The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1199: Ending the Financialization of America w/ Ron Dodson

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

87 MinutesPG-13Ron Dodson is Principal Owner & Portfolio Manager of a Texas hedge fund.Ron and Pete talk about the most recent Trump administration news on tariffs and bringing industry back to America.Firas Modad on the Peter McCormack ShowRon at the American ReformerRon's SubstackRon on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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with vouchers from Trump Dunebag. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Doonbiog, Kush Faragea. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and ad-free, head on over to freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher

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And yeah, can't do it without you. So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. Ron Dodson's back and probably couldn't have picked a better time to ask someone who runs a hedge fund to come on. Are you doing Ron? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me again, Pete. So this is Monday, the, what is today, the seventh? Indeed. And apparently we were supposed to see

the cratering in the market today that didn't happen. Well, I mean, I guess early on things looked really, really bad. And then over, overnight it was pretty weird. Overnight, it was weird. Oh, when I woke up, I woke up at 3 a.m. And I checked a couple of stocks. And I was like, oh, here we go. Well, and I'd love to tell you, I have a crystal ball. And I do not.

But it was interesting to see us of what amounts to flat today, you know, between the Dow, the S&P and the NASDAQ. You know, you have a little north of zero, a little south of zero and pretty much flat. you know, the markets are going to move around. There's so much embedded value in the old system that if this omelet is going to break some of those eggs, but this is what we voted for, or it's what I voted for is, and, you know, ever so often the financial system does need to be reset. And that means that a lot of the systems, that have grown up around the status quo, which inevitably are Pareto plus Rintier plus leverage, are reset in order to get back to just simple Pareto.

And, you know, I laugh because all of us who are arguing for this get called, you know, was it, Eric Erickson I saw today on Twitter, said, oh, look, you scratch a, scratch a populist, nationalist, and their Marxism comes out. I'm like, no, we're not, I don't think any of us are arguing against Pareto. And for those of y'all who don't know, Pareto is just the idea that that 80% of the capital is generally going to be, is going to be concentrated in about 20% of the people. And that just has to do because that's how God allocated resources, both IQ and opportunity and capabilities and talents. all those things. And you can't get away from that. Even Bitcoin works that way.

It absolutely does. So you're going to, you're, so Pareto is, is just reality. But if you have Pareto plus rentia, which is just the idea that because of my position, I can earn income off the position that I've created, which is what China and, and Europe has been doing to us for forever. Oh, you're the big, we're going to scrape. off the top, so to speak. And then you add leverage on top of that, what some of us might call a usurious situation. Well, now you don't just have Pareto. You have these Uber elite who it becomes a 80% of capital and wealth is in the 1%. And that's not healthy. That's not good. I don't believe that's a Christian view of how the world should work. So, and, and, and,

it wasn't the situation over the vast, you know, the history of Christendom and so forth. So I think we're right to oppose that. But getting called a communist, those are fight words, Pete. Well, I mean, I think nationalist would probably be a better terminology for it. A 19th century nationalist, too. I won't use nationalism with any terms. it might have been used in the 20th century, but definitely 19th century.

You know, it's amazing to me how I had someone who promotes Austrian economics, which doesn't exist, is a theory, has never been played out in, you know, say, oh, Friedrich List was debunked decades ago. And I'm like, by who? And how? That's the way the country And then these are the same people who will be like, Well, the founders were libertarians

But they seemed to like tariffs didn't That whole generation seemed to like tariffs a lot right And this is how Yeah so Well, I know he's a polarizing figure Among a lot of folks on our side But Yarvin had a good piece on list Just this past

this past, would it come out Saturday morning? I recommend if you can find a copy of it, it's really worth reading because it, you know, and I'm friendly with Curtis. I, we disagree on some things. But Curtis and I had very similar reading lists. You know, we're about the same age. He's a little bit younger than me.

But you speak of the Austrians. I was a member of the Loweig von Mises Institute there at Auburn, Llewell and Rockwell's deal for years and years. But Hapa, who I think was kind of the pinnacle of that, you know, was said that you had to have a national guarantor, in other words, a king type of figure in order to guarantee the liberty that allows for freedom of arm's length transactions within a national unit. that doesn't sound like modern libertarianism. That sounds more like what we're arguing for. And so anyway, I think that Von Mises and Hayek were making more of an argument that I think we would also agree with that economics is a social study, not a hard science. It is, it is, they had some.

scientific, they had scientific arguments within that, but the move to making economics, say, a hard science, what that does is, is that that assumes the fungibility of human beings, as opposed to each human being created in God's image from my standpoint. That's what I, I think, that each person is worthy of some modicum of respect and dignity. Well, that's a, that gets erased in a modern monetary theory, post-Kanesian economics as science kind of outlook, because it assumes freedom of international capital flows and Nick Land has written fantastic stuff on this, some of which I even understand, I think. Nick's a esoteric. but you know if you have if you have complete freedom of capital flows and the fungibility of

humanity then the destruction of individuals doesn't matter because it's all about aggregate wealth you know GDP measures and so on and so forth and it ignores these these distortions in this Pareto what what I was just talking about it it moves towards a incredibly over-emphasized concentration of wealth and the inability for national leaders to have the best interest of their own citizens at heart because the capital flows can escape the cultural norms and the jurisdiction of those national leaders. I've got a strange example of this. And I know we've kind of hit the ground running here, but as I have a head of hedge fund manager. I used to have a, I still have a relationship with them, but they used to be my prime

broker, Goldman Sachs. And for all of Goldman's ills, and they are many, and we would have major problems with a lot of them, they, boy, they can operate. And they used to have a facility exactly what we're talking about, where I could, they offered this to me, I did not take, take them up on it, where I could overnight have all my holdings, and I'm in volatility arbitrage. So I sell a lot of options and then hedge that risk out and a bunch of arcane stuff. And they had the facility to take that entire book and sweep it to London overnight so that it wouldn't be subject to U.S. overnight margin rules. And this is exactly what we're talking about.

