In short
Podcast Notes: From the Desk of Anthony Pompliano - Episode with Peter Schiff
Episode Overview
- Guest: Peter Schiff, a long-time advocate for gold and critic of Bitcoin.
- Main Themes: The rise of precious metals, inflation, economic policies, and the performance of Bitcoin versus gold.
- Tone: Engaging and heated debate between Anthony Pompliano and Peter Schiff.
Key Topics Discussed
- The Current State of Precious Metals
- Gold and Silver Surge:
- Schiff claims that gold, silver, copper, and platinum are experiencing a generational run due to inflationary monetary policies.
- Highlights the importance of central banks increasing their gold reserves in response to currency devaluation.
- Mining Stocks:
- Schiff views precious metals mining stocks as a more attractive investment than physical metals due to their rising profits and lower valuations compared to gold prices.
- Suggests this sector has potential for significant future gains.
- Inflation and Economic Policies
- Inflationary Pressures:
- Schiff argues that inflation is a result of Federal Reserve policies and expansive fiscal measures from the current administration.
- He emphasizes that inflation will lift all commodities, not just metals.
- Debate on Tariffs:
- Schiff believes tariffs are ultimately negative and result in higher consumer prices.
- Pompliano argues tariffs can incentivize domestic production and may not necessarily lead to increased prices for consumers.
- Bitcoin's Underperformance
- Comparison with Gold:
- Schiff highlights that Bitcoin has failed to perform as expected during a time when gold is thriving.
- He criticizes the narrative that Bitcoin is a superior alternative to gold, stating that gold continues to fulfill its role as a safe haven asset better than Bitcoin.
- Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Strategy:
- Schiff cites Michael Saylor’s significant investments in Bitcoin as an example of the challenges faced by Bitcoin investors.
- He argues that Saylor’s average purchase price for Bitcoin is far above its current market value, indicating poor investment performance.
- Future Predictions and Portfolio Strategies
- Investment Outlook:
- Schiff remains heavily invested in gold and silver mining stocks due to their cost-effectiveness and potential for growth.
- He remains skeptical about the long-term viability of Bitcoin as an investment.
- Pompliano's Optimism:
- Pompliano believes in the potential for a high-growth, low-inflation economy, arguing that technological advances (like AI) could deflate prices and foster economic growth.
- Final Thoughts and Conclusions
- Diverging Views:
- The discussion illustrates a clear divide between Schiff's pessimism regarding future economic conditions and Pompliano's more optimistic outlook.
- Despite differences, both share a mutual respect for each other's expertise in their respective fields.
Key Takeaways
- Gold and Silver: Continue to be considered by many experts, like Schiff, as sound investments amidst ongoing inflation and economic uncertainty.
- Bitcoin's Role: Schiff argues that Bitcoin is currently failing as a hedge against inflation, while Pompliano maintains belief in its long-term value.
- Economic Policies: The conversation explores the complexities of tariff impacts and inflationary pressures, indicating that the economic landscape remains contentious and uncertain.
Additional Resources
- Follow Peter Schiff:
- [Shift Gold](https://shiftgold.com) for precious metals investments.
- [Shift Radio](https://shiftradio.com) for more economic insights and discussions.
- Follow Anthony Pompliano:
- [YouTube Channel](https://pompyoutube.com)
- [Twitter](https://twitter.com/APompliano)
This podcast episode serves as a microcosm of the broader debates within the investment community regarding the future of currencies, commodities, and economic policies in a rapidly changing landscape.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe State of Precious Metals
0:45 to 4:29
Peter Schiff explains the current performance and future potential of gold and silver.
“We currently have just over 42 ,000 different subscribers, but my goal is 1 million.”
Understanding Central Bank Actions
4:29 to 7:27
Discussion on central banks' roles in increasing demand for gold and its implications.
“I thought we were putting in a very significant bottom and we're ready for a rather an explosive move higher in energy costs.”
Tariff Impact Debate
7:27 to 10:10
A heated debate over the economic impact of tariffs and their effects on prices.
“to dramatically increase the size of the QE program to monetize an ever-increasing portion of exploding deficits.”
Concluding Thoughts on Economic Strategies
10:10 to 14:00
Exploration of the administration's plans for economic growth and the potential outcomes.
“fun conversation for the audience if you don't listen.”
Debating Tariff Impacts on Goods
14:00 to 14:47
Explore the implications of tariffs on domestic and international goods and their pricing strategies.
“Domestic companies and international companies say that they are doing that.”
Solar Panels and Tariff Effects
14:47 to 15:40
Discuss the effects of tariffs on solar panel prices and domestic manufacturing dynamics.
“Out of 100 % of the goods that get put into the United States from external producers, there is some very small percentage of them with after the tariffs, they would be losing money.”
Understanding Price Dynamics
15:40 to 16:32
Analyze how tariffs affect prices and consumer behavior regarding goods in the market.
“We also saw the price of solar panels drop.”
Consumer Confidence and Inflation Data
16:32 to 17:38
Examine the discrepancies in consumer confidence surveys and their implications for economic perceptions.
“Well, they're always coming up with more efficient ways to produce things and make things better.”
Trusting Alternative Inflation Metrics
17:38 to 19:48
Learn about alternative metrics to gauge inflation beyond government data and their implications.
“So by having tariffs and a weak dollar, the American consumer gets hit with a double whammy.”
Deflation vs. Inflation Concerns
19:48 to 21:04
Explore the potential risks of deflation and the ongoing inflationary pressures in the economy.
“If you look at Truflation, they use 14 million independent data points that are coming from 40 different independent data sources.”
Show all 27 chapters
Impact of AI on Prices and Labor
21:04 to 22:36
Discuss how AI technology is influencing pricing and labor dynamics in various industries.
“That would that would relieve some of the pressure on consumers.”
The Role of Government in Inflation
22:36 to 24:15
Analyze the relationship between government policies and inflationary trends affecting consumers.
“But I think the part that people miss in this entire evaluation is artificial intelligence is probably the single greatest deflationary force that has ever hit the United States economy.”
Challenges in Rebuilding Manufacturing
24:15 to 25:29
Understand the complexities of rebuilding domestic manufacturing in the face of tariffs.
“I would have been able to buy stuff 5 % cheaper, but because they created inflation to finance their budget deficits, everything costs me 2 % more.”
Political Policies and Economic Growth
25:29 to 28:00
Investigate how current political policies are impacting economic growth and inflation.
“And a lot of companies, A, they don't even have the money to make the investment.”
Economic Growth and Investment Insights
28:00 to 29:28
Discussion on venture capital, economic policies, and growth outlook.
“getting savings and we're seeing manufacturing and production, this is one of the hardest things to do in the United States, build ships, build missiles, build all of this equipment.”
Misconceptions About GDP Growth
29:28 to 30:48
Exploration of GDP growth metrics, inflation, and historical context.
“And so we'll see, you know, if this spending is justified or if they've they've they've overspent.”
