← The Peter Schiff Show Podcast
The Peter Schiff Show Podcast
Honor Washington's Birthday, the Father of Our Republic - Ep 1010
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You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans, and the next, boom. Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your family. Are you with me? The revolution starts now. Starts now. We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. Turn those machines back on. You are about to enter the Peter Schiff show. Peterbottom, if we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. The Peter Schiff show is on. When they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness. Your money, your stories, your freedom. The Peter Schiff Show. All right, well, NFL football is gone. And so the Sunday night podcasts are back. Although normally when I do a Sunday night podcast, the markets in the US Are open for trading the following day. That is not the case today because this is a three day weekend. Tomorrow, everybody gets a day off in honor of Washington's birthday. Now, I want to start off today's podcast by talking about Washington and Washington's birthday, because almost every American knows tomorrow's holiday as President's Day. And you know, that's always pissed me off that we call Washington's birthday President's Day. And I think it would be great if President Donald Trump tomorrow, when he talks about Washington's birthday, clears this up. You know, he puts a lot of stock in the name of things. You know, we, we renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. We restored the name Mount McKinley to our nation's highest mountain. And so why not restore Washington's birthday? Now, legally, the holiday is still Washington's birthday. That hasn't changed. There is no official holiday called President's Day. And so I'll tell you how the whole thing evolved, because Washington's birthday was on February 22nd. So tomorrow is February 17th. So it's not Washington's birthday. So why are we celebrating Washington's birthday on the 17th and not on the 22nd? And that's because in 1968, they changed the date that we celebrate Washington's birthday. They didn't change the name of the holiday, they just changed the date so that it would always fall on a Monday, it's the third Monday of February, so that everybody would get a three day weekend. Right? So we're more concerned about ourselves and the ability to get that three day weekend so we could take a vacation than we are about honoring the father of our nation. Because that's really, you Know, people don't, you know, really spend Washington's birthday, you know, honoring the memory of General George Washington, right? They go away on a ski weekend, or, you know, they come down here to Puerto Rico. We got a lot of people here for the weekend, the extended weekend. So that's really what it's about. It's about, you know, taking a vacation. So they changed it. But, you know, we should at least call the holiday by its actual name, not President's Day. And the way President's Day came about, it shows you the commercial nature of. Of the US economy. It wasn't until the 1980s that some, you know, retailers started advertising sales, you know, because whenever there's a holiday and people aren't at work, stores want you to go shopping. So they started having all these sales on Washington's birthday. But a lot of the retailers started calling them President's Day sales because Abraham Lincoln's birthday is also in February. I think it's February 12, so a little bit earlier. But, you know, obviously the. The, you know, Lincoln was held in high regard up north, not. Not so down south. Although that's, you know, probably changed now. But, I mean, back in the 80s, I think it was still, you know, a lot of states didn't recognize the holiday of. Of Lincoln's birthday. But up north, you know, there was a separate. You know, some of the states had Lincoln's birthday as a holiday. But so a lot of the stores started showing both presidents because they were both born in February. They started having these Presidents Day sales. But now I don't even think people associate President's Day with any particular president, whether it's George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. I think they think it's just a holiday to honor the presidents, which would include Joe Biden. I mean, who the hell wants to honor him? And there's a lot of presidents that I don't want to honor. In fact, most of them have been a disgrace. And so we should not honor them. And so it would be great if Donald Trump came out and actually said, look, I'd like people to call this. Not that he can order it, but, you know, people put a lot of stock in what Donald Trump says. I think he could do a lot to try to restore the honor that we've bestowed on. On the founding, the founding father, the founder of our nation, George Washington. You know, I. I think he's the only person that we should have a holiday in memory of. That's one of the reasons I never wanted to have Martin Luther King Day. And I Still don't think we should have Martin Luther King Day. It's not because I'm a racist or because I want to diminish Martin Luther King. It's because I don't want to put anybody, including Martin Luther King, on the same level as George Washington. I mean, George Washington is a unique American. We owe our whole country to George Washington. I mean, not only did he defeat