So I may disagree with the sovereigns that I'm under, but that's just escaping their jurisdiction, right? So that they can't, if it's in the nation's interest, if it's in the citizens' interest for me not to do that, I could just escape it, right? So and multiply that times every fund manager, every CFO, every whatever, and you get the situation that we're in. And that's one of the things that we're trying to, I say we, that the folks we support are trying to fix. We'll see if they're able to do it. Yeah, I've gotten to the point now where really the support is over the money. and the mostly because you know we there's a certain element we want running the world and it's not China and it's not you know I think I think we know what I'm talking about here yeah because I don't

think you know as we speak Netanyahu's at the White House and you know to me that's that's more important that that's more important in the long run than anything else is decoupling that, that relationship right there. But they get the money. Yeah, but what do you think is part of it also trying to decouple the American Jewish population from having divided loyalties with, with, Israel. In other words, look, if there was a Christian Switzerland, I'm just making something up, okay? As a devout Christian, would I want Christian Switzerland as a kingdom or whatever to be

prosperous? Yeah, but I would, but if I'm a citizen of America, I owe my, I owe my first loyalty to America, right? Is part of this an attempt, I don't, I, I'm trying to be. very gracious here, an attempt to decouple some of those divided loyalties. Maybe that's a wish, but I would like to see that. The same way as I would like to see a decoupling of the divided loyalties among the Hispanic community that's here that have been here for multiple generations. I'm not talking about the ones who we think should be deported, but the ones who've been here from multiple generations, but still might be sending money home. And we know the ones who are here illegally or sending a ton of money back, there should be efforts made to decouple those divided

loyalties. And I think that should be necessary for the American Jewish community, too, not to say that, hey, look, you know, if you've got a piece of your heart in San Francisco, so to speak, you know, in Jerusalem. Okay. But your chief loyalty has to be to the United States. And I would like to see some of that, a bold measure made to decouple some of that, you know, and maybe that's a pipe dream, you know, even saying it out loud, I think it probably is, but I'd like to see that. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must haves, when

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Trump on Doonbiog, Kush Faragea. I mean, I think someone tried that. You know, in the years of great silence, just quoting the title of the book by professor Jay Otto Pol. Stalin recognized, I'm sorry? Yeah. No, no, I was going to say, flesh that out a little bit. Stalin recognized that having diaspora groups in your country was dangerous to his control. And I think in some, I don't think it was 100% selfish, but I think a lot of it was,

which led him to basically destroy and kill up to half of some of those communities. Polish, German, Lithuanian. There are others. Those are the biggest. And he didn't really address the issue with Jews in the Soviet Union until Israel became a nation. And then even in the beginning, he was friendly to them, but then he turned on a dime. Right. And I'm not calling for the murder.

And obviously not the murder of Diaspora groups that are in the United States. But you're always going to have that problem. And I think I shared a video with you. And I can't even remember the gentleman's name right now. But, you know, he made the point that. if you have a multicultural society such as Russia, Russia is multicultural. I mean, if people understand the Chechen situation there. Oh, it's 17 different ethnic groups.

Yeah, yeah. And that's within modern Russia. Yeah. Right. You understand that basically prosperity as we know it, which is just basically financialization, which is just basically financialization, We don't have manufacturing here anymore. We don't really have it.

It's all financialization. Goes on the back burner, and security becomes the most important thing. So I think that's the problem. I think that's where we're at. I think that's the problem that we're facing right now is we want to get the money. We would love to see the money situation be fixed after over a century of insanity. but we what's more important

is it security when you have you basically have foreign armies on armies that could mobilize against you against the population

so what do you what do you do? You know it's I had Clay Martin on here and you know Clay Martin was a tier one operator in the military

and he said look we got we have cells here that could be, you know, they could just go off in a second. And then we're in the middle, we're in the middle of a war. So this, well, yeah, what happened? Yeah, I was just going to say what, you know, the, it wasn't just

just Central American, you know, Mexicans and Central Americans and South Americans that we're pouring over the border, many, many Chinese nationals were coming in. There's 250,000, there's 250,000 Chinese citizens in United States universities right now. And that's just documented. Yeah. And untold numbers were coming in undocumented. And that's, um, two, and 80% of the Chinese, 80% of ethnic Chinese, 80% of ethnic Chinese that are caught spying in the United States are not first generation and are not are not

here on a visa or a student visa. They're second generation. I didn't I didn't know that stat. That's chilling. Two things. Number one, Pete just referred to a video. He sent me, it's well worth watching how Trump is reshaping the world with Fira's modad. He's on the Peter McCormick show. Peter will drive you crazy if you watch this. But Ferris, who's a Lebanese Christian thinker. I don't know what he does for a living. But this was one of the more impressive videos. I had to finally stop watching it because we were about to start.

I got about two thirds of the way through it. Absolutely fantastic. And then secondly, you mentioned the Russians. One of the real black pillory. moments when you're studying World War II and you're coming from accepting kind of the American post-war consensus telling of World War II is when you come upon the Caton massacre. And you see what, you know, and that, the Soviets blame the Germans for this massive massacre, 22,000 Polish citizens.

I don't know the number of those polls. It was done with bullets too. Yeah. It was done with handguns. I don't know the number of those polls. What percentage were Jews? I would assume a large percentage. And this is not some denial conspiracy theory.

This is something the Soviets later admitted to. I think it like way later admitted to. 19, I'd have to look it up. I think it was when the archives opened in the 90s. In the 90s. I think that's exactly right, Pete. But you go, you know, and Caten is spelled K-A-T-Y-N. You can go read about it yourself.

And it is, you know, it's the first place I take folks who, when I'm talking about, you know, not even read. vision as history because this is history that's admitted to by everyone, I say, hey, look, you know, just consider the sources on some of this stuff and go look up the Kate and Matt. It's one of the first things I send them to. Our buddy, Darrell Cooper is the first one to tell me about it. I didn't know about it. I mean, this is just a couple years ago. And, and, and, and Daryl's like, go read about this. I was like, you know, I kind of had my eyes peeled back.

Anyway, back to the monetary system. You know, ever so often, the rules get changed out of certain necessities. We would love, I know it's all, it's, it's, it's the draw, it's my temptation is to be an ideologue as opposed to love my fellow, my neighbor, right? I want to find an ideology that answers all questions as opposed to what, you know, for me, again, as a devout Christian, the Bible says search for wisdom. And that's way more complicated and that's a lifelong project. And, you know, instead, I want to find some kind of simple set of rules that I can just co-hanging everything on that explain everything.

