Speaker 1: So I'm out surfing the web. We still say that
surfing the web. I surf the web. Http s backslash,
backslash www dot so is out using an app which
Chrome to do show research that came across the craziest
video of a dude talking about some major shift in
US economic leadership, opening your door to a whole new
set of bull markets to know, what's this clown show.
Speaker 2: I think that the US story right now is a
really great story, starting from the beginning of the Trump administration,
you know.
Speaker 1: And this isn't anything political at all.
Speaker 2: This is clearly economic regime change and leadership regime change
right where we're throwing, you know, his new national security
policy kind of throws climate change right to the curb,
right and it sounds like a fossil fuel and nuclear
renaissance story, you know. And that's kind of following up
on all the things that he said that he would
do for the economy, which are the only set of
things that he seems to be making good on, which
is you know, most important for us. I feel like
he's handed us about a dozen bull markets to chase,
and he's not cheerleading the stock market.
Speaker 1: Well wait, that clip that came from Know Your Risk
podcast dot com. Hey, look who's joining us, the chief
investment officer bow Or Capital Management, Now you riskpodcast dot com.
Zach Abraham joins us courtesy of God Almighty. We'll get
with him in a second.
Speaker 3: But Todd Herman show is one disapproved by big pharma
technocrats in Tyran's everywhere from the high mountains of Free America.
Here's the Emerald City exime.
Speaker 1: Todd Herman. Today is the day the Lord has made,
and these are the times so which God has decided
we shall live. And there he is the co author
of said clips. Zach Abraham, my brother, welcome back. Good,
have you.
Speaker 4: Good to be back. What's happening? Well, what's happening? Yeah,
a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's a bunch, there's a bunch of you guys
in your biblical flood over there. I was just looking
at some pictures of a friend of mine house. Praise God,
he got through this four o'clock in the morning, evacuating
is on the White River and the house didn't float away.
But uh, you know, I think it's time. I think
it's time finally for my arc business model.
Speaker 4: That's uh yeah, yeah, I'm I'm I was, I was
going to start one on our backfield.
Speaker 5: You know, you start taking bids from the neighbors. No,
it's it's it's pretty. It's pretty wild here.
Speaker 4: You know, as a guy that's been born and raised
here like you have, you kind of feel like you've
seen everything. This this is whole. You know, we're used
to rain, but I mean it's been coming down. Like
we were joking around, I was like, boy, God must
have not been too happy about that, Bob ferguson election.
Speaker 5: Yeah, your new biblical the biblical floods are coming.
Speaker 4: Man, they're white. They're just washing us out. Well, there's
no it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Is this advantage though, is now you'll have heroin free streets?
Uh for just a little while. Because people haven't been
over there don't understand the degree to which human excrement
in urine coach the streets. And you can go from
the fentanyl district and there's a certain smell to the
urine there. Then a little higher up there's the old
fashioned crystal meth smell, and you know that stuff all
be washed away, So at least there's that that's good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like it's like a wine tasting, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like, so, no, it's not, it's not, but like the smell,
like you've become a connoisseur.
Speaker 5: You're like, I must be on Fifth and Pine. You know,
you can smell your way around the city.
Speaker 4: But but but no joke, And I know you remember this,
but people like people won't believe this when you tell them.
But it's one hundred percent true. There's so much fentanyl
and stuff on the streets that from the storm water
going down the storm drains and going out into the bay,
there are measurable amounts of heroin in the shellfish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, by the way, in the fatty tissues
of non shell fish. Yeah, it's in salmon. And there's
also this. It's something like eighty percent of seats on
buses there have fetnyl residue on it. It's just the
determination of how much. So I know you like to
take your shirt off and you ride the bus to
the Seahawks game, but maybe don't.
Speaker 4: Man, I mean, I give you pretty good. I mean, hey,
I get I'm pretty charged up by the time I
get there.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I don't think fetanel charges you
out though, does it.
Speaker 1: It goes in the other direction, Na out. Yeah, never
mind the other direction. I think about you a lot
when I read about economic volatility and you guys, man,
I mean, and by the way, I don't mean to
make light. I know there's a lot of people who
listen to the show, watch the show, or Russell wat shit.
I really don't mean to make light of what you're
going through. It's horrible. More of a brother than not.
My brother Matthew. He sent me pictures of his home.
It's it's horrible. And I know, Zach, you don't obviously mean,
you know, to make light of what people are going through. No,
it is horrific. But I think about the economic volatility
and how you guys tend to view this differently. I
get you on and we're doing the little pre show discussion.
You're like, man, major things in the market, it's a
good time for us, And then you mentioned silver.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, no, just and look, we'll get things right,
we'll get things wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But for years you've known when you look at what
government budgets are doing, and you look at the way
governments attack every problem, right, and that kind of became
a feature after two thousand and eight two thousand and nine,
which every single economic problem, you know, and that was
kind of one of the things we were afraid of,
is monetary policy should be treated sort of like Blake
break glass in case of an emergency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 4: Extreme monetary policy, especially fiscal stimulus, right, meaning giving money
directly to people. The problem is it's really effective, yeah, right,
And so when we think about human behavior, you start
sitting there. Once you break the glass, every problem can
be very quickly remedied by that solution, right, And so
you just keep going back to the well, and eventually
what happens is you push, you push where we currently are, right,
because think about every time you interact with printed money
or artificially low interest rates that is, by definition and
artificial divergence, Right, you're trying to stave off the natural
repercussions of what has happened, right, Like, that's because naturally
it would go under.
Speaker 5: Right. Think about the three hundred and fifty billion we
use for the.
Speaker 4: Bank bailout in twenty twenty was it twenty three? Beginning
at twenty three because interest rates were going up and
the banks didn't have the good enough sense to get
out there and hedge their heads, their duration risk.
