That's a very big deal actually, because it looked for a while like,
Okay, the Fed is going to eat ease and interest rates are going to
go back down, and pretty soon we'll be back in one of those cycles
where there's very easy money and everybody can buy anything. And that kind of
happened for a little while, and it still feels like it's happening in the
stock market, but in general that's not the case in the US. You
know, we're running big deficits and that's very stimulative. But if interest rates
are going back up, you know, the ten year treasury yield went down
to three point five percent from five percent. You're listening to Carrie Let's's Financial
Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to
thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more than
ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your free newsletter and gift.
Financial Survival Network now more than ever, and welcome you are listening to
watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Leutz. I am
on the road in Thailand and John and I are roughly nine thousand miles or
eight thousand miles apart here and we're still doing the show. The show must
go on. John, Hey, Carrie, greetings from the first world.
You know it's dinner time here, so that knows mean that it's breakfast time
for you, right exactly. And I started eating breakfast again, a practice
I've stayed away from for years now. But I'm eating breakfast, but I
keep it down to two meals a day. I can't do three meals a
day anymore. I just can't. It's something with age, man, I
don't know. I just can't eat three meals a day. Well, but
when you're in an exotic war in country, you got to eat the breakfasts
and all their other meals too. You got to got a sample. It
all so good. Now I'm picturing like for tie breakfast, I'm picturing like
octopus and squid and stuff like that. Is it o what they eat for
breakfast? They don't have like they do a Western breakfast. I'm staying at
the Hilton here. They do a Western breakfast, but they do the Eastern
breakfast, which is you eat the same food all day long. It's not
breakfast per se. It's just the same food you're eating and that's always how
it used to be. You ate for breakfast what was left over from dinner,
right, So okay, that makes sense, made sense. Yeah so
anyway, hey, well we should be celebrate breaking out the champagne Bitcoin his
eclipsed the fifty thousand dollars mark Nick Santiago called it. I mean, we
thought it was going to go a lot lower under twenty thousand. Maybe those
are ETFs, They are ETPs, change traded products are starting to have an
effect on the price job Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
you kind of think that, except that a lot of those those ETPs,
or all of them just are synthetic. They use futures contracts to replicate the
movements of bitcoin, so it's not like they're you know, getting a bunch
of bitcoin and storing it taking it off the market. But I don't really
know the details of that. So it's possible to sublet the ETPs are actual,
you know, analogs to physical ETPs, and that's leading to a lot
of demand for bitcoin. So that's that's a possibility. Hey, we could
say this that the ETPs for digital assets are the analog of g l D
and SLV. They got all the stuff on their books, but do they
really have it. I don't know. Supposedly, my best friend Jeff says
that Fidelity has the coins, they actually possess them. But you know what,
it's an ETP, which is a tracking product. It's not physical,
physical bitcoin, which is in the novelly anyway. So it's going to be
interesting to see what's happening. I told you, like, I buy a
certain amount of bitcoin every Monday, and when I swing traded, when it
hits peaks, I dump out of it. But here it went over fifty.
