[SPEAKER_00]: This is Peter's shift with the shift-gold Friday market rap and the week didn't go the way a lot of precious metals investors may have believed following the launching of all out war against Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I discuss what happened in the week in precious metals and the markets, let me just point out that I am not going to use this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: to get into the details of this war.
[SPEAKER_00]: My opinion on the war, the unconstitutional nature of it, the betrayal from Trump and the fact that he's decided to launch the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got into all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the podcast that I did on Tuesday on my main YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would encourage everybody who has not already watched that podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: After you finished listening to the market wrap, go and check it out on my main YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the war that breaks the dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what we titled it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me take a quick look.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the war that breaks the dollar, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the last podcast video on my main channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the one that has about 620,000 subscribers, Peter Schiff.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not one of those 620,000 subscribers, make sure you subscribe when you go and check out the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, if you're not currently a subscriber to this channel, subscribe right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still trying to get the 50,000 subscribers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this will be the podcast that does it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're listening and you're not a subscriber, just make sure and do that now and hit the like button, do all the stuff, you to leave a comment, that helps with the algorithms to get more people to see these videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, so let me go back and talk about what happened during the week, because precious metals, gold and silver, and the mining stocks, actually, were the biggest losers.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the week gold finished the week down about three percent and silver was down what about about five percent five and a half percent something like that they closed out the week on a positive note
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold was up almost 90 bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looks like it closed around 51 70.
[SPEAKER_00]: So still comfortably above 5,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, with all the selling that happened earlier in the week, Gold never even got below 5,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a lot of support there, which is what I've been telling everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silver closed up over two dollars on the day and still ended the week above 84 looks like about 84 33 so these are still good prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're much higher than we ended last year and way higher than we ended at 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're down on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: even bigger losses in the mining stocks that GDX and the GDXJ were both down over 11% on the week, including small losses today, even with the rise in golden silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question is why, isn't war supposed to be good for golden silver?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't people buy golden silver after all oil?
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... sword on the week up about thirty five percent we close around ninety one dollars a barrel this is the biggest weekly gain in oil i think since the mid nineteen eighties and in fact on the year now oil is up sixty five percent because we were already rising before the war now some of that rise was probably in anticipation of the war we were already building
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, I think, is the main reason that Golden Silver sold off, I think it was a by the rumor, sell the fact, because I think that there was some speculative buying in Golden Silver in anticipation of a war with Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Trump administration had made it pretty clear that this was going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just didn't know exactly when.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we knew it would happen over a weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just didn't know which weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump likes to move when the markets are closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we had already moved a lot of our ships and personnel into the region.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was pretty clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And gold was going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, gold had gotten pretty high at the end of last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: when the bombs started to fall on Saturday and gold initially opened for trading on Sunday night, it got near 5500.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was around the high, but because gold couldn't really break to new highs, I think the people who had bought in anticipation of the war sold
[SPEAKER_00]: on the news, you know, they, you buy what is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's especially the trumpets and you sell on the cannons or whatever, but we sold on the actual war.
[SPEAKER_00]: The traders took profits and golden silver went down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, golden silver stocks that may have also been bought.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the same reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: People bought those stocks thinking, hey, if we have war with Iran, that's good for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to buy some gold mining stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when gold went down, when the war broke out, a lot of those traders sold their gold stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that caused that big drop.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you recall, this has been how the mining stocks have acted for the entire bull market.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the investors have got one foot out the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've always been skeptical of the rally.