the British in the Revolutionary War as our general, but we owe our republic to Washington. There was a movement to make George Washington the king of America. And if George Washington wanted to be the king, he probably would have been the king and we'd be a monarchy. But George Washington didn't want the crown. He turned it down. I mean, how many people would do something like that if they want to make you the king? You know, I mean, it's good to be the king, right? I mean, who wouldn't want to be king? Well, George Washington didn't want to be king. He put country above himself. Now, sure, he was a wealthy man in his own right. In fact, up until the election of John F. Kennedy, he was the wealthiest person, you know, adjusted for inflation, to be president. You know, now the wealthiest president is Donald Trump. But before Kennedy, it was Washington. It was just because he married a wealthy widow, Martha Washington, who had a lot of money. She was very wealthy. But he was a successful businessman, and he made a lot of money himself. So he was a successful guy, but he wasn't a king, and he could have been king, and he turned it down. And there are a lot of other great things if you go and study George Washington, to realize, you know, what a unique and amazing individual George Washington was, the founder of our. Of our nation. I know people will say, well, but he owns slave. Well, so what? A lot of people owned slaves back in 1760s, 1780s, 1790s. It was a different world. And although I think George Washington, you know, was, you know, pro slavery when he was younger, you know, by the time he died, I think his opinions had evolved. You know, he freed the slaves that he owned himself. I think he freed his one slave when he died, and in his will, he freed the rest of his slaves when his wife died. And so they. They were freed on her death. But you can't just judge a man by the fact that he had slaves. In a time when slavery was widely accepted everywhere in the world and had been for thousands of years, it wasn't like slavery was uniquely American. The whole world had slaves. In fact, America was at the forefront of ending slavery. It was the northern US States that were the first areas of the world to outlaw slavery. So we started it. Even though we had some stragglers down south and we had a civil war, we led the charge on anti slavery. But some people want to use that to diminish George Washington's stature. No, he was a phenomenal American. And but for George Washington, we wouldn't be a republic, we would be a monarchy. And I want to also take a little time to talk about the difference between a republican and democracy, because I know Elon Musk has been making a lot of posts about democracy and I really wish that he would correct that because again, a lot of people listen to Elon Musk. He's got a great platform, probably the biggest soapbox in the history of soapboxes. And you know, he's been posting a lot of good stuff. You know, he posts Ron Paul now, you know, Milton Friedman. I mean, a lot of good stuff. And of course he's highlighting all the corruption and fraud in government that they're uncovering, which doesn't surprise me. But I think it's great to bring it out in the open. But he should use that soapbox to educate people about republican government and to be proud that America is a republic. We're not a monarchy and we are not a democracy. The Article 4 of the US Constitution says or reads that the United States government shall guarantee to every State of the Union a republican form of government. They didn't say or they didn't write democratic government. I mean, they knew what democracies were. The Founding Fathers weren't ignorant. They were a lot smarter than the people in Congress. Now they knew what democracies were. That's why they established the American Republic. But just cite the Pledge of Allegiance, right? You'll see that we're pledging allegiance to a republic and not a democracy. And it's not semantics. I mean, there is a big difference between the two and I'll discuss it a little bit. And I wish that Elon would. And first of all, you know, the fact that we're not a monarchy thanks to General Washington, who decided to accept presidency. And he also stepped down after his second term. And he started that precedent, which ruled until Franklin Delano Roosevelt stayed on for a third and then fourth term. And that resulted in a constitutional amendment to officially limit the President's term to two. But George Washington could have had a third term. Nobody would have ran against George Washington, but he stepped down from power because that's the kind of guy that George Washington was But a monarchy versus a republic, republican government. A monarchy, you are ruled by a king, a queen, and the title is hereditary. So the king's son becomes the king and is the new ruler. And it's not just the king and the queen. You have a whole nobility, a noble class that rules the common folk, right? You have, you know, barons and lords and dukes, right? And then, you know, if a duke has a kid, he's a duke. If he has a daughter, it's a duchess, right? The titles are also inherited with the land that goes around. So you have the noble class and then you have all the ordinary people. Well, in a republic there is no nobility, there are no titles. Everybody's the same. Even the people in government are the same as the people. They govern and they govern by