And that's not reality. The reality is, is it takes wisdom. And that means ever so often you've got to tweak the system and change the rules. You know, Nixon, you know, a lot of on our side say the worst thing Nixon did was take us off of the gold standard. Well, it was really FDR that took us off the gold standard way back. And he had to do that in order to finance his major social safety net three-letter revolution that he did. his imperial presidency couldn't have been done under a raw gold standard. And Nixon and the system that came after that, Bretton Woods,

had shoehorned Nixon into a spot to where we could not, we couldn't stay on the last vestiges of it without basically defaulting on some things. And so it really wasn't Nixon's deal. Nixon was, you know, I don't agree with everything he did. wage and price control is kind of weird. But he was a rightist. Easily the most right, the most right-leaning president we've had until, you know, it's funny because Trump is really, I don't know what Trump is, a populist, he got, but he governs far to the right, right? But Nixon philosophically was a rightist. Anyway, when he took us off the gold standard, you know, that

and kind of put torch to Bretton Woods, 73 to 74, which is things moved a lot slower back then, was a massive bare market that really took 40 to 45% of the wealth out of the investment class. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range For Mentor, Leon and Terramar Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro

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designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbioghush Farage. Well, but it also says, up the ridiculous, without that, you don't get the boom of the 80s and 90s and so on and so forth. And was the boom of the 80s and 90s perfect? No, because a lot of people didn't participate in it. You've all seen the graphs of how certain GDP goes straight up, but the working class kind of levels out after 71, 72 in that time frame. But anyway, these these reorder these reorder. orderings of the economic system are going to happen, whether you like it or not.

Part of what's happening now that Trump, I think Trump and I think his advisors absolutely see, is that the U.S. Navy is no longer going to be able to police the trade lanes of the world anymore. Because, oh, shoot, just was it today or yesterday, the copperhead. underwater kamikaze drones were announced by Anderil and other and China's working on the same thing. And we all know the advances in the drones. All that means is, I mean, look at the hooties have held up the number three commerce zone in the entire world. the hooties. I mean, the sect of Yemenis, and that's just simply because it's a lot cheaper to build drones and short, short range ballistic missiles than it used to be. And so the calculus of being able

to police this world trade system isn't going to be possible for much longer. And so you're going to see a nationalization, a spheres of influence reality is going to take hold whether we like it or not. That's just coming because the way it's just going to be easy to blow up ships, easy, cheap. And so if that's the case, then you're going to have to onshore, you're going to have to incentivize on shoring. Whether you believe in all the things that we believe in as a people of the importance of citizenship and all that, hey, that's a bonus. It's just the reality of the world is you're going to have to shorten supply chains, make them much more agile and local because you're not going to be able to have long supply chains. And that's beyond the

the concerns of, hey, do you really want your global competitor to make all your medicine and make all your industrial products? I'm, you know, those are even bigger, more philosophical questions. And we're on one side of that. But the reality of just how conflict is going to be waged is driving this as well. And that's why Trump, I think, is also pushing towards the Greenland and the Canadian thing is, is that you're going to have to increase your, you're going to have to increase your coastline in order to have,

in order to have regional hegemony. You know, and that's a, that will be a more decades-long process, perhaps, but, but all of these realities are changing, how the world has worked. It's like, I'm a pilot.

I tried, I was a F-16 pilot candidate. So I'm really romance. by a guy wearing a helmet, sitting in a cockpit, shooting down bad guys. But that reality's done. I mean, the last man fighters, we're going to see the end of that. Maybe not in my lifetime, but soon after, I'm 58. So let's assume I lived 80.

You know, by the time I'm 80, that world will be over. So, and the same thing with how naval, you know, how naval, you know, how naval. security is handled. So I think a lot of this is driven just by reality. And you can either be the faction of the real or you can live in this fake world of ideology as, you know, what Plato would say live in in the cave. And shadows don't make very good fighters. Shadows don't make for a good economy. You're talking about bringing manufacturing home, which is basically what Trump's been talking about, what a lot of the people that, you know, who we're friends with have been talking about. It's something, it's one of the only ways that you can truly be a

sovereign country. Right. I forget, I forget who said it on, somebody said it recently, and basically Lutwak laid it out in his book, Kudaita, is that if you do not manufacture your own your own weapons, you're a client state of somebody else. Absolutely. If we don't manufacture our own prescription drugs, if we don't manufacture our own, like Thomas was talking about the other day on a show we did, China has a city where all they do is apples.

They have a city where all they do is produce socks. Yeah. And so you have these, you have all of these things that are being made in other places, chips. Nothing can survive. Nothing can operate without a chip nowadays. None of this technology. All that's made in, no, Taiwan.

Taiwan, yeah, Taiwan semiconductor. Right. So basically, you're not a sovereign nation if you don't do this. So with that out of the way, can you talk a little bit about how people make money in this country. And we talked about it, talked about it a little bit texting the other day. It's all financialization. It is. And you know, you mentioned usury earlier. It's all, it's all basically manipulation of money. And yeah, just, yeah, go off on that. So,

the, the, the, you know, people live and consume stuff. I know, I know this seems very basic. One thing we do have going for us is we have the world's most fertile land and a river system that allows us to transport that around very easily. But what we don't have anymore is we don't, we make very little steel, but even worse, if we, there was a great video going around last week. we don't make the machines, we don't make the parts in order, let's say you and I, Pete, wanted to go build a steel mill, either in Alabama or out here south of Dallas.

Well, we would have to go to Germany, or I'm trying to remember where, maybe South Korea, I'm trying to remember the places that still built these massive smelting things that allow you to, with tremendous heat, take the ore, and make steel with.

We don't even make that stuff. So you're talking about a multiple steps where we're dependent upon other nations in order to even make. So let's say, I don't think this is going to happen, by the way. But let's say China just declared war on us. And we were going to go, first of all, we wouldn't be having this conversation because they could probably turn off our lights in about 30 minutes. And we could probably do somewhat similar, although they have a national firewall and we do not.

So it might be a little harder for us. But let's say we went to Warren. We wanted to massively mobilize and build a bunch of stuff. Well, you know what? That would be difficult after about we ran out of a certain amount of inventory that we have. We couldn't do the World War II thing where every auto plane. and every, you know, we just made 8,000 long-range bombers and tanks and or whatever it does we wanted to build, you know, big drones.