Speaker 5: On their balance sheet.
Speaker 4: So what we do We had to print another three
hundred and fifty billion dollars. So every time you do that,
you're basically pushing us further away from the natural trajectory.
Certain point, the distance where the distance between where you
currently are and the natural natural trajectory, that becomes the
crisis in and of itself, right Like, meaning, if you've pushed,
if you continually pushed off consequences, then you have to
keep doing it because if you allow all of those
consequences that you pushed off for a decade to rear
their head at once, right now, now, that's now, that's
a bigger, bigger issue, and it's a bigger emergency than
what you got you involved in the first place.
Speaker 5: So my point is it was like an economic roach motel.
Speaker 4: You could check in, you couldn't check out, right, and
they were always gonna have to go back to the well.
And at a certain point, the market was gonna sniff
that out. Other central banks were gonna sniff that out,
and people were gonna say, hey, we've got to hedge
ourselves from something we haven't had to hedge effectively in
forty years, and that is a falling dollar, right, Yeah,
we're gonna have to We're gonna have to migrate some
funds back, We're gonna have to bring some bring some
funds home. The tariffs, in my view, I think the
tariffs only accelerated that.
Speaker 5: But here you are, and if.
Speaker 4: When central banks want to hedge dollar exposure there is
no other viable currency for them to pull from, they're
gonna have to pull from gold, and that you know.
Then we were looking at how cheap gold stocks were,
and here we are, you know, eighteen months later, and
I think the average gold stock and our portfolio is
up over two hundred percent.
Speaker 5: And the crazy thing is todd us they're still cheap.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think that this is you're gonna have
pullbacks in this stuff. It's not going to go straight up.
We're probably due for one. I've been saying that for
a while now. But you know, I think that what
you're seeing in the metals isn't so much a price spike.
I think it's a rerating, okay, right, And so people
are going to start saying, oh, look at it, it's
gone up like this before. It hasn't gone up like
this before. When you had one hundred and thirty percent
to GDP. It hasn't gone up to gone up like
this before when you're running six and a half seven
percent deficits. Okay, So there are real drivers, and I
think that what you're seeing here's another part of it.
Speaker 5: For fifteen years.
Speaker 4: Effectively coming out of the financial crisis, you had virtually
no new net minds open for any of this stuff
around the world. Well, think about the population growth that's
happened over the last fifteen years and the economic growth
that's happened over the last fifteen years. So everybody's like
calling this like this parabolic blowoff, and I'm sitting there going, hey, guys,
you need a move like this in the price of
the medals, because if you don't get a move like
this in the price of the metals, you won't have
enough of the medal in five years. Meaning you got
to get prices high enough to incentivize the opening of
new minds. And nobody invests multiple billions of dollars into
a mine because they think they're going to squeeze out
fifteen percent profits. Right, you got to get a price
up there that's attractive. I mean, I gotta think I
can generate thirty five to forty five percent ir on
a mind to take the risk and invest the kind
of money that it takes.
Speaker 5: So I think we're at the beginning of this.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm not saying I think gold's going
to twenty thousand, but I'll be shocked if silver doesn't
at least get to one hundred in this move.
Speaker 5: Wow. And I think gold will go significantly higher too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that all those incentives and perverse incentives and
the things that government is so predictable at. There's two
stories here. One is the clip we played at the
beginning of the show, this economic leadership opening the doorway
to new bull markets some of that. In energy, Trump
wants new nuclear power. It's all these restarts now, so
he wants three Mile Island brought back and these restart operations.
You've been a proponent of nuclear, but micro nuclear, as
I understand it is, which you want to have. And
then another state we'll talk about that. Then, Faithful Finance,
I want to chat with you because you do philanthropy
and I think you have a method for this like
you do everything else's money, and I know what involves
around how you Steward, the wealth that God's given you
to Stewart, and how you get multiples on this as investors.
So we'll talk about those things. One of the things
you could do to Stewart your money is to change culture.
And one of the ways to do this is to
enjoy a brilliant movie about a guy named Science. Oh
pardon me, doctor Fauci. I get this screwed up sometimes
because he called himself science, so sometimes they accidentally call
him science itself. The movie is called Thank You, Doctor Fauci.
Award winning documentary filmmaker named Jenner first directed this. We
had him on the program. Jenner came out of this
a change dude, and he's always hated info warfare. That's
been his bag. Has been talking about info warfare against populists,
against the populist US. What he saw in COVID is,
he said, the worst case, most pronounced, most mendacious case
of information warfare against US. That has got him convinced
that there have been no natural pandemics during the time
of Fauci, that they were all lab created. And he
talks about a disease, for instance, probably having been lab created.
The polio tie into the COVID shots. You knew about
the age tie in and Fauci's earned he thinks he
became a psychopath over time. The movie is a stunner
for people who've never investigated Fauci. For people like me
obsessed by him, it is a great bit of new information.
Go to angel dot com slash hermon stream, thank you
Doctor Fauci right now and become an Angel Guild member.
That way you can vote for movies like this to
continue to get made. It's angel dot com slash Herman.
So the the cquickly paid at the top of the
show that the change in the leadership in the country
is opening up this this new doorway to bowl markets.
Let's talk about that, But let's also talk about this
passion that President Trump seems to have for a rebirth
of nuclear What does it mean for the country and
what are the bulmarks or what are they opening up.
I'm not going to answer that question. I'm not calling it.
Speaker 4: So what Tony's talking about is something that we've been
talking about, which is a good way to understand it.
Is the conversation we're just having about golda meaning commodities
are incredibly cyclical and the biggest reason for why they're
cyclical is human beings tend to do things when we
have to, as opposed to when we should.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So when do usually commodity bull markets start, they start
after a long period of time when not enough investment
was put into them.
