WarRoom Battleground EP 761: A Special: Paper Soldier

Summary

Bannon’s War Room: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Dollar’s Dominance and Its Global Implications

Episode: WarRoom Battleground EP 761: A Special: Paper Soldier
Release Date: May 5, 2025
Host: Stephen K. Bannon
Guest: Celia Motion, Author of Paper Soldiers
Transcript Excerpts: Scott Bessant, Steve Bannon, Celia Motion

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1. Introduction

In this special episode of Bannon’s War Room, host Stephen K. Bannon delves deep into the intricate relationship between the U.S. dollar and global economic power. The episode features a compelling conversation with Celia Motion, author of Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order. The discussion explores the historical context of the dollar’s dominance, its current weaponization through economic sanctions, and the broader implications for American economic and political power.

2. Scott Bessant on America's Economic Resilience

The episode opens with Scott Bessant, the former Secretary of the Treasury, emphasizing the unyielding strength of the American economy.

“Never bet against America,” aligns with Warren Buffett’s philosophy (00:00). Bessant highlights America’s ability to rebound from significant economic downturns and global crises, asserting that:

“US markets are antifragile. Indeed, the entire history can be distilled into just five words. Up and to the right” (00:00).

He paints an optimistic picture of a new golden age of economic prosperity, driven by deregulation, private investment, and favorable tax legislation. Bessant underscores the United States' pivotal role in global finance, bolstered by the dollar's status as the world’s reserve currency and the deep, liquid capital markets.

3. Steve Bannon's Critique of the Current Regime

Transitioning from Bessant’s optimistic outlook, Steve Bannon introduces a more critical perspective on the current economic and political landscape.

“This is the primal scream of a dying regime… it’s going to happen” (03:11).

Bannon expresses frustration with mainstream media narratives and asserts that the American populace is increasingly disillusioned with the existing political framework. He emphasizes the necessity of economic nationalism and the need to dismantle what he perceives as a compromised international order.

4. Introduction and Discussion with Celia Motion

a. Celia Motion's Background and Book Overview

Stephen K. Bannon welcomes Celia Motion, author of Paper Soldiers. Motion shares her journey from covering regional businesses in Ohio to gaining international experience in London and Oslo. Her experiences shaped her understanding of the interconnectedness between regional economies and national economic policies.

b. The US Dollar as the World's Reserve Currency

Motion elaborates on the foundational role of the U.S. dollar in global finance:

“It means that the world is pretty much beholden to the United States… every country that wants to drive their own growth needs the American consumer” (10:49).

She explains that the dollar's dominance facilitates global investment in the U.S., fosters innovation through R&D spending, and allows the U.S. to exert significant foreign policy influence without traditional military interventions.

c. Weaponization of the Dollar and Economic Warfare

The discussion shifts to the concept of the dollar’s weaponization through economic sanctions:

“When we talk about weaponization of the dollar, that is specifically talking about economic sanctions” (10:49).

Motion traces the evolution of this strategy from its limited use pre-9/11 to its expanded role post-9/11. She notes that economic sanctions have become a preferred tool for the U.S. to achieve geopolitical objectives without resorting to military force.

d. Historical Perspective: Bretton Woods and Beyond

Delving into history, Motion recounts the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, where the U.S. established the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. Key figures like Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau played pivotal roles in ensuring the dollar's supremacy over the British pound.

“The US has charmed the world into choosing the dollar as the world's reserve asset” (14:22).

She discusses how the dollar's status was maintained despite challenges like Nixon’s abandonment of the gold peg in the 1970s and subsequent financial crises.

e. Current Implications: US Debt and Global Influence

Motion addresses contemporary concerns about the U.S. debt trajectory and its implications for the dollar's dominance:

“The trajectory of US debt right now has made a lot of people nervous” (37:02).

She warns that escalating deficits could undermine confidence in the dollar, potentially inviting other nations to seek alternatives. However, she remains optimistic, asserting that the lack of viable alternatives and the dollar’s entrenched position continue to sustain its global dominance.

f. The Role of the Electorate and Fiscal Responsibility

Motion emphasizes the critical role of the American electorate in maintaining fiscal discipline:

“It's up to the US—it's up to the electorate to choose leaders that care about these issues” (40:28).

She advocates for voters to support policies that reduce deficits and ensure the long-term sustainability of the dollar’s reserve status, thereby safeguarding American economic power.

5. Conclusion

The episode culminates with a sobering reflection on income and asset inequality in the United States, highlighted by Bannon and Motion. They discuss the vast concentration of wealth among a small segment of the population and the political inertia that hampers meaningful fiscal reforms. Motion reinforces the idea that informed and engaged voters are essential for driving the necessary changes to preserve the dollar’s dominance and ensure economic stability.

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Notable Quotes:

• Scott Bessant (00:00): “Never bet against America… The American economy is unstoppable.”

• Steve Bannon (03:11): “This is the primal scream of a dying regime… it’s going to happen.”

• Celia Motion (10:49): “It means that the world is pretty much beholden to the United States… every country that wants to drive their own growth needs the American consumer.”

• Celia Motion (14:22): “The US has charmed the world into choosing the dollar as the world's reserve asset.”

• Celia Motion (37:02): “The trajectory of US debt right now has made a lot of people nervous.”

• Celia Motion (40:28): “It's up to the US—it's up to the electorate to choose leaders that care about these issues.”

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This episode of Bannon’s War Room provides an incisive exploration of the intricate dynamics between the U.S. dollar and global economic power. Through the expert insights of Celia Motion, listeners gain a deeper understanding of how monetary policy, fiscal responsibility, and political will converge to shape the current and future state of American and global economies.

