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- [00:18]
A
Hello and welcome.
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This is Gabriel Custodiet of Watchman Privacy privacy practitioner, consultant, author and frontline fighter in the push for privacy. I know why you're here. Like the rest of us here in the resistance, you're trying to escape the technocratic apparatuses that you see enveloping you and crushing your freedoms. That's why I created all of this, all without sponsors. I hope you enjoy this show. But then when you're ready to take the next steps to secure your privacy and your future, Visit my website, escapethechnocracy.com to start the real journey. Your support alone determines the future of the show. See you there. I'm very pleased today to be joined by Parallel Mike. He is Parallel Systems on Substack. That is a main place that he's disseminating his information. He talks about things like going off grid, the banking system, the monetary system, gold, silver. He's lived on a boat at one point in his life. He's big into homesteading and he has another, a number of other interesting biographical notes that we might get into in this discussion. But Mike, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today?
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A
I'm doing great, Gabriel. Thanks for the return invite. I always enjoy speaking with you. So looking forward to this one.
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Absolutely. So I would certainly encourage people to check out Mike's show Parallel Systems, pull it up on your podcast player and then check out his substack Parallel Systems. He puts out some really good stuff. He also has we'll have all the links anyway. People can check you out. And then you also have a community which I think is also very valuable if people kind of like the angle that you're getting at. I think you have a very tight knit community, so that's something that folks can consider as well. Here's how I was thinking for the structure, some geopolitics talk a little bit technocracy gold and then some very practical strategies towards the end. Let's start with some geopolitics, though. You talk a lot about Europe and it's in a pretty precarious place no matter how you cut it. What is your just general assessment these days of the state of Europe? I'll leave it broad so that you can go in whatever direction you want. We have your former country, Britain, with their age verification obsession recently and migrant crisis, which is always an existential threat to a country and things of this sort. What is your overall assessment of the state of Europe? And you can hone into any particular location that you'd like?
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Yeah, I think Europe is a sinking ship, to be honest, Gabriel. And it's a Titanic, it's a behemoth. So the certain places that are closer to that point, that's going underwater right now. So Britain, you mentioned, is one of them. It's destroyed itself, of course. So there are entities that are seeking to destroy Europe because it was the best place of democracy. That's why we got Greek democracy and the idea of liberty. And so really, Western civilization emanates from Europe. Obviously, you've spent time there, you've been there, it's a beautiful place to visit. You can go to any one of these many countries and each one has its own style, its own history, its own culture, cuisine. It's a beautiful set of countries. But, yeah, there is a vested interest in bringing Europe down and they're very close to that now. That doesn't mean that all nations are at the same point. There's certainly good places that are, I think, have a much better outlook. And so one thing that I always say to people is, what's happening in the world? There is no escape. There's no escape. I shouldn't say that, Gabriel, because I know you have your escape, the technocracy, but there's no full escape from what's coming. If you look around the world today, technocracy is being implemented in pretty much every country on earth. So Russia, digital IDs. I was listening to my friend Roy Morich's show just today on the drive back from the city, and he was talking about how they recruit people now for the military, so how they do conscription. And basically everyone's a part of this digital system. You have to sign up to it, it's got a digital ID attached to it, and then they call you up for service through this and if you don't turn up and you don't respond, they cut you out from your Social Security. They make it so you can't access your bank accounts, they stop you from selling your property or buying property, so it essentially shuts you down digitally. And, you know, this whole age verification thing that you mentioned, for Britain, for young people and teenagers, obviously this is a pathway to digital id. They're going to say, right, we need to protect the young people that we have absolutely absconded in our duty to protect for decades. And obviously we've had massive grooming gang scandals. But no, no, it's the social media that we have to figure out, Gabriel. So they're talking about under 16s having to. Basically, they're going to ban them from social media and that is the. Another cynical attempt to get digital IDs put in. But it's not just in Britain. It's not just in Britain. They're talking about it in France, they're talking about it in India, they're talking about it in the Philippines and Indonesia, they're talking about it in Poland, they're talking about it across the world is not just localized to Europe. And most of these technocratic tools are like this. And so for that reason, I don't think there's any escaping this stuff. So, okay, where does that leave as well? We have to find a place to set our lives up where we feel we can exercise our freedoms the most while we can have relative safety in the cat in the chaos. So finding some calm in the chaos where we can build a life for ourselves. And of course, maybe it doesn't always last, maybe we have to move on. But for those places, it's not just a case of leaving Europe. I do think there's some good places left in Europe and I visited them, I spent time in them. And so, yeah, I'm not completely down on Europe for the simple fact. I don't think that if you flee to, say, South America, you're going to have the best time either. There's lots and lots of examples in history where it goes to hell in a hand basket down there. And I could totally see that happening again. Where you're going to go Africa? Well, no, probably not. I don't think that's going to be good for you in Africa, Gabriel. At least not me. Or you maybe could go to Asia. Yeah, there's places there that might be fine. But look what's happening right now. They're doing energy lockdowns in many places. I think Taiwan's got 12 days of gas left before it goes dark again. Again. This is the nature of these periods of history. Going through financial resets and resets of the monetary system and the rewiring of trade routes. These are always chaotic. Lots of people lose their life, all kinds of calamities befall the world and crises are engineered so it's not even self evident where you would go. That's a long. Gabriel, that is a long answer to a very short question. So I'm going to pass it back to you and you can take it where you want to go.
