican, somebody paid $50 to. Tom, hold on. Yeah, yeah. Trump's. Trump didn't say this. Trump, Trump put out on truth, uh, social.

George Soros and his wonderful radical. Holy shit. He said George Soros and his wonderful radical left son should be charged with Rico because of their support of violent protests and much more all throughout the United States of America. We're not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America anymore, never giving it so much as a chance to breathe and be free. Soros and his group of psychopaths have caused great damage to our country.

That includes his crazy West Coast friends. Be careful. We're watching you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That's incredible. That is absolutely huge. Yeah, absolutely it's huge. And he named his son.

I'm telling you, this is Trump. Yeah, because they were, they were until not long ago, they were like unmentionable. were not allowed to mention that. I'll never forget, like two or three years ago, Newt Gingrich went on, I don't know, maybe CNBC or ABC, something like that. I forget. And he started talking about source and the anchor would interrupt him every time. And I was like, oh, yeah, we, you know, let's not go into conspiracy theories and blah. But he was making a point. He was trying to say this and she just wouldn't let him speak. So he gave up and he said like, what?

If I mentioned George Soros, we can't talk. It's verboten. And that was pretty much the state of things then. And so you see, okay, so I could be wrong about this. But I thought that when Trump gets the big, beautiful bill passed, and what else happened? Something else happened. In what context, Alex?

In consolidating his political base, in making himself more powerful as... He got all the Supreme Court wins. He's got... He's got controlled. He's got all the... He's got all the, quote-unquote burn bags from the CIA, which as far as I'm considering, he always had. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think, I think, you see, I think that the Epstein files are also playing a role. Because if it's true, I didn't see the confirmation about the Supreme Court. court thing. Well, the Supreme Court effectively all summer long has been reinforcing his powers under Article 2, the Constitution, in ways that we have not seen out of the Supreme Court for 40 years. And so now he can go out and he can fire all the department heads. And that's why Gabbard can go out and take away everybody's security clearance and bar them from federal buildings. Did you see that they barred Antony Blinken from all federal buildings? He's not even on the schmooze anymore. He can't even show him to go take somebody up for lunch at a federal building.

He is barred from all federal buildings, period. No way. Secretary of State. That's insane. That is insane. Yeah. And then they barred U.S. intelligence agencies from sharing Intel with five eyes, with the other four eyes, right?

Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, which is insane, which is like a complete radical departure. from the way things were done pretty much since 1947, right? And then, you know, this thing with Supreme Court, I'm very curious about it because one of the people who was apparently a frequent traveler to Epstein Island is Justice Roberts. Right. So, you know, I keep thinking that this Epstein files are playing a role.

We don't know what role exactly, but you know, you can use your imagination. Of course, you know, if somebody's on the list, you can get them to do what you want unless they want to be outed. And they're probably going to get out at all anyway once they're used up, once they're no longer of any use to the administration. You have to, I mean, what's happening domestically in the United States is nothing short of a, a complete counter-revolution. Yes. Yes, exactly. Okay. And, you know, very early on, I thought I was sniffing a lot of this out vis-a-vis monetary

policy. And I think I was probably, in hindsight, I was probably right about it all. But some of it was hope I'm on my part and some of it was, you know, in the hope that my country wasn't going to, you know, take the entire fucking world down with it. But as, you know, as data points were put up on the board and wins were put up on the board and we watched the last four years, five years play out, it's pretty sincere that it started on Wall Street. It started within the financial sector. And it's now morphed into the political sector and, and metastasized at exactly the right time. That's why it's all very interesting what's happening with Trump and the Federal Reserve and, you know, firing Lisa Cook. I mean, I can go into all this stuff.

This is all data, folks, that supports the idea that the United States is not going along with all of this ant-shaking, ant jar shaking that the British are doing and why they're so freaking desperate. And why they're, and so what is clear to me at this point, I brought it up earlier and I want to bring it, we'll bring the conversation back around to this, is that in the last week, we have seen a bevy of stories of everybody saying, the United States. United Kingdom is going to need an IMF bailout. France is going to need an IMF bailout.

Germany can't afford anything. Okay, so this is now the milieu. Why? It is this way because they know the Fed's not there to have their back. Something big is starting to brew in the financial markets. I was doing the market report for my patrons this morning. I've been watching, you know, I watched the U.S. German yield spread all the time. And it's at very dangerous levels for Christine Lagarde's down, the 10-year spreads down to about 1.53, 1.54%.

Whenever it gets down below 1.6, Lagarde tends to panic and do something to do something to push it back up. But what's interesting is that the Italian German spread has now, and I started charting that out. I just started charting like all the peaks when it, when it blows back out in the Germans favor. And it's always timed with some big geopolitical event. I've got like nine of these over the last year and a half. Right. And it's starting to blow out now, meaning someone's selling Italian debt a little bit and someone sitting on German yields. And the spread is starting to widen.

But there's no event. It's moved like 10 basis points in five days. And I just put a big question mark up this morning for once I didn't have an answer because I'm like, is something brewing? I've got all these nine data points over the last year and a half as the Italian as Italian bond yields have come down versus German bond yields. And then now it's starting to peak again. The U.S. UK spread has now 48 basis points. Something's brewing. Something's happening.

