Speaker 1: If you want an economic future for your kids and grandkids,
We're going to have to do some things that for
conservatives might feel icky or wrong. Talk about this with
the help of Zach Abraham, chief investment Officer of Bulwark
Capital Management, and we'll do this with the help of
God Almighty.
Speaker 2: But Todd Herman show is one disapproved by big pharma
technocrats in tyrans everywhere from the high mountains of Free America.
Here's the Emerald City exile Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made and these
at the time subers, God has decided we shall live.
Joining me is my friend and brother, Zach Abraham, chief
investment Officer Bulwark Capital Management. Then let me start with this, Zach,
let me check out with you emotionally. I know the
Mariners lost, so let me start with do you need
a hug, some more anti depressants? Is there anything I
can do? More bone Frog coffee? Are you making it through?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, yeah, we're surviving. We're surviving.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a huge
baseball guy. I never played it growing up. But that
being said, there are a lot of aspects about this
team that were really compelling and one of the one
of the compelling parts about it that really caught my
ears how many of the guys were Christians, and how
big a part of the bigger part of the clubhouse
that was, how many of the guys had pretty outspoken political.
Speaker 3: Views that I liked.
Speaker 4: Just seemed like a lot of good dudes that really
loved each other and uh and battled. And you know,
as an ex athlete, I I love the I love
competition in sports, but I also have such a great
appreciation for like what my college coach used to say,
the third side of the coin, right, which is, you know,
he had this analogy heads tails, win, lose. But there's
also this third side of the coin that is edge. Right,
So like in trading we talk about your edge being
your advantage, and that when you when you have a
group of people that really love and respect each other,
that's like the third side of the coin.
Speaker 3: It it makes the it makes the whole greater than
the parts, right.
Speaker 4: And whenever I see a team doing that at any level,
it's just compelling to me because you see this sort
of undercurrent, this this this effectiveness that seems to outweigh
each of their individual abilities. But together that synergy creates
that and they they very much had that going, especially
later in the season, and it was compelling. And but
you know, you lived here long enough, the one thing
you know is that no matter how good it looks
or how exciting it might be, the history of the
franchise is pretty is pretty consistent. Right, keep an eye
out over one shoulder and wait to get.
Speaker 3: Bushwhacked, because that's usually what happens. Yeah, unfortunately ended that way,
but it was a fun run.
Speaker 1: Well, now I get to I see, I'm not a
big baseball fan either, And you know, the marriage did
some cool things. Great Armed Forces Knights they used to
have there, and I got to participate in two of
those and watch World War two vets deliver the game.
Speaker 2: Ball.
Speaker 1: Dude, You've never seen anything cooler than a guy who
flew b seventeens sitting there in the tunnel and there's
players coming by Zach and checking in on him, sir.
They're calling him, sir. So cool to meet you. And
and and our fact, in fact, one of our friends,
the guy who does the web stuff for us, Dave
Barkurst at a Greenhaven interactive dot com. By the way,
if you need help with Google SEO all that stuff
green Haven Interactive dot com. Dave is awesome at that
and he's a Christian and a Conservative. I get to
meet his pop and he was a Vet. And you
haven't seen anything cooler than when you take those guys
out into the field and this role in this gentleman out.
He lost more guys in his B seventeen through freezing
to death than he did seeing them shot and killed
freezing to death in those things. He told me a
stories act of flying over France and they couldn't land,
they couldn't drop their bombs. They're disc close to losing
fuel of having to fly back, they might have to
crash land. And one of his fellow pilots got both
engines shot out, and he made eye contact with the
guy before he went down. Like he turned to his
left and made eye contact with a fellow pilot whose
plane is going down. And this is the guy getting
rid of guilious game ball. We were in the tunnel
and the guy with the mariners who organized that night,
he led the armed forces night.
Speaker 3: He walked up.
Speaker 1: He saw this guy had his medals on and his
hat and he said, sir, what an honor to meet you.
And this gentleman said, did you serve He goes, yes,
but only in Vietnam. Only in Vietnam. Yeah, that different
breed man, totally different breed, and that World War two
Vett struggled to stand up and stood up and saluted him.
Since warlike any other. So I wheel this man out
to the dugouts and the players make a tunnel for
this dude. And if you've never stood on the field
next to some and the professional baseball players, they are
so jacked and big, and you don't think that because
they're baseball guys, right right, Yeah, And we roll him
out to the field and his son says okay, and
I give him the game ball, and they're they're running
pictures of him and his bio on the and they
they were supposed to run my name, and now k
t TH radio said, no way, no way, not with
this guy. He's the focus and he's going to deliver
the game ball. And he stands up to walk and
a son's like, dadd he goes, I am walking, wow,
And you see the players watch this dude, this old man.
He goes that he delivers the game ball, the place explode.
It comes back and sits in his chair and he
died shortly after Ah and but Zach on his deathbed
he said to his son, they remember us. Yeah, I
can die now. It's okay. Even and he said, even
in Seattle they remember so sorry, that's my baseball story.