Speaker 5: Right. If you think.
Speaker 4: About the economy and think about energy in particular, there
needs to be a steady amount being invested in energy
and things of that nature all the time, right to
meet future demands as things change, as things evolve, as
things grow, and if you and and what happens though,
is people get attracted by something else, something shiny occurs,
and capital all starts flying somewhere else.
Speaker 5: And that happened in a.
Speaker 4: Way that we've never seen before, meaning more capital funneled
into fewer US stocks, and when I say capital, I
mean from around the world than is ever funneled into
that few of assets before. And what that meant is
that pretty much everything else that was not touching technology
or those technology stocks didn't really get capital, right, so
you starved it out. Well, you do that long enough,
and you really start creating a massive back end swelling
of demand. And we've done that longer than at any
other point now Does that mean that everything's going to
go to the moon. No, not necessarily, because over that
period of time, we also got better at extracting things
for cheaper prices, So technology is going to offset that.
But what it does mean is that when you start
looking at the power needs. You know, we've been talking
about how dilapidated and outdated the American power grid is, right,
we talked about.
Speaker 5: That for years.
Speaker 4: Well, now look at what you're throwing onto it, right,
these data centers, and people do not have a conception
of how much energy these things are sucking up. I mean,
you're talking about each one of these data centers is
like the equivalent of a major city. And I might
be overstating that to some degree, but it is shocking, right.
It is not like a data It's not like if
you look at electricity being used, it is not commensurate
with what you'd think of a data center. It is
much more commensurate to what you would think of as
a new population center. That's how much how much energy
those things are sucking. Well, when you look at again,
where has most investment gone into energy lately? In the
last several years, it's gone into quote unquote green energies,
and a lot of them have proven to be extraordinarily inefficient.
Now some of them are getting better. Solar is getting better,
and it is getting better in a way that we should.
Speaker 5: Not fight it. We should be all about technology.
Speaker 4: Where I had a problem with solar is when it
was incredibly inefficient and you're trying to shove it down
my throat and it costs more than it produces, and
all this kind of stuff it's gotten it's gotten much better. Okay,
but think about the inputs to solar, panels, metals, oil, right,
all these holes? You need coal?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: What about to power these data centers? You don't.
Speaker 4: You can't do it via solar. You're not getting there,
not even close. You're gonna need that gas. You're gonna
need uranium. So all of these things that have been
so underinvested in for so long also became so cheap
because they'd been underinvested in, and now you were gonna
have demand to make a bull market in these things eventually.
What makes this so compelling is again, not only did
you have the period of non investment and under investment,
but at the tail end of that sucker, you're dropping
an increase. We are going to see data centers in
AI have a demand, a power demand increase like this
economy is right, it's that violent, yeah, and you got
to backfill it. And here's the deal. None of it
works without energy. And you like you and I have
talked about what makes these things so attractive is if
you need energy to fire up a data center, you
don't not turn that data center on just because nat
gas is at ten dollars a unit and.
Speaker 5: Oils at one fifty. You pay it, right, you pay it.
Speaker 4: And that's and so that's one of those things we're
looking at clients and going, hey, look, we're not saying
to abandon all that stuff, but you guys are all
loaded up in tech. That's just at valuations through the sky.
Look at the market today. You see Nvidia getting hit
for almost four percent. You see Palenteer getting hit for
four or five percent. You see Oracle getting smoked by five. Why,
I think the market's starting to wake up to how
ridiculously overpriced this stuff is. Meanwhile, you've got this incredible
We've got a backdrop of inflation.
Speaker 5: We've had horrific energy policy in this country for ten
to fifteen years. That is like the strangled investment, and like,
you don't usually see trades like that, and on top
of it, all these things are dirt, dirt cheap, so
like you just don't see setups like this very often.
But no, I think Tony's right one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: He and I had that a long form discussion talking
about those new bull markets, and you know, and and
it's also the way markets work, taught. I know, you
know this isn't it funny? When we're all looking at AI,
when we're all looking at technology, when we're all looking
at the stars, the investment opportunities are in fossil fuels there.
Speaker 1: Right well, And certainly Gavin Newsom knows this. He knows
that his fossil fuels. So this is a piece. This
is out of California, and it's about two major oil
refineries in California. It's a semi long news piece, but
listen to this. Watch this with me.
Speaker 6: Sack Valero just wrote off one point one billion dollars.
That is the cost they are taking to walk away
from California rather than keep operating their Benicia refinery passed
April twenty twenty six. When a company takes a billion
dollar loss just to leave. You know something is seriously broken.
This facility processes one hundred forty five thousand barrels of
oil per day, representing eight point six percent of California's
entire gasoline production. Four hundred workers have lost their jobs,
two hundred contractors are out of work. The city of
Benicia loses seventeen percent of its entire budget, and California
drivers they are about to get hammered with the worst
gas prices in American history. University of California Davis economists
calculate a forty cents per gallon increase the moment Phillips
sixty six closes their Los Angeles refinery this December, then
another eighty one cents when Valero shuts down four months
later in April. That totals a one dollar twenty one
cent per gallon increase. By August twenty twenty six, your
fifteen gallon Phillip jumps from seventy dollars to at least
ninety five dollars. The Stanford Energy Institute came up with
even worse projection. They are showing potential spikes to eight
dollars per gallon during supply disruptions. You see Berkeley's Severin Borenstein,
who has been tracking California energy markets for decades, warns
these closures could create severe gasoline shortages with unprecedented price increases.
Speaker 1: Uh stay to California investments prowess.
Speaker 5: Well, so, so here here's the funny part.
Speaker 1: For California's it's hilarious.
Speaker 5: Well, I look, they keep voting for it.
