[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to start off today's podcast by wrapping up some of the action in the markets this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I speculated in prior podcasts recently that the air may be coming out of the AI bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we certainly got some more indication this week that that was in fact the case because the major stock markets all finished a week lower, led lower by AI-related names.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were some of the biggest losers.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, SpaceX, a stock that I talked about quite a bit on the last couple of podcasts,
[SPEAKER_00]: was one of the biggest losers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was down about five and a half percent today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the week now, SpaceX dropped 13 and a quarter percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: It closed just below 124.
[SPEAKER_00]: The IPO price was 135.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if you bought the IPO, you're down 6.7 percent if you didn't flip it, which obviously
[SPEAKER_00]: Because two or three days after the 135 IPO, SpaceX actually topped 225.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you bought that price, you're down 45% if you still hold your shares.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, again, this is indicative that the specular froth is coming off the market, that people don't want to keep gambling on SpaceX.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talked at length about the crazy valuation, not just the trillion dollar plus market cap, or whatever it was, two to three trillion.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that it was trading at more than 100 times revenues and losing money.
[SPEAKER_00]: and people are now getting nervous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I pointed out that this is all happening with a tiny float.
[SPEAKER_00]: The float now is about 5%.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the green shoe got exercised by the underwriters, based on the initial demand for the stock.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that enable the green shoe where the underwriters can oversell it and then get extra stock to cover their shorts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you happen about 5% of the total company
[SPEAKER_00]: tradeable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Elon Musk owns better than 40% personally and his shares are locked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think well into 2027.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his shares are not in the market.
[SPEAKER_00]: But between now and the end of the year, a lot of other employee owned early investor shares become free trading.
[SPEAKER_00]: So between now and the end of this year, which is not that very long.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to go from a 5% of this chair's available to be sold to 40% and eight fold increase in the supply stock.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a lot of overhang, a lot of people are already shorting.
[SPEAKER_00]: SpaceX right now short interest is exploding now I think that a lot of the shorts couldn't be the people that own these shares that are currently locked up what they may be doing is just shorting the stock now and they'll cover when their shares are free trading so they don't have any risk if the stock goes up well they just get the current price which they're happy to get because they got their shares you know for nothing if they're employees they just got issued stock
[SPEAKER_00]: But it shows you a lot of people don't have the confidence to wait out the lock down or lock up They're selling now.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to take their chances on where the stock price might be So this sentiment is turning because remember a lot of a hype
[SPEAKER_00]: that was built in the SpaceX was AI, XAI, and all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you start to see this across the board in that sector.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked at length about it in my last podcast, so I'm not gonna repeat it again a couple days later.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you didn't watch the podcast I did earlier this week,
[SPEAKER_00]: go go check that one out and I went over all of the capex and the spending of these hyperscalers and why it's really unsustainable and the potential collapse that's coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just to look at the overall market, the Dow was down about 1.2% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Close at 52,146 and the S&P, I down a little bit more,
[SPEAKER_00]: because of the technique exposure, now 1.35% biggest loser on the week was the NASDAQ down 2.2%.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Russell 2000, only down 0.35%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it held up the best of the major averages.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the stocks to the blue up today was Netflix.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was down maybe about seven and a half percent on the day, something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the lows, it was down over 11 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's earnings disappointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Americans are strapped, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't afford to pay all the rising costs of all these streaming services.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Netflix was down about 8 percent on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So pretty much all of the decline happening today.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Netflix is down 45 percent from its high, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like SpaceX.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just SpaceX got there a lot faster.
[SPEAKER_00]: the Netflix, but Netflix was a high-flying momentum stock, and the momentum is gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of air beneath that stock price, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But gold, silver, also down on the weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold down 1%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold spent a couple of days trading below $4,000, but it didn't close the week below $4,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: We closed it $4,000 and $17 and 30 cents.
[SPEAKER_00]: It finished up the week with just over a $40 game today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silver, uh, fair, much worse down 4% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silver closed at 55 83, I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is about the lowest weekly clothes I've seen in a while for silver and the mining stocks did even worse or about the same as silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: The GDX was down 3.9% and the GDX J down almost 5% 4.8% once again, the markets have got this wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: The markets are reacting to rising bond yields, to the Fed, and I'm going to go over part two of the Worst Testimony a little bit later in this podcast, but it's the idea that he is now this hawk that's going to be tough on inflation, but also it was the real escalation of the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the war really came back and focused this week, especially in oil prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oil prices closed up about 11.5% on the week, closed it around $82.50.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're now up 22% so far July for oil prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember we were down 30% in June, we're already up 22% in July.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that also,
[SPEAKER_00]: pushed down goal because again, traders are assuming that war is bad for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because gold is lower now than it was when the war started, that's the new narrative that war is bad for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always been good for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: It always will be good for gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only reason that gold went down when this war started was because it went up so much before the war started.
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of that was due to the anticipation of the war.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a massive hedge fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: that is creating an excellent opportunity for people who missed out on a huge rally to be buying, both the metals and the miners.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, Silver is way off its high of a dollar 25-ish down to 5583.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I focus on is the fact that we're above 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a massive breakout.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was tremendous overhead resistance just under 50 going back to 1980 and then again in 2011 so the silver chart looks phenomenal and I think in a couple of years you'll barely notice the drop from 125 down to 55 where we are now so it is a great opportunity to be buying bond yields did
[SPEAKER_00]: is a bit on the week based on the better than expected inflation numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talked about the CPI on my last podcast, better than expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing happened with the PPI.