Speaker 3: No, that's cool, that's more. That's certainly a better story
in the game.
Speaker 1: Hey, they could be back, but now no, no, I.
Speaker 4: Mean just the game of baseball, like my story, like dad,
just transcends sports.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm voting for the Blue Jays. Wont to know why?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they're not from LA.
Speaker 1: Well, and they didn't honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,
which is a satanic sexual left group. They didn't just
give Leah Thomas, the fake female swimmer, a courage award,
so to me, And maybe the Blue Jays are horrible,
but I'm voting for them because they're not the Dodgers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, yep, yep, yeah, I would. I would have
to agree with you.
Speaker 4: Like I said, it's if you're betting against anything coming
out of LA Yeah, you're ninety eight percent of time
you're gonna be on the right.
Speaker 3: Side of it.
Speaker 1: Is solid. Absolutely if you look at the video stream
of this. If you're listening to the audio, you can
go look at this. I guess pictures. Maybe Alex post
a picture of some of the new bone Frog merch
s getting in bites. Take a still of that. This
is the cup. I love these cups. Bought one for
my wife. She loves it, stands by it. My daughter
thinks it's cool, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing one of the one of the hoodies. I
wore another one yesterday. This is all at Bonefrog Cooffee
dot com slash todd get ten percent off your first purchase,
fifteen percent off subscription coffee. This is Wintercepter. This is
a special white rose coffee.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Yesterday I said I did not like this. In fact,
I said, this is the first coffee I'd say. Tim
made that. I said, yeah, it kind of sucked. It's
white coffee, high caffeine. But people didn't hear the rest
of what I said. I remember that Tim told me, Hey,
if you're a fan of tea, you're gonna like this straight.
My wife loved this. It's like an earthy tea. So
if you have friends who are tea fans, you're gonna
dig this. Drinking it straight. Tim had told me it's mint.
Really to have things added to it. He adds mint.
I had oat milk. Why do I drink oat milk
because they don't like all the calories in cowbuk. I
love cow milk, but I just can't have all the calories.
So I had oat milk to this and cinnamon blew
my mind. Now see that stuff I'd sit around drinking.
So it's like a dessert coffee as well, So you
can try that. It's called Winterceptor. It honors the guys
who go to the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Detachment
in Kodiak, Alaska. I saw one of these cats on
a reality TV show once. Yeah, gosh, it was a
good show. They go to Alaska and put up these
survival challenges. That dude swam. He jumped off of an iceberg,
literally jumped off of an iceberg, landed in the water,
and swam to a rubber raft like hundred me away
in iceberg water. So it honors guys like that. It's
bone Frog Coffee dot com slash todd. Use promo code
tod to get ten percent off your first purchase fifteen
percent off subscription coffee. So there's an act. I want
to talk with you about, Zach and we'll do that.
Speaker 3: Just do it.
Speaker 1: We'll do this right here. So there's the invest America Act.
I found this really interesting because of the responses to it.
This is a video explaining it, and I'm so curious
what you think about this.
Speaker 5: Here we go is you've changed the way potentially the
country is going to deal with financial literacy and also
having a stake in the markets, which is that this
bill finally passed and you'd come on the show.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think when you first.
Speaker 5: Two and half got away with the idea and here
we are.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So the invest America Act.
Speaker 6: You know, it's really there's a battle for the soul
of America, I think going on. We see it in
New York with the election fight over Mandami.
Speaker 3: You know this this drift.
Speaker 6: There are sixty percent of people who say, hey, I'm
left out of capitalism.
Speaker 1: This isn't benefiting me right, And we have that problem.
Speaker 6: We have this massive wealth gap that has grown. So
we have to get everybody into the game of capitalism.
The President ran on a main street agenda. The main
street agenda was my people in Indiana, how do we
get everybody else into the game of capitalism. So he
and the leadership in the House and the Senate helped
get this included in the Big Bill. Invest America Act
is now the law of the land, starting in twenty
twenty six.
Speaker 1: Every child born forever.
Speaker 3: More in America.
Speaker 6: We'll start off with a prosperity account one thousand dollars private,
four oh one k at birth their family owns they
own in the s and p five hundred that everybody
can add money to mom and dad, grandparents, birthdays, bar mitzvahs. Right,
companies are going to match. The list of companies we're
going to announce in early December is going to blow
your socks off.
Speaker 1: So a lot of this sounds super super cool. And
then there's some nuance of this act that's really interesting
to me because people are saying this is a fix
against socialism, but it's the government doing the investing for you.
And tell me that this doesn't a tastasize into something
like social securities become. I mean, I don't know, there's
a lot to talk about here.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm I'm really torn on this topic too.
And the reason I'm torn on it so to be fair.
So you know, you know, in support of the idea
of this concept, I would have been torn on this
topic in much of the same way that I would
have been torn about a lot of the government spending
projects in the thirties. We're on the face of it,
and let me explain what I mean. My initial reaction
to things like that, especially when I was younger, would
be like, this isn't capitalism.
Speaker 3: What are we doing right?