Speaker 4: I just you know, I it's hard.
Speaker 5: You feel bad for him, but you don't.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of like, you know, it's like, well,
it's like it's like free Gattle voting. Sorry, you know,
for the mayor you voted in, like, you know, four
years from now, it's not gonna be good. They'd be like,
oh boy, that didn't work out well and you're like, no, no, kidd,
go further left.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the funny, the funny part about this is that
it's actually opened up some investment opportunities to relate the
state of California.
Speaker 1: Because because the way you guys think, well, it's misery.
It is eight dollars per gallon. People can't drive, but
you know, hold on, let's we can short some things.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like the American Eagle trade man.
Speaker 4: You know when you can when you can double your
money on a stock like American Eagle in six weeks,
and you can do it on the back of woke tears.
I mean, there's, hey, doubling your money's doubling your money,
but when it's financed by woke teers, there's just something
beautiful about that. But no, So we've actually owned a
stock and we got rid of it because it was
just way too volatile and it was bouncing all over
the place.
Speaker 5: But there are multiple.
Speaker 4: Companies like that that have had assets that are one
of them. In particular, there was a Chevron had a
significant asset, significant oil field off the coast of California
was in international waters. Okay, so so California couldn't do
anything about letting them pump oil. So what they did, though,
is they set up a pipeline that ran from there
into California right to get it on shore to the refineries.
And over time that pipeline decayed, it needed some maintenance.
Companies stepped up into the maintenance, and then there's a
big discrepancy about the quality of that.
Speaker 5: The company is going, Hey.
Speaker 4: We did everything you said we did, or we needed
to do. State of California goes, you didn't do enough,
there's gonna be a leak whatever. So we were betting
on that company because Trump had actually the Department of
Energy had sent a letter to that company saying, hey,
hang in there, We're gonna if we need to, we're
gonna override the state of California on this. But to
look at it from the business side of it, it
literally is committing economics suicide.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 5: Their own people will pay for it.
Speaker 4: The oil that doesn't come out of that ground will
come out of different ground. It'll be sourced somewhere else.
Energy is completely fungible. The environment doesn't care whether it
came from California, whether it came from Cambodia.
Speaker 5: It is what it is.
Speaker 4: And you look at this and you go, there is
no benefit. The benefit is supposed, it is imagined, and
it is the best way you'd be able to describe
it as like moral in a.
Speaker 5: Cult like sense. Yeah right, because you know, people not
having the energy they need and driving up the costs
on working families. I have a really we're saving the planet, yeah,
I know.
Speaker 4: And Miami's supposed to be under eight feet of water
right now, right, So sorry that I don't really trust
all your models right right, and you're starting to see that.
You see Gates, guys like Gates pulling back. I don't
know if you felt like this about the whole climate
change thing, but I've always thought it was stupid and
I've always thought it was way over hyped. At the
same time, anytime I see people, regardless of what I
think of their moral fiber, when I see people that
are highly intelligent believe something that's the opposite of what
I believe, it causes me pause and I sit there
and I'm like, how. And what's amazing to me is
you're watching them A lot of those guys that I
would have put in that category, you're watching them slowly
go you know what, I think we've overstated it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hold on.
Speaker 1: But with Gates, understand something. The pattern is he sells
catastrophe to the people and in the back end he
has the solution. So he did it with the shots
and he had the solution. He made billions on that,
and then he turned around and says, yeah, we got
this wrong. Common core, same thing he did it now
with the climate thing, and he isn't backed off of that.
He's just switched targets so now what he's done, he's
gone upstream. Hey, if I can't force you to buy
carbon credits, and yeah, people are doing that, but it's
never really going to catch on. I'll force you to
buy plastic meat. I'll just go upstream. So now I'm
going to go and say and he's saying, Zach, he's
joining a course of people saying we need to destroy
three quarters of beef cattle and meatbirds. So he's just
gone upstream and he's selling that catastrophe now because we
can't model like cows, right, so he he is all
over that. Then of course he's come along and looked
at other ways to get into the human body, going
right back in back toroor this time. So having m
R and A's and meets et cetera, he hasn't changed
other people. Yeah, they can change their mind to come
along and say, boy, was I wrong with the guy
who found the green piece? Is now one of the
chief scientists coming out and saying, oh this is nonsense.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, that's the perfect perfect example.
Speaker 4: Is that guys just saying whoa, Hey, look we were
talking about this. You guys have extrapolated it out over
here and created it into something that it never was,
and that isn't that there's no you know, and there
it's a lot like you know, dealing with these people.
It's a lot like the Fauci and I am science
thing right right? If I say I am enough, then
I am. But I'm going to disregard all science, you know,
like the scientific method. Is it repeatable, is it measurable?
Is it observable?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: On all three levels. So you cannot sit there and
tell me the science is settled, right. You don't even
need to have a PhD.
Speaker 5: This doesn't pass third grade science right.
Speaker 1: Right, because you can't do all those things. So now
I'm glad that we agree on that. I thought that
we might. I want to ask you in a second
to run us through because it's giving season for a
lot of people. People like doing their last minute donations.
Sometimes they're attack right off, sometimes because they've been extra blessed.
I want to talk philanthropy with you from a perspective
of proper stewardship of money. But at the core of
this is properly starting God's money He's given us to
invest as philanthropists or as give us a charity. You know,
I al of us can claim philanthropy status, say some
amount of money. These exist for that, so do that.
