The Benny Show - Baby Formula CRISIS: Food Rationing and Hungry Children in America. What is happening and why?!

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Savanah Hernandez joined The Benny Show to talk about the Baby Formula Shortage hitting parents across America. Phillip Patrick, Precious Metals Specialist at Birch Gold also joined us to talk about the latest inflation numbers. Fight back against Bidenflation, preserve your wealth with Birch: http://birchgold.com/benny Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. Today is Friday, May 13th, 2022,

and inflation is surging. People are hungry for leadership and the hungriest people in America are babies who cannot find baby formula anywhere in the United States. Savannah Hernandez joins us to talk about the baby formula shortage and will also be joined by Philip Patrick of Birch Gold to hear what you can do against Biden inflation. My name is Benny Johnson and this is The Benny Show. Welcome to The Benny Show. We cover a lot of the left crying on this show. They are weeping and sobbing. The tears and the salty tears gush out of their faces like old faithful. The rivers run through the streets of leftist tears. And as they cry,

we wish to meme them crying and we wish to make memes that make them cry. And the circle of life continues and it continues on our new exclusive show with Parler. Parler.com, ladies and gentlemen. I'm at Benny Johnson on Parler, and we have a show called The Left Can't Meme. It's amazing. We have so much fun on this show and play for you a lot of memes, viral videos, hilarious Twitter comments, and so on on the show. We have a riot, and the reason we do it on Parler is because they're for free speech. They are the only platform out there that is 100% sensor free and they want to bring this community all together. And what better way to do it than memes, memes of libs crying, memes of the sadness from the left, memes that would definitely get

you banned on other social media platforms. We go in on parlor.com. Please hop on over to parlor every Friday at 2 PM. We drop a new episode of the left can't meme. And it is amazing. We're very proud of this product. We have a ton of fun. And so please, ladies and gentlemen, tune in parlor.com at Benny Johnson, your boy going in on the memes. See you there. We're living right now in America in the year 2022. We're a first world nation, the first of the first world shortages, scarcity and rationing is, of course, something that our great grandparents talked about during the Great Depression. It's not something that we live with. Come on. We're modern people. We have Wi-Fi on planes and nobody can stop America. Well, except for a geriatric old man who is shuffling around the White House inside of a mustard stained bathrobe, who's essentially screwed up everything in this country. And the

list grows ever longer. You can see the inflation crisis, the crisis in Ukraine, crisis with gas, crisis with inflation, all of it horrifying, all of it crisis, the crisis in Ukraine, crisis with gas, crisis with inflation, all of it horrifying, all of it terrible, some of it deadly, actually, whether it be Afghanistan's crisis or the crisis on the border. These are deadly crises that the Biden administration has wrought upon all of us. They're tragic and they're sad. But as a young parent of two kids under two, I've got to tell you, nothing has hit my heart more like this baby formula crisis. There are many people in our little cohort here. And if you're a young parent, you know this, you kind of travel and hang with a group of other young parents and they have their

babies and you chill out and your babies all throw up and eat and whatever. And you're hanging and that's just how it goes, right? You hang out with other parents. Man, I know personally three or four families that cannot find baby formula right now. Their children have various protein deficiencies or lactose intolerant. There are a lot of reasons to use baby formula. Some women can't produce milk. And so that's the reason why they use formula.

But there is an incredibly long laundry list of reasons why a child may need formula. My child has eaten formula from time to time. My wife used to travel a lot for work. And so we made sure that daddy was ready with a bottle, right? This is a day-to-day life thing for parents, and it's a life or death thing for parents. And it's truly, truly grotesque. It hits so close to home that even the New York Times is reporting on this issue right now. Reading to you from the New York Times, parents are panicking because they cannot find baby formula. Baby formula shortages leaves desperate parents searching for food. The New York Times goes into a long 2000 word essay talking to

parents and talking to the mothers who are freaking out because they cannot find food for their children right now. It's amazing that we are talking about this right now in modern day America. Over at the New York Post, parents stressed over baby formula shortages and limits. It's insane. Baby formula shortages have turned into a nationwide food crisis for parents across the country, desperate to feed their infants. Retail outlets have seen a 30% drop in availability of some popular brands due to supply chain issues, labor shortages, inflation, and safety concerns. In February, Abbott Nutrition recalled formula made in its Michigan plant and shut down the facilities after two infants died. Several others were hospitalized after consuming the product.