That's probably enough momentum to take it close to sixty in my opinion,
but we will find out soon enough. So, hey, interest rates are
rising again. Yeah, that's that's a very big deal actually, because it
looked for a while like, okay, the Fed is going to eat ease
and interest rates are going to go back down, and pretty soon we'll be
back in one of those cycles where there's very easy money and everybody can buy
anything. And that kind of happened for a little while, and it still
feels like it's happening in the stock market, but in general that's not the
case in the US. You know, we're running big deficits and that's very
stimulative. But if interest rates are going back up. You know, the
ten year Treasury yield went down to three point five percent from five percent,
and then it went back up just lately to like four point two percent,
And you know, that doesn't sound like much of a move, but in
for instance, the mortgage market, it's a very big deal because it puts
us back above seven percent of mortgages. Now. My wife and I are
thinking about buying houses for our two kids, so I'm really interest rate sensitive
right now. And houses in the places where we're look at have not really
come down in price. There aren't a lot of sales happening, but the
prices are simple at they're completely unaffordable bubble levels. And now mortgage rates are
going back up to seven percent and above, which means that, you know,
if you couldn't afford a house three years ago, I'm at the price
back when you could get a three percent mortgage, There isn't the chance in
the world if you've been able to buy that house. You know, you
know, if you buy a house now with a seven percent mortgage, your
total interest cost equals the price of the house, So over thirty years,
you would in effect, my two houses instead of one house. So that's
not the kind of thing that is survivable for the housing market. You know,
we have to have a housing and crash pretty soon. There's no way
around it. And that's just one of the things that's coming now that the
people have concluded that the FED isn't going to start cutting rates immediately, like
we're not going to go back to t QBI on a massive scale and negative
interest rates. The economy hasn't slowed down in a demonstrable way yet to justify
the FED doing that. And if that's not happening, then what does that
mean for these crazy tech stocks that are now you know, at and beyond
nineteen ninety nine levels in Video? You know, I was going to shorten
Video when it first spiked, and I couldn't figure out how to do it
because the stock was on the list of hard to short, you know,
hard to borrow a stock, so you can't just directly short. And then
the the option premiums for put options work they were insanely high. So I
didn't do it in Boyd and I'm glad I didn't because in Nvidia kept over
and going out. I read a thing the other day it said that it
added a new Tesla in market cap in the last few moments. So these
are short candidates, you know, these are things that are going to fall
by fifty percent and not even be fairly valued at the time. But where
do you short? The man? The entry point for something like this is
just incomprehensible, you know, It's very hard to call, and the danger
of missing it, you know, and shorting it at the wrong time is
outrageous. So I'm not sure how to play it yet. Remember the man
said, the market can remain irrah at all longer than you can remain solvent,
right, Yes, and it really I've found that out a couple of
times, because when something really starts to run, it runs beyond rationality.
It overshoots, and then it comes back and overshoots the other way. But
calling the point where it's going to overshoot and head back your way is very
hard. And I'm gonna short some more, but I'm not going to do
it with like S and P five hundred. That's p y. Yeah,
you know, put options on the on the hues, you know, the
the NAZAC one hundred or the spy or something like that. You don't have
ten bag or potential with things like that, but you do have five bag
or potential, and I think yeah, And you know, for the liquidity,
which means lower pood option premiums, and the fact that they're not as
wildly overvalued as the worst stocks means that you know, you aren't looking at
losing everything in three months or something like that. You have more time to
be right. So I'm going to start doing that. So we'll see,
you know, we'll talk as it goes along, but I am going to
increase the level of my shorts going forward now because this is just a ridiculous
market. Yeah, goldilocks, market price for perfection and all that good stuff.
In the meantime, the cre meltdown continues and we find out, just
like the subprime crisis with the mortgage backed securities, the European banks jumped in
with both feet and are getting burned now. Well. The American banks,
especially the smaller American banks, have a ton of real estate related debt on
their books, and a lot of that is cre commercial real estate, and
a lot of that is office buildings. And office buildings are at nightmare,
you know. Any They for reasons that we've talked about before are just a
mess because originally a lot of these buildings went up with very low interest rates,
so it was shaped to build them. And then during the pandemic,
people have found out that they really don't like working in an office. They'd
rather stay home, and you know, missed the commute to not have to
get dressed up and moving up. They gained three hours a day, So
more and more people who have the ability to win that argument are allowed to
stay home. Now that means office buildings have really low occupancy radios and they're
not generated of cash flow, and so you're seeing a lot of people are
tracking office buildings out there and finding examples of an office building that was one
hundred and twenty million dollars three years ago. Now it's selling for forty two
million dollars, you know, things like that. And those embedded losses are
on bank balance sheets, so when those office buildings change hands, the bank
have to report losses. And that's a very big deal, but now not
anyhow, it's a big deal for US, but it's also turning out to
be a big deal for Europe. A lot of European banks have US commercial
room estate on their books. And so they're on the stuff too, and
Europe is already a mess. You know, Germany. We can spend the
whole show just talking about what a catastrophe the German economies, which is wild
because five years ago you and I would have been saying the opposite, that
Germany is basically well run country lefts in the world. Now they're the worst
run country. They screwed up some monumentally. Uncle Merkel used to be this
kind of rock solid conservative lady who didn't make stupid mistakes. Turned out to
make stupid mistake after stupid mistake, and we'll go down in history as probably
the worst Western leader in human history. So because everything she did was turned
out to be wrong in retrospect, you know, they opened their borders,
they let an insane number of immigrants from incompatible cultures come in, and then
they shifted completely out of nuclear and into the wind and solar, which to
work in Germany because Germany is neither sunny nor wind a and they loaded up
or they committed themselves to Russian natural gas, and then they allowed the US
to blow up the Russian Russian natural gas pipeline. So Germany is de industrializing,
and you take them out of Europe. Europe is toasted and and that
is the next couple of years for Europe. You know, they're they're going
to level down to instead of their first word world system, to second world
at best. You know, they're going to be much poorer than I think
the I think you were correct on that score, John and the eight Uh.