the consent of the people. And that is the difference. It's not about democracy, it's about self government. We are not ruled by nobility, we are ruled by ourselves, by common folk, because that's all there is. Nobody is above anybody else. Everybody is equal under the law, including the people that are serving in government. Now, in the United States, there are certain elements of democracy. What is a democracy? A democracy is the rule of the majority. And it means that the government does what the majority want to do. You have an election and you do it. The majority. Now you could say, well, there's a direct democracy where you just have an election on every law, right? Hey, if we're thinking of passing a law, let's just put it to a vote and 50.1% and we pass it. Right? Or you can have a representative democracy, which people think, well, we have a representative democracy, which we don't. A representative democracy would be that the people elect representatives who then vote and vote to do what the majority wants, right? I mean, they're there to represent the majority and to vote the way the majority would want them to vote. Right? It makes it simpler to have a representative democracy because you don't have to count the votes of the entire country, you just count the votes of the representatives who in theory are there to do what their constituents want them to do. But in America, we have representative government, but it's not a representative democracy. In fact, when the Constitution was written, the only democratically elected officers in the federal government was the House of Representatives. Right? The senators were appointed to six year terms by the state legislatures and the President and the vice president were elected by the electoral college, which was a completely different group of people. But our elected representatives are not supposed to take a poll and do what the majority of people want them to do. They're supposed to use their own judgment and do what they think is right. Even if the majority of the constituents who elected them have the opposite opinion. Right. They're supposed to do what they think is right because they're supposed to be smarter, they're supposed to be better informed than the public at large. They're not there to rubber stamp a majority vote. But of course, we have all sorts of checks and balances on the will of the majority. You know, we have a Supreme Court that can strike down unconstitutional laws no matter how many people support them. Right? We have. In order to pass a law, both houses of Congress needed to pass it and then the President had to sign it. He's just one guy. One guy could veto a bill that the entire majority of both houses wanted to pass. What's democratic about that? It's not democratic at all. And then of course, if you want to override the presidential Veto, you need 2/3. And look at what, look, look at what is required to change the Constitution. You got to get 3/4 of the states to ratify a new amendment. Where's the democracy there? Right? The whole purpose of the Constitution was to protect America from a democracy and to preserve the republic. Right? You ask, they asked Benjamin Franklin, what kind of government did you give us, Mr. Franklin? A republic, if you can keep it, was the response. He knew the key was keeping the republic. But the reason we have a republic and not a monarchy is because of the integrity and the greatness of the founding founder of our nation, George Washington, who we should all honor and celebrate on his birthday. Even if it's the third Monday in January so we could have a three day vacation. We can still remember the birthday of the founder of this nation. Anyway, we got a quick commercial. I'll come back. I got a bunch of stuff to talk about, so stick around. We'll be right back. If you're early in your career and looking for insight, inspiration and honest advice, listen to the Capital Ideas podcast. Hear from Capital Group professionals about leaning into the differences that make you unique. Making decisions that last, and what it means to lead with purpose. The Capital Ideas podcast from Capital Group. Available wherever you listen. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Alright, well, first of all, you know, I did take a little heat in the comments section on my podcast on Wednesday when I said I told you so regarding the bad inflation numbers and the, the rise in gold and gold stocks. Well, of course by Friday the markets did the opposite of what I was saying would Happen. Gold stocks sold off and gold got clobbered. Gold was down $45 or so on on Friday. And I want to get to the action on gold and silver and the mining stocks in a minute. I want to just go over some of the economic data that came out on Thursday and Friday. That again, you know, follows my narrative and is part of the I told you so part of it. But so we got the producer prices that came out. Remember we got a much hotter than expected CPI and that was followed up on Thursday by a hotter than expected ppi. We were looking, or they were looking, not we, but whoever these analysts are that, that are forecasting they were looking for an increase of 0.3 for the month of January and instead we got an increase of 0.4. But even worse, the prior month, December of last year they initially told us that prices were up by just 0.2. Now they're telling us that they got it wrong. They were up by 