The FDA has not cleared the factory to reopen. It's unclear if they will resume. Meanwhile, the feeding frenzy for some New Yorkers searching as far as Wisconsin to get formula for their little ones. As far as Wisconsin, this is insanity. And my sister-in-law is telling me that she has had to essentially be turned away at multiple stores because of rationing. Rationing for her little infant who's nine months old, who has a rare protein deficiency, can't get formula, can't feed your kid. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? How real has it gotten? Well, very few are covering this because

it makes the regime look so bad. But somebody who is not worried about that at all is independent journalist and multiple banned accounts because she tells only the truth, Savannah Hernandez. You've seen her on Tucker Carlson's show. You've seen her viral clips, no doubt. We've played them on our show, and we're very excited to have Savannah join us now. Savannah, you are an extremely independent and honest journalist. You walk out into the street and you show people what the reality is out there instead of sitting inside a little studio and talking about it. And we commend you for that. Well, thank you so much, Benny. I'm so excited to be here. And I'm so excited that you're willing

to highlight my reporting, which has been banned so many times. We all know that Joe Biden is creating the Disinformation Governance Board because we really can't trust anything that we see with our own eyes or, you know, hear with our own ears. So I appreciate you actually highlighting those of us in America who are willing to tell the truth because it's getting harder and harder to get it out. Did you know that not since the pandemic have stocks slid as much as they slid just last month? Quarterly earnings are abysmal. The economy is shrinking and mortgage rates are going through the roof because the Fed knows that an overheated economy and hyperinflation is going to lead to disaster. And it's already here, ladies and gentlemen. Stagflation and the worst economic climate in many decades is upon us. What are you

doing to protect your wealth? In the Johnson family, we're using our friends at Birch Gold. We are buying precious metals and diversifying into something of real value. My wife and I invested for the first time last month and Birch made it so easy. For the first time, we have our future protected by precious metals. We diversified into a tax-sheled retirement account with gold, and it couldn't have been easier. Please text Benny to 989898 to secure the gains you've made while you still can. Every roller coaster comes to an end. Every night at the bar comes with a hangover, and we are here. Do not get a headache over losing your fiat currency because of the

dumb decisions made in Washington. Invest in something of real value. Gold, ladies and gentlemen, through Birch Gold, the only people I trust with my future. Text Benny to 9898 and start protecting your future today with gold. Savannah, I would like to bring you on and talk to you all about the number of bans that you've gotten and why you've been banned. But anyway, we're thrilled to be able to platform your reporting. The reason we suggest that you the ministry of truth, if we have to have a ministry of truth, we hope that you get that nod someday. We think you'd make an incredible minister of truth because your accounts spit pure truth and you spit truth about this issue. And it really shook us to the core. I mean, I'm a new parent and I saw your most recent video about baby formula. And I want you to explain what you did for this video to our audience and what you found

in researching this topic. Sure, Benny. So basically, as soon as I see a big headline break and yesterday's or earlier this week's was the baby formula shortage, which apparently has been actually happening for a couple of months, but now it's gotten so bad that the administration is being asked about it, that reporters are asking Jen Psaki to respond, that people are wondering why the FDA hasn't responded. So I wanted to go out into the streets of America, as I like to do, and say, okay, is the formula shortage really as bad as the media and these moms on Twitter are saying it is. So I went to eight separate stores

across two separate cities here in Texas over the span of a couple of hours. I talked to moms off the record. Not many of them, of course, wanted to be interviewed with their babies because they're out shopping. But I talked to moms off the record. I asked them what they were experiencing. And I went and I got B-roll of all of these empty shelves. And the fact that there really is no baby formula in the stores here in America, I went to Target, CVS, Sam's Club, Walmart, Bye Bye Baby, all of these stores where you should be able to find formula in excess, and they were all there. Even scarier, in some of these areas, the baby formula was actually locked up behind glass boxes. Well, just empty shelves at that point. But just to give everybody an idea of where our country is currently at, not only are

the grocery shelves empty, not only is baby formula being completely bought up, but it's also being locked up behind glass cases because apparently the theft of this product specifically is so high. So you saw actual rationing taking place here in America in 2022? In the footage that you guys will play, there actually are a couple of signs that I did take a video of that say only five canisters per customer. We're limiting customers. Even moms are telling me on Amazon, they can't go find their baby's formula online. It's completely out of stock. One mother telling me that she paid upwards of $150 for a canister of formula. And at times we're just getting very tough for these young parents.

