Shaun Newman Podcast - Replay #846 - Luongo Krainer Armstrong

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Today we are heading back to the morning after the Cornerstone Forum when Martin, Tom and Alex sat down at the coffee table in the hotel. Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat fa...rmer, 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. Martin Armstrong is the CEO of Armstrong Analytics and is renowned for his economic forecasting model, the Economic Confidence Model, which has notably predicted major market events. He has advised governments and financial institutions worldwide, offering insights into market trends, currency movements, and geopolitical impacts on the economy. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: SNP@silvergoldbull.comText Grahame: (587) 441-9100Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: welcome@BowValleycu.com Prophet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: SNP@prophetriver.comUse the code “SNP” on all ordersGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.
Starting point is 00:00:10 This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast. Folks, happy Monday. How's everybody doing today? Man, live, the Cornerstone Forum was, well, exceptional.
Starting point is 00:00:27 I think. It went off without a hitch. Um, we, we stayed on time. We got through all the speakers. All the speakers were there. Uh, and, uh, I think, you know, the resounding feedback I got from people and attendees and speakers is it was just a great event. Everybody was on a high and, uh, really enjoyed it. I want to get some, you know, some thank yous before I start today. Uh, first, my wife, uh, Melissa, you know, she, uh, rode with me down, ran, uh, part of the front door and and checking people in and making sure people got to their seats. And I just, uh, You know, everybody on this podcast knows the way I feel about my wife, but she's just fantastic, and I couldn't have done it without her, to be honest. She really pulled her weight and then some and probably some more for me and appreciate her being here with me. To Toby and Shannon, they were the other two ladies who answered the call to work the door.
Starting point is 00:01:22 My hat's off to you, two ladies. Thank you again for being there and helping check people in. To Shannon McNally, anyone looking for an event coordinator, in Calgary um here's a lady that uh I didn't know you know eight months ago maybe a little less and then yeah she hopped aboard and was the event coordinator here in Calgary and I just can't speak highly enough about her and her professionalism on making sure the day went smooth the expo the trade show with all the companies and attendance 32 of them she just was uh I don't know I didn't know what to expect and she exceeded my expectation so thank you Shannon
Starting point is 00:02:00 To the cowboy preacher, Mr. Joshua Allen, he ran the door directing people. And then, of course, he said grace and just was a beast of moving chairs and helping people get their stuff in and out. And I just appreciate him coming along as well. And Tanner today, he said grace at supper. Thanks again, Tanner, for, you know, being a friend and coming to an event. And then, you know, I approached him part way through. I'm like, you want to say Grace? He's like, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:02:30 Okay, well, super pumped to have, you know, different people from the podcast and from the audience being part of the event. To Silver Gold Bull and Bull Valley Credit Union, I'm going to get to their ad reads shortly, but this event, as I said last night on stage, you know, wouldn't have happened in Calgary if it wasn't for those two companies. They really twisted my arm in the best possible sense and brought it there. to the wind sport facility and staff. They have such a gorgeous facility, and their staff were just fantastic. At one point, I swear, on Friday when we were setting it up,
Starting point is 00:03:06 there had to have been like 50 people on the floor of the arena, just going this way, that way, every way, making sure everything got where it needed to get to. And they were just wonderful to work with, so my hats off to them. To all the speakers who traveled far and the ones that were in Calgary, you know the event isn't an event if you don't have the high quality speakers that I brought in
Starting point is 00:03:31 and you know that it I've list them off one by one but I've been rattling them off now for for so long on the podcast I just thanks again for coming and being a part of my idea and then to see it play out in the venue was man it was it was super super cool to Jesse Fusion Pro production world, Kelly, Chad, Jake, and I want to say Lucas, and forgive me, if it's not Lucas, but there was a team of four of them, five of them, if I'm being honest, that set everything up, stage production, lighting, the big screens, sound, you just name it, and they were just, ah, you guys were just pros, and it was fun to work with and appreciate you making, you know, my idea come to life.
Starting point is 00:04:21 to Emily the harp player which I'm sure everybody when she got on stage is like a harp it's exactly what the doctor ordered at the end of a day of talking and I just I don't know I just got to meet her that night and she was fantastic and to all of you who didn't attend we had a harp player for the supper hour and it was super cool and to the people that attended all 650 roughly it could have been a touch higher touch lower you know we had just people from all over the place. I'm going to name off the ones that I can remember that came from so far. We had one man came from Singapore, another couple from Cayman Islands, a guy from Ohio, a guy from San Jose, a bunch from Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec City.
Starting point is 00:05:08 You just name it, and they were there. And I was just humbled again at how far people traveled to see an SMP presents and the second annual Cornerstone Forum. And, you know, I got to sit and stew on some things for a few days, but I hope to be back in 2026. And once again, I'm sitting here in the hotel still in Calgary as to record this, and I hope I didn't miss anyone. I'm sure I did. And my apologies if I did.
Starting point is 00:05:39 But it has just been a real treat to be here and to have all of you come. And to those who couldn't make it, you know, I guess I should give a show. That's right there. There's one. Jericho and Lucas who filmed it all. They're going to have it all edited and everything about a week from today.
Starting point is 00:05:56 Our goal is for Monday. It'll be up on substack. And so I'll be trying to get it there. To all the substack people who've been loyal followers and funding the podcast, we're going to get back to putting something up on substack. Now the craziness hopefully slows down. down for a couple days but uh appreciate just everybody coming and being a part of this idea i'm six minutes in i haven't got to add reads yet um the first two i'm just going to blend together because
Starting point is 00:06:23 it's bull valley credit union it's silver gold bull you know the story between these two companies uh it's down on the show notes if you want to go visit either um they were there in attendance they're the reason why it came to calgary and if you're looking for two companies to deal with your uh your silver and gold or your banking don't look any further than silver gold bull or bow valley credit Union. All the details down in the show notes. Profit River, if you're, you know, you're interested in firearms. We had Chuck Prodnick on stage, a military veteran. He shared just a moving story about one of his friends that he served with. And if you're looking for firearms, look no further than Prophet River and reach out to their sales, their sales, internet sales and phone manager.
Starting point is 00:07:10 That's Joel. And you can reach them at the SMP. at profit river.com whether you're buying over the phone internet or in in person make sure you drop the snp code when you're purchasing uh they just go to profit river dot com for everything they're the major retailers of firearms optics and accessories and they serve all of canada it is beautiful outside which means it's deck season and when you're thinking wood think windsor plywood so stop into lloyd minster to get all your wood whether we're talking mantles decks windows doors sheds podcast studio table stopping Windsor Plywood
Starting point is 00:07:44 and tell Carly I sent you folks it has been a the Cornerstone Forum has has taken a lot of effort this year Calgary did not disappoint the people in attendance did not disappoint and the speakers certainly
Starting point is 00:08:02 did not disappoint and the venue I think wowed even me and I hope it did to everyone in attendance will be sharing some pictures here on Substack and You can go see some on X, and I'll try and get some up on all the other social medias. But just it's been, it has been a ride here the last month or so. And I'm going to have to sit and chew on it now for a few weeks before we get started on the next thing. But I appreciate you tuning in today.
Starting point is 00:08:29 This is an interesting, just, you know, at one point, I felt like I could have just been the, you know, the waiter or, you know, just the guy to go around, make sure that water and everything. I hardly interject in this conversation. Super cool. Happened the day after the event in the hotel room, and, well, we'll get to it here. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube Rumble X, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. And as I kept, you know, as people were thanking me for the show and putting it on, I just appreciate you guys all sharing these conversations into different circles that I
Starting point is 00:09:03 could never imagine to be entering. And look forward to meeting you all at some point. All right, let's get on to that tale of the tape. The first 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 and Guns podcast. The second, a Croatian national, former hedge fund manager,
Starting point is 00:09:29 author and contributing editor at Zero Hedge, and the third, the CEO of Armstrong economics. I'm talking about Tom Luongo, Alex Traynor, and Martin Armstrong. So buckle up, here we go. I think it's interesting that we have a guy like percent in a treasury now, as opposed to an academic like... I'm not even sure. I wrote to him.
Starting point is 00:09:56 Yeah. Our paths have crossed. Right. He worked for... Soros and... Or even before that for Jimmy Rogers. Yes. And he was working with Soros.