0.5. That is a big upward revision to the prior month. That's a big number. Again, you annualize 0.5, you're at 6% right? Nowhere near this BS 2% target. The year over year producer price number which was supposed to be 3.2 was 3.5. And the prior month's year over year number was revised from 3.3 to also 3.5. So you've got hotter than expected numbers. And when you take out food and energy, it's even worse when you look at the core which is supposedly more important to the Fed. That was supposed to be 3.3 and instead it was 3.6. So that is a big number. So this is bad news. And once again, gold did not sell off on this bad inflation news and neither did gold mining stocks. You know we have, they hung in there. And the point I made on Wednesday when gold shrugged off a $40 sell off to close positive on the day following the CPI was it meant, hey, maybe traders are getting this, that higher than expected inflation numbers are not bearish for, for, for gold. They're bullish. Now we also got on on Friday we got the retail sales numbers and the retail sales numbers were much weaker than expected. And this should have caused gold to rally on Friday and it didn't. Gold sold off the, the number was minus 0.9. That's a big drop for retail sales. The consensus was for minus 0.1. Now yes, there was an upward revision to the prior month from up 0.4 to up 0.7, but still the minus 0.9 was a big deal. And X vehicles, it was still minus 0.4. They were expecting plus 0.3. And X vehicles and gas, it was down 0.5. So why are retail sales down? And again, this is not adjusted for prices. We all know prices are going up. And so if retail sales are falling even as prices are rising, what does that tell you about the volume of sales? Right. It's dropping even more, people are buying less and they're paying more. But I think what might have hurt the gold price on Friday is the export price number, which came out because gold started to sell off as soon as it came out again. This was the another hot number. So kind of gold survived the hot numbers on Wednesday and Thursday. But on Friday we got the export prices and they were supposed to rise by 0.3 and instead they rose by 1.3 and the prior month's increase went up from 0.3 to 0.5. And so now year over year, export prices are up 2.7% versus the prior month. The year over year number was 1.8%. So this shows prices are going in the wrong direction, right? The Fed is trying to tell us that they're headed down to two, but all the numbers show prices moving in the opposite direction. And there's no reason to believe that this trend is going to change. Everything would tell you that prices are going to keep rising further and further away from the fed's so called 2% target. Ma'. Am, Remember I told you guys on a previous podcast, the Fed never had a 2% target before inflation got below 2%. I never heard anybody, the Fed, you know, back before the 2008 financial crisis when inflation was higher than 2%, I never heard them say, oh, we got to get it down to 2%, we got to hike rates because we're above 2%. No, no, it wasn't until we were below 2% that they use that to justify 0% and quantitative easing. But now they're kind of stuck with this because since they've told everybody that 2%'s the target, you know, now you know that they got to deal with it. They got to make the live in the, they got to sleep in the bed that they made. And so, but they can't do it. They're not going to be able to bring inflation down to 2%. Now Friday was also a very interesting day because when I woke up Friday morning, silver was up over a dollar. Silver was at like $23. I mean $33. Excuse me, $33 and like 30 cents. 40 cents. And so it looked like a real breakout, except the problem was it was only silver. Gold was only up about four or five bucks. So when I saw that, I was, you know, it was a little, little, little iffy. And I thought, you know, maybe there's just a lot of unwinding of these spreads because a lot of people I think have been long gold and short silver as a, as a spread, thinking that look, you know, if gold goes down, silver will go down more and if gold goes up, it's been going up more because it's, the ratio has been moving in that direction. So rather than just being long gold, there'll be long gold and short silver. And in case the market goes down, like, you know, I could make money that way too. But I think that it's been so stretched where the ratio has been more than 90 to 1. I was talking about this on the last couple of podcasts. I've been telling people, look, buy silver. And I still think that you should be buying silver over gold right now. Right. Even though I'm a gold bug. You know, silver is really cheap in terms of gold. And so it looked like we were getting a unwinding of that spread and I think that's what happened. But then as gold started to go down, it cascaded and gold went to down 45 and silver went from up A$10 to unchanged. Right. I think it ended up the day flat. Now it still was a gain in gold versus silver because, you know, normally or you know, or not normally, but in recent times, if gold was down 45, silver would have been down a dollar, maybe more. Instead it was flat. So I think there was some unwinding going on throughout the day. But that unwind caused gold to go down and it also caused the gold mining stocks to get clobbered. I mentioned we had that outside reversal day on Wednesday and I thought that meant that we would