[SPEAKER_00]: They think gold's going to collapse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they overreact to every down move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see that overreaction most profoundly in the gold and silver mining
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the war is going to be very good for gold and silver, and ultimately the market is wrong not to recognize that now and buying these metals.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think by next week, we should be, I think, off to the races, I think you're going to see a big recovery in the stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, part of the reason to now is I think the world is overly optimistic, particularly
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people still think it's going to be short and sweet, you know, a quick, you know, mission accomplished.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not going to be that disruptive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, maybe people are optimistic that we're going to have peace in the Middle East after this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have a friendly Iran, they're going to play nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything's going to be kumbaya, kumbaya in the Middle East finally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think these are all fantasies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no reason to believe that the outcome this time is going to be any more successful than our other adventures into that region, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Afghanistan, I think it's going to be a mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's going to go smoothly as people hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going to be drawn out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're going to have a lot of problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think what we're seeing in the oil market is just a temporary blip, which is another thing that people are hoping for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's, I think, also tempering some of the enthusiasm for gold and the mining stocks is that people are still too optimistic on the way this thing is going to play out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, I remember earlier in the week because on the first day, on Monday, oil was up, but it wasn't up that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, 5%, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was listening to the
[SPEAKER_00]: You financial shows, particularly on Fox News, like Larry Cudlow, you know, we're all they do is cheerlead for Donald Trump and, you know, just kisses his ass, you know, for the whole show and everybody that comes on, kisses his ass and he can do no wrong, he walks on water as far as these guys are concerned.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were so excited that oil prices, you know, we didn't even really get the $70 and they were saying, you see, this is how great President Trump is, it's all drill, baby
[SPEAKER_00]: The Middle East doesn't matter anymore, we're self-sufficient, we're exporters, so we don't have to worry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's different, different this time, thanks to Donald Trump and his fantastic policies, and we have all this oil production now, and none of this matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: and all of that was a bunch of BS because now a oil just went up every day after that show and now we're over 90 dollars a barrel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge move.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it isn't different this time and we'll probably be over a hundred dollars a barrel by next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is very significant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, you know, I checked the numbers and oil production in 2025, which is the first
[SPEAKER_00]: because Trump became president in January.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oil production in 2025 is not even 3% higher than 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no evidence that that's attributable to drill, baby, drill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it may have been the same, even if Harris had been elected.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that big a move in oil production, certainly nothing to say, oh, it's a game changer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we were self-sufficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that much more than we were producing before Trump was elected.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're just as vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, and now this one is not on Trump, but we sold like half of our strategic petroleum reserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: when Biden was president, now Trump had an opportunity when oil was cheaper before he launched this war of choice in Iran, Trump could have tapped into the oil markets and refilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: the strategic petroleum reserve so we have a greater reserve now going into this war so that was a mistake you know they talked about doing it but they never did because the only thing Trump really had to hang his hat on as far as how great the economy was or that he had beaten inflation was cheap gas prices
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, you know, yes, they had gone down, but not nearly as much as Trump claimed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He kept talking about $1.99 somewhere in some station that nobody could find.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Trump didn't want to start buying more oil for this strategic petroleum reserve because that would have moved up the price.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now the price has gone up anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't have any more.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say that the odds that we can tap into it again,
[SPEAKER_00]: are kind of remote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're in a very vulnerable position where the reserves are so low and there's now a war where you got the straits and famus shut down and you got missiles going all over the Middle East because you know I ran has to attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: are bases in other countries like Saudi Arabia, because America is operating from all over the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a presence everywhere, but I ran now when they retaliate, these missiles are going all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, this also is angering the countries that are hosting American assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now they have missiles going into their country.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them may miss, they could hit civilian targets.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know on both sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this has the potential to really escalate and involve other Middle East countries and maybe even countries outside the Middle East.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think all these polyanah of views about how easy this is, how quick it's going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at some point, the markets are going to start pricing in a much more realistic, which is also a much more pessimistic,
[SPEAKER_00]: a forecast for how this is going to be disruptive to the markets to the economy and of course politics this is a big thing and I actually forgot to mention this on the other podcast and I just told you guys about but it's very frustrating to see all the Republicans pretty much coming out and supporting Trump forgetting about the fact that he promised not to do this right nobody is saying oh he broke his promise and you know we're we're we're having another war
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have all the Democrats who are criticizing, they get not all there are some who are supporting the president, but the vast majority of Democrats oppose the president and the overwhelming majority of Republican support him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guarantee you, had Kamala Harris done the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the circumstances were identical, all these Republicans would be condemning this act.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Democrats would be supporting it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, there are a lot of Republicans who are supporting Trump, who, you know, were opposed in the past to military intervention by the other party.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't like the fact that this war gets politicized.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's all about party loyalty, not about what you think is right or your conscience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think any objective look at this.
