Podcasts about banks

The phones are ringing off the hook as Packer Nation processes another gut-wrenching loss and a three-game losing streak heading into the playoffs. Tonight's callers aren't holding back their frustrations, and the Rashaan Gary discourse has reached a boiling point. The big news drops mid-show as Trevon Diggs reportedly signs with Green Bay, sparking debate about whether the former Cowboys corner can resurrect his career in the same system that transformed Rasul Douglas. Callers also bid farewell to Malik Willis, with one suggesting Pittsburgh as his ideal landing spot to continue what Green Bay started. But the main event tonight is the avalanche of Rashaan Gary criticism. Multiple callers draw comparisons to Nick Perry, question his leadership abilities, and debate whether his contract is salvageable. The frustration extends to offensive linemen Banks and Rasheed Walker for drive-killing penalties, and some are even calling for Matt LaFleur's job. One caller sums up the mood perfectly: this team is broken. Despite the doom and gloom, we're still in the playoffs, and as the host reminds everyone, you don't have to be the better team, you just have to win. Rest up, get healthy, and anything can happen in January football. This episode is brought to you by PrizePicks! Use code PACKDADDY to get started with America's #1 fantasy sports app. https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/PACKDADDY To advertise on this podcast please email: ad-sales@libsyn.com Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/packernetpodcast Help keep the show growing and check out everything I'm building across the Packers and NFL world: Support: Patreon: www.patreon.com/pack_daddy Venmo: @Packernetpodcast CashApp: $packpod Projects: Grade NFL Players ➜ fanfocus-teamgrades.lovable.app Packers Hub ➜ packersgames.com Create NFL Draft Big Boards ➜ nfldraftgrades.com Watch Draft Prospects ➜ draftflix.com Screen Record ➜ pause-play-capture.lovable.app Global Economics Hub ➜ global-economic-insight-hub.lovable.app

The phones are ringing off the hook as Packer Nation processes another gut-wrenching loss and a three-game losing streak heading into the playoffs. Tonight's callers aren't holding back their frustrations, and the Rashaan Gary discourse has reached a boiling point. The big news drops mid-show as Trevon Diggs reportedly signs with Green Bay, sparking debate about whether the former Cowboys corner can resurrect his career in the same system that transformed Rasul Douglas. Callers also bid farewell to Malik Willis, with one suggesting Pittsburgh as his ideal landing spot to continue what Green Bay started. But the main event tonight is the avalanche of Rashaan Gary criticism. Multiple callers draw comparisons to Nick Perry, question his leadership abilities, and debate whether his contract is salvageable. The frustration extends to offensive linemen Banks and Rasheed Walker for drive-killing penalties, and some are even calling for Matt LaFleur's job. One caller sums up the mood perfectly: this team is broken. Despite the doom and gloom, we're still in the playoffs, and as the host reminds everyone, you don't have to be the better team, you just have to win. Rest up, get healthy, and anything can happen in January football. This episode is brought to you by PrizePicks! Use code PACKDADDY to get started with America's #1 fantasy sports app. https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/PACKDADDY To advertise on this podcast please email: ad-sales@libsyn.com Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/packernetpodcast Help keep the show growing and check out everything I'm building across the Packers and NFL world: Support: Patreon: www.patreon.com/pack_daddy Venmo: @Packernetpodcast CashApp: $packpod Projects: Grade NFL Players ➜ fanfocus-teamgrades.lovable.app Packers Hub ➜ packersgames.com Create NFL Draft Big Boards ➜ nfldraftgrades.com Watch Draft Prospects ➜ draftflix.com Screen Record ➜ pause-play-capture.lovable.app Global Economics Hub ➜ global-economic-insight-hub.lovable.app

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on what's open and what's closed on New Year's Day.

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USIn this powerful episode of the True Life Podcast, host George Monty delivers a hard-hitting “daily transmission” exposing how corporations and systems deliberately manufacture scarcity to drive profits, control populations, and prevent true abundance from reaching everyday people. Drawing on real-world examples from food, housing, medicine, and more, George reveals the patterns of consolidation, surplus destruction, and artificial shortages that keep society desperate and divided. He calls for recognition, documentation, and rebellion against this “scarcity weapon,” urging listeners to investigate local resources and demand the withheld plenty. This episode is a wake-up call to see beyond the narratives of inflation and supply chain issues to the engineered theft of abundance.Host: George MontyPodcast: True Life PodcastDuration: Approximately 10-15 minutes (based on transcript length)Release Date: Estimated based on content references (late 2025)Listen Here: Explore more episodes and connect with George Monty on the TrueLife platform. Key Timestamps & HighlightsGeorge's monologue flows as a continuous narrative, but we've broken it down into thematic sections with approximate timestamps for easy navigation:•  00:00 - 01:00: The Illusion of Struggle George opens by challenging the narrative that you're failing—it's engineered starvation in abundance. He prompts listeners to check their finances and see how earnings vanish despite higher pay, labeling it “2025's manufactured scarcity” designed for control and extraction.•  01:00 - 02:30: From Ancient Famines to Modern Engineering Contrasting natural famines with today's deliberate hunger, George highlights U.S. food production capacity (enough for 10 billion people) versus 34 million facing food insecurity amid record corporate profits.   He exposes the “machine that weaponizes emptiness.” •  02:30 - 04:00: Food Shortages Exposed•  2024 egg shortage: Not avian flu, but corporate consolidation by Cal-Maine Foods (20% market control), leading to tripled prices and $535 million in profits. •  2022-2024 baby formula crisis: Abbott's monopoly (43% market) caused shutdowns, boosting stock 34% while parents turned to black markets. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/doj-egg-prices-rise-cal-maine-profits•  04:00 - 05:00: Housing and Tech Hoarding•  Housing crisis: 16 million vacant homes in the U.S. versus over 600,000 homeless, as empty properties prove more profitable. •  2025 semiconductor shortage: TSMC's alleged deliberate restrictions via leaked emails to maintain pricing, with chips stockpiled while car prices soar.  (Note: Related to trade secret leaks; broader shortage context available.)https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/•  05:00 - 06:30: Surplus Destruction and Corporate Mandates George uncovers patterns of destroying goods under USDA/EPA/FDA protocols lobbied by corporations.  He cites the 2024 NASS report (Appendix G, p. 847) on 2.3 billion pounds of produce destroyed to avoid “market destabilization.”  Kroger's 2019 leaked memo advocates “optimal scarcity ratios” for urgency buying. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2023/09/20/usda-expands-efforts-prevent-and-reduce-food-loss-and-wastehttps://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crop_Progress_&_Condition/2024/index.phphttps://www.nationofchange.org/2024/09/03/corporate-greed-exposed-kroger-admits-to-price-gouging-on-milk-and-eggs-amid-antitrust-trial/•  06:30 - 08:00: The Scarcity Playbook Step-by-step breakdown: Consolidate supply, engineer shortages (restrict, destroy surplus), profit from desperation. Blame shifts to weather or labor, not architects.•  08:00 - 10:00: Historical and Ongoing Examples•  2008 housing crisis: Banks held 3.5 million foreclosures as “shadow inventory” to keep prices high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis•  2020 toilet paper: Procter & Gamble and Georgia-Pacific (55% control) restricted distribution for 300% price surges at 64% capacity. https://www.resourcewise.com/market-watch-blog/are-we-really-running-out-of-toilet-paper-in-the-covid-crisis•  2021 lumber: Weyerhaeuser and West Fraser (40% control) quadrupled prices with underused mills. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/lumber-prices-hit-record-highs-soaring-past-year-2021-4-1030299977•  2023 prescription drugs: Wholesalers like McKesson, Cardinal, and AmerisourceBergen (95% control) restrict insulin ($2 production cost) amid shortages. https://www.mmm-online.com/home/channel/drug-shortages-in-america/•  2025 water: Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Pepsi (75% bottled water) amid contaminated public supplies. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bottled-water-market•  10:00 - 11:30: Broader Patterns of Waste Amazon destroys 2 million unsold products yearly for scarcity pricing.  Pharma discards effective expired meds.  Energy firms flare gas for 10 million homes.  McKinsey's 2023 report recommends 15-20% below-demand inventory for margins.  Supply chain “disruptions” post-2020? Traffic normalized by Q3 2021, but prices stayed high via throttling. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethical-campaigns-boycotts/amazons-burning-approach-unsold-returned-productshttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10834166/

#goldprice #silverprice #cme #drugprices #usinflation #automakerhike #carmarket #gstwindfall #banknpa #rbibankreport #cryptocurrency #stablecoins #vodafoneidea #viupdate #zomatoCatch up on the biggest market movers from the year-end close! Gold & Silver prices fell after CME margin hikes. Carmakers like Tata & Hyundai announce price increases from Jan 2026 due to rising costs. Vodafone Idea shares crashed 15% on the AGR dues relief package details. Plus, RBI's Financial Stability Report projects lower bank NPAs (1.9% by Mar '27) and urges caution on stablecoins over CBDCs. Updates on Zomato/Swiggy payouts, Tata Power's new solar project, and IPO filings from OYO & Bagmane REIT. Get the full breakdown.00:00 Start00:34 Gold, Silver Prices Drop Post Margin Hike02:21 Falling crude oil prices02:50 Automakers Announce Price Hikes from January03:44 Small Savings Interest Rates Unchanged for Q1 202604:42 Banks' GNPA Ratio Projected to Hit 1.9% by March 202705:59 RBI Urges Prioritizing CBDCs Over Stablecoins07:22 Vodafone Idea Shares Plunge After AGR Relief News07:55 Zomato, Swiggy Boost Payouts Amid Strike Call08:37 Tata Power Commissions 1 GW Solar Plant in Rajasthan08:54 Bagmane Group Files for ₹4,000-Cr REIT IPO09:49 OYO Parent PRISM Files Confidential IPO Papers10:27 Solar Industries wins new order10:44 Knowledge Section

Part 1 of this two-part dive into the recent batch of released Epstein files begins with a 2020 email between prosecutors about seeing Trump's name on flight logs. From there, we delve into the banking world and learn more about key players like James Edward "Jes" Staley, a man accused of enabling suspicious financial activity, and review some of his predatory and intimate email exchanges with Epstein. Then, we meet one of Epstein's ten co-conspirators (only three of whom have been named) Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, and hear survivor Maria Farmer's statements that shed more light on the levels of his involvement. Lastly, a look at the legal filing involving allegations of a 13-year old victim who attended Michigan's Camp Interlocken in 1994, stating Epstein made contact with her as a former camper turned benefactor before introducing her to Trump at Mar-a-Lago as a "good one". Part 1 closes with documented comments from Mark Epstein to the FBI about his belief concerning his brother's death. BONUS: a rant about how the inequities of our current economic structure and tax code facilitate a "predator and prey" class system All opinions are personal and not representative of any outside company, person, or agenda. This podcast is hosted by a United States citizen, born and raised in a military family that is proud of this country's commitment to free speech. Information shared is cited via published articles, legal documents, press releases, government websites, executive orders, public videos, news reports, and/or direct quotes and statements, and all may be paraphrased for brevity and presented in layman's terms.Check your voter registration, find your polling location, or contact your representatives via USA.GOV, VOTE.GOV, and/or the "5 Calls" app. “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” - James BaldwinWanna support this independent pod? Links below:BuyMeACoffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/BBDBVenmo @TYBBDB Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on what's open and what's closed on New Year's Day.

