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Financial Sovereignty with Jim Lynch

Episode 17 · 31 March 2025 · 1 hr 49 min

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Financial Sovereignty: Jim Lynch on Bonds, Debt, Gold and Bitcoin

What does financial sovereignty mean to a longtime bond manager? Jim Lynch joins Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen to explain how bonds work, why he worries about government debt, and how he came to Bitcoin.

Jim spent decades managing bond portfolios. He starts with the basics: what a bond is, how municipal, school and hospital bonds differ, and what the 40-year bond bull market from 1980 to 2020 looked like from the inside. He says up front that none of it is investment advice.

From there he covers the 2019 yield-curve inversion, the UK bond crisis, black swans, government debt and interest costs, money printing, and who is buying Treasuries. He also explains the practical side of owning physical gold.

In the last part he tells how he first heard about Bitcoin, forgot about it, and came back through GBTC. He talks about volatility, his first Bitcoin meetup, and teaching his grandkids about money.

How Bonds Work, Bitcoin vs Gold and the Case for Sound Money

What you'll discover:

  • How bonds work, from Treasuries to municipal bonds
  • What a 40-year bond bull market taught a bond manager
  • Government debt, interest costs and money printing
  • The practical side of owning gold
  • How a bond manager became a Bitcoin advocate
  • Volatility, Bitcoin meetups and teaching the next generation

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome Jim Lynch
  • [01:27] How bonds work
  • [05:24] Different bonds, different risks
  • [06:44] "This isn't investment advice"
  • [09:26] Advice for young people: work for yourself
  • [10:43] What he's doing for his grandkids
  • [12:02] A 40-year bond bull market, and what changed in 2020
  • [14:41] The 2019 yield-curve inversion and the Fed
  • [17:23] The UK bond crisis
  • [18:44] Black swans
  • [21:20] A racetrack analogy for returns and risk
  • [24:00] Bitcoin's returns and volatility
  • [25:22] How he structures his bond portfolio
  • [26:41] California, taxes and municipal finances
  • [30:40] The Fed, the Treasury and credit ratings
  • [34:39] Why he doesn't pick stocks
  • [35:56] How new bond issues are sold
  • [38:31] Money printing and the secondary market
  • [41:10] The Treasury General Account
  • [43:50] Hundred-year bonds
  • [45:11] Who's buying Treasuries, and gold
  • [49:09] Owning gold: coins, delivery and storage
  • [54:20] Bitcoin meetups
  • [56:58] "I'm not a conspiracy theorist"
  • [58:16] Debt, recession and stories of hyperinflation abroad
  • [1:02:14] U.S. debt and interest costs
  • [1:06:13] Government spending math
  • [1:11:26] Rolling over $7 trillion in 2025
  • [1:14:08] Generations and the debt
  • [1:16:46] History rhymes
  • [1:19:23] How Jim found Bitcoin
  • [1:24:40] Working remotely, and forgetting about Bitcoin
  • [1:27:16] GBTC and his first purchase
  • [1:29:52] Volatility and buying over time
  • [1:33:49] Research, faith and conviction
  • [1:35:08] His first Bitcoin meetup
  • [1:37:46] Lessons from Wall Street
  • [1:39:06] Teaching his grandkids
  • [1:41:44] "Get off zero"
  • [1:45:42] Bitcoiners and faith
  • [1:47:00] Wrap-up

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About Jim Lynch

Jim Lynch is a longtime bond portfolio manager and a Bitcoin advocate who attends and helps organize Bitcoin meetups. He returned to the show in Episode 52.

Disclosure: Views expressed are the guest's own and are not investment advice.

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:09] John Oberg. Joining me as always, my co-host, Randy Lorensen. Randy, good to see you. Hi, John. Excited for this today. Yeah, it'll be fun. Yeah. Uh, we got Jim Lynch here, and we're going to talk about bonds. And I'm And I I'm guessing a lot of our listeners are probably not that excited about that. That's a sentence you don't hear very often. I'm excited to talk about bonds. Maybe Jim hears that occasionally. But I think it's part of the reason I'm excited about this and I wanted to have Jim on is I think this is a really important topic. And as listeners probably have figured out by now, I am deep into the economics and get really wonky and really deep with stuff. And I came to the conclusion long ago that when you talk if you really want to understand how the economy works, how money works, the markets, even politics, you talk to bond traders, they understand it better than pretty much anybody else and the debt and and just the way the world works. And Jim has also been a resource in in writing my book. There were a couple of times where I needed to play something out and I needed scenarios and and he gave me invaluable insight as to uh you know as is as as to where to go and how to think about things. So uh I think I think listeners are really in for a treat here and are going to get some real wisdom and things that they probably have never thought about. So welcome Jim. Well, thanks for having me on, guys. I I really appreciate it. Hey, we were talking before the show. You started trading bonds when?

[01:44] When he was three years old, people. Yeah. So, I started uh 30 I'm going to be celebrating 39 years in the bond business. So, uh there you go. Okay. So, you've forgotten more about bonds than I'll ever know is what I heard. Yeah. But, you know, uh we, you know, bonds are basically a simple investment. However, one of the most misunderstood investments. Yeah, we were talking about that before the show, right? Like nobody understands bonds. Yeah. But what are they? Well, bonds come in uh different forms. You have treasury bonds, which was probably what most people have heard of. You have corporate bonds. You have municipal bonds. Like we're sitting here in Austin, Texas right now. Austin issues bonds for their schools, for the roads out there. you know, they don't have several hundred million dollars sitting in the bank to fix all the potholes that you see driving around. So, they issue debt and then and and they get things done and then like for if you we have a lot of people that moved in here recently over the last several years, they'll issue debt to build a school, add on to a school, fix the hospitals, anything that's a public interest uh is generally your municipal bonds. But they're all bonds. They all work the same way alone, right? I mean, so as a school says, "I'm going to issue a bond." What that really means, I'm going to borrow your money. I'm going to Yeah. We're going to borrow money. Yeah.

[03:08] Yeah. Like the city, the state, you know, they don't have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank to fix some of these issues. They have to raise the debt. The same thing a corporation will do. You have corporations here in Austin. Uh Apple is here. So was Facebook. You know, they'll borrow money to build, you know, build a building or whatever the case may be. They're probably bad examples. because they have a lot of cash. But you get the point. Companies do uh issue debt to buy back stock to pay out dividends. Not really a great idea in my opinion. But look, they do it. Governments are our government. Uh they issue debt to pay off all our other debt and because we overspend. We'll get into this a little bit, but by and large in its simplest terms and there's there's bonds that go from one year or actually I should say 3 6 9 months in T bills. They go from one year to a 100 years. And what you're basically doing is loaning your money to a government, to a company, to a to a state. They give you a a fixed maturity date. Let's say it's 10 years. So we'll say March 1 of 2035 and they give you a fixed rate. 95% of bonds are a fixed rate. You get that for the next 10 years provided that the company is or the city or the state still in business. There's no magic to it. Now there's there are some esoteric things but for the most part that's how bonds work. Why is it so confusing? Okay. Treasury bonds are very simple, backed by the government. But there's Treasury bonds. There's Jinny May, Fanny May, Freddy Mack, Federal Home Loan Bank, uh, and several others.

[04:56] Well, how do these work? They're bonds. They're backed by different resources. You have you have JP Morgan. It's a big bank. It's our largest bank. They have senior bonds, junior bonds, subordinated bonds, convertible bonds, uh preferred preferred bonds, all with different ratings, different different criteria. You have general obligation bonds in the case of Austin. You have water bonds, school bonds, hospital bonds. So this is where like just different risk with different interest rates. Yes. And what really is the problem is the media. You'll listen to CNBC or uh Bloomberg or whatever else have you and every day they report it a different way. The bond market's strong today. What does that mean? The bond market's strong today. Well, what that means in my terms is prices is are up, yields are down. Okay. The next day they're going to say, "Well, yields are higher today. Well, what does that mean?

[06:02] That means the bond market's weaker. They don't say it the same way every day and every station's different. And it's it is very confusing because a lot of times I got to, you know, put my cap on. What did he just say? You know, so I always tell people, think of a seessaw. If you look at a seessaw, rates go up, the value of the bond goes lower. Rates go down, the value of the bond goes higher. some of these just basic, you know, concepts would make it a little easier if if people could do it this way, but they don't. Uh, if you guys don't mind, I just would like to give a a little disclaimer here. If you don't mind, please. Uh, nothing I say today is going to be investment advice. Okay? Uh, if you guys all want, I'll give you some parameters how to invest your money. That's great. I have uh as I said I've worked 39 years in this industry. I've owned two investment firms in my lifetime. I've sold them both. I've worked for some of the big boys out there. RBC Wealth Management, UBS Financial Services. So, I I'm I'm pretty well verssed out there, but I am here today representing none of them. My current firm I sold 5 years ago. I I basically only manage fixed income investments for them. I don't raise money for them. I don't advise anybody.

[07:23] If you guys ask me today to be your adviser, I'm not. I don't even have the licenses anymore. All I do is manage, you know, I manage two portfolios for my for my former company. I manage a fixed uh mun portfolio and a taxable portfolio. If you want to call me or email me and ask me a question, great. All right. I also mine Bitcoin. I run my own node. I that that's fun. Uh you know uh the bond but the bonds I could do it in my sleep. Uh I'm very good at it. I've been in the top top cortile for Uh so look um you know feel free to ask questions, feel free to you know pin me down a little bit but um to me bonds are simple. Keep it simple stupid. You hear this all the time. I give you money for a specific period of time. I'm going to get that money back with interest. And you know, is that good, bad, or indifferent? Well, we'll get into it.

[08:33] So, there's so many questions I want to get into. Let's start with some really simple ones. Like, so like I've got a I've got a um young kids, you know, in early 20s and one's 14 and we talk about money. Yeah. if I wanted them to like read a a book or a paper on bonds, like just understand here's here's what stocks mean. Here's what bonds like. Do you have your favorite books on investing that you get people to read is like, hey, this is the this is the place. I'm walking down Second Street in uh downtown Austin a few years ago. I live right down there. And I'm walking down Second Street and these two kids from UT stop me on the street and they say, "Hey, uh, you know, uh, can we ask you a question?" Sure. Can we videotape you? Sure. Knock your brains out. What would you do? How would you advise us 20 year olds, you know, moving forward in life? You know, I Okay. Um, first of all, work for yourself. Don't work for anybody else.

