[SPEAKER_00]: We could see the Japanese crisis happening sooner.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Japanese crisis may be the catalyst for our crisis.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may be the pin that pricks our bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Japanese bubble popping ends up picking the even bigger US bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though the overall stock market was down on the week, I think investors are much too complacent regarding the risks that are increasingly rearing their heads, not just for the markets, but the overall US economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's start by talking about what happened with these AI hyperscalers on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the companies that are spending enormous
[SPEAKER_00]: for the AI build out, all the data centers and the chips that everything that they're buying in order to be able to deliver AI to customers in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest news I think came out of Alphabet, that's Google.
[SPEAKER_00]: They announced on Thursday their earnings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the important part of the announcement was the increase in cap expending.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess above what investors had been expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think investors were expecting a cap ex to go up and that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reaction was not favorable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once upon a time,
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time one of these companies announced they would be spending more money on AI CapEx, the stocks went up, but they haven't been going up and neither have their bonds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because investors are now finally starting to question whether or not these investments aren't fact going to pay off.
[SPEAKER_00]: and so Google shares alphabet stock was down 10% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost all of that decline happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think on Thursday the day that the announcement came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now alphabet is still clinging to a 1% gain so far in 2026 but that's not much to show for all the money that they're
[SPEAKER_00]: on on CapEx.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at Oracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oracle was down almost 8% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are another big Spender 7.9% I think to be exact.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that stock is down down 41% on the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Markets are punishing not rewarding Oracle for all of this spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: Similar situation with meta that's Facebook down 7.3% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: and another stock that's down on the year down eight and a half percent year to date.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amazon also got beat up on the week down 6.8 percent, but year to date still up a bit, but only two and a half percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Microsoft lost less than the other hyperscalers on the week, but still down 2.7 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But year to
[SPEAKER_00]: Microsoft is down 19.3%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So almost in a bear market, Oracle already well into a bear market because of all this spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: And remember, this spending is what is driving a good chunk of US GDP, and there's probably a lot of ancillary GDP that is not directly this spending, but results from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think they spent collectively all these super-piper scalars close to a half a trillion dollars last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: On AI related capex alone, not other capex, but just what is specifically related to artificial intelligence, the data center build-outs and all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this year, they're supposed to spend maybe three quarters of a trillion dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, look at what happened to
[SPEAKER_00]: SpaceX this week and I've been talking about SpaceX even before the SpaceX IPO but this is another AI related company mainly because of XAI but SpaceX down another 7.7% this week on top of the prior losses
[SPEAKER_00]: SpaceX barely held a 115 handle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It closed at 115.07.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 15% below the $135 IPO price.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even more dramatic is that the client from the high.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that stock, I think maybe three days after the IPO,
[SPEAKER_00]: traded above 225, it's now 49% below that high.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, not just SpaceX got clobbered on the week, but Tesla had multiple bad days.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think again, this was related to the spending that they're doing on AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tesla shares down 18%.
[SPEAKER_00]: one of the biggest losers on the week now 35% below is 52 week and I guess all time high you know if you thought you had a bad week last week Elon Musk boss almost $100 billion on these two stocks alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, obviously, you know, he lawns not hurt him, you know, he's still got plenty of money left over, but there are a lot of people that aren't as well positioned as Elon Musk who might have bought into these stocks closer to the highs based on all the hype.
[SPEAKER_00]: and now they have some big losses and those losses are going to get bigger because both these stocks are still outrageously expensive and have a long way to fall especially as I said with SpaceX when all these shares that haven't even been able to sell yet although some of them may have sold short but once they're freely trading the float on this stock is going from 5% where it still is.
[SPEAKER_00]: up to 40% before the end of this year which is not that far off and of course all of this spending by these hyperscalers.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what's generating all the earnings for a lot of the text stocks that still have big gains.
[SPEAKER_00]: like Nvidia, which actually was flat on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's annual gains are being reduced.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only up about nine and a half percent micron, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was up 3% of the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So still up on the news, but not up a lot compared to prior gains on similar announcements.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, year to date, micron is still up about 200 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: and look at Taiwan's semiconductor which makes all this stuff was down on the week down 1.2% despite the increase still up on the year but it's only up 26% so it's not fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, even S.K.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heinrich
[SPEAKER_00]: which has been a trading in Korea for a long time chip maker over there but a recent addition to U.S. listings was down 4.6% of the week because the problem is if the customers of the chip companies
[SPEAKER_00]: are in trouble because they're spending too much money on AI capex and the market is starting to question whether or not this spending is going to end up being recoverable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether these investments will be profitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I've been saying all along.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't doubt the potential of AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I think the markets are likely underestimated the impact long term that AI is likely to have
[SPEAKER_00]: but I think they're overestimating the returns on the investments that are being made by the hyper scalers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is going to be similar to the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that AI will be a bigger advancement, ultimately.