Starting point is 00:10:09 when I was not only trading against him, but also with the whole bullshit with U.K. and stuff. Right, right, right. And every Treasury Secretary to date, I sent a letter, I get a response, not from him. Really? Interesting. Interesting. That's interesting. So I'm wondering,
Starting point is 00:10:35 and I said, look, I know our pastor crossed many times. and it just it is put a little red marker on me like you know can I really trust everybody in Trump's cabinet you know I'm not sure yeah so I'm not willing to say he's such a great guy
Starting point is 00:10:55 right it feels like what I've seen so far and you know I've made my analysis of what I think is going on pretty clear which is that you have both percent and Powell I think this is a that of all the at this point like the switch from sofer to LIBOR is just it's it's it's earth-shattering at the ultimately and then if they're sitting down having lunch every Monday morning as percent let out into
Starting point is 00:11:23 the world that Powell and that we finally have a Treasury Department Treasury Secretary and a Fed chairman who are not necessarily committed globalists they may not be the most they may not be the hippest people in the world they may not know everything that they need to know the ramifications of everything that they're the things that they're playing with but they're at least on this side
Starting point is 00:11:44 of the ledger as opposed to where we had Geithner and Bernanke under Obama those were those no they were academics right and not only they were academics but I firmly believe that they were working for working to destroy the country
Starting point is 00:11:58 and I don't think they were working in our best interest of all I see those people as traders I can't see them as anything else but and I don't I I just after a while like there's too much incompetence like that's that's that's that's a level of incompetence that is that is beyond willful and but it is because when I got called into the into 87 to the Brady Commission they had this professor got lead and I think he was from MIT I remember and he said we're gonna find out who shorted this market blah blah
Starting point is 00:12:34 right and I said to him I said do you understand how markets work it's as I teach finance at MIT or whatever I said very nice I have over three trillion dollars under contract you know I said you know these are my balls he just never trade it you know and I don't think you can see this stuff well that's without right actual trading you know and this is why you don't know you pick up the phone where's the bid there is no be right you know right they pay no consequences for being wrong gentlemen just so i'm okay to record this or do you want me to introduce it no whatever you want to whatever you want to no and then just keep going welcome to the podcast carry on so yeah well that's the interesting thing about both percent and
Starting point is 00:13:20 Powell is that they have real world experience right that in the ways that bernanke and yelen and got leave and and and greenspan who we all know that Allen's biggest failing was that he was a social climber and Ayn Rand had him pegged back in 1968 the year I was born and she was talking about that and I think that was fascinating but where we are today is different and I think it again they may not be the they may not be the perfect men for the job but they're the best guys for the job I guess right now and I certainly would rather have a guy like dissent at Treasury than Lutnik who I don't trust at all yeah I don't I don't know howard Lottnick
Starting point is 00:14:00 suspicious he gives me the freaking he gives me he gives me that that you know he gives me the hebe jibis but my only concern with bessor is that i know trading against sorrows what they were doing okay i can't see how he didn't know yeah you know i can't swear that well no i i i actually believe that he does did know what he was doing and who he was and what he was doing and again it's like everything else like i look at trump as a a kind of redemption story at a certain level, right? I see even, you know, I see a lot of these guys as they've gotten older after having lived lives that may not have been salutary when they were younger and, you know, and that when they get to a certain point and now they're
Starting point is 00:14:46 in the process of going, oh my, either I was a bad man one or it's time to, you know, leave a legacy of some kind of positive legacy. And I have the skill set. I know, I know how to trade against these people. I know how to bankrupt people. I can choose not to bankrupt people and actually, or I can choose to bankrupt different people this time, the ones who are now working against my people. And I've just, that's the way I'm trying to view the, at the very least that's the way I'm trying to view these people as best as I can. Trump, I think, absolutely understands debt. That's, I think, pretty good. Right. You were going to say, Alex. I would say they were manipulating markets and they knew what the hell they were
Starting point is 00:15:37 doing okay so I question whether his integrity is is what yeah but you see here here's what I think as he's relevant to me the Bessent is a hedge fund manager mm-hmm it's not a banker no there's a big difference there because he has no loyalty to the big banks yeah and not only that but as a the hedge fund manager, very often you're in an adversarial position to the banks. And so, you know, Timothy Geithner was a banker, a banker's banker. Robert Rubin was a banker's banker. I think the fact that you have somebody there who's competent, who understands financial
Starting point is 00:16:21 market and who is not beholden to the bankers, probably, is better than having another Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin time, Hank Paulson. Because these people were Goldmanites and loyal to the big banks. I was going to say that's why when I first started thinking about Powell and why Powell was tightening, I went to a former hedge fund manager who was bank who was, story wasn't as dramatic as yours, but he was ruined by Goldman and Morgan and all. I'm not going to reveal his name. He was a patron at the time. And I asked him about all this and I said, And what do you think? He said, well, they don't call him private equity Powell for nothing.
Starting point is 00:17:03 Right. Right. So he's also not one of that, to Alex's point, he's not one of. They definitely have experience. Right. You know, I mean, you know, I'm the only reason I've even a little questionable because he didn't respond. Right.
Starting point is 00:17:24 I write a letter to they instantaneously respond. Well, maybe he got stuck in the mail. I don't know. I mean, it's but only because, I mean, that in 1999, um,
Starting point is 00:17:39 I cost Sorrows at least $3 billion. He lost $2 billion on Russia. You're now my hero. No, even more of my hero than you were before.
Starting point is 00:17:52 But earlier, in March of 99, they were, the Japanese, would invest overseas but then they bring it all back for March 31st and they put it back out again right so they knew that and they were pushing the yen to clip them for like 100 points or something like that so I stood up at our conference in March and I said look you're the now you're the next target and this is how you defeat it lock it in don't lock it when it comes back right do it
Starting point is 00:18:29 first. So they did that and Soros lost over a billion dollars on that one. So then came to Russia's, which is part of my case. I think they went to the CFTC and say, get rid of this guy, please. Yeah. But it's just the way they are. Right. You know, it's, I was told years ago, It was, I hired this one, actually, I think he was the first black analyst, or Bob Howl. And he wanted to meet with me. I met with him in the oak room at the Plaza Hotel. And I was skeptical because he worked for Lewis Bacon. And they were always trying to get people into my operation one way or another.
Starting point is 00:19:19 I mean, I even, the Ross trials tried buying in. It's none, no thanks, all this other kind of shit. So I met with him, and I asked him, why do you want to work for me? And he said, you run the only clean shop on the street. He said, I was told if I want a big bonus, I have to bring in a guaranteed trade. and A, who was working for Lewis Bacon at that time?
Starting point is 00:19:50 They're all into that. They don't like risk. No, who doesn't? They want absolute guaranteed trades every time. Right, right. And that's like I've said with Safra paid for the
Starting point is 00:20:09 IMF dinner, rented the whole national and I'm invited down and it's like, see, come with us. we got them in our pocket. Right. You know, and I said, I don't give a shit. You know, what you have, my computer says Russia's going to fail, all right?
Starting point is 00:20:26 And I advise the people, the IMF, go to get money from. Right. I said, I'm not in. I'm sorry. Right. You know, but that's what they were always doing. And that's what people don't understand, like Russia, why did it collapse? Because they're all on the same trade.
Starting point is 00:20:42 Right. Then how do you get out? Right. Well, LTCM. was on the opposite end of that trade. Right, right. You get everybody on the wrong side of the trade, and then they have no way, there's no liquidity to get out.
Starting point is 00:20:54 There's nothing. Right. And then, like, and you're probably on the other side of the trade. I'm sorry, I'm taking you for, for, for, I'm going to take, I did. That's where I was named hedge fund manager. I was going to say, I go, why wouldn't you? I think we made 60% one month or something, you know. When the, when Russia collars.
Starting point is 00:21:14 Yeah. Yeah. And they're going to be. angry with you of course because I was going to say because you know well you had the you had the advantage you didn't have two Nobel Prize laureates on your on your team who never traded ever I know I know and that's the whole thing you know that's it Alex has a very dry wit Martin just to remind you no I know we know we know each other it's just it's why everybody's tried to copy our program of Socrates okay and they've never been able to do so because the problem is to be a programmer it's very nice and how to write code but a trader has a different skill set and he
Starting point is 00:22:02 doesn't necessarily communicate correctly to the programmer the programmer does like an academic doesn't understand the trading and go you know if I did it this way would work better right you know I have both sides right and that's what you know it's uh black rock and all these he bought all this real estate and then they can't get the hell out of it yeah they're they're gonna be in that problem in ukraine oh huge i mean and that's why so i think we should i i haven't really had a chance to to really dig into the the deal that trump put together with ukraine but it feels to me like he bought the place out from
Starting point is 00:22:43 underneath the people who had started this war in the first place. It feels to me like, you know, Sarmer went in the city of London, and they went in to secure the assets of Ukraine like they would normally do, and then assets strip it and use that as a means by which to collateralize all the debt day on the road, all the stuff that you talked about last summer, Alex. And Trump just walks in and goes, excuse me, no, this is mine. And you all owe us $350 billion, and we're the only ones who will actually treat you well enough to actually rebuild this. And that's it.