[09:36] If that's one thing I learned in 67 years, be your own boss. I want you to tithe 10%. And I want you to save 10%. Start now. If if you're working now, do it now. And uh you know, they thought it was cute. And I said, um, now I want to tell you what I would really do. And they looked at me. And are you still recording at that point? Oh, yeah. Okay, good. I I said to him and they asked, "Can we still record?" I said, "Sure." I said, "This is what you should do. You're 20 years old. What I'm about to tell you right now, I believe you'll retire when you're 30. Not what? Not that you will, but you'll have the ability to." And he said, "What's that?" Just buy Bitcoin. Just buy Bitcoin. This is back in, you know, 2122. Was it 20,000 a share or whatever it was? I say, 'L I have three grandkids. They're all Bitcoiners. You want me to tell you something different? You want me to tell you to go buy Apple or Microsoft? I I'll tell you that. This is what I'm doing for my own grandkids. I don't think they're going to have to work much past 30. Will they?

[10:54] That's their decision. Let them let them enjoy life. But will they have to? And that's where you want to be. So, you know, I don't like bonds. I think it's the worst investment in the world. I would not touch it with a 10-ft pole. Uh, do you have to learn about it? Sure. I guess you have to, you know, read a book. There's there's a lot of books out there. I've read all the books. You guys have mentioned a few of them on your podcast already. Uh, is there a really great book off the top of my head on I I can't think of one. Yeah. Uh but anybody under 40, forget you even know bonds. It's a dead investment at least for the foreseeable future. Now I say um because from 1900 to 1980, we had a bond bear market. It was the worst time in the world to be in bonds. Just look just look at the track record. You pull up any chart, it'll look terrible. From 1980 to 2020, we had a bond bull market.

[12:00] Was the best was the best investment in the world. And I I mean, I did very very well in this time. Uh you know, things changed in 20120. And to be clear, that's because interest rates kept dropping. Yeah. And the part that people don't understand about bonds, right, is when the interest rate drops, the value of the bonds that you own bonds go up go up. Yeah. Right. That's the that's the thing that's counterintuitive, I think. Yeah. That's what most people just think of the seesaw, right? Rates lower, prices higher. Right. And um you know, like 20 years ago, I started this phil uh you know, I got wind of this philosophy in bonds and we had a field day on it. It was called rolling down the yield curve. I I don't want to spend too much time on it because I'm not doing it today, but essentially rolling down the yield curve is you buy a 10-year bond, hold it for 5 years, sell it, repeat the process. So, you got a 10-year bond at 3% at let's say at par. You buy it, you hold it for 5 years, you sell it at a 2% yield.

[13:08] You'll sell it around 105. Take the 105 on $100,000. That's $105,000. Go back and buy the 3% bond in 10 years. I mean, this was like robbing a bank. This is like taking candy from the baby. When you're a bond manager, if you can outperform other managers by 25 basis points, that's a quarter of 1%. You're a hero. You're like Derek Jeter of the Yankees. you know, an equity guy who outperforms someone else by a quarter of a percent gets fired in the bond business a quarter. You you did that? Wow. So, it was very easy to make money for 40 years. And that brings me to another point. Nobody out there managing money has ever managed money with what we're going through right now. So all these charts and all these geniuses on TV, oh this is what's going to happen. That's going to just take a step back and realize none of us have ever done this before. Now maybe Warren Buffett, but I I think during the Great uh I think he was 16 or 17 years old. He wasn't managing money for anybody. So we are all newbies at this. So, so for the uninitiated, which I would consider myself one of those in this conversation, did something happen in 2020 that changed all of it? Actually, it was the spring of n of 2019.

[14:41] Okay. What happened in the spring of 19? The Treasury curve inverted. Now, what does that mean? That means short rates, your two-year rate was higher than your 10-year rate. We call that an inverted yield curve. That's usually not a great sign. Usually a sign of a recession or or something like that. Well, the Treasury inverted in in the spring of 19. And then something that's never happened before also inverted. Munis have never inverted before. I didn't know that. So taxfree taxfree bonds never inverted. They inverted over the summer. Whoa. Something's not right. Something There's a sign here that in September of 19, you probably have heard people say this, uh, the repo market blew up. What's the repo market? That's where banks put money at the Fed and they get an overnight rate and the rate went I forgot what the rate was. You know, rates were very low at that time. a quarter a percent, 1%, whatever it was, it went to 10% overnight.

[15:59] Whoa. Overnight loans, 10% yield on US paper. Something's not right. What' the Fed do? What they always do? They printed and they fixed it. Now, look, none of us foresaw the pandemic of March for 20. All right? But that certainly caught gasoline on a fire that was brewing. And you had the market blow up. And this is something I've never in my life saw. Yes, corporates will blow up, munis will, you know, get hit. Uh stocks will get hit, but the treasury market got hit. You go back to March and 20, you couldn't sell your Treasury bonds. What? You can't sell your Treasury. This is the largest most liquid market in the the bid air spread, which is like peanuts. It's like cents spread out two, three, four, five points. You couldn't sell them. Yes, you could. Yeah. But your 100,000 be worth 95,000 or 90 whatever it was worth.

[17:05] Unheard of in the US Treasury market. Something was really bad. And we all know what they did. They printed. So that was that was the tea leaves part You go to the third quarter of 22 and you had the issue with uh the UK. They were basically bankrupt. What happened? That how' they get out of it? They printed Yeah. had the first quarter of 23 with the bank blow up. Were these uh signature banks, Silicon Valley Bank, was this a bank issue? No, wasn't a bank. Th those banks were in great shape. What was the issue? They owned too many Treasury bonds. They went from a 100 cents on a dollar to 70 cents on a dollar. You guys wanted your money. You go down to the bank, pull your money out. What do they got to do? They don't have the money in the bank, guys. They got to sell assets. Well, what's their biggest asset? Treasury bonds. Most liquid asset. They had a problem. What' the Fed do? they created this another another acronym the the BTFB whatever it was called uh you know and they and they uh basically told banks give us the bonds we'll give you a h 100red cents on the dollar and you can you can redeem your share your depositors what and people with over 250,000 got bailed why the these are all signs and they're not good signs And uh these to me are you know you know signs of a black swan. And that's why I say you know for that period from 1980 to 2020 bond bull market. Well we're in a bare market now. Uh you can see it in our inflation numbers. You can see it in uh uh almost and and really can you believe the stats out there today? Uh, someone was talking to me earlier today inflation. Well, I think our GDP number came out today or the PC uh PCE is coming out and and they're going to tell you it's 3% or lower, whatever the new is. Walk across the street to any supermarket, go in there and tell me your your inflation's only 3%. Come on. We're not we're not dead out here. I mean, we know it's higher than 3%. So, I mean, conventional wisdom from like the let's call it the mid 90s until like the the teens, the mid teens and the 2000s, it was kind of like you buy equities earlier in your in your retirement savings. Then as you get closer, you kind of have equities and bonds and you retire and I'm going back, you know, 30 years in my recollection here, but it's like you have bonds and you ladder the bonds and you you have income and you maybe get an annuity or like that was that was the way people thought about things, right? Work great for 40 years. Yeah. And and so now it sounds like like it's not just the rules of the game have changed. It sounds like maybe the game has changed. Game has changed. It's different. You know, uh everything I I love to say this, everything is great until it isn't. So if inflation by the government standards and they're trying to get it back to what they want 2%. Right? Um it's at 3%.

[20:37] money supply, or global M2, take either one, and I'm going to give roundabout numbers here. Since the the GFC, the great financial crisis, we've been expanding the money supply by about 8%. Give or take. Some people think it's higher. That's per year. That's per year. It's compounding annually at 8%. Now, if you add taxes in there and your cost, your fees, well, I I mean, you're probably somewhere between 12 and 15%. Let's call it 10. All right, let's just say let's be conservative and say 10%. Well, that's what you have to beat to make any money. What? Yeah, your investment's got to do better than 10. Well, what does that Well, let's go to let's go to the racetrack. I haven't done this in decades, but let's go to the racetrack. And then I grew up in New Jersey. Used to go to Mammoth Racetrack in the Middlelands there. And my buddies and I, we would go in there and, you know, we didn't have much money. We had nickels and pennies and whatever, but you could buy a you could buy a a a ticket for the race for the races. You could win. I think I have this right.

[21:50] You can place or you can show. or you could buy a combo ticket and you would have all three, right? So, if your horse came in the top three, you got something. Well, we didn't really win too much money, but it was fun. It was a learning experience. But let's let's let's play this little uh game here. So, the S&P 500 has 10 uh 10 different sectors in them. All right, we're going to add two. So, we have 12 horses in the race. All right, our bogey is 10. Let me tell you what's coming in last. Long-term bonds. There's not a chance in the world you're getting 10% on your bond portfolio, right? Okay. So, we know that horse is losing. We're not betting on that. Now, I'll let you guys figure out the rest of them. Okay. But I'm going to take the top three. Okay. The S&P over decades have done has done about a 10% return. Okay? You know, maybe if you bought the S&P 500, ah, you you you'll break even. I grew up in New Jersey. I'm not a Yankee fan, but I remember George Stein, Breneron, and the Yankees. You don't play 500 baseball for the New York Yankees. If you did, you got fired. Just look, just ask Billy Martin. He's died. He died, but he got fired five times. You're not playing 500 baseball for the Yankees. So, the S&P 500's not going to do it. Okay. Well, what is going to do it? Well, you know, if you look at the last 15 years, probably a good barometer. Uh, well, the NASDAQ could be doing it, right? It's averaged 15% a year. And believe it or not, no one looks at this, but gold has uh the S&P for the last 15 years. That's a pretty recent development, too, though, because it was it was stagnant for a minute there. Yeah. But on average, it's it's beating the S&P 500.