[SPEAKER_00]: That came out better than expected to.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I got those numbers right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Producer prices in June down 0.3%.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the month year over year only up 5.5 versus the prior month up 6.5 and the core up 0.2 better than the expectation of up 0.4 and year over year excluding food and energy you have producer prices up 4.7 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that's better than the 4.9%, so that's what caused bond yields to move down a bit as the probability of a Fed rate hike went down a bit based on these numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the yields are still very high relative to where we've been.
[SPEAKER_00]: The yield on the 10-year treasury closed a week at 4.54, and the 30-year as 506.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are still high yields relative to where we've been.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not relative to where we're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And where we've been going back to the 90s, or the 80s, or the 70s, or low compared to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: In recent memory, post-2008 financial crisis, these yields are about the highest we've seen, and they're going to get a lot higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the news on inflation really is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: What drove the drop in producer prices?
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing that drove the drop in consumer prices, it was at 30% decline.
[SPEAKER_00]: in oil prices in June.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're already up 22% in July.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why are we celebrating a big drop in oil prices that has already been largely reversed?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a good chance that it'll be completely reversed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even more significant than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: look at the numbers that came out today on import export prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've mentioned this many times on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are much more honest numbers than the CPI or the PPI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's no substitution, there's no hedonic adjustments, the numbers are the numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And year over year,
[SPEAKER_00]: Import prices are up 7.1%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Export prices are up 10.2%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Compare that to the 3.5% increase year over year in the CPI.
[SPEAKER_00]: or a little bit hotter, as I just said, in the producer prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: These numbers are far more reflective of the pricing creases that Americans are actually paying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, if imports are up 7.1%, we buy a lot of imports.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're paying those higher prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the CPI doesn't reflect it, but we're paying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might say, well, we don't care about the export prices because we're not paying that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't matter if they're up to 10.2%.
[SPEAKER_00]: But most of what we export, we also consume ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say we export a lot of agricultural products.
[SPEAKER_00]: We corn soybeans, well, we also eat wheat corn and soybeans.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty much everything we export, we also consume.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if the price of what we're exporting is going way up, well the price of what we're not exporting must be going up by the same amount because it's the same stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this relates to the cost of producing stuff in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cost of the stuff we make ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: rose 10.2% year over here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cost of the stuff that other people make for us that we buy and import only went up 7.1%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that shows me that the inflation pressures inside the United States are even stronger than the inflation pressures outside the United States because the costs of the stuff we make here are rising faster than the cost of the stuff that's made abroad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this shows you, inflation is a much bigger problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then what the government claims, and that's why it's such a big concern.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the public is so irate about inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it is the number one economic problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because the problem has gotten worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Donald Trump promised that prices would be coming down on day one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of going down, they've gone way up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's also why this is all they're talking about at these hearings.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why Congress and the Senate are berating the Fed over what are you going to do about inflation?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you going to stop inflation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, I pointed out on the last podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: they're helping to cause it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they've got no right to criticize the inflation that they themselves had a hand in creating because inflation is a tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the way government spending is funded and they're the ones that are voting for the huge deficits that therefore necessitate inflation to fund them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, the reason
[SPEAKER_00]: the government wants to misdefine inflation claim inflation is rising prices and not an expansion of the money supply is precisely so they can pretend that they're not the cause so they can try to blame whoever is raising the prices and not accept responsibility for the inflation they created that resulted in
[SPEAKER_00]: in people having to raise prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I'm going to get right to that hearing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll take a quick break, so don't go anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm coming right back.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so actually before I get into what Kevin Warsh had to say to the US Senate,
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk a little bit about what I heard are Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson, say on Fox News.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was being interviewed by Jesse Waters, and he was taking him on a tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess of, you know, and I'm the wall there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were framed old federal reserve notes
[SPEAKER_00]: prior to 1968, or prior to 1933, where you had silver certificates and gold certificates, where it was legitimate currency, IOUs redeemable on demand in gold or silver coins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Scott Bessett is walking down the hall, pointing this out to Jesse Waters, and explaining to him
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, how our currency changed, how it used to be backed by gold and silver, and now it's just fiat currency, right, which is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it's all unconstitutional, he didn't get into that, but the reason I'm bringing this up is he then told Jesse Waters that if any of these old notes still exist, right, the silver certificates or the gold certificates, he said if you have one of these,
[SPEAKER_00]: You can bring it to four knocks and you can get your goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get your silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: He actually believed that these silver certificates are still good.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can he not know that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I guess I can forgive the average guy or gal on the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: Might not know that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That the government repudiated these notes years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was Roosevelt, 1933, Roosevelt said if you have a gold certificate, you can no longer get any gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't get gold for your gold certificates.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silver certificates remain good until 1968.
