Gold, Money and the Myth of Wealth | Dominic Frisby

0:04Trevor Hall: All right, everybody. It's a great pleasure. We are going to start concluding our coverage here of LME Week in London. And we are going to talk, well, with the gentleman who actually wrote a book on gold, Mr. Dominic Frisby. Dominic, thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I know it's not easy to get around the city, especially during rush hour, 4.30 in the afternoon. So real grateful for your time. Oh, don't be silly. Pleasure. I'm surprised you weren't down with the other lads having a pint or two before you came up. Well, I'm a new man, Trevor.

0:37I drink very little these days, so yeah.

0:40Trevor Hall: Unlike the gentleman down and down. Well, I think it's a metals trading thing. It's a heavy drinking business. It very much is. All right. Listen, you've spent two decades writing about gold, money, markets. It's, you have strong standing perceptions of where we're at in this currency regime right now, global currency regime. But this book here, The Secret History of Gold, fantastic book, by the way. Thank you. Why did you decide, it published last year, right? Published in the UK last August, and it came out in the US in the spring, I think. This is a US, the US copy. It is. The English one is white, and this one is black.

1:22That's right. Why write this book now? Well, I've written several books. One was about Bitcoin. One was called Life After the State. So I guess I'll let you work out what that one was about. And the other was about taxes. And it was just the obvious next thing to write a book about. And I do a show, well, I used to, but they've cancelled the room now. But I used to do a show every year in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Festival, which was a lecture. I called it a lecture with funny bits about a subject. and it would start as a lecture and then it was basically a way of generating material and then I'd turn it into a book or a film or something and so one of the lectures became a film and another of the lectures became my tax book and I did a lecture a few years ago about gold and it was obvious straight away that it would make a very good book and it was a very well attended lecture so gold's a kind of sexy subject people like gold and I've been writing about it for so long was an obvious thing to write a book about it.

2:21I should sort of say that there's three functions to money, to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. And gold has always been a great store of value, even when we came off the gold stand and it was no longer official money, gold's always been a brilliant store of value. And that role has never stopped. it was never so much a medium of exchange on a day-to-day basis you wouldn't go and buy your newspaper with gold you'd buy it with copper or you know silver was obviously the day-to-day medium of exchange and the words silver and money are interchangeable in a million different languages um but it's you know if i was buying a house or a racehorse or something like that you know you might use gold and in fact you would you would use gold to buy a racehorse you use guineas And that's why we have this relationship between guineas and racing even today.

3:19But where I think gold's role is really important today is as a unit of account. And it's kind of the most overlooked side of money. Why do we need a unit of account? And of course, we use dollars and euros and pounds as our unit of account because that's the money that we are obliged to account in for tax purposes. but the actual unit is changing by seven eight percent a year because of money supply growth and you know central banks have their ways of measuring inflation which a whole other subject but the unit is not constant and if you are trying to get to the truth of something which is the purpose of accounting it's really important that the unit is constant and so we see this because today's dollars are not the same as, you know, dollars even 15 or 20 years ago.

4:13They just don't buy you as much. And so you then have to use inflation adjusted dollars.

4:18Trevor Hall: I was going to say, we're always adjusting for inflation. And then nobody quite knows what inflation is and blah, blah, blah. So you just get a much quicker story if you use gold. And one of the things I'm sure you know from reading the book is that gold was around before the earth was formed. It was around before the solar system has formed. And in all that time, it has never changed. It is constant. It doesn't tarnish, it doesn't rust, it doesn't corrode, none of these things. It is just exactly the same. And in fact, if you look at new mine supply and population growth, the two grow at exactly the same rate.

4:54So, you know, if the population grows at 2 % a year, which is roughly what it does. And gold grows at a little bit less than 2 % a year. So there's as much gold now per capita as there was 100 years ago, as there was 500 years ago. Actually, there's a tiny bit more per capita because the gold rush has increased global supply, but it's so marginal. So straight away, you've just got a much better unit of account. But then as soon as you start measuring economies in using gold, you look at the S &P adjusted for gold since whenever, 2000, you go, well, actually, the S &P hasn't gone up that much. If you've got house prices and you measure them in gold, you're like, house prices are the same as they were in the 1950s.

5:37If you look at wages, everyone goes, well, it doesn't matter that the money supply, the inflation is up because wages have gone up. And then you look at wages measured in gold, and they're the lowest they've ever been and since, you know, we came off the gold standard, 1971. So it tells you a completely different story and it tells, it's also, it might be the truth, but it's an inconvenient truth because governments like to turn around and go, look at our GDP, it's, in the case of Britain, it's three trillion pounds or in the case of America, I don't even know what American GDP is. But if you measure GDP in gold, it doesn't go up every year, it goes down.

6:14So that's, I don't know, what the point of all that was. But, you know, it's a wonderful unit of account.