[SPEAKER_00]: would say that this was a mistake right and and and there was no imminent threat to the United States at all and there's no way I ran was about to attack us like the president said but again I already went into this in the other podcast so make sure and check that out but I think as the markets start to take a more realistic outlook you're going to start to see a bigger impact like in the stock market the stock market was barely down on the week barely down
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the Dow Jones closed it around 47,500.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now we're about 2,500 below 50,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, Donald Trump was bragging about 50,000 and taking credit for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We may end up being a lot lower than 50,000 by the time the midterm elections.
[SPEAKER_00]: come around, which is it's going to be a big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Trump has got a huge problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get into the economy to admit it, but with with with the the war in Iran, I think this is going to be an even bigger political blunder than George Herbert work or brush read my lips, no new taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then hiking taxes, promising to end wars, and then starting one, criticizing prior presidents for their actions in Middle East, and then doing exactly what you criticized your predecessors for doing is not going to go over well, especially when the economy is in the toilet, which it will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, let me get to the stock market.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was going down about 2%.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the week, S&P held up even better, down about one and a third, and the Nasdaq was
[SPEAKER_00]: not much of a reaction at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now individual stocks, I think the financials got hit pretty hard and I think they're going to continue to get hit, but overall the market held up.
[SPEAKER_00]: The weakest of the indexes was the Russell 2000 down three and a half percent for 3.3 percent, but it also, that's the most sensitive to the U.S. economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dollar rose about 1 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: When, you know, the bombs start dropping, beer would have been a much bigger rise in the value of the dollar than one percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the dollar's one percent rise is one of the reasons, I think, that gold drop by three percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think in the scheme of things, a one percent rise in the dollar,
[SPEAKER_00]: is negative for the dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that he didn't get a bigger bid than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the bid won't last.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the dollar is going to fall, which is going to complicate this war.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also going to be very bullish for gold and silver and oil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Surprisingly, Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitcoin was up 3% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of the Bitcoin is like, aha, you see gold was down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitcoin is up.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the turn we've been waiting for.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the big rotation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're going out of gold into Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all wishful thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a dead cat bounce in Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It rose with risk assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: After things didn't crash immediately after the war and you got some short covering, you got some buying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing happened in Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, look, Bitcoin is barely above 68,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: It got above, I think, 72,000 on this bounce.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now we're back at 68 thousand a Bitcoin finished a week on a downnote like the opposite of gold on an upnote and again Bitcoin is trading almost in the mirror image of gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I'm right that the war is going to be bullish for gold, it's going to be bearish for Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason the war is bullish for gold is not because of the war itself, but because of the way we pay for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way we're going to pay for this war is by creating more inflation and that's what's bullish for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are going to run bigger deficits because of the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we were going to run bigger deficits anyway because of the weakness in the economy and because of rising race as a lot of our low yielding debt matures and it has to be rolled over at the market.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were already on an upward trajectory, but the war is going to weaken the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to lead to higher long term interest rates.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, Yelban Yel's rose about 14 basis point.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Yelban attend your treasury close the week at about 413.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just below 4% at the end of last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So people maybe they bought the dollar, but they didn't buy treasuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: They sold U.S. treasuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitcoin, to me at 68,000, it's just going lower.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the same reaction that we had in the stock market as we had as Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't nearly enough pessimism.
[SPEAKER_00]: But getting back what I was saying about the deficits
[SPEAKER_00]: And the war itself is going to be expensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know that, just looking to these defense stocks, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the strongest stocks plus the energy stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I made money this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my second biggest personal position in my portfolio is energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, my oil stocks did well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're going to do, you know, better getting more in the weeks to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but it wasn't enough to offset the losses I had in my mining stocks because that's overwhelmingly my number one position, but I'm not concerned about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if we, if we're lucky enough to get a bigger drop, I might have to buy more, but I doubt it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we're going much lower.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would recommend the people watching the video.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... just buy buy them on monday the first chance you get uh... before uh... reality sets in and and and people realize this how high the golden silver price are gonna go and by the way i would buy again over the weekend and didn't work last weekend now it looked like it worked and people who followed my advice last week and bought gold on friday and saturday morning probably thought they you know they they were
[SPEAKER_00]: geniuses right when they saw the war and gold started to run but then but then it turned around but this week could be the mirror image of that so i would go to shift gold and and i would buy this week and i would not wait for Sunday night again uh to me we could be a six thousand dollars gold very quickly and silver could be back above a hundred dollars announced very quickly uh as uh you know oil prices are going to be over a hundred dollars
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other thing that's going to be driving this, oh, again, I forgot.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the cost of the war, Donald Trump has already made it clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only are we going to pay for this war, oh, I mentioned the oil, the defense stocks going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are they going up?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they're going to get a lot of orders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're blowing up all the stuff that we bought from them in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we have to buy new stuff so we can blow that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the military industrial complex is going to make a ton of money off of this war.