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No, that's a good answer. Even places like Argentina that in previous years, I know people who have considered that part of the world as the place less least likely to be affected by World War iii. Well, I, I Saw Iran was now threatening Argentina for getting involved in. In the conflict. So hard to find a safe place. But let's talk about the Iran war, because that's something that is on your mind these days. I always appreciate your assessment of these things. You don't just talk about the, you know, the surface level stuff, but the history and the other machinations at work here. What's your overall assessment of the Iran war, its origins, what's happening there, and then maybe what the ramifications might be.
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Yeah, well, I think if you know the full history of Iran, or at least let's say the history of the last hundred, 130 years, then you've got every reason to be skeptical of the narratives that were being given. So if we go back to the early 1900s, that was when the Western oil companies first got their foothold in Iran. It wasn't last year, it wasn't 10 years ago. We're talking over 100 years ago. It was actually 1901. And it was a company that was created called the Anglo Persian Oil Company, which was a foreigner to British Petroleum. And they made a deal with the ruling dynasty at the time to go explore for oil. And if they found it, they said, we're going to split the revenues. And I think the, the original deal was like a 60, 40 split to the English oil baron who was exploring, of course, they did find oil. Iran has some of the greatest oil reserves on earth. And so that led to lots of interest. And after the oil was found, now the original ruling dynasty, they basically said, well, we don't feel this deal is very good for us. This was after like 15, 20 years. They said, we don't think the deal is very fair. We'd like a greater chunk of the rewards that's coming from our oil in Persia. At the time, it wasn't Iran, it was Persia. And so what happened was The British and MI5 said, yeah, well, that sounds great. So what we're going to do is just get rid of you and put in a puppet, a puppet state. We're going to create a puppet state and we're going to keep the deal as it is. So they got rid of the K Dynasty, which was the original dynasty, and then they put in a man called Reza Shah, and he was a military general and he was made Shah of the country. And obviously you'll know the Shah of Iran, the last Shah of Iran, which was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. This was his father. So he got put in first. He lasted about, I think he lasted about 20 years before they got rid of him. It was around World War II. They said, well, he looks like a Nazi sympathizer. He's talking about changing the oil agreement. So we'll get rid of him and what we'll do this time is we'll put his son in power. So that was the second coup. Then there was a third coup when a prime minister got in power. They installed a prime minister, but he became nationalistic and started trying to renegotiate the old contract. So they got rid of him, and then they still had the Shah's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. So they said, let's just make him the autocratic ruler, get rid of the parliamentary nonsense. They'll just be puppets for the Shah, and the Shah will build up to be this autocratic ruler. And that's precisely what happened. And then, obviously, as the story goes, as you got to the wards, the 1970s, the Shah of Iran actually said, no, I'm not going to renegotiate. I'm going to renegotiate the con. No, actually, what he said, not, not I'm going to renegotiate. What he said was, I'm going to end the consortium agreement, which was this agreement with all of these Western oil countries. So they got rid of him and then they put the Ayatollah in. And then, of course, since that time, we've had this theocracy over there, and now they're getting rid of the theocracy and they're trying to put the Shah of Iran's son in power. So it's just a box of frogs, to be honest. Gabriel, The. The long history. And I've got an article on this on my substack, if anyone wants to go through the history, because it's way more in depth than we could get into here. It goes on forever. But my point is, this is not something that has just happened. This is something that's been going on for a long time. This whole thing about the nuclear weapons and Iran being a threat to the west of cost, that's propaganda. It was the US who actually ended the treaty with Iran during Trump's first presidency around nuclear armaments. So that's nonsense. What is actually happening, in my opinion, is it's about resources again. So the petrodollar agreement, as we all know, that was created in the 1970s. This was where the world would recycle oil. Every oil revenues would be recycled into dollars and US Treasuries, and the whole world would have to buy oil in dollars. So it created this system where commodities and resources, but especially oil, we're going to be propping up the dollar. And that's kind of come to an end because most of the Middle Eastern countries today sell more oil to China than they do the US So there is no petrodollar. And for many other reasons beyond that, especially debt levels, the collapse of the financial system, which is now imminent, all of those things have taken us to the point where there needs to be some kind of financial reset. And of course, a key part of that is, is reorganizing who gets to control what resources. So we're seeing kind of a mad scramble right now where the most powerful entities, especially America, are seeking to take back control over the resources of nations that in the past they didn't need to control because of the petrodollar. So, for example, Venezuela and Iran, both of those countries, were two of the largest oil producers on planet Earth when the petrodollar was installed. They didn't need to control the oil in those countries. They actually wanted to take it offline. Now, that might surprise some people to hear that, but they wanted Iran's oil offline, they wanted Venezuela's oil offline because they needed to