You know, one of the things that's keeping the US afloat is even
though the rest of the world is doing so badly, they're doing worse than
US. US and at the perception of the safe haven. Look, China's
imploding. Where are those wealthy people putting their money. They're putting it into
the US. I mean there's zillions of dollars. So the flow of funds
from global hot money whatever, flag capital is all coming to the US into
the stock market because they're not buying government debt with their flag capital, they're
buying stocks. So I think a lot of that is why it's going up.
And it's happening in Europe now as well. So hey, we got
you know GNAT gas prices keep going down and then the ADMIN bans new LNG
exports, Like what's going on here? We have more in that guess than
we know what to do with in this country. What do they think?
It looks like this was a plan on the bar, part of a Biden
administration to make the economy look as good as possible going into the election.
So what they did was they banned the export of liquid natural gas, and
that left the US with a surplus of gas domestically. You know what an
export it is, just slash it around here, you know. So the
price is way down. So anybody who uses natural gas, for instance,
to heat their house or to run their stove or whatever, and that's still
a big part of the country, they're seeing the prices go down, the
costs to heat their house and then their stove go down, which means their
life is no longer as expensive and they don't blame the government for raging inflation
anymore. That I think that's the Biden administration plan. That's what they're doing
well. I think to the extent that you know, natural gas is an
issue for people, this helps. So yeah, I think that's part of
it. Because you know, let me melt, these guys are capable of
anything. I'm talking about the powers that be right now. I think literally,
if if it took a false flag attack on the jet way and that
kills one hundred people to get the current administration elected again, they would do
it. You know, That's just how the guys in charge and should operate.
So I think anything we see out there out there that goes wrong in
the next six months, and I'm not saying the Republicans are the good guys.
I'm saying that anybody in charge in this way now, and it happens
to be the Democrats and their allies who are in charge right now, and
I think that any kind of false flag thinking that you can conceive of,
they would be willing to do in order to win. So any worfic thing
that happens in the next six months, your first impulse should be to blame
it on the government, and only then if it becomes super clear that it
couldn't positively have been the government. And he started looking for other examples.
But but yeah, you know, I agree, Yeah, And that means
the world is a very scary place because you've got people in power who are
willing to do pretty much anything to hold onto power. And if it takes
another pandemic, forget it. That's I mean, that's easy peasy for they
did it once. I mean, they already did it. They know exactly
how. So remember just lately they were talking about disease NX or something like
that, the next pandemic, and you know, they tried monkey pops and
that didn't work because it had a humorous name, so nobody could be afraid
of it. But they'll come up with something else, or you know,
or a a cyber attack or a library attack, or aliens are going to
attack. Oh yeah, I mean that's see the aliens landing on the White
House lawn is the that's the last on their list because that's the hardest to
pull off. But you now they've got holograms or something like that. That's
that that will make it possible. They've got some kind of advanced AI on
the imagery that they'll use, and they will use it if nothing else works.
