← Doug Casey's Take
Doug Casey's Take
TACO Tuesday? Trump's Iran Ultimatum, Energy Shock Fears, and Dubai's Fragile Future
00:29:54
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- [00:03]
A
All right. Good morning, Doug. We're in some. It's like D Day almost. If you read Twitter too much with Trump, you know, he's threatening the whole civilization will die in Iran at 8pm today if they don't meet his demands. What do you think about what's going on?
- [00:22]
B
Well, I've got to say, he's become genuinely unhinged. I mean, he's acting like he's actually crazy because my wife, who is very smart and has been a fan of Trump. His reasoning is, I think our reasoning was in the past, is that the US Is in serious trouble and some things had to be done. And of course, not everybody's an anarcho capitalist and mistakes are made, but, you know, you give Trump the benefit of the doubt. He was trying to destroy the WOKE movement, and he did a lot of good work in that direction. He was trying to stop the. The takeover of the US by millions of migrants that don't belong here and go on the dole and all this type of thing. Okay. This is, you know, trying to maintain what was left of American civilization, which was most of it. So you saw that. But then. Then he went off tilting on some crazy windmills, and the big one was, for some reason, getting involved in Iran for absolutely no good reason at all, calling them, you know, actually going out looking for trouble. Or was it Washington or Jefferson that said we shouldn't go out hunting dragons in foreign lands? And this is exactly why, because nobody benefits from this except Israel, because if the US Destroys Iran, it's destroying Israel's last state enemy in that part of the world. So the whole thing is screwed up, but it's gotten out of control now. And the things he said. Do you have some of the things he said that offhand, by any chance?
- [02:24]
A
Well, you're bonkers. Yeah, he. Yes. Yesterday he said they better open the straight, called them crazy bastards, and then signed off, you know, praise be to Allah or something like that. So that was.
- [02:41]
B
That was.
- [02:41]
A
I'm sorry, that was on Sunday. Not. Not. Not yesterday. That was on Sunday. Easter Sunday.
- [02:45]
B
That's. That's great to say on Easter Sunday. Praise be to Allah. And then there was some other implication in a previous email I saw where he said, glory be to God. I mean, this is not like God bless America. Okay? I mean, glory be to God. I mean, and that this kind of ties in with Pete Hegseth, who increasingly impresses me as a Looney Tunes. I mean, good things about Hegseth. Yeah, he got. Who did a lot to get Rid of wokeism in the military, which was really long overdue. I mean officers wearing high heel, male officers wearing high heels and things like that. I mean, that was crazy. All right, that's great. And the fact that he's in great physical condition getting into push up contests. Okay, that's great too. Just because you're Secretary of defense for a general doesn't mean you should be pot belling. Also. He, that's great. But then these, these wild tattoos that he has, most of them with religious significance.
- [03:54]
A
Crusader.
- [03:55]
B
Crusader, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm afraid Hegseth is kind of bonkers too. And Trump clearly has surrounded himself with sycophants who don't argue with them. They're afraid. They agree with them to start with, but they don't argue with them. And I think he's living in an ultra tight silo. He's living in a bubble, I really think so. We're. That's what everybody says. That speaks off the record. I think he's gone crazy.
- [04:29]
A
Well, here's his tweet. Here's his tweet from today. Doug, let me read it to you and have a comment because I know you haven't seen this one yet. He said a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have a complete and total regime change where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionary revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight. One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran.
- [05:14]
B
Well, the. Yeah, I'm not looking at this tweet from him, but as usual, as he randomly capitalized words and misspelled words, both of these things indicate somebody that's got problems, especially if you're the President of the US or not. Oh, there it is.
- [05:38]
A
Less so than normal though. Highly capitalized, who knows?