We couldn't do it after a while. And then you mentioned medicine. We don't make the vast majority of our medicines. That's a real problem. We're just subject. So, you know, in the issue of, of, of making money, how we do things today. So this, really, we're subject to what's called Dutch disease.

And this is kind of arcane, but I'll try to make it very simple. It's named after, obviously, Holland, in the late 60s, I believe it was, might have been early 70s. Some territorial waters of Holland, they found all kinds of natural gas reserves. and within a very short amount of time, the entire economy of Holland, which was traditionally farming, you know, traditionally Europe was part of the breadbasket of Europe was the Dutch farmers. But the vast majority of the Dutch economy became all about natural gas. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest.

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And so their smartest people, instead of going into all these diverse ways that the Dutch provided for themselves, all went into natural gas. And so the Dutch disease was this monster that took over the entirety of the Dutch economy. And then when the natural gas reserves kind of went up, they were in trouble. You know, and Holland had a real problem. getting out of that. Well, the U.S. has a similar problem. And yes, we produce natural gas and yes, we produce a ton of oil, especially in my state. I'm in Texas. But the real export of the United States is the dollar itself. And so what does that mean? It means that all the smart people

go into finance. Not all, but a vast majority. What does that? What does that? What do you? The smart people, the instead of going and and and being boy the best uh at robotics or the best at at producing a you know the best chip designers or the best whatever it is uh the smartest people go and become hedge fund managers or hedge fund trading analysts and uh and so and i'm pointed at myself you know I mean, I'm part of this. And what you do is you figure out ways, I mean, when I was, when I came out of grad school and I went to work for my first hedge fund, my entire job was to look for companies that were producing cool stuff. I would love to tell you that was the case. No, I went and looked for money that was laying around in inefficiencies so that I could arbitrage that out and lever up the arbitrage opportunity.

And so, I mean, you know, Treasury bonds, for instance, I wrote black box models. This is what this was used to be called. And there were tremendous inefficiencies in the way Treasury bond futures were traded because this was before Greenspan and the Fed really control that that market. And so, I mean, I had a black box model that was generating for every contract of risk that we put on was producing, you and these were $10,000 denominated contracts, were producing $2,000 of income. So you can do that math on what a year of that would be. Because treasuries,

because futures only require a small amount of capital, they have imbued leverage. We could lever that. I mean, I was able to, I was able to trade up my own personal account enough to where I could retire for a little bit and go do some fun things and then open up my own hedge fund job. Now, the point is now multiply that across an entire economy and now you have, and by the way, futures and derivatives have a role in allowing people to do insurance and protect themselves

and all these things, but you can't have an entire economy built around that. You saw the same thing happen with high frequency trading of stocks was the same kind of thing to where the bid ask spread that was a way for specialists in stocks to manage the risk of the entire market and provide order, got traded away by these computers that would bounce those trades back and forth a hundred times a second. Well, maybe not 100, but, you know, very, very quickly. And because there was no tax on those trades, basically ran the specialists out of business. In an earlier version of high-frequency trading, basically that's what led to the flash crash. When that got turned off, then you saw this cascading event. So the point is,

in the financialization, you begin to look for not ways to produce things, but ways to, because you have this immense tool called the US dollar, the ways to level. these small inefficiencies to 30, 40x in order to basically just suck dollars out of the system and produce huge returns. And that really isn't, you're not really making, I mean, I'm making money for my investors, but you're really not making anything. Again, I'm pointing at myself here. Now, I don't do a whole, I don't do that as much anymore. I do a little bit different version of of this. So how does that, how does that, how does that, how does that Dutch disease in dollar terms, how does that explain itself over an entire, an entire ecosystem? Well, this, this creates

the dollar's reserve status because it is in and of itself this tool that can be exported via Euro dollars across economies. So in Europe, they create dollars out of thin air called Euro dollars and do the same exact thing. Well, where does, so that incentivizes the U.S. government to print dollars beyond, so we spend way more than we take in in taxes. and we export that inflation. Normally you would just have to print those dollars to make up the difference.

You print those dollars, those dollars go stay in our economy, and now we have massive inflation because it's a vast amount that goes above and beyond what we take in, we spend. Well, if you have this reserve Dutch disease currency, The rest of the world soaks that up, soaks up those extra dollars because they purchased the treasury bonds that that's made up. And we don't have big inflation. Well, the problem is eventually that's got to come home. And you saw when Putin invaded Ukraine and Biden enacted all these, sanctions against

Russia, that embargoed those dollars. And part of the inflation problem that we had was those dollars didn't have near as many places to go to get soaked up. We basically cut off a big piece of the sponge. And so those dollars had to stay here and we had inflation. And who does that hurt?

Does that hurt the investment class? No, that hurts the average person who now is paying way more for eggs or way more for their fast food or way more for, you know, rents went way up. So anyway, this is a long way of saying that in the modern world of financialization, it's just a way for it incentivizes the U.S. government to do things that are against the interests of its citizens, number one, in printing, in debasing their savings. those saving that that that that debasement is just a transfer payment to the elite because it tends to

inflate the value of assets and then when you reverse that which is what they're trying to do you see those assets come down uh and it's it's just a mess but you've got to fix it somehow anyway i've been talking for way too long it's a it's a complex arcane system but the main things to remember are if the dollar is our chief export, and it is, then the entire economy is going to be dominated by that export. And the attempt that is trying to be done here is can we have a balanced? It's okay to have a strong currency, or at least a fairly valued currency, but that needs to be balanced by making stuff so that our entire economy doesn't create these weird incentives to prop that up. So can we have a diversified economy of exports so that everything isn't

distorted by this Dutch disease? I just wrote on this. If you go to my substack, the eyes of Appellees, Ron Dodson at sub substack. I wrote, I wrote, an article this weekend about this, about how this works if you really want to get, you know, arcane about things. But that's what they're trying to fix. And it will create havoc, because all of these structures are built around this, this system. But it's going to come to an end one way or the other. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say,

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packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.i.e. today. Well, a lot of people want this to happen overnight, and it's impossible. Yeah, I think about, we talked about like the Mises Institute and libertarianism, and one of the things that they really promote is entrepreneurship. One of the books that I read on my show was zero to one by Peter Thiel. Yeah, fantastic.