VLOG Dec 31 Epstein files and the UN (Antonio Guterres & Ghislaine Maxwell's Terramar board) & the banks, their use of AI in 2026, Fifth Third - Comerica, FFW v. OceanFirst - Flushing. Jan 9 Luigi Mangione in SDNY., Alexander Brothers, Peraire-Bueno Crypto Bros, Diddy appeal, LA Reid & Fat Joe, habeas, UN betrayals book coming - Happy New Year

Why Tom Hanks Played Walt Disney: The 30-Year Disney Connection Discover the untold story of how Disney strategically built the perfect actor to play its founder. Tom Hanks didn't just get cast as Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks—he was engineered for the role across three decades of calculated partnership. From Splash and Touchstone Pictures to Toy Story and beyond, explore how Disney's synergy with Tom Hanks created the most iconic casting decision in Hollywood history. This is the real reason Tom Hanks became Walt Disney. In This Episode: Why Disney created Touchstone Pictures and cast Tom Hanks How Splash (1984) launched the Tom Hanks era The brilliant Pixar pitch that convinced Hanks to voice Woody How Tom Hanks became "America's Dad" The perfect synergy between actor and founder Why no other actor could have played Walt Disney Subsribe to Synergy Loves Company on YouTube for deep dives into how Disney connects to everything in entertainment, culture, and history. https://www.youtube.com/@SynergyLovesCompany?sub_confirmation=1 Podcast: Listen to Synergy Loves Company → https://synergylovescompany.com Support the Show: Shop official Synergy Loves Company merch → https://shop.synergylovescompany.com Affiliate Disclosure: Some links above may be affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting the channel! Connect with Me: Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/synergylovescompany Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/erichsynergy.bsky.social Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/synergylovescompany Credits / Resources: • Synergy Loves Company is not affiliated with The Walt Disney Company or any of its subsidiaries. • Images and clips are used under fair use for commentary, criticism, and education. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

As Southeast Asia positions itself as a global hub for data centres and digital infrastructure, banks are stepping up lending to support the boom. But with growth comes new forms of credit risk. Dan Koh speaks with Rena Kwok, Senior Credit Analyst, Asian Financials, Bloomberg Intelligence, about Singapore banks’ exposure to data centre loans, whether risks are contained, a look ahead to ASEAN banks’ outlook for 2026, and the impact of currency volatility across the region.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big Banks on pace for a standout year. The money centers with double digit gains, and if the financials sector can stay on focus in 2026. Plus New Year, New interest in AI? What the VC landscape is looking for in the red-hot AI space, and where an early stage investor sees the most opportunity. Fast Money Disclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Crypto News: Bitcoin price seems to be manipulated but a bullish setup is hinting that a major rally is coming. Tech giant to launch crypto wallet, fintech L1s will bomb: Dragonfly exec.Brought to you by

Every bank today is trying to appear modern. But you can't operate a digital institution with a core system that hasn't been updated since the iPhone was introduced. After years of adding new features on top of outdated infrastructure, the limitations become clear: legacy cores slow innovation, hinder personalization, and make it nearly impossible to compete in an AI-driven world. Modernization is no longer just a tech project. It's a strategic choice for whether a bank can stay competitive. Banks adopting unified, modern architectures aren't doing it for appearances; they're doing it because it provides the speed, flexibility, and resilience that legacy systems cannot match. The good news? Modernizing no longer requires years of planning and implementation. Progressive methods are giving banks safer, lower-risk options to move forward. Today on the Banking Transformed Podcast, I'm joined by Sai Rangachari, Chief Product Officer at Temenos, to explore what modern core banking really entails, why it's important now, and how banks can update without disrupting their operations.

Charles de Boissezon is past CEO of Geneva headquartered Hinduja Bank, a Private Bank, and brings with him more than 40 years of International banking experience in London, Hong Kong, New York, Geneva, Chile, and Jersey. Charles is both French and British. He grew up in Vietnam and Hong Kong and spent his formative years in Geneva attending the College de Leman School. He then left for the USA to earn his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at Boston University, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Central bank to monitor large non-resident transfers as speculative gold trading peaks at 60% of forex transactions and expat population swells.View the full article here.Subscribe to the IMI Daily newsletter here. 

OFFBounds' 100th episode celebrates a major milestone by turning the spotlight on host Paula Macaggi, with Oliver Banks stepping in as guest host. The conversation looks back on how the show began, how it has grown, and what it took to get there, from Paula's global journey and early nerves behind the mic to building a truly international retail podcast driven by curiosity and consistency. Paula shares honest lessons about confidence, the hard work behind producing a weekly show, and the realities of traveling the world to record in person. The episode is both reflective and celebratory, while also looking ahead with excitement at how OFFBounds will continue to challenge perspectives and explore the future of retail and innovation.