And, you know, we have a lot of people in the community saying, oh, we'll just breastfeed your child. Simple, quick fix. Well, a lot of moms have medical issues. Some babies have very sensitive stomachs. I was talking to a mother who said that her baby has been constipated and she can't find the formula that her baby needs. So these moms are having to resort to feeding their baby's formula that they know is going

to make them sick in an effort to just try to feed them. So very heartbreaking to hear the plight of these young moms who are just trying to help their children survive in modern day America. It truly is. I mean, unbelievably tragic. You kind of have to see it for yourself. And I think we should just play the clip right now. This is Savannah Hernandez reporting outside of Bye Bye Baby. Now we're hearing that there's a national shortage for baby formula and that 40 percent of the top brands are completely out of stock. So we're going to be going to Walmart, Target, Bye Bye Baby, Sam's Club, Costco to go see if the shortage is really as bad as the media is saying. Let's go check it out.

Okay guys, so we're inside of a Bye Bye Baby right now and these are the shelves. They're pretty much empty. We talked to a couple moms outside who said that they've been having a really hard time finding formula and so this is what we're seeing right now what i will point out regarding this shortage is that there was a recall on formula back in february which is definitely contributing to this however many of the signs these stores have put up also point to supply chain issues and stores have started limiting the amount of formula a customer can buy this is the second target that we've been to we first went to a target in louisville and now we're in fr. And as you guys can see, it's pretty much the exact same thing here. Grocery stores, pretty much empty, no formula to be found. I've talked to a couple

moms who were telling me that people have spent upwards of $150 on formula on Amazon. Some moms can't even find the formula that their baby requires. One mother telling me her child was constipated, needed a specific type of formula, couldn't find it. So that's what's going on. So we simply saw nothing short of what you would expect to see inside of perhaps a third world country or a failing regime. Savannah Hernandez showing us the empty shelves throughout Texas. Are you hearing from these mothers? You must be now about the shortages. I am, Benny. And I actually took to my Instagram account to reach out to mothers across the nation because many people are saying, OK, well, there was a recall of formula back in February. So that's what this is tied to. It's

not a supply chain issue. We can't tie it to the administration or their shutdown of our government or supply chain. And so I went and I talked to several mothers who, again, were saying that this has been a months long issue. Unfortunately, it has just reached its peak, which is why we're seeing so much coverage of it. But I reached out to these moms on Instagram. And if I could just read a couple of these messages to you, Benny, I have this one from a mother who says there are so many medical moms in my Facebook group affected. My daughter was born with a heart defect and currently has a G tube. And the G tube group is all moms posting desperately seeking a specific formula because a lot of these kids in the group have very complex medical needs and can really only tolerate one kind of formula. So these moms reaching out, another one saying that she has a five month old. She can't produce milk because the area that she is living in has such high crime rates.

She actually just dealt with a car theft that made her so stressed that she stopped producing breast milk and is now having trouble feeding her child. And on top of that, she can't even go by formula. So what I tell you, we are being attacked by all angles in this country, whether it's the rising crime rates, the rising food prices or just straight up empty grocery shelves. You know, a lot of people say that Joe Biden is one of the worst presidents in American history. I say that he's one of the best at destroying our country in record time. Unbelievable. And can you please tell us the Instagram handle if you wish to send Savannah a comment on how this has affected you? Savannah, where can our viewers find you on Instagram? To the moms, please do reach out. My Instagram handle is at Sav with one N that's S-A-V-W-I-T-H

the number one and N. Please reach out to me with your stories because I would love to highlight what moms across America are going through. Because again, our media focused in on foreign affairs, not focused in on what's going on here at home. Yeah, that's right. It seems particularly cruel to send $40 billion to Ukraine. It seems like you'd buy Twitter with $40 billion. You could buy a lot of baby formula, maybe get baby formula to every mom in America, I thought. Definitely. And it's very sad to see that other countries are prioritized over Americans. I've done a lot of work at the border