And just because it's, whatever you think of Peter Thiel, it's a different way of thinking about things. So you push, you talk about entrepreneurship, you talk about people who can create something, come up with a new idea. Okay, and that's great. And it may even benefit us, but it's being built in India. It's being built in China. It's being built. So this entrepreneurship, sure, it may make our lives easier. It may make a couple people wealthy.

We may even become wealthy if we get in early enough. on the stock or, you know, we, we do well with it. But it's still not strengthening the country. It's still not strengthening the people because it's not being built here. And that's, that's the biggest problem I have with like Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalism, things like that. It's globalism. It's, I'm going to, you know, labor becomes, now just becomes another thing to negotiate and if you can get cheaper labor

somewhere else you do it, if you can import cheaper labor, you do it, or if somebody else in another country will do the labor cheaper and even with shipping it back. It's just basically globalism. You cannot have,

you can't have a strong country because your country then just is just surviving on this financialization. because you may be benefiting by using an iPhone, which, I mean, where the hell was this made? But, okay. Ching do. Yeah. Okay.

So how does that benefit our economy other than financialization, other than it being all about money, which can be printed into oblivion, can be arbitraged into oblivion? I mean, what is an unlawful? What does an entrepreneur mean if it's, it only benefits you as a consumer and not as somebody who, not as a society, not as a people, not as a Volk, who benefits from also manufacturing it? Well, think about if we, in the, in the old way of doing things, the, the, the, the, let's say in the in the in in royal england back in the old days of of where there was royalty and and because they were landed and people work the land and those those uh even i think uh the video we mentioned talked about this a little bit um where the people were

loyal to the lords because of this nobles oblige that they owed it to the people who surround who are around them in their village and their towns they owed it to make sure they were taken care of and in response I mean this sounds very Hobbesian but that doesn't make it untrue and as a as a as a response they were loyal when conflict inevitably came and but but what we've lost is this idea of no bless oblige. So all that means is, is that if I am, if I am wealthy, I owe it to the, that to my community to make sure my community is blessed, is, is, is able to feed themselves, is able, and that is really only possible in an enclosed and not completely enclosed. I don't think anybody's trying to do away with, completely do away with trade. But if it's, if suddenly,

I don't do international investing. But let's say I could hire a thousand Indians in Bhopal to do something cheaper than a hundred of the people who live around me, because all I cared about was arrow going up, then I've considered that's somewhat evil, you know, that I wouldn't care first for the people, that I wouldn't take a lesser return to care for the people around me than somebody, an ocean and two continents away. I mean, there's something very perverse about that, but that's what, frictionless capital. And again, Remember, capitalism is a term of Marx. What we believe as traditional rightist, you know, as Christians is the idea of, you know,

Jesus talked about one another and, you know, loving one another. And there's part of that that's embedded in the free arms length transaction. Hey, hey, Pete, I have, I'm not using this fridge over here. And I see, I haven't seen you use your leaf blower in a while. Hey, you want to swap? Wouldn't that be cool? We're both better off. and we both say thank you, and we are both blessed by that.

Or I go down to the local, you know, hardware store that my friend Frank owns and runs, and I buy this. I go to buy something. He goes, hey, man, don't buy that. Buy this. I know it's a little more expensive, but buy this American-made tool. It will let, you'll give it to your grandkids. Oh, thanks, Frank.

That's what we believe in. The idea that I can skip over my neighbor to somebody 10,000 miles away and forget about the obligation that I have to love my neighbor is, that's perverse. And I know that and what we do is we couch that ability in freedom. Well, that's not really freedom because this frictionless movement of capital erases, it not only erases borders and erases distinctions, by the way, which are all those, I don't want to turn this into a theology podcast because that's not what this is. But think about the cool thing of way back in the Old Testament, whether you believe it was literally true or not.

I mean, I do, but let's, but you don't have to. The Tower of Babel and all the languages were confused because they were trying to build a pagan ladder to God, right? This massive ziggurite, right? And then you get to Acts chapter two in Pentecost, and that's reversed. That curse of everybody's language being confused is reversed. But it isn't conversed by God miraculously giving everybody the same language. No, the miracle is in the hearing in their own distinct languages. And so there's something cool and part of God's economy in these distinct ethne, these distinct, that's just the Greek word for nation,

these distinct nationalities doing their own thing, but this cool king of kings who can bless still can reverse the curse of Bible through that. But Christianity and some people are perverse about how they say this, doesn't erase national distinctions. It's just a, it's a blessing that can overcome the curses that sometimes come from those national distinctions. So all that being said is, I'm supposed to love my neighbor, right? I'm supposed to love my family first.

I'm supposed to take care of mom and dad and my wife and my kids. And then my neighbor. And then my community. and then if I've got something left over, maybe I can give to some charities where there's special needs. And those first are to the people who are Christians for me. And then I can worry about the world at large, right? And so this frictionless, borderless capital,

it destroys that. So I'm okay with some level of being able to, you know, invest in the world, but it's got to come at a cost so as to not destroy that ordered, you know, the Ordo Amoris, the ordered loves that are part of Western civilization. Because if you live in a donut preference, then your community, that's where we get. destroyed communities, high crime, and nobody gives a, pardon me, nobody gives a crap, because we're just going to, we're just going to, because my dollars are free to invest wherever. And that's perverse, and it's wrong. And God bless the current administration for trying to put a dagger through the heart of that. And that's not freedom. It destroys freedom. Freedom. Freedom. is my ability to go to Pete and get his leaf blower and him get my refrigerator.

That's freedom. Sorry, I get a little, I get worked up about this because we've lost what makes Western civilization Christendom what made, it was the most unbelievable engine of blessed prosperity in the history of the world. And we have created. a system that is destroying it. And that's not just a shame, it's evil. Okay, I'm going to be less preaching now.

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thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately, terms apply for more infooshees sky.a slash beads. Well, we saw this over Christmas with the H1B thing, right? So, you know, there's a lot of towns that I've been to, you know, that I've been through here in Alabama. And you're just like, okay, what happened to this town? And think about this. If I was to, if you were to finance, say we wanted to open up a steel plant and you were helping me finance this and I was in charge of it and we're up, we're getting ready to go, up and running. And all of a sudden we just started putting ads through the H-1B thing.