So you know, twenty twenty four is going to be one for the
history books from a theatrical standpoint, because everybody's willing to do whatever it is.
We have the tech to do all kinds of things now, so I'm
I don't even want to guess what they're going to pull, but just remember
anything that happens is probably fake, and just respond to it by buying gold,
okay, or silver. Just do that, hat, ye, and
just let your stacks accumulate it, and then don't worry about trying to figure
out exactly what their reasoning is or how they pulled it off or whatever,
you know, they did it. That's enough, Michael, exactly eight.
So, speaking of the admin, we have this special Council report on Biden's
handling of classified documents, and I don't know, for some reason, everyone's
surprised that basically the guy is non compass. Meant this now you'll remember you
probably don't, but five years ago I wrote an article, well maybe four
years ago, right before the election, called the Emperor has No Cortex,
right, is like, why is anybody surprised over this? It's been obvious
for years now this guy has lost it. And you know that that he's
a puppet. There's no other explanation for what's happening. He's not running anything.
Maybe Hunter Biden's running the administration for all we know. Okay, this
was just too funny not to mention. You're right, because basically the story
it is they were indicting Trump been trying to imprison him or things he did
with classified documents after he was president. But then it turned out that Biden
had done basically the same thing, and you know, he had a garage
full of classified documents, and so they felt obligated that they were going to
try to put Trump in prison, you know, the Biden DOJ felt obligated
to well to look at him too, So they looked at him too.
They interviewed him and everything, and they came back and said, well,
we he clearly did a bunch of stuff that's absolutely illegal. He did it
with an understanding of you know that it was illegal. But we can't indict
him because in a trial, people would see, the jury would see that
he was just an old man with memory problems and you know, he's with
demensia. So they we couldn't convict him because you have to have intent to
convict somebody of something like this, and it's clear that he doesn't have enough
of a mind left to have that kind of intent. And so so he
got off. And so the administration now is like, well, is this
a good thing or a bad But he's not going to be indicted. But
he's not going to be indicted because he's senile, and so to watch these
guys scorm is just hilarious. Carrie, Let's do it. Let's let's do
a pool now and guess which what day they will replace Biden with Michelle Obama.
She's good, the one, you really think, So she's the one
they want, but she doesn't want to do it. Gavin Newsome desperately wants
it. But they can't replace Biden and Harris with a white guy, right
because if they if they just got rid of Biden, Kamala Harris would win,
and then we would we would have a black woman president. And the
Democrats cannot get rid of the black woman and replace her with a white guy.
They can't do that. There's no way they can do that. So
Michelle Obama is the logical choice, because you just swap one black women for
another black woman and you've got your diversity there. But Michelle Obama will be
He's been exposed to what it's like to be in that feature part of it.
So I don't know what they're going to do, but they need they
know they needed something. I think they don't know what they're going to do
either, but you know it could be some kind of a Hail Mary,
where they just grab somebody out of you know, out of the left field
and slot them in there as long as they tick en up boxes on the
assumption that Trump is easy to beat, and we'll see, I don't know,
this is the most hilarious election ever, as long as we don't end
up in, you know, a civil war, which we're reasonably close to
right now. So you know, so barring the civil war, this is
hilarious. Okay. So I'm thinking, when you're talking about checking boxes,
the former president of the Harvard University is available, and she could be perfect
because she checks like so many boxes. She checks boxes they didn't even know
they had until, you know, if she hadn't already had her downfall,
she would be on the short list. If right this minute, you know,
maybe thinking wow, man, Harvard, okay, Harvard, and then
look at all these other boxes that she ticks. Let's just slot her right
in there, you know, and then we'll just tell her when to invade
whoever and when depress the new box. That's that'll be fine. You know,
Oh Carrie, you know that we can joke about this and is a
sign of how crazy the world is right now, because we shouldn't you shouldn't
be able to joke about this stuff because it's bad from and then the Texas
thing. You know, oh, you've probably you've probably covered this already,
so your audience is probably very well our incipient civil war. But let me
know if there's anything else that needs to be filled in about that. So
yeah, well we I don't know that I've talked about it on the show.