[SPEAKER_00]: than the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the similarity is that so many companies made all these investments in internet related, you know, CapEx, that turned out to be malinvestment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the companies
[SPEAKER_00]: The early favorites that investors were pouring money into went bankrupt.
[SPEAKER_00]: They never made any money off of all of their spending related to building out the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And early beneficiary of that was Cisco systems and the stock collapsed.
[SPEAKER_00]: because their earnings collapse, because their customers went broke, and in fact a lot of their customers went broke, owing them money, because there was a lot of vendor financing, and you're getting similar type of relationships going on now between the hyper scalars and the companies that are producing the products.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they are buying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what you're going to also have potentially this week is another scare, a kind of a deep-seek type scare related to what's going on with Moonshot and Kimmy K3, which is another model that potentially will compete with anthropic and open AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also bringing down the costs
[SPEAKER_00]: and further potentially commoditizing AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if companies can buy lower cost AI agents, or whatever they're getting from Chinese companies, they're not going to be using more expensive models, offered in the US, which means to be competitive, a lot of these companies that have been making all these investments are going to have to lower the prices that they charge their customers, and they won't be able to recover
[SPEAKER_00]: the cost of these investments and any reasonable return or maybe they'll be a negative return.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be losing money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are a lot of people that think, oh, there's nothing to worry about because the US companies are way ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got like a six-month lead on China.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that may be significant in summer specs, but not in all respects.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there's going to be some applications where a six-month lead is significant, where the company that is six-month behind, their AI won't do the job that you need.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you have to pay up to use the more advanced model.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for a lot of applications, that won't be the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're a businessman and you need AI to do a specific task for you,
[SPEAKER_00]: and there are Chinese companies where the AI is good enough to do that task as well as a US company might do that particular task that there's not a meaningful improvement in the results but it's way cheaper
[SPEAKER_00]: then that's the one you're going to choose.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to buy whatever AI you need to get the job done.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to overpay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to have a model that is more than capable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just has to be capable enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that could be a scare again, the ghost of the market that causes some significant declines.
[SPEAKER_00]: in these stock prices that has broader implications for the overall market, because the market has been held up by these AI-related stocks, these text stocks, because there's a lot of negatives that have been ignored as investors have been crowding in to these smaller
[SPEAKER_00]: But not a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Dow is down 0.7%.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: S&P down 1.3%.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Nasdaq despite all these big blowups was only down 3.1% on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Year to date, Nasdaq's gain is now just 7.5%, which is about the same as the Dow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a big lead for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's still up.
[SPEAKER_00]: even the high-flying Russell 2000 was down, but only one and a half percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still up 17 percent so far this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, even though all these markets are down, they're still relatively close to their all-time record highs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite the fact,
[SPEAKER_00]: that you have this looming decline, significant decline in the stocks that have been leading the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's been a lot of bad news, too, that came out this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get into some of that bad news after I do this break.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before I do that, I want to turn my attention to markets that were positive on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold and silver precious metals.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did good week?
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold was up about 1%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing spectacular.
[SPEAKER_00]: But gold rose 1%, even though bond yields rose significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though oil prices rose significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you might say, well, yeah, well rising oil prices, you know, should be good for gold because gold and oil should be correlated, but they haven't been correlated recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ever since the war broke out the Iran war there's been a a divergent it's been opposite golden oil a gun in the opposite directions and I've been saying that eventually that's going to change And oil and gold are going to move in the same direction and that might be happening now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have a big move in in in gold this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did have a big moving oil
[SPEAKER_00]: But golden go down and the fact that it didn't go down and in fact managed to rise, I think shows that that is happening and that is very significant for precious metals investors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And look what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silver was up 2.4% on the week, still down 20% on the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gold is barely down on the year, no, no, excuse me, it's down about 7% on the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Considering the huge gain that both metals had in 2025, it's not that big a decline, but it's enough to create a buying opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, a lot of people got scared that the war was gonna be bears for gold, that rising interest rates were gonna be bears for gold, and they are wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're actually bullish for gold, and this week may be an indication that investors are figuring that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you look at what happened to the mining stocks,
[SPEAKER_00]: GDX was up 5.6 percent on the week and GDXJ up 5.8 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are decent moves where gold was only up 1 percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of leverage this week in the miners relative to the metal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a good sign at the bottom that we're moving a lot higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: These stocks are still great buys.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're down on the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: The GDX is down 12 and a quarter percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So far this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the GDXJ is down 14%.