Speaker 4: When you look at a lot when you look at
many of those programs, I don't know what the percentage was,
but many of those programs ended up being incredibly successful
in America, that paid dividends for decades and still do
you know the Hoover Dam I've mentioned before being one
of them. And so there are times that in defense
of capitalism or in defense of liberty, you have to
do things that seem to be counter to that. I
think of Abraham Lincoln, you know, rescinding Habeas corpus during
the Civil War. I think it's some of the things
that Teddy Roosevelt did at turn of the century that
had Republicans up in arms. I already mentioned some of
the stuff that was done in the thirties, and I
think when you look at where we're at is a country,
and you look at the state of social security, I
think that looking at from that frame, I.
Speaker 3: Do not think that this is a bad policy.
Speaker 4: Okay, something is clearly going to have to be done
with social security. And when you see when you do
the math on it, which which we have done in
great detail, what.
Speaker 3: You see is had, for instance, over the light.
Speaker 4: Now I'm not saying somebody has or I'm not saying
that that this will work the exact same way. But
if people could see what would have happened if every
dollar they paid into social Security would have gone into
an account that held the S and P five hundred, yep,
there's social Security payments would be ten to twelve times
what they are yep.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And I've listened to people sit there and say, oh,
but the market can crash.
Speaker 3: Not over a sixty year career. It can't, Okay, not
even Japan.
Speaker 4: Japan had broken out to new highs and they had
the worst, you know, for developed markets, they had the
longest sideways action. I mean their market went negative and
stayed negative for thirty two years.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they didn't make new eyes for thirty two years.
Speaker 4: Even in that scenario, had they been putting money in
the Japanese stock market, because remember, people forget about this.
Speaker 3: If the market crashes.
Speaker 4: Seventy next month, what you're putting into it, you're paying
seventy percent less to go into it. Right, So even
when that market gets back to two thirds of where it.
Speaker 3: Was, if you kept plugging money in, your money's grown.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: We're going to have to do something like this to
replace Social Security because Social Security isn't going to I mean,
it's bankrupt and it's going to continue to get bankrupt,
and we are not going to have if you look
what's going on in AI, we're never going to get
back to a place where we were when we started,
which when we started, I believe you had something like
thirty to thirty five workers per every person getting a
Social Security check.
Speaker 3: That those days are gone, that's not going to happen anymore.
Speaker 4: So the other thing is is I think that we
do need to make quote unquote capitalism in the market
American dream more accessible to people.
Speaker 3: Do I think this is the best way to do it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Do I think it is a step in the right direction. Potentially,
Do I think it is good for our markets. No,
but but we have turned our markets into a utility
of some some shape, right, Like if you know, look
look at the way policy is directed at equity or
asset prices today, like it just wasn't thirty years ago.
You know, thirty years ago you would hear central bankers
and government politicians say the stock market isn't the economy.
Speaker 3: We're not worried about the stock market. You don't see
that today.
Speaker 4: And it is concerning. It's not a it's not a
it's not a perfect solution. At the same time, flipping
back now and arguing for it, I think we're in
a pivot where I think we're in a very dangerous
and pivotal place in this country where we're gonna if
if we get things back on track, we're gonna have
to do things that are not conventional, at least in
the ways that we that we think of.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree, mom, because they don't worship systems. And
what you said, right, social security being bankrupt is true today,
and it's structurally to me that means it can't be fixed.
It's like, you know, the load bearing beams are shots.
I'm sorry, the house is shots. What about the foundation. Well,
the foundation has cracks. Okay, so I can't live here. No,
I mean you can live here, but eventually this is
going to fall down, and maybe you'll be inside when
that happens. Right, So that's an argument for this. My friends,
a renew medical center in Portavart, New Mexico, are working
on the last stages of a study where they contend
they're going to present a cure for diabetes. How could
they possibly do that? Because they're world class health care center.
We talk a lot about their stem cells. That is
in fact one of their products. They have the world's
best stem cell processing. It's based on donors. They know
who the women are. They monitor their health, their baby's health.
They walk the pluscentas and umbilical cords down to a
class four bio lab and there they reject ninety percent,
sometimes eighty ninety percent of the stem cells. It's only
the very best, making you that's one part of what
they do. They get there. They got the Western hemisphere's
largest hyperbaric chamber and they're building a larger one. They
make their own oxygen rather than buying it, so they
can control all the outcomes. You know what else they're
doing anti aging. They will tell you the biological age
of your organs, and they will show you how hyperbaric
oxygen and stem cells can in fact refresh your biological age.
This isn't pretense, it's what these stem cells do. Want
to be younger, Go renew r E n ue dot healthcare.
They can't make you chronologically younger, but they can make
us all biologically younger. It's renewed r E nue dot healthcare.
That stuff actually is sort of brain science. It's thirty
six million dollars per year. If you're saying there's three
point six million babies born in the United States every year,
which is the numbers, that's it's I found. So it's okay, fine,
that's nothing. You know, we're already three hundred trillion dollars
in real debt if you count the off books debt.
That's no one else I think that would be.