just be going up from there in gold gold stocks. And instead I got it wrong because we got clobbered on Friday. Now I, I don't think it changes the trend at all. I think it, it kind of was a buy the rumor sell the fact. Even though I don't know how many people were buying the rumor, but we did get four major gold companies that reported earnings. Three out of four beat, right beat the earnings estimates. But all four had great earnings compared to where they, what they were earning a year ago. And the price of gold is already much higher than it was when they earned this money last quarter. But I think that we had had a rally. I mean, gold stocks were up maybe 20% or so on the year now compared to where gold is. They should have been up much more than that because they got clobbered at the end of last year for no reason other than Trump winning and gold having a small correction of maybe 7% at max. But that sent gold stocks plunging into bear market territory. But I think a lot of people realized that they were going to beat on earnings. And so when they did beat on earnings, the stocks got sold. But I think that's just a temporary move. I think that probably starting this week, people who sold those stocks are going to be buying them back. Because the outlook for the gold mining sector I think is phenomenal. We're going to get a lot more earnings coming out between now and the end of February. And I would expect again the trend to be positive. Just like this time, we got 75% of the companies beating. But even the ones that don't beat, they're still going to have substantial earnings growth. I think in some ways, maybe some of these analysts deliberately want to overestimate so that they can punish the stocks when they don't deliver or don't beat those rosy estimates. But even though you have some of these rosy estimates for the current quarter, people are not bidding up the stock price. And again, as I said on the last podcast, they look at earnings two or three years into the future and assume they're going to be lower because everybody just pencils in a lower gold price, ignoring the fundamentals, ignoring the trend of the last 20 years for higher gold prices. Everybody on Wall street just assumes that, you know, a few years from now gold is going to be a lot cheaper. And so that is impacting their outlook for future earnings. And therefore the recommendations on whether people should buy or whether they should sell because it affects the present value of those future, future income streams. So people should be buying these stocks I think next week buying into the Euro Pacific Gold Fund, epgix. I think I always, always mix up those, the symbols ep, GIX or igx. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta pull it up here. But. And silver, people should be buying, I think silver now more than, than gold. I do think that what we've seen, if this is the beginning of an unwind, unraveling rather of that gold silver spread, then that's bullish because I think when people start getting bullish on silver, it's because gold and silver are going up. I think it's a much stronger bull market when you have silver leading the way and I think maybe we're going to be entering that. So at this point, with silver still trading around $32 and gold, you know, near, you know it's 2900, even though it dropped $45, it's still barely below 2900. In fact it's up, you know, it's up $13 right now on Sunday night. So it's just 28.95. We're only $5 below 2900. Silver should already be above $50 given where gold is at a minimum. So for now I would focus on it. And especially with the Tarra slumi, you
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You know, there's been articles written and it's happening. They're not just writing the articles, they're you know, writing about what's going on. But a lot of gold has been coming into the United States, a lot of it coming in from London. And the reason I think you're seeing a rush of imports is to get ahead of these tariffs because the tariffs would apply to gold. And a lot of the gold that Americans might want to buy is going to be imported. You know, America produces gold. We're the the fifth largest gold producer in the world. Number one is China. Right? They're pretty much number one and everything. Number two is Russia, number three is Australia, number four is Canada and then the United States. But if gold demand really picks up, which it should, we won't be able to meet it with our domestic production. And so we're going to need imports. Well, if there's a 25% tariff, who's going to want to pay 25% more for their gold? So the idea is let's bring the gold into the country now so that we don't have to import it. Well, I would suggest the same thing for our customers at Shift Gold, right? Don't wait to buy your gold after there's tariffs. That's the worst time to buy it. It's going to be tough, you know, so if you want to have physical possession of gold and silver, buy it now, not only because the price is going to go up, but because the tariffs may go on. And of course, the gold producers are not going to eat those tariffs. Tariffs for sure will go dollar for dollar. So If Trump imposes 25% tariffs on gold, any gold coming into this country is going to be marked up by $25. Otherwise it won't come in. Because nobody in Russia is going to sell gold to America for a dollar less than they can sell it in Europe. Right? The price is