[SPEAKER_00]: And another week where Bitcoin didn't really go anywhere, I mean, I know the week is not quite over yet, because we still have the whole weekend, but I think as of when the market's closed on Friday, Bitcoin was down close to 1% on the week, making it ended last week,
[SPEAKER_00]: close to sixty sixty five thousand are just below in this week it barely managed to gain or close above sixty four thousand.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact as I'm recording this on Saturday afternoon Bitcoin is about sixty four thousand three hundred and change so it's gained a little bit as since the close in New York but still an uneventful week for Bitcoin didn't move up with the precious metals went down with the risk assets year to date Bitcoin was down about
[SPEAKER_00]: As of the clothes on Friday, and about the same today still, that's a big drop, 29% micro strategy, even worse, down to 4.5% excuse me strategy, again, they should have just called it micro, based on where the stock is going rather than strategy because they have none.
[SPEAKER_00]: But down 4.5% on the week, now down 42% year to date,
[SPEAKER_00]: stretch, managed a slight gain on the week of 0.4, but still down 13% on the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: The price is 86.88, meaning the current yield, because the coupon is 12%, the current yield is just under 14%, 13.8%.
[SPEAKER_00]: investors don't believe in Bitcoin any more at least institutions apparently according to sailor institution picked you know stepped up and bought some stretch over the last week or two as retail sold obviously retail sold for a loss but this is still overwhelmingly a retail product but I don't read anything bullish into this the fact that institutions
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, put their toe in the water, maybe it's a short term trade, or maybe they're making some bearish bets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where this is a hedge, maybe they're shorting strategy and buying stretch or shorting Bitcoin and buying stretch.
[SPEAKER_00]: to get that yield and have a hedge.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are bearers' bets, if in fact they're being made.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think Wall Street's rhetoric does it match their action.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still trying to get customers in the Bitcoin, but they have no interest in it themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, we've got a quick commercial.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to take this break and we'll be right back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't go anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I alluded to before the break, the big moves really were in the bond market and in the oil market.
[SPEAKER_00]: Starting with oil, oil had a big week, it closed the week above $90 a barrel, $90 in 40 cents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oil prices continue to rise with the rhetoric in the Middle East, in particular related to Iran and the straight and everything that's going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: oil prices now are up 30% in the month of July and we got another week left to go week we could hit 100 by the end of the month we'll see but 90 is already a pretty high price if you remember and I talked about this and I warned about this on my podcast
[SPEAKER_00]: when we got the June CPI that the markets celebrated, we had rallies based on the fact that the CPI dropped in June more than expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was four tenths of a percent versus expectations of one tenth.
[SPEAKER_00]: What led the decline?
[SPEAKER_00]: was energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Energy prices dropped better than 20% during the month, and that was the reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the only reason really that we got that big drop, yet people thought, okay, defense not going to have to hike, inflation is coming down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Year over year was still 3.5% despite that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I warned.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it was too early to celebrate a drop in oil prices, especially one related to that memorandum of understanding, which was nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I turned out to be right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The price of oil today is higher than it closed at the end of May.
[SPEAKER_00]: It closed May just above 87.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's now above 90.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in June and July, so far, the two months take it together, oil is up, it's not down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the July CPI that we're going to get sometime in August.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget the date.
[SPEAKER_00]: is going to have a bigger rise than we had a fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so overall, the year of year CPI numbers are headed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Wall Street is going to have to be prepared for a negative print on that and that number.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, probably even more significant are the bond prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bond yields hit new highs for this move.
[SPEAKER_00]: So new highs post the Iran war.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though oil hasn't hit a new high, oil can still go higher to take out the highs since the war, but oil prices and bonds, Bond yields have been positively correlated.
[SPEAKER_00]: But bonds are breaking down even faster now than oil is rising.
[SPEAKER_00]: The yield on a 10-year treasury hit 4.68 or it actually got higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw it at 4.71, maybe 4.72.
[SPEAKER_00]: It closed the week at 4.78 at 4.68, excuse me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's near the highs of the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, the highs since the war taking out the liberation day high.
[SPEAKER_00]: This has ominous implications.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the highest in 20 or 30 years, but
[SPEAKER_00]: because a couple of years ago, we got slightly higher than this in the 10 year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's going to be taken out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget what that high was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It probably was 47 something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it got as high as 4.8.
[SPEAKER_00]: But look at the 30 year, because that's even more significant than the 10 year, because it takes into account 20 more years of inflation expectations and additional risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: The 30-year yield closed at 5.16%, that is a 20-year high.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the highest, the 30-year bond yield has been since 2006.
[SPEAKER_00]: The highest I saw in Ture Week was 5.16%.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe, you know, 5.19.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it traded 5.2.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should get there next week, probably by Monday.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is very significant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the national debt, US national debt, which is now higher than 39.6 trillion, marching to 40 trillion, and we'll hit 50 trillion within a few years.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the debt right now is more than four times, four times larger than what it was in 2006.