Speaker 3: I think that would be not be thirty three hundred
and sixty millionaire.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, what did I say?
Speaker 3: I said?
Speaker 2: Three?
Speaker 1: Okay, so three hundred and sixty million a year. Three
hundred and sixty million a year. Now, that's again small
money when we're three hundred trillion dollars in debt. Here's
my concern. You're a Democrat, why is it just a
thousand bucks? So this needs to go up costs of living? Incidentally,
why are the black and brown people at getting more?
And what about this company in that company? And why
is it the S and P five hundred? Why isn't
select companies? What about the green companies? Why are we
having people investment? There's oil companies in here, there's defense
contractors in here. Well, look I can't have that. That's
that's this is my prediction. If they don't lock this
into say it is one thousand bucks, or tie it
to some ratio of income or ratio of debt, something
where it's predetermined, make it hard to change. If I'm
a Democrat getting into office, man, I can't wait to
take this thing and blow it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I but here's the here's the tough part about
where we are. When you try to start I think
back to George Bush talking about compassionate conservatism.
Speaker 1: I was checking his watch during the debate. Who am I?
Why am I here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? There? You run into a you run into an
issue when.
Speaker 4: Look you as a society, I think you've got to
determine what is the most important thing to you and
if individualism and liberty and personal liberty are the most
important things to you, which I think they should be,
because that is the antithesis of the greatest threat that
government poses to anybody.
Speaker 3: Right. And so.
Speaker 4: When things have been too good for too long, people
only see the downside of things and they quit viewing
the upside. And the reason they quit viewing the upside
is because the upside's baked into the cake.
Speaker 3: They take it for granted.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: For instance, you go listen to these kids talk. They
think that they can get.
Speaker 4: Socialism payouts and socialism aspects and not lose any of
the upsides of capitalism, you know what I mean. Yes,
And you look at them and go, guys, that's not
how it works. Yeah, okay, Now, I understand why you're frustrated,
and you have every right to be frustrated. But you're
not witnessing the failure of capitalism. You're witnessing the failure
of capitalism receding. Right, You're witnessing the unholy union of
big corporations and big government.
Speaker 3: That's what you're witnessing.
Speaker 4: That's what's throwing all this off and the empirical evidence
is startling.
Speaker 3: Let's go sector by sector in the United.
Speaker 4: States and see how many competitors there are in each sector.
That number has been absolutely decimated.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So if you want to know why more of the
riches are not getting down to the work in class,
it's because large corporations are not competing nearly as hardly
for that talent anymore. Right, And and that's why, right,
increased competition equals increase pay.
Speaker 3: They just think about it.
Speaker 4: Right, So you've got to it's like going to like
a marketplace for employment. If you've got one hundred employers
there bidding for talent versus three, who do you think
is going to get a better deal?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And so that's that's the That is the most frustrating
part of this whole thing is the people thinking that
the way to fix this is given. And you go no, no,
because you don't understand if we give you that, you're
going to lose that right, right, and you're assuming that's
still that's still going to be there.
Speaker 3: It's not the way it works.
Speaker 4: And yet at the same time, it has created this
incredible inequity, right, meaning we've never had a wealth gap
like this in the country, and and the greatest crime
of that to me is capitalism is getting blamed for
big government and big business cabal and it's not an accident.
Speaker 3: This was big business.
Speaker 4: Now, I think part of it is on the government side,
and that's reflective in the fact that we no longer
have the best and brightest in government because I think
a lot of them were just duped and I just
think a lot of them aren't smart.
Speaker 3: But this was big business's strategy. Right.
Speaker 4: We've talked about regulatory capture. That didn't happen on accident.
They knew that, right. So what you're seeing is the
results of big business and really smart people gaming the system,
tricking politicians and getting them to do exactly what they want.
Speaker 3: And wouldn't you know that.
Speaker 4: That is correlated to previously unheard of corporate profits at
the expense of the working guy.
Speaker 3: And so that was the strategy. That was the strategy
all along.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you reverse engineer back to where things began,
you could look at the you can see observe the
design of the thing by what the thing does. Okay,
so here's what the thing does that you're talking about.
The thing does this. It takes some people a class
of people. It's designed to make them perpetual renters, perpetual
people buying on credit, people who never truly own a thing.
And it's designed to create a class of people who
are worker bees because they have to be forever. If
I were to take this back to one article, I
would take it back to This was probably gosh fifteen
years ago, back when I was working in tech and
doing stuff with Microsoft, and we had the people from
Detroit out and they were talking about taking all cars
and turning them into rentals. They saw this coming then,
that most cars are unused during the day. They were
got behind in the sharing economy, they got flanked by Uber,
but they had this vision, why do we sell a
car once? Right, we could make so much more money
if we owned the cars and we simply leased the
cars hour by hour. Now you have a whole generation
of kids who've been taught they don't need to drive,
they don't need to have their own car. That this
is Now it's being extended into apartments. I was talking
to a young person the other day who's working hard,
you know, four twelves in a row for seventeen bucks
an hour, because this is what they can find there's
some tips, and she's talking to me about apartments and
she says, the apartment I can afford is the lowest.