- [05:42]
B
Much less. Yes. And this whole 47 years thing, it actually started in 1953 when the US overthrew their government and installed the Shah, who was popular. You know, almost everybody's a double edged sword. There were good things about the Shah, I would say, and things that would were very bad about the Shah. So he was righteously overthrown because he was just a. Another crazy dictator who did some good things, in my opinion anyway, and replaced with these religious people. But Iran has not been a terrorist state for the last 47 years, the only times that they've killed Americans is when Americans were doing military things on their territory or when they were aiding Hamas and Hezbollah, which kind of like righteously fighting against the Israelis and don't want to get into all this type of thing, you know, who owns Israel and all this type of thing. But this has gotten out of control. And the average American believes that now, believes, it seems, that the Iranians are going to nuke us and try to kill us. Well, maybe they feel like it now after all the things that we've done to them. But,
- [07:22]
A
I mean, I don't know how, how we think that we can. I mean, a lot, a lot of Americans are concerned about the borders. We know that millions of people unchecked cross the borders, certainly increasing the threat in the United States of basic crime, of course, but of also potential terror. Right. So we, you know, we, like you have to assume that's the backdrop to it of this whole situation. And then when we're saying we are going to genocide them, which I think is the term, if you're going to cut off all the electricity of a modern, urbanized society, you are essentially sentencing them to death. I mean, there's going, Imagine if an American city was completely cut off from power, what would happen there in a couple of days? So when you're threatening that, it's just threats at this point, I guess. So that's good. You know, I hope he'll taco out of it, but if he follows through on that, how Americans should expect it will happen in the U.S. they have to.
- [08:24]
B
That's right. And I think the Iranians have been very, very prudent and restrained so far. Because assuming that they have teams in the US to destroy things, then it would kind of be game on. Because the average American would say, see, they've infiltrated us. There are enemies, we have to take them out. I think they understand that and they don't want to do that. They, they don't want to do that,
- [08:54]
A
but it's counterproductive to their efforts. Not that they wouldn't. Strategically, it's a bad choice. Even if they, they really did want to kill all Americans, it would be a mistake.
- [09:05]
B
Yeah, but Trump is backing, backing them into a corner, and things that they've done in the Middle east or around the Gulf are strictly to American interest in the Middle East. As far as any reporting that I've seen where American companies are involved, Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is, so forth. Kuwait, same thing. Strictly American interests. What will Trump do? Tonight if he doesn't taco, he's got to taco.
- [09:38]
A
I hope, I hope he tacos. I mean, people don't understand the consequences of this. There could be consequences where it can come back to the U.S. but if nothing else, you have to at least assume that Iran will do what they said they would do, which is just to lash out at all the Gulf, all the allies of the U.S. in the area and blow up infrastructure that we, the world needs, needs it to function. And if we have to, I mean, I guess it's been like a 10 million roughly reduction in output of oil which hasn't hit yet. You know, the ships are still landing that sailed out of the Middle East. So we haven't even experienced the consequences of that area being shut down. But if they permanently destroy that, we'll be in. It's hard to explain the consequences of that. I mean if you had to reduce your, you know, the global economic output equivalent to the energy inputs of 20% or whatever, like that's a global depression, isn't it? I mean, is it, could it go any other way?
- [10:42]
B
And already in the Orient, all over the Orient, because that's where all the oil goes is basically to the Orient, there are severe shortages, severe shortages where they just don't have the oil, forget about higher prices. So where's that going to end? And of course this is all happening in a time of ultra high debt around the world which people could default on as the economy slows down. And with the stock market and actually the bond market too. Well, the stock market's at all time highs and the bond market is still very, very high, especially with all that. So. Well, and of course debt is starting to be defaulted on. This has happened with things like Cliffwater and Apollo that have been making basically junk loans to secondary corporations where they're charging them 10%, they're charging them 13% basically. That's kind of like the average number for. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars. And after taking a 3% rake off the top paying investors 10%, 10% in interest, that looks pretty good. And no, I think things are going to start coming unglued finally. Don't want to be anywhere around this
- [12:13]
A
but Doug, I think it could lead to not the end, not the complete end, but the huge reduction of civilian air travel. Because if you have a shortage of oil, like they're going to produce the most necessary things first from it. Right? So jet fuel is going to be, especially for tourism is going to be on the lowest end of the value chain for military purposes. Of course they'll keep doing it, but they need diesel more and gasoline more. And I mean, the implications of all this are just shocking to me, actually, and that he, if he doesn't taco, I think people have no idea how
- [12:52]
B
bad it can get. Diesel prices are the most leveraged area of the crack. Of the crack spread and they've essentially doubled most places. And that's not good for truck drivers, which. Everything moves by truck. Right.