And I don't know what it is. And something is going to be the catalyst for this change. And in the short run, it looks like capital is. is moving in order to try and hold this world together that this current regime, the pricing regime together for a little while longer. Gold isn't moving. Silver is, is only allowed to go up two steps forward, one step back. Oil is in the shitter. Bitcoin's being capped. Like everything's being capped. German bond yields are being kept. Everything's being capped. And the only thing. And so it's really interesting what's happening right now and i i don't have a good answer for a lot of this but you can

feel it in your body you can feel it in your bones geopolitically i'm starting to feel it in my bones financially yeah it does look like gold about to blow up uh to go higher because it's been is you know like it's it's it's been getting squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter against like the uh 3 400 like horizontal resistance level but the If it breaks above that, that's going to be new all-time highs. And that means that, you know, it could go anywhere. It's like open, open air from there on. And then if you look at British Guil.

And the longer that formation is, no longer that formation is built, the more radical to move higher. Exactly. Exactly. And now it's been like four or five months that that formation has been building up. And then the same but inverse, if you look at British Guilt, price, which is just it practically, it practically declined by 45% since 21. And now it's been bouncing like smaller and smaller and smaller dead cat bounces above the,

let's call it 90 90 level 90. It goes like 9091, 92, 93, boom, back to 9091. And then, you know, like every bounce is a bit. feebler weaker than the next one and so now it's just like getting squeezed into like almost a straight line and if it goes if it goes below 90 if it good then again you know it's it's it's open slide into the ravine into the ravine and and it looks like that's coming but you know euro europe ones aren't looking much much better than that either well and that's the and again alex when what I've noted in the past is the last two times in the last three years, the last two times the U.S. U.S. U.K. spread, meaning the U.K. guilts were to 10, I'm only looking at the 10 year,

just the benchmark tenure. With 60 basis points above the American tenure, governments fell. Liz Trust and the U.S. Truss and the U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S.S. basis points above the American. So, and remember, as we note in the tick report, what I've been noting in the tip report, and you and I've talked and now I know I know I've got you on it as well, which is that the Bank of England has been the biggest buyer and its subsidiaries, by the biggest buyer of American a long-term debt over the last four years since Powell started the tightening cycle in 21, the NASA tightening cycle before he started raising rates when he was tightening global liquidity. And when you tighten the, you,

global liquidity, you're going to have an effect on bond yields. It does not matter what the official benchmark interest rates, lending rates are for the central banks. What matters is if you start tightening a liquidity, that's when bond yields start to blow up to the upside. And someone is positioned with a 60 basis point gap, that everything's fine and they're not going to lose their ass as long as U.S. and U.K. bond yields stay within a certain range. Then interest rate to start to pop, then people start to, they have to pay each other. And then, you know, all these swaps and and all this, what they, what they call, these derivatives are designed to lay off to, to quantify their risk.

Meaning if you've got currency risk and you're worried about, you know, the guilt, the, the, the pound moving a certain, you know, too much against the euro or against the dollar or whatever, you buy an interest rate derivative to define your risk and say, well, If it moves outside of this, as long as it's within this range, I'm good. And if it goes outside of that range, I get paid to offset my risk of the trade going against me, you know, in very broad terms, just for the people who are not, you know, and that's don't understand, you know, the guts of this of, you know, it's basically a straddle with interest rates as, you know, in options plays, the same kind of thing.

That's what Lagarde and Andrew Bailey and even Janet Yellen when she was, the treasury were defending like a dog. That's what I kept talking about for four fucking years to try and explain. It's like that's what they're trying to defend. And gold prices are a part of it and oil prices are a part of it and copper prices are a part of it and the currencies themselves and Japanese 10 years and all of this. And it's all tied together. And you know, and and you can't map it all in real time.

Yeah. Yeah. You can do it. Martin Armstrong is absolutely correct. He's like, I tried to map it. and real time myself. I had to build a fucking computer to help me map this stuff. And I agree with it.

I just try and focus on the big ones to try and make a, trying to get a sense of where things are going. And it looks to me like their push to implement the digital euro in October, maybe the catalyst. And what if Trump and Putin force Zelensky to the table to sign a peace agreement? giving up all of that territory legally to the Russians that Brits and French and Black Rock and this one and that one

all have secret agreements to divvy up those assets and they can't. What happens then? Because now it's Russian. What happens then? Well, clearly, city of London goes fucking broke and the whole thing blows up overnight.

Why do you think there? Why do you think there? you think here, Starmer is running a goal, a national struggle session against his own people for putting out the Union Jack and the St. George Cross. You're going to threatening to arrest people for waving the British flag on British soil. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's signing an executive order saying, if you burn the American flag, I'm putting you in jail. I don't give a shit if it's legal or not. You know what I mean? That's the difference between the two situations right now.