This is in Spokane, Washington. Eighteen hundred bucks a month. Geez,
spoke cane, Washington, she said. And this isn't a bad neighborhood.
And this is a studio apartment spoke cane stink in Washington,
eighteen hundred bucks a month. And there's no parking. And
now this is someone who's talking about having to rent
a car to get to work because camp park. And
I'm not here to create a SOB story. I'm here
to say to this young person. Look, this is why
you need to be in business for yourself. This is
why you need to use entrepreneurial skills. You are not
stuck in this station. God has a design for you.
You can beat these things. You need to beat this.
And you know we're talking about things to do that.
But in the sector she's working in, she's watching AI
come and eat the senior jobs. She saw people tossed
out of jobs because of AI. She's already seen this.
She's twenty one and she's seeing this stuff. So yes,
all this stuff is by design. So on the side
of what President Trump is doing here this prosperity accounts. Okay,
that's helpful, But then there's this, it's the inflationary nature
of it. You think Wall Street doesn't know this is here,
and the big companies don't know this is here. Hey,
here's the way you can spend your stock money, etc.
So this has to come along with actual literacy, and
then I think we may be in the business act
of needing to break some things up, like, for instance,
and this is close to your heart, and we'll talk
about this rarer thing. We need to talk about the
build on the White House, because it's insane how they're responding.
I was just reading that Blackstone and black Rock are
they They must watch you because you've given them some
financial advice. They're now going out and buying up energy
utilities as fast as they can find them. They're buying
up energy producers as quickly as they can find the
United States. And they're like that Abraham guy, he's his genius.
But Zach, once they own these things, this is beyond
means of production. I mean, this is up level of
means of production. Now it's means of energy. We may
need as conservatives to say, maybe part of conservatism is
saying to a black Rock and Blackstone, no, you guys
don't get to own this much. Sorry, you are a
virtual monopoly over far too many things. Does that sound
like sacrilege to you?
Speaker 4: No, we have to look it's it's and here's going
into it. And there's a lot of example. There's many
examples of this in the past, but going into it.
If we are true free market people and true capitalists,
we are going to have to make some decisions that
don't taste very good. Because I am very sympathetic, I've
got clients sit there and oh, absolutely not competition, Zach,
It'll take care of itself over time.
Speaker 3: Da da da, And I just firmly disagree.
Speaker 4: I believe that when you look at the EcoSpheres that
these guys have built, and when you look at how
intelligent they are, when you look at the mistakes that
they are not making, for the most part, i'd set
Apple aside.
Speaker 3: Apple to me is like the classic big company.
Speaker 4: They're they're losing the narrative in my opinion, and they're
they're descending. The rest of them have have done incredibly
well at staying vigilant and staying on top of things
and continuing to push the edge like so other companies haven't.
Because if you look at and I know I'm not
telling you anything you don't know, but if you look
at the arc of most corporations, you get to a
point when when you get to the point of dominance
or behemoth, that's usually your zenith because you start believing
that you know, you believe your own hype, you lose
dynamism and then somebody catches up to you and passes
you by. Right, these guys have been remarkably efficient and
remark arkably successful at not allowing that to happen. Right,
Unlike any other companies we've seen in the past, there's
always been this atrophy that you see. And like I said,
Apple is not done by any stretch of the imagination.
But to me, they're a good example, right, look at
the lack of dynamism, look at the lack of innovation,
look at the lack of revolutionary products that have come
out in the last Right, they're not taking chances and
they're not pressing the edges like they used to. But
most of those big companies are they've learned that lesson
and they are not nearly as vulnerable as big conglomerates
were in the past, and we're going to have to
do some things that feel undemocratic. We're going to have
to do some things that feel like not free market
because and we're going to have to do those things
to save capitalism because if we go down, like you said,
you cannot have somebody that is controlling you know, I
don't even know how much Blackrock has, but but but
like think about the level the amount of votes that
they control at publicly traded companies because of their passive
ETFs right, right, and then you simultaneously give allow those
people to control large swaths of the energy market. I
just I don't understand how that is not a massive conflict.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you think of this. They own the
energy markets that supply the power to the houses they
own where they own neighborhoods, entire neighborhoods. They own the
fuel that's delivered to the neighborhoods. They own controlling shares
over the cable news that goes into the houses, They
own controlling shares over the governments, or they own massive
influence over how government invests its money. Blackrock says, we
need liquidation, we need to pump capital. We need quantitative
easing to the tune of three hundred and sixty billion dollars.
And the FED turns around and does this twice for them,
and the Treasury breaks the law and goes and gives
that money to them through money laundering. We can't have that.
They own the land beneath the houses, they own the
building companies, they own the controlling shares of that. They're
buying up farmland along with Bill Gates, etc. Now here's
the means of food production. And it's not just here.
They own it globally. And they've done this with the
help of government. Where you told me I didn't know this.
They get zero interest rate loans that are not available
to us. Those aren't loans. Those are gifts that you
pay back if you feel like it. That's not capitalism.