- [13:12]
A
So, yeah, just let me, let me actually share this chart of the US Diesel prices. This is so over the last year, you can see how much the change is already. But this is nothing yet. We haven't even gotten any. There's been no reduction of supply yet in the US at all. But it's coming and especially
- [13:40]
B
when it is said, and I kind of believe it because it's been true for years. I think the average American basically has no savings and is living paycheck to paycheck. And this is exactly the time when a lot of paychecks are going to stop coming in for one reason or another.
- [14:02]
A
It's a disaster. Well, let's, let's hope for tacos. It's, it's actually Tuesday and we're recording. Taco Tuesday is the thing I've always liked. So, you know.
- [14:09]
B
Oh, yeah, of course. Maybe, maybe that will prove quite, quite appropriate. I think at this point they have to exercise the 25th Amendment for Trump, which is to say, take him out of office for mental or physical incapacity. I mean, Biden was incapacitated, and who knows who was running his regime in the final months of it. Was it his wife or was it some nebbishes that we're using as monopen? Who the hell knows? Maybe we'll never find out because there's no indictments that have been handed down on that yet, either for the criminality of the Biden regime. But, but Trump can't do the things that he's doing. You cannot insult, personally insult people. They take it personally and it redounds to the entity that you manage. I mean, the fact that he insulted Bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, I mean, there's a disaster, too. Somebody that's doing his best to destroy Saudi Arabia in his own ways. Not that it doesn't deserve it, but you insult somebody like that personally, it ain't going to be forgotten. And they will get back at you.
- [15:31]
A
You know, you're not the only person calling for a 25th amendment. I've seen more and more calls for this. And even I just, I saw on Twitter this morning Alex Jones was saying the same thing. So everybody all across the spectrum is calling for it.
- [15:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, this is, this is serious, serious trouble. Well, we'll know at 8 o' clock tonight. So.
- [15:48]
A
Yeah, we'll see.
- [15:51]
B
This is like waiting for the next edition of nighttime soap opera where who shot Junior? I don't know if you remember that from. It was a big deal.
- [16:01]
A
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I do, I do.
- [16:03]
B
So, same type of thing. So some people are asking us, so where should we run and hide? Where should we go? Well, I'm happy being here in Buenos Aires. And tomorrow this time I'm going to be back in Uruguay on the farm. You're in Paraguay yourself now. But oddly enough, I read an article from NPR about Tristan da Cunha today. And I've long been kind of a fan of Tristan da Cunha. It's one of those oddball places in the world like Pitcairn island. Oh, which is where the mutiny boutonnieres went in the, you know, middle of nowhere in the South Pacific. And the Falkland Islands, which have about what, 3,000 or some residents. But Tristan da Cunha in the middle of the South Atlantic, nothing there except a big island and some little islands. And it's very interesting, after the Napoleonic wars, some soldiers got stationed there and a few of them wanted to stay. And one thing and Another says about 225 people living in their own society on Tristan. And they have sheep which they monitor because it's, it's not a desert island, but there's no trees on it and you can't let sheep over grave. And cattle, they have cattle. I'm sure they have chickens that didn't mention that. And oh, there's a picture of a boat because you can only get there by boat, can't land a plane there. And of course you can't have a headache helicopter because it's way out of range. So you take this little kind of ferry and there's storms that come up. There's a picture of a storm. And I gotta say that the article which was done by NPR was, was not bad. Didn't cover a lot of things. It should have. But then again, it's their article, not my article. And like any right thinking person, I despise NPR and the people that work there. But occasionally they turn out interesting stuff. And this is one of them. Lobsters is the main thing that they do to generate foreign exchange. That's a line of sheep. We're looking at. So.