the price. And so if we want to tax Americans $25 to buy Russian gold, then they're going to pay $25, 25% more than what the Europeans are paying for the same gold. So the idea is to buy it now. And the same would be true with silver. Now, I guess if you're buying, like junk silver, obviously that's not imported, but that's when you're buying junk silver, that's a used product, right? By definition, you're buying it from somebody who's selling it. But if there's a 25% tariff on silver coming in, that's going to cause a big premium in junk silver, because people buying junk silver or anybody who's buying, you know, a used silver product that's already in this country, right, they're going to be able to charge more because it's not going to be competing with the new products that are being imported into the country. So the big guys, the institutions are trying to jump ahead and they're buying their metal. Now, I would suggest that, you know, my followers, customers shift gold do the same thing, except more so with silver, right? Buy your silver now, maybe there'll never be tariffs. Well, it's still cheap. You should buy it anyway. Even if you wouldn't, you didn't have the threat of tariffs that were going to make physical gold and silver a lot more expensive. You'd want to buy it anyway. So now you got another reason, right? You, you can kill two birds with one stone. You can get in to silver before the price goes up. And you could beat the tariffs. And if it turns out there are never tariffs, well, then you still did the right thing by buying it. And the fact that we did get this sell off, you know, it may have been off to the races on, on, on Friday after it was up a dollar, maybe it would have gone up two or three. And who knows the fact that, you know, it came down that that's, that's a good thing if you want to buy some silver. I had no intention of selling any of mine, so it doesn't matter to me. And I got a lot of followers who I'd like to buy more silver. So I'm happy when anybody is dumb enough to sell it because that means my, my clients can, can take advantage of that and buy it. Also, we got more economic data on on Friday, by the way, Friday was Valentine's Day. I forgot about that. So we got Valentine's Day Friday, Washington's birthday on Monday. But yeah, not a lot of love for precious metals on on Valentine's Day, that was for sure. But you got to love the sell offs if you're, if you're a buyer, and I am definitely a buyer. Industrial production there again, the overall number, we got a beat in the industrial production, but manufacturing output actually fell to minus 0.1. So that was a bit of a negative on less manufacturing. What else did we get that came out? I think that's, I think that's it. You know, I talked on the podcast on Tuesday at the very end because I kind of forgot to mention it. And so I talked a little bit about it. I talked about the, the deficit for the, the prior month, which was, you know, a huge increase January year over year. But we actually got the first quarter of the new fiscal year completed. So we have three months of the fiscal year and the deficit in three months. The official deficit was $711 billion. That's a record. So we've never had a quarter where we have had a budget deficit that large, including during COVID amazingly. So, you know, supposedly the economy was really strong in the last quarter. So we have such a strong economy, why do we have the biggest deficit in any quarter in history? I mean, normally if the economy is strong, the deficits are smaller, right? They get bigger. When you're in a recession and they're doing all this stimulus, what that proves is that we were in a recession, we were getting stimulus. And I pointed out that the fiscal stimulus that we've been getting has been the most that we've ever had. There's Massive fiscal stimulus, because this is a stealth recession that nobody has acknowledged. The voters acknowledged it by sending Kamala packing and electing Donald Trump and the Doge boys to go to Washington. But that's a 40% increase too, for the first quarter of the priority fiscal year. Also last year, fiscal 2023, we spent $1.13 trillion on interest. I mean, by far a record which we're going to beat this fiscal year, but more than we spent in national defense. The only program that's more expensive than interest on the national debt is Social Security. And that's going to change. I think by next year, we'll be spending more on interest on the national debt than we spend on Social Security. And then we'll be spending more on interest on the national debt than we spend on Medicare and Medicaid combined. It's going to be the number one line item in the budget and there's no stopping it. Think about it this way. I mean, right now I'm sure we're doing 100 billion a month at least in interest on the debt. $100 billion a month. What that means is that the interest on the debt, because of course we're running a budget deficit and so we have to borrow the money to pay that interest. It's not like we got the money. So the interest on the debt, the money to pay that interest has to be borrowed, just like a lot of other money is borrowed. So we have to borrow another 1.2 trillion a year to pay the interest on what we've already borrowed. So the interest on the Debt alone adds 1.2 trillion a year to the debt. Now, we never even had a trillion dollar budget deficit until recently. Right? Until was it