Transcript

[Scott Bessant]

When I entered public service, I spent more than 40 years in the asset management business. There, one mantra guides one of the world's most successful investors. Never bet against America. Warren Buffett coined the phrase and it's been his lodestar as long as he's been in the game. Never bet against America captures a time tested truth. The American economy is is unstoppable. Throw whatever you will at our capital markets. The Great Depression, two world wars, 9 11, a Covid recession of the last few years or sky high inflation. Each time the American economy gets knocked down, it gets back up again. And it gets back up even stronger than it was before. US markets are antifragile. Indeed, the entire history can be distilled into just five words. Up and to the right. On a long term horizon, it's never a bad time to invest in America. But especially now. The United States is entering a new golden age of economic prosperity for both Main street and Wall Street. And we don't want anyone to get left behind. Come with us so we can build a more abundant America together. On President Trump's first day in office, he vowed to usher in a new golden age for our country. A golden age. America deserves a golden age. America deserves a golden age economy. So for the past hundred days, we've been preparing the soil. We have uprooted government waste and harmful regulations. We have planted the seeds of private investment and we have fertilized the ground with fresh tax legislation. Next, we harvest and we want you to harvest with us. America is the shelling point of global finance. We have the world's reserve currency and the deepest and most liquid capital markets and the strongest property rights. For these reasons, the United States is the premier destination for international capital. And the administration's goal is to make it even more appealing for investors like you. The President believes we can achieve more together. This is the abundant vision he has for the future. He wants everyone to be a part of it. Thousands of businesses are now catching the President's vision. Since he assumed office in January, companies have pledged to invest trillions into the US Economy. President Trump has secured more investment for our country in 100 days than President Biden did during all four years. Entrepreneurs too are starting to understand what the President is trying to accomplish. March saw one of the highest levels ever recorded for new business applications. Many of these men and women, like many of you, are grasping that America first is the blueprint for more abundant world.

[Steve Bannon]

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on These people, I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people, the people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.

[Scott Bessant]

And where do people like that go.

[Steve Bannon]

To share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Band. Okay, welcome. Monday 5th, May in the year of our Lord 2025. Thanks for sticking around for the second hour of our late afternoon early evening edition of the War Room. You heard right there from our former contributor, the secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessant. Scott doing a fantastic job. That was at the Milken Global Conference with Mike Milken. The guys called the Davos of the west yesterday. They had competing receptions. Scott Besson, of course, Alexander Priet and Rebecca Karabas, all the team, you know, from the War Room was out there. They had this Ken Griffin, who's been quite critical of the president, was had his reception traditionally and I think Ken has a reception every year to kind of kick things off. Scott Bessant flew out because you're going to speak early this morning, had a competing kind of maybe a more MAGA reception. Of course, that they spoke. We're going to try to pick that up live this morning, but with some issues with the Milken conference. We got it right there and you got a good summary. Speaking of Scott Besant, joining me is Celia Motion, author of Paper Soldiers. And Scott, I noticed is in the acknowledgments of this talk to us first, your background. This book is absolutely amazing. We put this in the pantheon with Christopher Leonard's Lords of Easy Money, which the audience have just loved over the last couple years. In fact, we had an entire hour with Christopher in Kansas City a week ago talking about his new research for his new book on the defense industry. But Chris Leonard, Christopher Leonard gives and I mean for our audience, when a pull quote says about your book, a true feat of revelatory journalism, if you only read one book to understand American economic and political power in the world today, this should be the one. Why did you get interested in this topic? Scott Besant, your understanding of this? Walk us through how you got here.

[Celia Motion]

I started covering treasury in 2016 here in Washington, but before then, I'm From Ohio, from Cincinnati. And I grew up there, born and raised, pretty much the same zip code for most of my life. And at some point in my 20s, I went overseas, spent a decade in London and Oslo, Norway.

[Steve Bannon]

Realized that we're not in Ohio anymore.

[Celia Motion]

Realized we're not in Ohio anymore. So I got back to the US.

[Steve Bannon]

As a business journalist.

[Celia Motion]

As a business.

[Steve Bannon]

How does a young woman from Cincinnati and you go to the university, you're from there, you're born and raised there, you go to high school there, your parents there, you also go to university there.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah.

[Steve Bannon]

So you're, you're a local kid. How do you get into business journal? I mean, you're writing now at the highest levels of the most powerful economy in the world. And I know this just from my phone blowing up. Having announced over the last couple days, you're going to be here. So many prominent people who follow your writing. How do you go from a kid in Ohio to one of the most serious, not just business journalists, but about currency, capital markets and finance?

[Celia Motion]

So I spent a couple of years in Columbus, Ohio, just covering regional businesses. And I really got to understand how a regional economy works and how it connects to the rest of the world. I went overseas and I saw the US from an outside perspective. And when I came back to Washington, I was able to kind of bring all that together and realize that the intersection where government policy, politics and money is there is a real misunderstanding there of how the so called flyover states of America connect to what happens in Washington. So I kind of decided once Trump was elected in November, and everyone was quite surprised. November 16, November of 2016, that time he was elected, you could kind of see that coming. I'm not gonna say I predicted it, but I was in Ohio. And Hannah, I'm not saying you're a.

[Steve Bannon]

Maga, but I'm saying just as a kid from Ohio, when you go back and see what was.

[Celia Motion]

Absolutely. I mean, Ohio tends to predict the next president. A lot of that comes down to 120,000 votes in Hamilton county, which is where I'm from. I was there four or five weeks before election Day, and I only saw Trump sign. So if that county was gonna go for Trump and then that meant the state was gonna go for Trump, then the logical next conclusion is that the electoral votes would go to Trump.

