Podcasts about Austrian School

Interview recorded - 3rd of June, 2026On this episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of welcoming on Dr Mark Thornton. Dr Mark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and a leading voice of the Austrian School of economics, author of The Skyscraper Curse. He is one of the few economists to have warned about the housing bubble well before 2008.During our conversation we spoke about his current view on the economy, Austrian Economic Theory, the FED's betrayal, what would fix the current situation, which assets to perform and more. I hope you enjoy!0:00 - Introduction2:06 - Current view of economy6:22 - Austrian Economic Theory11:50 - Wages going up?16:11 - Recent inflation23:00 - Kevin Warsh balance sheet28:36 - Solution35:30 - Which assets to perform?42:40 - One message to takeawayMark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, and was the Peterson-Luddy Chair in Austrian Economics from 2021-2023. He hosts two podcasts, Minor Issues and Unanimity, and serves as the Book Review Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. His publications include The Economics of Prohibition (1991), Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (2004), The Quotable Mises (2005), The Bastiat Collection (2007), An Essay on Economic Theory (2010), The Bastiat Reader (2014), and The Skyscraper Curse and How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Crisis of the Last Century (2018). [high-res photo]Dr. Thornton served as the editor of the Austrian Economics Newsletter and was a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Libertarian Studies and several other academic journals. He has served as a member of the graduate faculties of Auburn University and Columbus State University. He has also taught economics at Auburn University at Montgomery and Trinity University in Texas. Mark served as Assistant Superintendent of Banking and economic adviser to Governor Fob James of Alabama (1997-1999), and he was awarded the University Research Award at Columbus State University in 2002. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and received his PhD in economics from Auburn University. In 2014, he debated in opposition to the “War on Drugs” at Oxford Union.Dr. Thornton has been featured in American Spectator, Barron's, Bloomberg, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, Forbes, Investors' Business Daily, Le Monde, New York Post, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Economic Times (India), Financial Times (Norway), and Tejarat-e-Farda (Iran). He has also had regular multiple appearances on Russia Today and Press TVHis editorials and interviews have appeared in the following leading regional newspapers: Apple Daily (Hong Kong), Atlanta Constitution, Birmingham News, Business Alabama, Chicago Sun-Times, Houston Chronicle, Mobile Press Register, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, Montgomery Advertiser, New York Post, Orange County Register, Richmond Times Dispatch, Tampa Tribune, and the Washington TimesHis commentary appears regularly in the Mises Daily and the Mises Wire. He also appears regularly on Boom-Bust, RT, Butler on Business, Tom Woods Show, Thom Hartmann Show, Scott Horton Show, Press TV and Freedom Works.Dr Mark Thornton - Misses Institute - https://mises.org/X - https://x.com/DrMarkThorntonWTFinance -Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wtfinancee/Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfniTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseas

With co-author Chris Coyne, Abby Hall has a new book serving as an introduction to the Austrian School. As she and Bob discuss, the book fills a niche in the existing options of this genre.Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:The YouTube version of this episode.Abby Hall's new book (co-authored with Chris Coyne), Austrian Economics: An Introduction.The prior BMS interview of Abby (on Latin American military intervention).Help support the Bob Murphy Show.

This, of course, is great news for the Austrian School, where anyone in the world can do what Gordon Tullock did and become his own economist by reading Human Action! The University of Michigan students who spontaneously began chanting when Ron Paul showed up there in 2012 to campaign for the Republican nomination were not chanting "Game theory! Game theory!" They were chanting "End the Fed! End the Fed!" because they had read some of the works of Austrian economists.

Keynesian macroeconomics had displaced Austrian business cycle theory and solidly established itself as mainstream macroeconomics. Meanwhile, most of the economics profession sided against the Austrian School in the socialist calculation debate. By the 1940s, the Austrian School was left behind as economic theory developed. Those who were identified as associated with the Austrian School passed away or drifted toward the mainstream. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that by 1950, Mises was the only remaining active member of the old Austrian School.

Mainstream finance regularly confuses finance, insurance and betting. The Austrian School provides the tools to understand their differences.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/mistaken-identity-prediction-markets

Mainstream finance regularly confuses finance, insurance and betting. The Austrian School provides the tools to understand their differences.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/mistaken-identity-prediction-markets

Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the Austrian school's intellectual roots from the Spanish scholastics to Rothbard, making the case that anarcho-capitalism is the natural endpoint of the classical liberal tradition.The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition.Full Text version of the Lecture (Submitted by Prof. Huerta de Soto):Thank you very much to the Mises Institute and Joe Salerno for his kind introduction as well as for inviting me to deliver this “Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture” to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Murray N. Rothbard's birthday. It is the second time I visit the Mises Institute to deliver this most important lecture: The first one was almost thirty years ago, back in April 1997, when I delivered a lecture on “The Scholastic Roots of the Austrian School”. In this second opportunity I am very happy to have been able to accept Joe's invitation and to come with a very well represented retinue of ten of my colleagues and doctoral students. All of them are teaching as professors or making their research at our more than twenty-year-old Doctoral and Master Programs in Austrian Economics at King Juan Carlos University back in Madrid, and which is the only one officially approved and with full validity inside the whole European Union. You have already had the opportunity to hear from each one of them a detailed description of the so-called “Madrid Austrian Research Hub” and of all the activities we are developing every year, including the 54 Doctoral Theses on Austrian Economics that have been read up to now in our program. And here you have also copies of the English version of our main books published by Routledge, Edward Elgar, and by the Macmillan Austrian Series edited by my Madrid Colleagues, the German professor Philipp Bagus and the Canadian professor Dave Howden. And you will have the unique opportunity to buy these books that, as you know, have a hefty price of almost 100 pounds each one, at the almost “stolen property” and symbolic price of 5 dollars per copy, thanks to the most generous help of the Spanish Jesús Huerta de Soto Foundation that is helping to finance our participation in this important event.And now what I will do in the next forty minutes is to try to summarize not only my main contributions, but also “The Libertarian Vision of the Scientific and Moral Truth” as we see it from our Austrian School Hub in Madrid. And I will do it by focusing on a series of fundamental points.Precisely, the youngest of all sciences, Economics is the one that has provided Humanity with the most important scientific contributionThe first one is that Economics, being the last science to arrive, or as Mises said, "the youngest of all sciences," has nevertheless achieved the milestone of providing Humanity with the most important scientific contribution. For the first time, and thanks to Economic Science, human beings have discovered and understood that voluntary social cooperation, free from all institutional and systematic external coercion, generates a spontaneous order that cannot be designed nor organized by anyone, and that peacefully and without limits drives the prosperity and expansion of Humankind.This transcendental message of Economic Science, on the one hand, resolves the impossible antithesis of attempting to apply, within the realm of interactions carried out by human beings endowed with free will, the manipulative approach of external entities that human beings have no choice but to use, supported by technology and the natural sciences, in order to dominate the subject of the material world. And on the other hand, this is a radically revolutionary message: for the first time, it has been scientifically demonstrated that states, in any of their forms, are neither necessary nor viable; that Society, understood as a process of voluntary human interactions, does not need anyone to govern it, because it regulates and organizes itself spontaneously; and that the attempt to coordinate Society on the basis of social engineering and state coercive commands is impossible, doomed to failure, and gives rise to all kinds of distortions, social conflicts and violence, that continually hinder and block human progress.Economic science is generalized into a complete Theory of Liberty that makes it possible to reinterpret History and promote the expansion of civilizationThe second point is that Economics has been generalized into a whole Theory of Liberty, understood as the most essential attribute and requirement of human nature. Liberty means that all human actions are carried out voluntarily, based on the principle of non-aggression, and free of external coercion or violence imposed and organized from above by the always minority group of human beings who, under whatever title, exercise any kind of political power.Moreover, Economics dismantles and turns upside down the erroneous and biased account of Thomas Hobbes and his followers. Neither was the "state of nature" a terrifying situation, nor did a supposed "social contract" ever exist or was it necessary to create and maintain a State that would impose order and guarantee peace. What happened was precisely the opposite: natural evolution consisted, above all, in the spontaneous discovery of the great advantages provided by voluntary exchanges and peaceful trade. Systematic and generalized violence, war, and terror arose only with the appearance of States, as coercive institutions composed of the most antisocial and violent human beings, who wanted (and still want) to live at the expense of plundering those citizens who earn their living by working and trading peacefully with each other (Oppenheimer, 1926).Thus, Economics, demonstrates that what Étienne de La Boétie named "voluntary servitude", is an anti-human aberration to which human beings have been subjected for centuries. And that it is not necessary to continue with the resigned habit of obeying the State; nor do governments enjoy an aura of prestige (but are literally "stripped" of any attribute of intellectual or moral superiority); nor is the caste—or “praetorian guard”—of intellectuals, “experts”, and acolytes that surround states and rulers to be regarded as untouchable; nor should we allow ourselves to be seduced and deceived by subsidies or perks, whether supposed or real, with which they seek to purchase the will and secure the loyalty of exploited human beings, so that they will consent, voluntarily and permanently, to their exploitation and servitude (De la Boétie, 1975).Economics is the Science developed by the Austrian School of Economics, which should in fact be known as the Spanish School, as it has its origins in the thinking of our scholastics of the Spanish Golden AgeThe third point is that Economic Science has reached its highest level of development thanks to the Austrian School of Economics. As you know, our school is based on the realism of its analytical assumptions, in the dynamic approach based on the entrepreneurial, creative, and coordinating capacity of every human being, and in the study of the spontaneous and self-regulated order of the social process of voluntary human interactions (Huerta de Soto, 2008). The institutional and multidisciplinary approach of the Austrian School is also very relevant. As a result of the spontaneous social process important institutions emerge which, in turn, make it possible and drive it forward: Law and property rights rooted in human nature and discovered and developed spontaneously outside the state; the family, a basic and essential institution, on which the expansion of Humanity is made possible and consolidated; moral principles, which act as a true "automatic pilot" for liberty and which human beings internalize and transmit from generation to generation, thanks to the family and other community or religious institutions; economic institutions, and in particular, money, which also evolves spontaneously outside the State, and which can and should be considered the social institution par excellence, since by overcoming the problems of barter, it enables the exponential multiplication of voluntary exchanges and human interactions, within which the rest of the social, linguistic, moral, legal, economic, and religious institutions are discovered, shaped, and perfected.Our fourth point is that the first theorists of the spontaneous order emerged in the field of law, led by the great jurists of classical Rome. They were the first ones to understand the organic and evolutionary nature of the social process, and so they became, without being aware of it, the first economists. Their tradition was kept alive throughout the Middle Ages thanks to the Catholic Church and, through thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Antoninus of Florence, and Saint Bernardino of Siena, eventually came to influence the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gathered around the University of Salamanca. As Rothbard demonstrated (Rothbard, 1976) these thinkers of the Spanish Golden Age should be considered the most immediate precedent of the Austrian School of Economics, which, precisely for this reason, should be called the Spanish School of Economics. And in fact, these Spanish scholastics were already able to articulate the following ten essential principles which constitute the theoretical foundation of the Austrian School:Firstly, the subjective theory of value developed by the Bishop of Segovia, Diego de Covarrubias, who as early as 1555 clearly explained that, although the objective nature of wheat is the same in Spain as in America, its price was higher in America because there human beings subjectively valued it much more highly; from this follows the correct relationship between prices and costs set out by Luis Sarabia de la Calle, in the sense that it is market prices that determine costs and not the other way around, as equilibrium theorists mistakenly believe; the Scholastics also realized that equilibrium models and prices lack realism and theoretical meaning because they presuppose a degree of knowledge “so complex that only God, and in no case human beings, could ever acquire it” (in latin “pretium iustum mathematicum licet soli Deo notum”), as already explained by the Jesuit cardinals Juan de Salas in 1617 and Juan de Lugo in 1643, more than three hundred years earlier than Hayek could conclude that “a science which assumes knowledge that can never be acquired is not a Science”; also the dynamic concept of competition is fundamental, understood as a process of rivalry among sellers based on the dynamic conception of market processes developed by Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla and Luis de Molina in 1589 and 1597, and that has nothing to do with the static model of "perfect competition" of equilibrium theorists; and also the important contributions of the Spanish Scholastics related with capital theory, business cycles, and the effects of fiduciary media generated by banks; so, particular emphasis should be placed on the rediscovery of the principle of time preference by Martín de Azpilcueta, following what Lessines had already stated in 1285; as well as on the fact that bankers commit mortal sin when they operate with fractional reserves, creating bank deposits as a form of virtual money (or chirographis pecuniarium, as Luis de Molina said in latin) that only exists in their accounting books and distorts the structure of relative prices, creating bubbles and deep economic crises that ultimately "bring everything crashing down," as Saravia de la Calle and Tomás de Mercado so vividly explained in the 16th Century; and in short, the Scholastic's idea that it is impossible to organize society through coercive commands due to lack of the information that would be required to give them coordinating content; as well as the discovery that inflation is a hidden and very harmful tax that arises from an act of tyranny, since it is neither known nor accepted by citizens, which would even justify the assassination of the King according to the theory of tyrannicide, a contribution originally made by the Castilian Comuneros eventually defeated by the tyrant King Charles V in 1521, and developed by Father Juan de Mariana almost a century later [in 1610].This entire line of proto-Austrian scholastic thought also spread throughout the Americas, especially in the newly founded universities of San Marcos in Lima and Mexico City in 1551 where brilliant disciples of these Scholastics, who had studied at the University of Salamanca itself, came to occupy prominent academic positions. Thus, for example, we should mention the cases of Bartolomé Frías de Albornoz in Mexico, and above all the great Juan de Matienzo, who became judge and president of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and Lima from 1560 onwards (Popescu, 1997).Finally, the doctrine of our scholastics did spread even to North America two centuries later through the books of Juan de Mariana, who greatly influenced Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States.However, the southern part of the continent ultimately proved unable to neutralize the wave of growing statism and centralization that first came with the arrivals of the Habsburgs in Spain, and which was intensified even further after the arrival of the Bourbons with Philip V at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Martínez Marina, 1820). How different and much more prosperous and libertarian might the historical evolution of Spain and Latin America have been, had the statist centralism of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons not prevailed, and had the far more libertarian, local, and decentralized traditional representative institutions of the kingdoms of Castile instead remained predominant—institutions that were dismantled, together with Europe's first libertarian revolution, beginning with the defeat of the Castilian Comuneros at Villalar on April 23, 1521 (Leonard Liggio, 2025).The most important and far-reaching contributions of economic scienceLet us now turn, in greater detail, to the most important contributions of Economics, as developed by the Austrian School.First, human cooperation takes place spontaneously, without the need for anyone to organize it coercively from outside. This is so because human beings are endowed with an entrepreneurial and creative capacity that continually drives them to discover the multiple opportunities for profit that arise in their environment. Each of these opportunities embodies a previous discoordination in human behavior that remains latent until it is discovered and overcome by the corresponding entrepreneurial act. This entrepreneurial act always arises from a creative tension and interpretation of events of the outside world that is essentially subjective and, therefore, cannot be reproduced by any artificial intelligence algorithm; in other words, the same objective events can be interpreted in multiple ways, even contradictory ones, without it being possible to postulate which is correct until the corresponding entrepreneurial process is completed in the form of a subjective profit. In any case, every entrepreneurial act involves, firstly, the creation of information that did not exist before (regarding the profit opportunity that arose from the previous discoordination that had gone unnoticed); secondly, the transmission of that knowledge (directly to the parties involved in the entrepreneurial act and indirectly through a series of institutions and signals such as market prices); and third and finally, the coordination of the previous maladjustments takes place when the parties involved learn motu proprio, that is, voluntarily and for their own benefit, to discipline their behavior according to the needs of others (for example, when they discover that they achieve their ends more effectively by specializing and trading peacefully the mutual results of their efforts). The discovery of the essence of this pure entrepreneurial act, with its elements of creation and transmission of information and the spontaneous coordination of the previous maladjustments continually generated by human coexistence, constitutes the most important contribution that Economic Science has provided to Humanity, and explains why the spontaneous process of voluntary social cooperation that drives the multiplication of human beings and the expansion of civilization does not require any statist system of institutional coercion.Another essential contribution of Economics is the concept of Dynamic Efficiency, understood as the process of unlimited expansion of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination that arises only within a specific institutional framework of moral and legal norms. This framework is the one grounded on the ethical principle according to which every human being has a natural right to appropriate the results of his entrepreneurial creativity; that is, a property right over what one has created and which did not previously exist, which is the most obvious and important human right. For this reason, (dynamic) Efficiency and Morality and Justice (properly understood) cannot be separated one from the other; or, as we might say, they are two sides of the same coin in the sense that only Justice and Morality induce and generate efficiency; and at the same time, what is dynamically efficient in economic terms cannot be neither unjust nor immoral. All of which, on the other hand, demonstrates the integrated order that exists in the social universe, and highlights the three levels of research (theoretical, ethical, and historical) that complement and reinforce with each other and are essential in our search for truth (Huerta de Soto, 2000).Finally, another key contribution of Economic Science is to have demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, or better, the impossibility of statism, in the sense that it is impossible for the State to achieve and coordinate what it promises for the following four reasons:First, because of the enormous volume of information required for such coordination, which the State cannot acquire because it is dispersed in the minds of the eight billion human beings who participate and interact in the social process every day. Second, given the tacit and inarticulate character of this information (and therefore its inability to be transmitted in an objective manner). Third, because the information that is generated is not "given," nor is it static, but instead changes continuously as a result of human creativity, making it impossible to transmit today information that will only be created tomorrow, and which is precisely the information that the organs of State intervention and the so-called “experts” would need today in order to direct society to achieve their objectives tomorrow. And fourth, and above all, because the coercive nature of State commands blocks the entrepreneurial activity of creating the very information which the State organization itself would need in order to give its commands a coordinating content. In sum, the State is always and everywhere violence and coercion; coercion blocks the entrepreneurial act of creation, discovery, and adjustment of discoordinated human behavior, while at the same time preventing the creation of the information and the emergence of free market prices that make economic calculation and social coordination possible. For this reason, statism is not only unnecessary but is also scientifically impossible.The impact of these essential contributions of Economics on the course of social evolution has so far been very limitedAll of these scientific contributions have so far achieved only a very partial, imperfect, and limited impact on the inertia of a social and political reality that has for centuries been characterized by the coercive power of States and rulers, and by the more or less resigned servitude of the citizens. And despite the very limited nature of this impact to date, which at best has materialized in a series of naïve and "liberal" revolutions aimed, with as much arrogance as lack of success, toward the impossible objective of trying to separate and limit the powers of states and rulers through political constitutions and "liberal democracies" (Rothbard, 2009); Humanity has been propelled as never before in those places and historical moments where it has managed, despite everything, to at least partially free itself from the State and open up some of the new channels of liberty shown by the teachings of Economics. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, which was but the first chapter of the never-completed "Revolution of Liberty" inspired by Economics. And although what has been achieved in terms of prosperity and standard of living by the now eight billion human beings seems relatively significant—and indeed it is—we cannot even conceive of the standard of living and population size that could be achieved if Humanity were able to take full advantage of and fully implement the teachings of Economic Science.We can be few and poor in a context of servitude and submission to the State, or many and wealthy in a context of liberty (Hayek, 1988, p. 133). The globe is practically empty of human beings (the Earth's current population would fit into an area equivalent to that of the state of Alaska, with a population density equal to that of Brussels). And we cannot even imagine the prosperity that could be achieved in a free market daily driven by eighty billion, or even eight hundred billion, human beings. Economics explains and demonstrates that the increasing prosperity of an ever-growing population of human beings never results from deliberate and coercive State plans, nor from the egalitarian income redistribution, nor from increases in public spending, nor from subsidies, debt, or inflation, but only arises from the free market of the capitalist system. This consists of the process of voluntary exchanges among all human beings who, endowed with an innate entrepreneurial and creative capacity, are able to detect and assess, through the system of free prices, the relative urgency and necessity of each good and service, overcoming the relative scarcity of each and satisfying, every day and in the best humanly possible way, the desires and needs of billions of consumers. Entrepreneurs who succeed in this never-ending process of profit-seeking accumulate significant resources, which, in turn, are saved and invested in capital goods and new technologies that make human beings increasingly productive, boosting their wages and standards of living; a virtuous process of continuously expanding prosperity and population growth that, if not coerced or hindered by the State, has no limits.Therefore, it is crucially important for the future of Humanity that it be able to take full and maximum advantage of the lessons and essential message in pursuit of human liberty that Economics provides. But this will only be possible if we are able to unmask and carefully analyze the powerful forces of the pseudoscientific and counterrevolutionary reaction that has been mobilized to prevent the advance of the theory of liberty derived from Economic Science. Despite their diverse origins, they all converge on the same objective: to attempt to justify and preserve State coercion at all costs under the appearance of scientific legitimacy. They are driven by the "fatal conceit" (Hayek, 1988) of many visionaries, thinkers, and supposed "experts" who believe themselves to be clever enough to correct the spontaneous market order, of course, using the violence and coercive power of the State. Together with a privileged caste of rulers, bureaucrats and acolytes, they continually manipulate a Humanity that is sadly accustomed to serving the State. For all of them, it is vital that statism be maintained and that the message of liberty provided by Economics never prevail.Next, we will list the main reactionary pseudoscientific currents that have infiltrated Economic Science like a lethal virus and constitute, in Hayek's terminology, "the counter-revolution of science" (Hayek, 1955).Pseudoscientific reactionary currents opposed to Economic Science. The role played as “useful innocents” by many libertarian economists of the counterrevolutionary mainstreamFirst, positivism and scientism as pseudoscience. By "scientism" we must understand the improper application of the methods of the natural sciences to the field of Economic Science. Thus, while the natural sciences study their object of research as something external, measurable, and quantifiable, Economics studies the implications of the voluntary actions of human beings. And given the essentially creative nature of human beings, the supposed empirical "evidence" has, at best, only a superficial, partial, and always historically contingent value. In Bastiat's words, of "what is seen" —or rather, what is believed to have been seen— but not "what is not seen" (Bastiat, 1995); and at worst, it always entails the assumption, that human beings are an object of research that can be manipulated as the matter of the external world studied by the natural sciences. This inevitably introduces the idea that to improve the world, the State and its rulers must use their coercive power to manipulate and change the things they believe they see in their historically contingent "empirical photos." But these "empirical photos" cannot capture the underlying dynamic essence of spontaneous social processes, let alone what is already happening spontaneously to solve and coordinate every problem. Therefore, it is not surprising that from the very first steps of Economic Science promoted by the Austrian School, its most violent opponents were the "socialists of the chair" gathered around the German Historical School, reinforced in France by the empiricists of the school of Saint-Simon, the insane Comte, and Durkheim, who sought to create a new and alternative pseudoscience of society. And their unhealthy positivist and ultra-empirical influence has persisted to the present day, first through American Institutionalism and later through the massive compilation of empirical data, for example, in the work of Wesley C. Mitchell or Henry Schultz, the latter, as shown by Professor Salerno, having gone on to exert a decisive influence on his assistant Milton Friedman and, through him, even on the Chicago School itself (Salerno, 2023).Secondly, the pseudoscience of neoclassical economics is characterized by its claim that only its own approach constitutes true “science,” that is, the approach based on the principles of equilibrium, maximization, and constancy. Moreover, in addition to the lack of realism of its assumptions, it adds the reductionism of a mathematical language that has developed in response to the needs and demands of the natural sciences, but which is alien to Economic Science because it does not allow for the subjective concept of time or entrepreneurial creativity. Neoclassical economists develop their pseudoscience based not on real human beings of flesh and blood, but on "ideal types" that are