[SPEAKER_00]: They always do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means the US government is going to be out of ton of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have to pay for the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are we going to get the money?
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump is not going to say, you know, we got to raise taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need a wartime tax to pay for the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just going to run bigger deficits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the money going to come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Defed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Feds going to crank out the presses.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why
[SPEAKER_00]: wars are bullish for gold because they're finance with inflation because the politicians don't want the public to have to pay for the war then they really won't support it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They want them to think they get the war for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's going to cause more inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But not only do we have to pay to destroy Iran, we now have to pay to rebuild it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump has now committed that we're going to fight until we get unconditional surrender.
[SPEAKER_00]: from Iran so that we can come in there and take over the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to rebuild it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make Iran great again, you know, I mean at one point it was great, I guess a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now we've got to make Iran great again.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that going to cost us?
[SPEAKER_00]: How much money are we going to spend building Iran?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess we're going to build it better than it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how much is that going to cost?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's that money you're going to come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're talking about hundreds of billions, probably an excess of a trillion dollars, to destroy and rebuild Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is very inflationary.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's bullish for gold, is bullish for silver, it is bearish for the dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other thing that's bearish is the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The economy was already weakening, and we got more data today to prove that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this may be one of the reasons, again, for this war.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned at the other podcasts, kind of like wag the dog, that movie, but it's a distraction, it's an excuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump knows that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He even thought that Obama might have used a war over the ran, started a war over the ran, you know, because he was in trouble politically and he needed a distraction and he needed something and obviously Trump needed something.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just because of the abstinence files.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the economy was weakening.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had the big loss in the Supreme Court with the tariffs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything was kind of falling apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this whole idea that we had this hot economy was about to blow up, because the numbers don't bear it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The economy was weakening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inflation was strengthening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we launched a war against Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now,
[SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump will be able to blame all this bad stuff that would have happened anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, now it's gonna happen even worse, but it was gonna happen and it was gonna be bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now Trump can say, well, it's because of the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like everything was great, but unfortunately, my back was to a wall because I ran was about to attack us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no choice, so we had a preempt, you know, we had to go first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're stuck in this war, this noble war that we have to fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: the cost of this freedom is going to be well we're going to have to have a recession uh... we're going to have to have some higher inflation but it's going to be worth it in the long run and everything is going to be great right it's just another excuse uh... that could be a scapegoat for for problems so let's look at the jobs numbers we got the uh... February jobs number that came out today
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I don't even put any stock in these numbers because we know they're going to get revised lower once twice three times over the course of the next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually the initial estimate that is the highest, and then it just goes down from there, which is particularly bad news, considering how bad the initial estimate was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the consensus was for 60,000 jobs to be created.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the prior month was 130,000 jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were looking for a slowdown.
[SPEAKER_00]: And 130,000 jobs is nothing right home about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a big number.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was revised down to 126,000 jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the February number came out at 92,000 minus.
[SPEAKER_00]: a loss of 92,000 jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody expected that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The range of estimates went from plus 35,000 to plus 125,000 minus 92,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the worst initial report that the labor department has put out in like five years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to go back to the prior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump administration.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at no point when Biden was president that we get a job's number this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as it turns out, it's not the weakest in five years because they revised the October number so many times October 2025.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the October number is actually weaker than this number.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a bigger job loss in October 2025.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, we haven't finished the revisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure by the time they revise the February number, it's going to be bigger than the number that we got in October.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that number, and I'm scrolling through, because I posted it on X when I initially saw these jobs numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so it was 105,000 loss in October.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was pretty big, but that was also under Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, today they went back and they revised December, 2025 from an initial report of plus 48,000 jobs, to a loss of 17,000 jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now, if you look at the last five jobs reports,
[SPEAKER_00]: three of them were negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lost jobs in three.