[Steve Bannon]

The people that you've known and work with in places like the City of London or, or on Wall street, were they even open to that concept that the working class in this country, many of whom had been Democrats or Independents that something was, they felt something was so wrong in the direction of the country that they would bring in essentially a revolutionary figure, a guy that had no political experience whatsoever. Did anybody in your life at the time understand the profound nature of that vote for those people in Hamilton County?

[Celia Motion]

I don't think so. I truly didn't. All I could see was, oh, it looks like Ohio's gonna go for Trump. I didn't know beyond that you're still, you know, you're waiting for when the bellwether state no longer predicts the next president. I had no idea that there was this much angst and anger in the working class and the manufacturing sector and the blue collar segment of the American voting population. It was really hard to see that. But he saw it and he kind of showed the rest of the world. And it's interesting that after his four years, if you listen to the first speech that President Joe Biden made to Congress, the joint session speech, the first couple of minutes, a lot of those words could have been said by Donald Trump in a different way. But Buy America and friendshoring is very similar to America First. Even during the Democratic primaries that got us to Joe Biden in 2019 and 2020, you heard Elizabeth Warren talking about economic patriotism, which is also America First.

[Steve Bannon]

Ro Khanna's concept of really the economic nationalism. Oppose Roe and the folks say call it economic patriotism. And he has gone back to Ohio to do that tour a couple of times to pitch that. Let me go back. The thesis of your book is that you talk about the subtitle is how the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order. Not simply the dollar, but the weaponization. So let's go back at first and talk about just the dollar because our audience is a blue collar, middle class audience, but they're fascinated with capital markets, they're fascinated with international finance because they realize, as you just said, that intersection of politics, economy and finance is really where things happen. But it's totally misunderstood, including by, I think, 90% of the, of the imperial Capitol Hill, the imperial capital here. What is it about us being the prime reserve currency that sets the world order before we talk about the weaponization changing it? What is just us being the prime reserve currency, the dollar being the dominant currency in the world today?

[Celia Motion]

It means that the world is pretty much beholden to the United States. Everyone is very, very exposed financially, economically, geopolitically, to what the US Decides to do. It is the world's largest economy. So every multinational company, every country that wants to Drive their own growth, needs the American consumer to help them because we have the largest consumer base. There's a lot of innovation in America and that comes from all the R and D spending that's financed by our very big budget deficit. That innovation has also driven a lot of economic growth. The other thing is that we're able to outsource or sort of push out our foreign policy and geopolitical agenda. Now when we talk about weaponization of the dollar, that is specifically talking about economic sanctions. U.S. economic sanctions were kind of barely used until 911 came. I think a lot of people forget that the very first act after 911 on September 24, 2001 was not a military tank rolling into a foreign country or US Troops hitting the ground, boots to the ground into another country. It was the US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill at the time being given specific powers from the executive, executive branch, from George W. Bush that you can now follow the money, find out how did the terrorists finance that attack, which was only a couple of hundred thousand dollars, all moved around in plain, in, in daylight for anyone to spot if they could find the trend and choke off any of that terrorist financing. So that you can say you are not allowed to use the dollar to hurt America. That's where the weaponization begins. And since 911 we've seen more and more that America doesn't want to go to war.

[Steve Bannon]

Well, we call it, particularly if you look at the way the Chinese Communist Party and Sun Tzu look at it, kinetic war. When you get to the kinetic war, the theory of Sun Tzu is like you've lost just by having to go that level of violence that you should be able to win psychologically with cyber politically, but particularly economic warfare. So we say sanctions, that's war by another means. That's essentially using economic warfare. And of all the different weapons you have, trade barriers, all this, the biggest club that you have is taking the currency and using the currency as essentially a weapon of war. Is that weapon? Is that what you mean by weaponization?

[Celia Motion]

Yeah, it's right between diplomacy, which, okay, talking failed. We don't want to go to kinetic war. So we're going to use economic sanctions and maybe not even use them. Maybe it's just talking about using them.

[Steve Bannon]

How is. I want to go back in time, how, how the world got in the situation. Because correct me if I'm wrong, I think you as a teaser, you said this morning on the show, it's in the book 97%, I think, of all transactions in the world are converted into dollars. The vast bulk of all transactions into petrodollars. And I think Your book says 2/3 or 75% of all government debt by foreign governments that are issued are dollar dominated. So the world is captured by the dollar. They can't get away from it. You have a Damocles sword over your head at any time if you cross the west. Because everything you do, the way you interact with the world as an economy is done through a US dollar. Is that essentially it?

[Celia Motion]

Well, Steve, I'm going to put a little bit of a prettier face on this. It's actually that America has charmed the world into choosing the dollar as the world's reserve asset.

[Steve Bannon]

Charmed the world.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. The US so far has not had to use any bullying tactics. In 1944, when the second of the two world wars was coming to a close, the 44 countries, the economic officials from 44 countries gathered in the United States in New Hampshire said the US is now going to be.

[Steve Bannon]

This is the Bretton Woods.

[Celia Motion]

This is Bretton Woods. The IMF was created. The World bank was created. The US is the biggest shareholder because it's the biggest financier of both of those institutions. The world realized that the US is one has been the largest economy by then for almost six decades. It had been bigger than the, than Great Britain. The sterling could no longer hold the reserve asset because reserve asset status because they're destruction empire. Their physical destruction from World War II to 1 and 2 was this charm.