[SPEAKER_00]: So having to pay 5.16% on a 30 year,
[SPEAKER_00]: is a lot more problematic, or those yields, the rising yields, the 10 year yields, are a lot more problematic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, then they were at similar yields 20 years ago, where we had a lot less debt than we had a finance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just the government that has all this debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The private sector has loaded up with debt, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: everybody went on a borrowing binge and that was that the specific purpose of the zero percent interest rates.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Fed kept interest rates so low for so long specifically so people would gone borrow money and I remember all these still called experts talking about how everybody should take advantage of the cheap money that the government should take advantage and borrow always cheap money while they can that individuals should borrow and corporations should borrow
[SPEAKER_00]: And an analogy I used was, well, what if heroin was free?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if somebody was giving out free heroin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Should you just go out and buy it and use it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, hey, it's free.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't turn down free heroin, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't cost me anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not just gonna buy it, because it's so cheap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, because it's harmful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because something is low cost, if it's bad, you don't do it anyway, because you're getting a good deal on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, if you could have borrowed that sheet money and put it to a productive use, if you could use it to make a capital investment that would generate a yield that could be used not only to service the debt, make your interest payments, but retire the principle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it lowered the hurdle rate, making investments that might otherwise not be financial, financial.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to that extent, sure, and that may have been a mistake, economically, the Fed may have been encouraging investments that shouldn't have been made because interest rates were artificially low.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe if interest rates were allowed to reflect the actual time preferences for money, some investments wouldn't be financed, because they're not really viable, given the amount of savings in the economy to support it, the Fed sends false messages to the markets with artificial interest rates, which is where you get these booms at most.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at least that was viable.
[SPEAKER_00]: on paper, but a lot of the consumption or a lot of the loans rather that were taken out because of the low interest rates went to finance consumption.
[SPEAKER_00]: especially the government, all that money was consumption.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the money the government borrowed was to make social security payments, Medicare payments, you know, fight wars, pay pensions, you know, all these programs that the government funded with that money, all the bailouts and all the stimulus after COVID, we borrowed all that money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that money has gone, there is no asset to retire the debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just the American taxpayer who has to work harder
[SPEAKER_00]: to to print more money.
[SPEAKER_00]: But and create more inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the point I'm making is these interest rates are a much bigger problem now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the bigger problem is they're going to keep rising because the US is headed for a fiscal crisis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our deficits are running out of control.
[SPEAKER_00]: The market is losing an appetite to finance, to the willingness to finance the debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why they're demanding higher interest rates.
[SPEAKER_00]: But higher interest rates, we can the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Higher interest rates cause our budget deficit to rise, because it means the government has to spend more money it doesn't have to pay interest on the debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as interest rates rise, that causes a higher
[SPEAKER_00]: deficit, which causes interest rates to rise more because the bigger the deficit is, the more investors are worried that the Fed is going to have to create inflation to service it, which means you don't want to own the debt because it's going to be the base.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get in this vicious circle where monetary policy interest rate cuts are no longer effective, physically because of the immediate impact that higher interest rates have,
[SPEAKER_00]: on the fiscal situation of the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, so far, the dollar is held up.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the dollar index was up a little bit on the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it didn't go in the same direction of gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think ultimately, the dollar is going to decouple again in the same direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to start to see the dollar falling.
[SPEAKER_00]: when interest rates rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, the dollar gains strength from these higher rates, because supposedly it's indicative of the fact that the Fed is, you know, get a high grades or it's supposedly going to be good for the dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I look at rising interest rates as a repudiation of the dollar, of
[SPEAKER_00]: a lack of willingness to loan dollars to the United States at rates that we can afford to pay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the de-dollarization trade and ultimately the dollar should decouple and start to fall as bond prices rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when that happens, that is going to accelerate the crisis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now one other crisis though that might happen first.
[SPEAKER_00]: is going to be in Japan because a Japan has a similar problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not identical to the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in many cases, our problem is worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Superficially, people may not realize that because of the Japanese debt to GDP being higher.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's just one aspect of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of other aspects that actually stacked up against the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as the timeline,
[SPEAKER_00]: We could see the Japanese crisis happening sooner.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Japanese crisis may be the catalyst for our crisis.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may be the pin that pricks our bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Japanese bubble popping ends up picking the even bigger US bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, when you look at the currencies, the Japanese yen
[SPEAKER_00]: fell to a 163.8 against a US dollar.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the lowest exchange rate for the Japanese yen.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 40 years, the last time the yen was this low where you can buy this many yen for $1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was 1986.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, yields on Japanese government bonds have also been rising.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been talking about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been warning about it since before the move even started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when the Japanese government drew a line in the sand on the 10 year JGB at a half a percent, 50 basis points.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said that there's no way that they're going to hold that line.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said that yields are going to go to 1% then 2% and 2.5% then 3% well we're at 2.8 now.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the high that we've been since 1996, 30 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: since the Japanese had a pay 2.8% on a 10 year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, Japan hardly had any debt 30 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of this debt has been accumulated based on this ass-in-ine policy of artificially suppressing the rent yen and trying to generate inflation on the theory that this would help exports by weakening the yen and keeping interest rates artificially low.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can export more to the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that strategy has completely backfired.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to get to that in a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to continue to talk about the Japanese government bond market, the yield on the 30 year JGB is almost 4% right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really unheard of.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Japanese history, this is the highest yield ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: We closed at 3.98%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the reason it's not a 30 year high is because Japan didn't even issue 30 year government bonds.
