I think teamsoft Landing is dead wrong. I think labor hoarding in the US
among other factors, while also just base effects. Unlike some gold bugs out
there who will remain nameless, I have been warning people for more than a
year that the base effects would mean that the reported CPI numbers would come down.
It would be harder for them to keep increasing at that pace absent more
money printing, which we haven't had. You're listening to Carrie Letz'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 Survival Network 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 own carry love. Well,
is there going to be a soft landing, a hard landing, or a
moon landing, a lunar landing? That is the question. And hey,
maybe maybe if they replaced our policy makers with AI, we would never have
another recession. What do you think about that? Well, Lobo Tigra's on
with us now and make sure you've go over to his site Independent Speculator dot
com. Hey, great to have you back, Lobo. So as you
refer to them prequel Team soft Landing, they seem to think that everything is
fine, We'll just have a brief slowdown and then you know, inflations under
control. Uh maybe the war and Ukraine will end at some point in the
not too distant future. So what's what say you? Well, there's a
lot of ways I can go with that. Carry Um, I want to
come back to the AI think because I think there's actually something very important and
investment related that people should keep in mind, not just ideological. But to
answer your question, I think Team soft Landing is dead wrong. I think
labor hoarding in the US among other factors, while also just base effects.
Unlike some gold bugs out there who will remain nameless, I have been warning
people for more than a year that the base effects would mean that the reported
CPI numbers would come down. It would be harder for them to keep increasing
at that pace absent more money printing, which we haven't had. So I'm
not surprised by the circumstance. I will say that I am surprised. I'll
go on the record with you here, Karrieus. I am surprised by how
quickly and how deeply the reported inflation numbers have come down. And this matters.
And I know, dear audience out there, I'm sure you're as skeptical
as I am of government statistics. You know there's lies, damn lies statistics.
Said, then the ultimate is government statistics, right, I get that.
I'm numbers. That's where you know, the comics traders and lima traders,
they trade on these numbers. And as long as we mistakenly refer to
their trades and their futures contracts as the price of gold or whatever, it's
gonna push those prices around. And so we can't ignore that data even if
we disagree with it. So what I'm saying, though, is for these
and a number of other factors, I think the US economy is much weaker
than it looks. The global economy is as weak as it looks, and
maybe more some. I mean, we don't have to worry about the hidden
weakness than the global ecoman Just look at China and U and the EU,
where inflation pop back up again, by the way, including the all imployment
still called core inflation pop back up instead of them down. So I think,
you know, I'm sorry to say this, and you know me and
any of the your audience that has washed our past interviews, and if not
go back and check them out. I'm not the arm waiving. This guy
is falling, you know, head for the Idaho Bunker now, sort of
guests that you might have on sometimes, you know, But I really think
that the brown stuff is going to hit the fan. And it's it's not
someday that you look at main street cheerleaders on Wall Street and they're like,
you know, even the most barrish of them is thinking, well, maybe
recession in twenty twenty four. I think that the weakness that has massed in
the US economy will be revealed this year. And I'll either be flat out
wrong on this carry I'll be right. If I'm right, it will make
a big difference to our investment decisions. Well, I'm inclined to agree with
you because I believe we've been in a recession since inflation spiked, but because
inflation's understated, the GDP deflator, which is basically you deduct inflation from GDP,
has been askew, and real growth has been decidedly negative. And look,
anecdotally, you go around any city in the United States, the number
of homeless people's increased. That's generally non people or fronts and all that.
Yeah, I mean, like right, every time we see I remember,
just yesterday I tweeted about the lower inflation in Canada, and basically all of
my Canadian followers are all like, what, you know, that's not what
I see when I go in the store or when I go anywhere or do
anything. My cost keep going up. Actually, this is this touches on
something that's a big pet peeve of mine. You know, I'm writing about
this now, so your audience gets ahead and start on this. The whole
word disinflation shouldn't exist. It should be stricken from everybody's vocabulary. There's really
no such thing. It refers to a decrease in the increase in inflation.
It's still increasing, right, I mean, you know, And to put
this word on it, people bandy it around disinflation. It sounds like deflation.
It sounds like a good thing. It's not a good thing. It
is a somewhat less bad thing, right, it's and but that word is
out there, and everybody can talk about disinflation like things are getting better.
It doesn't mean things are getting better. So pet peeve of mine, and
it relates to what we're talking about. And it's part I think of a
deliberate um, you know, messaging, massaging, manipulation, if you will,
of the populace. It's you know, it's propaganda. It's just like
transitory inflation, both tested and proven in action until it was disproven in reality.