[Steve Bannon]

This is the beginning of what we call the post war international rules based order is one of the central tenets of MAGA that that needs to be destroyed because it did not put America first. But wasn't this because you had the, you had the military alliances, you had NATO, everything that would undergird the security. You had trade deals and commercial relationships. But here in capital markets and currency, IMF and World bank were set up and Bretton woods was set up as the ultimate control mechanism. Would not be the United States Navy, would not be the United States Army. They would always be there to undergird it. But the central method of control, you say charm would be the US dollar.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. And that's what I trace in the book. I trace the history of showing how the US's rise as a global superpower is intertwined with the dollar's rise as the world's reserve asset.

[Steve Bannon]

Who were the geniuses that had, whether we agree with them today or not, who were actually the architects of this part of it? Because I would argue more than Even the military part in the trade and GATT and everything like that, that this was the most brilliant because this actually gave you the ultimate control and had the greatest benefits to the country, at least in the first decades. Who were the leading architects of this?

[Celia Motion]

So there was Harry Dexter White, a senior treasury official at the time, Henry Morgenthaus, the top treasury official at the time.

[Steve Bannon]

They said Harry Dexter White's a quite, quite controversial guy.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah, we're going to talk about the economics of it though. So they sat down and realized that America has the best fiscal trajectory. But all the other countries looked at the couple of different options. They debated for a while. Should we have a shared currency? Is there any way around just one country having this? No, there really isn't. Because the US has the biggest economy. That's fiscal trajectory.

[Steve Bannon]

And traditionally had been whoever's the hegemon, whether it's the British with the pound since the Napoleonic War or before that, I don't know, the Spanish or the Dutch. The Dutch who were superpower even because of trade and the ability to navigate. So it was always traditionally, by custom and tradition, that power that controlled commerce, et cetera. We took over from essentially 125 year run by the British under the pound.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. And the US dollar has been chosen over and over and over again. It's still being chosen many times a day, but sometimes big movements right after. In the 70s, Nixon abandoned the dollar gold peg and that shook global trade.

[Steve Bannon]

Let's go to that because we made a big deal about this on the show. That great book three days in August or think about. So how do we. We're on a roll. Post war, in the 50s and even 60s, we're on a complete roll. We're the hegemon. The world's essentially at peace, although we're kind of at a nuclear standoff. You then have Vietnam, the Great Society, Nixon, who is a Republican in August, I think in 1971. What was it that triggered this crisis at the time that Nixon and Connally, these guys, it seems like over a weekend up at Camp David. Their biggest thing, if you study it was not that they were taking dollar off the gold standard, but that they would have to cancel. They would want to give a speech to the nation that would preempt Bonanza on Sunday night, which was the number one show in the country. And they were actually saying we're going to get blowback on this. What was it in the late 60s, early 70s that caused a Republican to go off the gold standard?

[Celia Motion]

There were a lot of factors at play. But one of the key ones was that inflation was starting to take a hold of the economy and there just weren't enough dollars to back up the gold peg. It was no longer economically sustainable for the dollar to hold onto that peg. And that shook global finance and this new world order. Everyone said, oh, Bretton woods is over. It may be that specific people demanding.

[Steve Bannon]

I think the rumor was the French like, we're going to send some ships over and we want our gold, we want our gold. Yeah, but actually, is that actually true? People said, hey, we want our gold.

[Celia Motion]

I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, I'm going to have to look into that. But people have chosen the dollar over and over again. That time, right? Everyone's shaken up. It was a secret. All of a sudden, Nixon announces this. But a couple of years later, a couple of weeks and months later, people are still hanging on to the dollar. You zip forward into the 80s when there's a Plaza Accord and Louvre Accord to actively get countries together to weaken the currency. People are still holding onto the dollar after nine, eleven. And then the biggest sign was the global financial crisis. It was an American made crisis that spilled over into the rest of the world. But still this is 2000.

[Steve Bannon]

So you're saying at every different element, particularly like the Plaza Court where people. And this is gets to the road to Rio, which just kind of kicks off the BRICS nations. You're saying, hey, folks have tried this before. Folks have said, but have you ever had a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar Today? I guess you're saying in the late 70s, you had it with the monster inflation. But is it our charm or they can't come up with an alternative?

[Celia Motion]

It's both. There is definitely no alternative. Even now, even just two weeks ago, we have all these finance ministers and central bankers in Washington for the IMF spring meetings, the first ones under Trump's second presidency. And no one is saying, okay, we're gonna grab a hold and we're gonna be the world's reserve asset. No, the opposite is happening. You have the BOE Governor Andrew Bailey saying, no, no, no, everyone, this is overdone. The bank of, bank of England, bank of England, all these calls that are all this commentary that the dollar is power and those days are over. That commentary is overdone. The French and German finance minister and the German central banker all said that the dollar, it is important the world see the dollar as the reserve, reserve asset. We also haven't seen China say, okay, we're going to take on this, this role. We're going to start to increase transparency and, and get rid of capital controls. No one is stepping up to say we're going to do it. Even the Brics, the Brics have talked about since at least 2022, maybe earlier, let's get a shared common currency together. We're going to find a way to circumvent the dollar and chip away at some of the dollar's power. Even now they're saying we're going to, we're the ones who are going to defend multilateralism, the current status quo. We're going to defend it, which that same, that status quo is underpinned by the dollar.

[Steve Bannon]

What is driving. They just can't come up because they all, they don't want to be this beholden because the weaponization once again, it goes back to economic warfare at any time. We see right now with the Persians, right with what's happening in Iran, people like myself are saying we need to take the military option off the table. We can't be sucked into another war and we can't do verification. We have to dismantle it. The way we do that is really go to economic war with the mullahs. That means cutting off the oil shipments coming out of the Straits of Hormuz. It means really going to a sanctions and a secondary sanctions. But that plays into the fact that the world is going to be beholden to what the United States wants to do as long as they have this exposure to the dollar, both the swift system, which this international system, they can, they can monitor every transaction goes on in the world. And they can monitor it because eventually you got to convert it into a dollar. Aren't they sitting there going, why do we give the Americans this much control?