That's the China model, just not yet in the complete control.
So I can convince myself by this that it's it's
conservative to go and say, yeah, we're breaking this up Blackrock.
You need to separate into separate contraries and guards. You
need to separate in the separate companies. You can't have
this much of ownership of everything that doesn't even feel
wrong to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and it and it doesn't.
Speaker 4: And to be clear on the loan thing, structurally, the
way it works, it's not like they go and take
out big now they now they can take out big
loans from the federal reserve at that rate. But but
when I'm talking about them getting access to chief capital,
usually the way what I'm referring to. Just to be clear,
I just want to make sure everybody's clear on this. Yeah,
is that you know, and I've heard a lot of
people make this comment. If your money is sitting an
account at a bank, and let's say you look at
it right now, and you're making one and a quarter
percent interest, Okay, that on that safe Now, I know
the people like exact they got high yield.
Speaker 3: No, I know that, I know that.
Speaker 4: But like in your brokerage account, you know, if you
sell some stock it's sitting in that account.
Speaker 3: You look at that account, it's probably paying you a
one percent okay, something like that.
Speaker 4: What most people don't realize is that is their castst
of capital, right, because then then that what they're doing
is they're turning around and taking your money and buying
us government bonds that they're stay paying four Okay, So when
I talk about them having a negative cost of capital,
what I mean is they've got a negative cost of
capital when it comes to everybody else. Meaning if I
can borrow at one and invest at for I've got
a positive carry of three percent, not.
Speaker 3: Even using my own money.
Speaker 4: And so they and they can invent like that's the
way banks work. They can do that. That's totally legal.
They can keep as much of that interest earned off
that cash as they want to, assuming that's the type
of account it is, right, they've got to say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But and so look that money on account with them,
that's sitting there in cash. That's money that they can
use and invest in other places. So what is their
cost on that capital? It's like one percent? Well, in
a four percent world, that's a zerouse. That's zero percent
cost of capital, right, Just it's an unfair advantage that
they've got when they can access capital at a cheaper
price than anybody else can. Why are you allowing them
to transact in retail markets? It's structurally unfair.
Speaker 1: Right, And then that's the thing you've taught me about
where they get to skip into the line to buy
things based upon signals that us, US stupid monkeys are buying.
And this is the high frequency trading. Yeah, high frequency
trading where this is insane that we you know, there's
this these programs like robin Hood that pretends to be
in this for the you know, the retail investor and
no fees, et cetera. Wow, that's cool. I can invest
with no fees, right because we're observing the things you
want to buy, and then we give the big investors
the ability to hop in buy it just before all
these massive people do and then sell it to you
at more than you would have paid. And this is legal.
This is insane. This is someone This is like ticketmasters saying,
here's how much the you know, rolling stones and pearl jam,
roll the bones and the wheelchairs out to watch people
you know perform show. You can go, hey, here's all
the rush. But now rich people get to go buy
the seats and sell them to you at a five
percent markup. And they don't even do five percent, it's
like one half percent. But the volume on this is massive.
We don't get to do that. That that and they're
saying they defend this as putting liquidity into the markets. No,
you are the.
Speaker 4: Look they they defend it the same way that I
put this in the same category as the carried intert loophole.
Yeah right, meaning meaning everybody, including Warren Buffett, de cries it,
but it never gets repealed and they all use it.
Speaker 3: Right, So and and and this.
Speaker 4: One is just like that because what you're describing there,
it really is like a financial investment or whatever, like
uh like dairy farm, meaning right, there's they're stacking y'all
in there, and they're they're taking.
Speaker 3: Residuals off you, they're clipping those coupons off you.
Speaker 4: And it's almost like you're in like a financial prison,
you know what I mean, where you've got to keep
paying the rate.
Speaker 3: You got to keep paying this fee, you got to
pay that fee.
Speaker 4: And and you brought up a classic one, you know, Robinhood.
And and and this was what's so frustrating to me
about people. How I don't understand how you have adults
that realize that nothing is free or don't mean it, yeah,
don't realize, right, nothing is free. So, so Robinhood is
a publicly listed company, they don't charge any fees. The
first question in your mind goes should be like, okay, how.
Speaker 3: Is that possible.
Speaker 1: How do they make money?
Speaker 4: Yeah, how do they make money? Well, they sell your information. Okay,
look at how much money they're making. Now ask yourself,
why is somebody paying that much money for your information?
Because it's a guaranteed bat right, yep. How much do
you pay for a guaranteed winner? As much as somebody asks? Yep, right,
as long as there's a guaranteed win on the other
side of it. So and and how do they defend it?
They defend it because they get told all of this
nonsense by people that it improves price that and they
show them all their charts and all their stuff, and
again reflective of the fact that we.
Speaker 3: Don't have smart people in office anymore. Okay.
Speaker 4: And then on top of that, they notice that a
political action committee while they're talking to this company just
happen to dump five million dollars into their reelection campaign.
Speaker 3: And now all of a sudden, those charts and everything.