funnel people into purchasing their oil from Saudi Arabia, because that's who the petrodollar agreement was made with. So that's what they did. They took out those oil producing nations. And of course, it's no surprise that now the petrodollar agreement's over, they're seeking to bring it back online, but they want to control it. And that's why they went to Venezuela and that's why they're now going to Iran. And if you look at the trajectory of this war, which is supposedly not a war, we got told it was, you know, a skirmish and then they said, oh, maybe it is a war. And then, well, there's definitely going to be no ground troops. Oh, okay. We're sending 3,000 across. Now it's 10,000. And then just yesterday over the weekend, Donald Trump said, we're after the oil. He come out and said it. So it's about resources, Gabriel, is what it's about. And this is not something that I think is going to be over in a few weeks, like we're being told. I think it's going to be far more consequential. It already has been. If we look at the impacts on things like lng, the Ras Laughing facility, which is owned and operated by Qatar, it's about three times the size of Paris, that's had Multiple missiles dropped on it. And a significant portion of the LNG that comes out of there is going to be affected. That's 20% of the world's LNG. And so that's going to impact European nations who are heavily dependent on lng. After Nordstrom got blown up again by the us, this was of course part of their grand strategy to start taking control over resources. So in the post collapse world, obviously we're going to have the bifurcation between east and west that's already happening. But the US wants to rule over a newly formed American empire, and that newly formed reformed American empire will have nations or see nations dependent on it. So the US is going to sell it food, it's going to sell it oil, it's going to sell it gas. But to do that, it has to hijack the supply chains and also has to make European Europeans dependent upon it, which is why, of course, you know, the Nord Stream thing happened. It's ostensibly to sell lng, but it helps as well if you can take out the competitors. So, you know, Iran bombing the Ras Laffen plant in Qatar, it's advantageous to the us. All of it's advantageous to the US and Israel too, of course. And so that's why I don't think this is going to end quickly. I think this is part of a much bigger strategy. And the oil that comes down there, of course, that's been affected. So we've got oil prices spiking. We've also got fertilizer production that's being catastrophically impacted at a time when farmers would normally, normally be planting. Many of them are saying, well, we can't afford to. The diesel prices, of course, skyrocketed. But also fertilizer is going to be going offline. So why would you plant fields and fields of crop if you're not going to be able to fertilize it? Because unfortunately, they're all dependent on these chemical fertilizers. And around 50% of the world's food supply is dependent on the fertilizer ingredients that come down the Strait of Hormuz, and it's not transiting the Strait of Hormuz. So again, major crisis is being set up here, Gabriel. And so I just kind of look at this period much like the 1940-1945 period. I do believe it's World War 3 and a lot of what's taking place is going to impact us all at some point. It's going to at least hit our pockets in terms of inflation. But I think it's going to be worse than that. Unlike World War II, I don't think it's going to be necessarily bombs dropped all over our heads. So that's the good news, Gabriel. That's the good news. The bad news is it's probably not going to get much better from here. And these conflicts are not going to disappear because a reset requires crisis to take place. You don't get people to the technocracy without crisis. And so the crisis is actually a conduit for the reset. And when they talk about energy lockdowns, rationing, already in Egypt they are doing curfews at 9pm this really is Covid 2.0 to me. This is the second part of that. But underlying it all, I think we have the financial reset, which is something that they have to do or they feel they have to do because they've created such a massive Ponzi scheme that there's no other way to fix this without the reset. So of course, you know, what, what, what is actually the true wealth of the system, Gabriel, is commodities, its resources, its land, its territory, its trade routes. And so that's everything that is ward over during these resets. And again, nothing that's happening isn't anything that I wasn't expecting. Although of course we can't predict the finer details of these narratives.
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It's.
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Yeah, it's unfolding pretty much like I thought it would. And I think by 2030, a lot of the financial reset will be over and done with. It doesn't mean the reset itself will be over with because we know they've got bigger ambitions. And you talk about that a lot on your show in terms of technocracy. So, yeah, my, my way of kind of surviving these times and thriving through them is to take back more independence, take back more control over my own life, so I don't have to feel so exposed to some of these crises that may or may not arise. We don't know how bad they get. But when you're messing about with things like energy and fertilizer and food supplies. Yeah, it's pretty scary stuff actually, Gabriel, if it goes wrong, the biggest killer in history was famines. More people died during World War II from famine than they did bombs and bullets. And it's the same throughout all of history. So I take those things seriously, don't want to be on the wrong side of that. And so, yeah, I kind of focus on the solutions in my work rather than just looking at the problems of which there are many.
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Right. Well, you said that there at the end, another thing you're interested in is the food crisis. So maybe let's just get into that a little bit how you assess how bad you project things could get and obviously what people can do for themselves in the event of the food crisis.