Starting point is 00:23:21 And they're gone. Like, I'm like, they've already lost Ukraine. And it's, and they're still, but they're still, they're still, you know, arming for war. It's insane. But they're not. But they're not for war. What I find, what I find fascinating is that the markets are still not realizing it. I, yeah, no, it's really, it's like British pound is,
Starting point is 00:23:42 doing nicely. No, not the pound, but the guilt. The guilt. Still there, 92, 93. I'm just like, this thing is falling over the cliff, but I think it's in the Wiley Coyote moment,
Starting point is 00:23:59 you know, we're like, they've gone over the cliff, but they're still kind of standing there. Well, the interesting part about it, I read something on Twitter the other day. It was a really interesting threat from a guy who was, I can't remember his name, Michael, whatever, was talking about the the Stephen Mirren paper about the Marago Accords, and he was going over that what he thinks
Starting point is 00:24:18 Besson is doing is issuing T-bills to run a basis trade on both the pound and the euro, and then using that by physical gold, and then covering the T-bills with the proceeds, and if he's doing that, that would make a lot of sense as to why we're still seeing the euro and the pound, you know, five, six percent above where they should be while they're in intense negotiations for a trade deal and Trump is, it's like, it's like
Starting point is 00:24:47 the vice, right? We're, we're, you've got a guy, again, a guy who knows how to manipulate markets. So this is to your point, Mark, about Scott Besson, which is that if he's doing something like this, he's pushing up their currencies while Trump is putting tariffs on them
Starting point is 00:25:01 and they're trying to fight Trump's tariff war. And like they're, they're getting squows on both sides. That's the vice. You know, you've got tariffs on one side, you've got the rising currency in the other. I'm looking at it as an American going, yeah, I'm enjoying the hell out of this. I got a big fucking smile on my face going, yeah, this is what I want to see out of my leadership. This is the kind of thing I want to see out of my leadership as opposed to constantly being betrayed
Starting point is 00:25:25 by a bunch of fucking global shitbags like Obama and Geithner and the rest of them. I'm over it. And then to have Jamie Diamond show up the other day in Palisades out in California and say, you guys haven't even started rebuilding it what are you out in your mind Jamie Diamond Jamie Diamond calls it blue tape not red tape
Starting point is 00:25:44 he's yeah Jamie Diamond yeah goes to in what capacity as the chairman of as the CEO of JP Morgan or you know
Starting point is 00:25:57 the unofficial he just visited basically yeah he visited but but why does he go right because everything Diamond does it's almost as important as everything Trump does well he's
Starting point is 00:26:06 I can't say a lot but I understand he's he is very much intuant he's the only one also at Davos that stood up and said Trump was correct she'd get the hell out of NATO
Starting point is 00:26:22 yes all during the Biden hunter I said that Jamie Diamond was actually the real secretary of state for the United States not Blinken because everywhere Blinken went to foment some geopolitical tension,
Starting point is 00:26:39 Diamond shows up about three weeks later, say, don't worry, don't listen to him, he's not really in charge. And so he was a counterbalance of the neocons who had captured the Blyde. Lincoln was just outright neocon, period. That was it.
Starting point is 00:26:53 Ukrainian. He wasn't qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury for anything. He wasn't qualified to be my secretary. Sorry, and I don't even need one. Maybe he could just push the button for drop bonds that's about it yeah yeah and say really dumb things i you knew from the beginning what what the what he set the tone immediately when they when we
Starting point is 00:27:16 they met in alaska with the chinese and they sort of dressing them down over you know the the the weggers and i'm like you're going to virtue signal that crap that's the way you're going to treat the chinese yeah this is i know exactly where the these four years are going and why you're doing what you're doing and then to i was thankfully i was able to figure out you know, what I thought Powell, how Powell and the Fed and New York, you know, it's, it's that moment where, like, New York finally looked up and went, my God, if these people were on the table, we're going to have nothing. They're going to, they're going to steal New York from us, and that cannot happen. And I think we, I think, the thing I, in all the years
Starting point is 00:27:54 we've been talking, Alex, the one thing I didn't really consider, I didn't think we talked about it a little bit, but it was really very clear that there was a sovereign to swing at the Pentagon that was also helping behind the scenes and I think that those was an internal coup yeah at the Pentagon yeah that's and I think it's very obvious now in hindsight it now it's what I found really strange is that you had Blinken you had Victoria Newland and Garley and if you look at their backgrounds all three claimed to have Jewish heritage from Ukraine and they're all families were persecuted by Russians.
Starting point is 00:28:37 Christia Friedland as well. How could you possibly get, I mean, I know a lot of Jewish people. Maybe one from that area. I mean, how do you get three from the same area, all three claiming Russia hurt their families in the same administration? Actually, the whole of the European, in many ways, the whole of the European Union is run by the same people. You have Kayakalas, is another one.
Starting point is 00:29:05 Ursula von der Leyen is another one. They're all of that ilk. So they were all placed in there, Christia Freeland here in Canada. And there's a couple others as well. And it's the same thing over and over and over again. And yeah, it was done on purpose. But what I find fascinating is these people have very, very marginal or no support
Starting point is 00:29:29 in the American politics. but somehow they are very disproportionately powerful. So where does that come from? I think we should need to understand where they comes from. So to me, the relevant observation is that their political positions completely aligned with the policy of the city of London, of the UK foreign policy establishment. And then there's a National Endowment for Democracy and Carl Gershman.
Starting point is 00:29:58 And it's funny. With, okay, so they have the power USAID. Samantha, they hide their tracks. So you can't see, you see that they're pursuing the same policy. You see that it's all somehow leading to Ukraine. But you don't see the connection, except that then Carl Gershman promotes Vladimir Karamorza. Vladimir Karamorza is one of those, you know, he's the standing for Alexei Navalny. Alexi Navani is gone.
Starting point is 00:30:28 So now there's Vladimir Karamorzai. Moore's a new one. And, you know, who hired by McCarramorza, our friend, Bill Browder. So there you get the, there you get the link up to the, to MI6 and HSBC and all of those bastards. And CCHQ and all the rest of it. And it's got to be money. You know, how else do all these neocons wield so much power over things? And if you look at the U.S. policy towards Ukraine, you see that they're being dragged, kicking and screaming. by the neocons and London. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:31:04 I was going to say, just to remind him to Martin's like, Alex and I met because he wrote an expose on Bill Browder, and I was introduced to him through Lee Stranahan, so Alex was the first time I ever sat in the host chair on my own podcast, which was terrible. But Alex was very gracious, and that's how we met, was over Bill Browder. So this is a conversation Alex and I had been having for what's seven.
Starting point is 00:31:26 I wasn't very gracious. Nobody was calling me. Yeah, well, I mean, soon, I thought it was, I mean, you sat with me. I'm, you know, so yeah, that's how it started, my relationship. We kind of got to know, because basically the book that I did is, The policy is Russia. Yeah, yeah. The company they were trying to get me to put $10 billion into, right?
Starting point is 00:31:47 Was, his Humboldage Capital, which was run by Bill Browder and Evan Saffer. And, um, so we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were Yeah, and at peak there were like $4 billion, no? So you would have been more than a majority investor than that. Yeah, I was told, that's how I knew they were setting up Yelton. I was told that, look, I said, my computer says it's not going to work. All right? So I'm not getting involved.
Starting point is 00:32:19 I'm not interested. Plus, I knew a lot of these people. And, you know, say, oh, come with us. we're going to buy and you could be telling him to be the seller on the side you know and i think i'm joining you and it's really you selling to me you know right you can't trust these people on the floor and um you know and you know you better it's more than just counting your fingers when you deal business with them you know so i would never wanted to get involved with them and but he was they told me that don't worry we got a show in we're going to replace the president
Starting point is 00:33:04 I was told the whole bullshit where in 99 oh yeah yeah so they thought they thought that Putin was going to was going to or they didn't know about Putin oh they didn't even know about no this was all going after after Yeltsin that they had already handpicked that they had already had picked that he that he that was going to be their guy like like Victoria new one yeah yeah they had already picked Yeltson's successor after they set him up yeah he was gonna be in right oh okay right and okay um so I was told the name and everything and when I refused even tried to call me Barisnowski uh-huh you know sorry I'm I don't know what the hell's going on at this point I'm not getting
Starting point is 00:33:48 involved in regime changes now Because once they did, I mean, Martin, once they got you on one thing, they have you on everything. Well, it got so bizarre. I mean, when I refused, my case then starts in September. And I, it was, Barasnovsky's bodyguard said that it was MI6 that took him out and it wasn't a suicide. no shock there yeah and it's it's Tuesday and I think the CIA took out Sappra so my case starts in September but and they were just lied to by the banks they had no no clue what the hell my case was even about and it was like um um um um
Starting point is 00:34:51 We were buying portfolies. We're not even managing their money. We were bailing them out, really. And so, but all the notes were in yen, not dollars. So they, and they look at it and, like, claim to the Ponzi scheme. And I went to my lawyers, this Ponzi scheme. He says, you pay people back 20% more than you were supposed to? I said, no, I don't know what the hell.