The Role of AI in Economic Trends
30:48 to 32:24
Debate on AI's impact on inflation and economic policy.
“If you remember, you know, when we had the Great Recession in 2008, the government had to backdate the recession for a year.”
Challenges of Monetary Policy in Current Climate
32:24 to 34:34
Critique of government policies and their inflationary effects.
“That's what Bitcoiners used to want back when they first started it.”
Gold's Rise vs. Bitcoin's Struggles
35:01 to 36:46
Analysis of the contrasting performance of gold and Bitcoin in the market.
“you know, financial assistants, investment bankers, whatever.”
Bitcoin's Marketing and Investment Narrative
36:46 to 39:26
Examination of Bitcoin's narrative versus gold's resurgence in popularity.
“And this year is probably the best January for gold ever.”
Personal Investment Philosophy on Bitcoin
39:26 to 42:00
Discussion on the personal investment stance regarding Bitcoin and other assets.
“So the point is, if Bitcoin couldn't go up when it had everything going for it, it ain't going to go up.”
Bitcoin vs Gold: Investment Returns
42:00 to 45:32
Learn how Bitcoin and gold compare in terms of investment returns over different time frames.
“So, I mean, that really shows that, you know, that this thing is over.”
Current Portfolio Strategies
45:32 to 47:18
Discover the shifts in portfolio strategies focusing on mining stocks and energy exposure.
“because by the time they go to sell it, it's going to be a fraction of its current price.”
Economic Outlook and Bitcoin's Future
47:18 to 51:13
Explore the implications of economic growth on Bitcoin's value and the role of inflation.
“But the value of the underlying business has gone up more than the price of the business, which is like the opposite of what happens during a bubble where the price far exceeds the value of the business.”
Central Banks and Gold vs Bitcoin
51:13 to 56:01
Understand why central banks buy gold and the potential for Bitcoin in the future.
“And it turns out that we have a lot of inflation and a weak economy.”
Discussion on Recent Interview and Social Media
56:01 to 56:50
Peter Schiff shares insights on his recent interview and social media presence.
“I'm still not up in your numbers there, Anthony, but I got, I got hopefully this, uh, um, interview I just did with, uh, Tucker Carlson will help.”
Debate on Gold, Bitcoin, and Travel Plans
56:51 to 57:26
A lively discussion about the differences in decision-making between gold and Bitcoin, along with travel plans for a conference.
“So listen, I think that we should keep doing this.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hello, everyone. We've got a very, very special treat today. We are going to talk with Peter Schiff. Peter has been a gold bug for a very long time. And in this conversation, we talk about the state of the U.S. economy, what's going on with inflation, tariffs, gold, silver, Bitcoin, and much more. We also get into a very heated debate, and I mean very heated, about what the impact of tariff and economic policies are. And I tend to think that it's positive. He thinks it's negative. And you're going to hear all sides of the argument because we get locked in on this. We're live today from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.
0:39Before we get into this conversation with Peter, I need your help. I need you to hit the subscribe button on YouTube. We currently have just over 42 ,000 different subscribers, but my goal is 1 million. I can see it at the end of the tunnel. Please hit the subscribe button and let's get into the conversation with good old Uncle Pete. All right, Peter Schiff, the gold bug. You were wrong for a decade. Gold went nowhere, but now gold is doing very, very well. So you're going to come on. This is your victory lap. Please explain to us, the audience and me, why is gold, silver, copper and platinum doing so well?
1:10And how are you changing your portfolio based on what's happening? Well, first of all, what's happening now proves that I wasn't wrong for a decade. I was right for a decade. It just took a decade for the markets to figure out what I already knew. But even if you go back and look at my investment returns over the past 10 years, I'm well ahead of the S &P 500. Yes, all the gain happened in the last year and a half, but who cares, right? What matters is where are we right now? And I am financially way better off having been 10 years early than had I just missed it, which is what most people are doing.
1:51I mean, most people haven't positioned themselves at all in physical metal or the mining stocks. And in fact, I think as of right now, the better opportunity is in the precious metals mining stocks, because even though they have tripled, quadrupled over the past year or so, their profits have gone up much more than that. Their cash flow, by all objective measures, these stocks are substantially cheaper now than they were before the rally. And I think that's because investors just don't believe the rally, don't understand it. Maybe they don't think it's sustainable. So they think that in the future, gold and silver prices are going to be back where they were a couple of years ago.
2:35And I think they're completely wrong. Not only are gold and silver prices not going to go back down, they will continue going up. So there is still an incredible opportunity to make money buying into these miners even now, even now. Hold on. So I want to go through each one of these pieces here. So to me, let me tell you my view of what's happening with the metals and you tell me what I get right or wrong. Gold is going up because it has some industrial use case, but really it's going up because central banks are buying it hand over fist. There is a not just a de-dollarization, but there's a de-fiat currency process that's underway here.
3:13And the central banks are very big buyers. You have a scarce asset. The price goes up. Silver has a little bit of both. It has a lot more industrial use cases than gold, but it also is being used as somewhat of a store of value. And then copper and platinum seem to be full on industrial use cases. And there's some supply constraints going on in those assets. And so you get this kind of full metals mania, but it's actually each one of them is going up for a different reason. Do you agree with that or am I being a little bit too small? No, and I don't think it's a metals mania. I think it's a reaction to inflationary monetary policies, you know, in particular of the Federal Reserve and the expansionary fiscal policies of the current administration, which are highly inflationary.
4:01So it is a move. Wrong. I disagree. Yeah, it is a move out of dollars into hard assets, into a monetary alternative to the dollar. You know, inflation ultimately is going to lift all boats. And it's not just metals that are going to go higher, whether it's precious metals or industrial metals. It's agricultural commodities. It's energy. In fact, energy. I've been very bullish on the oil and gas sector recently. I thought we were putting in a very significant bottom and we're ready for a rather an explosive move higher in energy costs. But, you know, gold is being bought by central banks and more central banks are going to be buying it this year than bought it last year.
4:48And the central banks that bought gold last year are going to buy more this year because there is a move out of U.S. dollars. And I think what foreign governments are doing is they are replacing dollar reserves and U.S. Treasury reserves with gold. and the world wants to distance itself from the economic monetary regime that has dominated the globe for decades, where the U.S. government gets to create the reserve currency out of thin air and Americans get to live beyond their means, buying what everybody else produces on credit and just having this service sector economy with trillion dollar trade deficits, trillion dollar budget deficits.
5:31So I think our days of living beyond our means and getting a free ride on the global gravy train are coming to an end. And you can see that in what central banks are doing. But it's not just central banks now that are diversifying out of a paper into gold. Private investors are now beginning to realize that they need to do the same thing, that inflation is going to erode away the value of what they have traditionally thought of as a safe haven part of their portfolio, which might be bonds or cash or things like that. So investors are starting to move money that might otherwise have been allocated to the bond market to gold.