[23:47] Now, what's going what horse is going to win? It might be a good idea to pick that horse. And I if I have it on my shirt, um the fastest horse for the last 16 years has been Bitcoin. Now, it's averaged 50% a year, 50. You don't get 50% with no volatility. All right? Okay, it's down 20% in the last few weeks. Okay, you have to live with it. But you're not putting your not putting your food money, your health care money, your mortgage money in Bitcoin. All right, what percentage should you have? That's for you to decide. All right, so but that's the fastest horse. Can I Can I beat a 10% uh money printing? I think I can. I mean, I've been in Bitcoin for several years now. I um the only year I did not win with my percentage in Bitcoin, I think, was um 23. I think the S&P and the NASDAQ both beat me that year. And at that time, I had 70% in bonds. Jim, you just said don't buy bonds. Uh it's true. you don't buy long-term bonds, but I have Ta bills and I have short-term unis and that money comes due and I can make decisions with that money. Uh so I don't you know I I told you I manage two portfolios. My taxable portfolio is about about uh uh a two-year average maturity with a duration of one and a half years. My MUN portfolio is about a one and a half year maturity with a duration of one.

[25:34] So, I'm on the short end, you know, and clients call me, you know, the people I manage money for, they'll ask me like, you know, why so short or can I get any more yield out of my bonds? No. Well, you know, other people can. Good. Go with them. You know, uh h how would I get more more yield? You ever hear of equities? You ever hear of gold, Bitcoin, real estate, any of these time in California if I'm right. Yep. Okay. Anyone else live in California? Okay. If you're a resident of California, you understand these two things really, really well. You either have water or you don't. There's no in between. It's not like you could take a five minute shower. No, no, no. You either can take a nice shower or you can't take a shower at all. You know, you heard the old expression, if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. You know, Californians know this. That's the water issue. For those that haven't lived in California, why why is why do some people not have water? I I guess I don't understand this. Uh when they have a great year, what's a great year in California? They get a lot of snow and that snow melts down and the the water runs down. and they have it when they don't get a lot of snow or a lot of rain. The rainy season in California is in the fall. You go you go to San Francisco in the spring, you understand why it's the golden brown state. All those hills you see there are all golden brown, starving for water. And I don't want to get into the politics of things, but water tends to leak out of California into the ocean and they don't use it. That's that's a story for another day.

[27:24] The state of California, same thing on their finances. They either have money or they don't. I think it's the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world. So, what's what's what's with the uh their finances? Well, it's home to Silicon Valley, all those tech companies, and these guys are making money for the last 50 years. It's it's been a home run in Silicon Valley. My son-in-law works there. I mean, look, I you know, my my kids have lived my my kids and grandkids all lived there at one point in time, close to 20 years. We had a home in Tahoe. I get it. So, the thing with California is if the market's doing great, they have all these they're going to re reap in all these capital gains taxes. When the market's not doing great, let's go back to 2022. Fed starts raising rates. The beginning of 22, California had a $75 billion surplus. Everybody wanted to spend the money. Governor Nuome, to his credit, would not. He saved it. Good thing because by the end of 22, they had a $25 uh shortfall in just seven months. A hundred billion. Where'd it go? Well, uh, that's your capital gains taxes. And the United States of America right now is very similar to California. We have 36 37 trillion in debt. Uh, if you look at where we get a lot of our tax revenue from, same place that California does.

[29:11] So you let's go let's go back to 22. In April of 23, government's collecting taxes, very little taxes. Why? Markets were down 30 some odd percent, bonds were down 10, 15%. Everybody's taking losses out the gazoo, very little tax to pay. So, oh, did want to jump in? So, if I look at the income tax, I've never even thought about this, but if I look at the income tax collections for the Treasury, US Treasury, Yeah. How much of that is based on like um you know ordinary income versus capital gains? Is it is it really a I never even thought about that pie. Yeah. You know, off the top of my head, I I should have these numbers, but this is not what I do. Uh let's just take last year in 24, they took in almost $5 trillion. And and and the total total take Yeah. total take income tax was about half of that. Yeah. I would say that would be my uh my guess income tax will be about half that.

[30:14] Okay. So in 24 we took in almost 5 trillion. We still had a debt. We still we still spent 1.8 trillion in 23 the market did really good. In 24 the market did really good. and yet we still can't pay our bills. Probably not a good sign for me. I will say this. I honestly believe that the Fed, the Treasury cannot like cannot let the market go down for any extended period of time. Could we get a correction in the stock market like everyone's calling for 10 Sure. It it can't stay down there long. The Treasury needs the money. They need their receipts. You get a 20% uh fall off in the S&P for 25, it's going to cost you that much more money. The Fed's done this calculation. They're not dumb people down there. All right. They they know if you go back to 20, the Fed did something really crazy, really strange. Again, got to read the tea leaves. They came out and printed all that money. They backed uh the bonds. They backed they bought corporate bonds and high yield bonds on their balance What? It's taxpayer money. Well, why' they buy high yield bonds of all things?

[31:48] Well, turns out there's four companies they had a back. I believe it was AT&T, Verizon, and off the top of my head there was two others. Those companies were tripleB rated. If they would have got downgraded by charter, all your pension funds, all your mutual funds would had to sell them because by prospectus, they can't hold high yield debt in their portfolios. That would have created a catastrophe. You would have had a real problem with pensions, pension payouts. The Fed knows all this. you know, they're, you know, again, they're alerted men and women. They knew this. That's why they did it. Why would they back the stock market? Well, okay, the stock market goes down by 40%. I have all these retirees that rely on that money. I either got to pay them, you know, through through uh some type of government pay payment or I could just back the stock market and they'll take the money out of the market. I'm good. a few trillion dollars to them. I don't know what the numbers are, but a two few trillion dollars a lot better. Uh if you go back to 20, they were bailing out pension accounts.

[33:10] What? This is unheard of. Why are they doing it? Because they can't have Larry Lunchbucket out there not being able to pay to buy food and buy groceries and put gas in his car. It's not going to happen. They know that cost is a lot more than what uh what it is to support the stock market or the bond markets. So, uh I can go on and on about government debt. I think it I think we're at a crisis level. Again, I could be wrong. Maybe I am wrong. Well, then S&P has had two phenomenal years in a row. Up over 20% in 23, up over 20% in 24. real estate doing pretty good. Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, well, Bitcoin has been up a lot. Uh, I understand, you know, gold has been up a lot. People are taking gains. And with all this, we're still 120% debt to GDP, still running a 7% debt uh a 7 a negative 7% budget deficit, and our net international investment position right now is 80%. What the you know what is going on?

[34:28] The math is not working. I'm a simple guy. One plus one is two. That's why I'm a bond guy. I understand simple things, you know. I'm not as good as Warren Buffett, like analyze spreadsheets on equities and PE ratios and all. I don't really want to do that. Give me a bon. Let me know what's going on and I'll run with it. And and is it m like how how you view this problem? You mentioned your grandkids and your kids and for you like does everyone need to kind of look at this problem a little differently or is it oh you know history doesn't repeat itself but often rhymes is that the phrase if I got right know your history go back and read about what happened in the mar republic after world war I look at Argentina look at Venezuela look at some of the countries in Africa. Lebanon was the most recent. Uh, you know, look at look at England. England's basically bankrupt. They would have been bankrupt three years ago if the Fed didn't bail them out. Now, you you're going to say, "Well, the Fed didn't give them any money." Nonsense. They opened up swap lines with them. That's QE, guys. You know, you you you know, you can call you can call, you know, a chicken a chicken for crying out loud.

[35:47] You know, when you get when you take money out of our pockets and give it to somebody else, that's Q. All right. Now, they got all kinds of acronyms that they'll use and that they'll, you know, those, well, gee, why are they doing questions? So, in the old days, we used to have off the-run treasuries. We used to print out computer sheets and you could buy off the run treasuries. What's an offrun treasury? Well, as you know, the Treasury issues debt every week, every month, on a quarterly basis. They got trillions and trillions of debt that they got to roll over and pay. So, those are new issues. Same thing. Austin comes out with a new issue. You can buy the new issue or you can buy a secondary, an off therun Austin issue. Well, the Treasury has off the-run treasuries and in 23 uh the the the primary dealers, which I think there's 22 or 23 of them, a primary dealer like Goldman Sachs, companies like that. When the Treasury issues debt, if they can't sell the debt, well, guess what? You're a primary dealer.

[37:04] You're my new best friend. You get the bonds. Wonderful. That's what I want. Bonds on my inventory. I can't sell. That's great. That's what I want. So those banks are essentially buying them. They have to. There no there's no choice. They're required to. Yeah. Let's say an issue comes out for a hundred billion dollars and they only sell 80 billion. Guess who gets the 20? The primary dealers. And they're starting to get a little full of these off therun treasuries. And and that means they're not going to be buying the new issues or they're starting to push back. What's the government do? Well, you know what we'll do? We will uh we will buy those off ther run treasuries from you, but you have to buy the new issues that we put out. Wait, what is wait a second? I have grandkids. I think they can add 1 plus 1 is two. All right, that's basic math. You're going to buy my bonds at par even though they're selling below par. You buy my bonds at par and you're and you're I get the money and I can go out and buy the new issue treasuries. Yeah.

[38:12] Well, what do you call that? Oh, that's QE. That's quantitative easing. That's putting liquidity into the system. I I you know, they call it by other different names. This to me is a red flag when I see this. So, so for the for the uninitiated, so what they're what the government's done then is they've printed some money. Yep. So that they can buy these secondary bonds. Yeah. So that some I mean I think the FBI might call that moneyaundering in some cases. Uh that doesn't count. That only counts for you and I, John. Got it. You and I can't do that. I was just being tongue and cheek, but I guess maybe I should be careful what we put out. That's real control for myself. Yikes. So So um I mean but but I mean when you say take money out of my pocket, you don't literally mean they're taking the money out of my pocket. What you mean is they're printing money thereby devaluing the money in my pocket and and so it's actually just it's hurting it's hurting my buying power right so that you know what I could buy for a dollar last year now cost me a$120 this year that's inflation right isn't it robbing from I mean the guys that write the rules on robbing say no but uh John I walk by your house I walk by your house I'm I'm there I don't like inflation I don't like the way it works just so everybody understands this I walk by your house.