Starting point is 00:35:18 You know, when I figure it out, they were charged. everything in dollar terms but the yen went from 75 at 895 to 145 by 98 so I'm paying you back in yen but it cost me half the amount of dollars so then they didn't understand that then no Japanese would sign a complaint against me so then it turns into I manipulate the end to make them think they made money that's when Gretchen Morgensen says Marty I like you very much
Starting point is 00:35:54 I don't think you even you could do that you're good man but you're not that good exactly I mean they they just took whatever the bank said and
Starting point is 00:36:08 then by December 3rd Safre's dead so within three months and everybody's freaking out at that point then they start the contempt because I was moving for a speedy trial my lawyers go we got to get the hell in before they figure out what the hell they've done and um they started the contempt throw me in
Starting point is 00:36:30 contempt take the lawyers away just everything to stop this thing and but when saffers killed they go what the hell's going on here and because the guys I'm sorry about that uh I'll get back to the they didn't you know when saffa was killed all everybody freaks out my lawyers go do we have to get you a bodyguard or something what the hell's going on here right and initially I believe the bullshit that Putin killed them and all this stuff right because it was Hermitage Capital I knew he seized Hermitage Capitol then I thought okay well maybe he took revenge against Saffir. Sure. So then they have his reverse proffer by April saying, okay, fine, we know
Starting point is 00:37:24 you didn't steal any money. There's no shit. I mean, how do you get a billion dollars out of a bank and nobody knows? Right. You know, it's, come on. They said, we'll release you. We want you want you to plead guilty with a conspiracy with Saffir. I said, you realize what the hell you have stepped into right and I let it all out which I probably shouldn't have but I said because they had the bank they went after the bank in New York and that was the what Saffer had set up to remove Yelsoe right the so the New York Mellon the IMF money it's seven billion dollar money wanted so that's a parallel case and they didn't know what the hell was going on with that and
Starting point is 00:38:17 And I said, you know, do you really realize what you stepped into? I said, you're a bank in New York case. I happened to have known that the Minister of Finance of Interior was, from Russia, was in New York. That's like the head of the FBI, investigating the Bank of New York. And I said, I guess to my detriment, I said, you can't get past the Minister of Interior. I said, because all that money leads to Elton. You know, I let it all out. I was told, put in this money, okay, regime change.
Starting point is 00:38:55 I said, I'm not getting involved in this shit. I said, and I'm not going to plead guilty to some conspiracy with Safra. Because at that time, I did think Putin killed Safra. I said, I'm not putting my family at risk. They know I wasn't part of this, and I'm not going to say I was. And then it just turns into this Mexican standoff. but then later on I find out it wasn't
Starting point is 00:39:18 it wasn't Putin it was the freaking CIA they took him out because the same thing with Barrasnovsky they didn't want he was Barisnovsky wrote what is called his begging letters
Starting point is 00:39:32 to Putin to Putin and so now they couldn't say the Putin killed him because all right fine come home and then kill him right why kill him in London you know so
Starting point is 00:39:46 now you're asking who actually killed Barzovsky it's most likely it was MI6 and they said there's no way he could commit suicide what they were afraid of was that he wrote these begging letters and he was going to go back to Putin and reveal the whole damn thing
Starting point is 00:40:02 oh that makes perfect sense of course it's funny how all of these Russians seem to die by poison while they're in England in London What to me is. Scree ball.
Starting point is 00:40:16 And always in the most illogical way. Yeah. You can use some lead, but no, you use like novice. Amaricium 235, like all this stuff. And you're like, what are you out of your minds? Come on, guys. This is not even a good James Bond script. Yeah, I mean, it was just, but clearly being in the middle of all that,
Starting point is 00:40:38 the DOJ did not know. they were they were completely they had no idea what they stepped into at the time and then they couldn't get out of it and that's unfortunately the way the way it goes when I was doing the tour for the film the forecaster you had to go around all these different cities
Starting point is 00:41:05 and I think it was in Frankfurt and some woman stood up and she said oh this is what's wrong with American justice and some German lawyer stands up he's what are you talking about we do this to people here all the time yeah oh really and you're shocked to hear that that that that European justice is corrupt really you Alex Crane I am shocked because we this is your shocked we have our values and they're scaffolding around the world values but yeah I think it's Rassamakas said and about 2500 years ago justice is the same in all forms of government it's always the
Starting point is 00:41:40 self-interest of those in power and it's very true nothing's changed no because people don't change no that's that's why history repeats it's always human nature they were asking me about you know Alberta separating of course it's going to separate yeah you know I mean how many countries have ever survived you're you know eventually eventually everything it it's one of those things that's funny like I mean 20 years ago before I ever this public I was like ranting in my in my laboratory in in south Florida I was drawing up maps on my whiteboard of how the United States would break apart because I could see it coming
Starting point is 00:42:21 and I was reading the your missives as Jim Sinclair was public publishing on his site I read them then and I was thinking about this stuff then and and all of this stuff but you could just see it like I always I've always said like the United States is too big to govern itself and in many ways But I think where we are in this moment in time is, like, we have all of these consolidation of big power. So you have Europe trying to consolidate against Russia, which is a node, which is against China, which is a node. And the United States, which is a node. And we might have to go through a period of consolidation before another round of breakup. So that's, so as hard as Europe is trying to hold on to as much of the European Union is trying to hold on to as much of Europe as possible.
Starting point is 00:43:08 the United States has to respond by taking away their access to North America, by taking on Greenland, by taking in Canada. And then eventually, 20, 30, 40 years from now, in the next phase of the cycle, the United States will go, you know what, we don't need to be a part of ourselves. We don't need to be this big confederation anymore. We can, you know, start to break up along natural, you know, cultural lines. Because there's at least 15 different cultures in the United States, at least. Yeah, I mean, it's the only
Starting point is 00:43:40 reason the United States has survived is the structure. Yes. Okay, the taxation like per state. So like California, you're 13 and a half, Florida we have none. Right. So the problem with Europe is that
Starting point is 00:43:58 you have, it's really a centralized government is Marxism at another level. You're taking from one area that's more productive and you're handing it to one it's not. So instead of the individual rich versus the poor it's like you know, Croatia
Starting point is 00:44:14 was the rich one and they gave it to Serbia. And so they're doing that here in Canada. Alberta, if you took Alberta out, the rest of Canada is the third world country. Sadly. And so
Starting point is 00:44:30 whenever you get that sort of mix, historically it will always break up. And the United States, we don't have that mix in the sense that it's in the control of the states. Yeah, you don't have the redistribution where the state that generates a lot of wealth has to... Well, one of the things that I'm... So we're getting the migration from the blue to the red. But it's not at the federal level.
Starting point is 00:45:00 So one of the interesting things about it, in the last few months, I touched on it. yesterday in the talks, but I know I didn't have time because it's a more esoteric point. But in one of the recent issues of our newsletter, I went over the situation with the United States and how the monolithic Fed funds rate and the Banking Act in 1935 riffing off your discussion about the old Fed conception, I said, is there a connection between the Banking Act in 1935, which created the singular Fed funds rate as adjudicated by the New York Fed, did that what did that do to the United States in terms of political power? And so I charted the electoral college votes of California and Mississippi and New York
Starting point is 00:45:48 versus from 1900 to today as a percentage of the total electoral votes. And sure shit, in 1900, California and Mississippi both had nine electoral votes. By 2020 to 2020 election, California census, California is 54. and Mississippi has six. Because what happened was, of course, California was getting the preferential rate because California's cost of capital should have been, as it was growing,
Starting point is 00:46:15 should have been five, six, seven percent while Mississippi in trouble could attract capital to, you know, could attract capital as a two or three percent. And if we had the old Fed structure, that's exactly what would have happened. Right. And we didn't have that structure.
Starting point is 00:46:30 And it played out perfectly. And I'm like, so what's been the response? And California is, now so corrupt and so expensive that people are leaving and moving. What's interesting is that the other day saw it, Mississippi just voted to get rid of their state income tax because they're trying to attract capital. And they're trying to attract the capital that's coming. I mean, they are, and in Mississippi where they already have, um, uh, and manufacturing, auto manufacturing plants. And I was running into this the other day as I was, I'd be a, uh, being a musician. I was, I was, I got sucked into
Starting point is 00:47:06 the history of PV out of Meridian, Mississippi, which was born and bred in Meridian, Mississippi. They were, 30 years ago, they were the biggest music amplifier manufacturer, one of the biggest music instrument and amplifier manufacturers in the world. We all used PV gear when we were kids. Oh, really?