6:18And I also think that you're going to start to see portfolio managers that have zero exposure and that have had zero exposure to mining as a sector start to include mining stocks in their portfolios in addition to physical gold, which I think will come more out of the fixed income part of their portfolio than the equity part. I think the gold mining stocks, they'll come out of the equities. So maybe some money that might have gone into tech stocks or some other sector would go into mining. But money that would have been in bonds will go more into gold as the safe haven of a portfolio. And that has also broad implications because not only is the U.S.
7:08government going to have problems selling its debt internationally, it's going to have problems selling it domestically. So as U.S. budget deficits are exploding out of control, there's no buyers, there's no lenders who want the paper. And that's just going to put extraordinary pressure on the Fed to dramatically increase the size of the QE program to monetize an ever-increasing portion of exploding deficits. And all of that does is fuel the fire. It just makes inflation burn hotter and it causes an even greater run out of U.S. dollars, out of U.S. treasuries. And it just feeds on itself. And the potential result is just a complete collapse of the dollar.
7:56You have runaway or hyperinflation. So that is what's out there as a potential. And that, of course, is a reason to be buying gold and silver right now. OK, I'm going to tell you what I believe is the administration's plan. and then you tell me what you think is smart or not smart. I think that they essentially have a four-part plan. The first thing that they are doing is they are trying to figure out how the heck that they can actually go ahead and use tariffs to drive revenue. They want to weaken the dollar to offset that tariff impact. They then want to go and deregulate and use tax cuts to drive growth.
8:31And then they are hoping that artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies will create a deflationary force that hits the economy and they end up with a high growth, low inflation economy, which right now, Atlanta Fed GDP is showing over 5 % growth in Q4. And if you look at something like Truflation, it is showing a reading below 1.2 % on inflation. What do you think is smart or not smart there? And what do you think is possible and not possible? Well, first of all, what you said about tariffs and a weak currency, the opposite is actually true. So the tariffs are tax that make imports more expensive.
9:11I mean, that is the purpose of the tariff, not only to raise revenue for the government, but to increase the cost of imports so that Americans will buy fewer imports and hopefully they'll buy more domestically made products. Well, I don't know. I don't know if I agree. First of all, I don't know if I know that's a definition. And then by definition, that that's what tariffs do. and that is their purpose. It's called protection. Peter, but this is an important part. I agree it's a protectionist method, but I actually think that the purpose of the tariff is not to create a tax on the consumer, which it doesn't do.
9:45The Fed admits that, Trump admits that. No, of course it does. Hold on. Hold on. Just listen. Hold on. Hold on. It doesn't because the price of the products within 18 months of tariffs getting placed are lower than they were pre-tariff, which you can see in 2018 with solar panels, washing steel, et cetera. But hold on. They're not. They are. First of all, look. Hold on. Hold on. Just listen. Listen. This is not going to be a fun conversation for the audience if you don't listen. So the reason why I think it's a protectionist method is because it is actually a punishment to the producer to come and now start producing inside the United States.
10:23It's not targeting the American consumer. That wouldn't make sense. Of course it is. It is targeting the producer. And that's why you see, let's say in 2018, the washing machine manufacturers, when we put the tariff on, they came and they set up facilities to manufacture the washing machines in the United States. Look, first of all, look, I have purchased things that are now subject to tariff and they immediately increase the price that I have to pay. So when you bring something into the country, right, that I used to pay $100 for. And now they say, well, we got to charge you 120 because of the tariff.
10:58I don't say, wait a minute, you eat the tariff. No, either I pay the tariff or I don't get the products, right? That's how it works. The tariff is a tax paid by the importer to bring a product into the country. And like any other tax, it gets added on to the cost of the product. Look, when I go into a store and I have to pay a sales tax, the company, the business doesn't say, look, there's a 10 % sales tax, but don't worry about it. We're going to pay that for you. We're not going to add the sales tax to the goods. We'll just eat that for you. No, that's not how excise taxes work. They always get passed on to the end consumer.
11:36And that is in fact, what is happening. So why is inflation, why is inflation lower? Why is inflation lower a year later? It's not low. You believe government numbers. No, I don't believe the government numbers. I believe truflation, which is a real-time alternative metric. Well, I don't even know how truflation gets their numbers, but I can tell you this. Let's say I'm an importer, right? And a tariff comes in and I have to pay it, right? I have to write the check. But you don't have to, but you don't, just so we're clear, just so the audience understands, you don't have to pay it because the Fed and the critiques of the Fed, they both agree that when the tariff is paid, Let's say that a 20 % tariff is placed.
12:14What happens is the manufacturer eats some of it. The exporter in the foreign country eats some of it. The importer eats some of it. The consumer ends up paying? No. That's the China tariffs. The China tariffs. Look, you are completely wrong. This is the bullshit that the Trump administration is trying to get Americans to swallow so it can tax them without realizing that they're being taxed. So why did every product coming out of China not go up over 100 %? They are going up. They are going up. 100 %? A hundred percent? No, initially. A hundred percent? Not yet, but eventually, yes. Because initially when the tariff gets hit, right, and you get it initially, okay, I have to find out how to adjust things for the tariff.
12:57Is it permanent? Is it temporary? Do I want to increase my prices? Or, you know, there's a lot of factors. But ultimately, the prices are going to go up by the amount of the tariff. I mean, that's mainly why tariffs have been used, that the purpose of the tariff is to increase the price of the import. That's why it's there. That's the whole point. Why do you think when a domestic manufacturer wants tariffs on foreign competitors? It's because it makes the foreign competitors products more expensive because that's what tariffs do. It's nonsense to believe that they get they get absorbed. But there's two potential outcomes.
13:37This is, I think, an important part. And this is why I think people got the tariffs. Because look, if we go back, when the tariffs got implemented, I very clearly said they're going to be deflationary. There will not be high inflation. I was dead on right about it. And here's why. It's because everyone believes that just because there is a tariff that the producer of the good says, okay, 20 % tariff, raise prices 20%. The other thing that they could do is they could say we can keep the prices the same and we can just eat into our margin. No, you have. OK, OK. Hold on. Hold on. We have seen we have seen.
14:10Let me ask you a question. Hold on. Domestic companies and international companies say that they are doing that. All right. OK, so why didn't they do that before? Why didn't they just have lower margins before and sell more goods? But let me ask you a question. So let's say my margins are slim. him, let's say I have a 10 % margin, right? And there's a 20 % tariff. Am I just going to lose money for the privilege of selling goods to America? Am I going to say, hey, I'm going to keep selling goods to America, even though I lose money on every single sale, I'm going to do it anyway. Well, how many, first of all, let's just take out of 100 % of the goods.
14:46Is that what you believe is going to happen? Out of 100 % of the goods that get put into the United States from external producers, there is some very small percentage of them with after the tariffs, they would be losing money. So there's a very small percentage of people who are in that situation. So what are those companies going to do? Are they going to lose money or are they going to raise their prices? Well, let's just talk about specifics because the academic conversation doesn't really get me that excited. So if we go back to 2018, the solar panels - You need to learn something about tariffs.