[39:29] Yeah, John's got a pretty nice place here. You know what? I need something from this place. And I take 2% of it. You probably not going to notice it, right? But after a while, you're going to say, you're going to say to the wife like, "Honey, half our grass is missing." Yeah. What's going on? Oh, you know that guy Jim walking by the house every day? He needs it for his yard. You know, look, uh, they're stealing. That's what that's what we call that. We call that stealing. And they are robbing you. All right. Um, you want another sign? Let's let's do one. So, um, I already mentioned the third quarter of, uh, 22, uh, the UK had this issue. uh the Treasury move index which measures volatility blow blew out. It's a real Um this is something I watch on a regular basis. Uh it's usually under 100. That's the index. That's the index.

[40:36] This was around 130 140. That means the Treasury market's blowing up. Look, the Fed has two mandates. Low unemployment, keep inflation lower. That's that's hogwash. They're there to make sure that works. That's their primary function. That treasury blows up, it's the reserve asset of the world. We got an issue. That's what their job is. The treasury was blowing up in the third quarter of 22. So what' they do? Well, they emptied the TGA, the TR the Treasury banking account, right? and um over the the course of the last few years, Janet Yellen, our Treasury Secretary at the uh started issuing only T bills, but for the most part T bills short ter shortterm for the listeners. Yeah. 3 6 n months short-term debt. Is that that's the difference between a T bill and a Treasury bond? Is that Great question, John. T bills 3 6 9 12 months. uh um um bonds are longer in duration 2 5 7 10 20 30 so she starts issuing only short-term debt I think right now we're issuing on average 20% of our debt in T bills it's usually under 10 as a matter of fact a little over a year ago on CNBC one of the best investors in our time a guy by the name Stanley Truck and Miller I most of us can't even tie his shoes is on CNBC and he basically calls Janet Yellen stupid on national TV. I thought it was a little harsh and she didn't turn out the debt.

[42:30] Hm. She didn't. Well, it turns out that Jack Lou under the Obama administration as Treasury Secretary didn't turn out the debt. Neither did Steve Minutuchin when he was under the Trump. What does turn out the debt mean? Great question. Rates were historic lows, right? We remember we were at 1% for like almost 12 years. Well, if you had an 8% mortgage, John, I'm sure you refinanced it. Y you probably refinanced it to six and refinanced it again to three. Why would you do that? Lower your payments. So did every municipality. So did every corporation. Governments were doing it. How come the our government didn't do it? Wouldn't it have made sense to term out our debt, issue longer term bonds at 1% instead of T bills at a quarter of 1%. It turns out that Steve Minutuchin during the first Trump administration wanted to issue a 50-year bond. He says, "This would make sense.

[43:33] We'll issue it for 1% or one and a half, whatever, whatever the rate was going to be. It doesn't really matter." Came back and told the American people that we couldn't do it. Why? Ruckers in New Jersey issued a 100redyear debt. It's a double A rated school. Why could Ruckers issue a 100redyear debt? The United States government, supposedly the safest, most liquid market in the world. Why couldn't they do it? Back to Janet Yellen. Back to Stanley Ducken Miller on CNBC. So, was Janet Yellen really stupid? You may not like her or may not like her politics and all that other stuff. She's not my favorite, but she's not stupid. As a matter of fact, I'm probably not fit to carry her pocketbook compared intelligence, right? But she's stupid. Or maybe the reason was she couldn't. And what do I mean by that? She couldn't term out the debt. Hm. Because if she couldn't term out that debt on the world's ass most secured asset, most liquid market, that's probably not a sign. And that's really the truth. And why couldn't she? No 2014, the global central banks have not added to their treasury net net position for over 10 years. They're not buying treasuries. Who's buying them? Well, what are they buying? Well, they're buying gold. Maybe a a story for a different day. But who's buying the out since the last four or five years, hedge funds are buying treasuries. Now, why do hedge funds buy treasuries? I thought these guys are looking for, you know, outsiz returns.

[45:36] Yeah, they are. But treasuries, you can leverage over 90% in some cases on treasuries. What do I mean by that? You have a you have $100,000 in treasuries. You can borrow 90,000 much higher now, right? Four, five%, whatever they were over the last four or five years. I can borrow that money and go buy tech stocks, buy real estate, buy businesses. You starting to see the picture here? And if you look around the world and you look at who's our largest buyers of US treasuries, yeah, Japan's still up there. Uh, China is still up there, but they haven't added to their positions. The Cayman Islands, it's in the top five. Cayman Islands, who the heck lives there? Yeah, Raw Paul from Real Vision lives there, but well, Cayman Islands is that's where a lot of people, that's where a lot of these hedge funds register.

[46:44] Luxembourg. Luxembourg. I don't even know where Luxembourg is. It's It's somewhere in It's somewhere in in Europe. What do Well, they have a lot of hedge funds that register there, too. Why? And again, this is why hedge fun now hedge funds, they could be levered 25, 50, 100 times. This is who's buying Treasury bills, uh, Treasury bonds. I got news for you. Global central banks, they're idiot buyers. When they have to buy, they just buy. They don't care what the rate is, what the ter just buy it. right. They're going to be the first ones out the door. I look, I I I don't know what's going to happen with all these hedge funds, but if there's ever a crisis, my bet the black swan is in one of these hedge funds. As sure as I'm sitting here, I believe that to be the case. When will it happen? I don't know. But there's just too many treasuries with too much leverage. It doesn't look good. This is too many signs for me. There's too many things that cause me to go whoops or what's going to happen here? And so if I'm if so, okay, I have a I have a I issue my version of a bond called a mortgage to my bank and there I borrowed money from them, right? And so if I if I default on that, they get my home. Yeah.

[48:12] Like that's it's a mortgage backed it's a it's a real estate backed security. If there's a default where there's these Treasury bills and Treasury bonds, what what it's it's backed by the full faith of the US government, which is a handshake. Yeah, it's their word, right? I mean, we have the strongest army in the world. That's why everybody believes our debt is rock solid. Look, I don't want to put the fear of God in anybody here. Treasuries are never going to default. You're you put 10,000 in, hundred,000 in, a billion dollars in at maturity, you're getting it all back. We have a printing press. You're getting it all back. The problem is the value of what you're getting back. The value of what you're getting back. And that's the issue. Remember what we said earlier in the show, guys. I think you got to beat 8% 10%. There's only a handful of investments that are doing this. I mean, how many people that you know was talking to a buddy the other day just got a brand new job. I got a about a year ago. I saw him got a brand new job.

[49:20] Nice. He I he told me he said I'm going to hold out for as much as I can get. I said do your best because a year from now you're down 10% in your income. He says you're kidding. I said yeah you're going to lose 10% of your value here in a year. Get the best you can do. Our wages yes they're higher. They're doing great. Workers are happier. None of them are getting 10% raises. Yeah. Okay. So that means you're behind the eightball next year. Uh so the the these things are uh these things are uh a kind of bad uh in my opinion. These are these are warning signs. You know, if you look at the Bible, there's warning signs, right? And you could say, well, you know, this doesn't look too good. Well, these are warning signs in the economy. Buyer beware, take caution. You know, uh uh you know, I have never been a gold buyer. I I didn't buy gold for decor. I started buying it five years ago. What kind of gold should you buy?

[50:22] You should, you know, uh we have a saying in Bitcoin, not your keys, not coins. Not if you don't have the gold, you don't own the gold. All right? Uh uh you know, so you definitely want to get some gold. And so if somebody wanted to buy gold for the first time, I' I've bought gold, but if I wanted to buy if I wanted to buy gold for the first time as a listener, how do you do that safely? Well, everyone's going to go the ETF route, right? Um, it's just simple. Even with Bitcoin now, uh, most people are just going to buy the ETF, not having your keys. Also, do they have proof of gold? Now, the largest gold ETF, exchangeraded fund, is GLD, gold, Larry David. It's the biggest one. The one it's paper gold is not sure that all that gold is there. Now I do own the SPRUT gold ETF. All right. And everybody I've talked to says they have the gold bullion. Okay. So look, but I do I also own gold on my own. The problem with gold, owning gold on your own, there's a place in Texas here. I just found out about a week ago. It's not a bank, but it's a I forget the name of it. I'll shoot you an email that you can hold your gold in Texas privately. Problem with gold is you get the you get this you get the gold delivered to your house. Armored trucks outside your outside your front of your house. You're getting gold delivered to your house. You don't think your neighbors are kind of like suspicious why the wh why why the armored truck is out there? There's a reason banks have vaults. That's true. So, you now have this gold. What do you do with it? Well, you're going to put it in your safety deposit box.

[52:17] great. Third party. What if you can't get in your gold. That's why I believe liquid gold is the place to go. But it brings me to a valid point I want people to understand. Nigel Farage is a big UK guy. Uh you may not like his politics but he's a wealthy guy well known in in the UK about a year ago he got locked out of his bank UK. My gosh if this can happen to him he's in parliament I believe right? Yeah, in parliament, believe it or not, I just heard this a few months ago, uh, in January of 20, Trump leaves the House. Him and Melania leave the White House. They go to Margo. Melania takes Baron to the frozen. Can't. She just She doesn't have access to him. Wait a second. This is the former first lady of the United States of America could not did not have access to her bank accounts. I don't know the whole story. She wrote about it. It's in one of I think it's in a book that she wrote. What chance do I have? So Randy and I uh got to know each other through a Bitcoin meetup. And uh about two years ago, this thing called Noster started to gain some traction. What is Noster? I all all the tech guys are going to beat me up here.

[54:05] Think of Twitter or X on a blockchain. That to me is that's Noster. You know, you can't get sanctioned. It's on a blockchain. And I download the app for Noster. I'm on Noster. Look at me. About six months later, I'm at one of our Bitcoin meetups and I can't get the Noster thing to work. And we have a good friend, a mutual friend named Matt. And I call Matt over and I say, "Matt, this thing doesn't work." He looks at it. I can't figure it out either. But I got just a guy calls over this kid. He's I don't think he's even He's got my phone. Doing this. Doing that. Are you Um, you got Yeah. What do you mean I got debunked? Apple debunked you? How? Well, I have an Apple phone.