[SPEAKER_00]: But after 1968, those were no good either.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could not get any redemption.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, you know, maybe your typical guy, especially somebody who went to a government school, like what the hell do they learn, so they might not know anything about the monetary history of the United States or the Federal Reserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if there's anybody in the Trump cabinet that you would think would know this,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the secretary of the treasury.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's the guy that actually signs the bills.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's supposed to know about the history of our money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he thinks he does because he's explaining it to Jesse Waters as if he knows yet he is completely wrong about something that's so obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can't even remember when I originally learned this, but I've known it pretty much my entire adult life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure when I was still in junior high school, I knew that you couldn't take these notes in for redemption.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you know, when Scott Basin said if any of these things were around, there's lots of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of these certificates, you know, I went on eBay and that, you know, you could buy them on eBay and I saw one set that was framed, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you could buy it with the frame and it had three silver certificates, two two dollar bills and a one dollar bill.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means that you could get five silver dollars back in the day, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have gone to the government handed them that, you know, a two dollar bill
[SPEAKER_00]: You either get, you know, a Morgan Silver dollar or a peace dollar, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You got real silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could buy those three bills.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were selling them in the set.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, um, uh, thirty one dollars, thirty one ninety five or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That includes the frame and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now according to Scott Bessett, you could take those five dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: two Fort Knox, and they will hands you five silver dollars, which are worth about 60 bucks a piece, $300 worth of silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Scott Bessett, you can do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it would be funny, is somebody like had that video, put it on their phone, went down and Fort Knox, with some of these old certificates, and said, hey, I'm here to get my silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: Scott Bessett said, I just have to bring them down and you'd give me my silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, a lot of people, when I pointed this out on X, people were saying, oh, come on Peter, he didn't really say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He really said that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is exactly what he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go on my X feed, I reposted the clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, the person who posted it didn't even pick up on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reposted somebody else because in the same clip, he said that, hey, he's been down to Fort Knox and all the gold is there, so don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm not going to believe anything he says.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't even realize that the gold certificates are no longer valid and you can't get redemption or in the silver certificates.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, why should I believe him on what's in Fort Knox?
[SPEAKER_00]: But the person who posted it just focused on, on that point, hey, how do we believe this guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I, the minute I'm listening to it, I'm like, oh my god, how could the guy not understand something so simple?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then other people were saying, look, you know, he was, he may be, he slept, he missedpoke, no he didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to what he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: He believed that you could still get your gold and silver for these notes that they were still good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe he's confused by the fact that they're still legal tender.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, if you got an old $2 silver certificate, you can still spend it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still $2, but you're not going to get $120 worth of silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that shows you is how much purchasing power the US dollar is lost because in 1968, if you were dumb enough to keep the paper, then you still got two bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you converted it and got your silver dollar, you got your 60 bucks, the difference is the inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the difference is how much money the government has created between 1968 and now to pay for the great society, the war on poverty, the Vietnam War, and everything that's happened since, right, the 70s, 80s, all these expenditures, that's why the dollar buys so little because the government robbed so much of the purchasing power.
[SPEAKER_00]: testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: Day two, this is the U.S. Senate right the day before he spoke at the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of what he said was was repetition.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not going to focus on a lot of what he said because I already discussed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: on my Tuesday podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, if you haven't watched the Tuesday podcast, make sure and watch that because I went over a lot of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were a couple of new things that came up.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the Senate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, you know, it started off with Elizabeth Warren and, you know, really chastizing him for all the things that Trump is doing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: All the grifts all the way, he's making money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, he just announced yesterday, his latest grift.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, nobody in the Republican Party is criticizing Trump for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he uses his own social media
[SPEAKER_00]: truth social, and he exclusively posts on truth social.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he posts on truth social, a lot of times when he posts, moves the market because his posts specifically relate, war, peace, tariffs on, tariffs off, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: He, a lot of his posts, you know, result in stocks going up or down or oil going up or crypto going up, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What he's now doing, he just announced that if you want to pay extra.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get those posts a little bit sooner than everybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the purpose of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you need a post, 10 or 20 seconds before everybody else gets to see it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not really sure the time lag, but it's something very small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who would care?
[SPEAKER_00]: The only person who would care is a trader who's got like a program, an algorithm, where he can program
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump's truth social account directly into the algorithm to immediately trade based on those posts.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Donald Trump is saying, if you want basically what amounts to insider information, market moving information, I'll share it with you early if you pay me money.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's basically selling access to this information, so you can trade off of it before anybody else gets it.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is there not outrage over what Trump is doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's actually an admission to that his posts can move the market because that's the only added value.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, why would you, why would you pay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, these posts are so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to pay extra to get a 10 seconds earlier, or 20 seconds earlier, who cares?
[SPEAKER_00]: except if you get them 10 or 20 seconds earlier, you can position yourself in the markets before everybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now of course, if a lot of people end up buying new tweets early, then or the posts rather, that's going to reduce their value, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But pretty much everybody who's trading off of this is going to have to pay up because they don't pay up, they're going to be too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a massive griff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, can you imagine, is this what all the presidents are going to do from now on?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just going to post exclusively on a particular platform and then charge you money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that you can see the market moving posts that they're making.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so a lot of the criticism, that
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... warscott was actually trump criticism right there they're trying to get wars to agree that trump was a bad guy and he was doing us bad stuff of course he's not gonna do that right so he's so they're just grandstand and they're just talking you know for a sound bite and for their own constituents but there were a couple of interesting uh... questions and answers so one of them
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was Senator Kennedy, and this was probably the best exchange.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Kennedy asked Walsh, what caused inflation?
[SPEAKER_00]: What caused it?
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I want a quick answer, and
[SPEAKER_00]: worse responded, monetary policy caused it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: He admitted that the inflation that we have was caused by monetary policy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, who was in charge of monetary policy?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, worse admitted that it was the Fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't COVID.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't Putin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't supply chains.