6:19Trevor Hall: Well, I think that's a perfect, you know, segue. About the first part of the book really is, it's a gold story unlike anything I had read before because, you know, it's not your typical financial gold book. There's a lot of what you just described in the first part of the book about, you know, the relative nature of account of what this metal has actually meant over time. But then you also mix in, you know, a lot of myths and stories and how gold has just been a part of our history since the beginning. It's always been a part of us. Like we as a people change, but gold really has always played some sort of intricate role throughout that evolution, right?

7:01Trevor Hall: And I think it was just, it was almost refreshing to read a book about gold that didn't have specific financial attributes. boots. Like there was a little mystery, you know, behind the whole thing. Well, thank you. And there is a bit of financial stuff later on in the book when I, you know, look at relative prices and so on. But it's, there's a lot of books about we should go back to a gold standard and a gold standard is inevitable and gold is going to be money once again. And I'm a bit more nuanced than that. I have a lot of sympathy with that worldview and I keep looking at government debt and money printing and so on.

7:35And I go, how long can this go on for? And, but I was saying that in 2008. And the answer is a lot longer than you think. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't just because the system isn't necessarily going to collapse doesn't mean you shouldn't own gold. I just think everyone should. But yeah, gold is, you know, I've already said how old it is. But I actually think human beings have an instinct for gold. And, you know, you can do the thing. You could take a lump of gold to any society at any point in history, anywhere in the world, and they just understood that this gold has value. It's precious.

8:17And it really is a universal kind of money. And I think this goes all the way back to the fact, goes back to maybe a couple of things, and I'm sure an anthropologist would rip me to bits for saying this, but I would defend the argument even so. So gold was the very first metal that human beings used. Now, if you ask Google, what metal did human beings first use? It'll go, oh, there are examples of copper tools dating back to ancient Mesopotamia 6 ,000 years ago, whatever. And there are those copper tools. But there are fragments of gold in Paleolithic Spanish caves that date back 50 ,000 years.

8:57this is before the beginning of civilization before ancient mesopotamia this is we're talking about the stone age here and yet the common criticism of gold is that it has no use well how can it be the first metal that human beings used if it has no use and it does have a use just because it you know we could make gold teaspoons but it's probably not the most economical you know you're better off using stainless steel it's cheaper and it does the job just as well so that's why we use stainless steel rather than gold for our teaspoons unless we're you know extraordinarily rich but what did we use that gold for exactly the same thing i'm using it for now sorry i clunked my microphone but we wore it we used it and i might if you if you did something really good okay here trevor here's a bit of gold well done we'd give it out as a reward as a prize um i might have given you a bit of gold in exchange for your you know stone age microphone or whatever it is we used it as a as a tool of barter in other words so we were using it as money even before we could speak even before we had a word of word for money we were using it and we found gold alluvial gold gold nuggets in riverbeds as we hunted and gathered and we saw those little bits of gold shining and we were captivated by them so we wore them in the same way that we wore shells and other precious stones and this predates the use of copper we might have worn copper as a bit of jewelry but it wouldn't have been as nice as the gold but it predates the use of copper as a tool by tens of thousands of years and there's an anthropological thing that we find what is good for us beautiful so for example if we see a snake you know or a spider or a loud noise or a sheer drop we freeze up we panic whereas if we see a beautiful open landscape with trees and a bit of nature and some water and perhaps some mountains in the distance where we can take refuge and something we can use as a shelter.

11:16We're instantly attracted by that landscape. And that landscape is like a picture card, postcard landscape that is exchanged even in societies which don't have that landscape. They still exchange pictures of that landscape. And how many, you know, artists have drawn that landscape over the years? And it's basically the Pleistocene landscape which human beings came down from the mountains into and survived and thrived on. We find that beautiful because it's good for us. We find the sound of running water beautiful because it's good for us. And similarly, we find gold beautiful. And so that's why I say we have an instinct for gold.

12:01And it is wealth in its purest, most distilled, most natural form. That is gold, pure wealth. And as such, it has motivated human beings to do the most incredible things. Terrible things.

12:24Trevor Hall: I was going to say the heinous things. But also wonderful things. We've explored new places. we've gone to new frontiers, we've taken risks, we've invented things, we have innovated, all to get gold. We've also killed each other and done despicable things, but it's all to get gold. And so in the book, I describe it as, you know, after maybe hunger and sex, the need to reproduce, it is the single greatest motivator of human action. So I wanted to ask you throughout your research and write through the process of writing this book, you did a great job of like describing how gold was a center focus for rise and fall of civilizations and the falls on the heat.