like "robotic penguins" who, even in their most sophisticated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models are limited to moving and reacting to events and State coercion as if they were characters of a sort of economic video game ("videogame economics"). Yet neoclassical pseudoscience, despite its apparent and ever-increasing sophistication, is not capable of accounting for the immense complexity of the real world and rebels against the idea of spontaneous market order in two ways that are equally harmful to human liberty: on the one hand, by promoting the coercive "social engineering" of central banks, States, and governments to use "fine tuning" to force reality toward to the mathematical optimum of their models; and, on the other hand, by labeling as "market failures" everything they believe they observe in reality that does not coincide, in their empirical studies, with their ghostly models of “perfect” equilibrium and adjustment (Milei, 2023); failures that, according to them, refute the "benefits" of the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty, and justify their elimination as soon as possible by a coercive State authority. Note also how neoclassical pseudoscience needs, and feeds upon, the empirical work of the previous pseudoscience, positivism, in order to justify its conclusions against human liberty and in favor of State coercion, so that positivists and neoclassicists join hands and end up reinforcing each other in their reactionary agenda.Third, Keynesianism and macroeconomics as pseudoscience. The very “macro” approach already entails, inevitably, an obvious bias in favor of justifying State intervention, aggression, and coercion against the spontaneous order of the market and human liberty. As F. A. Hayek pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1974 (Hayek, 1978), macroeconomists ignore everything they cannot measure, specifically truly relevant economic processes and theories. At the same time, they believe that certain aggregate concepts—which lack genuine economic meaning—possess a “real” existence, that permits to collect empirical information or evidence that can be manipulated and statistically treated. Once again, macroeconomic pseudoscience goes hand in hand with positivist pseudoscience, and the two reinforce with each other in their counterrevolutionary reaction. Furthermore, Keynesianism is particularly harmful: not only does it flatly deny the coordinating capacity of creative entrepreneurship and the spontaneous market order, but it also builds as an alternative explanation a whole model—of course—of equilibrium with permanent unemployment, to justify the coercive intervention of the State in the lives of human beings in the form of all kinds of fiscal and monetary manipulations. Moreover, the macroeconomic and Keynesian pseudoscience feeds upon, and is reinforced by, the pseudoscientific approach of the Neoclassical School, to the point that, the so-called "neoclassical Keynesian synthesis" became, throughout the twentieth century, the main reactionary movement inside Economics. Keynesians and macroeconomists thus become the champions of that intoxication with statism, manipulation, and political power which constitutes the framework, orchestrated by governments and central banks, to which we have, regrettably, become accustomed and in which we are forced to live. This context repeatedly destabilizes the spontaneous market order, generates serious financial and economic crises and social conflicts, and continually hampers the prosperity and advance of civilization.We have left the quasi-religious mysticism of Marxist pseudoscience for last, because Marxism was scientifically dead even before it was born: in fact, it emerged with—and was theoretically demolished by—the subjectivist revolution led by the Austrian School of Economics. From the beginning, the Austrian School's development of time preference and capital theory revealed the contradictions and grave scientific errors of Marxism, while at the same time exposing its pronounced character as an intellectual fraud (Böhm-Bawerk, 1949). This intellectual fraud was historically illustrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of virtually all other communist countries, after many decades of unspeakable human suffering for a large part of the world's population, all of which was perfectly consistent with the theory on the impossibility of statism developed by the Austrian School beginning with the von Mises of 1920 (Mises, 1936), and which was the final nail that forever sealed the coffin of the corpse of Marxist pseudoscience (Huerta de Soto, 2010).Finally, in this context, we must mention the destructive role played by a number of distinguished economists who, although they defend liberty and the market economy, could be described as a kind of "useful innocents" in Mises' terminology (Mises, 1947). This is so because, even though they officially oppose rampant statism and defend liberty, by accepting—even if only partially—some of the postulates of the reactionary pseudoscientific currents we have described, they ultimately end up, often without intending to and much to their regret, providing additional impetus to the statist reaction within our discipline; for example, when they insist on advising States with proposals aimed at making them more efficient and at helping them do somewhat better things that they should not be doing at all. By way of illustration, we should include in this category of “useful innocents”, for example, thinkers as the Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper, 1966, p. 366), who came to admire the “scientific capacity” and even the “humanism” of Karl Marx, and who proposed a statist strategy of “piecemeal social engineering”; or George Stigler, when he claimed that only empirical evidence could determine which economic system, socialism or capitalism, might function (Stigler, 1975, pp. 1-13); and, more generally, the members of the Chicago School, led by Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. Becker when defending that only economics developed within the strict limits of equilibrium, constancy, and maximization, typical of the neoclassical pseudoscience, constitutes true "economic science." And even more serious could be considered the case of Milton Friedman, whose very sincere love of liberty and intense and popular media support for free markets stand in sharp contrast to his pseudoscientific approach based on the aggregate method of economics of Keynesian origin, on positivist empiricism, and on the full acceptance of the unrealism of assumptions. Only in this way it can be explained Friedman's litany of scientific errors which, much to his regret, have invariably ended up reinforcing statist interventionism, to the point that Hayek himself was forced to conclude that after Keynes's The General Theory, the book that has done the greatest harm to Economic Science has been Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics (Hayek, 1994, pp. 145).The failure of democracy and classical liberalism: the triumph of statismAs we see, many classical liberals and advocates of liberal democracy have also acted as "useful innocents." The fatal error of classical liberals lies in the failure to realize that their program is theoretically impossible, because it incorporates within itself the seeds of its own destruction, precisely to the extent that it considers necessary and accepts the existence of a State (even if it is "minimal") understood as the monopolistic agency of institutional coercion. Therefore, the great error of classical liberals is very basic: they believe in a program of political action and economic doctrine that aims to limit the power of the State, while at the same time accepting it and even considering state's existence necessary. However Economic Science has already shown that the State is unnecessary, that statism (even in its minimal form) is theoretically impossible, and that, given human nature, once the State exists, it is impossible to limit its power. On the other hand, liberal democracy is a concept as naïve as it is impossible. Mises already warned us that democracy could only function if all its participants accepted the classical liberal principles, which is impossible because democracy itself encourages and amplifies vote-buying and the partisan use of power. So, the inevitable conclusion is that "liberal democracy" is a contradiction in terms as absurd as speaking (following Anthony de Jasay) of a “square circle,” of “hot snow,” or of a “virgin prostitute” (A. de Jasay, 1990). And even Hayek considered democracy unworkable if it is understood as the exercise of absolute power by majorities (Kratos in classical Greek). It should therefore come as no surprise that democracy once and again tends to be a perverse system based on lying and buying votes with money stolen through taxation.The fact is that the State attracts like a magnet the worst passions and vices of human nature, for instance, when individuals try to obtain rents produced by others using the State's coercive power. Moreover, the combined effect of the privileged groups, the phenomena of governmental myopia and vote-buying, the megalomaniacal character of politicians, and the irresponsibility and blindness of bureaucracies generate a dangerous, unstable and explosive cocktail, continually shaken by social, economic, and political crises which, paradoxically, are always used by the political caste to justify further doses of intervention and statism that, instead of solving problems, further aggravate them. Statism therefore corrupts the entire social body and at the same time blocks the spontaneous and free market solutions of social and economic problems.In fact, the State has become the "idol" that almost everyone turns to and worships. Statolatry is the most serious and dangerous social disease of our time. We are educated to believe that all problems can and must be detected and solved by the State. Our destiny depends on the State, and the politicians who control it are expected to guarantee everything our well-being may require. Human beings remain immature and rebel against their own creative nature, which makes their future always uncertain. They demand a crystal ball that assures them not only knowing what will happen, but also that any problems that arise will be solved for them. This "infantilization" of the masses is encouraged by politicians, as it justifies their own existence and ensures their popularity, position of dominance, and capacity to control. In addition, a whole legion of intellectuals, so-called "experts," and social engineers join in this arrogant intoxication of power. Not even the Church and the most respectable religious denominations have been able to realize that statolatry today constitutes the principal threat to the free, moral, and responsible human being; that the State is a false idol of immense power, worshipped by all, and that does not allow Humanity to be free from its control or have moral or religious loyalties beyond those the state can dominate. Furthermore, it is kept hidden from the public that the state is the true source of social conflicts and evils, and "scapegoats" (such as "capitalism" or private property) are blamed for the problems, and they become the goal of the most serious condemnations, even from moral and religious leaders, almost none of whom have realized the deception or dared to denounce that statolatry is the main threat in the present century to religion, morality, and, therefore, to human civilization.Perhaps the main exception within the Church is included in the brilliant biography of Jesus of Nazareth written by Benedict XVI. That the State and political power constitute the institutional incarnation of the Antichrist should be obvious to anyone with a minimal knowledge of history who reads the former Pope's considerations on the most serious temptation that the Evil One can present to us (and I quote Ratzinger literally): "The tempter is not so crude as to propose to us directly the worship of the devil. He merely proposes that we opt for the rational solution, that we prefer a planned and organized world in which God may have a place as a private spiritual matter, but must not be allowed to interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev attributes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Open Road to World Peace and Prosperity; it becomes the new Bible, and its core message is the worship of well-being and rational planning," by the state (Ratzinger, 2007). And so, we should not be surprised that, for example, the great author of The Lord of the Rings, J. R. Tolkien, whose Catholic anarchism I fully share, went so far as to say that he would arrest anyone for simply daring to pronounce the word "State." Because the State is, always and everywhere, a reality of violence and systematic coercion against the most intimate essence of the human being, which is his capacity to act freely, creatively, and spontaneously; and so, it is unavoidable to conclude that the State is essentially immoral and that statism constitutes the principal threat to humankind.A theological digression: the dismantling of statism as a logical necessity inseparable from the work of GodAnd almost without realizing it, we can go ahead with a theological digression on how dismantling the State is a logical and moral necessity inseparable from the work of God. I fully understand that referring to God in this conference may come as a shock to many of those present, but I would ask that even those who do not believe in God, at least for dialectical purposes, make an effort of imagination and, for the next few minutes, imagine that God does indeed exist.And what do we mean by God? We must understand God to be a Supreme Being, Creator out of love for all things. And the most important creature that God has created is precisely the human being: in His image and likeness. And if there is a point of connection between God and man, it is precisely in the creative entrepreneurial ability: the capacity to discover, to see, and to create new things, goals and actions. But now I am going to go one step further and attempt to demonstrate that God is not only the Supreme, loving Creator of all things, but that—moreover—God is libertarian.And what does it mean to say that God is libertarian? It means that God, the Lord of all the Universe, has absolute power over it, and yet He chooses not to use force, but always leaves his creatures free. To the point that He gives human beings the freedom to rebel against Him; even though, again and again, God forgives human beings and allows them to rise up and begin anew.God always lets the universe He has created, flow in a spontaneous manner ("laissez faire, laissez passer, le monde va de lui même" could be the motto of our libertarian God). And this despite the fact that human beings tempt God again and again and demand that He manifest His absolute power, that He give us clear and indisputable signs of His existence and supreme power in order for us to believe in Him. But of course, God does not accept our challenge. Why? Because love and liberty are inseparable, and a forced conversion, for example by an evident cataclysm, would be completely contrary to that liberty with which God has created human beings out of love.Moreover, the Kingdom of God is not of this world; Jesus himself says this to a fearful Roman state official, who was also in charge of judging him: "My kingdom is not of this world." Does this mean that there are two types of kingdoms? The kingdoms of this world or States, which would be legitimate at their own level (remember "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"), and the Kingdom of God, of ("render unto God the things that are God's"). That is the standard interpretation that has prevailed until now, but I think is completely wrong. The Kingdom of God—which is the exact opposite of the kingdoms or States of this world—never makes systematic use of violence and coercion: it is a Kingdom that has already come to us and, moreover, has been given to us freely, in an act of immense mercy and love (Deus caritas est). And just as the hateful institution of slavery came to an end, the Kingdom of God will also dismantle the kingdoms of this world, the states of this world, or as St. Paul said, of every principality, power, and glory (Ephesians 1:21-23), because God is libertarian and man is made in the image and likeness of God.Ludwig von Mises, in his book Interventionism, introduced the term "destructionism" to refer to the economic and social effects of statism. If Evil (represented by statist destructionism in Mises' terminology) were to prevail, the human race and civilization would have disappeared long ago. The fact that, despite everything and the immense power of seduction of statism over humankind, the process of social cooperation continues to unfold and even prosper in certain historical periods and geographical areas, is a clear manifestation that God does not abandon the world nor leave libertarians alone in their struggle against the Evil; and that Good, represented by liberty, the principle of non-aggression, the spontaneous order of the market, entrepreneurial creativity and coordination, and above all, moral principles, always with God's help, prevails and is capable of overcoming Evil, represented by the fatal conceit of the statist ideal and the destruction that it produces.And now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human natureAnd now I will finish with some thoughts on anarcho-capitalism as the only possible system of social cooperation truly compatible with human nature. The most important intellectual and moral event that is taking place nowadays is the full fusion between Christianity and anarcho-capitalism. Because anarcho-capitalism is the only possible system of social cooperation that is truly compatible with human nature. Anarcho-capitalism is the purest representation of the spontaneous market order in which all services, including law, justice, and public order, are provided through a voluntary process of social cooperation. In this system, no area is closed to the drive of human creativity and entrepreneurial coordination; efficiency and justice in the resolution of problems are simultaneously enhanced, while the conflicts, inefficiencies, and discoordinations generated by the State are eradicated at their root.The progressive abolition of States and their gradual replacement by a dynamic network of private agencies different legal systems, and providing all kinds of prevention and defense services, constitutes the most important social transformation that will take place in the twenty first century. Without forgetting that exactly what prevents us from knowing with precision what the future without the state will look like, the creative nature of entrepreneurship, is what gives us the peace of mind of knowing that any problem will tend to be resolved and overcome, once the entrepreneurial effort and creativity of Humanity are devoted to its solution (Kirzner, 1985).Therefore, the revolution against the “Old Régime” carried out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the old classical liberals, today finds its natural continuation in the anarcho-capitalist revolution of the twenty-first century. The message of anarcho-capitalism is clearly revolutionary. Revolutionary in terms of its goal: the dismantling of the State and its replacement by a competitive market process consisting of a network of private agencies, associations, and organizations. And revolutionary in terms of its means, especially in the scientific, economic-social, and political fields:a) First, Scientific revolution, in the field of Economic Science, which becomes the general theory of spontaneous market order extended to all social areas. And by contrast and opposition, the theory and analysis of the effects of social discoordination generated by statism in any sphere in which it operates, as well as the study of the transition process from the State towards liberty.b) Second, an Economic and social revolution, as we cannot even imagine today the immense human achievements and discoveries that could be made in an entrepreneurial environment totally free from statism. Today, and despite continuous governmental harassment, an unknown civilization is already developing, with a degree of complexity that is beyond the reach and control of the state, and which will achieve unlimited expansion once it manages to completely rid itself of statism. And when human beings become more and more aware of the perverse nature of the State that restricts them, and of the immense possibilities that are frustrated each day when the State blocks the driving force of their entrepreneurial creativity, the social demand to reform and dismantle the State will multiply creating a future that is largely unknown to us but that will elevate human civilization to heights that we cannot even imagine today.c) And finally, a political revolution in which, although day-to-day political struggle is important, it should not be the top priority. It is true that the least interventionist alternatives must always be supported, in clear alliance with the efforts of classical liberals in their long term impossible democratic limitation of the State (including reforms such as those proposed by Hayek in the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty). But the anarcho-capitalist does not stop at this task, for he knows that he can and must do much more. He knows that the ultimate goal is the total dismantling of the State, and this goal leads all his imagination and political action in everyday life. And here we cannot fail to mention the unprecedented impact of our disciple and follower of our Master Program in Austrian Economics in Madrid, the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, who has done more than anyone else before to disseminate the principles of the Austrian School and the anarcho-capitalist ideal. Principles that he never ceases to quote and explain and defend once and again in all his public appearances, from the United Nations to the Davos Forum; and in all his meetings with other Heads of State, universities, and parliaments, to whom he even gives copies of the most important Austrian works by Mises, Hayek and even myself, as he did, for example, with the two popes, Francis and Leo XIV, with the French President Macron, the Italian Prime Minister Meloni, and even with Elon Musk. For us, it is a great honor that Milei has, to a large extent, emerged from the Austrian School of Madrid and that he continually keeps drawing inspiration from us. This is, without a doubt, much more important than incremental political steps in the right direction—which should of course be welcomed—and that should never fall into a political pragmatism that could betray the ultimate goal of achieving the end of the State (Huerta de Soto, 2010).And all this with tireless enthusiasm in the search for scientific and moral truth, an attitude that, inspired by the immortal work of Miguel de Cervantes, we could describe as follows: "It matters not whether they be giants or windmills, when the plume of our helm is stirred by the winds of tenacity and faith." And always creating a future that, although it may seem distant today, may at any moment witness giant steps that will surprise even the most optimistic among us. History has entered into an accelerated process of change which, although it will never stop, will open a whole new chapter when humankind finally succeeds in ridding itself definitively of the State, reducing it to no more than a dark historical relic of tragic memory.Thank you very much.REFERENCESBASTIAT, Frédéric: Selected Essays on Political Economy, Foundation for Economic Education, New York 1995.DE LA BOÉTIE, Étienne: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Free Life Editions, Nueva York 1975.BÖHM-BAWERK, Eugen von: Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Augustus M. Kelley, Nueva York 1949."The Exploitation Theory," Capital and Interest, Vol. I: History and Critique of Interest Theories, Libertarian Press, South Holland 1959.HAYEK, Friedrich A. von: The Counter-Revolution of Science, Free Press, New York, 1955.Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (eds. Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar), University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. III: The Political Order of a Free People, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1979.The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1988."The Pretence of Knowledge," in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978.HUERTA DE SOTO, Jesús: Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2010."A Hayekian Strategy to Implement Free Market Reforms," in Theory of Dynamic Efficiency, Routledge, Oxfordshire, 2010.Proyecto Docente, Chapter I: "Ciencia y Economía," Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid 2000.The Austrian School: Market Order and Creative Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham y Northampton 2008.DE JASAY, Anthony: Market Socialism: A Scrutiny, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper no. 84, 1990.KIRZNER, Israel: "The Perils of Regulation: A Market Process Approach" in Discovery and the Capitalist Process, University of Chicago Press, 1985.LIGGIO, Leonard: "The Hispanic tradition of Liberty," published in Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, vol. XXII, nº 1, Summer 2025, pp. 403-420.MARTÍNEZ MARINA, Francisco: Teoría de las cortes o grandes juntas nacionales de los reinos de León y Castilla, Collado, 1820.MILEI, Javier: Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap, in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume II (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.MISES, Ludwig von: Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Jonathan Cape, London 1936.Planned Chaos, Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson 1947.OPPENHEIMER, Franz: The State, Vanguard Press, Nueva York 1926.POPESCU, Oreste: Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought, Routledge, London 1997.POPPER, Karl: The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1966.RATZINGER, Joseph. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. Doubleday, New York, 2007.ROTHBARD, Murray N.: "New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School," in The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics (editor Edwin G. Dolan), Sheed and Ward, Kansas City 1976, pp. 52–74.Anatomy of the State, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn 2009.SALERNO, Joseph. "Milton Friedman's Views on Method and Money Reconsidered in Light of the Housing Bubble", in The Emergence of a Tradition: Essays in Honor of Jesús Huerta de Soto, Volume I, (editors Howden, D., Bagus, P.), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023.STIGLER, George: The Citizen and the State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1975, pp. 1-13.