[SPEAKER_00]: He acknowledged that the Fed caused the inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now again, as I said on the last podcast, the Fed didn't cause it by itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Fed had a partner in crime, and that was the U.S. Congress and the president, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was fiscal policy that he monetized that caused the inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, wars is accepting the Fed's responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet Congress is not accepting theirs, but then Kennedy followed up and it was a great follow-up.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, okay, he said, is inflation the high inflation going to be there permanently and worse said, nope, not on my watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Kennedy said, okay, what are you going to do about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you going to do about inflation?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then
[SPEAKER_00]: Well said, I got three things that I'm going to do about inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he listed the three things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, he's going to make sure that the markets know that the Fed is serious about bringing out inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and so then Kenny said, okay, so you're gonna talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, they're gonna talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're serious about bringing down inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing they're gonna do was take ownership of the inflation, which he basically did.
[SPEAKER_00]: We owned it, we created it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then say that the Fed has the power to do something about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, more talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna own it and they're gonna talk about what they're gonna do about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So of the first two things that he's going to do,
[SPEAKER_00]: it's just talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he gets to the third thing that he's going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said we're going to look at our tools, interest rates and the balance sheet, and decide if we need to make any adjustments.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're going to talk and they're going to look.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that count as what they're going to do about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, doesn't he know what he's going to do about high inflation?
[SPEAKER_00]: If he understands that the Fed caused it and its money supply and artificially low interest rates, why does he say we're going to shrink the balance sheet?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to jack up interest rates because that's the only thing he can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he doesn't want to do any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: he's just going to talk he's going to look right that's why I said it's all bullshit meanwhile look at money supply m2 a 5.6% year over year that is not a fed that's fighting inflation that is a fed that is creating inflation now we haven't got the money supply numbers yet
[SPEAKER_00]: under wars.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in another week or so we get we'll get the first monthly because they release these numbers every month and we'll be able to see what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: under his watch, but we have been able to see the balance sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: The balance sheet is there, and it's been growing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the most recent week, the Fed's balance sheet rose another 7.4 billion.
[SPEAKER_00]: The balance sheet went from 6.736 trillion to 6.5 billion.
[SPEAKER_00]: seven, four, three, trillion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the balance sheet went up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's expanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is he doing that?
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he admitted that he was uncomfortable with the balance sheet in its current size.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said it's so big to him, it looks more like fiscal policy, which it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the Fed monetizing government debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he can talk, but he can't act.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, if the markets are not figuring this out, it should be obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if Walsh did what he needed to do, the markets would be crashing if he did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why he set up all of these task force to study a problem with the solution is obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mentioned on the last podcast
[SPEAKER_00]: The Fed has 23,000 employees, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas it had 40 when they first started in 2014.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the real inflation has been in the number of people that work for the Fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we went from 40 people to 23,000 people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't those 23,000 cover it?
[SPEAKER_00]: We really need five new task force.
[SPEAKER_00]: We really need to bring on even more people to try to figure out what to do about inflation with none of these 23,000 has any idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not rocket science.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because it's easy, that's why they're setting up these task force because they don't want to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that the problem, it's not knowing what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the fact that if you do it, you create such a big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the Fed has always chosen to create inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mentioned, yes, worst says inflation is a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is going to choose inflation for the exact same reason that all of his predecessors chose inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, we got a second commercial break.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a lot more to talk about, so stick around.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're coming right back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are also questions about AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought the most interesting one had to do with the AI bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't remember which Senator asked him this question, but he said what happens if
[SPEAKER_00]: the companies that spent all this money, the hyperscalers, building out the data centers in AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens if these investments never result in a profit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is exactly what I was talking about on my last podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he asked, worse, what would happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would be the consequences for the US economy if it turns out that all this money was a waste?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe not necessarily a waste and that there's no use for it,
[SPEAKER_00]: are not going to generate a profit and therefore they're going to have a hard time repaying their debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: based on all the money they borrow and instead of saying well that's going to be a big problem which which it will be a big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: He basically dismissed it by saying well I guess that could you know inhibit their ability to cap the capital markets it may make it harder for them the borrow more money what do you mean may it if I mean of course it it will it will be a huge problem
[SPEAKER_00]: if these investments turn out to have been mal-investments.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it turns out that, from a corporate point of view, the money was basically thrown away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now the companies don't really have the ability to repay this debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think he downplayed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he could have said, look, I don't think that's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are smart companies.
[SPEAKER_00]: These investments are probably going to pay off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that wasn't a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question wasn't, what do you think are these investments sound or not?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was in the event that it turns out that they can't make any money, that they over invested, and they were going to lose money, what kind of economic impact is that going to have?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he pretty much shrugged it off, like it's no big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it is a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the reasons that I am concerned about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, it means a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in these stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what is the impact going to be there?
[SPEAKER_00]: because these are the stocks that dominate the markets.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where most of the Americans have their money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trump is, you know, bragging about these Trump accounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: He talked about them again in the speech he gave last night about, you know, voter fraud, talking about how rich Americans are going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the kids are going to be rich because they're buying stocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're probably buying these stocks that are going to collapse.