[SPEAKER_00]: 30 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't start issuing them until 1999.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since the beginning this is the the highest these bonds have ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason that this is so problematic for Japan is because of the enormity of the debt that they have.
[SPEAKER_00]: their debt to GDP ratio is above 200% and they're currently running annual budget deficits that are about 2% of GDP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite all this and despite the weakness in the yen,
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the reason that the yen is week is the policy rate in Japan, which is the equivalent of our Fed funds rate, is still at 1% 1% they barely raised interest rates.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is where the crisis is going to come because either we're going to get a significant increase in the policy rate soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to have to take the rate up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 3%, I don't even know if 3% is high enough, but that would be a start.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they just go to one and a quarter, one and a half, they're going to fuel the fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: So either they're going to act aggressively, and we're going to have a crisis in Japan that's going to spill over into the US, or they're going to be too timid, and we're going to have a different sort of crisis that is also going to spill over into the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to talk about that, and a few other things on the other side of this break, so stick around, coming right back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as I said, the Astonine cheap yen policy, which Japan has been pursuing, and also to prop up a lot of zombie companies that should have gone broke years ago, they kept interest rates artificially low to weak in the yen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they succeeded.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weak in the yen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The yen is the weakest it's been in 40 years, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I already said that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not helping Japan's economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even helping their trade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Japan had trade surpluses every year from 1970.
[SPEAKER_00]: Japan ran
[SPEAKER_00]: Trade surpluses every year from 1980 to 2011.
[SPEAKER_00]: So 31 years of consecutive trade surpluses.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a rising end, again, was going up, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The strong end wasn't a problem for Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't start running trade deficits at all until 2011, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But some years they had a deficit, some years they had a surplus, so trade was kind of in balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: But beginning in 2021, we had nothing but trade deficits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every year since 2021, Japan has run a trade deficit.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you look at the most recent trade numbers they had, which were from
[SPEAKER_00]: year-over-year imports stored by 25.4% the price of imports, not how much they imported, but how much they paid to import.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that far acclipsed that 19.3% rise in their exports.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they say, well, a weekend isn't a weekend going to stimulate demand for Japanese goods by making them cheaper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but it also means that the Japanese need more yen to buy their imports, which are now a lot more expensive, especially energy and food and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the weak yen is not helping their terms of trade.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is hurting their terms of trade.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact,
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the benefits of a strong currency is that you have low capital costs?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can borrow money cheaper because of confidence in the purchasing power of your currency.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was an advantage that the Japanese enjoyed, that they are losing now as rising interest rates are increasing capital costs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Japanese
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, explorers have higher import costs for their raw materials for their components because of the weekend and now they're facing rising capital costs which is why their trade position is deteriorating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, Japan is still one of the biggest credit donations in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they're now number three.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: because they're so wealthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't understand what a credit or nation is, versus a debt or nation, you look at the income that a country's citizens earn from their overseas investments, versus what they have to pay foreigners who own their domestic investments.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in other words,
[SPEAKER_00]: The residents of Japan, Japanese citizens own a lot of foreign stocks, foreign bonds, foreign real state, and so they collect dividends, they collect interest, they collect rents.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Japanese own a lot more stocks abroad than the rest of the world owns assets in Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the net difference is more investment income flows in Japan than out of Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Japanese can obviously use this investment income to cover the cost of their goods.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're trade deficit.
[SPEAKER_00]: In America, it's the opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're the world's biggest detonation.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we used to be the world's biggest credit in the nation until some point in the 1980s when it flipped.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're not only the world's biggest debtor, we owe more than all the other detonations in the world combined.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to pay net interest, dividends, rents to the world on top of our merchandise trade deficit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: we don't get investment income to offset our trade deficit or investment deficit adds to our goods deficit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that respect, we are in a much more vulnerable position than the Japanese, but Japan's position as a net creditor has been deteriorating because it was number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the largest creditor nation in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: for 34 years, up until 2024, and Germany passed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they became number two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Germany was number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well last year, China passed Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now China is number two.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna pass Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't question about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: China will be number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Japan has slipped to number three.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also have to ask yourself, why is it America,
[SPEAKER_00]: up there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, those are strong economies, wealthy economies, that are credit or nations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is the United States a big detonation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Get that as a huge problem for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we've been selling off our assets to finance our consumption.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been living way beyond our means.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not the case in Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Japanese people have been saving money.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not loaded up with credit card debt, student loans, mortgages, the way Americans are.