Covid or when did we have our first trillion dollars? It just happened. Now we're going to have a trillion dollar deficit every year, even if the budget is balanced. Right? Even if the government balanced the underlying budget, meaning we've paid for everything that we spend except interest on the debt. Just interest on the debt would give us 1.2 trillion dollar deficit. So in other words, we need a $1.2 trillion a year surplus to break even. That's how deep this hole is. But we're still digging it because it's not going to stop at 1.2 trillion. And I think by the end of 2026, we'll be spending $2 trillion a year on, on interest on the national debt. So I mean, this is a catastrophe happening right before our eyes. And I know as the Republicans are trying to negotiate A new budget, yes, Getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse is going to help, but it ain't going to cut it. It's not going to solve the problem. It may mitigate it somewhat. And I think part of the good that we're going to get is a public relations good by exposing the fraud and corruption in government. But we need, you know, we need government to level with the public about the extent of the cuts. Now, Donald Trump the other day, and I don't know if he was in said it in jest or not, but he was being interviewed and he talked about having a meeting with China and Russia about cutting defense spending in half, which would be great if we actually did that. Now, I don't know that we're going to be able to orchestrate this accord that he was talking about with China and Russia, but at least he talked about cutting the military. It's the first time I heard him do that. He's always been talking about spending more on the military. I mean, he increased military spending when he was president the first time. And he's been telling the Europeans that they should be spending 5% of their GDP, which would be a huge increase, even more than we spend on defense. Now, to finally say that we should be spending less, that's great. We should be spending less. We got to cut the fence, but it can't stop at the fence. We got to cut Social Security, we got to cut Medicare, we got to cut pension, we got to cut a lot of stuff that is going to upset a lot of people. You know, and Donald Trump is the guy that could do it. You know, if he can't, who can, right? I mean, somebody has got to level with the public about what needs to be done, about the pain that we have to go through. I mean, he kind of talks about it, you know, the tariffs. There may be a little short term pain. Look, if we're really going to reindustrialize the nation and make America great again and get rid of the trade deficits, which we need to do, we need to understand that the world has not been taking advantage of us. We've been taking advantage of them. But in the process, we are impoverishing ourselves. We are selling off the cows to buy milk. There is a big long term price to be paid for the excesses that we've been enjoying based on our trade deficits. And yes, for the long term health of the country, we need to bite the bullet and wean ourselves off of, you know, this international charity. And that means that in the short Run. Our standard of living is going to go down because we have to transition from a borrow and spend economy to a save and produce economy. That's not a fun economy compared to just going out and buying stuff that you can't afford. Right. We have a great time living high on someone else's hog. Right. But if we have to start, you know, working harder and consuming less, which is what we have to do. Right. The whole bubble economy implodes. Right. The GDP's got to come down initially by quite a bit before it can go back up. Asset prices have to come down. Stocks, real estate, interest rates have to go up. Somebody's got to prepare the American public to accept that. Who better than Trump now will he do it? Probably not, but he should, and Elon Musk should encourage him to do that. And maybe now is the time. Maybe they could actually get that done. We are heading towards another government shutdown. The Democrats will try to blame it on the Republicans because the Republicans have both houses of Congress. But of course, most of the Republicans want to just keep on spending. Yeah, there's some cuts in there, but it's nowhere near gonna offset the tax cuts and the normal growth of entitlements and other spending that is on autopilot. You know, most of the cutting that they wanna do to the extent they wanna cut anything, is a reduction in a rate of increase, not an actual cut the way normal people would think of it. Normal people think of, if you're gonna cut spending, you're gonna spend less. Right. If I said I'm cutting my spending next year, it would mean I'm gonna spend less next year than I spent this year. But according to government, when they say we're going to cut spending next year, what they mean is we were going to increase spending next year, we're still going to increase our spending next year. We're just going to increase it by less than we were planning. And they call that reduction in the rate of increase a cut. Right. That in no other world would spending more still be considered a cut other than in Washington. But I've said this, and I'll say it again, the best thing that Trump could do, if he's completely serious about slashing government spending, balancing the budget, shuttering entire agencies and