- [19:25]
A
Well, it could get very bad. It could get very bad. Fertilizer is unfortunately the key input for most of farming because the soils are so depleted these days. It's not like in the 1930s or 1940s when people had farms and they used manure and there was self sustaining systems where most of the production could be done using organic matter that was there in the surroundings. Now, most farms today are big monocultural units where fertilizer has to be produced a lot of its grain for animal feed. And so we are pretty much dependent on just a few places in the world for the ingredients for that fertilizer. And As I said, 50% of the world's food supply depends on the Strait of Hormuz and the urea and different ingredients get transited down there. And it's not just in the Middle east while we're having these problems with fertilizer. Australia's largest producer of fertilizer recently had an unexplained glitch, was as that's what they called it, an unexplained glitch that happened just at the same time. This issue with the Strait of Hormuza rose and that's taken their plant offline for two months. Isn't that strange? And then simultaneously, whilst all of that was going on, Russia's largest exporter of fertilizer, their plant had drones hit it and so there was explosions there. And all of this is happening at the same time. So it seems to me that somebody somewhere really wants to take offline fertilizer and the consequences for that will be tremendous. Now, I'm not suggesting that everybody in the west will have a famine. No, the famines will be localized to the regions that are very dependent on imports of grain and very dependent on imports of fertilizer. So the Southern hemisphere. Yes, certain places in Africa, we will definitely see famines. In fact, they're already in famine, so you're not going to escape it. Now we've had these catastrophic impacts to the fertilizer supply chains and also energy. The Middle east imports pretty much 100% of their food. All of these nations out there in the desert and we're already seeing people flee those places. So all those Westerners that thought Dubai was a safe haven and they could live in luxury they're finding out, actually, no, it does matter. It does matter how much food is produced in a country. And, you know, having independence, not just as an individual, but as a country, moreover, that there's a good amount of resources within that country is critical during these times. And those countries don't cut it over there. So that's going to impact those places. But, you know, I think it's Europeans and Westerners who are likely going to have things like food rationing. And I think that actually feeds into the technocracy and this idea that they want to take us back to some. Some kind of digital serfdom or take us to back to seraphdom, but it won't be back to digital safety, and it will be like a new type of serfdom where it's all done through apps and QR codes and digital IDs. And I could totally see them doing that, saying, yeah, we've got a crisis. We need to ration the food, we need to ration the energy. We're already seeing that take place. Slovakia's implemented rationing of fuel. I think Australia is talking about it. New Zealand is already doing it in certain places in the UK, they're talking about limiting fuel purchases to 30 pounds per person a day, which is about $40. So, yeah, you're not going very far. The grounding planes, so a lot of the planes that would normally be flying long haul are already being grounded in preparation for shortages of jet fuel because the prices are skyrocketing. So I think what we're going to see is all these shortages will be used as a catalyst to advance the technocracy and rationing will be likely. And we. Whether they're real or not, Gabriel, actually doesn't matter whether the shortages truly transpire or whether they just say the shortages, it doesn't matter. The outcome's the same. And so I don't really want to be a part of that. And so a long time ago, I decided to become a farmer, which is not necessarily what I was planning to do with my life. I certainly didn't foresee that for myself when I was younger and I had a career and I did lots of other things, but at some point I understood the trajectory of history. I studied the past resets and how they took place and what the risks were and how they would likely arise again. So I was predicting things like crisis, food shortage, resource hoarding, protectionism, de globalization, financial collapse, and the end of certain currencies. So all of those things I was trying to prepare for and Becoming a farmer was a key part of my solution. And you don't have to become a farmer, of course. You can simply be in an area where there are farmers, people who produce, because no matter what happens, they have to sell their product. And most of these small family farms, if you can get close to them, they're not going to be so impacted because it's people producing on a small scale where they don't have big agricultural machines that require diesel or they don't use fertilizer because they're using cow manure or something organic. There are plenty of places like that in the world still. So those farms are not necessarily going to be negatively impacted. And those farmers will still need to sell their produce because of course, that's how they survive. So you could place yourself close to them, you could do some small scale gardening where you just start to grow a few fruit trees and fruit bushes and a few rows of potatoes and vegetables. There's all kinds of things we can do and I think we should do because I think that is what we're meant to do. I think the whole notion that human beings should give up a hundred percent of the necessities of life to the state, that we should trust that they'll provide it and that that will always be stable, is absolutely insane. It's ridiculous. It's insane. Our ancestors would be rolling, are probably rolling in their graves thinking that we've done this to ourselves. We've become so dependent on what essentially is a tyranny. You know, these governments don't care about you. And so that dependency that we have on them will certainly be leveraged to usher you into a system of technocratic control. So, you know, if you don't like that, you, you got to take back some responsibility for your own essentials of life. And that's food, water and energy and of course the financial side too. And these are all things that human beings have done throughout history and we can do it again. And so that is what I love, like to do and I support other people with that too.
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Yes, you're really good on the topic of preparing for these sorts of potential events. And one thing of course, that you talk about a lot and I always love to hear what you have to say about things like gold, silver, their historical value and of course the practicalities of owning them and things of this sort. Now, gold has basically doubled in price in the last year and a half or so. To what do you attribute the rise? By the way, I should mention for listeners we're recording this March 30th of 2026. So in the last couple weeks, gold has also started going down in price. What do you make, though? Like, walk us, take us a little behind the scenes. Why did gold rise in price? Why is it going down now? What are some of the dynamics at work here?