So basically, the Supreme Court said that the FEDS could go in and
cut the razor wire that Texas has erected on the border. The governor of
Texas declared an invasion and sent troops down there, and they in light of
the Supreme Court's decision, it just added more razor wire because the decision didn't
say they couldn't add more. It just said that the FEDS had the right
to remove it, but the border patrol won't go in there to remove it.
And now a bunch of states, I think thirteen states have pledged National
Guard troops to Texas. The ADMIN hardcore people are saying, let's nationalize the
federalize the National Guard, which generally in the past and I don't know if
it's changed, required the consent of the governors in question to federalize the guard,
because when we go back to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration through FEMA
tried to federalize the Louisiana National Guard. The then governor Catherine Blanco, I
always called her Catherine Kathleen draws A Blanco. She refused to sign the federalization
order and they said okay, and they left, and then we had Hurricane
Katrina, and Bush got blamed for it anyway. So I don't know if
the law has changed since then, but under the existing law, federalization was
required with the consent. And even Trump tried to send the Guard to d
C for January sixth, and he asked the then mayor do you want the
guard? And she said no, and that was it, and then we
had January sixth. So it's an interesting legal issue. I don't think they
can federalize them under the constitution, and then that would just precipit take the
ultimate clash between the states, and we got twenty six states and then the
other states. Most of the people don't want what's happening now on the border
to be happening anyway. This is a policy driven by elites, by NGUS
and by big companies looking for cheaper labor here. John Well, Okay,
let me say two things about this. One is that these NGOs that are
down in Mexico and helping people come into the US illegally should be rounded up
and imprisoned in a heartbeat. Okay, they're breaking the law. They have
no business doing that. Lock them up and do it publicly because you get
a seventy to thirty advantage electorally out of doing that. Now, the other
part about it is, I think, you know, the Republicans, they've
been frustrated over this open border that Biden has imposed for a long time.
But I think the timing of this now is is pretty specific. Texas started
doing this right now so that the issue leads over into the election campaign,
and their google is to make Biden go down there and impose the federal government's
will on Texas and then explain it. That's the whole key to everything.
They want Biden to happen, stand in front of the camera and explain what
he's doing. And they know he can't do it. I mean that that
is too many complex thoughts strung together at once for him to be able to
actually articulate it, and then if he can't do it, then the people
who are actually responsible for it and the federal got burn, will have to
step up and explain it, and they'll see the deep state, you know,
exposed in all the Yeah, I at about money. Yeah, it's
all about winning the next election. Yeah, but the open border thing,
yes, is partially about money for sure. Yeah. Well it's going to
be interesting and that Trump is running on a policy of basically rounding up millions
of illegals and showing them the door. But the people that sent them to
us don't want them back, So where do they go? We put them?
Well, Gitmo right? I mean no, From from Trump's point of
view, the most electorally and you know, the most popular thing he could
do is shut down to the border completely and then spend the next three years
rounding up all the people who came in here illegally. It just take them
across the border in Mexico and drop them off you know, Mexico sceand to
let them in in the first place. I mean that literally, I'm not
joking. I think that's what they should do. Just drop them off on
the other side of the Texas border, and then you know, to the
extent that any of them need to be processed. They go through the official
channel, they submit their application from Mexico, and then they go through the
steps that anybody else all I pay parents did, all the all the people
who are doing it legally do to to become American citizens. And there should
be no other alternative. You shouldn't just be able to walk across the border
and then disappear into Michigan or wherever and never be heard from again. So
you know, I think as long as Trump, if he's the next president,
I'd say and show bust loads of people that he's catching and setting across
to Mexico. He's a majority president because people will people will see that.