Generations of scholars come and go; a few, including Roger Garrison, make their mark on the field and inspire future generations to do the same.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/roger-garrison-and-sustainable-growth-austrian-school

Generations of scholars come and go; a few, including Roger Garrison, make their mark on the field and inspire future generations to do the same.Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/roger-garrison-and-sustainable-growth-austrian-school

3 hour discussion roughly organized as follows: The intellectual and educational “ethos” of ‘The Austrian School of Economics' with some key quotes by leading thinkers Mises and Hayek. An introduction to ‘Austrian Economics' with a focus on Carl Menger...

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Stijn Schmitz welcomes Mario Innecco to the show. Mario Innecco is Financial and Macro Economic Analyst, and also host of the ‘Manneco64’ YouTube Channel. The discussion centers on the current bull market in gold and silver, driven by several fundamental factors. Innecco highlights four primary drivers: de-dollarization, global debt challenges, geopolitical uncertainty, and the transition from a paper to a physical precious metals market. The de-dollarization trend is particularly significant, with countries seeking alternatives to the US dollar-dominated system. Central banks are increasingly buying gold, potentially aiming to hold 40% or more of their reserves in physical gold. The massive global debt, now around 300 trillion dollars, is making it increasingly difficult for governments to manage financial obligations, leading to potential financial repression and currency devaluation. Mario emphasizes the importance of the Shanghai Gold Exchange in challenging the traditional Western paper trading markets. The exchange represents a shift towards physical trading, which could fundamentally change how precious metals are valued. He suggests that the transition from a paper to a physical market makes it harder to manipulate gold and silver prices. Looking at potential price targets, Innecco draws parallels with historical bull markets, suggesting gold could reach as high as $8,300 based on previous price movements. He also discusses the possibility of a gold revaluation by the US Treasury, which could provide a financial windfall without adding to the national debt. The conversation extends to silver, which Innecco believes will continue to outperform gold, particularly in the latter stages of the current bull market. He recommends a conservative investment approach, suggesting investors allocate 90% to physical precious metals and 10% to mining stocks. Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:01:12 – Gold’s Fundamental Drivers 00:04:30 – Debt and Financial Repression 00:05:10 – Paper Market Ending 00:09:42 – Silver Market Bifurcation 00:11:01 – Central Bank Buying 00:14:56 – Global Debt Inflation 00:19:51 – Gold Revaluation Potential 00:23:03 – Mystery Gold Flows 00:26:29 – BRICS Currency Remonetization 00:29:00 – Historical Bull Parallels 00:34:26 – Silver Bullish Breakout 00:39:27 – Commodity Rotation Outlook Guest Links: X: https://x.com/maneco1964 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/maneco64 Mario Innecco is a seasoned financial markets and macroeconomics analyst with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He began his career in private banking in Geneva, Switzerland, before spending two decades in the City of London, specializing in exchange-traded derivatives, government bonds, interest rates, and broader economic trends. During this time, he advised major financial institutions and corporate clients on market strategies and risk management. A dedicated proponent of the Austrian School of Economics, Mario founded the maneco64 YouTube channel in November 2015, which serves as a platform for alternative economics and contrarian views. Through his videos, blog articles, and social media, he educates a worldwide audience on the intricacies of the fiat monetary system, financial markets, and the enduring value of precious metals like gold and silver.