13:11Trevor Hall: Like that'd be one of the heinous stories that comes about the history of gold, right? Did anything you find in the writing really ever challenge your own assumptions about the metal that you've studied and felt certainty about with the metal? Anything that really caught you off guard in your research? That's an interesting question and not one I've been asked before. I tend to find that when I'm researching something, I often have the conclusion that I want and then let the research all back up that conclusion. But there were lots of discoveries that I made about gold And that last point about gold being a motivator of human action was not something I'd previously thought about.

13:59But then I looked at, you know, how it drove the, you know, the reason Columbus went to the Americas was gold. You know, he was looking for Solomon's gold. He was looking in the wrong place, but that's what he was looking for. And he was like an early prospector. He came back and he had to come back with the message, there's gold, but it's just that bit further on. You know, it's in the next, we just need to drill some more. uh but you know because he didn't actually find it but he had to come back and tell his investors there's more gold and so that they carry on funding it and so he had to keep making that promise of gold um i the all the stories about the nazi gold that i mean they're just so gripping and they're captive i mean i could have written a whole book about well there have been books written about nazi gold and we had to my editor was like no no you got to cut that you got to cut that so we had to cut that back yeah quite back quite a bit but i think um i suppose the biggest assumption is this and it's something i've always questioned is this a lot of people say it is inevitable that we go back to a gold standard they say it's inevitable and one thing i did is I looked at gold standards and while I feel it is inevitable that gold will retain its value as a store of wealth and it will always be used as a store of wealth in fact that never went away I don't think necessarily we're going to use it as a medium of exchange anymore in the way that we once did and there's this sort of romanticism of the gold standard but what made me question that is just how flawed the gold standards of the 20th century were now until 1914 we use in UK gold sovereigns was the pound coin now takes about 800 pound coins to buy the old pound coin and in America you had your dollars your gold dollars and one thing I realized is that why did we stop using silver as money and that was a direct consequence of the gold rushes they suddenly increased the amount of gold in supply and that enabled us and and and silver having silver and gold was had been problematic for leader after leader is a big problem that Isaac Newton failed to solve.

16:33And the silver and gold thing was, you know, the cause of William Jennings Bryan and all that Democrat stuff and the Wizard of Oz. It was the sort of underlying theme of the Wizard of Oz and all of that. But the amount of gold found in the gold rushes enabled governments to stop using silver. So in 1850, every single country in the world was on a gold and silver standard except the UK and Portugal. And the UK and Portugal were only off, were on pure gold standards only because of all the brazilian gold that had been found and that increased supply went to portugal and then portugal bought british goods off it so it all came to the uk by 1900 only china was the only major nation on a bimetallic standard so every other nation in the world had abandoned silver and then of course 1914 came along world war one and the major european nations abandoned gold altogether and we were using but we were always using gold and silver coins so they gold played a direct it wasn't that we were on a gold standard so to speak but gold was actually in the money yes there was paper gold that people exchanged but it was gold and silver coins were in the day-to-day money and then after 19 even though britain went back on the gold standard 1925 and other european nations quickly followed there was no gold in circulation we'd withdrawn all the sovereigns from circulation we didn't mint any new coins and if you wanted to redeem your paper for gold you only could if you were a major institution or you know another nation or something at the bank of england ordinary civilians couldn't so it was a nominal gold standard, but there was no, we weren't actually using gold.

18:17And then of course, America did its thing in 1933, where it made it illegal for American citizens to own gold, confiscated all their gold and, you know, revalued the dollar as we all know. So the same thing happened in America, even though America nominally was still on a gold standard, US citizens couldn't actually handle gold and there was no gold in circulation. So the whole thing was completely bogus. So even though it eventually unraveled in 1971 it had really been unraveling since 1914 right right and it was a much longer process and everyone uses 1971 as a cutoff date but actually the whole gold standards of the 20th century were bogus and so this argument that we have you know there's the romanticizing of the gold standards of the 20th century i didn't realize until writing the book, that was an assumption that was undermined to answer your question.

19:13But the romanticism of those gold standards is misplaced, in my opinion, because those gold standards were bogus. The romanticism of the 19th century, sound money, different thing. But we're not going back to that, the 19th century, for the simple reason that we don't use physical gold and silver anymore. right right we don't money is digital now and so you could have gold in a vault somewhere and the ownership of that gold changes hands with each transaction but like the old gold money model great model but at that point you're relying on a trusted third party and the point about gold is it's nobody else's liability there are no trusted third parties i give you the gold you got the gold.

20:02You give it me, I've got it. It's money in and of itself. And as soon as you put trusted third parties on top of the thing, it makes it vulnerable. So some kind of gold standard might work for a bit to reset the monetary system, blah, blah, blah. But more likely is they simply just revalue gold outputs.