- [18:31]
A
Yeah. Great photography though, they got of this place.
- [18:33]
B
Oh yeah. And of course now Tristan has Internet thanks to Elon Musk, so I guess you could go there and live there. The island is owned in common, it appears by the residents, although everybody owns his own house and everybody has a garden plot. I wish they'd mentioned what the market prices of these things are is if you want to sell them. Talk about any liquid market. But anyway, there's places like this, a surprisingly large number of them. There are islands in the world where stuff like this goes on, so somebody might want to further research this. I doubt if anybody's got any boots on the ground experience with the place.
- [19:34]
A
Yeah, well, I wonder how many visitors they get annually. I mean, only a population of 225. You can't imagine. Can't imagine there's much.
- [19:44]
B
Well, there's some corporation that has a 30 year lease, the lobster production production grounds. And that's what most of the Falklanders do, is they harvest lobsters and freeze them because they've got electricity and freezers now and then they. Lobsters are expensive, they pick them up and that's basically how they get by, I think.
- [20:10]
A
Amazing, Amazing. I didn't even know this place existed until you said. That's pretty shocking to me actually to think about that in today's day there, there are these little places isolated in
- [20:22]
B
the middle of nowhere and nobody, well, of course nobody knew the Falklands existed before that war. And stamp collectors, stamp collectors knew they existed, but that's, that's about it. But then kind of like the mirror image or. Well, I'm not sure that's even the right word. Kind of like the polar opposite of all the Falklands is Dubai. So with buildings being hit selectively by the Iranians who are just across the straight from Dubai, what's happened to real estate prices? Because this has been one of the, you know, great real estate developments along with cities in China, in the world. Dubai is unique, it's exceptional. I mean it's the desert. Like I, I've said before, when I was first there in 1980, it had an airport the size of, well, it was like 5,000 square ft. I mean it was nothing, nothing there. And it turned into one of the great commercial tourist whatever centers in the world. Immense amount of building. So is it all going to go back to the desert? Because they're fighting the desert constantly. The heat and the sand and the wind and the lack of water, it's all artificial. So question is, can it be maintained Especially in a war zone.
- [21:56]
A
Well, and I think you alluded to these potential financial problems that are coming, you know, and what happened when Dubai last had a big market bust? I think the first time I was there was in late 2009, 2010, you know, and they had all these skyscrapers and stuff and but very few lights on, you know, nobody was living there. It was just, you know, it was like, it was kind of like a ghost city in some ways. I mean, it was, it was, you know, during the financial crisis, it's really suffered from that. And you got to imagine if this work continues, you also get the financial crisis part of it seems like that'll be unavoidable. And it seems like Dubai has got to be highly sensitive to financial markets.
- [22:42]
B
Must be. Yeah. And people have exited en masse now. And of course the financial thing is yet to come, but that place is like Lamborghini and Ferrari central. And my question is how many cars are just going to be abandoned there? Abandoned there where they're leased or whatever and the owners aren't going to come back and get them. So this could be an opportunity. Of course, the other argument that can be made is that, hey, cars are dead ducks. Everybody's going to be, you know, moving around. There's a lot of alternatives to cars that are coming up, like personal drone type aircraft that you won't need to drive a car and everything. But this could be an opportunity to go, go there and buy really cheap cars and have them shipped out or really cheap real estate. But the real estate hasn't really collapsed, has it? According to.
- [23:46]
A
No, it hasn't. The transaction volumes are way down, apparently like half of what they were in the past. But the prices have been sticky. But I don't think that volume precedes price. You know, that's the thing is, you know, before you see a price decline, you'd probably see a volume decline. I mean, that's in real estate markets anyway. You know, I was just looking up about car abandonments because I remember there were. There was widely reported that during the financial crisis, lots of people in Dubai who lost their jobs, you know, and had a car lease or whatever, were just going to the airport and leaving it and getting out of there. And you know, there were thousands of people that did that during that time. But I'm just seeing. It also says the Dubai Municipality data for more recent years reports that 1387 impounded vehicles for the first half of 2025. And essentially these are people who left their cars, cars that were tagged and impounded as abandoned at the airports are in 2025. So it's apparently a normal thing even during good times. 2025, it says, oh, there 1300 of them for the first half.