And I think it's, I think it's very, you know, really on. People should factor that into all of their thinking when it comes to Trump's, Trump's relationship with Israel and this and that, and all that stuff is secondary. Like this is all about the national divorce that you and I and Susan Gokinda talked about on crypto rich the other day. And it's very, very obvious. That's where we're headed. I mean, dude, I've got two hours worth of material alone on what I think is going on with Fannie

and Freddie and the sovereign wealth. fund and nationalizing intel and like this is all part of that it's all tom question question for you tom have you been paying attention to argentina not not very closely because i just find mill i just i just find milay to be such a fucking cartoon i don't trust him at all i something about that guy rubs me the wrong way and squicks me out so i just don't yeah yeah well i'm going to be wrong but no i don't think i don't think you are wrong i think because i i i have been you know, there's a lot of these people who are, you know, conservative types, Austrian school types,

free market capitalism types, who were very, very enthused with Millay. And then, you know, like when I read a little bit, even casually, you know, without getting into the nitty-gritty, Millay's economic program, like what he was proposing, what he was promising to the voters, it sounds like, well, this pretty much amounts to turning Argentina into a Wall Street colony. So, I mean, why such enthusiasm for this? There's a long track record of what happens to colonies and it's never good. And so, well, you know, if you went by the press, if you went by what appears on Bloomberg Financial Times and these types of, Oh, he brought down inflation, which he did.

He brought investment into Argentina, which he did. He reduced government spending and now there's a government surplus, actually. True, kind of. But do you know that two weeks ago, he tried to roll over some amount of, you know, a couple of billion of Argentinian government debt? And do you know what the interest rate on that was? 69%. They offered it at 69%. And they were still not able to sell more than about two-thirds.

No, less, less, about 61%. They managed to roll over 61% of the debt at the interest rate of 69%. I mean, have you ever heard of such a thing? And so the peso, since he's been in power, which is about 20 months, the Argentinian peso lost about two-thirds of its purchasing power against the US dollar, which means pretty much against everything else. So where is that going? And then one of the promises that he made to his voters was that he would bring back

the Falkland Islands under Argentinian sovereignty. And who owns the Falkland Islands right now? A country with practically no army, no navy, completely submerged in its own financial, social, economic, political problems. And in way over the head in Ukraine, which country is that? That's Great Britain. So if you were... You also, Alex, I hate to just interject,

but to underscore your point, he also transferred a whole lot of Argentina's sovereign gold. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say now. So if you were going to take the Falkland Islands from Britain, then right now would be about the best time. Because the Brits are just, I don't see how they could mount any defense. So you take your islands if you think they're yours. No, he transfers Argentinian gold. to the Bank of England, which pretty much means that you're not going to be able to claim the Falkland Islands, because if you do, they're just going to take your gold. They're going to freeze it or confiscate it or whatever.

So, like, what is... Anyway, you know, I think that Argentina now is, like, way out there, so it's not really central to the world problems. But it is kind of related to Britain, which is central to the world problems. And so anyway, you know, like I was just wondering if you were paying attention because I wasn't. And then I just read up on Argentina today. And I thought, holy shit, this is this is completely insane. This is completely insane. But it gives you a perfect example of how desperate libertarians are for acceptance in the,

and in officialdom that a clown like Malay can go out there and spout Rothbard badly, I might add, or Mises badly, I might add, really badly. And they're like, oh, my God, it's the second coming. I'm like, okay, you need desperately to have a drink, sit down and look at the bigger problem. No, I've never trusted Malay. I never trusted, I'll be honest with it. They don't trust Thomas Massey either. I think he also works for the city of London at this point.

That's my personal opinion. You can disagree with me if you want, and a lot of people do. Because he always seems to show up and wanting to, like, screw things up, whatever Trump is trying to do at the right moment in time while spouting all the right rhetoric. That's a tell, folks. It's a tell. By the way, Nigel Farage does the same goddamn thing. Six months ago, he was all four in letting Britain be invaded.

And now all of a sudden, he's like, no, we've got to kick all the immigrants out. The guy, that guy twists in the friggin' wind more than a goddamn weather vein. Okay, because he's, you know, he's just city of London. That's all he is. So, you know, we're at that point where all of these people. The thing that really, that pierced armor are, you know, Kweef Stalin, whatever you want to call him, is doing in, in the, in Great Britain right now, is to liquidate the country.

and he's liquidating the country for his continental masters. All of these mutual defense agreements are all meant to betray Brexit. Part of them. Part of them are also to, you know, create entangling alliances and all the rest of it. That will get NATO involved. But if Britain's got mutual defense treaties with all of these countries, and remember, Britain's not a part of the European Union anymore legally, but all of this needs, but Brexit needs to be reversed completely,

or Brexit is going to finally end next June, right? Remember, there's an embedded 10-year divorce agreement with anybody who leaves the European Union, that you're on the hook for any damage done to the European Union economically for 10 years after you vote to leave. That timer is up on June 16, 2026. So that's why Starmor had to be brought into power. It's why Sunak had to be destroyed. Why do you think they, they probably,

manufactured the guilt crisis that got rid of Risi Sunak in order to call the election and all the rest of it. They did this on purpose. That one. The one before that was to get rid of Liz Trust, who was actually trying to rebuild Britain's economy by open up the North Slope and her mini budget and all of that. I looked at her mini budget. I remember arguing with Alexander McCarress about this, not arguing, but, you know, discussing it with him. When it happened, I'm like, this sounds like exactly the thing that the Britons, that Brits should be doing right now. which is securing their energy future, trying to build, you know, a better world for their people for domestic economy, yada, yada, yada, and yeah, it's going to cost them.

And they should devalue the pound. That's what they should do. Note throughout all of this, and I've noted this a while ago. And again, if you don't, you have to realize that these people think in these terms. It does not matter what they, what policy they put in place. The policy is the policy they pursue is enforcing. by financial architecture. So go back to Brexit.