departments. There is one sure fire way to do it. And he doesn't have to worry about legal challenges. Right now. They want to cut spending from the executive branch. And you have all these court cases and all these challenges, which again, we, we have a republic, people saying, hey, this Is a democracy reelected Trump, let him do what he wants. Well, no, you know, there are laws, there are rules. You know, maybe he was trying to do bad stuff. Right? So we got to work through this legal process. But there's one thing that Trump can do where there is no end around. Trump can force Congress to make these cuts. He doesn't have to make them himself. The Doge brothers don't have to do it. And take all the flack. All Trump has to do is one simple thing. Don't sign the increase in the debt ceiling. In fact, come out tomorrow on Washington's birthday and say, in honor of General George Washington, let it be known that I will not sign another increase in the debt ceiling no matter what. You know, we can also honor Harry Truman, who is no George Washington, but he did say, the buck stops here. So Trump could say, the buck stops here with me. No more deficit spending. That's it. And if he says that and he holds tight, Congress has to take a meat cleaver to the budget, because if they don't raise the debt ceiling, they can't issue debt. And if they can't issue debt, they can't spend more than they collect in taxes. That's the law. And there's no judge that can overturn that. Now, they could override his veto, but I don't think they'll be able to do it, because all Trump needs is to get 1/3 plus 1 of either the House or the Senate. He doesn't need both. He just needs one body of MAGA to hold tight, and that veto is sustained. And that means they got a cut. Now people say, well, they'll have to default on the debt. No, we don't. Not if they don't want to. Interest on the national debt. Right. We just said we're now spending a trillion dollars, 1.2 trillion a year on interest. Well, we're still collecting 5 trillion a year in taxes, so we got almost five times as much revenue to pay the interest. So if we want to prioritize the interest, we don't have to default on anything, but we got to default on something we got to cut. And Congress will have no choice if the President stands firm. But, you know he won't. Right. You know, talking about making big cuts and making big cuts are two very different political animals. But, you know, if Trump doesn't have the stomach for the fight, you know, who are we going to elect that will? Right. So he. It is possible to do. Isn't going to be easy. But I think that's the only way to do it. Because if Congress isn't put in that box, they'll never, they'll never cut. The only thing that will reign them in will, will be a crisis right now. Of course it'd be like a crisis if it was self inflicted. If we had a cut $2 trillion of spending right now, this year, yeah, we'd have a massive recession, but it would be a healthy recession. It would be a long overdue a recession that would help pave the way for a really solid recovery. But yes, it would be painful for a lot of people, but it's going to be even more painful for even more people if we don't do it now and have the markets do it later. Because we're going to have a currency crisis, a sovereign debt crisis eventually. It's just if it's not on our terms, if it's on our creditors terms, if it's on the market's terms, it's going to be far more brutal. But you know, the general tendency of politicians is more pain later is better than less pain now because. Or because I'm in office now. So nobody seems to care about how much worse the country is when they're no longer in office. Well, we need to see some leaders who care more about the country than about their own reelection. And since Trump can't be reelected, it seems like a perfect time for him to put country above self. Anyway, that's it for today's podcast. Again, if you liked it, don't forget to leave a comment. Put the thumbs up. Subscribe if you're not watching or listening to this on YouTube or if you are and you're not a subscriber, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I really want to get the subscriber base up to 600 000. It's like I've been below that for a couple years now. It's like I've, I'm kind of like reached a plateau. Maybe I lose subscribers as I gain them, but I really like to get up to 600,000 subscribers to YouTube, still growing nicely on X, you know, above 1.1 million. Make sure you follow me on X. If you're not doing that now, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter@shiftsovereign.com or better yet, try out the premium newsletter. And again, Euro Pacific Capital Europe, Civic Asset Management, Europact.com these mining stocks, they are giving these things away. I look for some really good earnings surprises. We got a gift on Friday that we got some profit taking on the good news giving more people the opportunity to buy gold stocks. To buy the Euro Pacific Gold Fund, you get more information on the gold fund@europact.com the website. You can buy the funds through the site. You can buy them with your representative at Euro Pacific Asset Management or or just buy them at any of the discount brokers. Look for the discounted no load ticker symbol for the Europe Pacific Gold Fund and buy the fund while these stocks are still cheap. Because if I'm right, they're not going to be cheap for long. Bye for now.