In a second with Zach Abraham, this isn't philanthropy. But
it costs a lot of money for my friend Steve
Anderson and Jim to operate their business, renew Healthcare in Mexico. Yeah, okay,
so they save some money, but there's some things they
can't do. For instance, it's really difficult for them to
get bonuses to their employees. They want to do that,
but the Mexican laws don't allow that. So they do
other things. Help them with housing. They hire from within,
they promote from within. But they'd rather be based here,
but they simply can't. Because Steve had to have stem cells,
and he had to have the good stem cells, the
American stem cells that are frozen and shipped around fourteen
different points and sword in someone's freezer and you don't
know who actually donated him or how healthy they were.
He wasn't going to put that in his body. He
went to the Middle East and got it done and
came back and said, Wow, I could do this. So
he capitalized the business. The only place that made sense
to locate was in Mexico. They chose the safest part
of Mexico. Port of Arta still the safest part. They
did this so they can reject ninety percent of all
the stem cells they see not good enough. They did
this so they can culture the stem cells that remain
from one million to forty million. They did this so
they can invest in the largest hyperbaric chamber in North America.
They did this so they can have a staff of
Harvard certified doctors on call working with them. So whether
it's recovering from surgery more quickly, or avoiding surge to
your knees or back, overcoming traumatic man injury, or things
that are aesthetic, like getting rid of wrinkles without botox
just using the stem cells, even ed and maile pattern baldness.
All this has helped through stem cells. Check them out
at renewed dot Healthcare. It's r E n U E
dot Healthcare. Please tell them you're part of the Todd
Herman Show family. Zach Abraham is Chief Investment Officer Bulwart
Capital Management, Milliarisks podcast dot com. You've been given much
by God and of you much as expected, and in fact,
the first time I spent social time with you, we
went with our wives to a charitable events with homeless youth.
And I knew at that point that you were a
guy who valued solid philanthropy, and I learned about your
Christian underpinnings and in fact that Christ is the center
of your life. So I wanted to talk to you
first of all from a perspective of godly stewardship of
funds into philanthropy and charities, and then doing this with
an investor's I so let's start at that that, how
do you, guys, because I know your wife's involved in this,
you don't make these decisions in a vacuum. How do you,
guys screen charities to make sure that they're godly and
allow you to feel good about using God's money that way?
Speaker 5: No, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: So it's funny we were just having we were having
this conversation with somebody. I remember we were having this
conversation just the other day, and we were saying that
at lower levels of money, it's actually quite easy. Where
it gets difficult is when the numbers get larger. Okay, right,
and that sounds crazy, but let's say you've got a
goal to give away a billion dollars, right, You're probably
not going to do that twenty grand.
Speaker 5: At a time, right, right, Right, So when you're.
Speaker 4: Talking about five and ten million dollars gifts, that's much harder, right,
Think about you can't just write a five million dollar
check to your church.
Speaker 5: I mean you could, but what are they going to
do it?
Speaker 1: Honestly?
Speaker 4: Right, it's probably not going to result, and not because
we don't trust that particular church, but it's probably going
to result in some weird things, right they money allocated
in a weird way. That's just great, it's not it's
not feasible. So, first of all, the size really matters.
Second of all, there are sites that you can go
look that do research on these guys.
Speaker 5: And the metric you're looking for the most impact.
Speaker 4: The most important metric is how does a dollar filter
through the organization? And the way you rank these nonprofit
organizations is how much of that dollar is left once
it travels.
Speaker 5: Through the organization.
Speaker 4: A lot of times you'll lift the hood on these
things and you know, maybe twelve to fifteen cents of
a dollars actually getting there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, Then.
Speaker 4: You look at really good ones, maybe you're eighty percent
eighty five percent. So if you're going to give to
outside organizations, just spend some time, ask Ai, google it,
use Gemini whatever.
Speaker 5: Find that you know two or three trusted places.
Speaker 4: The names escape me right now, but we don't typically
give to those those kinds of places. So that's why
I'm not familiar with the companies that do the you know,
curating and grading and things like that. And the reason
we don't is I like to give more locally for
a couple of reasons. A you can have direct impact
on people in your community, and I've always felt I've
always felt.
Speaker 5: Compelled to do that, to do both. But also, you know, don't.
Speaker 4: Live in a community and send all your help somewhere else. Yeah,
you know, see see the help right in front of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The other reason I like to do it is because
you can get directly involved. The best way to rank
a five oh one C three or a nonprofit is
to get involved and know the people that run it, right.
You don't have to know them ahead of time, but
get to know them, and by watching their organization, looking
at their offices, looking at the cars they drive, looking
at the number of employees they have, you can quickly
in your mind start doing the math and going, okay,
this is getting here, this is getting here, take a
look at their financials.
Speaker 5: It backs up what you're saying.
Speaker 4: We have actually fingers crossed to this point, have never
had a scenario where we were giving to an organization
that we found out wasn't using the money in precisely
the way that we that we had thought.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's and that to me is.
Speaker 4: The biggest part, Todd is because even those big organizations
that are going to be judging those like, there's an
element to it where they can still only rely on
the data that that corporation puts out and gives them.
And so if there's something untoward going on underneath the surface,
you really won't know. Now, the flip side of it is,
I think we need to pay attention to that. I
think it's part of our responsibility that comes with those
funds to be good stewards and make sure that we're
putting it in the right place. But I also always say,
and this is a big belief of mine, if you
get to a situation where you're fifty to fifty, give
them the money really right, Yeah, And here's why I
say it. I the primary reason why I get is
because I love God. Right, Like, if I really think
about the primary reason. Now do I love help. I
love helping people, and I love helping organizations. And it
really is the most fun inspiring money you can spend.
Speaker 5: It really is. But if I really back it out,
why do I give? Why is it a priority for us?
Because of God?
Speaker 4: And so what I am far more worried about is
his interpretation of where my heart's at and my willingness.
And I would much rather err on the side of
giving to somebody. I would much rather be faked out
by somebody than than to not give where real need exists.