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger Picture[CB] around the world are dumping the Fed note, they just aren’t taking on anymore, everything is about to change. Trump’s GDP outshines Biden’s. China is now going to restrict silver, silver is used in electronics, batteries,solar panels etc. Silver prices are going to move. [CB] fraud is now exposed. The Tariff system is the future. The [DS] criminal syndicate is being exposed, it’s not just in DC it is world wide. As people learn how corrupt the system is and most of the taxes and borrowing goes to support the criminal system the people will be with Trump to remove the Fed. Trump is in the process of bringing down the entire corrupt temple on the [DS]. Trump moves closer to peace with Ukraine, 2026 is going to change everything. Economy Status of the US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency: USD Share Drops to Lowest since 1994  Central Banks diversify their holdings into dozens of smaller “non-traditional reserve currencies.”  The share of USD-denominated assets held by other central banks dropped to 56.9% of total foreign exchange reserves in Q3, the lowest since 1994, from 57.1% in Q2 and 58.5% in Q1, according to the IMF's new data on Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves. USD-denominated foreign exchange reserves include US Treasury securities, US mortgage-backed securities (MBS), US agency securities, US corporate bonds, and other USD-denominated assets held by central banks other than the Fed. Excluded are any central bank's assets denominated in its own currency, such as the Fed's Treasury securities or the ECB's euro-denominated securities. It's not that foreign central banks dumped US-dollar-denominated assets, such as Treasury securities. They did not. They added a little to their holdings. But they added more assets denominated in other currencies, particularly a gaggle of smaller currencies whose combined share has surged, while central banks' holdings of USD-denominated assets haven't changed much for a decade, and so the percentage share of those USD assets continued to decline.   Central banks' holdings of foreign exchange reserves in all currencies, and expressed in USD, rose to $13.0 trillion in Q3. Top holdings, expressed in USD: USD assets: $7.41 trillion Euro assets (EUR): $2.65 trillion Yen assets (YEN): $0.76 trillion British pound assets (GBP): $0.58 trillion Canadian dollar assets (CAD): $0.35 trillion Australian dollar assets (AUD): $0.27 trillion Chinese renminbi (RMB) assets: $0.25 trillion Source: wolfstreet.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");  https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2004750391435755846?s=20 https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2004928015172821228?s=20 https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2004946780216328590?s=20  Political/Rights https://twitter.com/Patri0tContr0l/status/2004590513182367845?s=20  https://twitter.com/Geiger_Capital/status/2005107085865103608?s=20 ICE: 70% Arrested Had Criminal Ties Roughly 70% of illegal migrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the second Trump administration reportedly had been convicted of or faced charges for criminal offenses. New data provided to the Washington Examiner shows the Trump administration arrested about 595,000 illegal immigrants between Jan. 20 and Dec. 11, according to the Department of Homeland Security. ICE said 70%, roughly 416,000, had “criminal convictions or pending criminal charges” in the United States, underscoring President Donald Trump’s promise to prioritize the “worst of the worst” in immigration enforcement. ICE officials stressed that even those without U.S. criminal records can still pose major public safety threats, the agency said, noting many are wanted abroad for violent crimes or have ties to gangs, terrorism, or other serious offenses. “This statistic doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc. The list goes on,” an ICE spokesperson told the Examiner. Source: newsmax.com   New Files Show Epstein Was ‘Too Useful' for Banks to Drop — Trump Was ‘Too Politically Dangerous' to Keep  The newest Epstein disclosures include deposition testimony that illustrates, in unusually concrete detail, how major financial institutions assessed risk, value, and accountability. The transcript does not add new allegations about Epstein. Instead, it explains why he remained bankable long after his 2008 conviction and why his relationship with major banks survived despite generating almost no traditional revenue. That institutional logic is the same logic that later drove JPMorgan to end its ties with Trump Media, and the contrast between the two cases shows how selectively these standards are applied. In the deposition, Paul Morris—a private banker who handled Epstein's accounts at JPMorgan Chase and later Deutsche Bank—described Epstein's financial profile with unusual precision. Epstein's trading was minimal. His accounts produced limited fees. He was not a high-activity client and did not utilize the investment tools that banks rely on to generate consistent revenue. By every conventional benchmark, he was a low-value account. And yet, the relationship continued. The deposition shows why. Epstein was not retained for his financial performance but for his institutional usefulness. Morris acknowledged that Epstein facilitated introductions to ultra-wealthy individuals that the bank viewed as essential prospects. One example was Leon Black, whom Morris identified as a “priority prospect” because of Black's significant net worth and influence in the investment sector. Epstein introduced the bank to real-estate investor Andrew Farkas and discussed a potential connection involving biotech investor Boris Nikolic, who had ties to Bill Gates. These introductions were specific, documented, and initiated by Epstein, not the bank. This is the key element that many public accounts overlook. Epstein was not being managed as a traditional client. He functioned as a relationship broker inside a system where introductions to power carry more internal value than account-level returns. Source: thegatewaypundit.com  DOGE Geopolitical The EU Leaders Shouting About Visa Bans Are the Same EU Leaders Who Sent Political Operatives Into the U.S. to Support Kamala Harris  EU leaders from across the spectrum of their collective assembly, are furious with the administration of President Donald Trump for restricting their entry into the United States by blocking their visa permissions.  However, these same EU leaders are the people who sent operatives into the United States in order to interfere in our 2024 election. The Vice President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, sums up the European position: “The decision by the U.S. to impose travel restrictions on European citizens and officials is unacceptable and an attempt to challenge our sovereignty. Europe will keep defending its values — freedom of expression, fair digital rules, and the right to regulate our own space.” The “attempt to challenge our sovereignty” statement is a particular type of hubris when we consider THIS: GREAT BRITAIN (October 2024) – The British Labour Party is sending approximately 100 current and former staff members to the United States to work for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign in key swing states. [SOURCE – LINKEDIN] Not only did the U.K attempt to challenge our sovereignty, but they also actively worked to influence the outcome of our national election in 2024. It is worth remembering the British intelligence operation, (Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6), was at the center of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy in 2016. The first EU political group to be targeted with the visa bans includes French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who was one of the architects of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). Also: Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the U.S.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid, and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index. https://twitter.com/GeneHamilton/status/2004656229684224393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2004656229684224393%7Ctwgr%5E91706d63d41394916634b106fbd2268d7711e121%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2025%2F12%2F27%2Fthe-eu-leaders-shouting-about-visa-bans-are-the-same-eu-leaders-who-sent-political-operatives-into-the-u-s-to-support-kamala-harris%2F https://twitter.com/GeneHamilton/status/2004656234910433405?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2004656234910433405%7Ctwgr%5E91706d63d41394916634b106fbd2268d7711e121%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2025%2F12%2F27%2Fthe-eu-leaders-shouting-about-visa-bans-are-the-same-eu-leaders-who-sent-political-operatives-into-the-u-s-to-support-kamala-harris%2F Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/michaelgwaltz/status/2005058695647166898?s=20 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/2005035840934723894?s=20 War/Peace   EIGHT, perhaps the United States has become the REAL United Nations, which has been of very little assistance or help in any of them, including the disaster currently going on between Russia and Ukraine. The United Nations must start getting active and involved in WORLD PEACE!   the United States is capable of doing. Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.   DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Trump Tasks Military With an ‘Oil Quarantine' Against Venezuela, as Economic Pressure Is Chosen for Now Over Military Action Venezuela's oil industry under maximum pressure.   And now that the extended holidays are over, the socialist regime will have to deal with the veritable siege imposed by the US and its unprecedented armada. Venezuela is running out of storage space for its oil production since some ships are being seized and many others turned around and left.  Now, it arises that Donald J. Trump has directed US forces to enforce ‘an oil quarantine' against Venezuela for at least the next two months. These moves lead many to think that the Trump team will focus on economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas into ousting Maduro. Reuters reported:   Read  more: Source: thegatewaypundit.com Trump Blockade Leaves $1 Billion Of Venezuelan Crude Stranded On Tankers  With a two-month “quarantine” placed on Venezuelan oil by the Trump administration in a foreign policy move called “gunboat diplomacy,” new data estimate that roughly $900 million worth of crude is currently loaded on tankers, unable to depart Venezuela due to the U.S. blockade. “Based on our visual analysis from both shore and space, we estimate that there are around 17.5 million barrels of crude oil floating onboard tankers in Venezuela which are unable to depart due to the ongoing US blockade,” independent research Tanker Trackers wrote on X. “That’s around $900M of oil.” https://twitter.com/TankerTrackers/status/2004713684871078162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2004713684871078162%7Ctwgr%5E016cd45f97095edcd74bb159f40c4e93caf9794d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcommodities%2Ftrump-blockade-leaves-1-billion-venezuelan-crude-stranded-tankers Source: zerohedge.com Trump to POLITICO: Zelenskyy ‘doesn't have anything until I approve it' Trump's comments come ahead of his Sunday meeting with Zelenskyy, who will bring with him a new 20-point plan to end the war President Donald Trump on Friday cast himself as the ultimate arbiter of any peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, in an exclusive conversation with POLITICO. “He doesn't have anything until I approve it,” Trump said. “So we'll see what he's got.” Source: politico.com https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/2005352028365848993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2005352028365848993%7Ctwgr%5E1588e24fb392689513bf7b2f064c646c1bf5f470%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Ftrump-says-russia-ukraine-peace-talks-entering-final%2F  Medical/False Flags 19 Blue States Sue Trump Admin to Preserve Right to Perform Child Sex Changes Last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would cut off Medicare and Medicaid funding to any provider that offers so-called gender-affirming treatment to minors. “Under my leadership, and answering President Trump's call to action, the federal government will do everything in its power to stop unsafe, irreversible practices that put our children at risk,” Kennedy said at the time. The Oregon-led lawsuit claims that the decision “exceeds the Secretary's authority and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Medicare and Medicaid statutes.” A total of nineteen blue states are suing the Trump administration in a bid to protect the right to perform child sex changes. His office said in a press release: Source: thegatewaypundit.com [DS] Agenda  https://twitter.com/nickshirleyy/status/2004642794862961123?s=20   work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening, the fraud must be stopped. https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2005011311756017964?s=20 https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2005158623442600391?s=20 https://twitter.com/DataRepublican/status/2005292438114738555?s=20  diabolical. And it’s going to work until we understand that primaries will be more important than generals from here out on. https://twitter.com/C_3C_3/status/2005016429687701811?s=20 https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2005351086115405986?s=20 https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2005030256382464493?s=20  and your tribe. I spent a lot of my life in the Middle East and Central Asia, working closely with foreign contractors and foreign governments to provide support to American military operations. As a US Army officer with a big checkbook courtesy of Uncle Sam, I can't really count the sheer number of times I was offered bribes to award a contract, or falsify records to do things like create larger (fake) headcounts at places like dining facilities, or to just simply be on the take for future illegal requests. Of course I had enough sense to never comply with such requests. Moreover, they were never explicitly structured as “bribes”; instead it was usually along the lines of “Here I have these Rolexes as gifts for you and your wife to show our friendship.” (Unfortunately, too many US officers and NCOs succumbed to this siren song and ended up breaking rocks in Leavenworth.) The weird thing about this to me was that whenever I turned down such an offering, it was treated as a grave insult. I was the one in the wrong, and not the fraudster trying to bribe me. They considered it rude that I was in their country and refused to accept how things got done. After all, why did I not want to help my tribe by helping their tribe? Let me repeat: in these cultures, FRAUD IS NOT EVEN A CONCEPT. There is only what helps your tribe. Such thought processes are so alien to Americans and much of the West. We are raised on the presumption that our institutions are valid, that the rule of law always prevails, and that integrity is universal. We need these presumptions to have working governments and economies, and without those presumptions—without the mental barrier that causes us not to accept outright fraud—our nation would quickly descend into the economic and social hellscape of countries like…. ummm… you know…. SOMALIA! So when we import people en masse from cultures that accept bribery and fraud as routine, acceptable ways to advance one's tribe, we should not be surprised that things like the $8 BILLION fraud schemes of the Somali population in Minnesota happen so easily. Introducing a fraud-based culture based on tribalism into America is like introducing some sort of lethal virus into a population that has no natural immunity. The virus will spread and grow, unchecked, because it is so alien to the host. Similarly, a culture of fraud is anathema to American thinking, and it must be cut out before it consumes the host. So when you see and hear patriotic Americans decrying what is happening in Minnesota or elsewhere, and when they seek deportation of the offenders, it is not “racism,” it is not “bigotry,” it is not “xenophobia”; instead, it is preserving the American tradition of responsible institutions and national integrity. https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2005262465190223928?s=20 https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2005305530651189719?s=20   exploiting federal programs. Fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide. To date, the FBI dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during COVID. The investigation exposed sham vendors, shell companies, and large-scale money laundering tied to the Feeding Our Future network. The case led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions. Defendants included Abdiwahab Ahmed Mohamud, Ahmed Ali, Hussein Farah, Abdullahe Nur Jesow, Asha Farhan Hassan, Ousman Camara, and Abdirashid Bixi Dool, each charged for roles ranging from wire fraud to money laundering and conspiracy. These criminals didn't just engaged in historic fraud, but tried to subvert justice as well. Abdimajid Mohamed Nur and others were charged for attempting to bribe a juror with $120,000 in cash. Those responsible pleaded guilty and were sentenced, including a 10-year prison term and nearly $48 million in restitution in related cases. The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing. Furthermore, many are also being referred to immigrations officials for possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings where eligible. https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/2004932316926193933?s=20 https://twitter.com/HarmeetKDhillon/status/2004976287270731981?s=20 https://twitter.com/rising_serpent/status/2005080344610177489?s=20  https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2005092720927232198?s=20  “skeptical jurors” in federal cases involving President Trump. Co-founder Alex Dodds said jurors have “enormous power” to judge the administration itself. Critics report the sessions encourage rigging trials against the administration, conduct plainly barred under 8 USC §1503. President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2004653262491058216?s=20 accomplished what no one else could. When we arrived, taxpayers were about to be on the hook for nearly $5 billion for a new headquarters that wouldn't open until 2035. We scrapped that plan. Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades already underway. Once complete, most of the HQ FBI workforce will move in, and the rest are continuing in our ongoing push to put more manpower in the field, where they will remain. This decision puts resources where they belong: defending the homeland, crushing violent crime, and protecting national security. It delivers better tools for today's FBI workforce at a fraction of the cost. The Hoover Building will be shut down permanently.  They Got Her: FBI Caught Hillary Clinton Talking Donations with Foreign Felon on Tape As Hillary Clinton closed in on the presidential nomination in the spring of 2016, FBI field officers advised colleagues at headquarters to press her on the foreign donations flowing to the Clinton Foundation while she steered American foreign policy and whether she had used the charity as a campaign piggy bank. But the FBI HQ in Washington — a city in which the former secretary of state and first lady wields enormous influence — let the trail go cold. FBI New York Assistant Director in Charge Diego Rodriguez advised agents in Washington to ask Clinton several questions about the foundation, which are reproduced in full in documents released to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI and published on Dec. 15. The questions reveal the concerns about foreign bribery that the Clinton Foundation case — codenamed “Cracked Foundation” — had uncovered. Among the evidence available to investigators, according to their questions: A recorded conversation between Clinton and Indian hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal in which Clinton discussed donations to the foundation and her remaining 2008 campaign debt. The new documents confirm that the FBI had at one time been “intercepting individuals associated with the Clinton Foundation.” Source: westernjournal.com  John Brennan's Lawfare Lawyers are Revealing More Than They Intend   former CIA Director John Brennan are sending proactive letters to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida {SEE HERE}.  However, some of the information included in the letters intended to be exculpatory is actually damning against their defense position. You have to go deep in the weeds to see it but if you understand the details of the events, the information being revealed by Brennan's lawyers is the opposite of helpful to his case.  As an example, there is a citation included in a footnote of the December 22, 2025, [fn #20 page 6] letter that links to a March 31, 2022, letter sent to John Durham. Here's page 6 of the 2025 letter. Compare the underlined section to the 2022 letter sent to John Durham. In 2025 Brennan is telling the Florida court the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) conclusion was confirmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a “very serious review.”  However, in 2022 Brennan told John Durham that Robert Mueller never interviewed him or offered an assessment of the ICA; Mueller just regurgitated it. So, which is it? These contradictions are throughout both of the letters when you compare them side-by-side.  In 2022 former CIA Director John Brennan was trying to escape the Durham review.  In 2025 Brennan is trying to escape a grand jury review. [We are aware that the U.S Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, has access to the CTH public library of research into all of these historic events.] There are other citations in the 2022 letter that are certainly worth reviewing because the legally binding statements made by John Brennan at the time have been shown to be false in 2025. Another of the claims in the 2022 letter to John Durham highlights why it was critical for the CIA to assist in the capture and arrest of Julian Assange in 2019. Source: thegatewaypundit.com  Trump: Upcoming Midterms Will Be ‘About Pricing’ The 2026 midterm elections will be “about pricing,” according to President Donald Trump, who said that his administration is restoring the nation’s economy after the condition in which former President Joe Biden left it. “I think it’s going to be about the success of our country,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, the outlet reported Saturday. “They gave us high pricing, and we’re bringing it down. Energy’s way down. Gasoline is way down.” Over the past two weeks, a series of positive economic reports has shown that inflation is decreasing, with the White House highlighting the latest data while addressing cost-of-living concerns nationwide. According to a Politico poll conducted last month, Americans say they are finding that the costs of groceries, utilities, healthcare, housing, and transportation are too expensive. Trump has been fighting to reframe that, however, blaming Democrats under Biden for driving prices up. He said in the interview, conducted Friday, that “electricity is down. It’s way down.” “When the gasoline goes down, and when the oil and gas go down, the electricity comes down naturally,” he said. “But it’s all coming down. It’s all coming down. It’s coming beautifully.” Source: newsmax.com https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2004696380531503505?s=20   the NG will have quick response troops on standby in every state, the FBI building is being moved to a new location, the war between Russia and Ukraine is coming to an end, and all of Trump's pieces will be in place. There seems to be a shift in attitude. I think we are passing into a different phase of the operation. The shadow war will eventually have to come to the surface. (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