20:20Trevor Hall: There continues to be, I would say, a small portion of, I guess, the quote-unquote gold bug sector that still has kind of that virtue signal on what is anticipated just exactly what you are skeptical about what you just described here and i actually kept on thinking about that in the part of the book which i think was i don't it was probably my favorite part because it made me stop and think a lot and that was the story about king midas and everything He touched, turned to gold, which sounds beautiful at first, but quickly obviously turns into a curse. Right. But I kept on thinking about that, especially back last year when gold was making this unprecedented rise.

21:06Trevor Hall: And us in the gold industry, you know, we're pounding our chest and things were so good until, you know, we had a 10 % down day in the silver market in late January, early February. you know but that was the curse we we reap what we sow you know that type of thing and so it was just kind of i think that was an interesting parallel in in kind of my own sick way but when gold's making an all-time high it's hard not to put that emotion that virtue in front of everybody and say like i told you i know i told you but that should be our one signal like we should stop getting ahead of ourselves and maybe think about not being like that because we want somebody does in another sector we're as quickly enough to point it out as a contrarian right so i don't and i don't know if there's a question in there but more or less my own observation that was where my own mind was going when i was reading about king midas well yeah the midas story is a classic case of be careful what you wish for right um and uh i love the fact that it was the the the gold from Midas that led to the first coins.

22:20The first gold coins were minted by the Lydians, King Aliates and then Croesus, but they were minted from the gold that had gone from Midas's hands into the beds of the river Pactolos in what was Asia Minor. So I love the fact that coinage began with Midas. And I love the way that myths and the psychology around gold, that just weaved into our psyche. But to come back to your point about crowing, and it is easy to crow. And I think it's easy when it's nice being right. You know, sometimes you go, you got to buy gold, you got to buy mining companies, you got to do this. And everyone's going, yeah, shut up.

23:09And then it comes right. And it's easy to go, I told you, you should have listened to me. You should have subscribed to my newsletter, whatever. And I think a little bit of that is justified if people have gone, you're wrong, you're stupid, da-da-da-da. And so a little bit of that is justified. But it is obnoxious at the same time, and it's alienating. And I think this exact thing that you've described is one of the reasons why Bitcoin and gold bugs do not get on. and why they don't like each other. And to me, that's a great shame because we're basically, they're both forms of non-government money.

23:56And they're both ways by which you can restrict, you know, if we were on a gold standard or on a Bitcoin standard, they would both be ways by which you could keep government limited and stop the endless bloating. And to that extent, you know, They favor those who have the worldview of small government, limited government, low taxes, all that kind of libertarian-y stuff, which is me. But because of that, Bitcoin and gold should be on the same team. But the problem was Bitcoin came along in, well, it was invented in 2009, but people didn't really start finding out about it until 2011, 2012, 2013, that kind of time.

24:40at which point gold had just gone into one of the most you know when gold hit 1920 an ounce on the greek debt crisis september 2011 you know it looked like it would just been such a rampant bull market it looked like some kind of return to gold as money was inevitable and we were like oh my mining car you felt so rich and then just suddenly it went down and it kind of went down to about 1600 and went sideways for a year but it's only when 2013 got started that the miners got absolutely crucified and you know many of them just disappeared altogether and people didn't lose 90 of their investment they lost 100 of their investment and you know even top you know well run producing mining companies went down by 90 in that time and the and gold itself went from 1920 20 all the way back to 1050 um i think it was december 2015 month was the low and it was brutal it was brutal and you went from we're going to a gold standard to being having your portfolio absolutely annihilated meanwhile bitcoin was coming along and everyone was going we got this amazing new digital technology it's going to change the world we're going to go back onto a Bitcoin standard.

25:57It's Bitcoin sold this. Bitcoin sold that. It's going to, you know, if the dollar's going to collapse, you have to own Bitcoin. And it was all the same stories that the gold people had been saying. And yet gold was going out. So it's very difficult for the gold bucks to suddenly roll into, to buy this story again, because the story just unraveled. And meanwhile, Bitcoin would, you know, go up 10 times in a year, and then it would correct, and then it would go up you know a hundred times and and it did all the things that silver was supposed to do and hadn't and you know so many people got so rich off the back of bitcoin and they couldn't stop crowing and they were all young on the internet memes blah blah blah laser eyes let all that that came later but but you know it was it's it's great if you're winning and you're celebrating and partying and you know that there's no one promotes an investment as well as somebody who's invested in that investment so you know all the bitcoin is it's once you own bitcoin you become a promoter of bitcoin once you own gold you become a promoter of gold if i buy um shares in xyz minor then i start becoming a champion of xyz minor it's just inevitable your shareholders are often your best promoters and but so everyone's crowing about bitcoin and it to the gold bugs it was just like, ah, get these people away.

27:18And I think that crowing, which is exactly what you described, is what created this animosity between, because the Bitcoiners were going, ah, look at you, you stupid old boomer with your stupid old gold. And then when gold had its day in the sun last year, all the gold banks were like, you stupid Bitcoiners, look at you. And it's like, just own both.

