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Speaker 1: And we also have a series of shorts clips from

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the documentary. They're put out there, and they have several

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hundred thousand views of our short clips that are out

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there on Instagram and other places in social media. And

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so we're very pleased with this that we're getting making

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some progress and educating people about what the FED does

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and who benefits from it.

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Speaker 2: You are listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, where

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you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else

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to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial

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Survival Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork

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dot com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial

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Survival Network now more than ever.

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Speaker 3: And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial

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Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, we've got

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a person from our favorite institute of higher learning, and

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that is the Mesis Institute Mesis University, Mesis dot org,

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m I S dot org. Go there now. Tom de

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Lorenzo is with us. We're talking about a documentary put

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out by the Mesas Institute called Playing with Fire, and Tom,

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I mean you were telling me about a pre call.

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I've got to go see it. You said, it's gotten

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over six hundred thousand views in a very short period

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of time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we produced a thirty eight minute documentary. It features

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Ron Paul, Jim Grant, myself, and a number of other

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people tried to explain in plain English about what the

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FED is and what the FED does. And one of

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the reason why we think it's really necessary is I

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told you the little story about how when Tucker Carlson

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interviewed Ron Paul on his podcast several months ago, Tucker

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recalled the story when Ron was running for the Republican nomination,

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he had a speech to deliver at Michigan State University

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and the students there, hundreds of students began spontaneously chanting

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in the FED and the FED. And that's where and

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Ron ended up writing a whole book called End the Fed.

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But that wasn't organized by his campaign or anybody else.

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The students had just listened to some of his speeches

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and they did that. And Tucker Carlson's response was to say, well,

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you know, I was a professional journalist at the time,

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and I was covering that, and I didn't know anything

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about the FED, and I'm paid to know.

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Speaker 3: At least something, Yeah, some kind of superficial knowledge. It

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just so surprises me because Tucker Carlson, his father was

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in the Deep State, was part of the deep State

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by his own admission, and you know, Voice of America

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I think he was in charge of, and he'd been

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intimately involved, even the speculation about being with a certain

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three letter agency that we all know and love Tom

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So it just shocks me that he could be that

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ignorant on the topic. But I guess if you're not

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concentrating on something, you're not focusing on it, then it's

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understandable you wouldn't know anything.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you weren't focusing on the fit, you

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wouldn't understand anything about it. So that's the purpose of

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our documentary, Playing with Fire, which you can look at

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on YouTube. We can go to our website messas dot

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org slash fire and you'll find it and it's gotten

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almost six hundred thousand views in five months. And we

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also have a series of shorts clips from the documentary.

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They're put out there and they have several hundred thousand

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views of our short clips that are out there on

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Instagram and other places in social media, and so we're

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very pleased with this. We're getting make some progress in

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educating people about what the FED does and who benefits

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from it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and there certainly are a lot of people benefiting

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from it, for sure. You know, we could kind of

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tie this into what's happening with DOGE right now, the

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expose of frivolous, corrupt, fraudulent, criminal government spending. You know,

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it's all tied together to the FED. Right. Without the FED,

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they wouldn't be able to do this.

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Speaker 1: All right. The FED is the state's legalized counterfeiting machine,

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and there's no way around it. And so yeah, when

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people in Americans see all this absurd waste of trillions

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of dollars that they're discovering, it's going to be in

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the trillions, I'm sure.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: It is all made possible by the FED because you know,

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you tell people, for example, Okay, we're going to give

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the dictator of Ukraine another fifty billion dollars, but we're

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going to have to send each tax paying family, working

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family a bill for ten thousand dollars tax bill. You'd

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have a lot less support for the war in Ukraine,

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and you see a lot fewer Ukrainian bumper stickers in

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your town. But if the FED can just print up

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the money, it disguises the true cost of government. And

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it's not just foreign policy, it's everything. And that's what

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it's all built on. Funny money, which is the FED.

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And so if we were to just end the ability

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of the FED to monetize the debt, you know, the

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FED goes out there, it literally counterfeits money, does it

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electronically these days, and it purchases the government debt, short

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term debt, and that set's called monetizing the debt. And

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that didn't come into existence until the nineteen thirties. The

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FED was created in nineteen thirteen. But that law could

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be repealed, and that would instantly go a great deal

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a long way to eliminating the ability of the FED

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to create price inflation and never ending boom and bus

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cycles that we have in every decade we have some

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sort of crisis caused by the FED, and then the

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FED comes back and says, oh, we're gon We're going

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to solve the crisis that we created by doing more

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of the same thing.

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Speaker 3: So I'm going to run something by you here, the

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National Cryptocurrency Reserve or Bitcoin Reserve. Right now, it's like

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we don't know how much exactly, because a lot's been confiscated,

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some's been stolen, But there could be as many as

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five hundred thousand bitcoins there, maybe a million. Maybe if

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the a certain three letter alphabet agency created it, there

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could be millions there. So what if the actual plan

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here is to pump up bitcoin to ten million dollars

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a coin, have fifty trillion dollars worth of bitcoin in

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the reserve, and just do it debt swap. You no

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longer have a US government debt. You've got bitcoin. Congratulations,

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enjoy your bitcoin. Yeah, is that possible.

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Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's I think it's feasible. You don't think

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of that happening. But I think another thing I think

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that did happen. It was Trumble announced this. There are

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a lot of people who made a killing with within

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in bitcoin, another killing as far as far as that goes,

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But I doubt that that will happen. It's it's it's feasible,

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but I doubt politically, I doubt that that something like

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that is going to happen. But I mean I worried

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that the government is getting involved at all. And bitcoin

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the whole idea was to be able to engage in

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transactions without the government constantly snooping and threatening, uh and

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holding you hostage. And and so here comes Trump uh

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putting government involved with with coin, and we'll see what happens.