So if I'm running the risk of that, and I'm sure,
I am sure I have given in those scenarios before,
I know I have. I know I've given to people
that have misused it.
Speaker 1: We tithed first, and to me, that's very clear. I mean,
you know, it's funny because you, zach Abraham, think about
money all the time. I todd herm and try not
to think about money all the time. But I think
about tithing as a command and modeled through the Bible
many many times. So hey, I mean I want to
check off and make sure you guys tied before the
extra charities, right right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So yeah, the tithe is an amount that goes out
every single month. Commasserate to our that ten percent. The
additional giving we do is above and beyond that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's joy to be able to do. And
one day you're coming to Tupelo, Mississippi with me to
the offices of American Family Association American Family Radio. And
one are the things I noticed right away. You get
such a kick at us. You've been to the big
media companies, I know, like me, you've gone down and
done the Hollywood thing and had the meetings and been
to Madison Avenue and you've seen You've been to the
Rolls Royce houses and the tech houses and all that.
You've seen all this. So if you ever go to
say c AA, the Creative Artist Agency in Los Angeles,
the new building that looks like Gatica, the movie Gatica,
if you get into the parking lot, and good luck
with that. I mean you're gonna find the low The
low end is Porsche and so of course is sort
of a cute car. It's kind of a hot commuter,
right see. Yeah, it's a commuter even there even there
there are scooters or like you know, fifteen thousand dollars
of the scooters you stand on and ride in because
they've got GPS built in and all that. And when
I first went to Tupelo and they gave me a
rental car, I showed up. The rental car was just
a rental car, not fancy. There are trucks, there's average cars.
My producer Randy has a hot rodd he's built, which
you will love. I went in and looked at the offices,
and so Tim Wildman and and uh Walker Wildman, father
and son. They're most visible as executives. Their offices might
be like like Tim's office. He runs a place. It
might be I don't know, ten core feet bigger than
other people's offices maybe. But there's no fancy couches. There's everybody.
They have a worship room there and they have worship
in the mornings. Everybody on staff gets to lead the worship,
beginning with testimony.
Speaker 5: Everybody.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if your mailroom, you work on the phones,
work in sales, you work in support, does not matter.
It's not just the honor of people. So I look
at that and say, okay, an investment in a donation
to American Family Association. I know the screening method for
them is is it biblically strict, does it build God's kingdom?
Is it brave on the culture wars? And does it
multiply the blessings of God's words to people? Because that's
what they do. So now as you look at this
from a perspective faith, you've talked about financial acuum. How
do you and your wife look at organizations to see
does this aid the kingdom? Because not everything is going
to be It sounds like a you know, pronounced Christian organization,
But how do you do that and make sure sure
it isn't adverse to the kingdom?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's the key, right, which is to me,
that aspect of it is just as important as how
the money's handled, because you know, I was on another
show recently and the quote I had was, I am
not going to voluntarily hand over more capital to a
defunct and what I believe is a corrupt government to
have only to have them turn and wheeld that capital
against my family. Yep, right, And I think I think
today we need to be a specially.
Speaker 5: Cognizant of that and aware of that.
Speaker 4: But but again that's part of that process of getting
to know the people that run it right, not like
and meaning spending some time on the ground. And that's
why I like to do it locally, right, and we
pray about it. Lord show us, put the need in
front of us. We had a funny one recently. Okay,
the funny one. Lord put the need in front of us.
Put the need in front of it. I've got clients.
Two people that were very successful executives at Microsoft in
their early fifties felt they were both being called to
go be missionaries in Africa, and they have. They started
going over there and doing work. They found out that
the normal missionary way of doing things wasn't working there
because you'd go over and there drop money, and so
the people would just sit there and wait for money
to come. Yeah, right, and they no, No, we're going
to get in there. We're going to help them build
their community. We're going to show them how to build
water storage facilities. We're going to show them things that
they can go and replicate to other people. Right, We're
going to go make disciples. We're not just going to
feed them the fish.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: And so they've got they're doing this expanding thing and
you know, expanding this process and they're sitting there talking
to me about it, and I'm sitting there going and
my wife and I are laughing to ourselves, going, hmmm,
wonder if we're supposed to give.
Speaker 5: To this, right, Like, Lord, put the need in front
of us. Two of my clients are mission as doing this.
So a I would say, pray about it. Number one.
Speaker 4: I should have started with that. We pray about put
the need in front of us. God, bring us the
things that you want us to fund.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: He hasn't brought me any bad ones yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And then and then, like I said, when you're keeping
it small like their their five oh one c three
is them right, So it's very how much gets through
one hundred percent?
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: And so I love that and I love the impact
that they're having. But then that's that process getting to
know them because a lot of times, you know, some
of these places will show you the work that they
want you to see, and then they won't show you
some of the other stuff they're doing.
Speaker 1: I think I told you this, and I started interrupt you.
I think I told you this when you and I
went to that charity event with our wives all those
years ago and I was so impressed with what they
were doing for for homeless kids. Remember that that's what
the charity was. I don't remember the name of it.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I got moved that night, and we gave a
fair bit of money for us, you know, pretty good.
And then I got home and I realized I didn't
pray about it. I sat and this is one of
the things I think people need to look out for,
Like I never want to say no, to say yes
to someone selling me something when I'm sitting there, like
when I'm shopping for a car, I get the price
agreed or agreed to this, and here's my sales managers agreed,
and I know I've got the I'm at that point.
I'm like, Okay, I'm going to take this home and
come back and tell you tomorrow morning. What do you
mean we just we just got this. This is what
you want right in the moments with adrenaline, because we've
been negotiating. I'm going to come back and I want
to make sure that we're good to go in this
and often usually it is. So after we gave that money,
I asked, you know what, I got to call them,
and I did, and I said, hey, by the way,
if a boy who identifies as a girl is in
those homeless shelters that you run, do they stay with
the boys of the girls. And I got the answer, Oh,
you mean a trans woman.