[SPEAKER_00]: if it turns out that these hyperscalers waste their money.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, you know, Donald Trump talks about how rich our kids are going to be in 20 years because of these Trump accounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they're going to be broke because of 20 years of deficit spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: The debt that they're going to inherit is going to vastly exceed whatever stock portfolio they own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but anyway, I don't want to get you to get into that topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have enough time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a bunch of things I want to talk about on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, one of the things I want to mention on AI, because I hear a lot of people, you know, they, you know, because the public is worried that AI is going to cost them their jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The jobs they have now, because they say, AI,
[SPEAKER_00]: right i mean people lose jobs i mean when when when when the telephone came around the telegraph operator lost his job on the telegraph now maybe he got hired you know as a telephone operator instead right he's you know or the guy that was making uh you know buggy whips uh he lost his job but maybe he got a job at an auto company right so you know but there's always a transition uh jobs are lost and and jobs are created so
[SPEAKER_00]: People are always saying that, yes, jobs will be destroyed, but even more jobs will be created.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're trying to say that on balance, that AI will create more jobs in a destroys.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will destroy more jobs than it creates.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is a good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: What AI will do is mean that human beings don't have to work as hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: to get the things that we need because we'll have machines do the work for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what will happen is we'll have fewer better jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, some people won't need jobs at all, or they'll work less.
[SPEAKER_00]: They won't have to work as much.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be able to enjoy more leisure because of increased productivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll destroy jobs that we don't really need anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: and will replace them with other jobs that the AI can't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those jobs will end up being higher pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the people who still want jobs or need jobs will be able to get better jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is that some people who don't want jobs at all, more people will have that option.
[SPEAKER_00]: The option not to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: because of the increased productivity of everybody else who still works, and in particular, the increased productivity of computers and robots and all those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the idea behind automation and progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: So machines work harder, so humans can work less, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They work more, we'll work less.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that that is a good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And overall,
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what will end up being happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a couple of other things that I want to talk about that happened regarding my battles with the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, I had a FOIA request.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned earlier about truth social.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the things that Trump used truth social for was to call me out as a jerk and a loser and a Trumpator.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is back in December of 2025 because I went on Fox and friends on Fox News and I was critical of the president's economic policy, particularly inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said that prices are still rising.
[SPEAKER_00]: The inflation problem is not going away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I blamed, you know, the big spending of Trump and the big beautiful bill.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I said, you know, inflation is getting worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: That really pissed off Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it was like five in the morning when I did this interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was in Dubai, so it was, you know, late afternoon for me, early evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the president was up at the crack and dawn, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's watching Fox News.
[SPEAKER_00]: And before he even gets out of bed, he's on true social talking about what a loser and idiot I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this post, he claimed that I was totally wrong about prices, that they were actually following substantially since he became president, which was blatantly not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he publicly barated the booker.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, who the hell broke this jerk?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what's the problem with that guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and obviously that scared the, the Jesus out of the booker, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because now the president of the United States is pissed off at you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't like that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so anyway, I don't know, I forget like a couple of weeks later, I found out.
[SPEAKER_00]: that this guy Jonathan Copage of the Federal Housing Finance Administration sent an email to a company that stores clips of keyvian reviews, and then if you need a clip, you call the company up a gradient company, a great good company, and you can get the clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: sends an email to Gravian, and he says, hey, I want a copy of the interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the email, it says, hi there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw the president post about leadership being interviewed on Fox and Friends Weekend this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could I get that interview?
[SPEAKER_00]: Question mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm thinking, OK,
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to do a FOIA request, I want to find out like what they discussed, what was said because I have not been invited on Fox News since.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was in December of last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is July and not only have I not been invited on.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, that appearance on Fox and friends, I was on it a week or two earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were making a habit of inviting me on and not only have they not invited me
[SPEAKER_00]: But nobody will return my emails over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy that booked me or none of the people, I mean, I've emailed them a few times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even get a reply.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I became concerned.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did they do?
[SPEAKER_00]: They requested a copy of this interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then what?
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of discussions?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did they request a copy?
[SPEAKER_00]: What did they do after they requested a copy?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do a FOIA request.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I specifically asked for all the emails from this guy, or anybody else in the FH housing administration, that mentioned me, that mentioned Peter's shift for Fox News from the date December 6th, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: When this email was sent, till the date of the request, which was, you know, in January sometime.
[SPEAKER_00]: And about four months later, I get a reply from the government that says, we searched all the records, there's no emails, there's no data, there's nothing that relates to your readership, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Cases closed, we found nothing, responsive to your request.
[SPEAKER_00]: I replied and I said, well, that's impossible because I know of at least one email, because I saw it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how could you have found nothing when I know there's at least one?
[SPEAKER_00]: can you go back and look, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's another guy, this guy, Nicholas Jacobs, that was also copied on the Jonathan Cobbage email, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So two guys at the federal housing finance administration, you know, organic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you must have missed something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just a couple of days ago, so took another couple of months, they contact me,
[SPEAKER_00]: And they say, aha, okay, yep, here, we found an email that is responsive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the only one there is, and we consider the matter closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what they gave me was that exact email that I just read.
[SPEAKER_00]: So initially, they didn't even have this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I said, well, I know of one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing they said me was the one that I already had.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not even believable because obviously the company emailed them back They must have I don't know for sure because I haven't seen a copy of that one But I can only imagine because that's their business, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They provide these clips and so I'm sure
[SPEAKER_00]: they got the clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't produce that email.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then what did they do?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they asked for a the clip of my interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They never discuss what I said.
[SPEAKER_00]: They never talk about it amongst themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither of these guys, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way to believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, they ask for this interview for a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there must have been something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what I think happened is that they contacted Fox News about this and they got me banned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's possible that Fox...
[SPEAKER_00]: Just decided, hey, Trump doesn't like Peter Schiff, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: He called him a jerk and a hater.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just not book him anymore because we don't want to upset the president.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our audience loves the president.