[55:09] I'm using Noster on their phone. He says you must have said something. You must have tweeted or not tweeted, but I must have put something agreed about something somebody said. They didn't like your comment. They debunked you. Well, how do I fix it? He said, "Yeah, you just sign on with somebody else. You showed me how to do it." I got debunked. What happens if I go home today or any of you guys go home today and your bank you? Why? I don't like the way you look, John. I don't like gray hair. I don't like a guy who's got a big nose or or brown or hazel eyes or you know a guy whatever. I don't like you kids. I don't like your kids. You're debunked. What would you do? Think about that. Happened in Canada with the uh trucker crisis. Yeah, it happened with the Ukraine. It happened to American citizens when we pulled out of Afghanistan. You didn't have access to your money for 48 hours. Okay, that was resolved quickly. You go home tonight. You got debunked. You're a Melania Trump. Now, I I think she has a little pull. What What pull do you guys have? You know, I a few years ago, a woman gave me a book. We were talking about a lot of stuff. Our health, our health, we're basically the same age.

[56:31] And uh we were at a doctor's office. And um I got into a conversation with her and I was telling her about Bitcoin. and she says, "Look, I'm going to give you this book to read. I like to read. I like to study. I'm going to quote this book wrong, but I'm going to give it my best shot. The Army Chaplain's Guide to Armageddon. I believe that's the name of the book." I read the book and the guy had a lot of great points. You know, I'm not I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think I didn't think Y2K was going to end the world. I don't think I'm going to be without food, you know. But okay, I read the guy's book. I listened to him. I'm not going to buy a farm and start, you know, farming cows and chickens and growing my own produce. It's not me. But he had a lot of great ideas. And at the end of the book, he gives you a whole synopsis of what you could be doing as an individual to be a self sovereign individual. And I read through the whole thing and I thought, great, wonderful. If this really were to happen, let me ask you, what's one thing I know you're going to need besides water? Air is free. They can't take the air from you.

[57:41] He did give me this idea about water. How you could turn water into you can go down to the river. I lived across the street from the river downtown. I could go down there, put this wa put take that water, believe it or not, put it running it through this thing and it's drinkable. Okay, great. I I can drink water for a few days. What are you going back to the Wyomore Republic? What did these people need? They needed real I'll deal with it. That happens. Happens here in America. Whatever. We have a debt crisis. We have a a recession. I I I can almost guarantee you this. If I walked down to the local HB and I stood outside and they debanked me from the from the banks, I have no access to my money and I stood outside HB. I had a gold coin or I had silver coins on me and John, you're walking up and I say, "Gee, you look like a nice guy. I I need help. I have a gold coin here. It's $3,000. Can you go in there and buy me $2,000 worth of food? Would you do that me? But maybe you won't, but maybe Randy would gonna, you know, we we'll bargain.

[58:58] What? How much money? Yeah. Right. You don't think someone's going to take me up on that? I Someone's Someone's taking that money. Take Larry Lunch Bucket out there. Girl Scouts at the very least. I mean, the Girl Scouts will take it. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, let me go one better with you because, you know, I could get robbed on the way over to the I have Bitcoin on a wallet. You have a phone. I can do it electronically. John, Randy, can you go in and buy me some food? I think I'm going to be able to do it. It's happening all over the world. It happens in Venezuela. Happens I we we in our Bitcoin meetups. We've met people from Venezuela, uh uh uh Brazil, uh all over South America, Africa even. Well, that's where I want to go. When we come back, I want to take a break real quick. When we come back, I want to talk about the places where we've seen hyperinflation. and we've seen Zimbabwe and dollars go to trillion dollar bills and these types of things. I want to come back and tell take the listeners through some of the things that have happened in our lifetime that we might be able to learn from. So, let's take a few minutes. Sure. And we'll uh we'll come right back. All right. Good.

[1:00:08] with our guest uh Jim Lynch. Jim, this has been so fascinating. I I want to dive into like some of the things we're seeing around the world because, you know, um not everybody and certainly not me. I I know there was some real problems in Venezuela. I know there was some real problems like hyperinflation in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s was just I I think I bought a trillion dollar bill Zimbabwe in for like $9 US, right? And and it was worth like 80 cents the next week, you know? It was it was really nasty nasty infl phone is John said something that made my phone Yeah, I I evidently uh Oh, it's it's the AI is telling us all about hyperinflation. It's answering your question, which is interesting because I have it on do not disturb. We're we're in an age of AI for sure. So, that's good. Yeah. I tell my wife all the time who works in marketing uh in the AI world in technology, I say, "You can't spell blockchain without AI because I'm not a marketing person. I should never make taglines like that." And she just well, she doesn't roll her eyes at me because she's much more kind than that.

[1:01:15] But she tells me not to say things like that. You guys can roll your eyes at me. I get that from my kids. We we did At least it was internally. Usually I get it externally. So there's all these things happen. So, so take us through just like like in our lifetime, in our recent history, we've seen problems that have come to fruition for countries, for nations. Yeah. I think the late the last time I looked, um I think there's 400 trillion in debt in the world. So, hold on. I Yeah, I I trillion in I have a hard time grasping, by the way, we we throw these numbers around, trillions. I really have a hard time comprehending what a billion dollars is. Yeah. And then we're talking$400 trillion is insanity. Well, the entire US government collects five trillion a year, we said. Yeah. Five close to five trillion a year in in taxes, right? So, and we're still spending almost 7 trillion a year. Um, yeah. The look, we're we're we're being swallowed up in debt.

[1:02:23] Uh, you know, a point I I want to make sure listeners hear this because we I hear this all the time. Uh, Randy, you asked me about Japan before I think we went on the air. You know, Japan's worse than we are. Not all debt is equal. So, Japan has a debt the GDP ratio, it's like 230 or whatever it is. 230. Yeah. It's ridiculous. But Japan's net international investment position is plus 60%. So what does that mean? You heard me throw out that term before. Okay, you guys, we all have families here. You have a budget and you you're no longer 25. You you probably have some type of saving vehicle. Maybe it's your 401k. Maybe you got a couple CDs at the bank. Maybe you even own some of these bills. So, uh, God bless you. If you know 2025 is a bad year for you. Company's cutting back. The wife got sick. Extra time in a hospital. Little Johnny who's in his first year at college. You thought it was going to cost 50,000 cost 75,000. Whatever. At the end of 25, you're net a negative $25,000. So what do you got to do? Well, you can either borrow the money or your investment, your net international investment position is a plus $500,000. It's in your 401k, could be in your house, could be in your stock, could be in your brokerage account.

[1:04:04] Well, you're not going to borrow $25,000. You're what what are you going to do? You're going to go and take the money out of your savings account. That's what most people would do because you don't want to borrow on your credit cards at 20%. It's okay. So, Japan has a net international investment business position of plus 60%. They have a till. They could sell US assets. They could sell stocks, real estate, bond, whatever. A lot of countries have that. What's the American what's the USA before? This year, beginning of this year, we're a negative I it's it's it's insane. We we we're in trouble. Okay, we're in trouble. Now, you heard Scott Besson, our new Treasury Secretary, say, "We're going to monetize our our assets." Well, what does that mean? You know, are you going to sell all our real estate? The Defense Department won't let you do that. Uh are you going to uh you know, sell uh our gold? No. You know, Congress makes that decision, not the Treasury Secretary.

[1:05:07] Uh, and you've heard this question come up a few times. Is that goal really there? We haven't audited it in seven decades. Thanks. I hope it is. Right. Uh, so let's hope. But I don't know what Scott Besson's going to do. Look, for your listeners out there, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen these first few months. It's anyone's guess, but I believe I have a good handle what's going to happen one, two, five, 10 years out. Next two months, three months, anyone's guess. Um, I is it okay to you want to touch on Doge a little bit here? Yeah, let's let's go into that. All right. So, last summer, uh, Vivc and, uh, Elon came out with this idea. We're gonna we're gonna create Doge, the Department of Government, whatever it is. Efficiency. Yeah. They're going to cut$ two trillion dollars from our budget between the time Trump took office to July of 26. 18 Okay. Two trillion divide by 18 months is about 110 billion a month. Now, you guys are all in business. If you decided that on March 1st we're coming out with a new plan. Well, most business people are going to want to come out and hit the ground running. I don't care what it is. You got a new exercise program, you got a new investment program, whatever it is, you want to come out and hit the running. I don't think we crossed 100 yet. Now, and everyone I hear this from everybody. Elon when he bought Twitter now X fired 80% of the staff and the company's running better than it's ever has before. Yeah, I could do that. You can do that. Can the government do that?

[1:07:05] It's a me it's a media business that's highly technically leveraged. Like I think it's just not a good analogy. Well, take any business. Take IBM. Take Apple. They're all cutting back. When you're a corporation and you lay people off, they go from your balance sheet to where? The government's balance sheet. The government's balance sheet. All right. Now, as I uh I think I wrote you guys a little note for for for from X's point of view, they let go 80%. Now, maybe some of these people retired. I don't think too many 65 year olds worked at X. Okay. So, probably not too many retirements. They were probably pretty proficient with technology. Maybe they got another job. Did they get it right away? Did it take a few months? You know, if it took a few months, well, what happened? And then what happens if they didn't get a job at all? Well, now they're on their government's balance sheet. All right. Elon goes to the US government. I'm going to do to the government what I did with X. Oh, really? Okay. Let's let's let's look at this just from a common sense point of view. All right. He goes in and you hear and it's every day. Oh, we're firing these people. We're letting go of these people. These All right. I I sit back and scratch my head here and say, "Okay, people working at Twitter X probably proficient in the STEMs." I would think that would be my best guess, right? People working for the government, I don't think they're too proficient. Now, do we have 65 year olds working? Probably we do. So, yeah, we're some of these people and they have taken retirement. Okay. Uh, and they'll get a pension payout, whatever the case may.