Speaker 5: Oh I didn't. I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't. Maybe I told you this, or maybe
I didn't. I don't know that I knew you well enough.
Maybe I was afraid of offending you. But they said,
you mean a trans woman. I said, no, I don't.
I mean a boy who presents as a girl. And
they said, yeah, we they stay with the girls.
Speaker 5: Oh, good gosh. So yeah, No, I didn't. No, I
didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the lynch pin of me is we had clients
that were involved in that one as well. Yeah, and
they didn't they didn't take a dollar of government funding.
Speaker 1: I love that, But we have to share that was
you have to ask them comfortable questions.
Speaker 5: Well, and then and then and and see here's the
other part. And I heard a sermon about this the
other day. That's a Christian organization. Yep, that's a Christian organization.
Speaker 1: They told a good story about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and and and I believe that the people involved.
I believe that they are Christian, like I believe that
they consider themselves Christians. But there's these compromises that we
can't make. And there's these compromises that I see all
too many pastors making congregations making were making business.
Speaker 5: Decisions, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And sorry, guys, it doesn't work that way. The world
gets to have personal decisions and business decisions. When you're
in the Kingdom, every decisions personal right.
Speaker 1: And by the way, every decision is eternal. Now I'm
not saying that made them bad people. I'm not even
saying they don't do a great job with homeless youth.
I think they probably did. They told your great I
met some of the people. That was the other thing
they had is they had some of the recipients of
the aid and they gave speeches and I got to
talk with them, and man's it is so exhilarating to
meet people whose lives have been changed by things. You know.
I had the other week had my friend Cameron On,
who runs a ministry for to help people learn how
to live. If you ask what do you do? I
teach people to live. It's called Absolute Ministries, and they
help people who've been homeless and they've been addicted and
I got to know him by virtue of getting to
know people changed by the organization. This is the other
thing that I want to do, is it Christian? You're
talking about financial vacuum and being good with money, but
then also I want to see the lives changed.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's you you know this, but that's there's
another example. We give to that charity, Absolute Ministries, and
that's another one client of mine that they was involved.
Speaker 5: That's how I knew about it.
Speaker 4: And so I encourage people, Hey, if you want to
find good charity, like, pray about it. Ask God help
us to see the need right in front of us.
And I'm just telling you. And there's times, Todd, there's
times where we've got money to give and we're praying
God show us the need, and he just he just hasn't. Yeah,
and we hold and we hold and we hold, and
then something comes up and you go there it is, Yep,
there it is.
Speaker 1: And also one of the things that we did and
I we used to help the Union Gospel Mission and
one of the things they I asked them one day,
what do not need? He said, Can I say something?
We don't need more socks? We don't need food. Please
don't drop us off food. We've got that all nailed.
Here's why we need money. And they explain that not
that we don't appreciate the stocks. We'll accept them, but
understand we'll probably gonna sell them. So also get with
the organizations and figure out what they need and make
sure that you're fulfilling that. I want to close off
on one thing before we go, and that was.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 1: Watching Bill maher be right from time to time is
an extraordinarily fun thing. And he had this realization about
his tax dollars. I'll share this with you in just
a second, Zach. Speaking of Christmas time, there is a
blend that my friend Tim Krukshank has created with bone
Frog Coffee, and it is a very special one and
very very close to Tim's heart. It honors the wives
of Navy Seals. It's a bag called Sisterhood. Now, the
reason this matters to Tim is for of all, he
was in Navy Seal. He was deployed three times on
our behalf into really really really in the blank, as
they might say, I can't say the full word, I
don't want to, but he came home and lost guys.
He was a medic with the teams, so he got
to know the wives of fallen seals, because that's what
the seal community does. They gather on the families, their
surrogate fathers. And then Tim's wife died, Liz. He helped
keep her alive for fifteen years fighting against cancer. This
bag means something to him. It's called Sisterhoods. It's a
tribute to his wife, Liz and all the gold Star Wives.
And in this he writes about his wife. I'd love
you to read this. He picked what is arguably the
top one percent of coffees in the world. It's called
it comes from the Terrazu region. It's called the Laminita coffee.
He picked that for this reason. Also, ten percent of
proceeds here from this purchase go directly to gold Star
Wives on behalf of you and bone Frog go purchase
this for Christmas. Great store behind it. It's Bonefrog Coffee
dot com slash Todd. Use promo code todd to get
ten percent off your first purchase, fifteen percent off subscription coffee,
and do while you're there check their Christmas button. Now
Tim's put up a lot of Christmas specials. Bonefrog Coffee
dot Com slash Todd promo code Todd. I don't want
to fall into the trap of waiting for the Hollywood's rescue.
Bill Maher is not that. But Zach listened to this
guy who for years has defended big government for years.
We are the government. What are you talking about? We
hate the government. We are the government.
Speaker 7: Watch this explain to me the American economy because I don't.
I never can quite get it. Why week they take
so much of my money?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: Yes, it's not like yes, taxes.
Speaker 7: Whenever I hear like rich people don't pay teck what
I I can't remember the last year when I didn't
give more than half, and I'm.
Speaker 5: Not if it went.
Speaker 1: More than half, that's a lot more than half, be
a moratorium. And on the discussion.
Speaker 7: And yet still whether we increase taxes or whatever.
Speaker 6: And look, I actually think.
Speaker 5: That there are some examples of corporations in particular.
Speaker 1: Who get like that Amazon should not be.
Speaker 6: Getting a tax refund, right, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 7: That's the thing is that we're like in the just
the rich people that aren't really that rich, who get
hit hard, and when you make hundreds of billions, then
you pay nothing.