[SPEAKER_00]: This labor market is a disaster, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way that we have the hottest economy in history and the coldest labor market at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of people are just saying, well, it's because there's a productivity boom because of AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe there will be in the future,
[SPEAKER_00]: But companies are not that much more productive now because of AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening is we're having a massive investment in building out AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's goose in the GDP numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that we're so productive from using AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't even really rolled it out yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, I use it and all people are using it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it hasn't moved the needle.
[SPEAKER_00]: significantly yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's moved in a little bit, and I think it will move at a lot over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, we're just making the investment, and then we're counting that as a GDP.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we actually have a weak economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I expect a lot of these GDP numbers are going to get revised lower.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the rosy forecasts are not going to pan out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the labor market is weak because the economy is weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not weak because
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was not just a headline of this number that was weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look beneath the surface, private sector,
[SPEAKER_00]: accounted for 86,000 job losses of the 92 that's 93.5% of the jobs we lost were in the private sector.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not government jobs we're losing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we lost some of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: But most of the jobs that we lost were private sector jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot more jobs are going away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Manufacturing had a bad month.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lost 12,000 more manufacturing jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So add those to the total.
[SPEAKER_00]: And listen to labor force participation, which had been improving slightly tanked all the way back down to 62 from 62 and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a big move.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a mass exodus of people out of the labor force.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is a weak economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we got some other economic news.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got retail sales, which were down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, they're not adjusted for inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were down, point two percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they were looking for a down point four.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess it was it as bad as they thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's still a decline.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the prior month was unchanged.
[SPEAKER_00]: So retail sales are a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially when you consider prices are up.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way,
[SPEAKER_00]: a couple of days ago, we did get the import export prices for, yeah, it was January.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we got that we got the year, year, year over year numbers that came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And import prices, or export prices are up about three, three point three percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And import prices were slightly negative year over year by about like point two percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: and what that does is confirms exactly what I've been saying and that is that Americans pay the tariffs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The foreign producers are not paying the tariffs because there's only one way that foreign producers could absorb the tariffs because they don't actually pay them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get paid by the import.
[SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. importer writes the check to the government, not the foreign producer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea that was thrown around
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to maintain their market share, and keep their American customers happy, foreigners were going to slash their prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that they sold us the stuff at a lower price so that when you add the tariff to the lower price, it would end up being the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how foreigners were gonna eat it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was gonna be a combination of price cuts and currency debasement.
[SPEAKER_00]: So their currencies would go down, that would offset some, and then they would rate prices, but the net effect of a strong dollar and price cuts internationally
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even though we paid a tariff, we'd be paying it on lower prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be our trading partners that would end up eating it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would have lower profits in order to continue to do business with America.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the fact that prices, import prices are basically the same as they were before the tariffs, means that that didn't happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're paying the same price and we're paying the tariffs on top of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think what did happen is prices might have gone up and maybe some of the foreign trading partners were reluctant to jack prices up given the tariffs so they held off a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is probably true that but for these tariffs, import prices would have gone up.
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe by about the same as our export prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe they would have got up 3% or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, they were flat.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we probably did get foreigners to pick up some of the tariffs indirectly, you know, that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not going to continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not, you know, they're going to push it all through.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to restart raising prices, especially now with cost going up, energy costs are going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those that data proves that it was always a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the other problem and that's going to be very bullish for gold silver is you're going to be looking at a landslide victory for Democrats in the midterm elections because what is the US economy going to look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come November 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we may still be at war with Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: And believe me, the war is going to be a lot more unpopular if we're still fighting it in November of this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if the war is still going on in November of this year, we're all prices going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: 125, 150 dollars a barrel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Easily, you think we're not going to be in recession.
[SPEAKER_00]: If oil prices were that high, given how weak the economy already was before we even started the war, when oil prices were still low.