Starting point is 00:47:26 Because it was cheap and it was effective and it was incredible value. And they're also sturdily engineered, it was good roadworthy and everything else. And PV today is a shadow of itself after they had to go to China to do their manufacturing where they had for years
Starting point is 00:47:42 for decades built all of their their equipment out of the plant in Meridian, Mississippi. Peavy. Peavy. Yeah. And you're like Hartley Peavy was a genius.
Starting point is 00:47:55 Like in in electrical engineering terms, Hartley Peevy and Leo Fender are their equivalent in my mind. That dude was a bad ass. Where's Marshall manufactured? They're British. They're British.
Starting point is 00:48:11 They're all manufactured in China or Indonesia or somewhere else now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, Marshall, Vox, those are all British companies, Fenders and American company, Gibson's an American company. Bibi was Meridian, Mississippi, and this voice, literally the voice of Southern Rock. Like, they all, like, freaking Leonard Skinner and the dregs, Even Steve Morris, for Christ's sake. Like, I hate that, I'm a huge music geek.
Starting point is 00:48:41 It's like, this is my gig. I'm like, all of those guys used Peavy. It's crazy. And the company's a shadow of itself. And it's really sad. And it's, you know, and it's started with the Banking Act in 1935, ultimately. And then, you know, the global takeover of the Fed. And I think we're at the cusp of the reversal of that.
Starting point is 00:49:05 I talked about it a little bit yesterday, and I think that that's part of our process, is we have to stepwise move backwards to where we need to go. Yeah, I mean, like, they all seem to have copied the Fed after 35 and thought, oh, okay, fine, America is the way forward, blah, blah, blah. And I was here like in the 80s when there was big real estate speculation in Toronto. and it got so bad. People were actually demolishing buildings because they couldn't afford the taxes anymore.
Starting point is 00:49:43 It was bizarre, but they were, because the Bank of Canada had kept raising race to try and fight the real estate speculation in Toronto, they were putting farmers and miners out here in Alberta in bankruptcy. You know, and it was just, you know, that's what I used to get in, you know, deal with a lot with, with, when G5 came and they were, you know, all going to be manipulating. And so I dealt a lot of the central banks, and people don't realize they don't really know shit either. That's, if they did, they wouldn't be calling me in. Right.
Starting point is 00:50:29 You know, and I had one friend at the Bank of Canada, and it was after G5, and I'm sitting in there with them, and they actually had red phones connecting each other. And it's starting to ring, and I said, Pete, aren't you going to answer the phone? Not the goddamn Germans, I had got enough Deutsche Mark and not buying anymore. It was very interesting to have a front row seat to all this stuff. Sure. Even with the Euro, it was, like I can say it now, it was the Bundesbank was very much against it. Because, you know, as I've said, you know,
Starting point is 00:51:14 Herman Cole was just taking it in unilaterally. They were against the Euro. They were the ones feeding us all the information from every meeting, all the minutes, here it is. The Bundesbank was. Oh, yeah. Because they were absolutely against it. Right.
Starting point is 00:51:29 They said, you're right. this is not the way to do it. Right. And if I may ask, actually, Martin, and this just popped into my head. I had a friend of mine, a Swiss banker, telling me one day that the Swiss National Bank, the SMB, is actually a holy,
Starting point is 00:51:47 you know, the way he phrased it's a wholly own subsidiary to put in this bank. Is that, is the relationship that close or? I don't think so. Okay. When I met with them about the peg, it was... That's the Europeg that they... Yeah, I don't remember the guy's name, but he was an academic in charge of it. I think he was from the University of Geneva or something.
Starting point is 00:52:16 And I met with him that maybe a couple weeks before the peg broke. And I said to him, I said, look, I said, this is... Do you realize this is going to break? Right. And it's going to cost you a fortune. Well, we think we can hold a typical academic. And I said, well, I think the odds are on my favor. You know, any country that's ever attempted to do this has blown up.
Starting point is 00:52:43 I see, remember Britain, you know, in the ERM? So we have two pegs on the board today that are very, very important. Hong Kong and Saudi Rial. and I've been waiting for one of those two to break for years now and the Saudis keep, you know, making deals to try and hold the peg or now that I think they're trying to diversify their, their client, their currency list in order to be able to soft depag the real without any kind of, I mean, that's my read. I don't know if I'm right about that, in order to break the peg eventually
Starting point is 00:53:21 and allow it to the reality to refloat a little bit. So you guys keep talking. I have to take a break for a second. It's just, it's very interesting. They named me four X person the year because of the Swiss pay broke. You know, and I'm like, thank you very much. That was 16, no, 2016? That was absolutely spectacular.
Starting point is 00:53:46 Yeah, I was like. It was insane. I could not believe it. A lot of people blew up. But they're academics and no trading experience. And I tried to explain to him. I said, do you realize this is a guaranteed trade? What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:54:02 I said, I can borrow a trillion dollars. Put it on your peg. If I lose, I get my money back. If I win, I'm going to make a shitload of money. And he's just looking at me. They really don't understand what a peg is. They really don't. I said, this is like going to the casino.
Starting point is 00:54:20 You know, I play red or, you know, I put my money on red. If I lose, they give it back to me. Yeah. It's, you know, what do you want? You know, it's what Brenton Woods fell. You can't peg things. And then have a business cycle behind it, you know. It's my old, you know.
Starting point is 00:54:41 Forgive me for interrupting, put the dummy on the table, just admiring this conversation. Would you mind explaining a peg to the dummy in the room? a peg is basically when they fix a currency like they would say okay one Canadian dollar to one US period and the government tries to maintain that and so that seems like a poor decision it is and they've done this countless times I blew up every single time that what made I was talking about better better was that was that I had advised Maggie Thatcher keeping it out of the pay, out of the euro. She was probably the smartest head of state I think I ever met, honestly. That one report I did is just timely named after her. It had to be a couple years before the election,
Starting point is 00:55:44 and she said that the conservatives were going to lose before we ever heard about Blair and I said why and she said it's just time she understood trends and cycles and stuff like that that's why we kind of got along but she knew very well
Starting point is 00:56:02 that it was a backdoor to federalization of Europe and so she kept the pound out of the euro they staged a coup against her and to take all because they believed all the euro is going to be this wonderful thing to take and John Major even ran on for the election saying that he promised not to
Starting point is 00:56:31 devalue the pound and they stuck the pound in the ERM it was one the pound to be strong to show where and he overvalues it against the Deutschmark you know and this again it's an academic or a politician and he's just doing it for political reasons and then it starts getting attacked because I had advised thatcher then they're forced to call me in and I said to him I said look you know you overvalue the pound I mean this is going to break and so I said you have to devalue and and I was told we can't devalue because he ran And during the election, saying he wasn't going to devalue the pound. So when I do get to write my memoirs, one of these days or whatever, get to the time,
Starting point is 00:57:27 I wrote down a paragraph for him. And I'll tell you here where I took it from. And I said, we're going to allow the pound to float to seek its own level. Like, oh, brilliant. Same fucking thing, right? Right. And I took it from Richard Nixon, 1971. He stood up, and he didn't deviant.
Starting point is 00:57:47 value the dollar, he said, we're going to allow it to float to seek its own level. And I said, okay, fine, we can't devalue. I'll just take Nixon's words. I gave it to them. And they said, oh, brilliant. You should be John Ranger's speechwriter at that point. You know, I, yeah, it was all currency. Of course. It was always currency that dragged me into these different things. And it, I mean, it's been an interesting journey, but I've seen more than I wanted to, I think, a few times. Yeah, I think that's the understatement of the day. I think it's what's really fascinating as, you know, in our journey,
Starting point is 00:58:36 having been working, you know, obliqually with Alex for now for six, seven years, and I try to understand this stuck deep. deeper and deeper, what I come to realize is that I have to wonder in the grand scheme of things, as I said yesterday, this is that, does somebody figure out that currency arbitrage is the means by which to steal wealth for themselves? And if they did that, then everything kind of tracks at a certain level why the central banks are structured the way they are, why the wars have happened the way they are. I look, you know, again, in an earlier article I wrote earlier in the year before the one about the Electoral College votes and the
Starting point is 00:59:19 Banking Act, I was trading, I was tracing the, um, the trade balance between the United States versus Europe and I got into that whole period around the German hyperinflation after the treaty of Versailles, the Daws bonds, the rise of Hitler, the repudiation of the Daws bonds, um, which is what led to by Hitler, which is what led to, um, um, which is what led to, um, FDR, closing the banks and having to revalue the dollar. It was all part of that, and it all stems from Churchill going against the advice of everybody in the world to revalue the pound at the pre-world conversion rate to gold. He overvalued the pound on purpose in order to try and keep the Germans paying after the German hyperinflation. He still wanted his pound to flesh because he and the French still owed the Americans a ton of money and blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 01:00:15 blah, blah, blah, blah, and they were trying to extract every last dollar or every last Deutschmark out of them or mark out of them. And so there's both an incompetence of the managers that are put in charge in the moment, and then there's always there just seems to be this nefarious over, like you can't miss that part of it. And it's that interplay that becomes really fascinating, you know, as you try and study it over time. It's the way I've been, that's where I get, you know, a lot of the end, the, draw the conclusions that I have. And what's fascinating actually on top of
Starting point is 01:00:55 that is to say that once you start looking at it that way, you can almost predict what these people are going to do next. If you really think about, oh, they're acting this way on purpose, that means that their next move is going to be this. And, and it fits in with the cycle because they're losing money and they're losing political power so they're always going to respond like caged animals and you know it's it it's it's it all tracks with incentives and behavior and you know very basic human psychology it's not like it's not tough you know yeah Europe is is certainly crumbling at this point and this is why they need war right And, you know, it's, actually, Hannah and I went, we had a meeting in Berlin.