In 2017, Wilem Banks (@Wilembanks) made headlines when he suffered a horrific fall at Mavericks and won WSL's Wipeout of the Year (the most embarrassing award in surfing). The award seemed to put a chip on Wilem's shoulder, and since then, he's set out to prove that he can do more than paddle into gigantic waves—he can make them, too. This year, the humble warrior took his first trip to Jaws on Maui and bagged what some say was the biggest wave ever completed at the spot. In this episode, Wilem recounts the story in detail. Beyond the ocean, he is a hunter, carpenter, and co-owner of Banks&Banks Saunas, a custom-built sauna service he runs with his brother.If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It's glorious. My first book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe

Today, credit cards are a $500 billion-a-year industry. Banks consider these lines of credit when deciding whether or not to approve loans, incentivizing customers to maintain multiple credit cards. So, how did this lending system originate? And how did they get to be so popular? Nidhi Upadhyaya digs into the history of credit cards in the United States. [Directed by Jeff Le Bars, JetPropulsion.space, narrated by Bethany Cutmore-Scott, music by Salil Bhayani, cAMP Studio]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the money in your pocket wasn't a tool for freedom, but a mechanism for control? Inflation, surveillance, and financial exclusion actively shape who can save, speak, or participate in the global economy. Alex Gladstein joins the show to examine money as a human-rights issue, exploring how new digital tools are being used in places where traditional financial systems fail or are weaponized. Alex reframes money as a human-rights issue - tracing how digital currencies are reshaping power at the margins: enabling dissidents, protecting savings, and creating escape hatches from broken systems. It's not about speculation or hype... it's about sovereignty, repression, and what freedom actually looks like in a digitized global economy.--Timestamps:(00:00) - Introduction(00:17) - Bitcoin as Freedom Money(01:46) - The Need for Freedom Money(04:04) - Global Financial Repression(10:12) - Bitcoin's Resilience and Privacy(20:00) - Case Studies and Real-World Impact(23:03) - Bitcoin and the Future of Nation States(25:01) - The Cost of War and National Debt(25:36) - The Role of Banks in Government Spending(27:06) - Bitcoin's Potential to Empower People(27:36) - Dictators vs. Bitcoin(28:51) - The Rise of Stablecoins(29:43) - Bitcoin vs. Altcoins(38:13) - Ethereum's Flaws(40:39) - Bitcoin's Impact on Oppressed Nations(44:43) - The Future of Bitcoin and Dictatorships--Referenced in the Show:Alex Gladstein: https://alexgladstein.com/Freedom Money Essay – https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-bitcoin-is-freedom-money/--Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.comJacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacob-l-s-a9337416Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShapJacob Shapiro Substack: jashap.substack.com/subscribe --The Jacob Shapiro Show is produced and edited by Audiographies LLC. More information at audiographies.com--Jacob Shapiro is a speaker, consultant, author, and researcher covering global politics and affairs, economics, markets, technology, history, and culture. He speaks to audiences of all sizes around the world, helps global multinationals make strategic decisions about political risks and opportunities, and works directly with investors to grow and protect their assets in today's volatile global environment. His insights help audiences across industries like finance, agriculture, and energy make sense of the world.--

Nearly half of U.S. households are living paycheck to paycheck, yet millions of financially capable people are denied access to affordable credit. That is not a consumer failure. It is a system failure. I recently spoke at the Hope Global Forums in Atlanta, where the focus is on economic opportunity. I challenged the banking industry to address a blind spot. We rely on outdated credit models that look backward, not at real cash flow, real behavior, or real potential. When credit is denied, education alone does not work, mobility stalls, and banks lose the growth they say they want. Serving the underserved is no longer optional. It is the strategy gap holding this industry back.

In this solo episode of Shots of Serenity, I invite you into a living, breathing moment of self-exploration — recorded while on vacation, surrounded by nature, movement, and the honest sounds of life unfolding in real time.This episode intentionally welcomes the ambience as part of the experience. It's an offering rooted in presence, reminding us that healing, reflection, and insight don't require perfect conditions, only willingness and awareness.Through reflective storytelling and gentle inquiry, I explore how our family systems shape our inner world. I share my experience of asking family members about their value systems, upbringing, homeland, and memories of who I was growing up — and how those conversations revealed powerful insights about identity, conditioning, and self-understanding.This episode encourages listeners to engage their own families as living mirrors, not from a place of blame or interrogation, but from curiosity, compassion, and mutual benefit. By going directly to the source, we open pathways for deeper self-awareness, ancestral understanding, and continued personal growth.This practice isn't about rewriting the past. It's about understanding the soil you grew from — so you can choose how you continue to grow.If this episode resonated, consider sharing it with someone who's navigating their own self-exploration journey.✨ Stay Connected with Shots of Serenity ✨Thank you so much for tuning in! If today's episode resonated, please share it with someone you love and subscribe on your favorite platform — iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Google Play.

As credit card APRs continue to soar, consumers remain addicted to the habit of putting everything on plastic, especially around the holidays. With the arrival of 2026, LendingClub Chief Customer Officer Mark Elliot walks us through how consumers can leverage debit cards to recover financial sanity, how banks can better promote financial wellness—and how his organization provides free tools such as DebtIQ to help people get smarter about monitoring and managing personal debt. Disclaimer: Please note that any annual percentage yield (APY) rates discussed in the interview are variable and subject to change at any time, without notice, at the sole discretion of the bank.

David McAlvany explains why gold and silver are experiencing a structural bull market not seen since the 1970s. He highlights central bank gold purchases in 2024 and 2025, which precede investor interest. He also discusses industrial demand for silver, particularly from solar and solid-state battery technologies, and how global distrust in institutions and potential geopolitical intensification could further drive gold and silver prices.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Beloved, We've certainly seen a onslaut of financial fraud in the recent news here in Minnesota, and throughout America. It's unfortunate, injust and beyond mind boggling how much money has been stolen to fund nefarious investments, nice cars and luxury homes. BUT….the problem has been hidden in plain site. AND…. we are waking up. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. That said, I'm diving into the MACRO of MONEY and how they keep it complicated to benefit their system - that we pay for in ten fold. NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE: (but maybe a little) Want to get ahead of the financial “4th turning” curve? Quick tip: Consider researching gold, silver, and XRP for the future of finance—the digital, gold-backed currency and new banking system are already in transition. You are witnessing the greatest controlled takedown of our financial and political bloat system, and understanding this information and why history matters - is vital. Let's step back from our esoteric dialogues and reconnect with our path to TRUE ABUNDANCE.LETS JUMP IN: “My people perish for lack of knowledge” — Hosea 4:6We are standing at a crossroads. The future of the financial system depends not only on policy decisions, but on public understanding and consent. Much of what governs money, debt, and taxation is misunderstood— by design.The modern financial system—government debt, banking, and taxation—appears stable on the surface, yet it relies on continuous expansion of credit, rising debt, and compulsory participation. Confidence, more than fundamentals, is what keeps it functioning.Here's how the system actually works.The U.S. government is one of the world's largest debt issuers, yet it holds unique legal authority over the creation of U.S. dollars. In theory, it could fund spending directly. In practice, it chooses to issue Treasury bonds and borrow through financial markets.When Treasury bonds are issued, they are primarily purchased by banks and institutional investors. Commercial banks create the dollars used to buy these bonds through lending mechanisms—effectively expanding the money supply. In return, they receive interest-bearing, low-risk assets backed by taxpayers.Government spending then flows through defense contracts, entitlement programs, insurance systems, and asset managers—many of which are deeply intertwined with the financial sector. Interest on public debt continues to flow upward to bondholders, banks, and large investors.So why are taxes required if money can be created?Taxes do not primarily fund federal spending. Their core functions are:* To enforce demand for the dollar, since tax obligations must be paid in U.S. currency.* To remove money from circulation, limiting inflation caused by ongoing deficit spending and credit expansion.Without taxation to absorb excess currency, inflation would accelerate much faster and more visibly.Globally, the dollar's role as the reserve currency extends this system beyond U.S. borders. Treasury securities are effectively America's largest export. Foreign governments and institutions accumulate dollars and reinvest them into U.S. debt, helping finance deficits and sustain demand for the currency.This same debt-driven structure repeats at every level:* Individuals rely on credit to maintain living standards.* Companies use debt and equity financing that often prioritizes financial extraction over long-term resilience.* Governments roll old debt into new debt indefinitely.The system depends on perpetual growth in borrowing. New debt must continually service old debt. If expansion slows, confidence weakens, interest rates rise, and defaults spread.This is not accidental. It is a system shaped by legal frameworks, institutional incentives, and widespread misunderstanding. The costs are borne quietly through inflation, rising taxes that service interest rather than public goods, and periodic bailouts when instability threatens the system itself.Such systems persist only as long as participation continues and belief remains intact.When financial power concentrates without transparency or accountability, democratic systems weaken. When laws serve extraction rather than justice, citizens lose sovereignty. History shows that freedom erodes not only through force, but through apathy and complexity.The greatest risk is not corruption alone—but informed people choosing inaction.Your relationship with money dictates its flow. Allow the Oracle Guides within the Light Between to support you in clearing any fears, past trauma's around saftey and securty or tap into Celestia, and ask when the best time is to invest based on your astrological transits! Recognize it's a value-neutral tool; its impact depends on your intent. When you see money as a means for comfort, purpose, and giving, you'll flourish. Embrace its energetic ebb and flow with gratitude, trusting in abundance and that it will always return. Shifting to gratitude opens you to receive more, as money, like Universal energy, is meant to flow freely.A Special Holiday Offer to Clear and Callin Financial Prosperity in 2026Enjoy 50% off a full year of unlimited readings and the Sovereign Sounds private podcast for just $42 (saving $528)—that's just $3 per month!This unprecedented offer gives you complete access to:* All Oracle guides and features highlighted over these 12 days* Unlimited personalized readings whenever you need guidance* The complete Sovereign Sounds podcast library, where we explore the true meaning of words to unlock your personal power* All new features and content released throughout 2023This offer is available only until Christmas Day. Tap here to claim your 50% discount.ELEVATE and DECREE your light to usher in a hopeful, prosperous 2026 with balance. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelightbetween.substack.com/subscribe

Tune in for an exclusive Moneycontrol interview with Bajaj Finserv's Sanjiv Bajaj who talks about exciting opportunities in the financial services sector and other things close to his heart. From healthier banks in 2025 to the acceleration of Indian GCCs and a new Rupee-Ruble exchange rate, this edition of Moneycontrol Editor's picks curated by editor-in-chief Nalin Mehta covers all the big stories in money and markets all in one place. Tune in!