as well. And it really breaks my heart to see what the Americans at these border cities are having to live through, what our American military members, our National Guard members, our Border Patrol members have to live through. So again, my heart goes out to Americans all across the nation, whether you're a mom struggling to feed your child, whether you're a border patrol member who is getting threats from the cartel because this administration has allowed our border to remain wide open and our fentanyl crisis is getting out of control. Again, Benny, the only way I can describe this is as it is an attack from all angles and attack from within. Everyone rejoiced this last week when Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and we thought that maybe he'd be taking that company out of the leftist cesspool

and into the land of free speech. But he's not out of the woods yet. You see, Twitter is still platformed on Amazon web servers. Those are the racks and the servers that could pull Twitter offline if they don't like what Elon Musk is doing. You don't think they'll do it? They did the same thing to Parler. They offline the entire platform and crashed it because they didn't like what was happening on it. This is how evil and how incestuous the left has become with their control of the internet. It's why we need a new American internet. It's why we are so thrilled to be partnering with

rightforge.com. Rightforge.com is the true American internet and founded on American free speech principles. That's why BennyJohnson.com is hosted by Rightforge. Rightforge is also bringing back President Trump to the internet by hosting Truth Social, a new online community for free thinkers and free speech. It's amazing to have a company that is investing in the real wire and infrastructure, the routers, the servers, the racks that make the internet possible. And if we don't go down to the very core, we'll never have free speech back. The core of American values is what drives RightForge. And we encourage you to go to RightForge.com. That's RightForge.com.

And talk to them today about bringing your domain over so you are uncancellable by the left. RightForge.com. So you spoke with these young mothers. You're getting outreach. How would you qualify the mood right now for a young mother who's needing formula? I would say that a lot of young moms are getting very desperate. That's what I'm hearing. And that's what I'm feeling from many of these mothers is desperation is how am I going to feed my child? What is going to

happen if I go to another store and that store's shelves are empty too. I actually spoke to a grandmother whose grandbaby's coming in for the weekend. She said that she went to six different stores. She couldn't find the formula for her baby. Many mothers going to goat's milk, going to whole milk, going to their pediatricians and asking for various other supplementations because the formula is just a no-go right now. You'd think that our Secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, you know, he's chest feeding, right? He doesn't have the biological capacity to feed his surrogate child, right? His adoptive child there. You'd think he would care a little bit more about this. And clearly the supply chain shortage, as we read in our articles, is leading to this.

Thoughts on Pete Buttigieg, his chest feeding. Why isn't there any urgency from the Biden administration on said issue? Number one, Pete Buttigieg is an absolute joke. And I think we've seen that with every single thing that has come out of his mouth, with all of his policies, what has he actually done for America or for Americans? The only quote I can remember him saying is something about racist roads and highways and then celebrating how he and his husband were going to be raising a child together.

That's all I've heard from Buttigieg. This entire administration has been absolutely useless in helping the American people. And of course, the administration doesn't care about this. Of course, Jen Psaki is going to come up in front of America and make jokes about how there isn't an emergency baby food supply. Sorry, guys, because they aren't affected by this. They aren't talking to their constituents. They don't speak for their constituents. They are, you know, we like to call them elites. And we call them that because they

aren't burdened with the same issues that the average American citizen is. So they don't understand our plight. They don't understand what the average American is living through day by day, which is why it's just a joke to them, which is why it's something that they can continue to brush off and pass over. It's very sad to me. Yeah. Do you see it getting better? I mean, you've been following this issue. You've been doing a lot more than most corporate media, going out, talking about it, showing people, and really didn't hit home for me. I don't do a lot more than most corporate media, going out, talking about it, showing people, and really didn't hit home for me. I don't do a lot of shopping in this household. You don't want me to go shopping. You'll get like pizza and hot dogs. That's about it. And my kids would not be eating well if I was the one doing the shopping. But your journalism hit home for me because I was

able to finally see the bare shelves. You're just not used to that. I guess bare shelves Biden does trend from time to time. Do you see any end in sight? Unfortunately, I don't because this administration continues to, again, put foreign countries above our own, send our taxpayer dollars across seas, continues to prioritize issues in this country like the disinformation governance board or having progressive people in office or making sure that the LGBTQ community is allowed to indoctrinate our students. And we're attacking Ron DeSantis. They're prioritizing all of the wrong issues in this country. And they're putting at the forefront