They devalued the pound versus the euro by 25% in the run-up to the vote in order to the Brits for even thinking about voting in favor of Brexit. And then after Brexit occurs, when the pound should weaken tremendously against everything, what happens? The pound does not ever that, that the pound is not allowed to, the, not the, not something, the pound stays where it is and Britain is not allowed to sign any trade deals with the United States. I, Bryden has brought the power or anybody else, thereby getting the benefit of the weaker currency against all the other currencies. And what happened? You destroyed the purchasing power of the Brits, British people with their major trading partners,

the European Union. Listen to every commentator. They all say the same thing. They hate Brexit. I used to watch Top here in the grand tour. They would complain about how Brexit was terrible because wine's more expensive and this is more expensive and that's more expensive. Fucking Brexit. You would hear it over and over again. It was done on purpose to turn the people against Brexit. That's where we are today. Now what they're trying to do is they're saying, look, if Britain's going to get out from underneath the clutches of the European Union and Trump is going to try and save it, there's going to nothing left to save. We're going to scorch earth the place. Invite all of these people, the rape gangs, all of it, put people in jail for mean tweets. Don't let them show any national

unity or anything else. No, no, no, no, sorry, we're destroying you. And we're going to steal what's left of the money. And city of London is continental Europe. The rest of England, the rest of the islands is not. And the and the managerial class, and the elite class of the UK and the crown and city they're all they're the problem and the people are being destroyed and they're attempting to do the same thing to the United States and Trump is like yeah no sorry not happening and they did the same thing to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union that's what my our mutual friend Bill Browder was at you know was a part of that whole process of destroying Russia.

And then Putin comes to power. And look, and here's something for you, Alex. I want you to think about. Then I'll turn the microphone back over. I'm watching Trump today. And I think I even mentioned this to you. No, I probably didn't. Because this was before you and I met.

I said, when Trump first came to power, I said he should look at what Putin did in Russia to fix the United States. And if you look at what Trump is doing right now, it looks an awful lot like what Putin did in Russia. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's why the nationalization of Intel, look, Intel was always a government company in the first place.

75% of their revenue came from government contracts. Same thing with Microsoft. Same thing with Boeing and this one and that one. Put all these people in the sovereign. Put 10%. They take official 10% stakes in them, put them in the sovereign wealth fund, generate a 5% to 6% revenue stream off of them and get rid of the fucking income tax. That's what he's doing.

Yes, I agree. I agree to him. And I think that, you know, the people who are now, losing their minds over Trump nationalizing Intel. That is, you know, taking 10% stake at Intel, which, you know, I think that people are still brainwashed with this neoliberal economics where, you know, everything has to be private capital. Okay, fine.

What makes you believe that? And you will only find theory. People will spout off Rothbard, Mises, this, that, and the other thing, Hayek. And any involvement by any government in anything, including infrastructure, is bad, horrible. You're a socialist. You're a communist. It's all going tits up, right? But then, you know, study China.

And China has gone from. being the poorest nation in the world 40 years ago, like literally the poorest nation in the world, to be in the global superpower not just in in terms of GDP, but in terms of innovation and development of new technologies. It's now ahead of the United States in practically everything except for a handle a handful of technologies and this is you know like this is a empirical fact. This is not just looking at their shit and getting dazzled by the, you know, by the, by the features and by the bells and whistles. This is like this Australian Institute that tracks like a set of 60 distinct technologies and they've been doing it for 20 years and like 20 years ago

the United States was the global leader in, I think, most of them and now the position is exactly inverted and how is it inverted now the Chinese are the global leader in I mean all but like a handful of of these technologies and so it's the state is completely invested in all this so is the private sector but the state is providing the funding it's it's it's it's it's it's crafting the strategy, like, okay, so if we're going to be doing this, we're going to need a lot of engineers. So, you know, invest in engineering schools, encourage young people to go study engineering. If we're going to go into AI, well, I guess we're going to need a whole lot of scientists and

software engineers. Well, invest in software engineering. Make sure you produce millions of programmers and software engineers every year. And then, you know, encourage venture capital firms and banks and private investors to invest in these types. So, you know, like the whole ecosystem is moving in a certain direction rather than just everybody being splintered into like, okay, now biotech, now housing, now this, now that, take the money, run, do the next thing. And there's no direction.

But I have to say this, it doesn't seem that it was a random event that the United States fell back. And here's one thing. You know Martin Seif? Yes. Okay. So Martin Seif put out this brilliant article explaining how it is that the United States lost the primacy in generating new innovations and intellectual property. and then, you know, like the filing for patents started dropping. And then he traced it back to Al Gore, who pushed this legislation. You know, they make it, they reformed the way patent, the way filing for patents process was done. And so now if you file for a patent, if you file a patent, your intellectual property becomes, goes into public.

domain before your patent protection is even approved. Meaning, let's say you invent some kind of a widget. You want to patent it. The minute you, well, I don't know if it's the minute, but like as soon as you file the patent, it goes into a public database which anybody can browse and they can see your invention. They can see exactly what you're protecting. And then they can go, some register an offshore or company have it built in China. And before you even get the patent protection, they already took the market. Well, that was done on purpose.

That was done on purpose. That is so dumb, they couldn't have not known what the consequences of that would be. And the consequences obviously were exactly that. That it's going to disincentivize innovation. It disincentivized registering new intellectual property. And so that's what happened. But that goes back to the Clinton Gore administration. It was done on purpose.