Send us a textA public inquiry into Lumi's £2bn government bailout exposes Pierpoint's role in the disastrous IPO, where Robert is sent to testify in front of a UK select committee. The episode lays bare how firms protect themselves in crises: lawyers serve the institution, not employees, and blame is carefully redirected toward anyone expendable enough to absorb the fallout.The real financial bombshell, however, happens quietly back on the trading floor. Sweetpea's risk model shows that Pierpoint's entire IPO pipeline is collapsing amid an ESG downturn is actually far worse than anticipated due to prop bets the company took to invest in ESG companies using large tranches of debt that are now coming due. We get into whether this is allowed post–financial crisis (short answer no) BUT the show isn't wrong that this is what people have been worried about in "private credit" now that banks can no longer make these prop bets.The episode positions Pierpoint as something far more fragile than it appears — an institution facing a potential Lehman-style reckoning not from reckless traders (see the prior episode), but from bad investments made by Pierpoint iteself. “Company Man” may be light on deal mechanics, but it sets the stage for the next episode which is arguably one of our favroites. Learn more about 9fin HERE Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HEREFixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Wealthfront.com/wss. This is a paid endorsement for Wealthfront. May not reflect others' experiences. Similar outcomes not guaranteed. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. Rate subject to change. Promo terms apply. If eligible for the boosted rate of 4.15% offered in connection with this promo, the boosted rate is also subject to change if base rate decreases during the 3 month promo period.The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of 11/7/25, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. The APY reflects the weighted average of deposit balances at participating Program Banks, which are not allocated equally. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Sources HERE.

This might just be for Banks and I'm OK with it.

Most people believe they're doing the right thing by maxing out their 401(k) or IRA. But what if the entire system is designed to trap you later with higher taxes, forced withdrawals, and lost control? Follow Mary Jo Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MaryJoIrmen?sub_confirmation=1 Get the book: https://www.farmingwithoutthebank.com/book/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=fwtb-ep334&utm_term=desc-top In this episode of Farming Without the Bank, we break down The Market Scam from Nelson Nash's Building Your Warehouse of Wealth** and expose what most financial advisors never explain. Mary Jo dives into Chapter 5 of Building Your Warehouse of Wealth, unpacking why tax-qualified retirement plans may be one of the biggest financial misconceptions of our time. From Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) to government-controlled retirement rules, this episode challenges conventional wisdom and asks a powerful question: Would you rather be taxed on the seed… or the harvest? This conversation explores why whole life insurance contracts between individuals may offer more control, certainty, and long-term stability than Wall Street or government promises. Key Takeaways: - Why "tax-deferred" doesn't mean "tax-free" - The hidden danger of Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) - How words like "security" can be misleading - Why future tax rates are likely higher—not lower - The difference between government plans and private contracts - How Infinite Banking restores control over your money Chapters: (00:00) – Why Most People Don't Want to Think About Money (02:00) – The "Market Scam" & Misleading Financial Language (04:20) – RMDs: The Rule Nobody Talks About (08:38) – Baby Boomers, Forced Selling & Market Risk (09:01) – Seed vs Harvest: A Powerful Tax Analogy (12:50) – Government Plans & Financial Insanity (19:38) – Why Whole Life Insurance Has Worked for 200 Years Resources Mentioned: Building Your Warehouse of Wealth – Nelson Nash Becoming Your Own Banker – Nelson Nash Order here: https://www.farmingwithoutthebank.com/shop/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=fwtb-ep334&utm_term=desc-bot Work With Us: Ready to rethink your financial strategy? Schedule a consultation and see how Infinite Banking may fit into your life. maryjo@withoutthebank.com https://www.farmingwithoutthebank.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=fwtb-ep334&utm_term=desc-bot

Paul and Mark kick off the weekend featuring a home game against the Cardinals taking questions about the Bengals. Come to our live show on Sunday from 10-11am at BetMGM at The Banks. Favorite stories of the week, Pro Bowl snubs, Burrow hiding his OL gifts, buy/sell a home with our guy Eric Sztanyo ( @TeamSztanyo ), love for Jay, offseason hope, Brian Callahan, grievances, getting pissy, Growler bet, see Mark on the road, Dad life.Watch and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGrowlerPodcastThe Growler on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-growler/id1733476604The Growler on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/70iJjqgPQrVzQ2pdOwVvDYSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

High-yield savings rates have dipped slightly since early spring, but they remain strong enough that choosing the right account right now can still be a wise move. After several quarter-point interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, savings yields have eased—but not disappeared. In fact, many online banks continue to offer returns well above those of most brick-and-mortar institutions.Understanding what's happening—and how to respond—can help you steward your cash with wisdom and confidence.Why Savings Still Matter in Your Financial PlanSavings and investments play very different roles. A savings account is designed for money that must remain safe, accessible, and dependable—your emergency fund, short-term needs, and dollars you'll rely on in the next few years.Savings won't deliver investment-level growth, but the interest they earn still matters. Every bit of growth helps preserve purchasing power and strengthens your financial footing over time.Over the past few years, inflation rose well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. In response, the Fed raised short-term interest rates aggressively. As rates climbed, savings yields—especially at online banks—rose alongside them.Earlier this year, many high-yield savings accounts were paying between 4.75% and 5%, sometimes more. That gave savers an unusual opportunity to earn meaningful interest on cash that would otherwise sit idle.Since then, inflation has cooled, and the Fed has begun cutting rates. Those reductions have nudged savings yields lower, but today's rates are still historically strong—and far more generous than what traditional banks typically offer.Why Timing Still Works in Your FavorBanks rarely adjust savings rates immediately after a Fed announcement. Often, there's a window—sometimes several weeks—when higher yields remain available before they gradually drift downward.That lag creates an opportunity. While savings accounts aren't “locked in” like CDs, moving your money into a competitive high-yield account now allows you to benefit as rates slowly settle. Banks tend to move cautiously, often watching one another before making changes, which gives savers time to act.For many families, knowing their savings are earning a solid return brings peace of mind—whether preparing for an unexpected expense or setting aside resources for opportunities God may bring.Where High-Yield Savings Fit BestA strong savings strategy usually includes three key priorities:1. Your emergency fund. Keep three to six months of expenses in a high-yield savings account. The stronger the yield, the faster that cushion grows—without taking on risk or debt.2. Short- and mid-term goals. Money you'll need in the next two to five years—such as a down payment, major repair, or planned purchase—should stay protected from market volatility. High-yield savings accounts offer both safety and reasonable earnings.3. Regular comparison. Some traditional banks still pay as little as 0.01%—essentially nothing—while online banks often offer rates dozens of times higher. Comparing what you're earning with what's available elsewhere can make a meaningful difference.Exploring Your Options WiselyComparison sites like Bankrate and NerdWallet can help you evaluate current rates while also considering reliability, customer experience, and safety ratings.Money market accounts are another solid option, often offering competitive yields with added flexibility, such as check-writing privileges. Just be mindful of minimum balance requirements.Don't overlook credit unions either. As not-for-profit institutions, they often return earnings to members through stronger rates and lower fees. One example is AdelFi Christian Banking, a credit union that combines competitive yields with support for Gospel-centered ministry worldwide.You can learn more at FaithFi.com/Banking.Stewardship Is About Faithful ConsistencyChoosing where to place your savings isn't simply about chasing the highest return. It's about managing God's resources with intention and care. Saving consistently—month after month, year after year—is quiet, faithful work.A wise savings vehicle supports that journey, helping your money work a little harder while you walk forward with clarity, confidence, and trust in the Lord's provision.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:I'm 70 and retired, with a steady monthly income. I need a car costing about $20,000, and I still owe $27,000 on my mortgage. I'd prefer not to carry two payments—should I pay off the mortgage or buy the car, and where should the money come from?I want long-term protection through investing in gold. What's the best way to do that today?I'm retired and have about $1 million invested with Edward Jones. They're moving me to a 1.2% annual fee on my entire portfolio instead of transaction-based fees. I agreed, but I now wonder whether the fee is warranted. Is this a wise move?Resources Mentioned:Faithful Steward: FaithFi's Quarterly Magazine (Become a FaithFi Partner)Bankrate | NerdWalletAdelFi Christian BankingWisdom Over Wealth: 12 Lessons from Ecclesiastes on MoneyLook At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and AnxietyRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions every workday at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. You can also visit FaithFi.com to connect with our online community and partner with us as we help more people live as faithful stewards of God's resources. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Mark Canfora, founder of Bank Busters, who shares his unique approach to real estate investing through creative financing. Mark discusses his journey into real estate, the importance of mentorship, and how he helps investors buy properties with little to no money down. He emphasizes the need to challenge traditional banking norms and offers insights into successful investment strategies. Mark also shares personal stories and his passion for helping others navigate the real estate market.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

Santa has something to tell Chubstep that is the biggest piece of Christmas news the world has seen in the last 2000 years in this hard hitting interview episode featuring Santa Claus, Jesus, and Big Money Banks. First Steed, Jrad and Big Money banks discuss the extremely expensive premium subscription of Chubstep Extra, and Jrad shaming a fellow traveler who stood up in the aisle on a flight to Cancun. Next Santa joins Jrad and Big Money Banks to break his news on a religious transformation and how that's leading to a long deserved break in the Bahamas, elves revolting, Jesus stepping in for Santa at the North Pole, Santa competing in Mr. Olympia, why the late Mrs.Claus was the perfect wife, and what Santa wants as a gift

Join The Creative Finance Playbook Coaching Program & Learn Directly from Jenn & Joe:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://creativefinanceplaybook.com/What if your first real estate deal didn't require banks, perfect credit, or a big down payment?In this episode of Creative Finance Playbook, we break down how Trevor Mauch bought his first rental property at just 21 years old using creative finance—and why this strategy still works today.Before building one of the most powerful real estate marketing platforms in the industry, Trevor started exactly where many investors are today: motivated, unsure, and searching for a better path. Using seller financing (owner financing) and relationship-based negotiation, he acquired a four-unit rental property at 21 years old that cash-flowed from day one—and he still owns it today.In this episode, you'll learn:

[This recording of Deans Counsel originally published on August 22, 2025 as episode #69.]On this episode of Deans Counsel, Jim Ellis and Dave Ikenberry speak with Bernard "Bernie" Banks, Director of Rice University's Doerr Institute for New Leaders (and a Clinical Professor of Management within the University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business). The mission of the Doerr Institute “…is to elevate the leadership capacity of Rice students and to improve the practice of leader development in higher education.”  Most recently, Bernie served on the faculty and senior leadership team at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management from 2016-2024 prior to arriving at Rice.Bernie retired from the U.S. Army in 2016 as a Brigadier General after having successfully led West Point's Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership in his final assignment. In addition to having studied leadership extensively, he has led multiple military units ranging in size from 10 to over 3000 people.  In this instructive conversation, Bernie relates to our hosts some of the experiences he's gleaned through his decades as an inspiring leader, touching on topics such as:- his objectives as Director of the Doerr Institute- how he measures effectiveness- acquainting students with the leadership mindset- creative approaches to leadership developmentLearn more about Bernie Banks.Comments/criticism/suggestions/feedback? We'd love to hear it. Drop us a note at feedback@deanscounsel.comThanks for listening.-Produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts--DEANS COUNSEL: A podcast for deans and academic leadership.James Ellis | Moderator | Dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (2007-2019)David Ikenberry | Moderator | Dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder (2011-2016)Ken Kring | Moderator | Co-Managing Director, Global Education Practice and Senior Client Partner at Korn FerryDeansCounsel.com