these issues that aren't the reality of what the everyday average American is living through. So again, the rising gas prices, the food shortages, the reason why I went and I showed the empty shelves is because the average American isn't really seeing that, right? I see empty shelves every single time I go grocery shopping. But to me, it's like, okay, one specific shelf is empty, not a big deal. But when we really pinpoint and focus in on the fact that it's baby formula, that these are infants that are being deprived of food in our own country, when I go to the border and show people illegally crossing over, when I go to San Francisco and show people using fentanyl in the street in the middle of the day, I want everyone to understand that this is

what this administration is allowing to prosper in our country because they do not care about us. They don't care about our health. They don't care about our safety. If they did, they would be putting these issues at the forefront. It does seem politically suicidal, quite frankly. I think my worldview is predicated on the fact that Joe Biden knows that this is a one trick pony. He's not going to get another shot at this as deranged and demented as he is. And then he's going to just

essentially be the whipping boy without any political ramifications because they're going to lose Congress and he's going to lose the presidency and he's going to try to do as much damage as possible. However, man, if you're going against, you are a woman, if you're going against women, and if you're going against something that, I've got to tell you from personal experience from my wife, don't come at our kids, right? Like, you can come after a lot of things, our 401k, come after the security of our neighborhood. But if you come after our direct relationship with our child and the ability to provide for that child, man, that is a total different seventh layer of hell. And it does seem as though this is politically suicidal.

How many mothers in America will turn now on the administration because they are going to blame Joe Biden? Am I wrong? No, you're completely right in that. And going back to the topic of mothers and children, we have seen this ideology of socialism and how children are the property of the state being pushed on everybody, which is why, you know, all these teachers are getting away with indoctrinating our kids because they're like, oh, well, this is my kid for eight hours of the day. I'm going to teach your child what I want to because technically this child is property of everybody of the state. So this is ideology that's been pushed on us for a long time. But again, going back to your point on mothers getting very upset, look at what happened in Virginia

with the race over there. Why do you think that's now a primarily red state? Because they went and they targeted the children and the parents would not stand for it. Look at what is happening right now with Disney in Florida and Rhonda Santis and all the parents over there. They said, no, we're not going to stand up for the indoctrination and the targeting of our kids. And we've seen parents all across the nation continue to push back. So this was not the hill for them to die on. But we now see, you know, pro abortion activists in the streets screaming and crying and actually, you know, intimidating our Supreme Court justices in front of their homes because they don't have the potential right to kill their baby in a state that they don't even live in. If this is the hill that this administration wants to die on, then let's go ahead and let them and they will find out very quickly how strongly parents are willing to defend their family and children.

Savannah, is the modern day left properly defined as anti-baby? 100 percent, Benny. I was spiritually depleted after spending a week in California. I went to Venice Beach and I asked women over there, hey, how are we feeling about, you know, potential infanticide? How are we feeling about the potential for Roe v. Wade to be overturned? I'm not joking when I tell you that I had women who said, I will get an abortion and continue to get abortions until I decide that I'm ready to be a parent. That is the decision that I am willing and going to make. So it's heartbreaking to me. I also had another gentleman who said that he was a 10-monther. He thinks that babies should be killed

10 months outside of the womb. That answer in itself was insane to me. And I really pressed him on it because I was like, you're joking, right? He was not joking the slightest. One of my friends in California actually used to go to church with the man who now is a transgender woman who is a radical feminist. That's what he self-described as. So these women, very anti-life, anti-baby. And it's horrifying to see how we have misled women in this country into thinking that abortion is not only health care, but it's something to be celebrated. Keep in mind that women are having not baby showers anymore. They're having abortion showers and they're celebrating this. It's horrific. And it's very sad that we are encouraging murder in this country

instead of condemning it and protecting the most innocent among us. The attack on babies happen on all levels. And I guess the born babies who can't eat right now and who are hungry or the attack on them to take away their food is just as cruel and simply just as evil. And it seems like nobody seems to care at all. But you care, Savannah. And we just want to thank you for covering this. Very few people who are actually going out and telling this story. Where can people find your reporting? How can they stay in touch with you? Well, before I get to that, thank you, Benny, again, for highlighting this issue, highlighting the footage. It really means a lot to me and to all of the other independent journalists, Web and Censor, time and time again, and people like yourself, utilize your platform to help those

of us who are trying to get the truth out. So big thank you to you and your crew for getting this report out today. And if people would like to follow me, they can go follow me on truth social at Sav Says or Instagram at Sav with one N. Go follow me there and keep up with all my reporting. Follow now, ladies and gentlemen, Savannah Hernandez. She's going to blow up. Trust me.