Yeah. Well, by the ultimate puffers of, ultimate U.F. Puffers, U.S. puffers of international globalism. Like, it's seriously. Exactly. Exactly. Bill Clinton was a road to color, you know, Oxford Gunn.

And it was clearly back then, their goal was to transfer all their wealth and power and health and everything else from the U.S. to China, put the money there, take it over as an old, do an oligarch take over there and then build China because it was the biggest, it was, it was the biggest, you know, plunder of, of all time. And then the Chinese somewhere around 2013 got a brain and went, you know what? No. And they got and they brought in true believer and, and Xi Jinping to clean the fucking place up. I mean, like like me or don't like Xi, you know, I mean, again, as an American,

I have a more complicated relationship to China than and this because clearly we're, you know, we're the, you know, we're an we are at a rival stage here, right? And we have Chinese, you know, and there's definitely Chinese infiltration into our society in order to try and destroy it. Like the, the Chinese are part of this at a certain level. That's not to say that they won't cut a deal. And, you know, we can't work we can't work something out in the future. And this I think was Trump has tried to keep a very balanced position on China and his trade deals with and is dealing with them and everything else. He hates them one day. Then he says, I have a great relationship with Xi Jinping the next day. And they do the thing. But the important part of that story is what you just

laid out, which is that it wasn't random. It wasn't just this is what's going. going to happen next. We were absolutely betrayed from within by people working for someone else at every level. Alex, you've got that one. I can give you a hundred others. Like the whole, you know, we can go through cafe, the, you know, climate change, all the DEI, all of this, everything, all the environmental policy, all the tax policy, the tax normalization policy, or harmonization policy, sorry, let's get my terminology right. Um, like all. All of that was designed like a bunch of fucking Lilliputians to bind down Gulliver. And guess what?

What we're finding out is that all those little strings, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, this one, that one, everything else, the Bureau of Labor statistics, they're all little strings, and they're all easily cut when Gulliver finally just stands up and goes, the fuck is happening. No, he stands up, he starts stopping people. He just starts stumbling on people. And those people are John Bolton. And Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve and this one, this woman doesn't even.

Anthony Blinken. Anthony Blinken. But like, like, you know how unbelievably obnoxious these fucking people are? Lisa Cook doesn't have a background in economics at all. And she's a board of governors of the fucking Federal Reserve. Hey, but do you remember? Jackson has never, has never uttered a word, has never a legal argument in her life. made one lick of her Aristotelian logical sense and yet she serves on the Supreme Court.

Hey, do you remember? This is not a, this is not, this is not random. It's a plan, folks. It's vandal. Random acts of political vandalism. Tom, do you remember, do you remember Jared Bernstein? He was, he was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for Joe Biden. Remember that guy? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Who had no freaking clue about anything. And then he went, he ventured to give a, to give a, to give a statement about why the

United States can go bankrupt and how the United States issues bonds. And then, and it was, it was like chairman of the chairman of the council of economic advisors, not even like I swear Tom my my dead dog would have done a better job giving economic advice than this guy it's unbelievable there's a there's a clip somewhere on you to look it up Jared Bernstein explaining something about debt it's comparing Jared Bernstein to your dog is a is an insult to your dog I do want to say though it's it is interesting that we're doing this And I have to make this joke because it's important. The world is healing because we're now eight, we're now seven years after the,

the anniversary of the death of John McCain's brain tumor that regrets that it only had one life to give for its country. You know, it's a joke that never gets old, folks. It just doesn't. And, you know, just think that that man was supposed to be president. And on any given day, John McCain was owned by so many. different people. Every day he'd have to wake up and look at his calendar to figure out who he was

supposed to work for that day. Like that guy was never anything other than a puppet of just about everyone on the planet. And he was in London frequently. He was in London frequently and he worked closely with British intelligence. And in fact, that's how we go at Russia Gate. Yes, it is. He was still not one of the major players there. from the from the from the from the outset so I mean we're this is this world is this world is

changing and it's changing for the better but we're going to have to go through this period as Alex laid out at the beginning of this quite nicely this this transition state and the you know from where we are where we want to go and transition states are always messy I mean as a chemist I've always made this argument that like I you know that to get from the organization of matter in one coordination or one state, and then reimagine it and rejigger it into a different, generally lower energy and less anxious state, you have to go through a period of reorganization where the molecules have to spread apart. The energy of the entire system goes up a little bit, and then that energy is then used

to create a more stable, lower energy system later on. transition states are messy. The thing that we're with that, that I think Alex pointed out with all the things that he talked about at the beginning of this podcast where the attempts to control or to create as much anxiety as possible so that the transition state blows everything apart, as opposed to creating a new set of order. And that's their last play is to break.

is to blow everything apart. Unfortunately, we as humans don't crave that. We don't crave that kind of chaos. And we don't, when we're not going to stand for, especially when we can see them operating in real time. It's why it's so very important that we do podcasts like this on a regular basis to try and explain this to as many people as we possibly can, so that they're armed with the right knowledge and the right,

at least intellectual and emotional framework to go, Nope, that's bait, not taking it. That's chum. Piss off. We're not doing that. I don't like that idea. I feel like since I've had you guys on. Oh, John, you're there.

I am, John. How are you? Hey, man. What's up? Jackasses. I'm like, since I've had you guys on here from the beginning, it's been trying to institute chaos everywhere. Okay.