[SPEAKER_00]: They actually have money that the Japanese government could tap into because what the Japanese government is going to have to do to avoid a worse crisis than the one that they're going to create by doing the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to dramatically
[SPEAKER_00]: Raise interest rates bank and Japan big interest rate hike as I said at least a 3% from 1% if not more
[SPEAKER_00]: But they also need credible fiscal policy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to cut government spending, especially since interest expense is going to rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, they're budget deficits for 2% of GDP, which is not that bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there're going to be a lot worse when Japan has to start paying higher interest on all of his debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need real spending cuts coming out of the Japanese government or middle-class tax hikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Japanese people, they can afford it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have the savings.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can afford to pay higher taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can get along without with less government support.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not the case in the United States, but Japan has two choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do the right thing and force stocks to go down, bonds to go down, force a recession.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what would the response be in America?
[SPEAKER_00]: If the world's third biggest credit donation, all of a sudden interest rates are spiking, contractionary fiscal policy, recession, they're going to repatriate.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot more money is going to come into Japanese government bonds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Japanese are going to buy their bonds at higher yields.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to put money in the bank in Japan to earn higher yields.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to have to cover losses on investments.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a big call.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the end is going to sort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under this scenario, the end is not only going to stop falling, the end is going to reverse, and that's going to totally blow up the end, carry trade.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is going to send shockwaves throughout the world that will particularly be felt in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, part of the Japanese government doing the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just Japanese
[SPEAKER_00]: investors that are going to sell US assets including treasuries the Japanese government owns over 1.1 trillion in treasuries the Japanese government is the biggest owner of US treasuries in the world so if the Japanese government is doing the right thing one of the things they need to do to shore up the end is pay down some of their debt well how do they pay down their own debt by selling our debt and that also helps with the end
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they'll give up the income that they're earning on US government bonds, but that's not that much and in fact if Japanese bonds rise They may be able to have the same income on those bonds, right as they're as those bonds are maturing and they get higher yields, so you know
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a win for the Japanese to dump our bonds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's a huge loss for us when that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the stock market here can crash, the bond market, economy, we can have a financial crisis that starts in Japan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe the Japanese don't do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they just leave interest rates alone, or maybe the Bank of Japan just goes up to one, one and a quarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not going to be enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have a crash in the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that's not going to immediately drag down the dollar, but it's going to crash the Japanese bond market, which is going to have implications for the U.S. bond market.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Japanese stock market.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that happens again, a big repatriation, a big margin call, the Japanese are going to be selling assets all around the world, especially in the U.S. where they have a lot of assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: So either way, we can have a big problem in the U.S. And what's the Fed going to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously they're not going to hike rates either way, especially if the dollar is strengthening based on a collapsing yen, but even if it's weakening,
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to have to put a floor beneath the market.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to have to buy all the treasuries that the Japanese and everybody else are dumping.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to have a crisis either way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless of whether Japan does the right thing or the wrong thing, it's a problem for Japan and it's ultimately going to be a bigger problem for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are more dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are less able to service it, and we have the problem of being a detonation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not a creder nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. government doesn't have a lot of wealth other than from the very, very rich, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got the 1% or the 1%, but the middle class Americans,
[SPEAKER_00]: don't have the resources that the middle class Japanese have, which is why we're even less likely to do the right thing and more likely to get hit with runaway or hyperinflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Japanese may reach that decisive moment even before we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then it'll be just like Domino's, it'll start there and it will quickly morph.
[SPEAKER_00]: to the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I want to get into some other economic news in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was the unemployment claims, because the Trump administration has been making a big deal about about the drop in claims for weekly unemployment benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a significant
[SPEAKER_00]: First time claims for unemployment benefits dropped by 22,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're down to 187,000 claims.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the Trump administration is out there saying that this is the lowest level since 1969.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that's actually not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was actually lower 182,000 in September of 2022.
[SPEAKER_00]: so they want to ignore that year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously the reason why is because they want to tout this as some phenomenal Trump related accomplishment that Trump has managed to achieve something that we haven't had since 1969.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that it also happened in 2022 means that Biden achieved the same thing, which diminishes the success.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if Biden had a number even lower than Trump, because Biden said we had the worst economy and history under Trump said we had the worst economy in history under Biden.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yet we had a week where unemployment claims were lower than the week that we just had.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even if you throw that out, it's still a very low number.
[SPEAKER_00]: and people might say, oh, well, you know, I should be giving Trump credit where credit is due.