She's going to blow up. It's going to blow up because she's fearless, fearless. Thank you for being on the program. Such an important story. Thank she's fearless, fearless. Thank you for being on the program. Such an important story. Thank you so much, Benny. Well, that was just absolutely horrifying. We like to bring you positive and optimistic news on this program. We're optimists at heart because we're Americans and we believe in the future, but it's hard

to believe in the future when you're seeing so much collapsing. We just really can't believe that scarcity and rationing are a thing that's happening in 2022 here in America in the first world. But Savannah Hernandez and her reporting is showing it and it's truly, truly scary. Along with the baby formula rationing and shortages, you're starting to see the crunch all throughout the economy. This according to Breitbart.com, grocery store prices up 10% the most in 42 years. In case you're wondering if this is a biblical once in a generation spike, yeah, you're right, it is. Food prices rose 9%, according to the Department of Labor. Inflation is now not only running high, but it's broadened to an economy-wide phenomenon.

Everything on your kitchen table, everything is more expensive. Eggs up 23%, chicken up 16%, bacon up 17%. That is, we got to stop. Bacon up 17%. Bacon's like a quarter of my diet. And that is truly incredibly problematic in my household and in the Johnson household. It's truck month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 Sierra 1500 pro graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months with an available 5.3 liter V8 engine, 20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off-road suspension with available two inch factory installed lift kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13,200 pounds. You'll be ready for anything this Truck Month.

Truck Month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer for details. Baby food, of course, 13%. It's been a trend on this show. Airfare, by the way, up 33%. Furniture, 15. Gas, 44. You guys know this.

You know this. And so this has been a huge, consistent, regularly occurring theme on our program. Why is this happening? Who is in charge? Is anyone in charge? And do they care? I guess the answer now is no. And it's why we often encourage the viewers and listeners of this program to consider that maybe the brightest people are no longer in charge in this country. Maybe they never were in charge in this country. And maybe we should start thinking about protecting what we have right now and consider other options other than the stock market, the crypto markets, and so on. Well, in order to talk about this entire tumultuous time, we're bringing on Philip Patrick, an expert,

a precious metals expert with Birch Gold, who we are proud to partner with. Philip, thank you for joining the program. And my goodness, since you were last joining us, a lot of bad things have happened. We don't like covering bad things on this show. We like to be optimistic about America's future, but it's really hard to think in the near term optimistically about what's happening in this country. Am I wrong? Yeah, I tend to agree. And last time I came on, the news wasn't fantastic as well. So I feel like

the bearer of bad news, but at least short to medium term, there doesn't seem to be a reprieve. As you mentioned, inflation now at 40-year highs almost across the board, and that's starting to bleed into other markets. There isn't a reprieve from the stock market. It's down 16% for the year so far in the S&P. NASDAQ, worst start to the year since the last financial crisis back in 08. And even bonds are down 10% in the broader bond market. So it's a tough climate to navigate and it's bleeding throughout the entire economy, quite frankly. Goldman is there with Deutsche Bank saying, listen, it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. And people need to prepare for a worse 2022 and leading into 2023. Are you seeing this?

Yeah. It's a very tough situation that we found ourselves in. The Fed have made tackling inflation the number one priority. So what they've done in order to do that, they've started raising rates. They raised rates a quarter point towards the start of the year and a half a point more recently. That alone has had a dramatic effect on the stock market. As we mentioned, S&P down 16% for the year. Mortgage rates now at 13-year highs. So it looks like the housing market could follow. In fact, when we see a stock market drop 30%, a housing crash is almost guaranteed afterwards. So we're getting close. Yeah, it's tough. And the Federal Reserve are in a really tough situation because if they stand their ground and they're saying they will, Jerome Powell came out and finally admitted inflation was far, far too high.