We all love winners. We love hearing about the big wins and the perfect track records. It feels good. It feels safe. It instills us with a sense of trust. But I've been in business long enough to know that virtually all individuals who are long-term winners have had profound moments of failure from which they learned invaluable lessons. Those are the people I really want to hear from. They have the kind of knowledge we all need as we navigate through life. It's called wisdom. Surgeons have a saying: “If you've never had a complication, you haven't done enough surgery.” In my surgeon days, I had a handful of complications. Let me tell you—they are no fun. You stay up at night replaying things in your mind, trying to figure out how you could have done things differently—how you could have had a better outcome. Even when unavoidable, those complications teach you something you'll never get from textbooks. It's been no different for me when it comes to business and investing. But I take comfort in knowing that even the greatest investors of all time had their moments of failure and rose from the ashes stronger and wiser. Warren Buffett. Ray Dalio. Every big winner has a story of failure. And while it may be cliché to say that we learn best from mistakes, I truly believe it. The good news is that those mistakes don't have to be our own. Learning from other people's mistakes can be just as effective. This week's episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is with Russell Gray—a guy many of you already know from his podcasting and radio career. Russ lived through 2008 up close. He took a beating, and he talks openly about what went wrong. But that period also changed the way he sees the world—in a good way. It changed how he thinks about risk, leverage, and what actually matters when things stop going up. That mindset is a big reason he's been successful since then. It's a conversation worth your time. Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com.  If you let the debt run, at some point you fall into a debt trap where the interest on the outstanding debt consumes all of the available discretionary income, and then you’re borrowing just to service the debt. Welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast coming to you from Montecito, California. Before we begin today, I wanna remind you there’s website associated with this. Podcast called wealthformula.com. It’s where you will go if you would like to, uh, become more, uh, ingrained with the community, including getting on some of our lists such as the Accredit Investor Club. Of course, it is a new year and there are new deal flows coming through. Lots of opportunities that you won’t see anywhere else if you are a, an accredit investor, which means you. Make at least $200,000 per year for the last couple years with a reasonable expectation of doing so in the future. That’s 300,000 if you’re filing jointly or you have a million dollars of net worth outside of your personal residence. If you, uh, meet those criteria, you are an accredited investor. Congratulations. You don’t have to apply for anything, whatever, but you do need to go to wealthformula.com. Sign up for the Accredited Investor Club, get onboarded. And all you do at that point is look at deal flow, and if nothing else, you’ll learn something. So check it out. And who doesn’t want to be part of a club? Now let’s talk, uh, a little bit about today’s show. You know, um, we all love winners, right? We love hearing about big wins, the perfect track record. It feels good. It feels safe, gives us a sense of trust. But the thing is, I’ve been in business long enough to know that virtually all individuals who are, what you would call long-term winners, have had profound moments of failure from which they learned, um, invaluable lessons. So those are the people that I really like to hear from. You know, they have the kind of knowledge we all need that as we navigate through all of life, and it’s called wisdom. Um, surgeons, as you know, I’m an ex surgeon. Have a saying, if you’ve never had a complication, you haven’t done enough surgery. Uh, in my surgery days, I certainly, you know, had a handful of complications just like anyone else who did a lot of surgery. And, and lemme tell you, there, there are no fun, right? So you stay up at night replying things in your mind, trying to figure out how you could have done things differently, how you could have had a better outcome. And sometimes you realize that those mistakes were unavoidable, but. You still learn something from them. And in these cases, you always learn something that you’re not gonna get from the textbooks, just from reading something. And you know what, it’s been no different for me when it comes to business and, and investing, but I, I take comfort in the fact, uh, that even the greatest investors of all time had their moments of failure and arose from the ashes stronger and wiser. All you have to do is look up stories of Warren Buffet and Ray Dalio. And Ray Dalio basically lost everything at one point, uh, because he, you know, he had a macro prediction that went completely south. But listen, uh, the, the point I’m trying to make here is that every big winner, every big winner I know of as a story of failure. And while it may be cliche to say, you know what we learned best from our mistakes, I, I truly believe that. But the good news is that those mistakes don’t have to be our own, right? So you can learn from other people’s mistakes as well, and that can be just as effective. Uh, so this week’s episode of Well, formula Podcast is featuring a guy that you may know. His name is Russell Gray. Russ, uh, has been around a long time, uh, in the podcasting world. And radio. You know, he talks a lot. He’s talked many times to me at least about living through 2008. And you know what that was like, the beating he took and, you know, what went wrong? Uh, you know, it’s, it’s something that he talks about because, you know, he’s a successful guy and that period in time changed. You know, the way he sees the world, the way in which he behaves in that world. How he thinks about things like risk and leverage and you know, what actually matters when things stop going up. Uh, it’s a mindset thing and it’s important. Um, and we also obviously talk about other things as well, such as, uh, Russ’s current take on the economy. Uh, so anyway, it’s a, a good conversation and it’s one that you’re gonna wanna listen to, and we’ll have that for you right after these messages. 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Welcome back to Show Everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula podcast is Russell Gray. He’s a second generation financial strategist and, uh, you may know him from being a, the former co-host of the Real Estate Guy Radio Show, which is one of the longest running, uh, uh, radio shows of its time, uh, in the United States. He’s, he’s a founder of. Raising Capitalist project, which is an initiative focused on helping aspiring investors and entrepreneurs how to better understand how wealth is actually created and how uh, economic systems really work. Uh, he’s best known for his emphasis on real assets, cash flow, economic cycles, and preserving wealth and what he views as an increasingly fragile financial system. Welcome, Ross. How are you? Good buck, happy to be here. And, uh, proud of your success on your show. I remember way back at the beginning you were like, Hey, I wanna start a podcast. Yeah. Yep. You’ve done a great job. Yeah, it was an idea. I was like, here’s the idea. Start a podcast, build a community, all that kind of stuff. But it’s interesting. Uh, well, and let’s talk about what’s going on now. You’ve spent decades teaching people about, you know, real assets and cash flow. But lately your writings feel more focused on systems and and macro forces. So what’s changed? Has something finally become too big to ignore? Well, I think there’s two things you know personally, uh, most people who have heard of me or followed me know that 2008 wasn’t kind to me. I was in the mortgage business. I was very leveraged into real estate all over the place. Had my businesses for cash flow, had the real estate for equity growth. Believed that real estate was hyper resilient and gonna be the beneficiary of inflation. Didn’t understand the dependency on credit markets in both my business and my portfolio. And so that was a big mess, not doing, uh, a real SWOT analysis and understanding. And the third part of that, that was tough, is that I operated the business primarily on credit lines as well. So I had virtually no cash. And so when the credit markets seized up. Canceled my income, it canceled my credit lines and it evaporated my equity. And now all I had was negative cash flow on debt, on real estate. I couldn’t control. And so I looked at that and I said to myself, you know, I’m a pretty smart guy. I. Pride myself on paying attention. So obviously I’m not paying attention to the right thing. So I became obsessed with the macro, uh, picture and, and the financial system, which, you know, to me it’s, it’s the macro economy is what’s going on with, uh. Geopolitics and the energy and, you know, even policy, uh, that affects, uh, how well money can flow through the system. Both monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and fiscal policy from the government now today in the Trump administration trade policy. And so I began to pay attention to all those things, but from the standpoint of not how it was gonna affect the stock market, but how it was gonna affect the bond market and interest rates and the availability of credit, and how it was gonna affect Main Street. Directly and specifically now in terms of jobs and job creation are real wages. And so when I started really looking at all that, um, I, I, I realized that there were some things happening that were gonna be really good, and there were also some things that we needed to pay attention to. And these things move very slowly. So in 2010. I saw that coming outta the financial crisis, the Chinese were very upset with the United States about how much the Fed Balance sheet was expanding, and they were concerned about their very large investment in US dollar denominated. Bonds, and so they began creating bilateral trade agreements with Russia and many other countries to where they could begin this large process of de Dollarizing. Well, that was the first time I’d seen that movie, because it was the same thing that the Europeans did after they saw the Nixon default. Right? They began working on the Euro, which took ’em from 71, 72 when they started, maybe 74 when they started, but it took ’em till 99 to get it done. But you know, once they got it in place, over time, the Euro, the Euro has taken over 20% of global trade. You know, that’s market share from the US dollar. And so I saw this BrickX thing beginning to form. Uh, and then I saw the other thing on the macro that I thought was gonna be really good was in the jobs act, something you’ve benefited from as a syndicator, we. I wrote that report, new law breaks Wall Street Monopoly. And so, uh, even though I, I can’t tell you I was a big fan of Barack Obama, but he signed that legislation that happened on his watch. And I think it was fantastic because now it allowed Main Street syndicators, main Street Capital raisers to advertise for accredited investors and began to really, uh, level that playing field and open up Main Street, uh, to invest directly in Main Street. And so I met you in the syndication program that we put together with the real estate guys to coach real estate investors on how to become capital raisers to, to capitalize on that trend. So that’s, you know, kind of how I kind of became doing what I’m doing. And then when I decided, uh, just about 20 months ago to depart the real estate guys, I wanted to take some of the things that I originally set out to do when I first met Robert Helms way back in the day. And, you know, as relationships go, you know, he has his interest in the things that he wants to do, and I had my interest in things I came to do. And for a long time we were aligned well enough to continue to work together. But it got to a point where, for me, I, I wanted to go off in a different direction, and part of that was driven. By the, the death of my late wife. Uh, you had me on the show right after that happened to me, and I was going through this like, who am I? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do next? What do I really want to get done before I die? And so all of those things kind of informed my personal decisions to, to make a switch. And then of course, what’s going on in the macro. Um, what I saw with Trump 1.0, what I saw in the Biden administration and those policies, and then what I thought would happen in Trump 2.0. And I did a presentation on this at the best ever conference in March of 2025, right after he’d been inaugurated. And, and so, uh, that, that’s kind of has me where I feel like there’s some real opportunity coming. Uh, there’s also some things we need to be aware of on Main Street. Yeah. So you’re bullish on Main Street in general, but you’ve been pretty cautious about the broader financial system. So, uh, what are the things that you’re worried about? Well, I, I think if you understand the way the financial system works, uh, it has a shelf life and that. It’s because it’s, it’s a system that is, depends upon ever increasing debt. Um, people say, I wanna pay the debt off, but if they, if they really understood the system, at least the way I think I understand it, uh, and I’m not alone in this, so it’s not something I just figured out on my own. But, um, you know. I, I don’t want to sit here and pretend like I’m the world’s foremost expert, but the way I understand the way the system works is that it, it requires ever increasing debt, and if we were to pay the debt off, it would collapse the system. So I think you waste a lot of time and energy and from a policy perspective, trying to argue about doing that. And I think that’s why it’s never, ever, no matter what administration, what politician, what mix of congress, what. Pressure there is everywhere globally. The system, the central banking system, the way it works globally, is designed to create ever increasing debt. So the, the flip side of that then is to let the debt run. And if you let the debt run, at some point you fall into a debt trap where the interest on the outstanding debt consumes all of the available discretionary income. And then you’re borrowing just to service the debt. Yeah, that’s about $1 trillion right now, by the way. Which is. Which is, uh, about the, the, the defense, uh, budget. Well, and I think that the bigger thing is when you look at, at the interest on the debt and mandatory spending, there’s virtually no room left after that. So if you’ve got, you’ve got the mandatory spending and you’ve got, um, debt service, you, you have very little room. So it’s not. Feasible either for two reasons. One is there’s just not enough discretionary room to be able to cut expenses enough to, to ever manage the debt. Number two, as I previously mentioned, if we were ever to effectively try to pay down the debt in any appreciable way, it would crash the the system. So the, the way I look at it is it’s, it’s, it’s got to be replaced. There’s going to be a great reset. I think the World Economic Forum was trying to set that up for the world, and they had an agenda. I’m, I’m not particularly fond of. Um, there’s been talk about creating a central bank digital currency, which I think is what, you know, the Federal Reserve and the, what I all call the wizards, uh, or the powers of B would prefer. Uh, but I think if you care about privacy and, and, you know, individual sovereignty, uh, and, and just personal freedom, um, I have a lot of concerns about a central bank digital currency. Um, I think the popularity of Bitcoin, uh, if it was, you know, and who knows what the. True origins were, but let’s just take it at face value. I think a lot of the people, at least that were the early adopters before it had the big price run up, was just a way to escape, uh, the system before it failed. And so you’ve got that. And then you’ve got, again, as I mentioned, the bricks and this global effort to de dollarize, which was I think really kicked off. After the great financial crisis and the massive expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet. And then I think picked up a little steam when we froze Russian assets and people began to see that the US might use the dollar and the dollar system, uh, for political instead of being neutral. And I think that picked up some steam. And, and so there’s, there’s both a geopolitical drive to. Uh, come up with a new system. There is, I think we’re at the end of a shelf life that some type of a new system is gonna have to be, uh, created. Uh, and, and then you look at what Donald Trump is doing and what he’s espousing. You know, let’s get rid of income taxes. Let’s get back to pulling in, uh, revenue from tariffs the way the country was originally founded. Uh, he’s talked about eliminating the IRS and going with an ERS, an external revenue service. There’s people that think that he might beat. Wanting to try to get back on some form of sound money, you know, coming out of, Hey, let’s audit the Fed, let’s audit the gold. I mean, let’s audit the gold. And, um, so, you know, we, you, you never know what what’s really gonna happen, but, but I think what we have to pay attention to are the signs that the system is beginning to break down. And one of those signs that I pay a lot of attention to is monetary, metals, gold and silver. I make a distinction between precious metals, which would also include platinum and palladium, and of course they’re strategic metals, but I just focus on monetary metals, which would be gold and silver, and gold and silver. We’re telling you that people would prefer to be the, the, the safe ha haven asset is no longer us treasuries, but, um, but, but gold and central banks have been driving a lot of it. This isn’t the retail market driving it yet. It, it’s really central banks have been accumulating. And so those are the ultimate insiders when it comes to currency. And if the insiders in the currency markets are repositioning into gold, uh, I’d, I’d call that a clue. Yeah, absolutely. Um. Yeah. You recently commented on the public criticism, president Donald Trump made toward, uh, uh, Peter Schiff. What stood out to you about that exchange? Maybe give us some background people. Not everybody knows who Peter is and, and, uh. And all that. So, yeah. Well, I mean, as you know, I’ve known Peter for 12 or 13 years and, uh, I had read his father’s work way back in the day. He is a very famous in the tax protestor world as somebody who just believed that income taxes were unconstitutional. And he resisted that and ended up going to jail for, died in jail as a matter of fact. And so that was, uh, I think sad. Um. But, but to me it felt like a little bit of being a political prisoner, but be that as it may, that’s how I got to know Peter. And so Peter is a guy that comes from the Austrian School of Economics and he believes in sound money. He believes in gold. He does not like Bitcoin. I’ve sat on panels the last two years with Peter, uh, in between him and Larry Lepard. And you know, Larry is a, a former gold guy. He’s still not opposed to gold, but he’s a hardcore sound money guy. But he likes Bitcoin. Peter hates Bitcoin and they get into it, and I usually sit in between ’em and try to keep things calm. Well, you know, so Peter ended up going on Fox and Friends, uh, I think on whatever it was, Friday the eighth I think it was, or whatever, whatever day that was. And he, he criticized Donald Trump’s spending. And, um, budget deficits and said that it would lead to inflation, and that’s a hot button for Trump. And so Trump, yeah. Uh, responded to him, uh, I think like four 30 in the morning on Saturday morning and called Peter, uh, a. Jerk and a total loser. Well, actually I saw it before Peter did, and so I took a screenshot and I texted it to him. I said, Hey, have you seen this? You know, maybe I’ll press is good press. And I think to a degree, maybe it has been me from, I understand Peter ended up on Tucker Carlson’s show as a result of that. So, but I made a video right after that because I, you know, there was a time when. I’m friends with Peter Schiff and I’m friends with Robert Kiyosaki. As you know, I, we introduced you to both those guys and, and at one point they didn’t like each other very much. They got into it ’cause, you know, and, and so we introduced ’em to each other and found that they had more in common than they, they didn’t. And I, I think that that would be true. Not that I’m in a position to introduce Peter to, to Donald Trump, but I think the way Peter is looking at it is true. Um, but there’s context and I think the context is super important. Now I’ve been studying Donald Trump as a businessman way before he was a presidential candidate or a politician, you know, before he was a polarizing guy, a pariah for some people. He, he was just this real estate guy. He’s good at marketing, he’s a real estate guy, and as you know. We got to know his longtime attorney, George Ross. And so I’ve had a chance to have conversations about what it was like working with Donald Trump, the real estate guy, and when he became a politician, I asked George, is he a crazy man? Does he shoot from the hip? And you know, I got a lot of reassurances that he is a sober sound. Methodical, self-disciplined guy and, and I think he uses the eroticism to keep people off balance as a negotiating tactic. And he writes about that in the art of the deal. So the context that I think that people need to have, and I’m not here to defend Donald Trump, the man. I’m not here to defend Donald Trump, the politician, but I look at the policies and what I think he’s up to in the context of realizing that we have a system that is fundamentally flawed and has to be remodeled. So to use a real estate, uh, metaphor, it would be like we have a hotel building that is very tired. It’s at the end of its life, it’s got to be remodeled, and so you can’t. Completely shut it down because it’s an operating business, so it’s gotta operate during the remodel. And so you begin to, um, reposition things and. You, you, you’re not gonna run optimally, so you’re gonna run some deficits while you’re doing the remodel. You’re gonna go into debt because you got a lot of CapEx to do, and during that period of time, your debt and deficits are gonna be a problem. But real estate guys look at debt and deficits not as a permanent condition. I think Peter is saying, Hey, you’re just running up debt and deficits. Well, in the short term he is. Honestly, I don’t think Trump is concerned about that. I think he’s focused on getting this remodel done, and part of that remodel was showed up in the last jobs report, right? We lost jobs to a degree, but they were government jobs, and what we got was a lot of gains in private sector jobs. Scott descent, his treasury secretary, has come out and overtly said, we are an administration for Main Street, not for Wall Street. So if you’re going to de financialize this economy and turn it back into a productive economy. You’re going to have to have policies that are gonna stimulate Main Street, and that’s, that’s the, the, the new units that you’ve rehabbed in your hotel that you wanna move people into. At the same time, you gotta move them outta the old units, which is people making money, trading claims on wealth instead of producing real goods and services, which is the financial ice economy. So it’s not about banking, it’s not about stocks, it’s not about Wall Street. You know, you need the stock market to stay up. But really what you need to do is you need to create production. And, and, and I think that’s fundamental. I think he understands we’re never gonna pay the debt off by cutting. We’ve got to keep the system running until we can get to some form of sound money. We’re actually paying the debt off as realistic, and then we have to earn so much money that the debt relative to our earnings shrinks. So it’s not paying down the debt, it’s paying down the percentage of GDP by growing GDP. And the presentation I did at best ever in March of 2025 was me explaining why I thought. His policies, were going to allow him to increase velocity and increase wages by cutting taxes, interest regulation, transportation costs, and, and again, that was six weeks into administration. That was theory. I’m gonna do a follow up in March of this year to say, okay, looking back when I gave the speech a year ago, what’s transpired, but I can already tell you a lot of the stuff that I thought he would do. He’s done. And I think that’s muting some of the inflation that his spending and deficits to Peter’s point are causing. And that’s why when this last CPI report came out, it wasn’t as ugly as everybody thought it would be. And, and this is when you don’t look at, when you look at it in the mono, you just look at one thing and Peter’s very fixated on this quantity of money theory. Then the expectation is that you print a bunch of money, you run a bunch of deficits, you’re gonna get inflation. And it’s just a. Equals B or A leads to B. But there are other nuances and I think Trump is looking at more like a real estate developer, which makes sense. ’cause that’s his background. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s, I mean, and then the other just point to, to make there is that there is probably, um, now inflation’s a tricky thing, right? Like on the one hand you don’t want this riding up, but on the other hand, it actually helps with that debt. You’re, you’re basically eroding the debt by letting inflation ride a little bit higher at the same time. And I think the Trump administration knows that it’s a tricky thing to balance, but the goal is to, you know, get GDP pumping at, you know, four or 5%, but it’s gotta be real production buck. And that’s the difference, right? The old way of dealing with the debt was inflation. And, and I think people think that he’s using the old formula, but I don’t think he is. Well, I think it’s, I think, I think it’s definitely geared towards increasing real GDP, but I think in the process there’s probably, they probably care less a little bit. Of inflation riding up a little bit in the meantime. ’cause you’re still gonna have, I think he thinks he can mute it. I think he can mute it with lower taxes, lower interest expense, lower energy costs. And the energy is the economy. And from day one, that was the first policy. He’s, he’s aggressively gone after lowering energy costs because that has a, a, a ripple through, it just affects every area of the economy. And then the regulations in, in the last cabinet meeting. It was reported, the way I understood it, that for every regulation his administration passes, they’ve eliminated 48. So it’s actually, he’s removing the friction. And I think the bigger thing is, and I, and I was on a panel at Limitless, uh, this last summer, and TaRL, Yarborough was moderating the panel, asked the panelists what we were looking at that maybe other people weren’t looking at that. Um. You know, is, is a signal about maybe the direction it was. We, I, I can’t remember. This was a prediction panel and what I said was trade policy because everybody in finance spends all their time looking at the flow of money and trying to get in front of the flow of money. And we’re so used to the money coming from the Fed or coming from the treasury. So they’re gonna come from monetary policy or fiscal policy. And that’s what Peter’s doing. He’s looking at the Fed and he is looking at the treasury. And so what I’m looking at is not just the tariff income, which is relatively minor, but I’m looking at the trade deals, and those are published at the White House and there’s a couple trillion dollars of money that’s FDI, foreign Direct Investments coming right into Main Street. And it’s gonna build infrastructure. It’s gonna build factories. It’s good. And they tell you where it’s gonna be because they, they came back with the opportunity zones, which I thought they would do. Makes sense. It’s the way he thinks. And then taking those opportunity zones, the governors can say where in their state they want that money to go. Well, people on Wall Street don’t think geography ’cause they operate in a commodity world that trades on global exchanges. But real estate people. Geography matters a lot. So if I’m a Main Street person, I live on Main Street and I’m looking for Main Street opportunities, I wanna look where that money is going to be flowing in geographically. And then there may be opportunities in real estate or small businesses in those economies, and you can see it coming, but nobody talks about it. So I created Main Street Capitalist as a show to begin to talk about it. I still do the investor mentoring club, which is, you know. A premium thing where we get together every month and we talk about these things. And the point is, is that if you understand, I think what he’s doing, then you can, you can begin to paddle into position. And I think, again, I am really bullish if he loses inflation. If he loses to inflation, he’s cooked. He knows it. I think that that even the suggestion that Peter made that he was losing to inflation is what flared him up. And so I wasn’t trying to necessarily defend. Peter and I wasn’t trying to defend Trump, I was just trying to reconcile that it is possible that both guys could be right at the same time from their perspective. And so I, you know, I, I had one guy take exception because he felt like I was defending Trump, but for the most part, I got positive feedback on the video. I, I, I, you saw it. So you tell me. Did it make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So when you look at today’s environment, everything going on, where do you think investors are most vulnerable? Um, I, I think that if you are very dependent upon, um, healthy credit markets, we could have a disruption. And that’s what happened to me. If Trump loses the inflation battle even for a little while, little be reflected in interest rates. And the challenge is right now that he is asked the Fed to quote unquote lower rates, but the Fed actually doesn’t like. Set rates, what they do is they set a target and then they manipulate markets to achieve those rates. And if, if people believe the fed, there’s a little bit of front running. So what’ll happen is the Fed will come out and go, oh, we’re gonna lower rates, which means bond prices are gonna go up. So they’re like, that’s great, let’s go buy a bunch of bonds, which drives rates down. So the Fed just by talking. Begins to move the market and then they hope that later on the Fed will buy those bonds from them at a profit to push rates down. Does that make sense? So, so when the last two times the Fed has raised rates in their target, the 10 year has responded in the opposite direction. Which means that the market is like not buying in, and the Fed is gonna have to step in. And when the Fed steps in, they do it by printing money out out of thin air. Now, the concern about that is that when they print the money out of thin air. If they’re replacing bonds on their own balance sheet, that’s kind of a circle and it doesn’t leak out into the economy. If they’re buying new issuance from the the treasury, then that money is gonna work its way through the government to to to main street. Now, the Trump administration can prevent some of that by keeping the money in the Treasury, for example, uh, Trump 1.0 left. The Biden administration with, I think over a trillion dollars in, in the treasury checking account, and Janet Yellen put that into the economy right away during the lockdowns, which immediately created extreme inflation because you muted production at the same time you goose. Uh. Purchasing power, you know? So anybody with like three ounces of economic understanding could have told you that that inflation was gonna come, it was gonna come hard, it was gonna come fast, and it was gonna be stickier than than you thought. ’cause once you let that money out in the economy, it’s out. It’s out and the only way to mute it is either to suck it back, which is very, very difficult, or to outproduce it, and it’s very hard to produce anything when everything’s in lockdown. So I think that, you know, those days are behind us. I think the policies that we’re embracing now are more. Pro productivity. And I think that even if the Fed does have to step in, as long as that money doesn’t leak out into the economy, and part of it is the treasury being able to throttle some of that, and the money that does go into the economy doesn’t go into stimulus, but goes into CapEx and infrastructure, that’ll actually, uh, create. Production. Then I think that, you know, this, this game plan that I think they’re trying to execute has a chance. And so I, I’m, I’m watching for it. And of course, to answer your question, what do we have to worry about that it doesn’t work? Right? If it doesn’t work, then inflation will show up. Interest rates will rise, credit markets will crash, it will take real estate values with it. And the hedge is really gonna be, what I’ve always talked about is gold. I started talking back in 2018 when we were the zero bound with interest rates. Hey, there’s only one way interest rates can go and that’s up. And if they go up fast, then that’s gonna crash bonds. So it would be smart, and that’s gonna take real estate equity with it. So it’d be smart when you have real estate equity and low rates to pull some of that equity out and move it into gold. And I called that my precious equity strategy. If I have a video I did at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference in January of 2022, explaining that when you could still really execute on that, and I’m not saying that you couldn’t do it today, but it’s harder, but the people who did it back then, I mean, you know, they’ve, they’ve seen their gold almost triple. And at the same time, they were able to lock in interest rates that are, you know, a half what they are today. So when you see those mega trends and you can begin, and that’s the stuff I didn’t know how to do in 2006, 2007. I didn’t understand any of this stuff. The, the, you know, losing everything in 2008 forced me to become a hardcore student and then try to apply that to Main Street strategy. And so I think gold and real estate and debt, they all work really well together depending on where you are in the cycle. Do you think that Main Street investors may actually have some advantages in periods like this? Yes, a ton because I think what’s gonna happen is if we have a, um, a, a, a restructure of the financial system into something more responsible, which I think is either gonna be forced upon us or it’s gonna be done by design, and I hope we do it by design. But when that happens, then the days of just buying low and selling high and riding the inflation wave that goes away. And so now it’s gonna be very, very important to understand how to invest for. Productivity. So I call it, you know, buy low sell high trading as an acronym, B-L-S-H-T you. You can sound it out for yourself phonetically. And then the other one is poo, which is productivity of others. And I think that if people focus on investing in the productivity of others, which is what Main street investors, especially real estate investors, focus on, I think cash flow, real profits on small businesses, not speculating on. Uh, exit price or a company that’s gonna take a company public, everybody trying to tap into this giant flood of money that gets pre created from thin air in the banking system and in Wall Street. If, if, if people on Main Street will just start investing. Kind of what Kenny McElroy was doing going through 2008, just focusing on sound assets and good markets with good fundamentals. That cash flow and, and are run by good managers, whether it’s a business, an apartment building, a mobile home park, a self storage, residential assisted living doesn’t really matter. Invest in real businesses that produce real profits where you’re not overpaying for that production of income and especially where there’s some upside. Not to flipping out of the stock, but to actually growing the market share and growing the income. That’s what investing really should be. Wall Street has perverted it into just placing bets and riding a wave and trying to figure out where the money is gonna flow from the Treasury or for from Fed stimulus. And I think Main Street is gonna pick up on the new game sooner. And the good news is if you get good at playing that game, even if the system stays the same, you’re probably gonna do better off anyway. When you talk about buying, buying or investing into productive businesses, I mean, what, what’s the difference in your mind between investing in a private business versus investing in a, you know, a publicly traded business that’s run off, you know, dividends? Yeah, so I, I, I think that it could be okay if the dividend yield makes sense, but anytime you have a publicly traded security, it’s a highly liquid market, which means it’s gonna be volatile and the stocks become chips in the casinos where professional traders are just gambling all day long. And some of that gambling can create an impact on the stock, and it doesn’t matter to you if you’ve only bought it for production of income. Um. And so, uh, you know, I, I don’t think it’s bad. I’ve, you know, Peter’s always been an advocate of, uh, dividend paying stocks, and I think if you’re gonna be in the stock market, that’s what you want to do. I think the opportunity in a private placement in a small business is the opportunity not to have to pay the high multiples because it’s not a perfect market. It’s, it’s the same reason there’s so much more opportunity in real estate. If real estate could trade on an electronic exchange where. You know, millions of buyers could find it, and you could have perfect price discovery. It’s very difficult to find a deal, right? It’s very difficult. But we, if you buy a private business, you know there’s gonna be considerations. You, you deal with a, a owner. Who cares about his customers, who cares about his team, maybe would be willing to carry back the way you would if you were buying a, a, a piece of property from somebody that cares about their neighbors or whatever. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot more humanity in it. There’s a lot more room for negotiation in it. And a lot of times there’s a lot more room to have control. So, you know, one of the adages with real estate that real estate investors like is, I’m gonna buy an asset, one that I understand, two that I can control. And so when you buy a stock, like a dividend paying stock, you, you might understand the business, you may not understand completely the. Uh, market dynamics that drive the stock price. But as long as the dividends are there, that can be okay, but you don’t have any control. When you actually go buy a small business, you have a, a degree of control. Now, if you’re a passive investor buying into a syndication, then you still have a little bit more, um. Relationship, you have a little bit more insight. You maybe have a voice. You may know the people that are making the decision and running the company personally. So it’s the same thing. You know, you Buck is a syndicator. When you go do a deal, your investors know you. They have a personal relationship with you. Go buy stuff in the stock market and mutual fund managers and investor. You don’t have a relationship with that fund manager and I think that’s worth something if you have a voice right. So we’ve, we’re talking a little bit about credit markets, um, volatility, you know, interest rates. Are they gonna go down like, you know, Donald Trump would like to see, and you know, we’ve got a new fed share coming, all that kind of thing. How should investors be thinking about leverage and risk right now? I, I think the adage with real estate, uh, I mean, sorry, with leverage is always the same, is, um, you know, manage cash flow. I, if, if you use leverage to speculate, that could be a real problem. And whether you did it. Do it for real estate like I did by having very thin or negative cash flow and making that up someplace else and believing that somehow, you know, rents or appreciation are gonna do it. Or buying a non-income producing asset with borrowed funds hoping it’s gonna go higher. I think that would be dangerous, but I think if you fundamentally use debt as a tool. Based on cash flows and you use conservative cash flows, you know, so the debt service coverage ratio, you know, if you have $10,000 a month going out in debt service, make sure you have at least, you know, $12,000 a month coming in on income or above. Then that’s how you begin to build resiliency into your portfolio. And the other thing is don’t borrow long to invest short, right? So your duration matters a lot. We were talking about this before we hit the record button, and I think what happens is people. Uh, make a mistake when they try to operate like a bank. ’cause banks lend short and invest long. And the only reason they get away with it is because they have the Federal Reserve Bank system backstopping them. But you don’t have that as an individual, so you better to do the opposite. Um, if you can match the durations, that’s perfect, right? ’cause then you know what your interest expense is for the, for the duration of the investment. And once you lock in the spread, then you just have the counterparty risk of the, whoever is responsible for creating that income stream that’s gonna service the debt you use to control the asset. And then it just comes down to underwriting and then recourse. And if you feel comfortable with the underwriting and you feel comfortable with the recourse, and you’ve got spread and you’ve locked in a, a duration. Um, that, that is compatible, then that can be a, a, a fairly safe way to use debt. And if interest rates work against you, then you’re okay. And if interest rates work for you, you might be able to refinance your debt and actually increase your spread, but you don’t need it to happen to be successful. Let’s talk a little bit more about what you’re doing right now. So in the past year, you’ve launched, um, several new initiatives. You had masterminds via platforms. Tell us a little bit about this and, and a little bit more what, what you’re trying to accomplish. Well, you know, after losing my wife, um, you, you go through this. Period of time of like figuring out, okay, life is short. What do I want to get done before I left die myself. And so, um, after thinking about that, I went back to really what I came to do when I first met Robert Helms and got involved in the real estate guys. And so I just kinda went back to home base and. Then the other thing is now I’ve got 17 grandchildren, and so I’m thinking a lot less like a father, more like a, a grandfather, a founding father. And, um, and so I’m thinking about what the world is gonna be like in 40, 50, 60 years, and what can I do to plant a seed that will make that world better for my grandchildren? And so I, I did a couple things. One is, um, after I left the real estate guys, we were going through a merger with Ken McElroy, George Gammon and Jason Hartman to create, um, a mastermind group, which we did. And I, I was CEO of that for the. The year during the merger. And that took up some time. And the second thing I decided to do, uh, ironically, it was after a conversation I had with Charlie Kirk. I had a conversation with Charlie Kirk. I said, Hey, I’ve got this idea to help, uh, K through 12 get involved in, in capitalism by starting businesses or working with businesses. Their parents start, and I explained to him the model. He goes, I love it. I want to help you. And so that encouraged me. And then I had a follow up meeting in January of 20. 24 with Mark Victor Hansen, and he really encouraged me. And so with the strength of those two endorsements, I go, you know, I’m gonna do this. And so, uh, I left the real estate guys in, um. March, late March of 2024, and in the summer of 2024, I, I launched the Raising Capitalists Foundation, and people can learn more about that by going to raising capitalists plural.org. And I, I literally launched it at Freedom Fest on July 13th, 2024 and five minutes before I took the stage, Donald Trump got shot. Always remember where I was and how distracting it was, but I did record that presentation and it’s on the website, and so it explains the model. But in, in short, it’s pairing, um, or it’s, it’s putting parents who are in what Kiyosaki, uh, rich Dad would call the E-Class employees. And, uh. Put them under a mentorship program with experienced entrepreneurs and investors to help them start a business, a side hustle. They need the money and they need a mentor. And so then they, um, it can create a situation where their children can come to work for them in the business. And today, information Society, you know, there’s a lot of things kids can do where they learn real life skills, um, working with their parents. So that’s what the Raising Capitalist Foundation is all about. Then I launched two shows. Uh, in 2025, uh, one is I literally just launched like a week ago, and that’s. That Donald Trump video was really the first one that I put out, the Donald Trump versus Peter Schiff video on YouTube. I haven’t even started the podcast side of it. Um, and in on September 27th, uh, on pray.com, I started, uh, another show that, that one’s called the Main Street Capitalist. So if you go to YouTube and look at the Main Street capitalist, you’ll, you can find me there. And then the other one I created was the Christian capitalist. And I kind of went back to, you know, my, my core roots of realizing when I started looking at. Where the country was at, John Adams said that, um. Our Constitution was designed for a moral and religious people and is really wholly inadequate for any other, and so I thought, you know what? I’m I, I’m going to do that because my experience as a, as a Christian businessman is that I find that sometimes the stuff I get in church is more consumer oriented, and it doesn’t, it’s more employee oriented. I, I don’t. And, and then the other part of that is I created a, a ministry called Fellowship, a Christian capitalist, which is really about helping people put purpose into their business and then, you know, express their faith. Love your neighbor. Through their business. And so I’ve got all these different initiatives going and then I created the Main Street Media Network because I wanting to reach youth. I hired a YouTube coach and I said, look, I want to create content to encourage youth. He goes, that’s great. You can’t do it. You’re too old, he said, so what you need to do is find young people you can mentor and teach them the things that you’ve learned and let them teach it in their own words and they’ll reach their generation better than you. So with Main Street Media Network, I’m I, I’ve got. Two guys that I’m apprenticing right now, but I’m gonna be adding a lot more. Um, one, one young man is 20 years old, the other one is 26 years old. And, uh, I just came back from the Turning Point USA event where we had a broadcast booth and they were conducting interviews and I did the New Orleans Investment Conference. And so these guys are sitting down with Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, Mike Maloney, Ken McElroy, you know, you, you know what that did for you, buck with your show. You know, you, you met all these people through us and then you. We’re able to build upon that and create a very credible show. So I’m doing that for these guys that are in their twenties with the idea that they will be able to reach a generation of people. Uh, I call it putting Boomer Wisdom in Gen Z mounts. I mean, they get to process it and it gets to be their own. And I’m helping them build financial podcasts that actually make the money and is the foundation of, in this case, they’re both capital raisers of their capital raising business. I got all these different things going, but I’m doing it through leaders, so I’m not trying to do all things myself. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I’m building out an ecosystem to accomplish all these goals and so far so good. It’s a lot. Sounds working like a young man, man, man. I’ll tell you that. I know, I know. Wow. I I thought you were gonna slow down after you. No, I’ve actually, I put my, I put, I put my foot on the gas. I, I’ve probably never worked, uh, harder. Um, but I, I think I’m working smart, you know, so I’m hiring coaches and I’m bringing in, um, leaders and going through all that EOS and organizing to scale stuff. Sounds good. Well, always a pleasure, Russ. Um, make sure not to be a stranger to have you on again, um, you know, in a few months and figure out where you’re going with all this stuff. All the new things that you’ve accomplished, but it’s, uh, it’s great to see you. Well, happy to be here, proud of you. Uh, keep up the good work and keep educating people. Thank you. You make a lot of money, but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties. Now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage, a private school to pay for, and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put out by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s called Wealth Accelerator, and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens to you. The concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealthformulabanking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. As always, Russ, uh, is, uh, you know, he’s, he’s got a lot of wisdom. He is the guy you really wanna listen to. And I would encourage you to follow his work anyway. Uh, just pivoting back, you know, to where this economy is and all that. I think for me personally, it’s about allocating capital in a market that is a, uh, is certainly losing value in its dollars. And, um, and I think that we’re gonna continue to see that. Speaking of that, make sure if you haven’t, as I mentioned before, sign up for the Accredited Investor Club. Go to wealthformula.com, go to investor club, as we have plenty of those types of things that are hedging against inflation, um, saving taxes in terms of tax mitigation strategies, that kind of thing. Check it out. That’s it for me This week on Well Formula Podcast. This is Buck Joffrey signing off. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealthformularoadmap.com.