You know what, man, this is good for investors.
Speaker 4: Look at look look at this right, this is good
for investors.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 4: We need to let them do this this work. And
on the surface, it is when they say that it
improves liquidity and volumes and price execution markets. They are correct, okay,
but again as adults, what is it at what cost?
At what cost? This is because what you've done. What
you've done is you've built another apparatus that is designed
not to deliver value but to scalp it from unknowing consumers.
Speaker 3: That's what you've done.
Speaker 4: So the cost of that will be a lack of trust,
greater wealth and equality. So any benefits you say this
provides the market, I think it is a very very
logical conclusion to come to that the benefits do not
come close to outweighing the costs.
Speaker 1: I tell people this all the time. If you're using
a free service like Facebook, understand something, you're the product. Yes,
anytime it's free, you are the product. Anytime it's radically discounted,
you are the product. For instance, and this sometimes it's
things you even pay for. There are places in America
still where there's one cable provider. Do you remember back
in the days when there were big time competitions for
inter service providers had all these local ISPs. I still
remember some of them, c netsres one in Seattle and
all these local ISPs, and then the cable companies are
having trouble competing with them because they could provide services
they couldn't. They went to Congress and they lobbied them
out of existence with fees and regulations in you know,
institutional capture. So there are places in New York where
you have one cable company.
Speaker 3: And we have that in my area.
Speaker 4: Okay, only if you want internet or cable, there is
only one place to get it.
Speaker 1: And it's regulated. And they purchase that. They purchased you.
How much are we bid to provide cable for this area?
They purchased you, and then they simply mark you up
and they say to someone else, that's what Robin Hood's doing.
These are things that should be broken up. It is
not capitalism, it is a perversion of it. And that
one other thing I wanted to check off with you now,
and I do want to talk about this this thing
at the White House. So the rare Earth deal with
what with Australia. President Trump is really touting this. They
signed this, and China is trying to own the rare
earth markets. They're trying to own seawater, they're trying to
own salt. They want to own all the silicon. I mean,
they want to own everything, And is this meaningful for
us as you guys have studied it? If you're an
let's had a chance to look at this, that we're
not going to be able to get rare earths from
Australia and this is apparently going to help us as
you guys. Have you looked at this at all?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, tons?
Speaker 1: And should we be happy?
Speaker 3: Yes? And no?
Speaker 4: I mean I'm happy that they're recognizing the issue here.
The issue is one that has been decades in the making.
It's also a very ironic conversation because the reason you
don't have rare earth production here in any serious level.
Speaker 3: You've got a little bit, but not very much, is
because it is a very polluting process. It really is.
And so can you do it here? Yeah?
Speaker 4: But think about how much more expensive it is going
to be to do it here than to do it
somewhere in Africa or somewhere in China.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's be on right.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the things I've laughed so much
about the climate cabal and all the climate people, right,
they're all levy in their sights. What do they talk
about all the time they talk about us in Europe, yep,
us in you're a part of the source of anywhere
close to all of the carbon being pumped out. Right,
So when they're not talking about China, you know the
fixes in because there's there are monetary reasons for why
they're not right, Like you, I'm not telling you anything
you don't know obviously, or your listeners even, but the
environment doesn't care whether carbon's coming from China or whether
it's coming from America.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a it's all fungible, it's all so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the ludicrous, just the lunacy of the
whole thing is is is mind numbing.
Speaker 3: But what we've done is because of.
Speaker 4: That environmental those environmental issues, you have virtually no domestic production.
Speaker 3: And if you think about that, that's.
Speaker 4: Ridiculous because these rares, I mean, if you don't have rares,
you're not making missiles, right, if you don't have rors,
you're not making satellites, you're not making automobiles, you're not
making so many of these different things that you can't
live without.
Speaker 3: And so this is kind of that. What I remember
people referring to it is.
Speaker 4: That suicide the suicidal club that is is then the
environmental lobby and the extremists because they are literally putting
a gun to our head economically, and so you look
at China right now. China responded saw that. You know,
they're not worried about the environment. So their attitude is
pull those suckers out of anywhere you can possibly get them.
But what we're doing to strengthen bonds with other countries
that produce them, we have to do that. We also
need to pass some legislation that expedites the build out
of those minds, because you are probably somewhere and then
if you start today, you're probably in the neighborhood of
six to eight years away from producing any serious amount
of rare earth metals out of now. I'm sure there's
some projects that you could turn on quicker. The question
is is what is the yield off of them going
to be? What percentage of the demand will it make up.
My belief is that if you expedited it, cut a
lot of red tape within six to eight years, you
could have a meaningful amount of domestic production that might
be over aggressive on mind it may be closer to ten.
But if you're not passing that kind of stuff at
the same time, then all of this is for no
We have all the natural resources we need here, and
we need to make it permanent policy that a certain
percentage of that production will never go down, right, And
if you need government subsidies for that, then then then
that's that is the kind of thing you should be
subsidizing rather than corn.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to ask you,
have you seen the unprecedented and frightening I don't even
know how to defend this, but President Trump has sent
backos and cranes in to destroy the walls of the
White House.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean he yeah, and the country. I mean
he's he's a tyrant and he's an authoritarian.