Yes. Now, I. exclusively for the Sean Newman podcast, I'm going to propose to drag this discussion into a direction in which I think we've never gone. And I'm going to make you guys so incredibly uncomfortable. Are you ready for this? I guess so. I'm sitting down. So one of the problems in the world, because I, you know, why am I going this direction? because Tom mentioned something about the rivalry between China and the United States

and it's a complicated relationship and all this. Okay, that much is true, but only if you look at it in a certain framework. And this is always the framework of this approach to, well, let's call it again, the system of governance that we got inert to in the West, which is always basically, you know, practically since the Industrial Revolution, it always sought to maximize the production of crap. Lots and lots and lots of crap. So you know, like, why produce 10 widgets?

If you can produce 1,000 widgets. And if you make 10 widgets, then maybe they cost a dollar widget. But if you produce 1,000, now they cost 50 cents a widget. So if your margin on 10 widgets is a dollar, well, you know, your margin on 1,000 widgets is $1.50. and now you're going to be selling a thousand of them rather than a hundred of them, right? But then the problem that you know, the problem that you're going to have with this is that now you need a market. And if your own domestic market can absorb a thousand widgets, well, you're going to have to force them on some foreign country. And so that's where you get the rivalry, you know, because now the Chinese are the masters of producing shitloads of widgets at lower price and nobody can rival them because they're really the,

out there in the world and they're producing all this shit super cheaply. And a lot of that shit is not even bad. And you know those jokes when they say like the Temu warehouse in Germany caught fire and burned down, experts are estimated the damage at $56.20. Have you guys seen those memes? Do you guys have Temu? the TME? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, anyway, anyway, okay, so there's more to that because the Chinese, it seems to me, that's an impression, want to pull the world away from this business model of this, you know, producing maximum amounts of crap to dump on each other markets and then always be fighting and having rivalries. And I think that that inflection point happened, remember a few months ago, when they published like suddenly a blizzard of videos about making Gucci bags and Hermes bags and this and that. And, you know, it's retailing in Europe for 30,000 bucks and they make it for a thousand bucks and you can order it here without the little label and all this. I thought that was interesting. They're not just doing this. This is a strategic move.

This is a strategic attack on one of the main. In fact, this is one of Europe's strategic weapons. The blink factor. Because, you know, when you corrupt foreign officials and you give them money, what are they going to do with that money? They're going to take their wife to London and to Paris and to Geneva. you're going to take them shopping. And then you're going to buy them like a $39,000

a Hermes bag. And, you know, that works because that gives you status that's completely unavailable to anybody else in your country. So that's how you get corrupt officials to carry water for you and to be your dog in the colonization fight. Well, now, if thousands of ordinary folk in that same country can have exactly the same bag

for a thousand bucks well then you've lost that blink factor you know that that blink factor lost a lot of its appeal but then I've noticed another something I'm getting a lot of feed of Chinese videos on Facebook

on X now and on YouTube where I don't know if you guys have seen this but like the whole video is like one person making one thing. And, you know, I've seen them make like a board game, a musical instrument, an umbrella, a hat, a cloth, you know, a raincoat. And the whole thing, like the video, the video would be like two, three minutes. But the process it shows is probably weeks of this one person probably spending hundreds of hours to make one hat or to make um

an umbrella or to make a music strings for the musical instrument whatever and one thing that you notice when you watch this video it's it's kind of beautiful the whole thing it's it's the word is wholesome it's very wholesome and then the the objects that they end up making is a very beautiful object and it's unique. It's just that one thing. It's not hyperproduction of crap. It's exactly its diametrical opposite. But it has absorbed hundreds of hours of skilled labor,

which exactly takes care of hyperproduction of crap that has to be dumped on somebody else's market. And then, you know, I asked myself, why not? I mean, you know, the reason why I said this is going to make you uncomfortable is because it's no longer a question of top line, bottom line, margins, a number of widgets produced, big investment into a factory because all of this is produced by hands, you know, with basic tools. And what it actually does, it absorbs the excess labor, making something beautiful. Remember Dostoevsky said beauty will save the world. And then you also don't have the problem of having to go and open other people's markets by force. It's unnecessary.

And, you know, things like this exist. It's not like we're starting to, you know, like one of the most amazing products that is made in the United States for century, for more than 100 years. It's like the Steinway pianos. And you can find documentaries online about how a Steinway piano is made. It's an amazing thing. And it's, you know, like the, if you want to call this like the, the market dominance, the market share dominance,

is practically unassailable because it has that level of skill and know-how in something that's going to be used forever that is super expensive and that practically everybody wants in the world. I mean, you know, every theater, every concert hall, every conservatory. So you have like practically a guaranteed market everywhere in the world. But you're not maximizing the quantity of the product. You're maximizing the quality of the product. And you're developing skills and you're building something unique.