15:16I'm going to show you exactly what happened. The solar panels in 2018, the original tariff was 30 % tax on foreign-made solar panels and modules imported into the United States. That tariff decreased by 5 % each year until it bottomed out at 15%. That was under Trump. Eventually, Biden ended up increasing it even further on China specifically. But here's what's interesting about this. We continued to see domestic manufacturing of American solar panels after the tariffs were implemented. We also saw the price of solar panels drop. They went from and I'm reading directly off the chart. Domestic solar panel prices continued to fall in price as they had been for years before the tariffs.
15:58So for the American consumer, when the tariffs started to the time when they actually expired, the price of solar panels that were being bought by the American consumer went down. while the United States was punishing external producers of the solar panels. What you are forgetting is had the tariffs not been imposed, then the prices would have declined by more. But this is a different argument. See, you're moving the goalposts. You just told me that the prices increased. Now you're saying that the prices decreased, but they would have decreased more without the tariff. No. Well, they're always coming up with more efficient ways to produce things and make things better.
16:37And so let's say the prices of something would have gone down from 100 to 80, but they put a tariff in. And so instead of going from 100 to 80, the price goes to 100 from 100 to 90 because there was a$10 tariff. The price went down, but it would have been down more if the consumer wasn't forced to pay the tariff. The consumer pays. But the other point I wanted to make. That's like saying I was going to be I was going to be six three, but I only ended up six. If you can't understand this, that this is your problem. This is very simple stuff, Anthony. So you're trying to protect the president's bad policies by denying what's obvious.
17:18But the other thing I wanted to point out, just so we're clear, I actually think I actually think that the part of the story that doesn't get told is that both Trump and Biden, both of them have leveraged tariffs over the last decade. And both of them, Republicans and Democrats, have been successful using tariffs. No, they haven't been successful. But the other point is that you said about weakening the dollar, weakening the dollar also increases the prices that Americans pay for their imports. So by having tariffs and a weak dollar, the American consumer gets hit with a double whammy. Not only does he have.
17:55Why are prices going down for the prices? Why are it going down? Food, gas and homes are all going down. The oil. Gas went down, yes, because we had a temporary decline in oil prices, which is now coming to an end. But did food prices go down? Food prices are going up. Everything is going up. In fact, why do you think consumer confidence just plunged to a 12-year low? Because you're looking at data that's wrong, and I'll explain why. So the Michigan Sentiment Survey. That data is wrong, but your inflation data is right. Hold on a second. I don't believe any of the government data, And that's why I use Truflation, which is a real-time alternative metric that actually looks at 14 million real-time price points.
18:37But what data do you believe? Do you believe that you don't believe the consumer confidence, but you believe the GDP numbers? You tell me how strong the GDP numbers are, but then you don't look at the confidence numbers. Just listen for a second. We're going to talk about three data points. I think it's very important for people to understand. Let's talk about the Consumer Sentiment Survey first. The Consumer Sentiment Survey, according to the University of Michigan, has plunged to a 12-year low. When you go and you look at the data, what you find is that right now, Democrats are reporting their consumer sentiment at 41 percent.
19:05Republicans are reporting it at 96 percent. So Republicans think it's way too good. Democrats think it's way too low. The consumer survey recently in the last two years changed the way that they actually look at the methodology. And they used to survey 50 percent Republicans, 50 percent Democrats. Today, they now survey two thirds Democrats, one third Republican. So what they are actually doing is they change the methodology of how they collect the information. And because Republicans say that it's going so amazing and Democrats say it's going so badly by now surveying more Democrats than Republicans, you get a lower reading.
19:38So that's first. The second thing is the reason why I trust Truflation, which I think you and I agree, the CPI metric is completely nonsense. Forty percent of the inputs are estimated and it's lagging. It's looking backwards. If you look at Truflation, they use 14 million independent data points that are coming from 40 different independent data sources. And what it looks at is not things like owner equivalent rent and nonsense. They actually look and say, what was the clearing price for this product? So if it's rent, what did things get rented for? If it's home purchases, what did they actually get purchased for?
20:11It's a thing that they verify what is the actual data point. Truflation today shows that inflation is under 1.2%. because deflation is a much bigger risk than inflation at this exact moment. I haven't looked into the true inflation index to show 1.2. So I don't know what factors are weighing heavily on that. If there's a couple of prices that are disproportionately impacting it. But, you know, even if prices were only rising at 1.2 percent, you know, that's still an increase. I mean, prices were expensive and then they're even more expensive. But if we're going from three, if we're going from 3 % to 1 % and the risk is deflation, the first of all, deflation isn't a risk.
20:59Deflation would be relief. Americans want prices to come down. They're too high. So to say there's a risk that prices might fall, that's what we want, right? That would that would relieve some of the pressure on consumers. It would be great if prices went down. The risk is that they're not going to go down. They're just going to keep going up. And even true inflation, probably by next year, is going to start to show significantly higher numbers. The inflationary pressures are building so dramatically beneath the economy. The weak dollar that we're going to have, we're also going to start to see the reversal of energy prices.
21:36But all this, look at the producer prices, too, as a leading indicator. They've been even stronger than the consumer prices. So obviously, as producer prices are rising, that's going to be feeding into the CPI. And yes, a lot of the tariffs, to the extent that the consumer hasn't had to pay the full boat because the producer has absorbed some of that hit, that's also going to get passed on to the consumer. Everything ultimately is paid by the consumer. The consumer pays all the costs of the business, all the labor costs, all the rent, all the interest, and all of the tariffs. All of that is built in to the price that the consumer pays for whatever he's buying.
22:19Okay. But what we are watching is we are watching the tariffs discourage external producers of these goods that then opens up the opportunity for there to actually be domestic manufacturing of many of these goods. That's a protectionist policies. On top of that, we have deregulation and tax cuts. Those balls should spur growth. But I think the part that people miss in this entire evaluation is artificial intelligence is probably the single greatest deflationary force that has ever hit the United States economy. And so as that happens, you are seeing prices fall off a cliff. A great example is the insurance company, Lemonade, that just came out and said, if you have full self-driving activated in a Tesla, they are going to drop your insurance premium 50%, five, zero percent decline in your insurance if you are using this new innovative technology that leverages artificial intelligence.
23:10Across the economy, we are seeing artificial intelligence be implemented in all of these different ways. Every public company who's embracing this stuff is telling you, I'm going to produce more revenue, more profit. I'm going to do it with less employees, which means they're going to be more profitable. Yeah, I'm sure that, you know, that technology for insurance will make the industry more efficient because they can monitor your driving habits. And so better drivers will pay less and worse drivers will actually pay more. So some people will see their auto insurance go down, but others are going to see their auto insurance go up.