[SPEAKER_00]: We must have a very strong economy to have a labor market so strong that hardly anybody is being fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, it must be a good economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: If employers are not letting people go, because normally you let people go when the economy is weak and because no one's getting fired or not that many people that we must have a strong economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that misses
[SPEAKER_00]: other significant changes that have occurred in the labor market in recent years that render that number a lot less significant than what it used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is the fact that we've had such minimal hiring over the past couple of years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Companies have barely hired anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they may have not hired anybody at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but even if you believe the government numbers, there's hardly been any hiring, and those numbers can easily get revised to show that there's just been firing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the point I'm making is if companies are not hiring a lot of people, it stands to reason they're not going to be firing that many because a lot of times,
[SPEAKER_00]: you hire somebody and they don't work out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's somebody new, you take a chance, you don't really know and they don't work out and so you let them go and you hire somebody else or maybe you find out, you didn't really need that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're not having that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not having that type of firing because we're not having the hiring.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that right away diminishes the number of people that potentially could be laid off and could be filing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four claims the second thing is the collapse and labor force participation, which is continued under Trump if you have fewer people in the labor force
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you have fewer people who potentially could be laid off and collecting unemployment benefits because you have to be fired and you have to be looking for a job to qualify.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you haven't been fired or you're not looking for a job, obviously you can't file for unemployment benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fewer people in the workforce, fewer people filing unemployment claims.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a third reason that I think these numbers are insignificant is
[SPEAKER_00]: the sheer number of Americans who are now working, but they are self-employed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're working through the gig economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: An example would be somebody who's driving an Uber.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're only occupation right now is Uber driver, you can't get fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Uber employed all of these drivers,
[SPEAKER_00]: and had them on payroll.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's say demand was falling for rides.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't getting as many rides.
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to cut costs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would lay off some of these drivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now these drivers would go and submit for unemployment.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would file a claim because, hey, I just got laid off from Uber.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna get my unemployment benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber doesn't have to do that because nobody is on salary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uber drivers only get paid for the rides they perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it would make any sense for Uber to fire anybody because it doesn't cost them anything to keep people as drivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is, instead of some drivers losing their jobs, all drivers just drive less.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the pain is spread out among everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have some people that do no driving.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody just does a little bit less driving if there's less demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: the layoffs and you don't get the unemployment claims.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're self-employed by definition, you can't fire yourself, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these good workers have not been hired by Uber.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to get fired by Uber and they're not going to be getting unemployment benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, even if you're still working,
[SPEAKER_00]: and but you're working less that doesn't count you can't you know you're still employed you're still performing work that would disqualify you from unemployment benefits because you have to not be working and that that's why the unemployment rate too is so uh... meaningless because we count people who drive the ubers
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, maybe a few hours a week has not been unemployed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if they spend the rest of their hours looking for a job, they still don't count as being unemployed because they earn so many driving an Uber and people didn't have that opportunity years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot more people who were unemployed were qualified.
[SPEAKER_00]: as being on a pledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the number is is meaningless.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think Trump going out there and the Trump administration making a big deal, they're making much do about nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the other big story on the week are the new terrorists.
[SPEAKER_00]: that Trump is imposing to replace some other tariffs that just expired, not the reciprocal tariffs that were declared unconstitutional, but this new tariff, that's also unconstitutional.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if we're going to have to wait or how long we might have to wait for some legal challenges, but they will be overturned as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Trump is now imposing tariffs on about, I don't know, 60 different countries, something like that, ranging from 10 to 12 and a half percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's based on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what this section is supposed to do is protect
[SPEAKER_00]: American workers from competition with slave labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is that if a country is forcing people into involuntary servitude, coercive labor, they're not hiring workers in a competitive free market and paying a fair wage that it's unfair for American workers to have to compete with that or American companies, to have to compete with a foreign company that has the advantage of enslaving their workforce.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't so much that, you know, we're so concerned about the plight of these slaves, that wasn't what was politically driving it, although, you know, they may have used that as part of the selling point, but it was more an economic argument, hey, let's help America workers, it's not fair if these businesses have to compete because, you know, we don't have slavery to America anymore, and so we can't compete.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that beside the point that slave labor to the
[SPEAKER_00]: is not very efficient labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It never was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the slave doesn't work very hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the slave does the minimal amount of work that he can get away with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas in a free market, you know, absent like a labor union or something where you can't get fired, people work harder because if they don't work hard, they're going to get fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: A slave isn't worried about getting fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to get fired, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: To the extent that that's even possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in a free market,
[SPEAKER_00]: and they work even harder because they hope they get a raise.
[SPEAKER_00]: They hope they get a promotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of getting a promotion when you're a slave?
[SPEAKER_00]: What you just get to work harder, but you're still a slave.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get any money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an inefficient...