And he said we have to raise rates expeditiously. So analysts out there are predicting that the federal funds rate will probably hit 3% by the end of the year. That means more rate hikes, which spells tough times for the stock market and the housing market, at least between now and the end of the year, unless the Fed U-turn. If they do, I think inflation is going to go even higher. So it's sort of a rock and a hard place at the moment, unfortunately. So what you're saying is that the roller coaster has started to go down and it is not going up for a while. What should people do? I'm a young parent, right? I'm 35, got two little kids, got a family we're supporting. And a lot of people in my

position are saying, what has just happened to my 401k, right? What is going on in the crypto markets? Everything is collapsing. Your recommendations for people to just have some stability. Look, you're absolutely right. So it's a tough climate to navigate. I think if we want to deal with the issues long term, that's where we got to go out and vote, right? The midterms 2024, we need a change of direction. We need an administration that is not trying to spend us into prosperity. That picture, you know, we're limited in what we can do. So I think what we have to do shorter term is scale it down, look at those around us,

ourselves, our retirements and say, what can we do to hedge? And that's where precious metals come in today. They are very conducive for climates like this, right? When stock markets decline, people tend to flood towards safe haven assets. They go up. When inflation rises, right? Inflation is, as we know, the rising cost of commodities and services. Commodities are things like bacon, which I agree with you, it is a

travesty that it is going up, but also gold and silver, right? So, you know, as inflation rises, tangible commodities keep pace. So they're a very good way for people to preserve and hedge some of their other exposure. So if I'd be 100% in favor of a gold standard for bacon, so we can just tie bacon to the gold standard and we can just have stable bacon prices. My family invested in Birch Gold this year. Now, we had never invested in precious metals before, but we do the show every single day and we saw what was coming and we have no faith in the administration, the regime. And as Philip just said there, spending your way into prosperity is obviously how every inflationary spiral started and ended in every country, whether it's Venezuela or Germany. And so you've got to look

at something that is outside of a fiat currency in order to have some stability in what you own now, some diversification. I got to tell you guys, folks, it was really easy. So my wife and I, we decided on what would be smart to diversify in with gold, what we wanted to do. And we worked with Birch Gold, and it was shockingly easy. And it's shockingly stable and secure. Now I got my little list of stocks and indexes that I follow, and gold is on there. And I got to tell you, a lot of security involved in that, and immense security, quite frankly, in this time. It tends to actually have an inverse effect. Am I wrong, Philip? Oh, you're absolutely spot on. And you

can see it. Gold is one of the only assets that's up for the year so far. So it's working inversely. Absolutely. Yeah. So can you explain to me exactly what would be the process? So somebody's sitting there going, I've been destroyed in crypto. I've been destroyed. My 401k is half the value that it used to be. If they want to get started in defending what they've earned with precious metals, how would they do it? It's as simple as a phone call.

You can contact us. We have free information kits that will really help to inform people. And then, of course, there are a lot of people like myself at Birch that are there to guide people through step by step by step. If you have either cash sitting in the bank, losing to inflation, you can buy physical precious metals. We can ship them directly to you or we can arrange storage. If you have an IRA or a 401k, you can roll over any portion of that, no tax implications, no penalties into physical metals. The individual needs to have the desire,

but we can do the heavy lifting. We can get everything set up and transferred over. They just have to have the desire, like I said, and we're here to help and provide information. The other night, my wife and I were talking in the kitchen, the kids were asleep and we were, well, the kids were never actually asleep. We had a three week old. And so there's no sleep in the house. But we just entertained family

because we had a new baby. We welcomed a new baby and we'd had family rolling through. And we were talking about our home as a physical asset and how valuable it was to have rooms for our family and to have a place for them to sleep and, and, and, and a physical asset that we own in our home. And the only other real physical asset now that is something that is tangible. We can hold in our hand and like keep is precious metals. And it has as we watch the bloodbath, it had a similar feel to us

as like we have invested in something real that will be here rain or shine. It's absolutely right. And they share their tangible, it's real wealth. And they share other characteristics too. Land is a commodity too. Commodities go up and down, right? But long-term, they always increase. Why? Because inflation is the rising cost of commodities. So when you have something finite, something tangible, and a commodity, it's always secure in a different way. And over longer periods of time, they tend to grow at a steady rate with the cost of living. Now, in times like this, when there aren't other options, when we have very tough things on the horizon, precious metals do even better.