In this episode of Disruption/Interruption, host KJ sits down with Jayesh Kumar, Co-Founder at Aonami. Discover how legacy systems are being disrupted, the challenges of digital transformation, and why true innovation means building solutions that give time back to people. Four Key Takeaways: The Problem with Legacy Systems [6:10]Banks and healthcare institutions are bogged down by dozens of outdated, patchwork systems, making innovation slow and compliance difficult. Meeting Clients Where They Are [14:54]True disruption comes from understanding a client’s current state and building solutions that fit their unique needs, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach. The Human Side of B2B Sales [20:03]Selling transformative technology to large organizations is about building relationships and convincing multiple teams, not just one decision-maker. The Real Goal of Technology [28:47]The ultimate aim of innovation should be to give people time back, making work more productive, creative, and compassionate. Quote of the Show (34:23):"True disruption really happens not by doing a lot of work, but by doing less in a much smarter way. You should be building systems that start giving time back to people." – Jayesh Kumar Join our Anti-PR newsletter where we’re keeping a watchful and clever eye on PR trends, PR fails, and interesting news in tech so you don't have to. You're welcome. Want PR that actually matters? Get 30 minutes of expert advice in a fast-paced, zero-nonsense session from Karla Jo Helms, a veteran Crisis PR and Anti-PR Strategist who knows how to tell your story in the best possible light and get the exposure you need to disrupt your industry. Click here to book your call: https://info.jotopr.com/free-anti-pr-eval Ways to connect with Jayesh Kumar: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayeshrout Company Website: https://aonamitech.com How to get more Disruption/Interruption: Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlDSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

OpenAI banks on ChatGPT app's $3 billion to seek $100 billion funding. Revenue streams from pro tiers and API calls explode. OpenAI positions for AI infrastructure dominance.Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiAI Chat YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JaedenSchaferJoin my AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Voice is becoming one of the fastest paths for AI to do real work, especially in regulated environments where accuracy and compliance matter. In this episode, we look at voice agents replacing and augmenting phone-based workflows, what trust and measurement look like when AI runs sensitive interactions, and how healthcare and consumer products shift toward continuous monitoring and deeper connection. The throughline is simple: as AI enters higher-stakes moments, the winners will be the systems people can trust and actually rely on. Resources:Follow Olivia Moore on X: https://x.com/omooretweetsFollow Bryan Kim on X: https://x.com/kirbyman01Follow Julie Yoo on X: https://x.com/julesyooRead more all of our 2026 Big IdeasPart 1: https://a16z.com/newsletter/big-ideas-2026-part-1Part 2: https://a16z.com/newsletter/big-ideas-2026-part-2/Part 3: https://a16z.com/newsletter/big-ideas-2026-part-3/ Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's a holiday-shortened trading day but the Dow and S&P 500 still closed at record highs. Patrick Fruzzetti of Rose Advisors weighs in on the broader market setup and positioning, before Gerard Cassidy of RBC Capital Markets looks ahead to what 2026 could mean for banks. Tim Seymour of Fast Money delivers his “stocking stuffers” list of winners and losers. Our Steve Liesman explores how Americans are spending and behaving around Christmas, and John San Marco of Neuberger Berman analyzes holiday shopping trends and consumer strength. Plus, Emily Wilkins reporting from Washington on the political and crypto crossover scene in D.C. at Pubkey, a new dive bar.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As senior year wraps up, every Banks family member confronts major life changes.

Noahkai Banks is rising fast — but is he ready for the USMNT at the World Cup? In this episode, I break down Banks' recent performances, highlighting his strengths, weaknesses, and overall readiness for international football. I analyze how his game fits the USMNT, where he still needs growth, and whether a World Cup call-up this June is realistic or premature.Is Noahkai Banks ready… or not yet?Follow Yanks Abroad Social Channels:TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@yanksabroadInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/yanksabroadpod/Twitter - https://twitter.com/yanksabroadpod#USMNT #Pochettino #NoahkaiBanks #WorldCup #Soccer