And then you know what, there's what, like Gibson guitars that are made in the United? You know, like, so that's a way to compete. And then you don't have, because, you know, like, if the United States makes a widget and it costs them a dollar a widget to make. And then the Chinese come and they make the exact same widget, but it costs them 99 cents per copy. Then you could practically go to war over that one cent difference. producing widgets, whereas you also have a choice of driving the whole economic development to where it's going to develop skills, it's going to produce very valuable, beautiful things,

and you're not going to have to compete because it's unique. Nobody else can make it. Nobody else knows how to make it. And then, you know, like, this goes completely outside. of all the economic theory that we've ever been taught because it practically starts with John Adams. No, what's not John Adams, Adam Smith, right? Adam Smith, the economist of the British East India Company. And then, you know, you have build on like it all goes from there, it all goes from there. And it's all, it's all

the same paradigm, you know, making shit efficient in large quantities and dumping it on others and making profits and so forth. It doesn't even have to be that way. Anyway, exclusively so for Sean Newman podcast on the 27th August 2025, I just thought I put a stick in the wheels of the Western tradition of economics, Keynesians, Austrians, all of it. Well, what's interesting, Alex, it's funny. I had when when that whole thing happened with the with the Gucci flip-lops and the

and you know the guy I'm getting the Gucci flip-off for 75 cents and they're getting angry about it Dexter White and I had roughly the same conversation not not the way you presented it here which was which was lovely but we were saying like yes especially the you know destroying the whole brand exclusiveness stuff in my other life as a gamer I can tell you that the chasing of the thing that no one else has be it that mount or that piece of gear or that or that skin or whatever oh believe me people spend hundreds of hours to farm mats to make that thing so that they're the only one with the pink tuxedo or whatever the fuck it is right um and that and that cheapening it by then

putting those things chasing them in the cash shop and you just buy one for 25 bucks that's not nearly as cool as the thing that you always right and um but I think so much of what we are, what you just said is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, have now, um, that we've all been, uh, forced to live in, right. And, um, it all goes back to the same thing that I said, why Donald Trump was going to be Hillary Clinton back in 2016, because of the, of the, of her authenticity gap. We had a generation of people here in the United States especially the Bernie bros who then all broke for Trump that they wanted authentic stuff. They wanted farm to table food.

They wanted manscaping tools. They wanted they wanted craft coffee and craft cocktails. They wanted lumberjack fashion. They wanted real experiences. They wanted the world, right? That's it. That's it. I've been bang on my shoe on the table like Chris Jeff since I wrote the original version

that article for my newsletter at Newsmax. And then I repurposes as a blog post about six months later. I said, this is coming. And you know, but you have to also have, you have to have a balance between the, the stuff that we need on a regular basis. No one's making beautiful toilet paper, right? Toilet paper should be an industrial process.

Like it's just toilet paper at the end of the day. Make as much of that as you need and then do the inventory and the supply chain management. But the beautiful things, the musical instruments, the furniture, the clothing, all of that stuff. If you know, one of the things that I will give the free marketeers, they're due and they've been getting a, they've been getting hammered in this podcast, is they noted that where there's very little in the, in the arts, where there is very little, um, regulatory control and, and, and, and an intellectual property. enforcement, the amount of intellectual property enforcement is inversely proportional to the size of the market cap. Meaning in the-

Hold on the industry. Come again. Come again. Come again. I'll say it again. That meaning, meaning in a something like fashion where there is zero intellectual property is a hundred times the market cap of film and television. Oh, okay. Or music. Why is that, Tom? Or the production of music. It's, it's absolutely true. Like fashion and the fashion industry wants no regulatory or intellectual property control.

They want no, no anybody who tries to, because they, they rip off of each other constantly. And they're in this constant back, given forth. They're working off of each other and being influenced by each other constantly. And so now what I always said was, and I agreed with that, that basic framework. And that's why I was always against, you know, intellectual property enforcement of like when they went after Napster for distributing music. Right. Like, dude, the experience, like, you record a song, right? You put it on an album and you send it out into the world.

And X number of people buy it because they, they're going to buy that. They're going to be willing to buy to have their own copy of it. And they're going to share it with their friends. I say to people all the time when I get my patrons say to me all the time, they're like, you know, can I share the newsletter? with other people. I'm like, dude, you bought it. It's yours. Do what you want with it. Word of mouth advertising is the strongest form of advertising. It's your private property at that point. I can't control what you do with it, right? I can only hope that you share it responsibly and then, you know, to try and make sure that the, you know, Dexter and I received some of the, of the work.

But I also want the ideas to spread as far and wide as possible. And as long as we make a comfortable living, we're okay with all this, right? So we could pass, we're protected, we can do all this shit, going to. And but the experience, but here's the thing. I was like, dude, I don't need to listen to, I don't need to pay rush or royalty every time I want to re-record, I want to take my copy of Tom, of moving pictures and re-record Tom Sawyer. I still give them $100. I gave them $100 until I stopped touring to go see them play it live. That's where musicians make their money is the experience of watching that particular performance and that particular night with that particular crowd. That's where the quality is.

It's a great song that that gets reinterpreted over time and is always and then creates great experiences. And I'm like, so it doesn't matter if we're talking about a unique piece of furniture or in the case of my, me telling my wife, no, go become a great potter. She's not a great potter, but she's getting there. But she has a great potter. Well, no, she's good. I don't, you two have been going back and forth.

for like 20 minutes now where I'm sure Alex is laughing at him. I'm like, what the fuck are these two talking about? I'm like, I'm like, are you doing a different wave life? We're talking about tearing down that, that the regulatory system that precludes people being able to spend their time producing beauty. We don't produce beauty anymore. Everything has to be fucking. If you go back to what Alex was saying at the start.