Speaker 5: It's insane. It's insane, partly.
Speaker 7: Because you have an army of lawyers and partly because
it's in stocks and things. And the tax code is
you know, Reagan tried to make it simple. It's not simple,
and they and they gain the system, but like you know,
just don't tell me we don't pay a lot of tax.
Speaker 5: How can you?
Speaker 7: And I've seen this tat the government's money going confiscate
a lot of money, and I'd be okay with it,
but yes, where is it going? Why is there still homeless?
And why is there still like not railroad builds in
calim what why? And it's sounds just like stapidity And
there there we go.
Speaker 1: And then I want to add this because I just
read this statistic and this will interest you if you
don't know. And we'll then talk about the bill mar
thing real quick because we close off. Do you know
how much in assets in dollar amounts the Federal Reserve
reported NGOs in America holds as of Q two, twenty
twenty five assets representative money all the NGOs, non government organizations.
It's got to be in the trillions, fourteen trillion.
Speaker 5: For those scoring at home, that's like half of GDP, right.
Speaker 1: That is I think the GDP of Japan and Germany
probably one other country by you know, plus five percent.
These are assets that are gaining value. Okay, so some
of them are cash, but most of them aren't. Most
of more investments, land, buildings, income properties purchased with our
tax dollars, laundered through groups like USAID. And Bill Maher's
waking up to this and he's talking about the train
in California, right. That encourages me, But then he doesn't
answer his own question, where does all the money go to?
Speaker 6: Griff?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and give him time, because the one thing
I've seen with people like that is once they ask
that question, they're going to find the answer. Yeah, you
know what I mean, because that you're waking up now,
and that's sort of you like, for lack of a
better term, and I hate how this has been co opted,
but you're really taking the red pill. You're waking up
and seeing it for what it is now and you
can't see it once you do it, and then you
can ask some more things, for instance. So and this
is where we as capitalists need to actually stand up
and defend capitalists who owns the majority of stocks in
the country, it's rich people, right.
Speaker 1: No, it's most stocks or most dollar amounts, because I
think it's spread across if you're to take organizations, pension
funds four one K's am I wrong?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: The top one percent owns like forty percent of all
US equity valuation.
Speaker 1: Okay, but that's forty percent. That's not sixty percent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well no, but one percent, yeah, owns forty percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, got it right.
Speaker 4: Okay, So huge discrepancy, biggest it's ever been. You know,
let's let's take a step back and look at this.
So they own stock in a corporation, it's the primary
driver of their wealth. Yep, that corporation, regardless of how
much money it makes, gets taxed at a twenty percent rate.
As an individual getting income, the top rate is thirty
seven and a half percent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hey, think about that, you guys. Yep, what does
that mean? That's a loophole.
Speaker 4: That's a loophole that because the really rich guy owns
billions of dollars of stock that's his big asset, and
the income that that entity makes, or the income that
that NT makes, that he owns billions of dollars of it,
only pays twenty percent tax.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, And so you sit there and go, wait
a second, why what? Why would a corporation that makes
billions of dollars a year pay a higher a lower
effective tax rate than a work than a two parent,
three kid home making a quarter of a million a
year is paying the same individual tax rate as the corporation. Now,
the corporation we need to keep keep in mind competitive
tax rates around the world so as not to be penalized.
But for us, for those of us that believe.
Speaker 4: In capitalism and the economic mobility that it provides, we
need to start asking questions like this, why is our
corporation structured in a way that by owning stock and
a company, I can effectively pay half the tax rate
that I would.
Speaker 5: If I was actually making that money myself, and saying
why would we?
Speaker 4: Why are we giving these types of advantages to people
that are already rich. I'm not saying to penalize them.
I'm not advocating for my tax levels to go up.
What I'm saying is we got a bunch of situations
in this country that both liberals and conservatives don't see,
and if we look at them for what they are,
I think you're really hard pressed to not go, Hey,
this doesn't make any sense. The rich people don't need
additional advantages. They're they're paying their fair share. I'm tired
of hearing that that's nonsense. Right, What is it the
top one percent pays what percentage of income tax? I
want to say, it's like sixty five seventy, something like
ten percent. Yeah, So I don't want to hear that,
but I do want to look in you know, you
and I have talked about the carried interest loophole, right
that every hedge fund manager loves to talk about, but
they all take advantage of it, right, and it never
gets closed.
Speaker 5: Right, there's things in there.
Speaker 4: It's like be like Teddy Roosevelt's sometimes you've got to
do things that might sound a little bit anti capitalist,
but you got to do it to save capitalism, right,
because it's like I've always said, capitalism is a wonderful
guard dog, assuming you do not have holes in the fence.
If the dog gets out, he can cause some damage.
And so anyway, I I agree, obviously agree with everything
mar is saying. But then you start digging deeper and
you start seeing these things where you go, hey, guys,
it's not about being anti capitalists. But it is about
admitting there are a group of elites in this country
that have molded the law in such a way to
benefit everything they do at the cost of everybody else,
and that has to stop exactly.
Speaker 1: And and I would remind those elites that God is
a really good accountant. I don't think he's forgotten a
number wrong, right, not every huh. Pleasure to have you here,
my brother.
Speaker 5: Think it might work today in this day and age,
it won't work.
Speaker 1: When he comes and you have the second set of books.
Can you imagine Judgment day? And no, I was honest
my whole life, and Jesus is whold On a second,
you got those other books and said second, yeah, let's
talk about these exactly Judgment. Thanks for the wise counsel.
My brother appreciate you. This is the Todd Herman Shaw.
Please go, be well, be strong, be kind, and please
make every effort to walk in the light of Christ.