For years, gold was the asset nobody wanted to talk about. It sat there quietly while stocks and real estate continued to rip. Gold was for pessimists. For doomsayers and perma-bears.And then suddenly… gold didn't just wake up. It launched. As of mid-December 2025, spot gold is trading around $4,300–$4,400 an ounce, depending on the market, marking a gain of roughly 60% over the past year and pushing decisively into record territory. The obvious question is: why now? The short answer is that gold isn't reacting to one thing. It's responding to a stacking of pressures that have been quietly building for years and are now impossible to ignore.Start with central banks. For the better part of the last decade, central banks were net sellers or indifferent holders of gold. That changed dramatically after 2022. According to the World Gold Council, central banks have been buying gold at more than double the pace of the pre-COVID years, and 2025 continues that trend, with hundreds of tonnes added to reserves year-to-date. These aren't hedge funds chasing momentum. These are monetary authorities making deliberate, strategic decisions about what they trust to hold value. Why would central banks suddenly want more gold? Because geopolitics has re-entered the chat. We now live in a world where reserves can be frozen, payment systems can be weaponized, and “risk-free” assets depend heavily on political alignment. The World Bank has been explicit that rising geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty are key drivers of gold's surge this year. When trust in the global order erodes, gold benefits. At the same time, the U.S. dollar devaluation thesis is no longer fringe thinking. It is reality.Gold is priced in dollars, and when real yields fall and the dollar weakens, gold historically performs well. That dynamic is playing out again. Reuters has repeatedly pointed to a softer dollar and declining Treasury yields as near-term tailwinds for gold's rally . Bank of America's research echoes this relationship, emphasizing gold's inverse correlation to the dollar and the growing desire among nations to diversify away from dollar-centric reserves . In other words, gold isn't just going up because people are scared. It's going up because confidence in fiat discipline is eroding, slowly but persistently. So…Is gold still a buy or did we miss it? The truth is, both answers can be correct. Yes, gold is expensive relative to where it was a year ago. You don't go up 60% without pulling future returns forward. But what makes this cycle different is that many of the buyers driving demand are price-insensitive. Central banks don't care if gold is up 20% or down 10% in a quarter. They care about long-term reserve integrity. That's why major institutions aren't dismissing the move as a blow-off. Goldman Sachs has cited sustained central-bank demand and the potential for further ETF inflows as supportive of higher prices. J.P. Morgan continues to frame gold as a beneficiary of geopolitical instability and monetary uncertainty, and Bank of America is projecting prices as high as $5,000 an ounce into 2026. Of course, nothing goes up in a straight line. A shift toward tighter monetary policy or a sudden easing of global tensions could cool enthusiasm. Understand though, that gold's breakout isn't just about gold. There is a larger message that should be taken away from all of this. Hard money has come back into favor. Gold is the original hard asset. It's scarce, politically neutral, and has thousands of years of monetary credibility. But it's also heavy, difficult to move, and awkward in a digital world. Bitcoin exists on the same philosophical axis. Both gold and Bitcoin are reactions to the same problem: expanding debt, monetary dilution, and declining confidence in centralized control. Gold is the conservative expression of that view. Bitcoin is the aggressive one. Today, Bitcoin trades around $86,000, still volatile, still controversial, still misunderstood. But if gold's surge is signaling a regime shift toward hard assets, then Bitcoin may simply be earlier in that adoption curve. In other words, gold may be leading the parade. And if history is any guide, when institutions start moving into the oldest form of sound money, they eventually begin exploring the newest. That's the signal worth paying attention to. So this week, I interview Dana Samuelson, an old friend of the show and an expert in everything gold and hard money. 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.  Gold isn’t reacting to one thing, it’s actually responding to a stacking, uh, pressures, uh, that have been quietly building for years and, and really right now are impossible to ignore. Welcome, everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast coming to you. From Montecito, California and today. Uh, before we begin, just a quick reminder. Uh, there is a, uh, website associated with this podcast called wealth formula.com. And, uh, that’s where you go to get deeply more deeply integrated into this community, including our accredited investor club, AKA investor club for you to join. And, uh, once you get onboarded, all you do is you, you have an opportunity to see private deal flow, uh, that, uh, is not available to the general public. If you are an accredited investor, meaning that you have, uh, make $200,000 per year or $300,000 per year, uh, for the last two years with the reasonable expectation of continuing to do so, or you have a million dollars outside of your personal residence, a net worth, then you are an accredited investor and. All you need to do is sign up and join the club. Just go to wealth formula.com and sign up and get onboarded. Now, let’s talk a little bit about something that has been extraordinary this year. It’s gold. You know, for years, gold was the asset that nobody wanted to talk about. I mean, it sat there quietly. Well, stocks and real estate continue to rip. Um. Gold really is really, you know, was for the pessimists. For the doomsayers and the perma bears. I mean, I, I gotta tell you, I kind of am was one of those people, right? And then suddenly gold didn’t just wake up. It, it totally launched, exploded in his mid-December 2025. Spot Gold is trading around, I know, 4300, 4400 an ounce, depending on the market, gaining roughly 60% over the past year. Pushing decisively into record territory. Now the obvious question is why now? Well, the short answer is that gold isn’t reacting to one thing. It’s actually responding to a stacking, uh, pressures, uh, that have been quietly building for years and, and really right now are impossible to ignore. And this is an interesting shift because. The thing is that in the old days, and I’m even talking about 15, 20 years ago, uh, you would look at gold as something that didn’t really go up when the stock market was doing well, right? It was kind of a reaction. It was a fear-based thing. It still is sort of a fear-based thing, but now it’s not just fear of, you know, whether the stock market’s gonna crash. It’s fear of geopolitical concerns. That’s where the central banks come in, right? So for the better part of the last decade, central banks were net sellers. Or really indifferent of holders of, of gold, and that changed dramatically after 2022. So according to World Gold Council, central banks have been buying gold at more than double the pace of the pre COVID years. And 2025 continued that trend with hundreds of tons, uh, added to reserves year to date Now. These are central banks. They’re not hedge funds chasing momentum, right? They’re monetary authorities and they’re making deliberate strategic decisions about what they trust to hold value. And why would central banks suddenly want more gold? Well, because again, geopolitics has reentered that chat. We live in a world now where reserves can be frozen, right? Payment systems can be weaponized. Risk-free assets depend heavily on political alignment. Now of course, I’m talking about the United States when I’m mentioning all those things, right? Uh, how we can kind of just freeze assets of Russia and that kind of thing. I’m not, uh, pro-Russia, I’m just pointing out the fact that. Countries don’t like it when you freeze their assets. Right? The World Bank, uh, has been explicit that rising geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty are the key drivers of gold surges this year. And when trust in the global Ory roads, of course that is now when gold benefits and at the same time, the US dollar devaluation thesis is no longer just kind of fringe thinking. It’s reality. No one, no one even bothers to pretend that that’s not happening. So gold is, uh, of course, priced in dollars and when real yields fall, uh, and the dollar weakens gold historically performs well so that that dynamic is playing out again as well. In fact, Reuters has repeatedly pointed to a softer dollar and declining treasury yields as near term tailwinds for Gold’s Rally Bank of America. Uh, their research shows, uh, this relationship emphasizing gold’s inverse correlation to the dollar and the growing desire among nations to diversify away from the dollar centric reserves. In other words, gold isn’t just going up because people are scared. It’s going up because confidence in the fiat discipline is eroding altogether slowly. Persistently. So the question is, is gold still a buyer? Did we miss it? I mean, I just mentioned that it just went up by like 60%, right? So that’s a tricky question. It really is. I could certainly see some volatility there. But here’s the thing. I mentioned that central banks were big buyer, right? Central banks don’t care if gold is up 20% or down 10% in a quarter. They care about long-term reserve integrity. So they’re a price insensitive buyer. Um, and that’s why major, major institutions aren’t dismissing the move, as you know, just a big blow off. Uh, Goldman Sachs cited sustain central bank demand, and the potential for further ETF inflows is supportive of higher prices. Banks, uh, like JP Morgan and um, and, and Bank of America. I mean, they’re continuously talking about how gold is a beneficiary of this geopolitical instability. Bank of America is projecting prices high as $5,000 a ounce in 2026. So that’s still a big move, right? Of course, nothing goes up in a straight line. So shift toward tighter monetary policy or sudden easing of global tensions. Well, I, I could, they could cool enthusiasm, right? The less fear in the world. Well, that isn’t. That’s not good for gold. I understand though that gold’s breakout isn’t just about gold. There’s a larger message that should be taken away from all of this, and that is that hard money, real assets have come back into favoring, and gold is the original hard asset. It’s scarce, it’s politically neutral, tens of thousands of years of monetary credibility, but it’s also heavy, difficult to move and awkward in a digital world. Now, of course you know where I’m going with that. I don’t wanna make every gold conversation conversation about Bitcoin, but just as a reminder, Bitcoin exists on that same philosophical access, right? Both gold and Bitcoin are reactions to the same problem. Expanding debt, monetary dilution, declining confidence and centralized control. Gold is the conservative, you know, version of that, the expression of that Bitcoin is the crazy youngster, the aggressive one. They’re, they’re following the same rails. And today Bitcoin trades around $86,000. It’s still volatile, still controversial, still misunderstood, and really, listen, the market cap is 2 trillion bucks. Um, you know, no asset that has ever reached $2 trillion. Market cap has ever gotten to zero. But on the other hand, there’s it, it’s pretty small, and you could still move those markets really quickly, and that’s why you’ve got volatility. But if gold surge is signaling a, a, a shift towards hard assets, it’s really hard to not see that. Uh, Bitcoin may simply be, uh, you know, early in that adoption curve. In other words, gold may be leading the parade. And if history is any guide, uh, when institutions start moving into that, you know, oldest form of sound money, they eventually begin exploring the newest. And that’s, that’s a signal. Worth paying attention to. Anyway, this week what we’re gonna really focus on though is gold and hard money. We’ll talk a little bit about Bitcoin as well. My guest is Dana Samuelson, who is. An old friend of the show, and we will have that conversation right after these messages. Wealth Formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net, the strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account. As your money accumulates, you borrow from your own. Bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you’ve borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying. You compound interest on that money even though you’ve borrowed it at result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investments get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique, it’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its back. Turbo charge your investments. Visit wealth formula banking.com. Again, that’s wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula podcast ad Samuelson. He is been on the show before. He’s friend of the show. He is a professional. How do we see this numismatist since, uh, 1980. Working with some of the most influential, precious metals trading companies in the country. Before founding his own American Gold Exchange Incorporated in 1998. Uh, for nearly a decade, he was a personal protege of James U. Blanchard ii, one of the true giants of the industry, and the individual most responsible for re legalizing the private ownership of gold in the us. American Gold Exchange Inc. Is a national mail order, precious metals and rare coin dealership that makes competitive buy and sell markets in mainstream, modern, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, bullion coins and bars and classic pre 1933 US Gold and silver coins and World War ii European Gold coins. I don’t know if I left anything out, but welcome Dana. How are you doing? I’m doing great, buck. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. Well, it was funny, we had a little conversation, uh, just before we started and I said, well, gosh, you know, uh, we’ve had you on the show before, maybe once, maybe twice. And, you know, and, and you, um, I think Apley described the gold market as watching paint dry. And I, I think that’s, I think that’s pretty adequate. Um, I mean, for, I mean, the last decade or so before this all happened. So, so let’s start talking about it. So, gold gold’s moved into price territory that, you know, very few people would’ve predicted even a couple years ago. So what, from your perspective, having lived lived through multiple gold cycles, what feels fundamentally different about this move? Uh, this market is a globally driven market and it’s focused on physical. There’s been a move into gold this year, and silver now platinum two. To a degree palladium, uh, in a physical level that we haven’t seen since the late seventies when we had the last really, you know, red hot market driven by fears over debt inflation. Geopolitics. Uh, you’ve got the bricks, nations that are trying to divorce themselves of the dollar, but they really can’t do it easily because there’s not a good viable alternative except for gold. And that’s been one of the leading drivers of this gold price surge that has really, you know, almost doubled in price since, uh, two years ago. A lot of it is, you know, underpinned by Central Bank Gold buying, you know, between 1950 and 2010, after the dollar became the world’s reserve currency backed by gold. And even after we un pegged the dollar to gold in the 1970s, 1971, central bankers had had gold on their, physically in their vaults from pre-World War ii when gold was money, uh, they shed that. From the 1950 all the way to 2010, they became net buyers after the great financial crisis due to the global debt explosion and primarily quantitative easing printing money outta thin air. But they were buy, they were modest buyers, you know, 500 tons a year until Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022. And we sanctioned Russia and weaponized the dollar. The last four years, they bought, you know, almost a thousand tons of gold year or double. That really became material last year in price as the cumulative effects of their continually buying about a fifth of what the mines make every year started to really impact supplies and price movement. And now we’ve got President Trump this year, you know, throwing a monkey wrench into the World Trade order with his tariffs. And I think that that’s created a lot of uncertainty, some fear. And of course the debt just continues to go higher and higher. And now interest payments on our debt are over a trillion dollars for the first time ever. So debt servicing is starting to become problematic. The cumulative effects of all this have caused the, the people around the world, including central governments to buy gold at record rates. Um, but it’s not the phenomenon that’s happening in the United States. ’cause we don’t have a gold culture in our country, like almost every other country does. It’s interesting. Um, so what, you know, you’ve been talking about really is central banks around the world have it really been accumulating gold at levels we haven’t really seen in modern times. Right. And, and, uh, why do you think the US Central Bank. It doesn’t do the same because is it an admission of the debasement of the dollar? Because really the gold, gold is the anti dollar. I’ve always viewed it as the anti dollar maybe. Maybe that’s not the, you know, you may not agree with that a hundred percent, but I’ve always viewed it that way, and so why wouldn’t the US hedge and accumulate more? Well, we’re the world’s reserve currency. That Right. That’s, that’s created a paper culture in our, in our world. It’s now three generations old, right? Since 1945, when the dollar became the world’s reserve currency and we, the world went to a paper money standard instead of a gold money standard, which was the world’s standard from ancient times all the way till the 1930s. You know, the, our monetary system when the country was founded in 1793 was based on gold and silver coins. A copper penny was the size of a half dollar because that’s what one penny’s worth of copper was worth in 1793. Right. Um, you know, after World War ii, we had a couple things that the rest of the world didn’t have. We had a manufacturing, uh, industries that were, uh, unaffected by the, physically by the war. And we had, you know, the ability for markets to work properly, which should allow the dollar to become the world’s reserve currency. Backed by, you know, 8,200 some odd tons of gold, the biggest pile of gold that any country had. Actually, at