And we're like, okay, we're just going to hire people from India. We're going to hire people from wherever we're going to pay them 60% of what we would pay in Alabama and. I mean, you're an evil motherfucker. I'm sorry, sorry for the language, but you're an evil son of a bitch. And, I mean, really, you should, the people should, the people should burn down my factory. That's what they should do. The people who live there should burn down my factory. I had lunch today.

Some impressive young man. I mean, I say young. He's 38 years old. Young to me, 20 years younger than me, who is an engineer. structural structural mechanical engineer very bright guy and i'm i immediately think you know man if i and the in the talking to him because he's you know they've they've in his firm they've hired some h1 bs and all this kind of stuff and so he's disillusioned you know because and and i'm thinking man, if we could open up a steel mill or some, it would take, it wouldn't take six months for this guy

because he's sharp to become an expert in whatever it is. Because you learn, people forget, you're not buying. I learned what I do. So the first six months when I started in the hedge fund, and what I do is some complicated stuff, a lot of calculus and all this stuff, programming. and, you know, the first six months, I sat in a windowless office and I was given a stack of books to read. I wasn't expected to know all the stuff. And I had a master's degree in derivative finance. I mean, it was an MBA, but it was really in derivative finance.

But I was given a stack of books. I was getting paid to go learn to what God had given me with an inquisitive mind and the ability to take an information. And I was paid for six months to basically do nothing. I wasn't doing it. nothing. I was learning. Do you think this guy had lunch with, this brilliant young guy couldn't in three to six months learn whatever it was. Let's say we were going to manufacture clothing. Let's say we were going to start making denim here, some cool jeans or nice suits or whatever it is. He could be an expert. He would know everything there is to know within six months. But instead, what we do is we go jump over him to somebody who we and guess what and I've worked and I don't have any hatred for anybody who was you know had the is born in India or whatever I don't have any hatred

toward anybody but I'm just supposed to love my neighbor first and there is untold talent waiting to be tapped to go do cool stuff here We've just got unlock it and incentivized doing it. And the inability to see that is kind of disgusting. I mean, has Musk brought in some H1Bs? Yeah, I know he has. But I've got friends, friends of friends who are in his operation down in Boca Chica. And he's employed a ton of smart Americans who are doing other stuff.

And we're like, oh, we can learn how to do this. They didn't know how to build rockets when they were doing other things. There is untold potential in America that is waiting to be unlocked. Guys who are doing financialization things, you know, who could, I'll tell you, guys who are spending ridiculous hours figuring out people's income taxes or programming. what a waste. If we really went full Monty on this Trump deal and we replaced our income tax, if we quit taxing productivity and tax consumption and the ability to sell goods here, did away with the income tax. The talent that would be unlocked by people who are just working on taxes and that entire economy, system is untold. My next door neighbor, sweet, smart lady. She works for the IRS. She should be doing

something productive. Not that. She's, I mean, I'm not a big fan of women giving their life away to working instead of having kids, but some are going to choose to do that. And she could be, you know, Anyway, I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but we have got to, we have got to be supporting our, telling our representatives to support Trump in this effort to unlocking American talent and American opportunity because it's right. And it's there. And people are going to, I think the ability to generate wealth is greater here than shipping it, shipping those dollars. elsewhere. I really believe that. Well, the argument that you're going to get is what you're going to trade for that is you're going to trade higher prices. Well, not in the, people don't understand. So, so, so tariff, people saying tariffs are, are inflationary. No, they're not. They're actually

deflationary. And the reason everybody, that's the reason everybody's throwing an absolute hissy fit is because we are so levered to the gills. What deflation destroys anybody who's levered because suddenly their debts just increasing and increasing and increasing. So that's why people are freaking out. The people who are rewarded are savers, which we used to understand in Western civilization or the bedrock of any civilization are the people who,

get this, this sounds crazy. who spend less than they make, that's your salt of the earth people. The people who are actually who are tied to the generation who went before them and the generation who is after. You want to know the real fascism to be afraid of, the fascism of the living, people who are not tied to the people who came before them and the people who are coming after them. And that's what should be, you should scare you.

is people who only live for themselves. That's, that's, those people will do untold evil. But, so anyway, tariffs because of the elasticity of demand are deflationary. That's why we've seen treasury bonds go up. That's why I'm getting long treasury bonds. That's why I've seen them to a certain degree extent the market come down. You eventually punish those levered relationships. And it's way more complicated than that.

But there's the medium term, the medium term impact is different than the long term impact is different yet. But it doesn't have to be inflationary. And I don't think in the short term it is. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person.

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It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.i.e. today. This Black Friday, gain stream and go full speed. with one gig sky broadband and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on sky these nice people killing each other and ballad of a small player starring colin farrell on netflix i've made some mistakes right who hasn't get one gig sky broadband essential tv and netflix all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months our lowest ever price availability subject location new customers only 12 month minimum terms standard pricing thereafter tv and broadband sold separately terms apply for more infoz skyd a slash speeds yeah it's one thing that um Talking to Stormy, really, he helped me to understand those. What did Stormy say? Did Stormy agree with me?

I hope so. Oh, yeah. He said, he said people, people who are leveraged to the Hilt are the thing they fear the most is deflation. Oh, thank you. Glad Stormy agrees with me. Yeah, deflation helps people like us, but the people who are, you know, within this system and, you know, married to the system, wed to. the system where every bit of their wealth is went to the system in a certain way, deflation is going to destroy their wealth.

And yeah, that's why they don't want to see prices go down. So you have this trope out there of, oh, tariffs are just a tax. It's just going to raise your, you know, and then then you ask a question like, well, if tariffs are so bad, how come like every other country in the world uses them? and people are like, well, if every other country in the world punched themselves in the dick, does that mean we have to? It's like, well, there are. Yeah, you can have conversations with folks.