23:42But, you know, that's fine. And I like, you know, innovation and I like all that. But that is not deflation. Yes, efficiency and productivity brings prices down. That does not give the government carte blanche to create inflation. Because let's say that economic efficiencies and capitalism would have lowered prices by 5%. But because the government creates inflation, they go up by 2 % instead. That's not a good thing. The government has stolen 7 % of my gain. I would have been able to buy stuff 5 % cheaper, but because they created inflation to finance their budget deficits, everything costs me 2 % more.
24:23That's a 7 % swing out of my pocket. So I would rather have the government not create any inflation and let the prices come down so that I as a consumer can enjoy the benefit of buying stuff for less money because then I have money left over to buy other things that maybe I can't even afford because the government made prices go up. But I think a lot of the benefits from AI are not going to be here right away. They're going to take more years than people realize to really filter through in a more significant way. And as far as our ability to just flip a switch and start manufacturing, that ain't going to happen.
25:08So just because imports become a lot more expensive doesn't mean we're just going to start making this stuff ourselves because we can't do it. It's going to take years and years of construction and capital investment and training and reconstitution of non-existent supply chains. And a lot of companies, A, they don't even have the money to make the investment. But if they did, they don't necessarily want to risk it on building a factory that may be obsolete because a future president may allow the tariffs to go away. You know, so it's hard to make the investment that is only economical based on a protectionist tariff when you have no clarity as to how long it's going to be in place, whether the Supreme Court might correctly just throw it out as being unconstitutional, which which these tariffs clearly are.
26:02But even if collectively we were going to make the investment in rebuilding non-existent infrastructure and supply chains, where is the money going to come from? I mean, what as a society are we going to give up? What are we going to stop doing to pay for all this? Right. So there would have to be a massive economic downturn. We'd have to seriously reduce our consumption to free up the resources necessary to rebuild our manufacturing base. So it's just not going to happen. All that these tariffs are going to do is drive up prices and make American manufacturers that we still have even less competitive than they are now.
Read the full transcript
26:42You know, I love you, but that's not true. Let me explain. It is true. Okay. I'm going to give you a real example. You're using academic theory. I live in the real world of facts. Here's the first one. When we put the tariffs on the washer machine manufacturers, when they were internationally producing these and shipping them to the United States, you know what they did? they came to the United States and they took over existing facilities that were no longer being used and they began manufacturing very quickly within 12 months. Second of all is U.S. steel. When we put the tariffs in 2018, what people didn't realize was we have steel manufacturers here in the United States.
27:15They were only operating at about 40 to 50 % capacity. When we put the tariffs on the international producers of steel, all of a sudden the U.S. manufacturers went to over 80 % capacity. Yeah. If we have unused capacity, we can ramp it up. But for a lot of - But hold on. Hold on. For a lot of the goods, we have zero capacity. We don't have excess capacity. We have no capacity. Hold on. So that was two of the three things that we tariffed in 2018 was a direct example where that didn't happen. Yes. And it made prices go up, didn't it? No, no, no. Actually, steel went down. Steel went down, washing machines went down, and solar panels went down the three things that we tariffed in 2018.
27:54Now, here's the other thing that people forget is that let's take defense equipment as an example. If you actually look at where we are getting savings and we're seeing manufacturing and production, this is one of the hardest things to do in the United States, build ships, build missiles, build all of this equipment. We are funding that via the private sector through venture capital, Anduril, Saronic, all of these companies, they are actually not being built with public dollars. They are being built by being funded by venture capitalists, people who are taking the risk to fund this stuff. And so I don't believe we need any sort of economic downturn.
28:30Instead, what we're seeing, it is a pro-growth approach where people are saying, I am willing to risk dollars to get an economic return as long as we can step in and solve this. The problem is, you know, the president's policies, by and large, are not pro-growth. They are Keynesian style, a demand-focused stimulus, cutting taxes, you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. These are all inflationary policies. They don't grow the economy. They grow the taxes. Then why is the economy growing? Then forget for a second who's doing it, whether Biden did it or Trump did it.
29:07I don't care who the person is. If what you're saying is right, then why is the economy cranking and inflation is falling? It's not cranking and inflation is not falling. That's my answer. You know, we we have blown more air into the bubble by, you know, running up the deficits even bigger. We gave out some tax cuts. We increased government spending. But also we have a massive investment, CapEx investment in AI, which is driving like 80 or 90 percent of the GDP growth is all this spending on on on AI and these data centers by these hyperscalers. And so we'll see, you know, if this spending is justified or if they've they've they've overspent.
29:51But there's there's been a lot of misallocations. I think, look, a lot of money has been spent on all this crypto nonsense. That's all all a big waste. But, you know, it's goose to GDP. And I do think that the deflator is is too small. I think that there's actually more inflation than is being assumed by the government when it adjusts nominal GDP gains to real. So, and I also think there's a good chance. You can't say GDP is growing, but it's AI. It's like, I would have been 6 '3", but I'm only six foot. No, I'm just saying where it's coming from so you know whether it's sustainable. Because, you know, they can pull back on the AI spending.
30:34But also, I think a lot of the numbers may end up being revised lower in the future. And so just because the government comes out and says, hey, look at the GDP growth, it may not be the case. If you remember, you know, when we had the Great Recession in 2008, the government had to backdate the recession for a year. And they went back and they took a year's worth of positive GDP numbers and revised them to negative numbers. So, you know, they can come back a year later and say, oh, the number was completely wrong. In fact, not only wasn't it, you know, it was wrong, it was actually negative, not positive.
31:11So I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it. I would take I would put more stock in the fact that gold prices and silver prices are soaring, that the dollar is tanking, that the yields on long term treasuries are rising despite the Fed rate cuts. These are all signs of weakness and inflation. Do you use artificial intelligence on a daily basis? Like, how do you use? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I use it, you know, you know, yeah. I mean, I'd say every day I use chat, GPG, Grok for for something. I mean, you know, I don't know, you know, how much money it saves me. But and we use it in the business for certain things.
31:49I mean, I think obviously people are starting to use it. I'm not saying that, you know, it's not good. I think there's a lot of potential, a lot of promise there. But it doesn't, again, it doesn't give the government and the Fed a license to create inflation just because they think, oh, well, we're going to get downward pressure on prices from AI. So that gives us carte blanche to create inflation. No, I want sound monetary and fiscal policies. I don't want the government creating inflation. I want sound money. That's what you should want, too. That's what Bitcoiners used to want back when they first started it.
32:28Right. They were they were on board. Right. But but now so many Bitcoiners just want to kiss Trump's ass because the only thing propping up Bitcoin is Donald Trump. So you have to basically, you know, pretend that everything this guy does is great because he could destroy your whole net worth with a single post on on Truth Social. So a couple of things. First is I actually think that the policies being implemented are coming from Stephen Myron. I think that a lot of what's happening here are things that people have been talking about for a long time. And again, I think that folks who don't want to debate the details of the economic policy try to make it political.