Go Okay, Trump's doing what he's supposed to do. It's a new catch
and release. We catch him here and we release there. Yeah, I
mean, this is madness. I mean, look, it's it's not quite
analogous to Rome being overrun by the Visigoths because the population of the country is
far larger than the invading force. But this is an invasion, and I
think Trump would be within his rights to declare it an invasion and take all
necessary steps to undo it, to end it and to send the people back.
And I don't think the Supreme Court is going to try to stop them
from doing it, because you know, maybe it maybe we wind up with
martial law. I don't know. Well, hey, it's a big issue.
We'll be talking about more in the weeks to come, for sure,
and I think we'll leave it at that, because the beach is calling me
here, the beach in Thailand is calling me. Hey. Questions comments kl
at Carrie Let's dot com. Don't forget John Substackrabino dot substack dot com and
make sure you sign up for your free newsletter at Financial Survival Network dot com.
We're starting John the Inflation Cafe Inflation dot Cafe and the newsletter first one
is going to go out this week and pretty excited about it. Is based
on my experience of going to a certain undisclosed coffee shop that we all know
and well and love, the largest chain in the world, and realizing I
was paying double for a price of coffee that I was paying three years ago.
They cut back on their rewards and I had half a cup and I
said to the manager, you're not in business is selling coffee. You guys
sell inflation. Thus was born in the concept of the Inflation Cafe, and
the you know, he just kind of laughed. But I am the chief
editor. I am the editor and chief barista of the Inflation Cafe. So
we're transitioning here. They mess with the wrong guy. Hey man, it's
like seven frickin dollars for a drink. I can't believe I was paying more
than four dollars for and it was overpriced at four dollars, John at seven,
it's just highway robbery, and I can afford it. But why you
know I cut back in the beauty is here here in Thailand, at the
same undisclosed coffee shop. It's three bucks. Yeah. Do you have a
second more for me to go on an inflation rant? Yeah? Sure,
go ahead, Okay, okay, because you know, you see these guys
like Paul Krugman, or basically anybody that is in the current power structure saying,
oh, the economy is so good, Look how low unemployment is and
inflation is down to two and a half percent, and why are people so
mad still? You know, what they don't realize is that we've raised a
lot of people's living expenses by thirty percent. Okay, and now we're coming
to them and saying, look, the further increase is only three percent of
a year. Well, we already raise their cost of living to the point
where they have to decide between driving to work and feeding their care So the
fact that it's only prices are only going up by another three percent a year
does not help them and does not make them happy. And that's what the
guys in charge can't figure out, because to them it's irrelevant. You know,
the cost of a Starbucks coffee is just not a factor in life.
Neither is the cost of a tankful of gas or you know, one week's
worth of groceries or anything. But to everybody else, it's a big deal,
and they've ruined it for this huge section of the economy. That's that's
why, that's why there's so much angst out there right now. And John,
let's face it, we're both right around the same age a year of
each other. In our lead. We're pushing seventy. We live through the
last inflationary period sixties, seventies, early eighties, so we understand it.
But most of the people alive today, John, that no clue what inflation
was. They didn't live through that just like they don't know what a bear
is. The most of these kids on Wall Street now, most of the
people walking the planet don't know what inflation is. They haven't lived through an
inflationary cycle like we did and like our parents did post World War Two.
So I think that's one of the reasons why I'm kind of like putting this
newsletter together in a new site is I wanted to people to understand where it
comes from, why it's happening, and that they're really being taxed silently against
their will, against their consent. It's a stealth tax inflation, and it's
rampant now. So we'll leave it at that. Hey, we'll talk to
you in a couple of weeks when I'm back home and got my equipment.
Everything is locked up right now. I actually went to the safe deposit box
and threw my desktop computer in it so that because can't lose your data,
you know, even though I'm backed up three ways to sign down, four
ways actually anyways, it's all locked up. So all right, John,
Hey, make sure you go to John Substack Rabino dot substack dot com.
I want to see an article on inflation. John. All right, Harrie,
send me what you do and I'll post it over the there. Okay,
all right, cool, you got it, all right, we're working
on it now. Thanks, talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the
latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,