But over long periods of time, they're stable and they're about wealth preservation. There's a lot of crossover between real estate and precious metals in that respect. I know we're not doing a segment necessarily on geopolitics, but I have to ask, since you are a specialist in this field, I can't help but notice I have a ticker now for gold. And so that brings up gold articles, articles about gold and how it's being sold around the world. And holy smokes, like the number of every day there's a new bevy of articles of nations out there, some good, some bad, what is a good and a bad nation, right? But like every nation, let's just say every nation that can get its hands on gold right now is getting its hand on gold in a historic way, in a manner that is a feeding frenzy right now. Can you explain that and why that may be happening?

Absolutely. Look, I think a lot of it ties into our currency, the US dollar, right? Remember, what happens with the US dollar doesn't just affect us here in the United States. It's the global reserve currency. 80% of all invoice for exports are in dollars. Sixty percent of all foreign currency reserves are in dollars. And the thing is, the Federal Reserve is printing dollars or has been like they're going out of fashion, devaluing currency. Central banks have been looking for alternatives. Last year, central bank dollar holdings at a 25 year low. As you mentioned, central bank gold holdings at a 31-year high. So they're transitioning, right? They're saying, hey, the dollar's getting printed into oblivion. We need a stable store of value. So it's a very similar premise for nations as it is for individuals.

Look at Russia, right? We kicked them off swift. We punished them, and rightly so. But their ruble plummeted. How did they respond? They pegged it to gold, and it stabilized it. It stopped the rot as much as it was. That's what they did. So the premise for them is the same as it is for individuals, just on a broader scale. In the future, do you believe that the Fed will achieve its goal of breaking the back of inflation? Will they breaking the back of inflation?

Will they break the back of the American economy while they're at it? It's one. Yeah. I mean, you can't break the back of inflation without breaking the back of the American economy because in order to crush inflation, we've got to raise rates significantly. By doing that, look at Volcker in the 80s. Volcker put federal funds rate to 15%. Inflation was at the same level it is today back then.

He put it at 15%. And what he did was he sacrificed the stock market and the housing market for inflation. And you know what? It was tough. But once we got through it, two decades of economic prosperity. So believe it or not, crushing the markets, in my mind, is the better of the two options, because the alternative is the Fed capitulate, they U-turn, they drop interest rates, once they see the markets plummeting, they start pumping money,

and inflation goes bananas, right? So we'd rather, I think, stagflation than very, very high inflation, if not hyperinflation, depending on how aggressive they get. So yeah, they've got to sacrifice the markets if they want to get inflation under control. We're big fans of optimism and peace on the show. If you want peace looking at your investments, if you want to have just a little stability over the next year, my advice, purchase gold through Birch Gold. You've got to get something tangible and real that you can hold in your hand that has retained its value for all time. But more importantly, that can let you know that you're not losing everything, right? As you're staring at crypto

down, I mean, what is Bitcoin now to 25? I was just looking at Bitcoins at 25. Oh man, so many bros out there just like slamming their head against the desk. And more than anything, it's about your own mental health. And so my recommendation, and always a smart thing, diversify. Diversify with gold through Birch Gold. Philip, thank you so much for joining the program. Deeply appreciate it. And scary times out there. Come back soon and help us calm the waters. The gold standard for bacon, by the way. Amazing. You've got my vote. That hands down. Run for whatever you need to run for. A gold standard for bacon. I'm there. Okay. Please. Let's yeah. Let's, let's definitely make that an offering for a brunch. I'm in. I'm in.

Thank you, Phillip, for being on the program. Thanks, buddy. Former MLB All-Star Sean Casey, aka The Mayor, keeps hitting it out of the park. Take my 30 years of experience. Take the wisdom and knowledge I've learned from the failures when I got sent down my rookie year,

all the injuries I had to overcome. Your mind is the most important tool you have in life. Be relentless. Keep charging. It matters how you talk to yourself, how you look at the world. That matters. We talk about that. I don't know. I'm fired up. Baseball's back and it's going to be incredible. I love it. The Mayor's Office with Sean Casey from Believe. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.