27:36Trevor Hall: In hindsight, all hindsight is always 20-20. The moral question to ask in conclusion of these cycles is not confusing the accumulation of monetary wealth, whether it be through gold or Bitcoin, with genuine prosperity. And when you're making money and you feel rich, you feel like you're prospering. But if you remove the wealth, you could have healthy family, roof over your head, food in front of you, not a problem in the world, but you don't feel the prosperity unless your wealth is, you know, your monetary wealth is accumulating. And much like Midas himself, he realized that everything turning into gold wasn't, didn't, didn't make him happy.

28:30Trevor Hall: No. You know, and so, you know, it's like one of the greatest assets you and I have is not Bitcoin, it's not gold, it's time. Right. And so just, where are we at in this cycle? We sit here today. And we have this incredible urge to continue to accumulate monetary wealth and whatever means necessary. But really what we should be asking is how do we keep our own selves prosperous without the numbers on the screen? Well, yes. And, and, you know, every, I'm sure if you said to Warren Buffett, you can have your time back, but it's going to cost you your fortune he'd go okay probably would and uh uh you know time ultimately is more valuable and um i just see my kids you know in their late teens early 20s and i just think you're sometimes i look at them and go you don't know how valuable you're wasting your time guys you know time is is a precious thing and i used to have this graph on the wall of my uh we used to my kids and I, we used to paint pictures and put pictures up on the wall of the kitchen.

29:43And, um, I had this graph of time and on one side of the graph was, uh, your age. And on the other side of the graph was time. Is that right? So long since I did it now, but the idea was, is that time is on a logarithmic scale so you know your your first 10 years you know how logarithmic charts look and the first 10 years is like that and the next 10 years is like that a little bit smaller and then you know as you get into your 50s and 60s they just fly by without you even noticing time goes quicker as you get older besides the same time because we all measure time with minutes and hours and so on it just goes quicker yeah especially when you have children well every you know i can't i'm now i can't i'm 57 now and i'll be 60 before i know it and i'm like i'll be whatever happened to my 50s you know just so fast so time is on a lot and it is that most precious and you don't you know the great um it's it's gandalf says it in lord of the rings but Tolkien didn't actually write it Peter Jackson wrote it is it is it's I'm going to misquote it now but it's it's what we do you can't basically you can't help when you're born it is what you do with the time that is given to us that matters so I have a lot of sympathy with all of that but at the same time why have human beings since forever relentlessly pursued wealth and I think it's because they know wealth yes there are morals and all these guys Pizarro uh you know all these guys who made fortunes with great Jason as in Jason the Argonauts all these guys who made fortunes it ended badly for all of them there's a common thing with these prospectors who find the bonanza discovering get incredibly rich their life ends badly even Elon John Musk, richest man in the world, and he freely admits this, so I'm not sort of slagging him off in any way by saying this, that, you know, he spends, allocates so much time to his work, and he famously sleeps at work so that he can work harder, but his family life suffers as a result, and that's why he has lots of wives and so on, and, you know, I'm the same, I'm a, you know my marriage didn't survive so you know all these things are in balance but if you take the same guy just exactly the same person with the same genes and the same iq exact same look same everything and you have the rich successful version of that guy he will be he will live longer than the poor version of that guy.

32:35His skin will glow more. He will be healthier. He will probably be better looking, even though it's exactly the same guy because of all the confidence and everything which comes. And I guess, so I guess like all of these things, there's a balance. But there is a reason why people chase wealth. And life is easier when you've got money. you don't have to have elon musk billions but you also don't want to be a beggar on the street you but you need you you need plenty of money put it that way yeah do you do you find it

33:15Trevor Hall: more challenging to create wealth now than it was you know 20 30 years ago or is it easier um i was probably more cautious when i was younger i'm in my 50s and there's a thing men make their best investment decisions when they're in their 50s apparently that's the point in their life i've made a lot of stupid decisions i'm in my 40s so you didn't tell me it gets better i i made it i've made a ton of bad ones and i've made bad ones in my 50s um i'm a more adventurous with my money now. But I always, you know, I've made decent money over the years, but I always reinvest it in myself. And I have, you know, I'm very ambitious as a comedian.

34:00I'm very ambitious writing songs. I'm very ambitious with the film that I'm currently working on. And I'm quite happy to take money that I've made. Now, you'd like the BBC is never going to commission me to write a TV series, but I would like to write a TV series. The BBC is never going to, you know, whoever it is, Channel 4 films are never going to commission me to write a film, but I would like to write a film. And I'm like, I'm not going to let those people or the lack of commissioning from those people stand in my way. If I want to make a film, I'll go and make the film. So I need the capital to raise the film.