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Yeah, so what happened last year with gold was essentially there was a silent move towards safe havens. And this has really been triggered by Trump's second presidency and the wider recognition that we are in a reset. So the conversation that we're having a few years back, let's say 2021, 2022, would have been considered a conspiracy theorist conversation, that they're going to have a financial reset and we're going to see nations become more protectionist and that globalization is going to reverse and eventually the dollar is going to get dethroned and nations are going to go back to gold. All of those things were considered completely fringe. And when I first started my YouTube channel, people thought I was a conspiracy theorist for discussing them. Actually, they were incorrect. They'd just been conditioned to this fake Ponzi system, where we actually have, as the base layer of the financial system, debt. So we've got debt backstopping debt, backstopping debt. And people genuinely believed that that was a stable system that could be sustained indefinitely. Of course, now they're finding out it's not. And so what does that mean for the system? Well, if the entire system is backstopped by debt, and that debt is unsustainable, because right now the US is facing the prospect of spending 50% of GDP on interest payments alone in the coming few years. Yeah. At some point you're going to hit a brick wall on that and the whole system is going to have to be reset. So this is just simple mathematics. And of course, there's all kinds of frauds within this system. The private credit fraud is now coming to light. You've got two to four quadrillion in derivatives. These are just bets backstopped by nothing. So there's no underlying collateral besides our assets, which have been put up as collateral. So our stocks and bonds have been put up as collateral for these megabanks derivatives positions. So they're setting you up to be the bag holder, is the bottom line. And right now that slow realization is taking place. Now, the everyday man and woman on the street, the plebians, of course, they're not going to figure it out. They aren't figuring it out. They continue to believe all of the narratives. But there's many sophisticated financial Players that are realizing that and they're saying, whoa, what do we do with that? We're used to going to bonds as safety. So our safe position was buying debt, government debt. And what we saw with Trump's second presidency is people no longer, no longer trusted the sovereign debt. So the yield started to spike up in Japan, in the US In Europe, and instead of going into sovereign debt, they exited the system entirely. And they did that by going to gold. So of course, gold sits outside the financial system. Although there's financialized assets based upon gold, physical gold is outside the system. There's no counterparty. Its value is intrinsic. It's got 5,000 years of history, and in every reset, it always goes back to gold. So I was talking for a long time about how going into the reset, what we'd see is the gold price would start to go up much sharper. So we'd start to see gold go up 20% a year, then 40%, then 70%, then we'd get to 100%. That's the financial reset in process because you've got 1 to 2 trillion dollars of U.S. treasuries traded daily. But in terms of the gold that's coming out of the ground each year, it's a pretty stable amount. It takes a long time, about 20 years to get a gold mine up and running. And big gold discoveries simply aren't there. So based on the current supply of gold that we get each year, there's only about a trillion dollars a year versus 1 to 2 trillion dollars of treasuries traded daily. And that debt's just growing and growing. And so people are now cycling out of sovereign debt and into gold. And that was why gold was up 70% last year, and it was also why it was up 25% this year. Now, the current correction that we're seeing in both gold and silver isn't just in gold and silver. This is a correction. Well, it's not even a correction. This is actually a liquidity crisis. And so right now we've got bitcoin down 50%, silver's down 40%, gold's down almost 20%. Gold miners are down 30%. Copper, which is of course one of the key commodities for expansion and growth, is down 20%. The S&P 500 is the only asset class besides oil that's not in a bear market just yet. The rest of the ones that I've discussed are pretty much in a bear market or on the precipice of it. The U.S. 10 year bond is up 12%. In a matter of weeks. That's huge, Gabriel. A 12% increase, I don't mean in the yield, I mean a 12% increase in the basis points is massive in a few weeks for a 10 year bond. So what we're actually seeing right now is everything's selling off together. And the reason it's selling off together is because there's major disruptions in the financial system and everybody's running to liquidity, which in this stage of the crisis is dollars. So they're skipping sovereign debt, they're going to dollars. That's because margin calls are happening behind the scenes. We've got a private credit bubble that is definitely beginning to unravel. That's going to continue throughout this year. And then we had this big massive energy shock. And so there's lots of people that are caught out because of that. You've got nations whose currencies are failing, like Turkey. They're having to sell gold to prop up their currency. You've got Middle Eastern countries that are pretty much entirely dependent on the revenue of their oil, which is no longer being exported. They're having to raise liquidity by selling whatever they can. That includes gold, of course, which they hold on the balance sheets. And then you've got a lot of hedge funds who have got huge margin calls and their gold position was up 100% in a year. So if suddenly you've got 16 fold increase in margin, you're going to sell whatever you can and you're certainly going to be happy selling the thing that's already up, because that's a really strong ballast. So this is what happens in the first stages of a crisis is people sell not what they want to sell, but what they can sell. And gold as the most liquid asset on earth is one of those assets that gets sold, but so does everything else. That's the first stage of a crisis. What you find in the second stage is everybody floods into gold and that's what happened in the 2008 GFC. So gold sold for the first two months of that crisis and then it started to rise again at a time when everything else fell for another 10 months, or there were thereabouts. It fell right up into the middle part of 2009. Gold was already performing in 2008 itself, so it had this initial sell off and then by the end of the year it was the best performing asset class of 2008. And so that's what we're going to see again because it's just the dynamics of a Ponzi scheme. In the first stages of a crisis, everybody rushes into liquidity. In the second stage, people rush out of the system and the physical market gets overwhelmed and the supply disappears because you've got lots of people realize very quickly and sober up very quickly that this system isn't going to last forever. Gabriel at some point there's an end, and maybe it's going to be a hard stop, and maybe that's where we are. You know, we don't know the time or day that it ends, but all of the dominoes are in place for something pretty major in the coming few years, I think. And all of this crisis that we're seeing, in my opinion, it's a part of that, it's a part of the reset. And if you understand it through that lens, there is a coherency to all of this. It does make sense. But it does end with a financial collapse. And so, yeah, gold will be a good protector during that. And there's other assets out there which you could consider too. But I don't think anything really has the same protective qualities as gold. As we've discussed in past episodes, there's
- [34:32]
B
a couple of things that we could say about the state of the world and the rising prices of certain things. And obviously, if we want to call them contrarian investors have. If you can foresee the price of oil going up, sure, that impacts your ability to go and get fuel from the gas station and affects other costs of yours. But if you have invested in oil stocks, then you could theoretically become rich. So there's the whole investing side of that. But then there's also just the more survival practical side of this. And the same goes for gold as well. Whether you talk about gold stocks or physical gold, and I know you talk a lot about physical gold in terms of the acquisition of physical gold, people transporting it, maybe they're going from country to country, they're trying to be light on their feet. What are some of your latest thoughts on that? Maybe some of the problems of gold acquisition and transporting it elsewhere. I know this is something that the Bitcoiners like to tout, that, oh, our wealth transcends borders, gold cannot, it'll get confiscated, all these sorts of things. What are some of your updated thoughts on those sorts of topics?