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, labor, you know, system slavery, but apart from that argument, because that's a relevant to the point that I'm really trying to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was an economic argument that it's not fair, you know, if you're not paying any wages, you know, it's unfair competition.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it allowed the president to impose tariffs on these goods that were the product of slave labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the provision that he is relying on, Trump, to impose these tariffs now on all these countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying that we're doing it because of slave labor, except there is no slave labor going on in these countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there have been some allegations that there's some slave labor potentially in China somewhere, but the tariffs in general have nothing to do with actual slave labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way Trump is justifying this is he's saying that we are imposing these tariffs on countries that are not doing off to prevent the products of slave labor from coming into their countries, even if no products associated with slave labor are actually coming into the countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Trump, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is going to use this to impose these tariffs anyway by claiming that these other countries aren't doing enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
[SPEAKER_00]: The difference between the 10% tariff that Canada is getting, for example, and the 12.5% that China is getting, that Switzerland are getting, is Trump is saying that China in Switzerland aren't doing anything to protect against slave labor while Canada is doing something.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just not doing enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all this is complete BS.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think about Switzerland.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think the reason Americans are buying Swiss products is because they're being made with slave labor?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the average wage in Switzerland is higher than the average wage in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're paying higher wages.
[SPEAKER_00]: So any competitive advantage that Switzerland enjoys in their products has nothing to do with paying low wages because they're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're paying higher wages.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are other things that are involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's all BS because Donald Trump is saying this is being done to protect American workers, protect American
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not working, the trade deficits are bigger than when Trump was elected.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not smaller.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are fewer people employed in manufacturing since Trump was reelected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not more people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are backfiring.
[SPEAKER_00]: All these are our taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're taxes and they're on Americans.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not taxes on the Swiss.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not taxes on Canadians or the Chinese.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are taxes on Americans and Americans are paying these taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
[SPEAKER_00]: Americans need to pay taxes because we have a massive deficit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the government needs more tax revenue.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just this ingenuous for Trump to claim that these taxes aren't being paid to just take credit for lowering taxes on tips, lowering taxes on Social Security or Medicare, but not expect except responsibility for taking back a good chunk of those tax cuts.
[SPEAKER_00]: with tax hikes, which is what these are, but the way they're being done, they're actually making American businesses less competitive, and therefore they're worsening the very trade problems that can try and solve, and they're not doing much about the deficits, the deficits are still going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: because we need bigger tax cuts or bigger tax hikes than the ones that we've had.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tariffs are too small to make a big enough dent in the reductions in taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the deficits that already existed before the big beautiful bill made them bigger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, what we're really missing is cuts in government spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because not only did we not cut government spending,
[SPEAKER_00]: we increased government spending.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem when Trump was elected was that the government spent too much and Trump acknowledged that Trump ran on austerity in a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were going to cut waste fraud in abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were going to have Elon Musk indulged in all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, not only did we do nothing to help solve the out of control spending problem with the big beautiful bill, we made the out of control spending problem even worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: We increase the amount of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made the deficits under Trump even bigger than the deficit under Biden, which all the Republicans ran against.
[SPEAKER_00]: including Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, these new tariffs, it's just more of the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's another attempt by the Trump administration to circumvent the constitutional requirements that taxes including tariffs need to originate in the House and past Congress.
[SPEAKER_00]: before he can sign he cannot just impose taxes on the American people as as if he was a king but that is exactly what he has been doing anyway that's it for today's podcast hopefully everybody enjoys the rest of their weekend and we will see we will see how the week plays out as I said there are some ominous forces that are building
[SPEAKER_00]: that should be obvious, yet they're hiding in plain sight, we'll see if they manifest themselves next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, make sure that you like and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you're not watching my podcast on the YouTube channel, then go to the YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're watching on shift radio or just listening on, you know, on Apple or Spotify or someplace else, just go
[SPEAKER_00]: The follower account continues to improve.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm at about 1,620,000 followers now.
[SPEAKER_00]: My goal is 2 million followers.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the year, I think I'm going to get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you guys help me, I will get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You help me not only by following me yourself, but by encouraging all of your followers to follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And constantly repost.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I can constantly expand.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... you know my my audience in my reach because i am getting or disseminating very important information in defense of freedom of capitalism of sound money and exposing all that the fraud and the corruption in government and in of you know big government theory and wall street because when this next crisis comes and it's going to be far worse than anything we experienced in two thousand in eight and much worse than the economics of covid
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that the powers that be in Wall Street, academia, government, they're all going to be blaming capitalism, they're all going to say there wasn't enough regulation, especially the socialist that are gaining in numbers in both the Democratic and the Republican Party.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be able to push back against that false narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need more people to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: that these government, these problems are caused by government and more government will just make them worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want a push, a real grassroots push for free market solutions to government problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye for now.