Starting point is 01:01:46 And the guy that owned this company was, believed all the press, anti-Trump, stuff like that. And he said to me, he said, so, you know, what's your computer say? This is like May before the election. and I said Peter says Trump's going to win and it's going to be big oh how can you possibly say that I said look it's not my opinion
Starting point is 01:02:12 I said my opinion is I know these neocons I've been to dinner with them and I said to them I think they're going to try and assassinate them because there's too much power that they're going to lose he says oh come on
Starting point is 01:02:25 after that happened it goes all right you're not in the conspiracy theories look I've had dinner with these people right all right I've looked at the mental eyes. Right. I've listened to the bullshit.
Starting point is 01:02:38 I mean, Bill Crystal in the 90s, which I found interesting, because if you look at General Wesley Clark's video, it's on YouTube, his speech from 2007. Right. And I met with, you know, I mean, Bill even spoke at one of our conferences back in the 90s. So I knew him. I thought he was more of an economic conservative. Right. It was in the White House, Chief of Staff to Quayal, et cetera. And he's the one that really made me begin to see the real true side to these neocons.
Starting point is 01:03:21 And his father had started the neocom movement and all that shit. And he was telling me, oh, we take out Saddam Hussein, Assad, out of Syria and Qaddafi will bring peace to the Middle East. I said, have you ever been there? Right. I said, they don't see themselves as all Syrians or, I said, it's tribal. It's tribal. It's Sunni versus Shiite and many more divisions beyond that. Yeah, and you really, you needed somebody like Saddam Hussein to keep them from killing each other.
Starting point is 01:04:00 otherwise they're all civil war and Erdogan is now going to be wind up in Syria right now and and Erdogan is being given Syria not for a variety of other reasons and there are a lot of terrible things are going to happen in Syria and there's no way of getting around that
Starting point is 01:04:18 but it's like it's it could be it could invariably it's like it could be far worse otherwise because you know depending on who takes control of Syria like the news this week is fascinating that we have we've been
Starting point is 01:04:32 in effect this kind of distracted with Cornerstone what's going on outside of you know it's been
Starting point is 01:04:38 finding out that Trump is really pissed off with Netanyahu for trying to get him involved in the war in Iran that he did not want
Starting point is 01:04:46 and now he's now Trump is out there saying I want a Palestinian and stay like and now the Israeli foreign minister
Starting point is 01:04:53 comes back this morning literally and says oh there will be consequences for that and we're like yeah what what are you going to do fart in our general direction
Starting point is 01:05:00 like you're You, we own you. Like, without us, there is no Israel. And when Trump came out and said, you know, while Netanyahu in the room saying, oh, that guy heard again, he kind of made a good move for himself over in Syria. And you watch Netanyahu's face, like, just dropped.
Starting point is 01:05:18 Everything is changing. And the size and scope of the game has been revealed of what they're actually trying to do. And I'm going to leave my trust in. Scott percent for a little while yet to see to see where we are because it looks to me like they have a plan well I don't think a lot of people know but there was a a war you know a Saudi Arabian desert war and the Saudis won so they got Saudi Arabia all right the opposition was given Jordan Jordan was supposed to be
Starting point is 01:06:00 the Palestinian state. So the Palestinians lost that. The king of Jordan married a Palestinian to try and blend it together. That never really worked. But these things are just so tribal, and the hatreds go back just so far. I just don't see any possible solutions, particularly when you're talking about religion, you know. The solution is that the big powers have to get out of the way and let them fight it out amongst themselves.
Starting point is 01:06:35 Because they're all acting far beyond their ability to create. They're all going, well, I got the big bodyguard behind me. The Israelis think that they've got the Americans, the Iranians in some ways think they have the Russians and or the Chinese. Everybody is acting in ways that they believe they have a bigger brother that will stand by them for whatever reason there is. And I look at that and I say, I don't know if you, Alex, you and I haven't really talked about this in a while,
Starting point is 01:07:02 so I'll turn the mic over to you in a second. But ultimately, I think that what has to be crafted is a way for both of the major powers to leave the area without there being a vast sectarian bloodshed. And giving Erdogan, giving Syria to Erdogan effect is the least bad solution of all of it. That's the way I've been reading. I mean, when you say both powers,
Starting point is 01:07:26 you mean who I mean the Russians and the Americans oh the Russians and the Americans okay in the same way that we're the same that way I think we're trying to get them out of Ukraine though Trump unfortunately I think has to take control of Ukraine in order to keep Europe out of it for collateral purposes right that's that's and I think that's very temporary I think that's a 20 I think that's a 10 or 15 20 year process rebuild the place get repaid the United States get out and then but in the process as Europe collapses then there's no chance that they're going to come in
Starting point is 01:07:57 and start this shit up again five or ten years from now. That's I think the, I think that's the gambit. The big problem is really coming out of France. It's Macron. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.
Starting point is 01:08:13 I've been in contact with a couple of generals who wanted the Senate to vote about war to overrule Macron. And they're like, he's stripping them of their rank and everything. And I talked to some people in France very well up in the government. They basically call him the Petit Napoleon.
Starting point is 01:08:39 And he honestly thinks, and this is just the typical deranged bullshit from that area, that they're just using Ukraine and they were trying to get Romania to do the same and to take as many Russians with you and then they can just walk in and McCrone thinks that he'll then have the 75 trillion in assets of natural resources of Russia and that's twice the size of the U.S. national debt
Starting point is 01:09:21 and the Roman Empire will rise in the dust. And the funny part about it is that if anybody knows anything about France, they know that the president only serves at the pleasure of the military. If you piss off the French military, which is a very powerful lobby in France, you're in trouble. And if he's pulling an Obama, right? Yes, yes. If he's pulling an Obama into the French military, he's going to wind up on a lamppost.
Starting point is 01:09:48 Sooner rather than, right? Yeah, I know something. people who are close to the French military circles and pretty much the pervasive belief is that this ends in a civil war in France yeah yeah and they say that we're preparing for that that's very new I didn't I did not know that that's interesting I hear the same thing from Germany yeah yeah yeah actually and and and what I'm hearing from the Italians is that they're just hunkering down hoping they can it like they can control the deep state
Starting point is 01:10:21 So now let's talk about the Pope. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I don't know what to think about the Pope. Because I don't quite know either, right? But if Trump went to the funeral to effectively say, okay, look, this is all done. And I don't know. I can read it like a couple of different ways. The American Pope being this is the continental.
Starting point is 01:10:51 of Europe through the Vatican are like we're going to funnel billions in to continue to destabilize the United States and start another summer of violence that makes 2020 look like an Amish barn raising or it's a message from Trump that we are now going to that as Americans we are in control of what's going on in the Italian deep state and I do think what I've been thinking is that Sergio Matarrella the president in Italy wants out he's supposedly sick he's 83 years old he's been the guy that has defended the Italian deep state
Starting point is 01:11:25 and Davos and Europe in Italy for 15 years now. He's the guy who got Mario Mont. All those technocratic caretaker governments all went through Matarella overstepping his authority constitutionally and everybody just like turning a blind
Starting point is 01:11:41 eye to and going on if Matarela wants out is that because the tide is shifted against him? Is he really sick? And who's going to be his replacement? So I think the Pope and the Italian president are tied at the hip. And I've been talking to Italians about this for a while.
Starting point is 01:11:56 They were freaking out like two years ago when Matarillo signed the Treaty of Carinale which effectively ceded northern Italy to fucking France. And it's like this is not absolutely no. And so something has changed and
Starting point is 01:12:11 the American military I think is making their presence felt in Italy in a way that we have not seen since World War II. That's very interesting. actually because you know what what I've been what I've been observing I was just observing this I don't know you know like I I see the connections but I don't know what's behind it sure so I've been going to this this this thing called Eurasian integration conferences Verona Eurasian integration conferences
Starting point is 01:12:39 it used to be organized in Verona and now they're doing it went to Bakuazirbejan and Samarkand and UAE so it's it's every year in a different place I kind of went there and I thought, I was wondering like, am I in a den of vipers? Why am I here? I don't quite understand why they invited me, but okay, you know, like you go there, you mingle, you talk to people, you find out what you're going to find out. And I noticed that it's a very high budget production. I'm thinking, who the hell is financing this?