Speaker 7: And I'm putting a picture into the show notes because
people have to see this. It is a picture of
the White House, the whole White House from the sky.
There's the West wing, there's the residence, there's the East wing.
Then there's the parts of the rebuild that President Trump
is rebuilding. And this speaks to the poisoner media. I
am torn on whether I like donors paying for this.
I probably don't because it's a way to buy the
president off. I want to know how much money the
President's putting into this. I like the fact in a way,
it's not the taxpayers doing this. But Zach I was
listening to local television news simulcasts on radio. It's Kicksy,
ABC affiliate out of Spokane. I do this to torture myself.
Speaker 1: In the morning, they do the weather, they do a
story about a local nonprofit. Then I'm not kidding you.
It's boom boom boom. Breaking news now from Washington, d C.
A crane can be seen on the east side of
the White House, tearing the walls off the White House
in a construction project two hundred and eighty million dollars.
Critics say it's happening too quickly and there's not enough
transparency in this. They're demanding more transparency in the process.
President Trump remise people that don't should pay for this.
Now onto sports and it's the grim mouse Stone take
on this, and it's the panic thing, and they're cutting
live to this. They are never going to get the
fact that they continue to show utter hatred for people
who are not them in the Musclebard media.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know, this is a little bit
off the beaten path, but I was watching a social
media clip last night. Yeah, and there were some kind
of protests somewhere. Yeah, and this this white protester is
going after this black guy wearing Maga stuff.
Speaker 1: Now this is out of Portland.
Speaker 4: We ran this, yes, yeah, yeah, and telling him you're
a pick a piece at right, and he goes, you
hate yourself, you have self loathing. And I'm listening to
all of that and going because he's black and doesn't
think like you, Ruddy, you know.
Speaker 3: What we call that? That's racism.
Speaker 1: Right, you are a racist.
Speaker 3: Right, you're a racist.
Speaker 4: You are literally exactly because the black man, which you
have no experience, walking in his shoes, you're telling him
because he doesn't think like you.
Speaker 3: How was that different than Jim Crow laws? Right?
Speaker 4: Jim Crow laws were because they didn't look like us.
Now the new Jim Crow laws are just about if
you don't think like us.
Speaker 3: And right, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: I saw that same clip, and Zach, I'm a Christian man.
I turned the other cheek. I don't want my flesh
to rise up. I want to be in the spirit.
But I come from a time where if you, as
a white dude, went to a black dude and said
you are a disgrace to your race, where what's your saying,
is I would like my butt kicked. Sorry, I mean,
and that's what you were saying, or do you remember this?
This is the soft, bigger tree of law expectations. I
heard this once back when I was like six years old,
and my mom was so offended. And I didn't get
it because as a kid, a man said to a
black waiter at a hotel, we were there because my
aunties once a year would take us to a nice
place for dinner, like fancy place. And a man said
to a waiter as he was giving him a cash chip,
he said, you're a real credit to your race. And
my mom looked over there and got this red face,
and she I could tell. She said, sisters, what's wrong?
Speaker 3: She was, we'll talk about it later.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it later. And we got into the car.
What was wrong? He gave him a compum No he
did not, No, he did not, as if one black
man is the one person who can get the get
service right at a.
Speaker 4: Table, and it's like, hey, you're the only honest black
man I've ever met.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know you know what I mean. You're like, well,
that was the what was it Biden talking about? It
was Biden talking about Obama many storybook. I tell you
he's clean, articulate, no discernible Negro accent, or.
Speaker 3: What he said to them. If if if you don't
vote for me, you're not black. I vote for me.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you some of you you ain't black. By
Son Hunter's black. I know, I know, well we got
off track.
Speaker 4: The the no, but the it's it's the undercover racism
of it all is just astonishing. And we've even had
we've had to deal with some very minute issues surrounding
racial stuff at the kids' school.
Speaker 3: Very minute.
Speaker 4: But it it amazes me how backwards some of the
thoughts are on that side, especially on the left.
Speaker 3: It's it's unhinged.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but even even on the right, I just we
like the it's it. It is so reductive what we're
currently doing, because as we move forward as a people,
everybody should the response to racism should do so everybody
should quit caring about it, do you know what I mean? Like,
I've always said that a hallmark of the end of
racism would be listening to a group, a diverse group
of kids talk and say the most horrific racial things
to each other and then crack each other up.
Speaker 3: And laughing about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying I want to hear that I
don't allow my kids to make racial What I'm saying
is when we get to a point where we can
laugh and joke about those differences, that's the end of racism,
not the memorializing of those differences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well said super Well said. I always great to
get wise counsel from you, brother. Thank you for coming on.
It's Know Your riskpodcast dot com. Zach Abraham's work. This
is a Todd Herban show. Please go, be well, be strong,
be kind, and go and make every effort to walk
in the live of Christ.
Speaker 4: Ye