[Celia Motion]

They are saying that. And some of this, Steve, has to do with the fact that there's nothing wrong with the dollar losing some of that. Because here is, number two, the US Is way ahead of.

[Steve Bannon]

There is no number.

[Celia Motion]

There is no number.

[Steve Bannon]

That's why they would talk about a basket of something new. There would be gold. I mean, it's very ephemeral of what they're trying to accomplish. Right? Because there is no, there's no currency in the world today to even come close to this.

[Celia Motion]

No. And part of the reason is that investors are conditioned to want a reserve asset to be backed by a government and a strong democracy. And you can't find that in that, this combination of largest economy and strongest.

[Steve Bannon]

Because you're saying we took it up from The Brits at the end of World War II, they had it since at least the early 19th century. So you're looking at 200 years plus of having a democracy with a powerful military and business community. And at the time, the city of London, which was the Wall street of the world, just that alone, that continuity alone makes it custom and tradition. People don't want to get off that. They're comfortable with that, right?

[Celia Motion]

Yeah, they're hooked. It's a dollar addiction out there. If you think about what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 Russia sanctions that the Biden administration led the world. Right. Half of the world's GDP joined the US on in applying economic sanctions on Russia. And the European sanctions were maybe more important because the euro was much more intertwined with Russian activities. But the US needed to lead that to get everyone along. What happened there? No one wanted a bunch of rubles. Right. Putin starts trading more, more oil with India and the India doesn't know. One doesn't know what to do with all these rubles. And Putin doesn't know what to do with this pile of rupees because you can't exchange it the way you can exchange the dollar. So there is.

[Steve Bannon]

Would they rather take the currents? Because weren't output deals from the UAE and Saudi Arabia and of course this controversial one with the Persians and China all done away from the dollar is converted into dollars. Weren't they all done as output deals that would be in the currency and they would take the currency risk and try to hedge it.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. So we've seen that there have been a chunk of transactions and maybe an increasing or expanding chunk of transactions that are being taken that are taking place outside of the dollar. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with diversification. If anything, it might benefit the US a little bit to not have to sort of fund all of this. That's what Trump is out there talking about, Right. He's saying that NATO members need to pony up a little bit. Our deficits are huge. We need to start to find ways to reduce that.

[Steve Bannon]

I want to get into the history of how this started and how we got here. Plus we talk about deficits, where this is going to go, particularly with this looks like inability of our political class to cut spending. Birchgold.com the end of the dollar empire. For the last four years, we've tried to teach you all this with free installments. The seventh free installment is the road to the Rio Reset. Make sure you get that. The one before that, the six was modern Monetary theory, the ide that broke the world, the outpouring of that of you folks talking about this has been quite amazing. That's where we get the seventh free installment done so quickly. So make sure you go to birchgold.com Bannon the end of the Dollar Empire and the Rio reset. Also you get to talk to Philip Patrick and the team. Philip, we're sending an entire crew to Rio. Philip Patrick's going, guys from Birch gold and folks in the world, we're going to cover it wall to wall covering wall to wall. Just like Jack Vesovit's heading out to the Vatican. We got a team going there to join Ben Harnwell, our international editor in Rome who's stationed there. So we'll go Rome to Rio. How's that sound? Short commercial break. Back with Celia Motion in a moment.

[Celia Motion]

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[Steve Bannon]

I got American Faith.

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[Trevor Comstock]

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[Steve Bannon]

For a while now.

[Trevor Comstock]

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[Steve Bannon]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. Welcome back. Take your phone out. Text Bannon B A N N O N 989-898. You get the free Ultimate Guide for investing in Gold and Precious Metals in the Era of Trump from Birch Gold, Philip Patrick and team. Check it out. Make contact with Philip and his team. Remember, it is not the price of gold. It is the process of how it got there. That's what you have to understand. Understand why gold's been a hedge for 5,000 times of turbulence for 5,000 years of mankind's history. Know that and you'll start to understand how the world works. You start the book off with an amazing story about Steve Mnuchin and just the very mention in Davos, our favorite, we cover it every year. People go crazy. Just the very mention of not being a strong dollar. Right. Since the world's capital markets in this two different ways. You do say how the dollar strong. But why is it that everybody's associated since they bought into the system that they need to see a strong dollar even if it has certain anti competitive things for people in the United States?

[Celia Motion]

It has to do with the fact that investors, businesses, when they're planning out the next couple of quarters, they want stability and predictability. And they need that from the world's largest economy, the one that owns a reserve asset, the one that has the most influential and powerful central bank. They need to know that policymaking is going to be stable and predictable no matter what it is. That's why today, since April 2, 2025 it's been really hard for traders and investors and businesses and foreign what we.

[Steve Bannon]

Refer to as liberation.

[Celia Motion]

Liberation Day. Sure, you can call it that because.

[Steve Bannon]

Remember you're in a populist nationalist show here. Because they can't, they can't. Although things have calmed down the market, you know the headlines in mid April, worse since the Great Depression. Things have calmed down since then.

[Celia Motion]

Why?

[Steve Bannon]

Because people have a better understanding what's going on behind. Behind reciprocity, the non tariff barriers. Is that what you think it is?

[Celia Motion]

Well there's also the 90 day pause came in showing that. Okay, now there's going to be a little bit of process. We want to see what is the roadmap.

[Steve Bannon]

We're a big avenue gets that.

[Trevor Comstock]

Yeah.