Starting point is 01:13:11 You know, this is kind of, because they, you know, to Samarkand, they brought all these A-level Italian musicians and bands to, perform in in in freaking kyrgyzstan right in the middle of norway um i think like what is all this about i don't get it and and all the talk there is multipolar integrations russia good uh iran good china good and there's all these italians in this room and it's low it's it's actually plain loads of italians that's i actually flew on one you know like they said like well you know you just like come up to Verona and then we have charter flight and and so that's what I did. And then, you know, so I kind of like check things out and I realize this is one of the G-Sibs
Starting point is 01:14:03 that's financing this. It's hidden. It's not obvious, but it's one of the G-Sibs. And and then here's what happens. And then I'm wondering about Trump. Like somebody's behind it. This is not just him. Right. I mean, he's a billionaire, but he's not that. And then there's Elon Musk who comes on board. What is all this about? Well, already in the, already during the Biden administration, Elon Musk got a major contract with the U.S. Space Forces, which is weird, but I remember that space forces were set up by Trump.
Starting point is 01:14:44 And it was really controversial. Everybody was freaking out. Like, why is he doing this? And I thought, who knows? Maybe he's doing it because he wants a brand new military structure there. Yes. That he can staff with people loyal to him because everything else is compromised. And so they give a major contract to Elon Musk.
Starting point is 01:15:08 I saw like, all right, whatever. And then literally like within two weeks, this same GSI that's all over the multipolar integrations makes a massive investment into SpaceX. you understand and so and I noticed also that some of the people who are in these European integration conferences are Jesuits
Starting point is 01:15:33 you know like I I talk to them and it was like oh yeah I'm a Jesuit that's why I thought like holy shit I'm in a den of vipers but I don't know maybe and then you know like I drive by Verona
Starting point is 01:15:46 probably 10 times a year And every time I drive by Verona, exactly there, there's like this big giant Tesla thing. You know, like, it's a building you can't miss because it must have cost a lot of money to build because it's just these massive glass panels that you've never seen the size of glass panel. So, and I'm thinking like, what the hell, why the hell does Tesla have this giant thing in the middle of nowhere in Verona? you know so I think that that's somehow the linkage I think I think there's got to be like a civil war between between banking families going on and a part of that and so you know it makes sense to me then that because also Steve Bannon is linked up with the Jesuits oh yeah yeah and he's he's been all
Starting point is 01:16:42 he's been very very opposed to the pope the new pope the old pope francis yeah yeah so he's been working with the jesuit i can't i can't remember off the top of my head but i remember reading articles uh interviews with steve bannon where he was uh he even had an office somewhere i think in italy at one of the jesuit convent or something so there's a so yeah you know now that you mention all this i realize there's there's the fact that maybe this is one source of support for Trump. It is absolutely. And then Trump suddenly has this
Starting point is 01:17:25 influence into who's going to be the next pope and the next pope turns out to be an American. And we got a hand-picked. And Elon Musk and Steve Bannon. And it all kind of comes together and suddenly Italy becomes really important. And they have Georgia Maloney there. and I think that maybe Italy is going to be the epicenter
Starting point is 01:17:48 of EU disintegrating. And Trump just happens to be reinforcing Greece with a whole lot of men and material and whatnot from Poland, then Germany and everything else is all moving into Greece. You've got the Balkans all beginning to coalesce around. I saw something
Starting point is 01:18:07 right before I came upstairs. I was looking at my Twitter feed and prominent Ukrainian account. I don't know if he's like four ministers or something. One of these guys, complaining about the Hungarians doing covert operations of the Transcarpathia to effectively betray the Ukrainians to do fact-finding.
Starting point is 01:18:27 I said at the beginning of the war that Hungarians are going to get Transcarpathia back. The Poles are going to get Lviv back or Lovath back. This is going to happen. And you're starting to see this whole process play itself out. like I expect I'm telling you
Starting point is 01:18:42 Rump Europe is coming they're going to cut they're going to cut France and Germany off from the northern coast of the of the Mediterranean and they're going to turn the Mediterranean into an Italian and Greek
Starting point is 01:18:56 lake just like they've turned the Black Sea into a Russian Turkish lake and now we just have to bottle the Europeans up so that they've and freed the British and then take Greenland, Canada, and bottle them up, and let them, and as I like to put it, turn them into a John Carpenter movie, and let them die. And we get the end of this 400-year period
Starting point is 01:19:22 of history linking up with your cycle, your macro cycle, that that's what I'm talking about here. I got thinking about all of this stuff in these terms, just simply thinking about the way you've described the cycles, and it all lines up with the solar cycles, it all lines up with all the things that are happening. And you're like, is this really happening? And then there it is. I'm like, yeah, it's happening. And then I have to like stand here and go,
Starting point is 01:19:46 did we choose this? Like as I talked about yesterday, is this where we're going here? I'm okay with this. Like, it, it just, I can see it happening. You create a rump, you create a rump, landlocked Ukraine, which we rebuild.
Starting point is 01:20:06 You create a rump, landlocked Europe, which finally breaks down that four to five hundred year history, what I like to call the era of the central bank, starting with the Dutch Central Bank and then the Bank of England, and then to today, are we at the verge of a complete revolution and the way humanity organizes itself? And what does that look like? That's what our computer has been showing. Right.
Starting point is 01:20:34 You go through these cycles of, you know, the American Revolution was against monarchy. And then the French said, that's a good idea, so they joined. These things turned to be a contagion. You know, even if you look back when communism fell in 89, Tenement Square, then six months later, Berlin Wall Falls, people go, oh, it's communication. I said, no, it's not. If you knew your history, Rome overthrew its Tarquin Kings in 509, And within six months, Athens overthrows its tyrants, and democracy's born.
Starting point is 01:21:08 Okay, all right, fine, one's democracy, one's republic. But it's a revolution that it becomes a contagion all throughout the Mediterranean area. And this is the end of, we go through six of these cycles. And 2032, it's it. I mean, that's where, you know, the guy that was doing the movies on me, he asked me, says, how does it feel to live through your forecasts? I said, not so great, but, you know, it's not me personally. Right, right, right, right.
Starting point is 01:21:46 This is what the computer said. My job is to say, this is what it said, okay? It's not my opinion. It's not something I want to see. But this is my old PA used to have that little stick figure with the signs. It happens, you know. One of those was really funny is, like, I've been, I can't speak for Alex, certainly,
Starting point is 01:22:04 but I can tell you that my entire life, I've been, I've looked at this and gone, I grew up in, you know, I grew upstate New York, that was NYPD, and I remember him having to pledge his pension, you know, the cops pledging their pensions to help bail out the city in the late 70s. And I remember that being a big deal with my house. I mean, eventually they got paid,
Starting point is 01:22:27 but it was used as the pension, the cop's pension, the fireman, was used as collateral in order for the city to secure the loans necessary to keep it running. And all I remember, you know, thinking about it was that I kept thinking that this whole thing is going to collapse. If we can't pay for this shit now, how are we going to pay for this 30 years in the future? I'm nine years old, 10 years old. So interestingly enough, I'm just, as you were speaking, Martin, one of those, what was now reviewing my entire life going, of course I seek out that information that would help me because I've had had this.
Starting point is 01:23:02 this sort of Damocles hanging over my head my entire life. The impending apocalypse has been here, it's coming. And I'm like, how does it feel to live through all this? Well, for me, it's been like trying to figure out what it looks like. And is there a way of, you know, not avoiding it, but at least understanding it. And that's, and I think that that's led us to this table. I don't know about, you know, I don't know if you've got a similar thing in your experience. But I know I've talked to Sean about some of this.
Starting point is 01:23:30 Well, I can tell you that. I mean I knew you know Klaus Schwab back in where I was talking about the gay own family and stuff like that yeah we open up an office in Geneva and so about den of wipers back the reason we became the largest FX advisors because it used to go out over telex right so one One transmission per day, it was $75. We had people paying $300,000 and communication costs just to get the daily reports.
Starting point is 01:24:15 Okay, so that's why we ended up with the biggest institutions because nobody else could have possibly afforded it. So we were opening up an office in Geneva. The idea that, okay, fine, we'd open an office there, send one there, and redistributed from there to bring down. the costs. Oh, right, yeah. And that's when I had no, I mean, we were talking about it before, about know your
Starting point is 01:24:41 client, that all that stuff came in in the 90s, but in the 80s, you didn't know shit. You know, it's stepped into there, the Gay-owned family, which was the opposite, I thought I was dealing with the Hilton hotel chain, Noga Hilton's. Noga is Geyone backwards. They had all the oil wells in Nigeria. And then Nigeria went through a coup, and so they were nationalized, and they lost that. So a lot of people thought that Geyones were going to go down. And then they took in silent partners.