Yeah, I mean, Austrians are, free marketers are, some of them are absolutely insane. You can have conversations with a lot of them. Well, it's really the anarcho-capitalists. I don't think, you know, let's go back to Adam Smith, who, which is, which is, where a lot of this originated, in theory originated. Again, I think it goes back to just the idea of free price discovery and the ability to have free, the freedom of arms length transactions. I personally think that is the freedom that absolutely must be protected at all costs. And you've seen erosions in that since, well, the Civil Rights Act has eroded that because

I can't, you know, freedom of association has been somewhat destroyed. and that erodes that. The ridiculous amount of regulation that you have to fish through in order to open up a business, but has eroded that. But that is what absolutely must be protected. But Adam Smith, in wealth of nations and in general, what did he assume when he was talking about the freedom of trade and capital flows? Was it in the modern state? No. He was talking about within Christendom where you shared presuppositions and, in other words, you were held to everybody understood that we may disagree. We may go to war over the different flavors, but we ultimately are serving the same God. And we know that we're going to be held in judgment if I violate these certain, you know, these certain transcendental rules.

rules, the certain transcendent ideas of what is right and wrong. And so Smith understood, he would laugh at China being granted, you know, free access of because they don't share our basic view of how life and the world works. Or, you know, or Vietnam for the that matter, you know, where all the Nike shoes are made. Boy, Vietnam came to the table quick, didn't they? That was funny. Uh, no, my, do you think the, do you think the, uh, acting CEO of Nike made a phone call to the president of Vietnam? Hey, you know, uh, I got some good news and some bad news. Um, yeah, you know, everybody, they had 90, they had 90% tariffs on us and people are, okay, do you think, how many cities,

Are there in Vietnam right now, do you think that are worse than like the south side of Chicago? Or Camden, New Jersey. Or, you know, pick a ghetto. Pick a ghetto, any ghetto. Yeah. Do you think they have those? Oh, but they're punching themselves in the dick by charging us 90. Shut the, I'm serious, man.

I know what's funny? They're like, they're like, where did this question come from? Where did this question of if everyone else can charge tariffs, how can we, look, I don't, I don't care if it came from Benjamin Netanyahu. Answer the fucking question. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason every country generally has some type of gating mechanism at the border is because they understand that the chief loyalty of any state, state is to its own citizens. I mean, how many other countries have birthright citizenship?

Where you dilute your own, you can have, you know, hey, vacation to America, drop a kid and have a brand new citizen who is going to get social security benefits forever. I mean, who else does that? There was a point in time where we had to fill the western half of this country up because if we didn't Spain or the French or the Brits or somebody was going to. And we had to, you know, did we go too far? We had to fill this place up. And we understood that that was generally going to be with people from Europe who looked

and talked and believed the way we do. They might have a different, you know, linguistic spin on it. Some might be Catholic. Some might be Protestant. But generally it was going to be that. hey, we've got to fill this up. So go come over here and take some land so that the Spanish won't or the Mexicans won't or the French won't, right? And so I get that.

Now we filled it up. So this idea of birthright citizenship that dilutes our own, you know, our own franchise. I'm talking about in the citizenship sense of franchise is crazy. But we do, we do. This is, our government does not, our government's chief loyalty is to the dollar. It is not to you and me, Pete. It's just not. Now we're seeing that change and people are screaming bloody murder.

And I'm like, don't you understand what this, what's being changed here? That we're at least moving back to the political reality that Hobbs understood, that Carl Schmidt understood, that I am protected by the state, therefore I'm willing to sign up for the draft or pay whatever taxes. That's the trade. If you don't give me this, why would I ever do this? Just because there's a flag waving,

I'm supposed to have loyalty to this? No, it was based in covenant because, as Schmidt said, every political reality is just a secularized version of how we view God. And God says, hey, look, again, I'm not trying to turn this into a theology podcast, but this is where we get our understanding of the state from, is from the idea that God says, hey, look, I'm going to, I'm going to be your God, you're going to be my people. And then in the new covenant, hey, it's even better. I'm going to send a king and to show you how much I love you, he's going to die for you so that if you just pledge your loyalty to me, I'm going to take, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to take care of you. Okay. So our understanding of the state is that's the role of the king or the government is they take,

they don't take care of me in the sense of they provide for some UBI or any of this or, you know, state medicine or anything, they're going to make sure that generally there's peace. I'm free. I can walk the streets of my neighborhood without fearing for my life or being mugged, that I'm generally at peace from foreign invaders, and that if I have a dispute with my neighbor that if it gets bad enough that we can go and have somebody who's righteous, judge and decide our disputes. And so you provide me those things, and I'm going to be loyal to you.

I'm going to be, I'm going to follow the law. That's the trade that we make, because that's a secularized version of what God offers us. This is Carl Schmidt 101, book called Political Theology. Go read it. It will blow your mind. And if somebody says, oh, he was a Nazi, look, it's a lot more complicated than that. I don't care. I don't care any.

I don't make it not true. It doesn't make it not true. He was brilliant. What's that? I don't care anymore about that. Well, I know you don't, but there's going to be people who, you know, who listened, who are going to swing by this and go, Ron, why are you part quoting this? Go read him. And later, Schmidt in his book called Laws, said that the basis of all this, that he got all this because of his understanding of his loyalty. and Schmidt had a complicated relationship to the church. Get it. But he said he understood all this because of his loyalty to Christ

and that the role of that civilization, societies are built upon shared ways of life. And we understand that because that's what, that we understand that from our understanding of God. And so that's not. Nazi or anything. That's just basic, you know, Christian Western civilization. Okay. I get so tired of having to defend this stuff. But anyway, air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your

input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th. of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free, and even better. You can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is our Ireland's brand new multi-choice employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches.

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Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoosies sky.a slash speeds. It is what it is. Yeah, I don't have a problem with talking to theology because I've gotten to the point where, you know, I've read enough yucky and once you dive into Hegel enough and you start getting into Spangler, you can't have a conversation. with somebody, really, if you're just talking about, you know, the thing that one of my pet peeves, and I won't even, I won't even entertain it anymore, is anybody who wants to talk about the interwar years, like 1990 to 1939, who wants to talk, everything is a black and white issue, evil, bad, good, good, you have, you have no idea.