[Celia Motion]

And that's what a treasury secretary, a treasury Department kind of the goal is to instill some of that process, some of the predictability instability that investors and finance financiers look for.

[Steve Bannon]

Hamilton county, that's where you're from, Ohio. Hamilton County, Ohio, one of the most important in one of the most important states, at least politically one of the most important counties. It's ironic that it goes back to Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton is actually central to your book. Why is Hamilton such a towering giant and how he kind of thought this whole thing very different from Jefferson, from my home state of the Commonwealth of Virginia had this kind of bucolic yeoman agricultural democracy of kind of little guys yeoman farmers in a perfect democracy. But Hamilton saw the possibilities of a continental Superpower. But really, when we were just starting an economic superpower.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. He was one of the founding fathers. He was the first Treasury Secretary the United States had. And he was there to issue the first ever bond sale. He financed, brokered the first loan that the United States ever had. It was $50,000 in, you know, the cash value of the 1780s. It came from the bank of New York. You know, it still exists. You can go to bank of New York Mellon and have a look at some of those documents.

[Steve Bannon]

And he was the founder. One of the founders of the bank of New York.

[Trevor Comstock]

Yeah.

[Celia Motion]

And he signed some of that paperwork. You can go have a look at it. I've seen it before, too. He issued that, and he said that credit is the price of our liberty. Because at the time, think about it, the US Was very, very young. Everyone is expecting this experiment in democracy with all these ideals of low tax or, you know, low taxes and, you know, not. No, we fought against taxes we don't want.

[Steve Bannon]

Yeah. We're not. Americans have always been had. Had a chip on the shoulder about taxes.

[Celia Motion]

Exactly. No monarchy. We don't need a king and a queen. We're gonna. Our electorate has the power.

[Steve Bannon]

So we had no manufacturing. How did he envision that? I mean, how did that. Cause credit would be tied to becoming a manufacturing power. Right. The farmers. Because Jefferson, they had that huge fight in one of the first cabinet meetings. When Jefferson gets back from revolutionary France, and he tells Hamill, he says, I don't really understand what a Secretary of treasury does. Can you explain it to me? And he gives him the big rap on credit and manufacture. And Jefferson says, I hear you. I see what you're saying. But you're telling me that basically a farmer here, or even a small guy with a business, will be in hock to a stock jobber in New York City who's in hock to a British merchant bank. He goes, what did we fight the revolution for? We're in hock to the same guys that we broke off from. What was Hamilton's response to that?

[Celia Motion]

I don't know. The point that Hamilton was trying to make when he said that credit is a national blessing, that our debt is a national blessing, is that you can take any dollar that the US has and leverage it. You can show that this country is Burgundy. There's a lot of economic growth here. There's a lot of potential. So come invest in us so that we can use that debt to create more good.

[Steve Bannon]

And if we have deal with all. If we have to deal with all cash we're generating. Our equity capital will never expand.

[Celia Motion]

Exactly.

[Steve Bannon]

You need debt just like he just like leveraged by our guys today said, or buying a house, just like you mortgage your house, if you do use leverage smartly, you can increase value and growth dramatically.

[Celia Motion]

And that's the thing. One thing we haven't talked about, Steve, yet is that in the book, I explain that every American is touched by the benefit and the privileges of living in a country that is the owner of the world's reserve asset. Because the world is always investing in the dollar, always wants, has an insatiable appetite. No matter how many trillions of dollars of Treasuries and bonds we sell. Federal government bonds are sold here. Everyone wants that. That means the interest rate cost, the insurance premium on that debt than it could be with any other fiscal.

[Steve Bannon]

People need to own. People need dollars and they need dollars and they buy those securities to get.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. So the, the credit, the interest rate on our credit card bill, auto loans, student loans, home mortgages, that interest rate is very low because the US Dollar is a world's reserve asset.

[Steve Bannon]

Uncharacteristically low. If you didn't have that, it would be higher. Now, in a situation where we seem like the political class cannot get control of spending, spending, and here, even President Trump's big, beautiful bill, because this show is the show that turfed out McCarthy for the deal he did with no debt ceiling limit and unlimited spending by Biden in those first two years, we're quite concerned that in the big beautiful bill, there hasn't really been tremendous cuts. It's been $163 billion on the, on the social side, but there's been no. Not touching the Defense Department. Over a trillion dollars, it looks like, and we're the first ones to call it on the cr, the CR this year, President Trump not, you know, inheriting Biden's budget in the House and folks not doing anything about it, we're going to have a $2 trillion deficit for this fiscal year, it looks like, particularly with the populist tax cuts we want to have of no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. Right now, this number looks like two, $2.5 trillion. So Scott Besant, as you're adding this to the debt, he's going to have to, on an annual basis, I don't know, sell 8, 9, $10 trillion of government securities, particularly Yellen. Those guys did it short term. We're going to do it. Is there the appetite. Are you concerned that at some point you start to reach some sort of where you're going to get pushback. Like for instance the Japanese. The bank of Japan told the Financial Times I think on Saturday, hey look, we hear Trump with reciprocity and the non tariff barriers and we're engaged with Bessing. We think we're gonna get a deal done at least the architecture. But part of this discussion is gonna be the trillion dollars of government securities we own. Cause we kind of see that you guys are gonna come back for another bite. Is this gonna get to be a problem? Is this debt? And particularly people are taking this in dollar denominated bonds.

[Celia Motion]

The trajectory of US debt right now has made a lot of people nervous. You hear from Jamie Dimon and Mark Rowan and Ray Dalio and Ken Griffin and everyone below them. Everyone. At what point is there a debt issuance from a Treasury sale that goes a little bit wrong? Congress is paying attention.