[1:08:44] They'll go on social security. Oh, by by the way, unfunded liabilities. Whoops. Let's not talk about that. So, uh, uh, so they'll go on social security. Now, they got to go find other jobs. The people who can't retire. Well, find what jobs. I don't think they're going to find jobs even at the pay they were getting or they're going to go on unemployment, food stamps. Okay. So, in other words, they're on the government balance sheet, column A. They get let go and they're over on the government balance sheet in column C. Now, I'm a logical guy. I understand 1 plus 1 is two. You took them off column A, you put them in column C. All right. On unemployment, it's probably cheaper. All right. Okay. Now, let's take these workers. What do you think the chances are that they have mortgages? Credit card debt. Student loans, car these things? Who pays for that? Let me see. Well, what happened in '08? By golly, the government pays for it. And who did get where's the government get the money? From the taxpayer. Great. You thought Doge was working phenomenal, right? This is wonderful. I see Elon in the White House with Trump. We're doing a great job.

[1:10:11] Yeah, great. I got to cook that guy dinner tomorrow night. This is not working. Now, maybe they'll get some done. And yes, I'm an American. I love America. I want them to succeed, but you can't succeed at this program at 120% debt to GDP, 7% uh uh budget deficit, and a net international investment position of negative 80%. What you need to do is get that that GDP down 70%. Hey, you you need breathing room cuz the government's going to be laying out money. How much more money can we lay out? We're collecting five trillion in taxes. If the S&P goes up 20% this year, okay, we're still our uh the government is on account their their um calendar year started October 1, ended on December 31. Correct? My math is right. We're already running an over a $700 billion deficit for 25. 700 billion in the first quarter. Uh let me call up my grandkids.

[1:11:18] They probably all can do this without my help. 700 billion times four quarters, that's almost $3 trillion deficit for this year. Oh, by the way, 2025, we have to roll over 7 trillion in debt that's coming due that we don't have the money for. And plus, we have a potential $3 trillion uh budget deficit. Hm. That's $10 trillion in my if my math works out right. Oh, and let me let me let me give you something else to think about. I'm a baby boomer. I I get all the a we we we we've been bad. We don't know what we're doing. We we ran the economy into the ground. Well, wait a second. This this deficit has been since George W. Bush. That's when it really started to blow out. George Bush, I'm going to round about the numbers. 5 trillion when he left office. Obama comes into office. Hey, George, I see your five. I'm gonna raise a 10. Trump comes into office in 16 and says, "Hey, you know, by the time I get in office in January, it's going to be$20 trillion dollars." And here we are at the end of the Trump Biden 8-year term. If you if you let it if you let it be fair to Bush and Obama, we're at 37 and our unfunded liabilities where that's the baby boomers. That's Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, throw in veterans care. We're at 137%. These are the men and women who fought for us and they're the reason we're sitting here today. I I just heard that number the other day. It puts us It was at 120 or 130 trillion, something like that when you add it in.

[1:13:04] And what was even more alarming to me, that number included the next 75 years of tax receipts they were they were putting on the books. The real number is over 200 trillion. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But they're assuming like whatever it is, 70 80 tr whatever those years of tax receipts that get paid into Yeah. Social Security, Medicare. In New York City, they used to have a debt clock in New York City. They don't have it anymore. Seymour Durst was the guy who did it. He paid for it. I believe that was his name. I could be wrong. It's no longer there. But uh if you look at our unfunded liabilities, doesn't matter if it's 100 trillion or 200 trillion. It doesn't matter, right? I mean, it it it's we don't have it. Excuse me. Now, I have three grandkids. I I've said this a few times. My oldest is 18. I have one turning 14 in a couple weeks, and my youngest just turned 10. I hope they love me. I think they love me. They tell me they love me. This is generation Z we're talking about now. They were born with an iPhone in their the baby boomers. The the oldest boomer turns 80 this year, believe it or not.

[1:14:25] The youngest is 62 or whatever they are. There's 76 million of us. we all vote. There's no way they're changing Social Security and Medicare in in the near future. However, when you start hitting 80, you start dying and you're going to die off over a good part of these baby boomers going to dying. So, I have to ask myself a question as a as a young baby boomer. What are the chances are generation Z 10 years from now or 15 years from now is going to vote to keep these payments coming? My grandkids love me. I really honestly believe that and I love them. I don't think they love me that much. I just don't. I would not bank on that. So, if you're if you're close to this age and you think that something's not going to happen, you don't have the money. All right. That's that's Doge. All right. Let me let me ask let me ask you a question. Go ahead. So when there's people listening right now and they think, "Oh, Jim's crazy." Like, because I know this because I watch people look at me like this as I have these conversations and they've lived their whole life. The US dollar has been the gold standard. The whole world runs on it. Everybody wants our dollars. And they think, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

[1:15:47] But that that the dollar's been the thing. It's been it's it's been great and they just think it's never going to happen. What do you what do you tell those people? Okay, common sense comes into play here. You have to ask yourself, if it's not the US dollar, what is it? The wand, the peso, uh pounds. No one else wants this headache. There's a thing called Triffin's dilemma. This guy was uh one of the one of the board uh sat on the go on the board of governors back 20s or 30s. Triffus dilemma. You should Google this and look it up each of you. It basically says if you're the reserve currency, you you eventually got to print dollars so other countries can get the currency right and it's not good. And he predicted this 70 or 80 years ago. A great book out there called the fourth turning. I don't know if the guy's right or wrong, but there are cycles in life. History doesn't repeat itself. It often rhymes. You can look at this. I think we're in the uh one of those fourth turnings.

[1:16:56] Um I don't think the dollar is going to change. Everyone, China doesn't want it. They see what's happened to us. There's no way it's going to be the one. So who now? Could it be a neutral reserve currency like what the bricks are trying to do? and their and their currency is gold. Maybe, you know, maybe. Uh, look, for all the Bitcoiners out there, I don't think it's going to be Bitcoin either. I know a lot of Bitcoiners want the Bitcoin standard. I I just don't see it. At least not in my lifetime. Maybe in my grandkids lifetime. Yeah. I I just don't see it. Now, there's other things they could do. And you're hearing about Bitcoin bonds from the Treasury and all these things. Yeah, I think a lot of that stuff is could be worthwhile and we could talk about that maybe at another time and viable thing to do. I just don't see us getting off the dollar, Randy. But you believe in it enough that I mean, you started mining. You're running a I got to hear this story. I know Randy knows the story. Let's go back. I I guess my point is when when I tell people it's math and most people don't take the time all the things you've been talking about all of the problem, it's all math. It's all math.

[1:18:06] It's just it the math. I I challenge anybody to make show me the math that works. So, I'm gonna defend Doge or whatever you say it a little bit. Go ahead. I agree with everything you said, by the way. And at least for the first time that I can remember, somebody's and God bless him. I agree with you. Well, Clinton balanced the budget. Yeah. That was 25 years ago, right? I mean, but he's saying the first time I remember it's math, too, right? Yeah, it's math. Yeah. By by the by the way, did the debt increase or decrease or stay the same during that time? I think I don't I have someone fact checked me here, but I think it might have decrease. Let's check. Increased. It increase is the answered. They they say they it's like now by the way the numbers Jim says we're we're 1.8 1.9 trillion above budget. If you notice we're going three trillion a year in debt. Yes. Right. So there's the budget and then there's the real number. And we don't have to dig into that now in the essence of time, but it's really a worse problem than they say. So I I just challenge anybody to do the math. Show me I would love to have you show me where the math works out. So I think it's inevitable. Yeah. And let's talk more about Bitcoin. We've referenced it a lot of times. I think your story All right. I think your story is fascinating because you are not you and I are not typical Bitcoiners. Yeah, it's true.

[1:19:33] We're we're How does the B how does the how does the the the bond guy Yeah. at at what age did you find Bitcoin? 30 some odd years ago. No bond Bitcoin or how how 30 some odd years ago you found Bitcoin? Yeah. Did you start investing at that point? No, it wasn't available. I I I'll tell you the story. I want to make a brief comment. I want Doge to work. Yeah. I want I want America Yeah. I I want I want to be number one. Okay? I love America. The men and women who fought for my freedoms. I love you guys. You know, I get choked up on this. You know, the Vietnam War, I wouldn't have gone. I'm embarrassed to say, you know, but uh I want America to win. I want Elon to get this right. However, you got to get the debt lower because we we're going to have to these people. We're going to have to re-educate them. We're going to have to give them stipens. You know, you call it whatever you want. We don't we don't have the money. Yeah. All right.

[1:20:39] If you if our debt was lower, if our debt was 80% of GDP, okay, I can take a few billion dollars, trillion, whatever it is, and give these people a stipen, why the econom Why? Why re Why we reshore America right now? We just got done fighting this war in Ukraine. Hopefully, it's over. Russia won. We could not compete. Why? Because, follow the logic here. China makes our parts, they send them to us, and then we make the uh bomb, and then we send it over to the Wait a second. Our adversary is making our equipment. All right. Bitcoin. Yeah. Well, let me let me add to that one. It's it's a spending problem. It's definitely a spending problem. If if you think about this as a family, I think I think when we start dealing with trillions, people can't put it into perspective. So if we do that to scale, y it's like the the US revenue, think of it as a family making $50,000 a year. And if they're spending whether it's 70,000 or 80,000 a year, you're spending 70 or 80 and you have debt that is three 370,000 or over a 100,000 with unfunded liabilities. The only way you get out of that is if you stop spending so damn much. Right. If that look at some point in time, you're too far gone. Yeah. And there's a lot of Americans too far gone.