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But I just don't in a visceral sense. I don't

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like the idea of the government getting involved in with

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so much with bitcoin.

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Speaker 3: But really, couldn't you see them doing this?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they they've done wilder things.

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Speaker 3: But when it's like, that's how you get something out

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of nothing. Everybody gets their money, nobody cares, everybody's happy, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can go on with business as usual.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean everybody gets paid, right, isn't that

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what it's about in the end. Yeah? And then I

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don't know what happens to bitcoin after it, but it

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could be the mother of all pump and dumps, right.

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I actually did a video about that myself. Yeah, just

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speculating on what would happen. It just like it seems

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like the kind of thing Trump would pull, you.

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Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, Trump and Trump and Elon Musk.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, hey, there is no way to pay

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off the debt otherwise, is there?

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Speaker 1: No? The historically all governments have done is well you

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could repudiate it. You can just tell the Chinese, sorry,

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you're not going to get the you'll ever get your

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money back from all those bars you buy it you bought,

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and inflation slowly gets rid of a national debt. But

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that's just like drops in the ocean as far as

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that goes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's going to be fun to watch. I think

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there's an ulterior motive here, and maybe it's the only

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way that it can be done. I'm not going to speculate,

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but getting back to the documentary because it really does

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tie into it. The arsonist at play here is the

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Federal Reserve. They start a fire and then, like we

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were talking about, they put it out with gasoline and

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it erupts into an inferno and the next thing you know,

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you got the Los Angeles burning. So if the Fed

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wasn't writing the checks, they're the ultimate enabler. It's like, hey,

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don't blame us. All we do is print money and

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control the money supply and try to ensure stable prices

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and full employment. And also their latest function is to

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never allow the stock market to go down. But without them,

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none of this, like we were talking about, would be possible,

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would it.

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Speaker 1: No, it wouldn't and all these things. You know, any

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economic student, it takes econ one oh one in college.

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One of the first weeks of the semester. You learn

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about the bad effects of price controls. And here's the

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FED constantly trying to manipulate interest rates and you know, drive,

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driving them down to zero one year and then doing

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the opposite the next year. And that's that's a form

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of price control. And then you have hundreds of FED

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economists who who rationalize this, who defend this practice. It

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really is a central planning organization, and the FED does

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more than monetary policy. It is involved in one of

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the its own publications, it's called the Structure and Functions

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of the Federal Reserve System, and it lists hundreds of

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different types of regulations that the FED enforces and every

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conceivable type of financial transaction. So it does a lot

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more than just monetary policy. For example, you know one

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simple example in the nineteen seventies, there was a law

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pass that created the called the Community Reinvestment Act. This

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is the law that sort of pressures banks and mortgage

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lenders to make loans basically based on race and income.

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And even if it made billions of loans to unqualified

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bar wers by putting putting more or less a quota

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system on lending, on more mortgage lending. And that's just

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one of the things that the FED enforces. And that

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was a part of the crash of eight, of course,

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with a lot of the bad loans. And I'm not

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saying it was the main cause. The fed's bubble that

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it created was the main cause, but that contributed to it.

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There were dozens of other laws and regulations like that.

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That makes the FED sort of our grand central planning

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agency because the controls more than just the money supply.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure, And we know how well

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central planning works. We all were looking up to the Chinese,

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how wonderful their experiment was going, and then a funny

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thing happened on the way to global dominance. Everything blew up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was you know, back in the nineteen eighties.

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I remember when Japan was touting what they called its

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industrial policy, which was, you know, heavy planning of its industry,

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and they did things like they only wanted one national

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car and at one point in Japan and the post

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World War two era, and then of course the Japanese

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economy went in the tank for you know, several decades

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really after that, and so they quit bragging about their

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version of central planning. And it's incredible, by the way,

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if you study American economic history in the nineteen twenties

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and thirties and forties and even past that, all the

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praise that American statesman, so called self described statesman gave

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for Soviet central planning, even all Samuelson, the famous textbook

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author from MIT was His book dominated the economics textbook

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market for forty years, beginning in nineteen forty eight. He

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predicted in his nineteen eighty eight edition that the Soviet

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economy by the year two thousand would be bigger than

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the US economy. And so, of course, a couple of

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years later, the Soviet economy essentially disappeared altogether. And so

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here we are with the FED is sort of the

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last vestige of early twentieth century central planning. And it

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needs to go.

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Speaker 3: Yes, certainly does need to go, we know, that's for sure.

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But how it will go, how they'll get rid of it,

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that's going to be the interesting thing. So, Tom, we

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find you over at mesas dot org.

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Speaker 1: Correct, that's right, that's our website. You can get a

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great economic education for free. And I just happened to

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have this little book on my by Friedrich Hayek on

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my desk called Choice and Currency a way to stop inflation,

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and it's one way to start getting rid of the

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FED and allowing competing currencies. And you know, bitcoin and

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cryptocurrency is one thing, but you know, currencies backed by

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gold or silver or other precious metals is another way

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to go. And I think that's what has to happen

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in the future. The whole world relied on gold based

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money for thousands of years before governments took over the money,

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and that's the direction I think our country needs to

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head into.

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Speaker 3: Agreed for sure. Preaching to the converted here, Tom, appreciate

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you coming on. As always, We'll talk to you again soon.

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We'll have a link in the show notes this interview

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on Financial Survival Network with the link to the documentary

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and of course to mesas dot org and your bio.

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Appreciate you coming on. We'll talk to you again soon, Tom,

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Thanks so much, appreciate it.

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Speaker 2: Thanks no good day, Thanks for listening to carry Lets's

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Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For

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the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com Financial Survival

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Network now more than ever,