[Steve Bannon]

Well, hang on. Two weeks ago on that, before they announced the process, it was a Tuesday. Bessett had. We had a little bit of disconnect in the 10 year. Remember they had a. And that's when the market imploded. And I think Scott had to oversee, put hands on a normal 10 year and said everything was fine, it was over subscribed. But this is what Ray Dalio, who's no MAGA guy and no friend of the show and we play his clips all the time, he's saying, hey, we're one failed auction away from a crisis. This is my point. Aren't we hurtling towards this? And now we have smart guys warning about it, but once it happens, it's too late to kind of reverse this. Is it not?

[Celia Motion]

I don't know. No one knows. We've never been in a situation where there's this much financial technology, this large of a country with this, this much of a hold over global finance. And then a auction goes awry and traders panic. Right. Traders range from 22 year old on up. They don't know necessarily. They're not thinking, they haven't read all the books. They're smart people and they haven't gone through a cycle.

[Steve Bannon]

They haven't gone through a tough cycle.

[Celia Motion]

Exactly. So this is why the conclusion of my book is that a lot of people say, oh China and Russia, they could do something that shakes the US and makes the dollar not the reserve asset or makes the US not as power powerful as it is. But I actually end saying that it's actually up to the US it's up to the electorate to choose leaders that care about these issues and to try to call for a cut in deficits, but also understand what's going on in the economy. But it's up to the US to maintain its fiscal house in order so that no one else has this power.

[Steve Bannon]

So that's it. We argue here all the time that the elites in this country have breached their fiduciary responsibilities to the nation, to the country, because in the bailouts of 2008, as Christopher Leonard showed so brilliantly, lords of easy money, this is why he had the greatest concentration of wealth first during that period for the bailouts, then later during the pandemic. So now we have the greatest concentration of wealth. I mean, we essentially have a capitalist system with almost no capitalists. It's 75 or 80% of the people in this country, the hard working people in Hamilton county that have been there for generation, generation own almost nothing. And this is the problem, is that you have a political class that refuses, I think, to address the central. This is why your book's so powerful. I'd like to give a copy to everybody up here. If there's a handful of books, if people read it and say, hey, not only do we have an emergency, but once you get into this crisis, all of your easy alternatives are gone and you're going to be down to, you know, whatever. Like right now, $163 billion of non discretionary cuts, which will never happen. They've already rejected them up on Capitol Hill. I mean, heck, the President is trying to get PBS and npr. Leave the politics aside. It's a couple of billion dollars. It's nothing. And they can't even get their arms around that. It's the scale of this thing. Doesn't it worry you? You're one of the leaders in thinking through this currency and its geopolitical impact. Doesn't it concern you that it's the political class here that fails to take the leadership that the country? Because people in Hamilton county don't know. I mean, it's one of the reasons the show is so popular. We expose people to these powerful converging forces that drive global politics, which is really about money and the economy. And that's really the intersection of power. And people see their eyes open, but they don't have time to do it. They're working two jobs right now, as you said. The biggest thing is how do you survive in an economy where the prices keep going up? Isn't it incumbent upon our leaders to kind of take that leadership?

[Celia Motion]

Look, I think the electorate is very powerful in the Us I think as long as the electorate can understand that there will be painful cuts in budget spending that will affect everyday Americans, meaning that their lawmaker might have to lose an election because they voted in support of some budget cuts that maybe constituents weren't happy about. So it's this concept of short term pain for long term gain that right now if we can accept some of the budget cuts, then it's better for future generations. But that starts with voters.

[Steve Bannon]

I'm not asking you to make a political judgment because I realize you're apolitical in your job, of what you do in your reporting and in your book. But when you think back to Hamilton county and those signs you saw in 15 and 16, which other people didn't pick on, pick up in that mindset of those people, the same decent folks are now 10 years into this experiment, right? And now with essentially every day we pick up the Financial Times to walk people through it now this huge thing on tariffs and the commerce part and the codification of commerce with trade deals, et cetera. In their perspective, do you think they fully understand now how big a deal this is? That now you combine economics with finance and capital markets and we have a period in world history that's every bit as fraught with danger as around the Second World War and particularly the end of the Second World War.

[Celia Motion]

I do think that there is a lot more tolerance for pain across America. We learned that in February of 2022 when Biden imposed the economic sanctions on Russia and gasoline prices across America went up and polls showed that Americans were willing to pay a little bit more at the gasoline pump for in the spirit of helping a democracy in Europe and trying to make sure Europe doesn't blow up into another world, into another big war. And now we're seeing that with Trump's tariffs that there's also again, a little bit more of a steeliness in the electorate that we can handle this. Maybe it's because the global financial crisis and 911 is, is a recent enough memory that people know that, okay, we're gonna have to suffer through this, particularly after Covid, we're gonna have to suffer through this.

[Steve Bannon]

But the 2008, the financial collapse, the causes of it, the converging factors of it, and particularly what was done as a result. The bailouts, right? And it's kind of bushing these guys, you know, with the political class cause a problem. Obama, and he's kind of weak, say all the time. He's kind of a tragic figure. He came in as an anti war populist immediately have this financial implosion. And Geithner and Bernanke, all these guys are kind of neoliberal neocons. It's a classic neoliberal save. The system will do anything to save Christopher Lennon's book. Shocking in going back and reading actual the minutes of the governors of the Federal Reserve to say it was. I think Dick Fisher in Dallas was sitting there going, guys, if we take this to zero negative interest rates, it's the working class and middle class countries are going to be decimated on capital formation. They're essentially going to finance a bailout of people who knew better. And people said yeah, I got it. But we got to be unanimous for everybody has to vote. Do you think that the American people are also looking a little better this with John Desai and saying, hey, every time something like this comes up, they're looking to me for sacrifice. Why? You just see continual greater concentration of wealth.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah, that's an excellent point. There's a huge income inequality problem in.