33:10That's like the person behind it. But actually, what we have seen is we saw Democrats for 20 years talk about the fact that the trade deficit was a huge problem. We now have the Republicans who are saying that. So regardless of Democrat, Republican, whatever, there are people in Washington, D.C. on both sides of the aisle that know that that's a major problem. The second thing is that Trump implemented a bunch of tariffs in his first term, which whether you liked it or not, he did it. We can now look at it as a case study in terms of what happened. Biden came in and Biden actually extended a number of those, including the tariff on China.
33:41So hold on. The trade deficits were larger when Trump finished his first term than when he began it. So the trade deficits got worse under Trump. And the trade deficits, they're a problem, but they're more of a symptom of an underlying problem that is causing the deficits. I'm not arguing. I'm not arguing. The point I'm trying to make is I don't think that it's a red or blue thing. I actually think that people in Washington, D.C. agree way more on what the problems are. They may disagree on how to solve it, but they understand the trade deficit. They understand the weak or strong dollar. They understand this stuff.
34:18I don't know if they understand it. Well, here's what they're trying to do is the current administration, I think they want to get to a high growth, low inflation environment. Here's what I want you to do. I have a challenge. It's the opposite of that. I have a challenge for you. I think you're the perfect person. We built a product. It's called CFO Sylvia. You should go on there and you attach all of your bank account, your crypto account, your stock account, all that kind of stuff. You put your credit cards. You can put your real estate, cars, all that stuff. And then you can talk to an AI model and you can start asking a question.
34:47You can ask it, you know, hey, how do I save money on my taxes? How do I analyze my portfolio to identify risk? Do all this stuff. I think that you will not only one be blown away by the power of this stuff when it has the context of your own financial life. But the second thing is my guess is that you will actually spend less money on advisors, you know, financial assistants, investment bankers, whatever. And to me, that isn't. It's giving out investment advice. No, it's no. So, for example, if you ask something like, how do I get my tax rate down? It will go and it'll go asset by asset in your portfolio and it will tell you a number of different options that you have.
35:27So it's trying to inform you. You got to go and make the decisions. Right. But it's trying to inform you. If you go and you say to it, you know, hey, take a look at, I don't know, Palantir stock. You know, is that something that I should buy? It will go and it'll look at fundamental analysis, sentiment analysis, technical analysis. But then it will present you. What happens if you ask it if you should buy Bitcoin? What's it going to say? The first thing it says is Peter Schiff has been wrong for 15 years. He should have bought Bitcoin and he would be way richer. Because if it tells me I can try, if it tells me to buy Bitcoin, I know it's a completely worthless program.
35:59All right. It's biased based on whoever wrote it. Speaking of Bitcoin, I want you to take your victory lap. For the last year or so, gold has done very, very well. It's up, you know, 80 plus percent. Bitcoin has not participated in this rally. I've seen you taking your victory lap online, but I figured that I would give you the floor to go ahead and explain why you think gold is taking off and Bitcoin isn't. Well, you know, gold, obviously, we're at a record high as we're speaking. It's just under$5 ,300 an ounce. And, you know, it really broke out two years ago because in January of 2024, it was just below$3 ,000.
36:39So it's gone from$3 ,000 to over$5 ,000. in that period of time. Last year was the best year for gold since 1979. And this year is probably the best January for gold ever. And this may be an even better year than last year. And during that period of time, Bitcoin went down. Bitcoin was down last year. And I don't know, it's about flat this year. But it is not participating in an environment where people are looking for alternatives to the dollar. They're looking for an inflation hedge, a safe haven. It's de-dollarization. This is the exact environment in which Bitcoin was supposed to outshine gold.
37:25The whole selling point of Bitcoin was that it is better than gold. It's a digital version, like high-octane gold 2.0. And if gold goes up, well, Bitcoin will just go up even more. So buy Bitcoin instead of gold. It's going to serve the same purpose, only better. And that narrative was completely destroyed by Bitcoin's failure to rally. And in fact, look at the poster boy of Bitcoin buyers, Michael Saylor and strategy, where he spent over five years accumulating Bitcoin. And this is supposed to be the greatest thing you can do with your money, the greatest asset, the best returns. Just buy nothing but Bitcoin, leverage your life, mortgage your business and your house and throw it all into Bitcoin, according to Michael Saylor.
38:20Well, he's been doing this for over five years and the average cost on his Bitcoin is 76 ,000. And right now, Bitcoin is still below 90 ,000. Was it 89 ,000? Where is it right now? Where's Bitcoin? 90K. Yeah, so 90 ,000, right? He's barely, what is he up? 15%, 16%. That's all he's got to show for five years of nonstop Bitcoin buying. I mean, had he bought gold or silver, he would have way more money right now in micro strategy. They would have had a much better return on that investment. And they could get out of it if they wanted to. Michael Saylor, if he tried to unload that Bitcoin, the market would implode.
39:03he would have a huge loss. The only reason he has a gain is because he hasn't tried to sell. In fact, if he stops buying, I think he'll have a loss. That's why he keeps on buying more Bitcoin, even though a MicroStrategy stock is now trading at a discount to devalue the Bitcoin. What he really should be doing is selling Bitcoin and buying back his stock, but he can't do that. So he keeps doing the opposite to destroy more shareholder value. So the point is, if Bitcoin couldn't go up when it had everything going for it, it ain't going to go up. It's going down. And I have always said that the best thing that Bitcoin had going for it from a PR perspective was gold's failure to go up.
39:49Gold was stuck in a range for almost all of Bitcoin's existence. Gold, before Bitcoin came on the scene, gold went from under 300 to 1900, right? Huge one, Six tax gains. Bitcoin shows up during a period of time where 12, 13 years gold traded sideways in a range. And that was very frustrating for a lot of gold buyers that weren't getting the immediate, you know, you know, reward and the gratification of of seeing the gold that they own or silver go up. and Bitcoin was saying, or Bitcoin promoters, look, gold and silver are not going up because they're no longer the hedge because now we got Bitcoin.
40:32Bitcoin has replaced gold. It's the new gold. It's gold 2.0. And look, it's going up. Look at how much it's going up. People are getting rich in Bitcoin and you're just going, staying poor, owning gold and silver. And so that was great marketing for Bitcoin. But now that gold and silver are performing, and that they're going up almost every day, right? And Bitcoin is the one that's going sideways. It's hard to make the argument now that people should sell their gold and silver to buy Bitcoin, or that people should not buy gold and silver and they should buy Bitcoin instead when Bitcoin is the one that's going sideways and gold and silver are going up.
41:14In fact, if you go to the peak of the prior cycle, which was November 2021, Bitcoin is more than 50 % lower priced in gold than that peak. And that is a significant decline. That's despite all of the Bitcoin ETFs that were launched, despite the election of Donald Trump and the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. And despite, you know, Michael Saylor's buying and all of the copycat, you know, you know, crypto companies that have come on the scene to buy crypto and all the other crazes that have come and El Salvador buying Bitcoin. All that hype, Super Bowl commercials, celebrity endorsements, all of that.