- [35:39]
A
Yeah, you know, for most people, it's not that much of an issue. There are, of course, certain considerations you have to put into any portfolio, but especially something that's a physical asset. But gold has always been something that was able to be transported around the world. There's Ways to do it. One thing that I do think is wise is for people to have some gold that's in a secure offshore vault. So somewhere outside of your current jurisdiction. I like to use a company in the Cayman Islands. It's a private vault. It's got a very high level of secrecy in the Cayman Islands. Not that your holdings couldn't be discovered, but the Cayman Islands have always denied foreign legal proceedings against resident there or somebody that has, let's say, a trust there or assets there. So they don't engage with foreign legal proceedings. So let's say there was a confiscation in the US and they put a call out to all of the vaults and said, we want a list of all Americans named and we're going to nationalize their gold holdings and we expect you to hand them over. They could probably do that and they could get away with it in a lot of countries. I think a lot of countries would definitely abide by it. Especially if America is their source of food, fuel and fertilizer. Then, yeah, you're going to do whatever you're told to do at that point. Because they could collapse your civilizer, they could collapse your society. But so far, you know, the Cayman Islands is out the reach of that. So having some gold in offshore locations is smart. That's one way to get around it. You can buy and sell using the Internet or liquidate by the phone. It's, you know, been successful for many, many years. This kind of process. People have done that, of course, transport ability. There are ways to transport gold. If you think ahead, you can plan for it. Gold has many different legal distinctions. So there's a difference between bullion, there's a difference between gold jewelry. You can travel, for example, on a plane with a million dollars worth of gold. If you're wearing it as jewelry. If you had a million dollars worth of bullion, yeah, you'd have to declare it and maybe that ask some questions. Knowing those distinctions helps. And so I think a really good gold portfolio will factor in all scenarios and I think long and hard about those things because of course, in a crisis, confiscations do happen. Now, I think the alternatives, like you mentioned bitcoin and things like this, I don't think they're too worried about that either. So I think if they was worried about bitcoin, there would definitely not be a big push to encourage people to buy it. So I think there's pros and cons to lots of things. But there is a reason why, you know, gold has held that place for 5,000 years. And ultimately even in a grid down situation or an energy crisis or some kind of a cyber event, then yeah, gold still has its place there, whereas other assets would become instantly illiquid. And that's really what we're trying to avoid. You know, as individuals and citizens. We don't want to be made illiquid, which is where you are cut off from your wealth or your funds. Because I always say you could have a bit, you know, you might have a billion dollars, but if you can't access it, you're as good as the man who's got $0. You know, you've not, you've not got access to your wealth, you're going to end up in debt and you could, yeah, get yourself in a lot of trouble. So liquidity is a key part of this and I think in a financial crisis that's the first thing to disappear. Like I said, the reason why everybody's selling assets right now and we've got most asset classes in a bear market is precisely that, it's liquidity. People need liquidity, so they're selling stuff, but that could happen to an individual too. So I think, yeah, gold works for that. But even then people still need, you know, three to six months of cash because in the early stages of a crisis you're not going to be using precious metals, that's for sure. And you're probably not going to be using digital currencies either. You're going to need cash to go to the store to buy from a local farmer or somebody that has produce. Unless you're in a very, very specific location where you've got people who accept alternative currencies. And some people do, but most people don't. So yeah, factor that into your planning as well.
- [39:51]
B
Yeah, talk to me a little bit about banking strategy because we live in the real world, we can't necessarily be using all these alternatives all the time. Cash is still going to be very useful, as you say. And having some money in a bank account potentially, well, I mean, obviously is also useful. Now my question is, I do think that people should just have a lot of cash on hand. They should be very skeptical of the banking system. And yet, as I said, the banking system still is the status quo. So here's my question. The big banks out there, seemingly the least trustworthy of all and yet potentially the most likely to get bailed out, to have certain protections, special privileges because of their connection to the government. Right. If you were trying to have maybe a couple different bank accounts, some money in banks, do you think you would trust more the local bank or the big bank? And maybe tell me a little bit of your theory of when we're in still in the banking system, what are the entities that we should be relying on?