[Steve Bannon]

The United States and a bigger asset inequality. Yeah, the income equality I think also misses the mark. I tell Bernie Sanders, these guys, Tom, income equality and you can solve that with tax structure and particularly our populist tax hits somewhat. The bigger gap is asset difference. You have a capitalist system with essentially very few capitalists that 75% of the country doesn't own anything.

[Celia Motion]

But that's why I think future leaders need to actually go across the United States and understand the electorate. Right. I kind of like to think about it as the empty glassers. We kind of, we've always looked at the economy, especially in the decade after the financial crisis, during that recovery, as a glass half full. There's look at all this recovery. So many people have recovered. But if you look at the breakdown of how Trump won the election, he won in the states where those states stayed in a recession for much longer than the country as a whole did after the Great Recession ended for the country, it continued for a lot of people who went for Trump. So you have to think about there's a glass half full.

[Steve Bannon]

This is why every morning after I took over the campaign, we redirected and spent more time piercing the blue shell. Morning Joe would sit there and mock us. These guys don't know what they're doing. And you could tell demographic, particularly in Ohio, around Akron and dating place like that. The demographic were like western Pennsylvania were like areas of Wisconsin, Michigan and even Iowa. We could see that shifting on Democrats and independents who were open to the fact of having a guy that had no traditional experience whatsoever because he was talking about economic nationalism or economic patriotism. I said, finally, this guy speaks for me.

[Celia Motion]

And this is the reason that I wanted to write this book, the reason I wrote it this way. I take readers into Weirton, West Virginia. I take you to Moraine, Ohio, where I show readers how decisions made in the halls of power at the Treasury Department, in Congress, at the White House.

[Steve Bannon]

At the Federal impacts your life.

[Celia Motion]

Impacts your life here from outside of Dayton, Ohio. This is how it affects you.

[Steve Bannon]

What did you got a couple minutes? What did you learn about yourself in researching and writing this book?

[Celia Motion]

I realized one that you don't have to have an elite university background to write a smart book. I realized that diversity of thought is very important. I think diversity of all kinds is great, but I think it should be driven by diversity of thought. I grew up in Ohio and went overseas and somehow landed in Washington.

[Steve Bannon]

You came from classic flyover country.

[Celia Motion]

Yeah. And then also that all social upheaval and this really fierce rhetoric that we hear from people that we should look past the words and try to figure out what is the emotion and what is the economic pain that probably led to this. Because economic pain is usually the root of many social and political upheavals.

[Steve Bannon]

When you're in places like the city of London and areas of Europe in the Davos places you've had to go and of course Washington, D.C. do they have any real understanding of flyer of a country of Hamilton, Ohio?

[Celia Motion]

No, they really don't. They think that America is basically LA in New York and they say, oh well, I don't know how you live in the US New York is so unsafe. And I say it is a huge. Have you looked on the map like how giant this country is? I'm from this part here in the center.

[Steve Bannon]

Where do people go to get this book? Where do people go to get your ratings? What's your social media?

[Celia Motion]

I'm aleyamosin on Twitter. You can buy my book on Amazon.com, paper soldiers or wherever you buy books. Books.

[Steve Bannon]

Fantastic. It's been great to have you. I think very enlightening until the audience is very excited. This book, how the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order. It's something we're referred to a lot. Christopher Leonard, the great Christopher Leonard, says if you only read one book to understand American economic political power in the world today, it should be this one. Thank you so much for joining us in the world. We're going to be back. We're going to leave you with the right stuff. We'll be back tomorrow morning at 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time. We'll see you then. Them in the War Room.

[Trevor Comstock]

What if he had the brightest mind.

[Steve Bannon]

In the War Room delivering critical financial research every month?

[Trevor Comstock]

Steve Bannon here. War Room listeners know Jim Rickards.

[Steve Bannon]

I love this guy. He's our wise man.

[Trevor Comstock]

A former CIA, Pentagon and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets, Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself. Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11, a moment that could define Trump's presidency and your financial future. His latest book, MoneyGPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos. Bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm driven crashes, and even threats to national security. Right now, War Room members get a free copy of MoneyGPT when they sign up for Strategic Intelligence. This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence. I read it.

[Steve Bannon]

You should read it.

[Trevor Comstock]

Time is running out. Go to rickardswarroom.com that's all one word.

[Steve Bannon]

Rickards war Room.

[Trevor Comstock]

Rickards with an S. Go now and claim your free book. That's rickardswarroom.com do it today.

[E]

Hey War Room. Hope you're all doing well. My name is Trevor Comstock. I'm one of the co creators of Sacred Human and I wanted to share just a little bit more about our brand. For those who may not know of us yet, but about six months ago we decided to launch Sacred Human with really the simple mission being to provide American made natural supplements without all the artificial nonsense. So unfortunately, as many of you know, a lot of these big corporate supplements will include things like preservatives, artificial ingredients and other additives that really aren't benefiting your health. So that's why we created Sacred Human. Really trying to fill this gap of quality supplements and of course the beef liver being our flagship product. For those who don't know, beef liver is loaded with highly bioavailable ingredients such as vitamin A, B12, zinc, CoQ10, etc. And because it is 100% grass fed and natural, your body is able to absorb these nutrients far better than taking any other synthetic multivitamin or any other synthetic vitamin in general. So we have some other amazing products, but if you'd like to check us out, you can go to sacredhumanhealth.com and cheers to your health.