- [25:01]
B
Well, I guess the market's dealt with that type of thing in the past, but if they're inundated now with tens of thousands of cars, it's going to be harder to deal with. And the question is, what's going to happen to all those apartments? Because okay, you buy an apartment, that's one thing, but maintaining it in desert type conditions is something else. The condo fees and this type of thing are quite high, I think, on most of those apartments. And the thing with real estate like that is nobody has to buy it. It's not like a must have it, it's. But if you don't want it, you got to sell it. So there's gonna be a lot more, a lot more sellers and buyers. The market's gonna collapse there. Now the question is, is it a good speculation? Because maybe oil, because of this war, is gonna stay up at a hundred dollars or maybe 150 for the next several years, but beyond that, I don't know.
- [26:05]
A
Yeah, it seems to me it's not, you know, I know you like investing in a crisis, but it just seems to me it's not quite at that point of that vomit stage yet, you know, where everybody really wants out.
- [26:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's too early, it's too early to, to speculate on an apartment in Dubai. And even there it's just a short term speculation. It's not a, it's not a buy and hold thing, I'm afraid.
- [26:35]
A
No, I mean, it's kind of like, it's, it's like it always, it felt to me completely artificial when I was there, you know, because it is, it's, you know, it is, it's like, but with the environmental conditions as they are, it's like living on the moon in my mind or living, you know, a thousand feet below the surface of the sea or something. You know, it's a, it's this artificially contained environment that nature wants to go away. You know, you're fighting against everything. You're, you know, you're beating back the deserts constantly in order just to maintain things as they are.
- [27:11]
B
Yeah. Living in Dubai is actively and aggressively fighting the second law of thermodynamics, which is trying to take everything back to the desert. So that's a fight you can't win.
- [27:24]
A
Yeah. Oh yeah. It'll be interesting to See what happens to Dubai. I have to say that a lot of, a lot of people, everybody who I know who has a connection to Dubai, you know, has some investment in Dubai. They're all still very, you know, they think it'll, this will pass and, you know, it'll be fine. That's what they're even, you know, people who went on our VIP call, there's a guy who has, you know, he owns a condo there himself, but he also has a lot of friends that are there. And he's like, oh, yeah, it's not really a problem. Know, it's, Everything's fine. So that's, that's what you hear.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, I, I, I think, you know, I've enjoyed myself in Dubai, so as long as everything works, it can be pleasant enough. But I think it's one of those places where everything is fine until it's not fine anymore.
- [28:16]
A
That's right. I mean, if the whole civilization will die in Iran, I'm pretty sure the consequences will be very serious for Dubai.
- [28:25]
B
Yeah. Is he actually threatening nuclear war to the Iranians?
- [28:29]
A
It's what it sounds like. I mean, never, never ever as there in the context of war, civilization ending is associated in my mind with nuclear weapons.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And we haven't heard from Netanyahu and the Israelis, who are the ones that really have an interest than that happening either.
- [28:52]
A
Well, I did see a tweet from reported by one of the Israeli news agencies that said if Trump makes a decision after 8pm they have their, you know, their strikes lined up and ready to go after civilian infrastructure.
- [29:07]
B
Well, I guess the good news is they've said there won't be any Israeli boots on the ground. That's for, that's for Magan soldiers to do.
- [29:16]
A
That's true. But it sounds like they have their hands full in Lebanon right now.
- [29:19]
B
Yes, it does. They've lost, last I heard, about 30 Merkava tanks. That's quite a few.
- [29:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah. All right, Doug. Well, I guess we just got to see about whether or not it's Taco Tuesday. We'll just have to wait for that.
- [29:39]
B
The soap opera continues. All right, well, barring anything else, I guess we'll talk on Friday.
- [29:48]
A
All right, sounds good, Doug. Thanks so much. See you then.
- [29:50]
B
Thanks.