41:57And gold, you know, is or Bitcoin is down 50 percent relative to gold. So, I mean, that really shows that, you know, that this thing is over. You know, the money has already been made in Bitcoin. And now the key is, you know, who's going to get out and who's going to be stuck holding the bag? Do you own any Bitcoin? No. All right. I mean, I have a little teeny bit that was gifted to me for my strategic reserve. Oh, so you do have some Bitcoin. You finally capitulated. No, I didn't buy any. I got it for free. What is that? Doesn't count. Well, if you don't sell it, that's an active decision to hold it.
42:32No, because I told the people that if they put Bitcoin into my reserve, I would not sell it because I'm not going to ask people to give me money and then use it. But I said, look, I'm going to set up this strategic reserve just as an example. And if you want to fund it, then go ahead. I'm not going to use it. I'm not going to take advantage of the fact that you gave me some Bitcoin and sell it and go out to dinner or something. So I made a commitment. If somebody gives me Bitcoin, I'm going down with the ship. I'm just going to hold it till it's worthless. But if I was you, you know what I'd be saying?
43:07Do you know what the five-year return of Bitcoin is and the five-year return of gold? Well, it could be pretty good right now because Bitcoin went from 69 ,000 down to 15 ,000, right? Had a big drop. And so if you're going to measure it from below point. No, no, no, no. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you. Bitcoin's return over the last five years as of today is 160%. What is it over four years? What is it over four years? Hold on. Gold's five-year return as of today is 186%. So gold is outperforming Bitcoin over the last five years. But what about four years though? It's probably even greater and three years and two years in one year.
43:44I'm just on Google finance. So, you know, yeah, I mean, but five years, because what happened to Bitcoin is Bitcoin had a big drop and then a big rally. So if you start measuring it kind of at the low point, it yields a big return. But, you know, if you measure it before that big drop, you know, so the timeframes can influence it. But what's I think more relevant is what did Bitcoin do last year? What did it do? How are returns the most recent time period that you have? And Bitcoin has been lousy. I agree. And in fact, for most people, for most people, right? Bitcoin has not been a good investment.
44:27For the people who got in very early, it's the best investment they've ever made. No question about it. I mean, I know people, I know many of them who have, high net worths, half a billion to a couple of billion. I know a bunch of these guys and they own their net worths to Bitcoin, Ethereum, stuff like that. Because they got in really, really early. Okay, great, fantastic. They hit the lottery with crypto. But the majority of people who made that wealth possible by bidding up the price of Bitcoin, who got into the Bitcoin in the last three, four, five years, they haven't made a lot of money. A lot of them have lost money.
45:10So it really hasn't been a good investment for the majority of people. For some people, it's been an investment of a lifetime, right? But for the vast majority, that's not the case. And a lot of people still don't realize how much money they've lost in Bitcoin because they haven't sold it yet. And they're just looking at the current value and they think they have money that they've gained, but they haven't really gained anything because by the time they go to sell it, it's going to be a fraction of its current price. What are you excited about in this year? And how are you positioning in your portfolio?
45:45Now that I beat you up about the economy and ran circles around you, now tell us what you're doing in your portfolio. Well, I'm not really doing much to my portfolio. It's the same portfolio I had a year or two ago. It's just a lot bigger, as far as the number on the statement. But what I have been doing personally is I haven't been buying much in miners right now because I'm so heavily weighted. There was a recent correction a few months ago where I actually added. I mean, you know, every time I've been able to add to my miners, I'm kind of surprised because I didn't expect the pullback that I got.
46:23And so I bought some more. But based on what's happened recently, I've been focusing on emerging markets. I really increased my energy exposure because I'm trying to diversify more away from the gold and silver mining stocks that are so dominant in my portfolio. And that I expect to continue to outperform everything else that I own. But I'm obviously I'm cautious by nature. And so I want to have some other assets in my portfolio. But, you know, if someone were to come to me today from scratch is, hey, I don't even have any stocks at all. I've just got, you know, I just got cash or I got crypto.
47:06Right. Well, what should I do? The first stocks I would probably buy them. I say we've got to get these mining stocks, you know, because there's so much potential and they're so cheap. You know that that that's the thing. Yeah. The price has gone up a lot. But the value of the underlying business has gone up more than the price of the business, which is like the opposite of what happens during a bubble where the price far exceeds the value of the business. And you have these rising PEs, right? People are paying more and more money to buy a dollar of earnings. But today you could buy a dollar of earnings from a gold stock a lot cheaper than you could buy it a year ago.
47:45And that's, again, because the markets don't believe what's happening. And not only don't they believe it, they don't understand it. I understand exactly what's happening because I've been waiting for it. I've known about this for years. And what's happening is exactly what I said was going to happen for the exact reasons that I knew it was going to happen. I hope that your portfolio continues to go up. I think that if you become a billionaire, which I know you're getting closer to, I'd be really happy for you. You know, you've been completely wrong about Bitcoin, but gold has done well as well.
48:21And I think that it's important that although we may disagree on the exact details, there is an element to me of Bitcoin and gold, they're brothers in arms in the sound money fight. but i do think that right now um you know you may be missing a little bit in terms of what's happening in the economy i don't give a shit who's sitting in uh in the white house all i care about is if we can get a high growth low inflation economy we can grow our way out of some of these problems that would be yeah but we're not going to get that we're going to get a low growth high inflation economy that that's where that's what we're going to have that's that that's what i think that the difference of our viewpoint is and so look the beauty of this is we're going to keep doing this for the next couple of years.
49:02And then at some point in the future, we'll have a definitive answer. But so far, the data that we're getting suggests I'm right and you're not. Let me ask you a question. If you're so optimistic on the economy, if we're going to have all this growth, there's going to be no inflation, why buy Bitcoin? This is a great question. I actually think this is one of the biggest risks to Bitcoin in the short term that a lot of the Bitcoiners don't talk about is if we do not have high inflation, then a very big portion of the argument for Bitcoin would not be there. Now, there's still reasons why you would want to buy Bitcoin in terms of it will still store value over a long period of time.
49:40There's censorship. But why do you need to store value if there's not going to be any inflation? I mean, why not, you know, why not earn interest and own treasuries, for example? Well, I think that there's a lot of people. That's what they are doing right now. The Bitcoiners, but I think just people in general are saying, wait a second, that there's not going to be this inflation. Now, I think that over the long run is very different than over the short run. And as you mentioned earlier, there's obviously a very rapid changing economic policy given who's in the White House in terms of what their approach is.
50:09And I have no doubt that when this administration leaves, the next administration is going to come in, they're going to roll back some of this stuff, there's going to be changes, et cetera. So I don't think - Yeah, if everything is as good as you think, right? If everything is great, the next president should be like J.D. Vance, who's going to continue these policies that you think are so good, right? Because the reason that we might have a different administration is because the economy is so weak and inflation is so high that the Republicans get kicked out and the voters go for a Democrat, right?