[1:22:04] Yeah. And and the interest right now is what 1.2 to 1.3 trillion a year just the interest on the debt in getting worse. So that's I think for scale that's where the math comes in. Yeah. And and against worldwide. So your Bitcoin story 30 years ago 33 years ago 1992 Jim Bitcoin wasn't there. I if you read the book Genesis though you're going to find out a lot of these uh uh crypto punks were real close. I didn't know any of these guys. What did I see in 1992? Remember I'm a bond guy. I'm with that guy. How much was Bitcoin in '92? It had to be like 90 cents or something. It was It was zero. It wasn't even invented yet. Well, how did I find out? Yeah. Okay. I'm watching the I'm watching the the debates between George HW Bush, who was running against Bill Clinton at the time. I lived in Jersey. And there's this guy on stage from Texas named Ross Perau. I don't know if you guys remember this. Yes. Go back and watch some of these debates. Ross Perau was famous for bringing these charts up on stage and he was talking about the national debt. I don't remember what the national debt was 33 years ago, but it wasn't that bad. He was and I'm sitting there and my mouth falls open and I'm saying to myself, "Oh boy, I start I started reading everything I could on our on debt, on uh on what we're doing and how we're spending money." And I had this one client. I I think he was part of the mob. I never sold this guy anything bad.

[1:23:39] I was afraid for my life. He used to call me up, Jim, what's the debt today? I don't know. 300 billion. Well, we're going to 350. What do you think this is going to conversations like this? Start reading books. You get to the Asian crisis in 9798, bailed them out. Print. Unfortunately, 911 the the the.com boom bailed them out. 08 I remember, you know, watching my stock. I had UBS stock at the time. My cost basis was $42 a share. It went up to 62 and all the managers at UBS, look at this. We're we're rolling in it. Yeah. At the end of '08 was under 10 bucks. Was the was a dollar or$2 dollars. I lost my shirt. I remember telling my wife, I said, look, we're this is what this is what the government's going to do. um whether it's right or wrong, they're going to do it. If we don't pay this getting out of this. And um I started working remotely in 2011 2012. I'm living in the Reno Tahoe area and um working on my laptop doing my bond thing. I'm watching Bloomberg News. some young guy comes on there, starts talking about Bitcoin.

[1:25:04] was, if he's right, that's the greatest thing that I've ever heard in my life. Bitcoin. Okay, he's he's buying it and selling it and he's buying stuff with it. Guys, I couldn't find one person. Now, remember, Tahoe is in the not that far away from the tech industry. I couldn't find anybody who knew how to buy this. And the the the best thing I could figure out was you had to send your money to Japan. Took like nine years to get there. Uh you might get Bitcoin. It might go to Mount Gaus. I don't know where. And and at that time, my business partner called me up and he says, "Hey, Jim, I'm ready to I'm ready to we were we were working at UBS. He says, "I'm ready to go independent." And we opened up our own firm. And uh I to be honest with you, I lost my way with Bitcoin. I just forgot about it. The next time I remember, it was 2017. A family member calls me up and says, "Jim, what about this Bitcoin? It was heading to 20,000, right? one of those bull market runs. I said I wouldn't buy it if I were you. I mean, it's probably, you know, long story short, I poo pooed it. Um, Randy told me to buy at $600.

[1:26:27] maybe $400. Beginning of 19, I'm sitting my office and this is what uh investment guys do when they have nothing else to do and they're bored. One of the one of my associates calls me up and says, "Look, Jim, we're having a stock an inter office stock contest. Uh, you know, you're talking to the bond guy here, right? Yeah. Inter office stock. We all have to pick two H, you got to give me two stocks. I I don't want to be a part of this, Jim. I think there's eight or nine of us in the in the in the firm. All right. I tell you what I'll Bitcoin. Okay, that's your first pick. What's your second pick? Bitcoin. He says, "You're kidding." I said, "No." He calls me back. He says, "But I can't track it on my computer because Bitcoin doesn't trade uh at a brokerage house. But we have this thing called GBTC, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust." Uh, can I use that? Sure, go ahead. I'm blowing the competition away. If you look at 19, Bitcoin had a great year until the fall.

[1:27:32] I'm winning. I'm thinking to myself, I'm the only guy in America that can do a contest like this, say I'm doing Bitcoin, and not own Bitcoin. So, I started buying this thing called um there was a blockchain trust. I think the symbol is B L K. I'm not even sure it's it's even still in existence. Started buying that January of 20. My business partner, great guy. It's a little younger than me. I I trained him in his business. His father hired me in business. We ran our business 15, 20 years, whatever it was. Never had an Well, we did. She says, "Jim, I own more of the company than you do." That's it. Okay, that was 70% of my net worth. Now, I'm sitting there in March of 20 thinking, "Okay, I I got to come up with a new plan. This one's not going to work." Oh, Bitcoin. I look at GBTC, my first investment. Bitcoin's trading around 6,6500, whatever it is. I threw 25,000 in because I got a stop. I got bought out. I got my, you know, uh, payment for my stock for the company and I I I put 25,000 in GBTC. Next day it's up 25%.

[1:28:49] I'm a trader. This is great. I sell it. I I What's it? Uh, trading at seven, seven and a half, whatever it is. I thought I'll just buy it back when it goes back down. Well, ain't going down. I thought, well, this was stupid. So I decided to say, "All right, I'm going to buy GP GBTC. I look, it's a closed end fund. I understand closed end funds. Been around for decades. I understand how to buy them, how to sell them. I I I I knew the I I knew the uh legal part of it. Started buying it. I said, I got to learn Bitcoin. I started consuming everything, reading everything, listening to everything. And I would tell anyone before you buy Bitcoin, you need at least a 100 hours of study, probably more like a thousand. Look, you're going to make 50% a year on average. This is not Apple. This is not you you have to know what you're doing or else what you're going to end up doing is buying at 109 like where it was a few weeks ago and selling at 84 where it's trading now. That's what people who don't know Bitcoin do and and and then they hate it forever. I read everything.

[1:30:06] I I I I put in thousands of hours on this. Look, it's a huge part of my net worth. Am I bummed that it's down 20% from its all-time high? Absolutely. But I bought more yesterday. I'll buy I bought more today. It's going up. All right. It's 16 years. I've heard this nonsense. It's a tulip bulb. First of all, if it was a tulip bulb, it would have it would have fizzled out 12 years ago. It's not a tulip bulb. Okay? It's used all around the world. Millions of people own this thing. The great thing about it, it's a nonissuer. No one can control it. I run my own node. I'm part of 18,000 19,000 people around the world that run their own node. What's what's a node here? Here here's a note. It's the best way it was ever explained to me. I'm a sheriff in town. We're all sheriffs. Come on, everybody get their guns up, right? Somebody does something wrong. This is what we're doing. That's what a node operator does. Protects the network. I mine Bitcoin. What's a minor do? That's how you get Bitcoin. It's, you know, without getting to all the weeds and the details. It's a complicated formula.

[1:31:14] You're guessing a number. Yeah. And you get Bitcoin. I I I I went to school. I invested the money in the miners. What's the investment take to get a mining operation going? Oh, it could be anywhere from, you know, couple thousand to a few hundred,000. Depends how elaborate you want to be. Some guys, gals will run a right in their home. The problem is these machines are loud. So, you know, you may not want to put one in your living room. Your wife may be a little upset. Although, it'll do a great job heating your house. Yeah. Maybe not this last week, but in any event, by the way, I became a Bitcoin miner two weeks ago. I bought a heat bit. All right. Which is a heater that is that is in the house and the Bitcoin mining puts off the heat. Yeah. Basically, what I would pay for heating is mining Bitcoin. Now, it mines 40 cents a day. It's irrelevant. Probably may never pay for itself, but yeah, it's a learning experience. Uh to me, you you've heard that you've heard the uh the term not your keys, not your Bitcoin. Look, I have keys to my Bitcoin. Um, uh, you know, how do you buy Bitcoin? I would recommend anyone starting to buy Bitcoin strategy called DCA, dollar cost average. Look, this thing is volatile.

[1:32:31] That's why you're getting 50% a year. You're going to buy some highs, some lows, you know. So DCA um you talked earlier about like 6040 like the whole bonds and and equity things dead dead and so you'd be 100% Bitcoin right now. Okay. No, started off at 10. And what I would do is if it went to 15, I'd sell a little bit. If it went to 20, sell a little bit. Went down to five, I'd buy a little bit. And as I'm learning and as I'm studying, I'm just getting more confidence as we go. It's it's you know I compare it to religion you know you hear about Jesus h sounds like a pretty decent guy you know may you know look a lot of historians who wrote about him h you know he sounds reasonable and if you read more about him you know at the end of the day believe in him or not. I choose to believe in him. Uh, I can give you just as much research to have you go down this path.

[1:33:36] I can also give you just as much research to have you not believe in Jesus. Okay? The Bible was supposedly written by God. I'm just going to take him at his word. I wasn't there. Neither was anyone else. Okay? He did it. All right. Yet the virgin birth, the whole nine yards. Sounds totally unreasonable. But the research, now let's take research. Research is I I I'll give you all the research in the world. boy to buy Apple. And I'll give you all the research you want not to buy Apple. Yeah. Same thing with Bitcoin. You heard it in real estate. What's the most important thing in real estate? Location, location, location. In Bitcoin, it's study, study, and study. You never stop studying it. It's So, what do you I mean, I think that's great great advice, but what do I study? Like if I'm a guy who's not I mean there's listeners here that are huge into Bitcoin I'm sure and we probably have some listeners that are relatively new. Yeah. Where do they start? The Bitcoin standard by Dr. Seine Amoose. Okay. Start there. You know I was I was at my uh dentist yesterday and yeah he's my age and he asked me you know hey what's going on yada yada. We got on to Bitcoin. I just bought him the I just bought him the book. I'm going to give it to him as a gift. Start there. Start watching podcast. Start reading white papers. Uh, attend Bitcoin meetups.

[1:34:56] They're all over Austin. Austin is Bitcoin Central. Uh, Unchained Capital is located down here in the middle of Austin. They run events all the time. Start going to them. You know, I have to tell you, I I I went to my first Bitcoin meetup in uh March of 22, and I'll tell you why I went. Uh, I heard I heard about South by Southwest. Supposed to be something really big here in Austin. Everyone brags about South by Sheriff West. Well, in 2020, they didn't have it. So, I I couldn't wait for 2021. Bitcoin has to be a part of this technology. There's nothing on Bitcoin. And you had to be vaccinated and wear a diaper on your face. Ah, it's not going to go over too well with me. The Bitcoin comments with Unchained. Come as you are. No one had a diaper on. I don't know about their vaccination status. It's not my I don't really care if you want to do it, you don't want to do it. It's up totally up to you. It's your choice. The mayor comes. No conservative by any means. I'm a libertarian, but he's a little on the liberal side. I forgot I forgot his name. Uh but you know, in any event, he comes. No mask. Okay. I'm in pretty good company, I guess. Now I you know so they ran the Bitcoin program March of 20 22 or 21 I forget what you know and it was like this is the America I know I met people there I met men there got you know women there and boy you know it's like a religious festival it really is almost a cult I don't want to say that but uh look I think it's the great I've been in this business 40 years, 39 years, I've seen a lot of great things come and go. I went through the dot and I I if not the century, Bitcoin certainly investment over the next decade. There's I I I I defy anyone to put the time in and study this 98% conversion rate if if you if you take the time Yeah. and and be objective.