But it was a great talking point and it's uh, it's just a
talking point with a purpose. It wasn't just like, oh they chose the
wrong word. Oh they made an honest mistake. It's a completely dishonest,
unmistaked. It was deliberate at you know, push the herd in the direction
the powers that be wanted it to go. News speak. Hey, it's
just like in the Great Depression and they said, prosperity is just around the
corner. Right. That was the talking And let's not forget whip inflation.
Now, yeah, I was, you know, I was giving away win
buttons. Somebody sent me an email requesting a win button. You know,
I bought a few of them on eBay and that was Gerald Ford's a big
contribution to inflation. Liz if Hey, maybe they should be wearing it at
the Federal Reserve. Put that over their doorstep, right because Milton Friedman said
it best, nobody will ever say it better. Inflation is first and foremost
a monetary phenomena. And what does that mean, Lobo? Well, actually,
right now, it's important for those of us who make that quote always
in everywhere a monetary phenomenon, to recognize that M two has been shrinking,
you know, the fact has been reducing its balance sheet. And I'll I'll
admit more than I thought they would. They've stuck with that more than I
thought they would. And okay, again, government numbers, I get it.
But still, you know, those are the numbers that people trade on.
They put input into the equation. So if you're going to say when
when the M two is increasing and the money supplies increasing, oh, this
is inflationary. You can't then turn around and say what it's decreasing that it
doesn't matter. It's just a government lie, right, you know, it's
it's that same number. So I mean, I mean this matters for us
right now. And it's it's interesting to me that in that environment where we've
seen a significant decline, Okay, it's not like healthy, happy, hunky
dory. But it's a significant decline in M two and here we are at
gold still around two thousand bucks and outs. It's really quite strike the appetite
out there for gold and the face of headwinds like that at higher rates and
the FED tightening all this stuff, you know, and there's people out there
pulling their hair out because gold isn't higher. It should be three thousand,
or it should be whatever. But the fact that it isn't down when it
seems like the powers that be are throwing everything they can at it, I
think it says a lot about the strength of the demand out there, or
the perception of the reality. Despite the prop again and the spin that we're
talking about. There's people out there that get it. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely, let's not forget. Yeah. M two is down. But the
emergency facility to keep the banking system afloat every week for the past month has
been hitting records record draw down, which is really another way of calling it
QE because basically they just take all their crappy securities, drop them off at
the discount window, and they get alight. Let me let me jump in
on that, because I think that's really really important. Carry you just put
your finger on something that I think the mainstream is either ignoring deliberately or just
doesn't get. But I think it's very very important. You know, the
powers that be, they're all telling us everything's fine. The regional banking crisis,
it was just you know, concentrated and a few poorly managed banks.
You know, the banking system is sound, Everything is fine. Nothing to
see here. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move on,
right, But this facility that you're talking about, what the Fed did that?
That's not just a band aid and a kiss on the boo boo.
That is an absolute crisis response that basically bail everybody out without bailing them out,
Like we're not giving you just the bailout, but we're allowing you to
redeem your underwater paper at par Right, that's a bailout. And it wasn't
just a few banks, it was everybody. It was across the board.
Like that was an absolute emergency response. You know, it seems to have
worked for the time being, right, you know, kick the can down
the road. But but don't let them kid you, don't don't let anybody
tell you that that was a nothing Burger that nothing really happened here. That
was a major and I think part of our earlier conversation will reveal Team soft
landing to be wrong. You know when when when we get our payday carry.
I can't tell you when. I can't promise when. I think things
generally will be inclined to fall apart over the next quarter or two. But
don't forget that there's still this crisis mode out there. They've been, you
know, like tamping down these fires left and right. That doesn't mean there's
no more fire out there. You know, if the FED breaks something else,
and that could be happening already, Like the next thing that breaks,
he's probably already broke it. We just haven't realized what it is yet.
Like the guilt thing in the UK and so on. Something happens and until
it until it goes vertical, until it really breaks in a visible way,
and then you look back and you say, oh, yeah, well we
should have seen that coming. Or you know, I think we're in that
process now, so you know, we'll see I'll either be right or I'll
be wrong, and it will be like forever or someday it will be this
year. I think either things deteriorate just on a progression or the FED breaks
something else. I don't incline more to the latter. I think we're more
likely to see a sudden wake up moment, smell the napalm, and Wall
Street starts to panic. Yeah, I love the smell and napalm in the
morning's. Let's also not forget about China, the so called engine of growth
in the world. Now, you talk about government statistics the ultimate lies.