So what's shocking about it is it's China that's doing it. Well, it seems to me that China is sending a message to the world because all of a sudden, and this started at a certain point in time, relatively recently, all of a sudden these videos are everywhere and people are picking them up. And I'm noticing people I follow an X, they're starting to share them. And they're obviously making an impact. And I don't know if people are, you know, getting like intuitive some kind of a signal that this is somehow important. Or if they're aware that this is actually a solution to a huge problem that's been plaguing humanity for centuries. But these videos are produced very, very well. They're expensive production.

They didn't like make themselves. They didn't. This is not a random thing of a guy. just filming themselves doing something. There's obviously a production crew, and a lot of thought has been put into this. So that tells me that this is a deliberate message being sent to the world in a very, very subtle way.

And I think that people are starting to pick it up. And, you know, when you watch these videos, they are very, very appealing. Go ahead, Tom. Oh, I was going to say, this has been going on for one time. My wife spends a lot of her time on YouTube watching a lot of stuff like that she watches the the primitive skills guys out in vietnam building mud huts and all she watches all of it she watches guys which watches woodworkers produce beautiful

in in and and and unique tables and all the rest of them i'm still here Alex i'm still here right i i see you there with uh show up what i'm getting at yeah because shout out to camille of course what my point is is that those are incredibly popular channels Like these people have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of subscribers watching a two-hour video on a guy making some beautiful, you know, the beautiful table out of a slab of wood that has to be filled in with epoxy and all the like, I can't remember the guy's name. He makes these beautiful tables. He makes more money on the, on the YouTube royalties off the video that he gives the tables away for fucking free and there worth 20 grand.

right like it's this kind of thing is is is everywhere now and it's what i'm getting at is is that there's a hunger for this there's a hunger for authenticity and for for unique and beautiful things and and and and the market not only not only to acquire the unique and beautiful things but i think there's a hunger for people to be able to make a living doing that shit. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if and my and I think to wrap it up what I was trying to say before was is that is that what these fucking people like TFP, these fucking people or Davos or the city of London or what you want to call them. These people do everything imaginable to put roadbox, no matter how subtle up in front of you to waste five minutes of your day this way or waste another 10

And it's that way or force you to sit in traffic or to do this or to do that such that you don't have any time. You don't have any bandwidth at the end of your day to build something beautiful. You barely have enough time to come home from work, eat some dinner if your wife's prepared it for you or whatever. And play with the kids for 10 minutes. Zone out in front of the television for an hour before you go to bed. Go to bed, get up and do the same thing tomorrow. Like, and then on the weekends, you get the, I don't know, you get your rocks off watching football or whatever. or in Europe, it's soccer.

It's basically football. It doesn't matter. It's the same thing. And like my point being is that that model has to end. And they're stealing all of that time from you. All of those taxes, they're stealing that month, that time from you. And what the and what and what and I resisted this for very, very, very long time. The, the whole reimposition of the American system that guys like Matt Erritt and,

now the Promethean action ladies, Barbara and Susan, and what Trump is putting in place. What they're arguing for is that system of that the government and the people work together to create a cohesive society. And the government provides the framework in which the people can interact with it in a minimal level in order to create national wealth. And if the definition of national wealth goes from, well, 50 states today in the United States and organic, I've always said, if the United States is going to break up and it breaks up organically, it breaks up organically because the people just don't want to, you know, they like each other, but they don't want to be governed by each other. Fine.

So we break it up in the 50 states. But that should happen organically. It shouldn't be happening on someone else's dime in order to gain an advantage, which is what the fucking British and the French have been doing since the day after Cornwall surrendered, Yorktown and sadly Canada was always part of that process which is what a lot of Americans are beginning to figure out has been you know we never really thought of it in those terms especially these two or three generations of Americans and it's beginning to realize this now this needs to end so that we can keep our wealth that we generate have the time to generate that wealth and to

generate beauty and to fix our lawns and to care take care of our homes and and work on our cars and for the car industry to stop having to chase the wind tunnel testing of cafe standards and miles per gallon but so we had these brutalist ugly fucking widgets that drive down the fucking road we got beautiful fucking cars again so so that somebody can go out and make a replica of 1965 Mustang that doesn't cost 250 000 because i want a 65 mustang but i want it on a modern chassis with a modern transmission and a modern engine But I want that car, but I can't get that car. Not allowed.

Verboaten. Not allowed. Alex. You had something to impart. Go ahead. So I wanted to share a quote by William Burroughs because this is very close to where we're going. So William Burroughs wrote, quote, what does the money machine eat?

It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and it shits quantity. That's that quote. Anyway, that's a great quote. And I think it's a place to unfortunately, guys, I have a hard stop because I know. Unfortunately, I got to get going. I appreciate it having you both back on. I'm like, you could tell.

I haven't had you on for a while because you guys, I'm like, I feel like, I feel like I'm back in episode one with you too. I'm like, what is going on right now? Appreciate you guys coming on and doing this. And, well, we'll have you back on here soon enough. Either way, gents, thanks for hopping on today. Yeah, and a nice, nice implants. Sean.

Guys, it was a blast, as always. Sean, I'm glad that you got some time away from the production grind of having to produce a produce. quantity and spend some quality time with your family and all that for the summer. Alex, as always, it's an absolute joy and a pleasure to interact with you under whatever circumstances because it just is. It just is. Thank you, Tom.

It's the sentiment is mutual. Sean, thank you for organizing this. It was fun, as always. And I look forward to doing it again soon.