50:38Because it's about change, right? So if the next election is about continuing the policies that have been so productive, then we get more Trump. We get more, you know, we get a continuation of what we're doing. The only reason that we would have a switch is if what we're doing now doesn't work. If the economy is not good, if inflation is not low. Right. So I agree. Yeah. And so if you're saying, well, I want to buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin would be, well, because I want to own Bitcoin in case I'm wrong. And it turns out that we have a lot of inflation and a weak economy. But if you're right. I think there's also an element of – there's other reasons why somebody who holds Bitcoin today may not sell it and go do something else, right?
51:30So, for example, I still am a believer that Bitcoin is going to do well because I think that for the same reason that central banks are buying gold, I don't think central banks are buying gold because of inflation. I think that central banks are buying gold because they see the view of de-dollarization and de-fiat currency process. Right, but they're not buying Bitcoin. What makes you think they're going to buy Bitcoin in the future? Well, some of them are. and I believe that that will continue. Which central banks are buying Bitcoin? Well, if you look at, let's take a second, El Salvador, they don't have a true central bank.
51:59El Salvador doesn't count. I mean, I'm actually going to El Salvador tomorrow. Have you been there? Are you? Yeah, I'm going tomorrow. I'm talking at the Tether conference. Well, I'm doing a debate with Seifedean, gold versus Bitcoin. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, have you been there? Should I come to the conference? Yeah, why not? Why not come? and we go back, we come back to Puerto Rico on Sunday. I got another seat in my plane. Hop on board. I won't charge you. All right. Well, yeah, I mean, you can come here to Puerto Rico. Gold's up so much. Gold's up so much. Now listen, gold's up so much.
52:34I mean, you should just be giving out free flights to anyone who wants to use the plane. No, I don't, I only have, look, I don't, I don't have, I don't have that big a plane. You know, I'm not, you know, not yet. The gold's up. Oh, you only got a helicopter. Only a couple, you only got four seats in there. All right. I appreciate it very much. Listen, I got it. Where can we send people to see your stuff? Where do you want people to go? Well, you know, I do my podcast. I'm doing a podcast. You know, we got the Fed decision later today and the press conference. So I'm doing a podcast tonight to discuss that at shiftradio.com and on my YouTube channel.
53:10So check that out. For people who want to get in on gold and silver, especially silver, because I think we're going to be running out of silver. I've already seen some of the smaller dealers run it out of inventory. It's getting harder to get the physical silver. So I think the premiums are really going to start to go up. So not just the silver is going to be more expensive, but to actually get one of the coins or bars, it's going to be more expensive. So we got them now. So you go to shiftgold.com and get some gold and silver. And, you know, for the people who like crypto and, you know, I did that debate with CZ and I talked about tokenized gold and T-gold.
53:48we're going to be rolling out a gold gold-backed token, which is the best stablecoin there is. Forget about tokenized dollars. What good is that? Tokenized gold, that's the real deal. That does everything that Bitcoin promised to do but can't. So if you want to get yourself some gold and silver that you could ultimately withdraw on a token and hold it in your wallet right next to your Bitcoin, then you can go to tgold.com and sign up for an account. And if you want to get in on the gold and silver mining stocks, which I think is your best speculative play right now, I think the risk reward in the mining stocks is so much greater than it is with Bitcoin.
54:29I mean, even if Bitcoin is going to go up, it isn't going to go up as much as these mining stocks. And I think the downside risk is much greater in Bitcoin than in a portfolio of mining stocks. So if you're really, you know, if you're looking to go to the moon, I think you're going to get there in the mining stocks. My gold fund, which has a lot of juniors in it, which I think are going to really outperform this year, the no-load symbol is EPGIX. And you can buy that at any discount broker, EPGIX. You can get information on all my funds at your Pacific Asset Management, yourpac.com website. In fact, my dividend payer fund was the best performing fund tracked by Morningstar last year out of 350 funds or so.
55:11It was up about 62 % last year. It's already up 12 % this year. And, you know, it's still January, you know, so it's running circles around the S &P 500. And this is, you know, this is not even a gold fund. This is dividend paying foreign stocks. This is about getting out of U.S. assets and into foreign assets. So, you know, and we have separately managed accounts as well. So if you're a larger investor and you don't want to be in one of my mutual funds, you have an account directly with my asset management company and we'll manage a portfolio for you in these foreign dividend paying stocks. Or if you want a portfolio of gold and silver mining stocks, you know, we're doing that too.
55:51So you can get information there on europac.com. And again, remember, follow me on social media. I just moved up to just over 1.3 million followers. I'm still not up in your numbers there, Anthony, but I got, I got hopefully this, uh, um, interview I just did with, uh, Tucker Carlson will help. He just, he, my Tucker interviewed the first part of it anyway, hopefully, you know, there's cause he, he aired about half the interview, but, uh, the first part is up on Tucker's, uh, uh, X channel. Uh, and he's got about 17 million followers. So hopefully some of those followers start following me, but you should follow me on, uh, on social media and And also check out my free newsletter at shiftsovereign.com.
56:32We're putting out a lot of excellent content there as well. Peter, this is like, I said, where are you going to send people? You just sent out to like the whole internet. You're just like, go to google.com. Jesus. Oh my God. All right. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. As much as I think - There's a lot there, you know. Yeah. Well, listen, you're a smart guy, you know, very successful, very rich. Been right about gold last year or so. So listen, I think that we should keep doing this. We'll find time maybe every - So are you going to - Are you coming? to El Salvador? Let me think about it.
57:01I'll message you after. You got to hurry up. The conference starts on Friday. So I'm coming down on Thursday. Peter, I know that in the gold world, you guys are real slow to like horse and buggy stuff. In the Bitcoin world, we make decisions and we move, man. It just happens. Yeah, but you can't transport yourself down there on a blockchain. You actually have to physically get in a plane, fly down there. Well, now that I got your supersonic jet at my disposal, then I'll be there in a jiffy. All right, bye. All right, take care. I promised you we were going to get into a heated debate. I promised you that we're still friends.
57:33I got a love for this man. He's wrong about Bitcoin, but he's been right about gold. So he's one for one. Say and have I. That means that him and I, we are simpatico. I appreciate you guys watching. Please make sure that you subscribe to the channel on YouTube and I'll see you guys live tomorrow from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.
From the publisher
If it feels like gold and other precious metals are setting new all-time highs every single day, it's because they mostly are. They are on a generational run, so of course, I had to bring Peter Schiff on the show to do a victory lap. Peter is here to explain this generational move, why there's no top in sight, what else he's bullish on (spoiler: mining stocks), and yes, the underperformance of Bitcoin. This is a fun (and sometimes heated) convo, but Peter always brings it when I talk with him!
Listen to From the Desk of Anthony Pompliano on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-the-desk-of-anthony-pompliano/id1819778503
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1THAGnR1Xt1WDUn1CCTh1D
Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at:
http://pompletter.com
Join 600K+ subscribers on my main channel: https://pompyoutube.com/
Follow Pomp on social media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/APompliano
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pompglobal/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypompliano/
#AnthonyPompliano #FromtheDesk #marketnews