The Austrian School of economics isn't a 20th century or even 19th century creation. Instead, Austrian economics is rooted in the logical thought, as developed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/aristotelian-thomistic-roots-austrian-school

The Austrian School of economics isn't a 20th century or even 19th century creation. Instead, Austrian economics is rooted in the logical thought, as developed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/aristotelian-thomistic-roots-austrian-school

Stijn Schmitz welcomes Peter Schiff to the show. Peter Schiff is CEO of Euro Pacific Asset Management, and Chairman of Schiff Gold. The discussion centers on the current economic landscape, focusing on precious metals, monetary policy, and global economic shifts. Schiff argues that the Federal Reserve has effectively returned to quantitative easing by purchasing T-bills and expanding its balance sheet. He believes this signals a highly accommodative monetary policy that will continue to fuel inflation and prop up economic bubbles. The conversation highlights the ongoing transfer of wealth from the West to the East, with central banks in Eastern countries accumulating gold at unprecedented rates. Regarding precious metals, Schiff is bullish on both gold and silver. He predicts silver could reach $100 per ounce in the next year and believes the current bull market is still in its early stages. He emphasizes that investors should not wait for pullbacks but start building positions now, as the long-term trajectory for precious metals looks promising. The discussion also explores the broader economic challenges facing the United States, including unsustainable government debt, declining industrial capacity, and the potential loss of global reserve currency status. Schiff is critical of current economic policies, arguing that the country needs significant structural changes to address its fundamental economic weaknesses. On investment strategy, Schiff recommends a diversified approach that includes physical gold and silver, mining stocks, and international value stocks. Schiff’s outlook is cautiously optimistic about precious metals while remaining pessimistic about the U.S. economic trajectory. He believes the current trends will continue, with gold and silver serving as critical safe havens as global economic dynamics continue to shift. Guest Links: Podcast: https://schiffradio.com Website: https://schiffgold.com Website: https://europac.com X: https://x.com/peterschiff YouTube: https://youtube.com/@peterschiff Peter Schiff is an honorary chairman of SchiffGold, founder of Euro Pacific Asset Management, and host of The Peter Schiff Show. Peter is an economic forecaster and investment advisor influenced by the free-market Austrian School of economics. He is one of the few forecasters who accurately and publicly predicted the 2007 housing market collapse and subsequent 2008 financial crisis. His latest best-selling book, The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy – How to Save Yourself and Your Country, warns that the 2008 crisis was just the prelude to a larger sovereign debt crisis in the United States that may lead to a collapse of the US dollar. Peter recommends long-term investment in foreign markets with sound fiscal policies, as well as global commodities including buying gold, silver and other physical precious metals.

Dr. Mark Thornton, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and Austrian economist who correctly called the housing bubble, warns that we're living in an everything bubble with a flock of black swans ready to ignite a crisis. From commercial real estate cover-ups to private equity opacity, data center spending without defined returns, and trillions in government debt, Dr. Thornton explains how Fed manipulation and artificial interest rates have created malinvestments across the economy—and why Trump's push for lower rates will only fuel more bubble activity. He breaks down Austrian Business Cycle Theory, why we're on the on-ramp to hyperinflation with 2026 looking turbulent, and makes the case for gold and silver as essential hedges against fiat money depreciation in a world of central bank money printing and currency debasement.This episode is brought to you by VanEck. Learn more about the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF: http://vaneck.com/REMXJuliaLinksX: https://x.com/DrMarkThorntonFree Hayek book: https://store.mises.org/Hayek-for-the-21st-Century-P11367.aspxMises Institute: https://mises.org/profile/mark-thorntonTimestamps: 0:00 Intro and welcome Dr. Mark Thornton 01:09 Concerns about the macro economy 6:35 Fed manipulation creating vast array of potential swans 12:00 What if inflation ticks up? Long-term government debt and currency depreciation fears 14:50 Living through an everything bubble 18:40 Fed outlook22:30 Austrian Business Cycle Theory explained 28:30 Malinvestment and artificial credit expansion 34:50 Who really benefits from the Fed's policies? 44:50 Inflation to pay off the national debt 46:00 Gold and silver as hedges against fiat money depreciation 52:40 Early on in the precious metals bull market, silver going above $50 is 'the end of the beginning' 1:00:03 Path to hyperinflation 1:07:01 Bitcoin and Austrian School of Economics compatibility 1:10:31 Final thoughts and closing

Austrian Economics, Von Mises, and the Fight Against Interventionism. Carola Binder discusses the Austrian School of Economics, highlighting its focus on free markets and Ludwig von Mises's opposition to government "interventionism," including rent and price controls. Mises argued these policies distort markets, leading to shortages and inefficiency. Binder emphasizes Mises's belief that economic literacy is a primary civic duty necessary for citizens to reject socialism and interventionist panaceas, especially as new generations are exposed to such ideas.

SHOW 11-12-25 CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR 1930 THE SHOW BEGINS IN THE DOUBTS ABOUT CHINA'S LEADERSHIP. FIRST HOUR 9-915 Allied AI Competition and Submarine Requests. Scott Harold examines the crucial role of allies Japan and South Korea in the AI competition against China. Japan is developing locally tailored AI models built on US technology for use in Southeast Asia. South Korea aims to become the third-largest AI power, offering reliable models to counter China's untrustworthy technology. Harold also discusses South Korea's surprising request for nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines to track Chinese and North Korean vessels, signaling a greater public willingness to contribute to China deterrence. 915-930 Rare Earths Monopoly and US Strategy. General Blaine Holt discusses China's challenge to the US and its allies regarding rare earths, noting that China previously threatened to cut off supply. The US is securing deals with partners like Australia and is on track to replace China entirely, despite initial processing reliance on Chinese predatory practices. Holt suggests a two-year recovery is conservative, as technology for domestic processing exists. He also notes China's leadership is in turmoil, trying to buy time through trade deals. 930-945 Russian Economic Stagnation and War Finance. Michael Bernstam confirms that the Russian economy is stagnating, expecting no growth for years due to exhausted resources and reliance on military production. Oil and gas revenues are down significantly due to Western sanctions and high discounts, widening the budget deficit. Russia is increasing taxes, including the VAT, which drives inflation in staples. This economic pain damages the popularity of the war by hurting the low-income population—the primary source of military recruitment. 945-1000 Buckley, Fusionism, and Conservative Integrity. Peter Berkowitz explores William F. Buckley's consolidation of the conservative movement through "fusionism"—blending limited government and social conservatism. Buckley purged the movement of anti-Semites based on core principles. Berkowitz uses this historical context to analyze the controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson giving a platform to Nick Fuentes, who openly celebrates Stalin and Hitler. This incident caused division after the Heritage Foundation's president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson, prompting Roberts to issue an apology. SECOND HOUR 10-1015 Commodity Markets and UK Political Instability. Simon Constable analyzes rare earth markets, noting China's dominance is achieved through undercutting prices and buying out competitors. Prices for key industrial commodities like copper and aluminum are up, indicating high demand. Constable also discusses UK political instability, noting that Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer lacks natural leadership and confidence. The major political driver for a potential leadership change is the party's broken promise regarding income taxes, which severely undermines public trust before the next election, 1015-1030 Commodity Markets and UK Political Instability. Simon Constable analyzes rare earth markets, noting China's dominance is achieved through undercutting prices and buying out competitors. Prices for key industrial commodities like copper and aluminum are up, indicating high demand. Constable also discusses UK political instability, noting that Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer lacks natural leadership and confidence. The major political driver for a potential leadership change is the party's broken promise regarding income taxes, which severely undermines public trust before the next election 1030-1045 Austrian Economics, Von Mises, and the Fight Against Interventionism. Carola Binder discusses the Austrian School of Economics, highlighting its focus on free markets and Ludwig von Mises's opposition to government "interventionism," including rent and price controls. Mises argued these policies distort markets, leading to shortages and inefficiency. Binder emphasizes Mises's belief that economic literacy is a primary civic duty necessary for citizens to reject socialism and interventionist panaceas, especially as new generations are exposed to such ideas. 1045-1100 Austrian Economics, Von Mises, and the Fight Against Interventionism. Carola Binder discusses the Austrian School of Economics, highlighting its focus on free markets and Ludwig von Mises's opposition to government "interventionism," including rent and price controls. Mises argued these policies distort markets, leading to shortages and inefficiency. Binder emphasizes Mises's belief that economic literacy is a primary civic duty necessary for citizens to reject socialism and interventionist panaceas, especially as new generations are exposed to such ideas. THIRD HOUR 1100-1115 Philippine Missile Deployment to Deter China. Captain Jim Fanell reports that the Philippines unveiled its first operational BrahMos anti-ship cruise missile battery in western Luzon to deter Chinese aggression. This supersonic missile system, part of the $7.2 billion Reorizon 3 modernization program, gives the Philippines "skin in the game" near disputed waters like Scarborough Shoal. The deployment signifies a strategy to turn the Philippines into a "porcupine," focusing defense on the West Philippine Sea. The systems are road-mobile, making them difficult to target. 1115-1130 AI, Cyber Attacks, and Nuclear Deterrence. Peter Huessy discusses the challenges to nuclear deterrence posed by AI and cyber intrusions. General Flynn highlighted that attacks on satellites, the backbone of deterrence, could prevent the US from confirming where a launch originated. Huessy emphasizes the need to improve deterrence, noting that the US likely requires presidential authorization for retaliation, unlike potential Russian "dead hand" systems. The biggest risk is misinformation delivered by cyber attacks, although the US maintains stringent protocols and would never launch based solely on a computer warning. 1130-1145 Sudan Civil War, Global Proxies, and Nigerian Violence. Caleb Weiss and Bill Roggio analyze the civil war in Sudan between the SAF and the RSF, noting both factions commit atrocities, including massacres after the capture of El Fasher. The conflict is fueled by opposing global coalitions: the UAE and Russia support the RSF, while Iran, Egypt, and Turkey back the SAF. The Islamic State has called for foreign jihadis to mobilize. Weiss also addresses the complicated violence in Nigeria, differentiating jihadist attacks on Christians from communal farmer-herder conflict. 1145-1200 Sudan Civil War, Global Proxies, and Nigerian Violence. Caleb Weiss and Bill Roggio analyze the civil war in Sudan between the SAF and the RSF, noting both factions commit atrocities, including massacres after the capture of El Fasher. The conflict is fueled by opposing global coalitions: the UAE and Russia support the RSF, while Iran, Egypt, and Turkey back the SAF. The Islamic State has called for foreign jihadis to mobilize. Weiss also addresses the complicated violence in Nigeria, differentiating jihadist attacks on Christians from communal farmer-herder conflict. FOURTH HOUR 12-1215 Corruption, Chinese Influence, and Protests in Serbia. Ivana Stradner discusses protests in Serbia demanding accountability one year after a canopy collapse killed 16 people, with investigations linking the accident to high-level corruption involving a Chinese company. Leader Vučić suppresses discontent by alleging the West is plotting a "color revolution." Although Vučić aligns his heart with Russia and China, he needs EU money for political survival, prompting him to offer weapons to the West and claim Serbia is on the EU path. 1215-1230 The Muslim Brotherhood and Its Global Network. Cliff May discusses the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the progenitor of Hamas, founded in 1928 after the Ottoman Caliphate's abolition. The MB's goal is to establish a new Islamic empire. Qatar is highly supportive, hosting Hamas leaders, while the UAE and Saudi Arabia have banned the MB. Turkish President Erdoğan is considered MB-adjacent and sympathetic, supporting Hamas and potentially viewing himself as a future Caliph, despite Turkey being a NATO member. 1230-1245 Commercial Space Records and Political Impacts on NASA. Bob Zimmerman covers new records in commercial space: SpaceX achieved 147 launches this year, and one booster tied the Space Shuttle Columbia for 28 reuses. China also set a record with 70 launches but had a failure. Commercial space faced temporary impacts, such as an FAA launch curfew due to a government shutdown and air traffic controller shortages. Zimmerman speculates that Jared Isaacman's conservative-leaning public appearance at Turning Point USA might have convinced Trump to renominate him for NASA Administrator. 1245-100 AM Commercial Space Records and Political Impacts on NASA. Bob Zimmerman covers new records in commercial space: SpaceX achieved 147 launches this year, and one booster tied the Space Shuttle Columbia for 28 reuses. China also set a record with 70 launches but had a failure. Commercial space faced temporary impacts, such as an FAA launch curfew due to a government shutdown and air traffic controller shortages. Zimmerman speculates that Jared Isaacman's conservative-leaning public appearance at Turning Point USA might have convinced Trump to renominate him for NASA Administrator.