34:34So I'm quite happy to, when I make money on one thing, to just throw it at the other thing. And sometimes it recoups and sometimes it doesn't. I don't care because it was something I wanted to do similarly but i do care when i invest in a company and i'm quite forgiving if they tried to do the right things and things went against them but i'm not forgiving when they lie i don't like that and that happens a lot especially in mining junior mining well come on dom and i'm not i'm not the greatest reader of character and you know so you know i put money into a company a

35:11Trevor Hall: few years ago you really don't think you're a good reader of character not not of liars i i'm i'm a i'm i'm i'm i'm easy to lie to i see the best in people which i think it's a good quality to see the best in people but i i actually that's hard for me to really swallow actually because like i think i have to tell myself to be cynical if i remind myself look is this guy bullshitting me if i ask myself that question then i then i but you you do such a good job of calling out power you know on a federal scale like some of your videos on your youtube like i've watched multiple times okay but to like be able to do that and not only not only is it entertaining but obviously makes me very much think and skeptical of you know the powers that surround me in society and then for you to turn around and say you're not a very good judge of character actually like i don't believe you well maybe i'm maybe i'm doing myself down i mean i can see like i could spot a politician bullshitting a mile sure and and uh i should i could probably spot a minor bullshitting a mile off as well and i just have a sort of off switch i just don't listen but i still i still have invested in companies where i shouldn't have that way okay and and and the ceo said he was going to do this and didn't should we talk about mining, mining equities.

36:35Trevor Hall: I love it. I love it. Who lied to you? Which companies? I normally, I will, I don't hide it in my newsletter. If a company bullshits me, I just, I will call them out on it. Okay. Well, you were just in British Columbia? Yes. You're doing some site visits? Yes. Give me a rundown of what you were seeing. So I saw three companies in British Columbia, and nicola or nicola mining uh run guide by peter is it i've forgotten his surname peter it'll come back to me big big man nice man um and uh extremely capable i went to kodiak uh ventures which is a big big copper property lots of exploration outside run by claudia tongquist um uh more of a team i would say the nicola which was a sort of kind of hinge like if something happened to that guy nicola would would struggle whereas kodiak you feel as big thank you yes i looked it up power of technology and then the third one i looked at was west haven gold they're all very close to each other and um i like west haven as well gold um they've gone into partnership with Dundee.

37:53I forget if it's Dundee Metals or Dundee Precious or Dundee Mine. I get muddled between the two. But anyway, one of the Dundees, and Dundee's given them a load of money. So they've got like$80 million to spend on exploration. And they just had this outcrop. And he did say, this is the greatest outcrop you will ever see. And it was, I mean, I haven't seen that many, but it was pretty good.

38:17Trevor Hall: Do you have any hesitations over the province of British Columbia with their mining? Well, they were all, we have this relationship with the indigenous people, and I was like, oh my God, are you wasting a load of money? Which is essentially, you know, it's just cost of government basically. And I hate it, but it was just so normal to all of them. And, you know, the overriding narrative at the moment is that British Columbia needs mining, and so it's approving stuff. But yeah, it's highly regulatory and not in a good way. Well, I mean, Canada is always a great place to go and put capital, especially in resource development, right?

38:54Trevor Hall: And it sounds like Prime Minister Carney, for all his faults and criticisms, is actually, it appears to be doing some good things for the mining industry. I don't know if that's swayed any of your... Well, I can't stand him because of the Bank of England, but I recognize he's also a practical man. Yeah. What about the US? Well, it's the place to be at the moment, isn't it? Yeah, it certainly feels like that. I mean, that won't always be. I mean, I was invested, still am, invested in a company called Fortitude Mining, Jason Reid Companies from your neck of the woods from Denver. And he just, all the way through the Biden, he couldn't get anything done because he was waiting on permits.

39:33The same happened with a company called Monero Alamos, which I was invested in, waiting in these permits in Mexico. And it's just like, what's the point? You know, Biden just instructed the Ministry of Mines, whatever it's called in America, to just delay everything and not approve anything. And so everyone's just sat around. Unfortunately, you know, no politician's perfect. And Donald Trump is an extremely imperfect man, but he's been pretty good on approving American mining. And, you know, he wants to develop American industry and mining is a huge part on that. And America has a rich history in mining.

40:07And so, you know, and all this reassuring of essential minerals and not relying on imports and Chinese smelters and all the rest of it. So that's generally good for American resource production. So I think America's the place to be at the moment.

40:22Trevor Hall: I find it a real shame that all of the, I guess not even progressive, it's realistic policies that the Trump administration has put forth, not just in mining, but all of heavy industry. It's a real shame it's overshadowed by just sheer chaos all the time. right? Like if they could just focus on, go back to, you know, America first type of policy and then highlight the good things that they've done to support that, I think they'd probably be in a completely different position than they find themselves here just two weeks until the midterms. You know, again, not a question there, just a blanket statement.