I mean, you can't believe if they tell you this guy is blue,
you definitely can't believe them, because you very rarely see a blue sky in
China. It's usually gray, dark gray, or weird colors from all the
chemicals being pumped into the atmosphere. But by all accounts, they're housing market
is doa ever. Grand A just closed its doors permanently. I mean they
are on zombie life support for the past six months, and every other major
real estate company probably is going to file follow a suit as well. And
that's like, yeah, maybe it's good for flight capital coming to the US,
right, because they've been so far. That's a pretty slender silver lining
there carrying and they're really caught between the rock and the hard place, because
I mean, Beijing very deliberately clamped down on the excesses in the real estate
market because you know, it was going crazy. They had used it to
stimulate it got out of hand and created all kinds of never mind the ghost
cities, but these insolvencies, you know, unsound business practices written large.
Okay, so they pull it in, they clamp down on it. Fine,
it makes sense. But you know, if that's what your growth depends
on, then you choke it off. What's gonna happen. You know,
there's people who are saying, oh, well, look, China's last GDP
report six point six percent. That's great. But even in the mainstream there's
people who are recognized, well, wait, not so fast. A year
ago, they were still in a lockdown. So it was expected that the
GDP numbers or lies or whatever they are, you know, the numbers that
we get, you know, would be higher in the first half of this
year because of those base effects. But that goes into reverse in the second
half of this year, and even mainstream people are worried that this six point
six percent now is nowhere near enough for China to hit it's five point five
percent by the end of the year. So yeah, yeah, I mean,
I agree, I think that's very worrisome. And bring it back home
a bit. You know, we mentioned earlier how Team soft Landing is cheering
here in the US, but it's more evident around the world that there's trouble.
China is you know, the eight hundred pound guerrilla of economic trouble right
now. And I think it's a mistake for you know, Americans to think
that somehow the US economy can be just fine when the rest of the world
goes to heck in a handbasket. Yes, we have more you know,
food and oil and gas internally than a lot of other countries. We depend
less on our trading partners than many other more vulnerable blocks, but that doesn't
mean we're fully independent. And despite everything that's happened after the New the New
Iron curtain has started going up, and despite the post COVID deglobalization, it's
still a global economy. Yeah, and you know, you could say,
okay, well, you know, the US economy only depends or the sp
five hundred. I think only a third of the stocks are exporters. Well,
but if that third goes to zero, not to zero, if that
third crashes, it still hurts, and the entire economy it is resistant to
external harm, but not immune, and it's a mistake to conflate those two.
You're exactly right. Uh yeah, we haven't decoupled from the global economy
yet. And those trends, I mean in China, you see parts of
Shanghai, you know the videos escape where literally there's all these stores that were
booming free pandemic are shut down and whole areas of Westerners have left. Large
chunks of Westerners have shut down and left the country. So yeah, I
think it used to be when the US sneezes, the rest of the world
got a cold. Now China sneezes. I think the rest of the world
gets pneumonia. And that's just more more evidence to what you said that the
hard landing is imminent and the Panglossian view of those out there you know that
everything happens for the better isn't true. Everything doesn't happen for the better,
especially when it comes to a weakened global financial system that had a near existential
event in OA No. Nine and we've done nothing to change it, you
know, still the same system. So takeaways financial survival network, what can
we do to be helpful to people. You know, my fellow goldbugs don't
like it when I say things like this, but I actually think that in
the nearest term, the very nearest term, the appearance that teamsoft Landing is
right is barish for monetary medals. You know, if the safe haven demand
goes down, if the people who have been thinking, oh, well,
you know, maybe we should consider allocating you know, just a little bit
to gold. You know, if that stops, that's material. You know,
maybe central bank buying makes up for it. Maybe we're at two thousand
dollars gold plus or minus because of central bank buying, despite Team soft Landing
appearing right. But you can't count on the central banks for anything. I'm
sure your audience doesn't mean to tell them, you know, not to trust
central banks. So if the goldbugs hopes are all pinned on this infral banks
are going to save us, you know, that's that's not a great thing
to put a lot of weight on. So yeah, I don't trust them.
And therefore, you know, even if they do keep buying, even
if bricks are headed for goldback currency or whatever, you know, that's a
multi year thing. It doesn't tell us that right now, they're going to
help us right now, and that's important in the faces. So you know,
I'm I'm not one of these people that says every day is always the
best day to buy gold, bye bye, bye bye. I think right
now it is actually prudent to hold back golden gold stocks to wat for potential
weakness in the nearest term. You know, people are tired of buying opportunities,
but I do think that's what it would be. You know, from
everything that we've said is interviews so far, that the nearest term pullback would
be before the next leg upwards. So I'm not saying, you know,
dump all your gold stocks forget gold, you know. And I'm not a
drop gold guy. I'm just trying to be honest with your audience here instead
of just being a cheerleader and promising it can only go up. I think
there is a significant risk of near term downside in our favorite in our favorite
medal. Now here's the funny thing. Sorry, I know you've got a
question there. Let me just say. The funny thing is that silver might
actually outperform in this landings themes. Right then, Hey, that's great for
industrial metals, and the silver's industrial side has you know, even the most
diehard silver bugs recognize that silver's industrial side has become a tailwind when you know,
they're building more solar panels and all this stuff. So you know,
oddly enough, the very thing that could whack gold in the nearest term could
boost silver. And last time I look, silver was over twenty five bucks
an hour, which has bubble getting over recently. So that's interesting. But
then reality comes back, you know, and if I'm right about that,
you were right about that in the recession, you know clearly that's going to
whack industrial metals, and I think that will happen by this fall, you
know, So so be very wary of saying, oh, it's all safe
to get back into copper or lithium or whatever your favorite industrial metal might be.