- [40:56]
A
Yeah. So you know the bank of International Settlements produce a list called the CFIs, the Systemically Important Financial Institutions list. It's about 20 banks globally and these banks are considered too big to fail mostly because of their derivatives exposure. So for example Deutsche bank have, I don't know, it's a few hundred trillion worth of notional derivatives. If their derivatives portfolio blows up and the bank goes under, it takes down everything. It's like a cannonball to a ship. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how it got there and how it went wrong. Everybody on that ship is going down. So the blame game doesn't work. At that point the whole system just falls apart. So that is too big to fail. And there's a lot of banks that are considered too big to fail. Like I said, it's about 20 of them globally. J.P. morgan's on there. Who else? Bank of America. And so they are literally telling you with that list these other banks were going to bail out. Everyone else will be allowed to fail. And so if I was going to put my money in a bank or currency in a bank, should I say I'd likely choose one of those banks because there's a little bit more protection. It doesn't mean that those banks are safe. Not all. I think like you said, Gabriel, all banks should be considered a hazard to your wealth because they can freeze you out, block you out at any point. And they do, they do this all the time. Look at the truckers protest. There's ideological reasons now they will shut you out. Or you know, the system itself could make you, because of political reasons, for example, illiquid by just saying we're going to freeze you out of all of your digital accounts. And that's happened too to journalists and people like this. So yeah, I think, you know, you want to diversify, you definitely don't want to be dependent on them. But if you have to have them, then probably choose the larger banks that are more likely to be saved. There are some banks that have far less exposure to the toxic parts of the financial system. These are smaller banks. There's one in the US called, I think it's called alliance bank and it's voted the safest bank in America because of that reason. It's a family run operation. So yeah, totally. You might Want to use them, too. It's not a case of either or. You could have a mixture. And maybe those banks that are smaller do survive. But one thing I would say is they do have a target on the back. Because during the 1929 stock market crash in the years that followed, of course, there was bank runs and a banking crisis. And what happened was the Federal Reserve chose the winners and losers. They basically chose who they was going to save and who they wanted to allow to collapse. And this was a massive power grab. It was a huge consolidation of the banking sector. And I would imagine that in the next crisis, the same thing's going to happen. So right now, all banks are basically primed to fail. So you've got many banks that have huge exposure to private credit and private equity, which is the aforementioned credit bubble that we've been discussing. And then you've got banks with huge exposures to derivatives, commercial real estate. And then they've also got massive unrealized losses on their bond portfolios, which is their collateral base, really. And that's because of the rapid interest rate rises that took place over the last few years, following over a decade of interest rates at close to zero. So they had these bond portfolios of 1 to 2% yielding sovereign debt bonds. And then all of a sudden the interest rates went up to 4%, 5%, and it rendered them with massive unrealized losses. And so that's just sat on the balance sheet quietly waiting. No problem just yet. But the moment that the bank has to raise liquidity fast, what's it going to have to do? Sell those bonds? And what's it going to sell them for? Well, next to nothing, because nobody's going to buy those bonds off them. So huge problems in the commercial banking sector. That's a horror film still to come. It's not happening just yet, but it's there waiting for us. And so know that when you have your money in a bank, know that that is what you're putting your capital into. And when you put it into those banks, you don't actually own that capital anymore. The currency is no longer yours. You've loaned it to an insolvent entity. And if you go into it with your eyes wide open, maybe you'll make a smarter decision around that. But like you said, many of us have to use banks for all different kinds of reasons. So if you are going to, then that's the strategy I would take with it.
- [45:19]
B
Very well said. Just a final question for you, Mike, because we can have these good perspectives. We can Understand the world, we can be red pilled, but that doesn't necessarily matter if we're caught up in the dopamine gratification that social media, poor food, mass entertainment, modern conveniences grant us. And so you're somebody who is very good, I think, at deferring gratification, which is what we're talking about. You're a marathon runner, I think an ultra marathon runner. So you've had, and you know, you've been a counselor and a therapist, you put health as a top priority. And I guess my point is that if we are not fighting against this dopamine hit addiction that we get for bad things, then it doesn't really matter a lot of these other things and success really can be defined as deferring gratification. So what are some of your tips for people to get a hold of that part of their life?