41:03Well, maybe, I mean, I don't follow American politics that closely and, you know, I'm pretty superficial. It's just, I watched a Donald Trump video and there's something about him, he makes me laugh. You know, there's just something funny about him and he winds up all the right people. But I've recognized that it does seem to be chaotic, but I mean, maybe he needs the chaos. Maybe he, you know, relishes the chaos. I don't know. But I think, you know, Iran was probably a mistake and I think he probably thought he would get Iran done as quickly as Venezuela. And maybe he believed some of his backers and shouldn't have done.

41:37Trevor Hall: Yeah, yeah. Well, I hear that the UK is opening up oil and gas exploration in the North Sea again. I'm not sure they are. They're making noises about it. And now they're, yeah, and they're going back and it'll be typical UK. It'll be halfway house. Okay. Hypocritical halfway house. Let's go back and talk about our favorite yellow metal real quick before we start wrapping things up. From where you sit here, Dominic, do you feel that people are starting to reconsider gold's place in not only as a monetary metal, but just its position in an economy to, you know, have some sort of protection against, you know, faulty government policy or a falling currency?

42:23Trevor Hall: Is it starting to pick back up again? without a shadow of a doubt it is and i know this because i um work with a bullion dealer called the pure gold company and so i see their reports and i talk to the bosses and he tells me who's buying and more and more people are buying they just are and etf holdings are at record highs even with the you know lower gold price so more and more people are aware of it more people more people are investing in it and buying it admittedly off a very low base you know if you think of the late 90s the noughties you know it's pretty low gold ownership gold ownership but even so yes so more more people and obviously as we all know central banks are buying like mad and particularly china and china's understated its gold reserves and they're anything between three and ten times more than they say they are um it's all in the book but the the there is still a i think it's worse in europe than it is in america but there is a still a huge and it's probably a majority who do not own any and have not even considered owning any it's still quite a niche thing yeah do you feel that the narrative behind gold the current narrative behind gold leans itself towards a continued progress toward a decentralized society.

43:54Trevor Hall: You've talked about Bitcoin. That's democratizing money. We talked about pressures on governments and people becoming, you know, just nobody to relate to in power. It seems like those institutions are failing. What is it? I guess what's the bigger picture here? Are we decentralizing civilization in a way? No, I don't think so. I mean, it's a nice idea and I wish we were, but I think big government is here to stay for probably most of our lifetime, I'm afraid to say. I think we're heading into, I can describe two things. And in my newsletter, I'm proud to say I coined this term, which is the South Africanization of everything.

44:43And in Western Europe, you know, South Africa was one society. Then, you know, they got rid of the Boers, the leadership of the Boers and apartheid and all of that and replaced it with Mandela, Rainbow Society and all of that. And gradually, you know, it was a great celebration of multiculturalism, yada, yada. And then the crime rates have gone up and it's just steadily, you know, the infrastructure's fallen and it's just steadily deteriorated. And I think Western Europe is going the same way. and I call it that the South Africanization of everything America's better but it's a I've hopefully America can see what's happening in Western Europe depends if you get the Democrats who are pro it all or the Republicans basically but America bits of America are going the same way and and the South Africanization of a place can happen pretty quickly look at Detroit you know what was Detroit in the 40s and the 50s?

45:40What is it now? And, you know, my kids, we all went to LA a couple of years ago. And I was like, where do you want to go? Disneyland? And they were like, no, no, we want to go to Skid Row. And they wanted, yeah, they wanted to go there. And so we drove there and I was like, windows up, locks on the doors and all of that. But they wanted to see the, you know, the guys walking around, whatever they are, the space cadets on whatever drugs they've taken. And they wanted to see that. and um and then we got out on um the bit of what's it called where where all the things are in the street with it on the pavement all the um famous people's names are written all the stars yeah we got out there and there were these two enormous black guys just i mean you know both of them must look like basketball players or something but like one of them was certainly seven feet and just had the deepest voice you've ever heard.

46:33And they had a massive fracker in the street about something. And even the shorter of the two was like six, four, you know, they were just enormous. And, and they had this massive fracker and, and, and they didn't actually exchange blows. They were just screaming at each other about something, but it was, and my youngest daughter is maybe five foot. So she's just tiny in comparison. And she just went, dad, I've never been so scared in my whole life and it was just terrifying it was right there in front of us they didn't give they would it was completely between them they didn't care about us they didn't threaten us in any way but it was still just seeing these two huge people having this fight it was like everything but blows i think they were pushing and things like that and eventually the i don't know why but the the smaller one chased the bigger one off down the street how that worked i don't know but um i think he had more money but anyway uh so you could see la you know with the deterioration i mean when you go through beverly hills and you look at rodeo drive i mean i've never seen wealth like it and then but you know a mile down the road you've got skid row two miles down the road and it's just like these two extreme wealth and extreme poverty right next to each other and with the deterioration of the film industry as it's going you know is is hollywood like cars were to detroit i gather that even though the film industry is falling apart there's still a lot of other media that gets made in la so there's still money in la but is la going to do a detroit it could it could do it's i don't say it will but i say it's possible but you're definitely seeing this sort of ghettoization, South Africanization of there.