[SPEAKER_00]: The president doesn't like Peter Schiff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just not have Peter Schiff on.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also possible because the Trump administration actively tried to get a copy of this, following Trump's criticism, it's possible that they reached out and they said, hey, do us a favor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let this guy on anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying stuff that we don't like.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want
[SPEAKER_00]: the president's base that watches Fox news to hear this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want any negative talk about the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want people saying that prices are rising, which, in fact, they were.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want people telling the truth when the president is telling all these lies, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We especially, you know, at Fox.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because these are the people that need to believe the president's lies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't put somebody on like Peter Schiff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was hoping that, you know, I might find something like that that would prove that, of course, they probably either, either they destroyed all the evidence,
[SPEAKER_00]: and so therefore it didn't exist or they're just hiding.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like the IRS did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, I had to sue the IRS to get them to comply with my FOIA request.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would probably have to sue the FHA or housing authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: to get this information because you know the government is a bunch of criminals right they do something illegal and then they cut they do something illegal again by covering it up and I know there are a lot of people who are saying Peter I'm making a big deal about this I'm being a cry baby look I don't care I don't really care if I'm out on Fox News again I mean I'd like to be on but I mean if I'm out on I'm out on it's the principle that bothers me it's the fact that this is censorship and you know the most important
[SPEAKER_00]: a part of free speech is freedom to speak critically of the government, because normally the government doesn't care if I want to speak critically of my neighbors or just somebody else they don't give a damn, where freedom of the press is important, where freedom of speech is important is where you're free to criticize your government, because that's where the government can stop you, right, an oppressive government will clamp down on your right to complain, to point out what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what is happening, if the president was involved, if they leaned on Fox News in any way to get them not to book me, that is a big, big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially since one of these Trump ran on was, hey, let's freedom of the press, or free speech.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're all this political correctness and cancel culture, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he's trying to cancel me, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: From speaking my mind, political speech, the most sacrosanct speech that needs protected, I went on Fox and spoke politics, and now I can't go on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, no, maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe they just haven't decided to invite me on.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would, you know, what, why didn't they respond to my emails?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've sent the multiple emails.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't bounce back.
[SPEAKER_00]: The email addresses are still valid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess these guys are even afraid to answer me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I have been on Fox business since that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just one show that claim account down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's obviously not a complete ban all over all of Fox.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I'm clearly not welcome on Fox and Friends, and maybe not the entire Fox network because nobody else has contacted me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, in fact, the only person who has contacted me on Fox Business since then has been, you know, Liz Claiming.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, to her credit, I'm still on, and I guess she hasn't had any pushback, but this is a big issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the even bigger issue that I've been fighting with FOIA is about my bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just got some more explosive information.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's coming out in drips and drives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are emails that were previously redacted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I sued the IRS, the judge agreed with me that the redactions were inappropriate, that the exceptions that the IRS gave for hiding this information from me did not apply.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the judge ordered the IRS to release
[SPEAKER_00]: the documents without the redactions, so I can actually see what was written there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got a new batch of documents a couple of days ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got some more explosive evidence that I did not know about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I posted it on my website, NineFraud.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, if you have never gone the nine fraud, this is where I'm putting all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason it's nine fraud is because it's nine in Australia, channel nine, which is the network in Australia that ran the defamatory 60 minute piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they also, the company, also owns the age and the city more, more than have herald, you know, and that's where this guy Nick McKenzie works, who basically did this to Famitory story, this new story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's the name of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have all this FOIA stuff up on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you gotta go there after this podcast, go to 9thraw.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: and look at the exhibits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the most recent one I just posted, it says, latest FOIA evidence, the ATO Nick McKenzie and the manufacturer's success of Operation Atlantis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I learned some interesting facts that I kind of suspected, but I didn't have as much evidence as I do now that this, in fact, was the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: The OST of Commissioner, there was an email from the OST of Commissioner about the rescheduling of the press conference to shut down the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, it was scheduled for June 20th.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they kicked it back to June 30th because they had a scheduling conflict with the head of criminal investigation, Jim Leigh at the IRS.
[SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't get down to Puerto Rico for the press conference on the 20th.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they postponed the action to the 30th.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, again, shows you, there was no emergency.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was worthy of a season to assist.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were more concerned about the optics of the press conference than protecting the bank's customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also in that email, the Talia Zakaria, who was the host of Commission at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said that they were going to issue this season to assist.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were going to file it early that morning, early that morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they were going to hold off on telling the bank until about an hour or so before the press conference, because she wanted to make sure that I didn't have enough time to go to a judge to get an injunction to try to stop this from happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So think about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's deliberately withholding
[SPEAKER_00]: something that she knows she's going to do, and she knows this is already weeks in advance.
[SPEAKER_00]: She knows that she's going to file it, but she doesn't want me to have enough time to react to it because in theory I could have stopped it because there was no reason to put the bank in the receivership because it wasn't in solvent, no customers were at risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, one of the other interesting things about the over 500 pages of emails that I've read.
[SPEAKER_00]: is not a single email, mentions the fact that the customers were at risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no emails that say, oh, we got to do something to protect these customers, the bank is in solvent.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there is no discussion at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in an earlier email, not one of the ones I just got.
[SPEAKER_00]: but there was revealed to me a cost benefit analysis that the Puerto Rican government did on closing down my bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cost, the downside of closing my bank was the loss of jobs, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna shut down a bank, we're gonna fire people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were worried that yes, some Puerto Rican are gonna lose their jobs when my bank is forced out of business, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was the negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what were the benefits?