[1:37:10] Don't come in with an attitude like this. You know, look, there's a reason why Wall Street hates it. There's a reason why Jaime Diamond thinks it's garbage. They're coming for its lunch. You know, when you see people on the news media, the CNBC or whatever, these guys are talking their book. These guys are investment professionals. They buy and sell stocks and bonds and art and and gold and real estate. You think he's talking? Is he He wants you to He wants you to believe that he's doing this. It's It's a hoax. Yeah. When I first got into Wall, when I first joined my first firm, one of my managers said to me, "Jim, don't believe anything any investment professional tells you. Go do your own research. Go find out yourself. Go read for yourself. Find out why it's right or wrong." And I would tell your listeners to do the same thing. Don't listen to the to the knuckleheads. We all know that they've been giving us lies for the last several decades on any subject you want to talk about. Why would you believe them? Go find out. Go learn about Bitcoin. Learn how to send money to an exchange.

[1:38:23] River.com, if I can give a plug. Look them up. Read about it. What are they doing? What are they charging? Okay. Once once you know how to buy it, how do I store it? No. Don't take the easy way out and go buy the Black Rock ETF. Yeah, look, I I I do it. I understand the logic here, but go learn it. Understand, you don't have to be a minor, but understand what it means to be a minor. Understand what it means to run your own node. Look, 50% a year. You're not getting that because it's simple. If it was simple, everybody would be doing it. Everybody just wants to throw money in the in the Mag 7. Okay, brain. My my kids can do that, you know? I I mean I know my kids are older but my grandkids could do that. Go learn something. You have to ask yourself a question. Do you think things like AI technology? I remember in the '9s, you know, 1995 is like the year the Rolling Stones came out with Start Me Up and Microsoft 95. That's like the kickoff for the internet, right? The Rolling Stones got on board. Go back and watch the commercial. It was a great commercial. You know, it was wonderful.

[1:39:35] You know, look, I remember working for a company. I don't want to badmouth him, but Oh, you guys can't use email. That's bad. You got to use the intranet if you guys remember that. Who didn't send out an email to a CL? Do you think we're getting less technology or technology? I can give you a hundred. I've met people all around the world. Bitcoin is being used. Don't kid yourself. This thing is this is rocket fuel. Get on board. If you don't want to be on board, right? I I look I I I don't I don't think ill will of anybody. 67 years old is what I tell my kids. Buy Bitcoin. Whether they do or not, that's totally up to them. My grandkids, I control their accounts. They're buying Bitcoin. But, you know, I sat down with my uh oldest granddaughter. She was uh she just turned 18 just six months ago. So, a year ago, she was 17. And I said to her, I said, "Look, you're going to be 18 next year. And my that account I have for you is going to be yours, and I want you to know there, I'm sure you do know there's Bitcoin in there." Now, I I I couldn't do uh uh at that time, I couldn't do the real Bitcoin. I had to do an ETF, right? So, um I know but I want what look you're going to be 18. I think you can retire or have the ability to retire by 30. I honestly believe this. I I I I don't think this kid is going to have any trouble in life. She's very bright kid.

[1:41:14] All my kids are grandkids are really bright in their own way. They each have specialties, but I'm going to tell each one the same story. You're going to turn 18. This is what I want you to start I want you to start sending me money month because she's got a job. She's going to now she's going to college. I said, "Look, every month, I don't care what it is. Whatever you can afford, start sending me money. And as you get along in life, send me more money and send me more money. It's all going to Bitcoin." it we, you know, in five, six years ago, the threat of going to zero was real, okay? It was real. That's no longer the case. Uh, a few years ago, uh, regulations was real. It was really China tried to disband it. You mentioned before, India and Japan didn't work. Just went somewhere else. There's no there's no CEO of Bitcoin. You have all these other cryptocurrencies and look, some of them are going to hit really really big just like the internet stocks. Okay, which ones? I have absolutely no idea.

[1:42:28] Bitcoin, rock solid. It's going to be there. Don't miss this opportunity of a lifetime. You don't get many of these. Yeah. over your lifetime. I could think of a handful of times that things really just were like, you know, real estate in the late 80s, right, at the savings and loan crisis. Stocks after 2001 and '08, oh, you could have made a you could have made a fortune. This is this not my generation, generation Z, generation X, this is your opportunity to hit a grand slam. Don't miss it. Don't miss it. percentage- wise, get off zero. Yeah. And once you're at 1%, all right, maybe I can go to two. I started at 10. I'm now at 40. Okay. I have 10% in gold. The rest is all short-term bonds. There you go. Look, the market's down. Okay. Not a big deal. But I got the bonds. All right. If if I need money, I'm going to the bonds.

[1:43:31] They're coming due all the time. I'm rolling it over. I I It's that simple. You need help, email me, call me. I'm more than willing to help you. I'm not your financial advisor. Okay? I do not I I I don't want to do that anymore. Okay? Call me up. I'll be more than happy to help you. I got several friends. Jim, what should I be doing? You're going to mine it. You're going to run the node. You're going to be the sheriff to make sure it's all good. It's all good. Yeah. is I can't stress it enough. It's an opportunity of a lifetime. Don't let this go by. And look, even if you don't like it, you don't want to buy it. Find out why you don't want to buy it. You're going to come to the pearly gates at some point in time in your life. We're all going to die. And you're going to stand there and supposedly St. Peter's going to come down to meet you. Make sure you have the right answer, okay? Because if it's the wrong answer and all that research you did to give you the wrong answer, what is the you know, is it so bad to to live a a good life? All right, I could have I could have had a lot of women. Okay, I missed out. I could have done all the drugs I wanted to do. Okay, I'm healthier for it. I could have I I could have made more money in life. Okay, I missed out. My wife, you know, my wife has just a really She's down there. She left me a note on my computer one day.

[1:44:58] She says, "You know, early in our marriage, where you are in life right now, you would have been tickled pink. You prayed for this day." And now I look at my life now like, "Oh gosh, you know, I we always want more, right?" I mean, you always, oh gosh, why couldn't I sold Bitcoin at 109 and bought it back for the 84, right? We we always we we Yeah, we're human. When you get to the pearly gates, just understand why you came to the conclusion you did and pray that you're right. If I'm wrong, I had a I I I lived that moral life. If I'm right, I'm in eternity for a lifetime. I don't think that's such a bad bet. I really don't. Uh I feel the same about Bitcoin. They're very similar. A lot of a lot of Bitcoiners are Christians. A lot of people find uh look if they lie to me about the money and lie to me about my food and lied to me about this. What else are they lying to me about? Here you go guys. I hope I uh I hope I helped. I hoped I hope I was a good guest for your show here. This has been great. I think super informative and I think as as you know listeners I think I put myself in the box of learning probably as much as anybody who's listening in today and it's a great great reminder to be educated like like you know you there's things in your life that you can't really delegate to somebody else and understanding how the money works that's just whether you're whether you're just talking about your household or the world like I think we all owe it to ourselves to at least understand you know and and there's some form of Pascal's Bitcoin wager that hasn't been written today that probably gets written after this episode. So, it's been fantastic. So, I I knew you'd be great. You're better than better than I expected. So, thank you. Thank you, Randy. You're you're a good friend and you know I I I John, I I watched a couple of your videos. I'm I'm just amazed at your life. God bless you, man. Uh I appreciate that. You know, uh I think you guys are doing a good work here. I hope uh I hope you can grow this really really well. You want to help people? You know, we need more people.

[1:47:06] You know, I read the other day Michael Jordan, a basketball player, opened up his fourth clinic in North Carolina. He put $10 million. Cost him $10 million. Fourth time he's done this. I don't know much about this. What's he doing? He's pro. He He's from North Carolina. Grew up in North Carolina. Went to college in North Carolina. It's worth billions of dollars. Uh, look, m maybe somebody is going to email me and say, "Jim, this is a I look, from what I read, he's opened up fourth health four health clinics in North Carolina. All to help the the the the poor, the un uneducated, those who can't get insurance out." And I thought myself, that's what we need to be doing as people, you know? I I mean, if we just take all these riches and and say fungu to everyone else, we really didn't learn anything. So what? Okay, so you got a couple more bucks than the next guy. Now, I'm not shouting muddy. I know nothing about Michael Jordan except that I think he's the best best basketball player in the world. But, you know, why aren't other billionaires doing this? So, maybe they are. I don't know. I Paul McCartney or you know uh you know I shouldn't pick on these guys but you know look I'm sure they're all doing what they think is right but you know it's nice to see that it warm my heart that a guy like him helping out just North Carolina that's okay let the guy in Virginia the per the guy uh let the Ross Perau's family help out people in Texas for all I care you know but do something well and how how about the media cover that like I we can get that's a whole other show on like Yeah. I think there's a lot of that happening and we just that's not we just don't know. It's not what the media is talking about. Yeah. Well, we can I can always come back, but love it. We love to have you back. Love it. Jim, thanks for being here. Really appreciate your time today. This has been like my head's spinning. So, it's it's fantastic. Uh listeners, uh as always, check us out.

[1:49:08] iTunes, uh Spotify, Fountain, YouTube, wherever you want to find us. That's great. uh download, subscribe, give us five stars, tell your friends, tell your family, uh all the good stuff. Check out the website talesofabundance.com for more information to be a part of the community. And again, thanks Jim. This has been fantastic. All right, man. Thank you. Thanks so much.