48:19And so America risks going the same way, but you're not as bad as what bits of America are, but it's not as, um, it's, it's, you seem to generally be in a better place. It's funny. Somebody sent me this message, America thinks like libertarians and spends like a socialist.

48:38Trevor Hall: It's absolutely true. So something like that. But so, so, so, but back to where you said, where is all this going? And so on the one level, I see the South Africanization of everything, increased socialism, more taxes, uh, more pressure on people to pay their taxes and, um, to, you know, maintain free speech and do all the other things that they want. But within that, there's a book called the sovereign individual written by, uh, Lord reese mogg and somebody else forget the name of the other guy but it's lord reese mogg is jason jacob reese mogg's dad and it was written in the 90s i think but i've read it in 2006 so it's 20 years since i read it but it's the most prescient book and he describes a sovereign and he describes the deterioration of most societies into socialism and the you know the falling apart as a result and government services being crap and so on and then he describes these sovereign individuals who have got money and wealth and are able to leave their countries and go to other places where perhaps they welcome people with money.

49:47And if that place goes socialist and starts trying to tax them or whatever, then you could just go somewhere else. And, you know, Bitcoin is very much the sovereign individual's form of money, but then so is gold. So is your shares. You know, we've all you know revolute and they're all multinational and i think we're going into a world where we're going to have basically two tiers of citizen and there's going to be one tier which is people trapped in the physical economy in their own country heavily taxed and this other more lightly taxed um more nomadic sovereign individuals and so i think you know on the one level, we've got the South Africa thing.

50:29And then the other level, you've got this kind of, you know, I'm hesitant to use the word elite, but this sort of sovereign class who can, are able to avoid that. And that's where I see things going.

50:41Trevor Hall: What optimism do you have? What are you excited? Pretty good life for these sovereign individuals.

50:49Trevor Hall: I mean, that's the opportunity, like you're able to take your wealth and keep moving. is that this i think you need to be able to do that well i think i agree with you i absolutely agree with you and i mean there's always been a bit of that my my stepdad was jewish guy and his parents fled poland in the 1930s to antwerp and they were diamond dealers so they had kept them you know they smuggled their diamonds and they ended up in south africa obvious you know diamonds obvious reason and then my stepdad left south africa in the 70s with 50 krugerrands you couldn't there were capital controls you can get your money out of south africa and so he left he just and people used to in those days gold smuggling was a thing airports weren't as police like they are now you know metal detectors and stuff so people you know gold smuggling was a big thing it's in the book but yeah he took 50 krugerrands from south africa to the uk and that's how he got started in the uk so i guess they were kind of sovereign individuals uh although hard you know and they had the nazis after them but so it's always been a thing and they'll always be like you know a land-owning class who are kind of more rooted and stuck where they are because of that's where their land is and their wealth is in the land but um that's just where i see government going and i'm just not positive about government i think government's i'm you know i'm a libertarian i think government gets involved with the meaning to do good and it most of the time it makes it worse and spends a shit ton of money in the process but there's loads to be positive about most of it to do with human advancement, progress, technology, you know, Elon Musk, cars that fly and this mobile phones, and we can talk to each other anywhere in the world.

52:32And if you want to, you can, you can use, you can do it privately and you see, there's loads to be positive about, mainly to do with the advances of human beings. But there's also, you know, I don't see myself as positive or negative. They're positive about some stuff and negative about others.

52:47Trevor Hall: Well, I'm thankful that we could just take it all the way back and have a nice conversation in a Mayfair pub. That's pretty fun. Well, yeah. I mean, I despair about London and then you walk down, we're in Mayfair and it's great. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Dominic, I'm actually going to see you next week in New Orleans. We're going to New Orleans, yeah. So hopefully this will be out. Will this be out before we get to New Orleans? I will make sure it's out. Okay. I'll make sure it's out. Let me do a quick plug. You should all read my book, The Secret History of Gold. You'll love it, particularly if you like gold.

53:16And you should all subscribe to my newsletter, which is theflyingfrisbee.com. theflyingfrisbee.com, and that's my sub stack.

53:23Trevor Hall: Thanks, Dominic. And that's our coverage from LME Week here in London, everybody. We will be back actually again next week from the New Orleans Investment Conference. So a lot coming more your way. Stay tuned. And thank you to everybody here in London who made this trip so special. Appreciate you. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.