[SPEAKER_00]: The benefits were all publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: How it was going to look in the media, how it was going to look to their reputation, shutting down a bank accused of money laundering and tax evasion, how this would help Puerto Rico repair its reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wouldn't be viewed.
[SPEAKER_00]: as attacks haven't because here they were shutting down this bank that was accused of tax evasion money laundering.
[SPEAKER_00]: But nothing in the cost benefit analysis focused on actually stopping money laundering or tax evasion?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that wasn't there putting a stop to crimes or, again, there was nothing in there about protecting the customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact,
[SPEAKER_00]: not a single email, really, from anybody at the IRS or the ATO, when they talked about the success of Operation Atlantis, the Atlantis investigation of my bank, it was always framed in media and publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many articles were written about the Atlantis investigation and the shutdown of my bank?
[SPEAKER_00]: How many social media posts, and they basically, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Listed them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many reposts?
[SPEAKER_00]: How many likes?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they were so obsessed with publicity and using this shutdown of my bank to lend credibility to the J5 and to the J5 tax chiefs themselves This was like their crowning achievement that they had shut down my bank
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though my bank did absolutely nothing wrong and they knew that it did nothing wrong because there's nothing in these emails that even suggests that my bank did nothing wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, but what I did find out that I really didn't know is that the real driving force behind the entire thing was not the IRS.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the ATO, the Australian tax office.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the motivators.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got everybody else going.
[SPEAKER_00]: They basically wrote the entire script that everybody else wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Jim Lee is opening remarks that he read, were prepared and written for him in Australia by the ATO.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why was the Australian tax office, the one that was so concerned with it?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones that had the idea for the global press conference.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted it and they were, they were giving marching orders to everybody else with respect to how to promote it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What to say?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, why nobody in Australia used my bank to evade taxes or longterm money?
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: They accused, right, the 60 minutes of broadcast said that hundreds of Australians, hundreds, multiple hundreds were using my bank to evade taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I sued for defamation, Nick McKenzie, 60 minutes, Charlie Greve,
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us one guy, one gal, who used Europe's civic bank for tax evasion in Australia, and they couldn't come up with one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is this big victory?
[SPEAKER_00]: If not a single tax cheat was caught.
[SPEAKER_00]: If not one extra dollar of money came into the ATO, what the hell was achieved to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing was achieved, but what they achieved was publicity, and that's what they wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Read all the stuff they wrote.
[SPEAKER_00]: They craved this publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said it's very important, but also one of the most important aspects of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They specifically said that it was important, that this global press conference was important to Nick McKenzie.
[SPEAKER_00]: They mentioned him by name.
[SPEAKER_00]: More than once.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to do this for Nick McKenzie, because he has an interest in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he didn't just have an interest in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was at the defendant in a defamation lawsuit where I sued him and why did I sue him?
[SPEAKER_00]: I sued him because he accused the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: or he accused me of using my bank to facilitate tax evasion and money laundering, which was not true, and he had absolutely no evidence to prove that was true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: is he went to the ATO, his source, who likely leaked him the information in the first place, because I also found out that this massive publicity campaign that happened in early January of 2020 on the day of action.
[SPEAKER_00]: They called the day of action when everybody took action.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the day that these two iris agents came to my house and gave me a subpoena.
[SPEAKER_00]: and lied to me about who the target of the investigation was, but this was their day of action, but there was a big PR campaign around the day of action, but they never identified the target.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just said it was some bank in South America, which obviously it wasn't even my bank as I'm out in South America.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now that I found out that all the PR came from Australia, they probably don't know South America from the Caribbean right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're nowhere near us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they had always publicity around the day of action.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they didn't mention my bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they mentioned some target that they suspected there was this massive money laundering, tax evasion, thing going on, and they're going to put a stop to it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This big day of action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I think what happened is, you know, seven, eight, nine months into the grand jury investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: when it became obvious that we did nothing wrong, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a complete waste of time, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They thought that the bank was facilitating tax evasion money laundering and it turned out that that wasn't the case that we actually had very rigorous compliance, KYC AML.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we probably had less tax evasion money laundering going on at my bank than any place else, which is why not only was not a single employee of the bank charged.
[SPEAKER_00]: with any crimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to my knowledge, not a single customer, not one customer out of the thousands of thousands of customers that we had, not a single one to my knowledge, has been charged with any of the little and convicted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody that shows you how tight the ship was that we were running.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think what happened was when they found out.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we did do anything wrong, yet they made a big deal about the day of action, they gave some information in Nick McKenzie.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he could do a story about the bank and how the bank was guilty.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had no proof the bank was guilty, so they could do nothing legally, but they figured, you know what, let's get some publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just get some newspapers or this report reporters to come out and talk about this great investigation and how we've got this bank that's doing all this bad stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't prove it, but the media doesn't need a proof.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll just a legend.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll just say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Nick McKenzie, they do this 60 minutes broadcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do the articles.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get the New York Times.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get Mac Goldstein in on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They probably get extra credibility as I'm what I'm thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they accused me of tax evasion, money laundering, they really play up the J5.
[SPEAKER_00]: These guys are great, they're super cops, they're on the job, they busted this bank, they're putting a stop to tax evasion, my laundering, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What they didn't count on is I filed a defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then nothing happens to the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing happens because the story is false.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to lose the defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think Nick McKenzie,
[SPEAKER_00]: goes to the ATO, goes to his contact and say, hey, you got to help me out here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: We said the guy was guilty.