Silver has gone up a low of seventeen fourteen announced on the Comax.
It's at twenty five, so it's up nearly fifty percent at the same time
gold is up, but you know, not nearly so much. You know,
silver has been the performer here and maybe that's the trend for the future.
People get mad at me because I talk about silver's greater industrial side.
I've been dubbed Darth silver and all that because of this changing use case.
But you know, you know, the goal is to make money, not
to be religious about our favorite metal. And if the goals to make money,
you can't ignore the data and just just look at the charts. Silver
is tracking copper more than gold this year and wild chief soft landing seems right.
That's a fine thing. You know, when the session deniers give way,
which I think they will, I think that's going to whack silver more
than gold. You know, this is I'm not trying to beat up on
anybody's favorite metal. I'm not trying to cheer lead anybody's favorite metal. I'm
trying to provide the most straightforward you know, reporting an analysis of market trends
that I can Yeah, I'm in complete agreement with you. Hey, when
there are liquidity events in the market, in the stock market, it always
hits the metals. We've seen that over and over and over again. So
if there's the event that you're talking about coming up, the hard landing realization,
if that turns into a liquidity event, metals are going to get slammed
in the short term. And uh, you know, metal stocks are also
going to get slammed and eventually that they bounce back nine perfect example. This
is actually another important thing because it really is worth stressing and thinking about dear
audience, because you know, goldbugs and I'm a gold bug, but most
of us we have the skepticism or the mainstream, and that feeds into an
assumption that they're doing something wrong right, and that feeds into this. It's
like, let me put it this way, what year does do most gold
bugs not think Wall Street's about to crash? It's every year and okay,
some years it does crash, but most years it doesn't. So even if
we get this recession and the recession, denying goes away as I think it
will, that is not the same thing as saying that markets must crash.
And markets are very forward looking. The markets may see the recession and morally
because they think the Fed and the Congress will come to the rescue. So
it is not saved to assume that, even if we're right about the economy,
that therefore mister market should do the rational thing. He often doesn't,
you know, as the saying goes, you know, remain irrational longer than
you can remain solvent. Yea, So exactly what I was fighting point here
my rant, and I just I just think this is important because I get
an email or call or something like if it's not weakly, it's certainly monthly
of the markets are going to crash. What should we do. Shouldn't we
sell and get out before the market crashes and then buy back in at lower
prices or something like that at some point that might be the right thing to
do, but nobody knows in advance. And like I say, you know,
if goldbugs think that way every year and they sell and they sell their
gold stocks because they think the market's going to crash and then it turns out
that it goes the other way, you've made a huge mistake. You've you've
either you know, jumped, you know, bailed on winning plays too early,
or you've realized unnecessary losses. So I'm not I'm not trying to tell
anybody that there's not going to be a crash this year. I think it's
possible, but I think it's a mistake to assume that you know that there
will be, And certainly it's worth being careful about in your actual investment decisions.
Absolutely, and just reminds me of the Yogi bearras yogiism that you know,
prediction is very hard, especially when it's about the future. So remember
that it's difficult to predict the timing. People. You could follow cycles and
make a lot of money, but following a cycle is different than predicting the
future and actually how things are going to turn out. Cycles, it's a
trend and if you can cast them, they're great. But yeah, or
you see it's in motion, right, It's it's a very different thing to
say, hey, look here's this is trending upwards, I'm going to go
a long, or this is trending downwards, I'm going to go short.
That's very different from saying this is the bottom, right, or this is
the top, and that's an entirely different level of parel exactly. All right,
Well, hey, we appreciate your coming on. As always logo and
I urge everybody to go to the a site Independent Speculator dot com and the
link is in the show notes to this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com.
Just click it you'll get through. While you're there, sign up for
your free newsletter LOBO. Always a pleasure. Thanks for stopping by. Thank
you, Carrie, good conversation. Thanks for listening to Carrie Lenz's Financial Survival
Network your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial
Survival Network dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,