You're not even aware. Yeah, I mean, Reed Spangler, Social, Social, um, oppression socialism what is he talking about in the beginning he's saying there everyone is running around calling themselves a socialist and no one can no one can define the term he's like these people they were throwing stuff at the wall to seeing what was stick uh see what was stick ideology was gone they were just trying to figure out how to survive in most cases and then you read somebody you know you read someone like yaki and it's like okay well i mean and then you read hagglin it's like if there's no if you're not even going to entertain metaphysics at a even at a base level how do I have a

I can't have a conversation with you politics is not black and white you know continental philosophy is not black and white it's a philosophy and you can't yeah well uh it's interesting that uh you know Hegel everybody the the the the the conservative approach to Hegel has judged him by the fruits of the Neo-Hagalian, so Marx and so forth. And that's unfair to Hegel because Hegel was really trying to wrestle with the fact that progressivism ended up out of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, synthesis, was not Hegel. Hagle was just like, look, this is how, this is how history, progressivism is the thing is is the abomination that added on top that that arrow always goes up

that was not uh that was not that was not that was not part that that wasn't the bedrock of what hegel was trying to say hagel was really trying to understand look that that time moves one direction okay you can't go back nostalgia will kill you because you can look to the past for for perhaps we did things in the past that were better, but you can't go back to the past. History moves forward. And Hagego understood that, but to judge him simply by the Neo-Hagalians is unfair to his project.

It's like judging Calvin based upon the five points of Calvinism and the later, and again, I'm a Presbyterian, I'm a Calvinist. But Calvin would have kind of looked, given you side-eye, the five that that came later so you you it's more complicated than that that's number one and and and you know i haven't read i have i just have to admit i haven't read yaki so so i can't speak speak to that but but the the the philosophy the whole point of philosophy is to love it is to love wisdom and wisdom goes all the way back to just right and wrong that that that that wisdom is the apply. Look at the at the at the proverbs that the idea is to pursue the

understanding of what is good and evil. And then so and and politics is a layer on top of that, which is in applying wisdom, understanding good and evil to make the better, or as Plato would say, the just or as Paul would say using the same exact word, the righteous city. And then grand politics or national politics is how do we as a civilization unite these cities together in the pursuit of this goal? And so philosophy and politics and religion are all tied together in this pursuit of what is good and right, of understanding good and evil. And there is good and evil. There just is. And if you abandon that,

then that's what's going to lead to. I'm just a fungible economic unit. And we're going to have a, the United States is just going to be an economic zone. And we can have free flow of capital. And, you know, an Indian who's not a citizen is just as good as Tom next door. And why use Tom's, why use Tom's human capital when I can get

whatever human capital we keep beating up on India it can be whoever you know that's how you get all this and it all goes back to is there good and evil

which I know Hegel did talk about and how do you pursue the study of wisdom philosophy and how do you apply that to the city politics and in tying it all together

in national, you know, nationalism or national politics. That's all nationalism is, is, are we united together in pursuing what is good and right and the blessing of our neighbors? That's all nationalism is. The state has its first loyalty to its own citizens in the pursuit of what is good and right and their blessing. It is not some scary where it can get scary because if the, hey, look, in Germany, there were roving in that period. You're talking about the period between the wars. And I know you're friends with, you know, we both know Daryl and he's going to really expose a lot of this stuff. And I think in his upcoming series.

But that period between the wars was civilization itself had broken down. And it was roving gangs of violence and chaos. And I'll tell you what, you can say whatever you want about. about all this stuff, but that's evil. When I can't walk out, when I can't feed my family and I can't walk out my front door for fear of my own life, for the ability to make a living and all my savings have been destroyed. And I got to, you know, all of that, that's evil. That's chaos.

And if you want a German who speaks cogently about that, you can go back to Martin Luther. Martin Luther said, hey, there's got to be peace. Peace is the first, first duty of the king. Yeah, I read a book on my show called Blockade. It was the Diary of a Middle Class Austrian housewife by Anna Eisenmanger. Someone resurrected it some years ago. And she talked about that. In 1920 to 21, Austria was, Austria suffered the worst from the blockade.

And she had visited a relative's farm. You know, she risked traveling by road to go to that farm. And what she experienced in that, going to that farm was roving bands of psychopaths, destroying farms, stealing everything. And they were from Russia. She clearly says, you know, they had come in from Russia. So, you know, you can just imagine what they were, who they were. Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, that is people, people need to understand that civilization is, and I know we have to end, but civilization is like this close from falling apart. And yeah, yeah, I think a lot of what we discussed today and a lot of what we critique today gets us closer to that civilization falling apart. And a lot of what we're advocating for brings us together because. then we understand that we're all in it together. And hopefully we have leadership and elites that help us and back us up in that. So I think that's what we can hope for. I hope so. I hope so.

And I hope, look, dislocations of capital absolutely have collateral damage. And so if the chaos that this is hopefully short, term and causes a minimum of that because look if you know it's not you know the the the the the financialization that I that the ridiculous levels of financialization that I hope are brought to be brought to heal through all this that in the in the middle to long run and have built up these ecosystems and I don't want undue suffering among people who or hey, just try, oh, look, I'm good at accounting. I can service all these things that are products of financialization.

You know, that's not, you know, Frank, who built that business, I don't want his life destroyed. That's not, that's, that's, that's not the point. So, so we've got to, you know, think through solutions to help people out in this. But, but make no mistake, this system is going to, to get destroyed. It's either going to be destroyed on our terms, which is what we're trying to do, or it's going to be, you know, what I think we're staring at is, is a conflict possibly with China in the fall in the latter part of the year, because we are really going to hurt them through

this. And it reminds me a lot of what we did with Japan in the lead up to World War II when they invaded into China and we blockaded all their fuel sources. and that's what led to Pearl Harbor. And you can disagree or agree with all of that. That's not the point. The point is, if you corner an animal into a corner, good chance to get bit. So does that look like an invasion of Taiwan later in the year? Does that look like a blockade of Taiwan?

I don't know. I would probably come on the side of blockade. And does that force our hand into something that do we get stoop? I mean, is Taiwan worth enough for us to get our lights turned off and our, you know, where China can dictate the terms of our surrender? I mean, again, I don't know what that looks like. But I do know that if it needs to be, we need to be out ahead of this. And so I'm fully supportive of the president and the vice president and Bessent and team of,

trying to do this this this change in on our terms and not waiting for the inevitable change on somebody else's terms all right what's the name that substack again uh well it's the eyes of appellees um but it's just ron dodson dot substack.com r-o-n-d-o-d-s-o-n-s-o-sodd-sone that's uh dot substack.com I'll link to it in the notes. Thank you. Once again, hopefully next time we talk, it'll be, we'll have something to celebrate. Sounds good. Thanks for having me on, Pete.