Starting point is 01:25:24 The Simon partners were Khashoggi, the arms dealer, Gaddafi, and Marcos. and they had offered me $5 million just to use my name. They wanted to open up Armstrong brokerage house and took me to dinner and everybody's there. Met Schwab and I mean, they invited everybody from Geneva in. So I, and I just thought, nobody gives you $5 million just to use your name. Oh, you don't have to do anything. I said, you know, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:26:00 no I just you know something just didn't sit right of course and they had a big you know poster they were building this it was Harold Square in New York City big tall building and each floor was going to be a different shopping center and so I thought that was theirs they invite me to the to the grand opening in New York after Ferdinand Marcos leaves the Philippines and all the gold disappears I got the FBI coming in my office asking me where Marcus's gold is I said I don't know Marcus
Starting point is 01:26:36 you know he's talking about they didn't believe me come on you're on his VIP list for the grand opening of Harold Square right I thought the guy owns over it turned out of his Marcus he also had a house in Princeton
Starting point is 01:26:52 about five miles maybe from my office right oh come on you didn't know him he must have bought it The way they create conspiracy theories that he bought a house in Princeton to be near me and all this shit, you know. Then you got to ask the question that did they do that in order to just set you up? I mean, like, you know. I don't know. I mean, it, but.
Starting point is 01:27:17 If they target, because they, you know, if they're, they want to work with you, like, the way these people operate, like, dude, like, they set their plans of motion. I ended up managing money for Gaddafi twice you know and back then you back office you know they they try to do the due diligence and we're trading okay and they come back do you know
Starting point is 01:27:43 you're managing money for I said yeah a sort of group no it's Gaddafi I said what? And then that's when the U.S. had the sanctions against Syria and I'm going to oh I mean Libya and I'm going oh shit you know and I said got shut down the account right opens it again under another group they do the same i learned um
Starting point is 01:28:07 as i was telling Alex i get a call of banks says come on in we got a client wants to give you 500 million to manage and you go in there's a curtain between you and him i said who's on the other side you know i said no thanks you know this was geneva in the 80s right so why they came through with the know-your-client share. Right, right, right. I see. You just had no freaking clue. Obviously, the FBI didn't know either.
Starting point is 01:28:34 Right. Yeah, and I had, we had a company called Granitex, which was like the biggest green company in Geneva. And I'm getting requests for all kinds of studies for platinum and geopolitical stuff,
Starting point is 01:28:49 and I'm going, what the hell's the green company went with all this? Right. You know, and so I went to lunch with, I had a, B.S. at the time and I asked, I said, what's with Granitex? And you know, he says, oh, Marty, you don't know? I said, no. He said, they were fun for the KGB. I said, okay. Thank you very much.
Starting point is 01:29:12 It was, it was one giant masquerade party. Sure. And that's why after that, I said, look, I'm only going with public corporations. There you go. That's it. You know, I don't know who the hell is anybody anymore. It was really wild. the 80s and but they were all trading I even had this group I thought they were Irish where red hair you know white skin it turned out to be the counter-revolutionary army in Iran trading commodities to buy arms to fund a revolution against the Ayatollah KGB CIA they're all trading commodities in the 80s to make money to fund some covert operation it was just like the 80s was like oh
Starting point is 01:30:07 holy shit it's just absolutely crazy but um wow it was enlightening gentlemen I I know there's other things to do today I don't want to end because I've just been sitting here I just have a quick question for Martin what do you think happens to Euro the pound which one which one crashes first probably the euro probably the euro probably the euro I think well then mainly because all the you know the least the podcast I'm doing from Italy and Croatians or and the I would say two years ago they would say you think the euro is going to crack now it's like when yeah yeah it's it's definitely shifted Everyone that I talk to, it's like, you know, how much more we got to endure this?
Starting point is 01:31:00 Well, I think the U.S.-UK. trade deal, depending on the terms of it, may be a sign of surrender. Like, there's a lot going on. We still have the looming June of 2026 where the U.K. is not out from underneath the – this is a divorce decree where they got 10 years after the vote where they're still on the hook for all this. So, you know, I don't think Trump wants to destroy England. Does he want to destroy City of London? Yes. City of London, yes. England, no.
Starting point is 01:31:28 He wants to preserve England. He's trying to protect that, I think. So if I were going to make the case between the pound and euro, I would choose the euro simply because that's where Trump is going to put his. But I also think that individual central banks in Europe, you know, the Bundesbank and the French. I think they're printing money. It's like the Soviet Union. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:31:50 You know, it fell apart in 1991. For another year, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, they all printed rubles to fund their own needs. And then you had January, February, 292, you had inflation take off like 500 percent overnight. Yeah. Because they just like piled some, and I think that the European Union, individual central banks on the European Union are doing exactly the same thing.
Starting point is 01:32:20 Well, I can tell you, though, like, when you're looking at, like, German-Italian bond spreads, the collapse between the amount of money that has moved into Italy versus Germany over the last three years since they, since she started doing yield curve controls insane. The Italian 10 years down under 3.7%, that 3.7%. Makes sense. And, well, they have stable leadership. Like, and they have the Americans now. So, like, someone got the notice that the United States.
Starting point is 01:32:47 States is defending Italy against Germany and France and I think the bond spread is a good indicator of all the things we just talked about also why I say the
Starting point is 01:33:04 you know the the euro is the when the why I warned them about the structure was to be disastrous is that we saw it in 2010 with Greece. Yep. Once one
Starting point is 01:33:21 goes down, it sets off a contagion. Yep. All right. So the real risk in Europe is that one of them has a problem. Yeah. Yeah. And then people are going, oh shit, who's next? And then it will just go
Starting point is 01:33:37 from France. I guess LaGuard is absolutely like trying to control everything. And she no longer has the U.S. Treasury Secretary helping her out. So what I'm seeing is, especially with the inversion of the U.S. The U.S. yield curve, like they're selling 30s and they're buying twos in order to try and manage the market's perception of where the risk is and where the yield spreads should
Starting point is 01:33:59 be. She's been doing this year for three years now. But now they're having to spend their own money to do it. Before they were getting Johnny Allen to spend our money to do it, now they're having to put their money on the table. That's why ultimately, I think that's what we're dealing with, is that eventually they're going to run out. Margaret Thatcher, your friend Margaret Thatcher, always said the great thing, the thing about socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money. Yeah, no, I mean, Maggie was, Maggie was always very on point. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:27 She knew, she knew, she said, this is a backdoor to federalization. Yes. And that's why she wanted to get to keep it the hell out. And, uh, so. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know. I do have to get going because we have a, no, I know, you, uh, I know, you, uh, I know, you, uh,
Starting point is 01:34:46 and I got to get there first. No, I appreciate, you know, to the people who didn't make it. I just, you know, and to the people who did make it. This has been a real treat and honor to have you guys, you know, here in Calgary for the event. And then, you know, this was about as impromptu as it gets. I ran into Tom at breakfast this morning. And I'm like, I don't have anything for tomorrow, you know, as people are listening this Monday. I'm like and yet everybody's sitting in this hotel I'm like I should just make a couple calls and make it and I don't know you know all we need is a big thing of cigars here and and it's it's almost it's just it's just you know I'm sitting here and I'm like you know this is a surreal moment in in a podcaster's life I think you know just maybe another mark on the journey of you know putting things together the first one happened in 2023 when you two and I'm pointing at Alex and Tom
Starting point is 01:35:43 Tom landed and came to Lloyd Minster. And then Martin, now to have you here a couple of years later in 2025, I just want to say thanks again for all of you showing up and being here. And I hope you enjoyed yourselves. And I don't know. I got nothing else to say. Just thank you again for being here. You didn't bring me here on as 40 below.
Starting point is 01:36:06 No, but Sean, thank you for organizing. I think it was a very worthy event. Yeah, for everybody who was involved in making sure and helping you get, this get through doing this thing in calgary which i know was a big deal for you yeah um it was great to see for me yesterday the best part of yesterday was seeing just how much um you got validation and you and nick and everybody got validation for the work that you put into this and i'm pleased this punch and you know humbled to be a part of it so the more of us globally um as i i notice I'm doing these podcasts all around the world and it's it's obviously they're coming to me because
Starting point is 01:36:48 they were the same mindset yes so it I see it rising yes yeah uh globally um yeah because it's it's clear yeah yeah I mean people were just like they're recognizing that something's wrong yes yeah um and so they're not all just sheep waiting to be slaughtered you know yeah not at all Not at all. Gentlemen, thank you again. Mr. Newman. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

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