[SPEAKER_00]: And nothing is happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something needs to happen to this bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to do something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need some evidence to defend against this defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because otherwise I'm going to lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to do something to prove that I was right.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I think what happened was the ATO reached out to the IRS and pressed them to do something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they obviously didn't say we need to do this to help Nick McKenzie
[SPEAKER_00]: Defend himself against a defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: They probably said, we just want it for the publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want some finality here.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, on many occasions in the emails, they talk about phase two, the debanking of Europe Pacific Bank, that it's important that we have this debanking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, this is months before it actually got debaked.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was,
[SPEAKER_00]: They said they wanted to have some concrete results.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted something tangible and real to show for Operation Atlantis.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Operation Atlantis was a complete failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had nothing concrete to show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they needed to get Ossiff to shut down the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the things I also found out in this new batch.
[SPEAKER_00]: was that the IRS originally reached out to OASIF about the bank in December of no January of 2021.
[SPEAKER_00]: now I had thought that the earliest they spoke was in December of 2021.
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually was January.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that until just the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the earliest emails I've seen so far are from April of 2022.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because the only FOIA request that they've so far
[SPEAKER_00]: complied with is the one that specifically dealt with the press conference.
[SPEAKER_00]: So clearly, they didn't start planning that press conference until April.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why my email production started in April.
[SPEAKER_00]: But obviously, before they planned the press conference, they had to shut down the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't seen any of those emails yet, but I'm going to get them because the judge ordered the IRS to produce them because I had two FOIA requests.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was almost completely redacted and I got the judge to order the government to remove the redaction so I can actually read what was produced.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the 500 and some odd pages I got.
[SPEAKER_00]: that mentioned me, Euro-Pacific Bank, Operation Atlantis, going back to the day that they first started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, the day of action.
[SPEAKER_00]: in January of 2020, they didn't give me any of those records.
[SPEAKER_00]: The government claimed, well, that's too broad.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't figure out what you mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to give you nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I sued the judge said, oh, that's bullshit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's obvious what he wants, give it to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to get all this, but basically what it really means is that how do I never filed my defamation lawsuit?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I just left well enough alone?
[SPEAKER_00]: The bank never would've been shut down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have been able to sell it, because the only reason the HEO pressured the IRS to get OSIVE to do something was to help Nick McKenzie defend against my defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think, absent that, they would have left well enough alone, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They got the 60 minutes broadcast, it was already out there, they already talked about how
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that was out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got all that publicity.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't really need the fidelity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, the IRS didn't need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The British didn't need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Canadians didn't need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all Canada.
[SPEAKER_00]: Canada was the only country of the J5.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was really not only pressing for it, but leading the charge, scripting the entire narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why was that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's where Nick McKenzie was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't just publicity for the ATO, for the IRS.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bank was shut down to bail Nick McKenzie and 60 minutes out of the defamation lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the problem
[SPEAKER_00]: 60 minutes they introduced the action against the bank as their only evidence that was supposedly the proof that my defamation lawsuit was wrong because they said look the bank was shut down it was guilty of tax evasion it was guilty of money laundering shift is a criminal we were right he was the mastermind behind the whole thing but the problem was the judge actually looked
[SPEAKER_00]: at what was said, the specific reason given for shutting down the bank, which of course was a pretext, but that was solvency.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was internal controls.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, the OST of Commissioner said at the very press conference that they tried to use as evidence, the OST of Commissioner said that no evidence of money laundering or tax evasion was found.
[SPEAKER_00]: that the bank was being shut down specifically for not having enough capital, and of course the irony was the reason the bank didn't have enough capital is because it lost so much money as a result of the bad publicity generated by 60 minutes Australia, the age, the New York Times.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the leak of the information.
[SPEAKER_00]: falsely accusing the bank of committing crimes that the bank was ultimately exonerated of committing, that caused the very financial problem that resulted in the bank supposedly getting shut down, the media, which enabled the J5, the ATO to claim credit.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said, look, this bad bank was shut down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it was shut down because you destroyed its reputation with a bunch of false allegations
[SPEAKER_00]: If there was any evidence that the bank didn't have anything wrong, somebody would have been charged, but nobody would have charged with anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody even talked about what the bank didn't wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, one of the other things that I found out in the most recent production, Jim Lee,
[SPEAKER_00]: that was written by the ATO on the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The morning of the press conference, he had no idea what the bank did.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sent an email to the publicity guy at the IRS and said, okay, hey, what exactly did this bank do wrong?
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me a couple of examples of how they helped the customers, long-term money and evade taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer is still redacted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm pressing the IRS to release the answer, but it was very short, like a paragraph.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also asked them about six or seven other questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the IRS agent said, it's better if we discuss this over the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did he want to discuss it or the book because he didn't want to put it writing that the bank did nothing wrong that there was absolutely no evidence Let alone they couldn't come up with one example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let alone too that the whole thing was a charade it was it was a force It was a PR event that the bank was being framed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess he didn't want to put that in writing So we told Jim Lee hey, let I'll talk to you about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got all this new information.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get more again, go to nine fraud.com and check this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, I apologize this last bit of the podcast is all broken up because I ran out of memory of my computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's screwing the whole thing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to keep starting and stopping it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got to figure out what's wrong here, so I can, you know, erase some files.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I could do this next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, if you like the video, make sure to give it a thumbs up, come in on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not watching on YouTube, go to YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a great weekend, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be back again next week with more podcasts on the Petership Show podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bye for now.