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot more unemployment the cost of living crisis affordability is going to be much worse real estate is going to be in the tank real estate prices were probably a lot lower if the war continues stock market will be a lot lower so americans going to be a lot poor because their stocks are going to be down uh... their real estate is going to be down if they got crypto that's going to be down so they're going to be poor but everything they need to buy is going to be a lot more expensive and a lot more people are going to be unemployed
[SPEAKER_00]: So who do you think they're going to vote for, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to feel very betrayed by Trump who promised to lower the cost of living and set a skyrocketed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He promised to end wars and steady started one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I guess the guys over at that Nobel Prize committee, I guess they feel pretty good now that they didn't give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he was so upset that he didn't win it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They probably would have asked for it back.
[SPEAKER_00]: if they had given it to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although I don't know if he started the war out of spite because he never he was saying that one of the reasons he was thinking about invading Greenland was because he didn't win the Nobel Prize.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Greenland had to do is that I don't know, but that's what he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe this is really out of spite that I'll show them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't give me the peace prize awkward to go start a war that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who now knows?
[SPEAKER_00]: With Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the voters are going to be
[SPEAKER_00]: and the only way that they can take it out on Trump because he's not going to be on the ballot is to take it out on all the Republicans who are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So normally the party that's in power loses some seats in Congress in the midterms, but I think this could be one of the worst on record.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's no question that the Democrats are going to take back the House, but it looks now likely that they're going to take back the Senate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how, you know, you unscramble to say, I don't know, you know, how Trump's going to get out of this unless he can get a quick victory, which, you know, again, as an American, as a human being, I hope the war is over quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope we could win it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the hell winning means, uh, but.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, history is not on our side for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't see any precedent in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the government lies to us all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure they're lying to us about the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, they lied to get us into the Iraq war with the weapons of mass destruction.
[SPEAKER_00]: They lied about the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The government lies about everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why should they be honest about the war?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure we're getting misinformation there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure they're lying to us about why the war started and they're going to be lying to us about how great it's going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't know, I mean, I hope it is, but I just don't trust it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all of this, you know, having the Democrats get.
[SPEAKER_00]: back in is going to be bearish, especially if it lays the foundation for the Democrats to win in 2028, which is my forecast.
[SPEAKER_00]: My forecast is we get a Democratic president in 2028 with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, the worst possible situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you thought the government was spending a lot of money when the Republicans controlled it and you were right because they are, it's going to be even worse when the Democrats control it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you thought the multi trillion dollar deficits that are going to hit all time record highs, Trump is going to break the record again, he's going to have more debt than any other president in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Democrat that follows Trump is going to be Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: That record will not stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump will set it and the next Democratic president will break it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But who knows where gold and silver are going to be by then?
[SPEAKER_00]: Up in the stratosphere, people will look back at these low prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, $5200 gold or you know, $80 top five dollars silver, whatever, $82 now, these prices are going to look cheap when you have
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would just be loading up on it now, unfortunately, you can hope for the best, but you better be prepared for the worst because our track record is pretty clear as to how this is likely to unfold.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the meantime, go to the Shift Goal website, buy yourself some golden silver, and
[SPEAKER_00]: in gold and silver mining stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go to my, uh, your, your, your pack website, your pack.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get information there on setting up a separately managed account.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have accounts that specialize in mining stocks, but we also have broader strategies.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the emerging markets also got hit this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have been doing well this year, but I think emerging markets are going to be some of the biggest winners from the de-dollarization trade, which is going to continue in earnest as this war progresses.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can look into those strategies, our foreign dividend pair strategies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than our mining stocks, a lot of our stocks held up pretty well, despite the fact that the markets were lower and the dollar was higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we're going to start to see more capital fleeing U.S. financial assets moving into the overseas asset.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can talk to the representatives of your Pacific asset management.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have five mutual funds that can be bought no load at most of these discount
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can get all the information on my goal fund, my emerging market fund, my foreign bond fund, and my foreign value and dividend pair's funds.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the information is on the website at yourapak.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tickers are there and make sure if you buy them through your discount broker, make sure and buy the institutional share class.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is the one that has a no load up front, no 12 B1 fee, so you pay lower fees on the way in, you pay lower management fees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the way to do it if you're not working with a full service broker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, have a great weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't forget, tell your friends about this podcast about shift gold, Friday market rap, get them to start subscribing, start listening and more important.
[SPEAKER_00]: start investing in gold and silver and getting out of dollars while we're getting is still good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye for now.