Austrian Economics, Von Mises, and the Fight Against Interventionism. Carola Binder discusses the Austrian School of Economics, highlighting its focus on free markets and Ludwig von Mises's opposition to government "interventionism," including rent and price controls. Mises argued these policies distort markets, leading to shortages and inefficiency. Binder emphasizes Mises's belief that economic literacy is a primary civic duty necessary for citizens to reject socialism and interventionist panaceas, especially as new generations are exposed to such ideas. 1940

Rafi Farber of End Game Investor discusses the global financial endgame, why he thinks the attempts to implement a neofeudal reset will fail, the dollar, metals, bitcoin, weathering the storm, and more! Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rumble / Substack / YouTube *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://easydns.com Escape The Technocracy (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopolitics Outbound Mexico https://outboundmx.com PassVult https://passvult.com Sociatates Civis https://societates-civis.com StartMail https://www.startmail.com/partner/?ref=ngu4nzr Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Substack https://endgameinvestor.substack.com YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@endgameinvestor X https://x.com/RafiFarber About Rafi Farber Rafi Farber is the publisher of the End Game Investor, focusing on monetary analysis from an Austrian School perspective as we head into the End Game for the global fiat monetary system. *Podcast intro music used with permission is from the song "The Queens Jig" by the fantastic "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

This Flashback Friday is from episode 402, published last August 20, 2014. Lew Rockwell is an American libertarian author and editor, self-professed anarcho-capitalist, a promoter of the Austrian School of economics, and founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His website LewRockwell.com was founded in 1999 and features articles and blog entries from a number of columnists and writers. His motto is "anti-war, anti-state, pro-market".  Visit Lew's website at LewRockwell.com The Ludwig von Mises Institute at Mises.org   Follow Jason on TWITTER, INSTAGRAM & LINKEDIN Twitter.com/JasonHartmanROI Instagram.com/jasonhartman1/ Linkedin.com/in/jasonhartmaninvestor/ Call our Investment Counselors at: 1-800-HARTMAN (US) or visit: https://www.jasonhartman.com/ Free Class:  Easily get up to $250,000 in funding for real estate, business or anything else: http://JasonHartman.com/Fund CYA Protect Your Assets, Save Taxes & Estate Planning: http://JasonHartman.com/Protect Get wholesale real estate deals for investment or build a great business – Free Course: https://www.jasonhartman.com/deals Special Offer from Ron LeGrand: https://JasonHartman.com/Ron Free Mini-Book on Pandemic Investing: https://www.PandemicInvesting.com  

Economist Joseph Salerno, an expert on the Austrian School, money, and methodology, joins us to talk about what makes the Austrian School of economics different. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

Economist Joseph Salerno, an expert on the Austrian School, money, and methodology, joins us to talk about what makes the Austrian School of economics different. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 26, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Daniella Bassi tells the remarkable story of the Arctic fur trade as a real-world case study in stateless order. In early 20th-century northern Canada, Inuit and European traders conducted peaceful, prosperous exchange, without government law or enforcement, guided instead by mutual respect, property rights, and natural law.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 26, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Modern psychology has been at odds with the praxeology of the Austrian School, as psychologists have tended to see humans as passive and reactive, while Austrians view human action as purposeful. Recent developments in the field might change that narrative.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-psychology-catching-reality-human-action

Lucas Engelhardt explores the economics of interventionism, tracing Ludwig von Mises's core argument that state interference in markets is both self-defeating and inherently unstable. Building on insights from Rothbard, Ikeda, and Higgs, Engelhardt examines why interventionism persists despite its failures, and whether we are, in fact, on the road to socialism or stuck in a stable middle ground.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Modern psychology has been at odds with the praxeology of the Austrian School, as psychologists have tended to see humans as passive and reactive, while Austrians view human action as purposeful. Recent developments in the field might change that narrative.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-psychology-catching-reality-human-action

Timothy Terrell challenges the mainstream view that markets fail to protect the environment, arguing instead that government intervention often distorts land use, fuels cronyism, and undermines conservation. Drawing on Austrian insights, historical examples, and striking contrasts in land management outcomes, Terrell makes the case for property rights and market-based stewardship as the true path to sustainability.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Is economic inequality really the crisis it's made out to be, or is it a misunderstood feature of a healthy, free market society? Mark Thornton dismantles the modern obsession with equality, exposing the statist assumptions behind popular narratives and showing how capital accumulation, entrepreneurship, and individual differences drive prosperity. This is the Austrian answer to egalitarian myths.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Tim Terrell offers a critical examination of higher education's economic structure, exploring how federal subsidies, credential inflation, and misaligned incentives have driven rising costs and declining academic rigor. Drawing on Austrian insights, he questions whether universities still serve their educational mission, or have become consumption-driven institutions shaped by bureaucratic interests and distorted signals.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Tate Fegley analyzes the deep state through the lens of Austrian economics, showing how bureaucratic insulation, lack of economic calculation, and political incentives lead to cronyism and inefficiency. Focusing on defense procurement and media influence, he argues that systemic dysfunction—not bad actors—is the primary driver of deep state behavior.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Paul Cwik and Shawn Ritenour revisit the often-overlooked "forgotten Austrians" who extended Mengerian economics beyond Vienna. From Wicksteed and Fetter to Strigl and Smart, this session highlights how the early Austrian tradition flourished across borders, until it was eclipsed by Walrasian formalism and Anglo-American Marshallianism.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Lucas Engelhardt challenges conventional applications of game theory by integrating the Austrian perspective on entrepreneurship, showing how creative action can resolve apparent economic impasses like the prisoner's dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, and coordination failures.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Through a detailed, real-time narrative, Tom Woods examines the inconsistencies, unintended consequences, and bureaucratic incentives behind lockdowns, mask mandates, and public health messaging. Supplemented by empirical data and firsthand accounts, the lecture highlights the human and institutional costs of the crisis response, while underscoring the Mises Institute's principled opposition to prevailing narratives.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Bob Murphy examines Henry Hazlitt's treatment of inflation in Economics in One Lesson, highlighting key insights on monetary expansion, Cantillon effects, and the distinction between nominal and real variables. The lecture offers a clear, Austrian perspective on why inflation distorts rather than enriches, and why its consequences are uneven and often misunderstood.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Bob Murphy and Jonathan Newman take on the rising popularity of Modern Monetary Theory and explain why it stands in direct opposition to Austrian economics. Using clips from the documentary Finding the Money, they critique MMT's core assumptions, from government spending and deficit myths to the origins of money itself. They offer historical evidence, economic logic, and biting rebuttals to MMT's claims, exposing its flaws and clarifying what's really at stake in today's monetary debates.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Shawn Ritenour critiques mainstream growth models that emphasize abstract inputs like capital accumulation and technological innovation, arguing instead for a human-centered approach rooted in Austrian economics. He emphasizes the foundational roles of entrepreneurship, time preference, the division of labor, and sound monetary institutions in fostering sustainable economic development.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Tate Fegley examines how the structure of state-run police departments—lacking profit-and-loss mechanisms—leads to systemic inefficiencies, distorted incentives, and unaccountable authority within the public sector.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Inflation isn't just about rising prices. It's a systematic distortion of economic signals, fueling inequality, eroding social mobility, and undermining real growth.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Patrick Newman offers a Rothbardian critique of the US Constitution, arguing that rather than establishing a framework for limited government and individual liberty, it was crafted to centralize political power and protect elite economic interests. Drawing from the Austrian tradition and historical analysis, the lecture challenges the prevailing narrative of the Constitution as a purely libertarian founding document.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Timothy Terrell tackles the most common objections to capitalism, from inequality myths to profit “villainy,” and offers a principled, empirical defense of market institutions and voluntary exchange.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Sandra Klein takes on dwarf-tossing, horse meat, and human organ sales to show how moral squeamishness isn't a market failure, it's just a preference.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Are markets a friend to minorities? Economist Walter Williams thought so, and Wanjiru Njoya explains why. Her lecture cuts through critical race theory dogma to show how liberty, not legislation, lifts up the marginalized.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Dr. Jeffrey Herbener explains how time preference shapes interest rates, production, and investment, making time central to economic coordination and prosperity.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Patrick Newman introduces Austrian capital theory: how savings, time, and production structures drive economic growth. Without capital goods and roundabout production, we'd still be living like primitive hunters, and without savings, growth halts altogether.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Competition is a relentless, dynamic process of entrepreneurship and discovery. Tom DiLorenzo exposes how antitrust laws, rooted in flawed theories of monopoly and “perfect competition,” have served as government tools to punish success, stifle innovation, and prop up politically favored monopoliesRecorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

We'll hear from protestors about why they're facing off with law enforcement in LA. President Donald Trump is heading to Fort Bragg to celebrate the US Army, but the timing isn't great. Authorities say nine people have been killed in a high school shooting in Austria. We'll tell you what to look out for in today's primaries in New Jersey. And, the world of funk music says goodbye to a pioneer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Natalie Brunell is joined by Peter Schiff, economist and gold advocate, for a fiery and wide-ranging conversation ahead of their live stage appearance at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas. Schiff doesn't hold back, calling Bitcoin a “meme coin,” criticizing Trump's economic policies, and warning that America is on the brink of economic collapse fueled by debt, inflation, and political dysfunction. Topics iinclude: Why Schiff is still anti-Bitcoin despite holding his own “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” Gold vs. Bitcoin: trust, counterparty risk, and final settlement Schiff's take on the "Big Beautiful Bill" and why it guarantees higher deficits The myth of “growing out of the debt” and what needs to happen instead Foreign central banks ditching dollars for gold and what it means for the dollar's reserve status How Schiff would fix the U.S. economy (but why it won't happen) Guest Bio: Peter Schiff is the Founder, CEO and Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital and host of The Peter Schiff Show. He is an economic forecaster and investment advisor influenced by the free-market Austrian School of economics. His book, "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy – How to Save Yourself and Your Country," warns that the 2008 crisis was just the prelude to a larger sovereign debt crisis in the United States that may lead to a collapse of the US dollar. Follow Peter on X at https://x.com/PeterSchiff.  ---- Coin Stories is powered by Bitwise. Bitwise has over $10B in client assets, 32 investment products, and a team of 100+ employees across the U.S. and Europe, all solely focused on Bitcoin and digital assets since 2017. Learn more at https://www.bitwiseinvestments.com  ---- Coin Stories is also powered by Bitdeer Technologies Group (NASDAQ: BTDR) is a publicly-traded leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing. Learn more at https://www.bitdeer.com  ---- Natalie's Bitcoin Product and Event Links: Secure your Bitcoin with collaborative custody and set up your inheritance plan with Casa: https://www.casa.io/natalie  Block's Bitkey Cold Storage Wallet was named to TIME's prestigious Best Inventions of 2024 in the category of Privacy & Security. Get 20% off using code STORIES at https://bitkey.world   Master your Bitcoin self-custody with 1-on-1 help and gain peace of mind with the help of The Bitcoin Way: https://www.thebitcoinway.com/natalie  For easy, low-cost, instant Bitcoin payments, I use Speed Lightning Wallet. Get 5000 sats when you download using this link and promo code COINSTORIES10: https://www.speed.app/sweepstakes-promocode/  Safely self-custody your Bitcoin with Coinkite and the ColdCard Wallet. Get 5% off: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/COINSTORIES  River is where I DCA weekly and buy Bitcoin with the lowest fees in the industry: https://partner.river.com/natalie   Earn 2-4% back in Bitcoin on all your purchases with the orange Gemini Bitcoin credit card: https://www.gemini.com/natalie   Bitcoin 2026 will be here before you know it. Get 10% off Early Bird passes using the code HODL: https://b.tc/conference  Protect yourself from SIM Swaps that can hack your accounts and steal your Bitcoin. Join America's most secure mobile service, trusted by CEOs, VIPs and top corporations: https://www.efani.com/natalie   Your Bitcoin oasis awaits at Camp Nakamoto: A retreat for Bitcoiners, by Bitcoiners. Code HODL for discounted passes: https://massadoptionbtc.ticketspice.com/camp-nakamoto      ---- This podcast is for educational purposes and should not be construed as official investment advice. ---- VALUE FOR VALUE — SUPPORT NATALIE'S SHOWS Strike ID https://strike.me/coinstoriesnat/ Cash App $CoinStories #money #Bitcoin #investing