- [46:13]
A
Yeah, I think that's a process of self development because we was all brought up in a culture of instant gratification. Whether that's bad food, whether that's social media, pornography, Hollywood films, all of it's about instant gratification. But it all has long term negative consequences that are far, far worse than the, the cheap thrills people get from these things. So you know, for me, I've always tried to cultivate a life where it's sustainable and that doesn't mean the sustainability that they talk about in the ecological movement or environmental movement. I'm talking about a life where what I, what I enjoy, the things that I get gratification from, the things that are meaningful and enriching for me are replicable no matter what happens. So it's kind of like a self reinforcing, virtuous cycle. Obviously having good health is great. It's fantastic. It means I can do more. It means I can spend more years, hopefully with, with my loved ones and family. It means that I don't ache and feel rubbish when I wake up. So yeah, good health's great, but I also enjoy going out in nature, I enjoy running, I enjoy taking time to exercise each day. And I think it's good for your mental health. I think it's good for you on many different levels. So yeah, that's something that nobody can take away from you. They can take away a lot, but they can't take away that because even in a prison cell you see prisoners get extremely ripped and they can get in great shape. So it doesn't matter where you are in the world, once you've learned how to keep yourself in shape, you can can continue to do that and it can be great. Yeah, it's good for you. So that's one thing. I like to spend a lot of time in nature. Again, that's free. Doesn't cost me anything, but it's very rewarding. It's something that I do with my family. We go out together and we make great experiences and memories. Again, it's something that's replicable anywhere in the world. So it's another easy win. And the online stuff and all of those things, that comes down to discipline. It comes down to having the discipline to disconnect from those things. And I think having some something to replace it is a key part of that. So cultivate the things that are genuinely enriching activities and that are healthy for you and at the same time start to limit your exposure to the ones that are not. I, I personally don't feel anybody, anybody needs to go on to X, for example, to get some news. I think you're going to find out about the important news anyways, Gabriel. I think it's going to find its way to you, even if you don't go online very much. I think what X and places like this do do is they give you a lot of noise and they give you oftentimes a lot of toxic videos and, and even that's a cheap dopamine hit. You know, people might not like what they're watching. There's a lot of violence out there these days and there's a lot of videos of war zones and all of these things are being fed to you through devices. But I think even that is addictive to people. You know, it gives people this dopamine hit in a different way. And so you have to get control over your chemistry again. You have to take control over your psychological chemistry and detox from the things that are unhealthy. And that's difficult for a lot of people, but totally possible, you know, the more time outside you are. Don't take your phone with you. That's the key part of it. Don't take your phone up a mountain for one. Leave it at home. You know, I've spent thousands and thousands of hours in the mountains and I've probably got less than 10 photographs of my time in the mountains. That's truth. Because I don't take phones with me, I don't take cameras with me because I don't want to disconnect from the activity that I'm in by having something there that can snap me out of that moment or that. Yeah, that kind of living in the moment experience that you've got. So those are, that's just me. I mean, I'm not here to tell anyone what to do, but I think going forwards, the more dependency you have on those things, the more likely you are to find yourself controlled again. Because I remember when Covid hit and there was a lot of people who suddenly couldn't access the restaurants and the things that they had become, let's say, addicted to for pleasure, and it sent them crazy. And for people who, like myself, didn't have a need for those things because they wasn't living that life and they exercised at home instead of at a gym and they'd figured out how to get enjoyment from just going outside and in nature. Like, it didn't really affect me, none of those things. And when people were being threatened saying, you can't access these things if you don't do X, Y and Z. Well, it was easy for me not to do X, Y and Z, because again, I didn't need those things. So that dependency part is really key. I think it's a leverage point on all of us. And so take it away from them, you know, Take it away from them. Fasting is another great one, Gabriel. I think fasting's a superpower. Once you get really good at fasting, you can travel anywhere in the world and you don't have to stop for hunger and eat some crappy food. It doesn't matter. Like, I can go travel and if there's no good food available, I can wait. I can wait till 8pm, 9pm, I can skip the day if I want. And that's not because that's. Well, it's not because I'm not needing calories. It's because my body can become very efficient just on the calories that already exist. And fasting enables you to do that. So that's another thing that I cultivate is fasting.
- [51:40]
B
No, all, all very good. I think what you said is certainly true in many respects. And, and a lot of the people who are enslaved, the worst are the people who don't realize they are. So you think about these people who. They're checking Twitter every 10 minutes, right? But they think, oh, but I'm, I'm red pilled, I'm furthering the conversation. I'm part of the dissidents. But they're checking Twitter every 10 minutes, they're posting every couple hours and they're responding to comments. And you know, they're prisoners, they're prison prisoners of the algorithm that is still short term gratification. So those people are just as enslaved as anybody else and they certainly need to to break free from that. Now I will give you the the final thoughts here, Mike. Definitely worth a a follow on Substack. He's on Twitter. I think Substack's your primary place these days. You also have a website, some good videos on YouTube. We'll have all the links for people. Substack is definitely the first place people can check. And thank you again, Mike, and any final thoughts you have?
- [52:36]
A
No, just a thank you to you, Gabriel, for inviting me back on the show and for the great conversation, and I look forward to catching up with you again. And as you said, if listeners want to check out my financial content and articles, the best place is Substack. I also put out a lot of notes on there and any links to videos that I'm a part of. So I've got a few podcasts that I'm engaged with, including our mutual friend Roy Morich and Monica Perez. I know you've been on Monica's show before, so we do a roundtable show called Cognitive Dissonance. It's now every two weeks. It used to be every month, but that's become pretty popular. And that's kind of where we get into what's happening in the world, the geopolitics. And we give our sometimes slightly cynical take on all of that. So you can find that on the Substack as well.
- [53:21]
B
Immediate gratification to be had. Hey, thanks for listening. I could really use your help real quick if you could share this episode with someone, engage with me, leave a review anywhere. This helps me to break the technocratic shadow banning that is happening with my brand. And of course, if you really want to escape the technocracy, go to escapethetechnocracy.com privacy tutorial, series, books, newsletters, consulting. And of course you can leave a donation. Thank you very much.