that time it was more like 20,000 tons of gold. Uh, but by the time we got to the seventies and we un pegged from gold, we were down to about 8,000 tons. That’s still more than anybody else is supposed to have. I do think China could have more gold than that. Now they’re just not telling us they do. You know, officially they’ve got about 2,400 tons of gold, uh, and the second and third are, you know, 3000 tons of gold. So we, we still have a lot of gold. And there’s talk about auditing Fort Knox and monetizing it, but it only gets us about a trillion dollars. It’s not enough to really, you affect the 38 trillion, maybe pay the debt off for a year, or, you know, for six months. Six months, yeah. Something like that. Our, our debt is starting to matter too. You know, it’s doubled twice in the last 20 years. It gonna double again in the next 10 to 70 trillion, 78 trillion. People hear about the, the whole, uh, the bricks phenomena, right? And part of, part of what you were just discussing in the, uh, accumulation of gold. Explain that, explain what’s going on over there for people who aren’t paying attention, and you know how that is, how that is playing into all of this. Well, when we sanctioned Russia after they invaded the Ukraine. And seized their assets and threw them off of the Swift International Bank Transfer Payment System. We forced countries that were concerned that if they ran politically afoul of us, we could do the same to them. They forced them into thinking, oh, how do we get some independence from that vulnerability? Potential vulnerability? It’s not easy to replace the dollar. What they’ve, what they’ve been doing is replacing the Swift Bank transfer payment system with a payment transfer system of their own right so they can move money amongst themselves outside of the SWIFT system, number one. And since there isn’t a good viable alternative to the dollar, really the only other asset that makes sense is gold. Gold is a neutral asset. It’s not like you need it for oil or grain or steel. Nobody really needs gold, right? But it’s universally trusted. It’s immediately liquid, and it’s got a couple other things going for it that are unique. Number one, it has no counterparty risk. It’s one of the only assets. It isn’t simultaneously someone else’s liability. And number two, uh, gold in a vault can’t be seized or sanctioned. Right, so they’ve been going to gold, like they’ve been going to gold for, for centuries. It’s just, it hasn’t been that way since after World War ii. It’s a, it’s kinda like a back to the past kind of a situation. It’s sort of back to the future. It’s back to the past. That’s the allure for gold and the reason why they’re accumulating. In fact, they just launched their own currency unit called the unit. 40% backed by gold. The bricks nations have now it’s in its infancy and it’ll take a while for it to really, you know, work. But they’ve been building the components and the infrastructure to get to this point, creating the transfer of payment systems and all the components to go along with that so that they could announce something that they could use as a, as a settlement vehicle for trade, which is really what this is all about. And they’re backing at 40% by gold. Which is material and it’ll become bigger as time passes. Let’s, let’s try talk a little bit about that price movement. Huge. Um, is 60% in the last couple years, is that about right? This year alone, gold’s up 67% on a 12 month rolling basis, 67%. I mean, those are like bitcoin num, you know, type movements in the past. Right. They’re kind of crazy. So a lot of people are looking at those prices today and they’re thinking, well, I’m late to the party. Uh, are they late to the party? How do you, uh, what, what do you think’s going on there? I think the party’s about halfway through. We haven’t got to the late innings yet. I, I really do think this, and this is why this is the fourth major bull run in gold we’ve seen since we went off the gold standard in 1971. We had a a 20 to one run for gold in the seventies that was built on two oil shocks. 18% inflation and a crisis of confidence in the US then for the next 30 years. You know, 25 years a good part of my career. You know, watching gold was like watching paint dry. It traded routinely between three and $500 an ounce until we got into war, uh, following the nine 11 attacks, Iraq and I, Afghanistan, and we went into deficit spending. Then we had a second financial crisis when the great financial crisis hit another bull bull market in gold. Then we had COVID economic closures, another bull market in gold. Now we’ve got a fourth, but it’s lacking what the first three had, which was fear in the US over either economics or geopolitical events. So this gold price has essentially doubled since March or April of 2024. With no fear and a lot of complacency in the US markets. So my, my thinking is what happens if the economy slows down and, you know, the Fed’s gonna lower rates anyway. We know that’s coming with a new Fed chairman in the next five months, six months, number one, that’s good for gold. What happens if we go into a real economic slowdown and the Fed really has to drop rates, or God forbid, go to QE again, right? Or inflation rears its ugly head because the fed’s too accommodative in it. Situation where, you know, supplies are kind of tight still because of the monkey wrench, president Trump has thrown into the World Trade Order. You know, if we get fear in the US that’s when gold could go from 4,000 to, you know, 8,000. And I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, but I do think the trends have driven gold higher are not gonna change anytime soon. One of the things that you’re mentioning is those trends and like even. You know, in the last 15 years ago when I’ve been sort of involved in the investor world, the, the things that we talk about with trends with with gold have changed. I mean, usually you don’t see AI stocks going up with gold, right? Like, I mean, not that AI was around, but the point is tech stocks, that kind of thing. How is that thesis fundamentally changed? Um, I’m not quite sure I understand your question. Well, what I mean is like if gold was, gold used to be, I think it’s, you know, something again that people would buy when they were afraid of, of what’s going on in the equity markets. Right. Uh, that’s clearly not the case now. No, no, not at all. Right. Talk about that change. When did that change happen? How did it happen? This is a globally driven market. It’s not a US-centric market. This is fear around the world. You know, central banks started to underpin this market in 2022 when they stepped up their buying and doubled it. But this year, because of the uncertainty, uh, and some of the fear that President Trump’s tariffs and the way they’ve been deployed, kind of knee jerky, um, and inconsistently. Certainly not diplomatically, right? You know, it’s caused a lot of concern around the world. And for example, in April when President Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs on April 2nd, what happened? The bond market went into the complete dislocation, yields spiked from 4% to 4.5% in a week. The bond values tumble because investors started pulling money out of the, and taking it back home. Money that’d come in from Europe and Asia started to go back. So what did President Trump do? He pulled back the reciprocal tariffs on every country, but China and China said, well, we’re not gonna drop tariffs on you. And he said, well, we’ll ramp ’em up on you. So we went toe to toe with him. Until a week later, we were at 145% tariffs on China, and they were 125% on us. Well, if you’re a Chinese investor and you have real estate or stocks to invest in, and both of which have done badly since COVID or gold, what are you gonna do when your best customer suddenly says, Hey, we really don’t want your products, because that’s what 145% tariffs say to the Chinese. We don’t want your products. You can’t sell ’em here. You gotta go sell ’em somewhere else, but we’re their best customer. So they bought gold. They bought gold handover fist, and they drove the gold price up $500 by themselves during that month. That’s what I mean by fear outside of the us. Yeah. We don’t get it inside. Well, and and that’s fear outside of the markets too, right? I think that’s, that’s the fundamental shift I was trying to get at is true. It used to be that gold was, uh, gold would react on fear of the markets, but now there’s another level of fear, which is geopolitical. And it doesn’t seem like there’s any time soon that that’s gonna end. No, no. I, I, I’ve called it like a run on the bank only. It’s not a run on the bank of like George Bailey’s run on the bank and it’s a wonderful life. This is a run on the gold market, the physical gold and silver and platinum markets. That’s really what this is, and it’s a global rush to buy. And it’s not just central banks, it’s the public as well. Due to uncertainty, part of it’s fear of missing out now that we’ve had a big run in prices too. That’s FOMO in there too. That’s what I’m trying to, that’s part of what I was wondering too though, is like, you know, again, there’s people out there now who, um, are, are looking at this and they might even be listening to us going, gosh, yeah, it really makes sense and I happen to have no gold. What do I do? You know, what do I do now? Do I buy now? And, and I’ll, you know, and, and the next thing you know. I find out this was a frothy market and, and I’m down 20% for the next three years. I mean, that kind of thing. So I, I think it’s a, it is a tricky time, but, so that sort of, I guess, brings up when you think of gold, um, in a portfolio. I mean, you say, you’ve said in the past, it’s not about getting rich. Well, some people really did get rich this time. Uh, you said it’s about preserving wealth, right? So how should investors think about Gold’s role alongside stocks, real estate, and other assets right now? Well, even I think JP Morgan Chase has said this year, you know, instead of a 60 40 portfolio, you should have a 60 20 20 portfolio with 20% bonds and 20% precious metals. Gold in particular, because of what’s been happening. And now we don’t have a gold culture in our country, like most every other country does. So most Americans don’t get it. And that’s part of. We’ve ingrained because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency and it insulates us from currency shocks in commodity pricing primarily. Uh, without that insulation, you know, they might think things a little bit differently, but you know, any good financial planner will say you should have a little bit of precious metals as part of your portfolio, uh, as a hedge against financial uncertainty. And it certainly worked perfectly well during the great financial crisis. And when COVID hit because. Gold tends to counter cyclically, perform in price against stocks and bonds, and it’s always liquid. Now, you’re a real estate investor, you understand real estate. What couldn’t you get in 2009 alone? Right? Bankers wouldn’t give anybody money, right? But if you had gold, you could get liquidity, right? And gold, you know, almost doubled between 2008 and 2011 at the same time when most assets were dropping 50%. That’s an insurance policy for the rest of your money. That’s why I said, look, it’s a way to preserve wealth and have a hedge against financial uncertainty. But in the market that we’re in now, you know, having more than just the, the minimum, which is five to 10% of assets as a, you know, potentially an investment instead of just an insurance policy. That makes sense. But you’re right, you could buy and you could, you know, tie up money that won’t produce anything for a couple years, maybe longer. You also have an insurance policy in case the wheels do come off like they did during the great financial crisis or during COVID. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to, uh, another podcast. I listened to the, these, uh, guys, the All In podcast, and, uh, Tucker Carlson was on there, and apparently he’s a, you know, huge, uh, physical gold guy. And, and he said, and I, I think he was serious. He said he buries it in his backyard and then he spreads a bunch of, um. Uh, a bunch of, you know, silver beads, uh, out there too, like, just in case no one can like, use a medical metal detector and find it is gold. Uh, let’s talk about that nuance of, of physical gold versus, you know, buying ETFs and all that stuff. What’s your take? I mean, what, what do you tell people when they say, well, gosh, you know, uh, it might be hard for me to store that gold and, and why shouldn’t I just get an ETF and, and talk a little bit about that? Well, I trade ETFs in my IRA account. When I think the, when I think I can harness price movement, that’s what I use ETFs for. You know, they’re a paper representation of gold, uh, that you can trade at the click of a button, physical gold. Is valuable. It’s, you have to find a place to store it. It’s pretty inert, so you can, you can bury it in your backyard, keep the elements out of it, but then there’s some risk there because it could be found, it could be stolen, so you do have to store it somewhere. You can put it in a bank safe deposit box, but I don’t really recommend that because what happens if there’s a banking holiday and you can’t get to it? So having a home safe or maybe, you know, maybe bearing it in the backyard. Is an option if that’s what you wanna do. Or there are independent professionally run storage facilities. There’s a few of ’em around the country that are run by precious metals dealers that are, you know, big entities. Uh uh. So I think they’re trustworthy and they certainly have the ability to service and aren’t properly insured. So that if something happens, you know your value is protected. And that’s primarily what you pay for as a storage fee is a percentage of value. Not so much number ounces that you have there, but the value percentage, because it is an insurance, uh, related value, right? The value goes up, they’ve gotta get more insurance so they get a higher storage fee for that same amount of metal if the value increases, which is unlike other assets. So I do have a couple of those I recommend that are run by professional. Companies that have been in business for years that we know would trust and have performed perfectly. If you wanna store, um, physical metal now gold is compact. You know, a hundred ounces is smaller than a paperback novel and it’s $450,000 worth of value today. You could, I could literally have one bar in each one of my coat pockets and be walking around with almost a million bucks in my pockets, and no one would know. Silver. You know, silver creates a bigger problem because it takes 70 ounces of silver to equal an ounce of gold. So there’s a lot more volume involved and a lot more weight, which is why sometimes these facilities make more sense if you wanna store something that’s more bulky like silver. But if you’re gonna store gold somewhere, that’s not easy to find. You wanna make sure somebody you trust behind you knows where it’s just in case something happens to you. Right? Yeah. Um. What, um, how difficult is it, uh, Dana, for someone to, I guess, say they wanna sell, say maybe they need to sell one of those bricks in your pocket there? Uh, and, and, um, is that a, um, a process that, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s not as easy as clicking a button at that point, right? But to make sure that you get the best possible price for your gold and all that, I mean, you’re not gonna go to a pawn shop and. Oh, that, so like, I, I’m just curious on the mechanics of that. ’cause I’ve, you know, I’ve, I’ve never sold, you know, physical gold for anything. So, so our, our company’s a physical dealer. We’re a hybrid between Amazon and a financial institution. And that, uh, we sell something online or over the telephone. The price is always changing on a minute by minute basis, but it’s like you’re buying shoes. It’s just, you know, you don’t quite know what the price is gonna be. So we physically, you know, figure out which product you should purchase, what’s best for you, and then we ship it to you if you want to sell it, it’s just the reverse of the transaction. You have to present it for delivery, which means you have to ship it back to, uh, your dealer, or, you know, physically deliver to them, and you get paid immediately upon delivery. So, um, you know, we, we do business like a financial institution. You can call us up, place a transaction over the phone. Uh, if it’s a smaller transaction, we’ll do that without deposit funds. If it’s a bigger transaction, we don’t know, you will want funds first, but once we lock in, that’s the price. Just like when you buy stock and then you pay the balance or, or we ship you the merchandise, whichever comes first. Um. You get it, inspect it, make sure you, you got what you’re supposed to get. In fact, it, you know, in the last two years with this gold price just climbing higher and higher, we’ve got a lot of clients that are complacent. They like the stock market that’s been hitting record highs, uh, and they’ve been shedding gold. We’ve actually bought more gold as an industry, not just our company, but as an industry in the last year than we’ve bought in a single year in 20 years. So it’s very easy to reverse the transaction. But what I would tell you. For your listeners is, and this is important, you should buy sovereign minted products, gold ounces, silver ounces, one ounce gold coins. They’re really just round bars made by the US Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the British Royal Mint. The Austrian Mint instead of refinery made. One ounce bars or 10 ounce bars or kilo bars of gold because we have a modest but growing problem with Chinese counterfeits. The Chinese can take tungsten and plate it with gold and pass it off as reel, and they can do that much better with refinery made bars that have plain design pictures stamped onto them. They can replicate those very well, but they cannot replicate the intricate pictures. The US Mint or the Canadian Mint, or the Austrian mint, British royal mint stamp onto that one ounce gold coin. We call it a coin. It’s just a round bar made by a mint that struck with dyes like a coin. And all of the mints around the world have introduced minute anti-counterfeiting design elements into the picture that they stamp on their coins to deter Chinese counterfeits. And it’s working. So the most important thing is, you know, do business with a reputable dealer that’s been around a long time, that has a good reputation, not a, not some new entity, right? You wanna find a, a trusted member of the community and develop a relationship that makes buying again or selling very easy. Once you have a relationship with a dealer, and we know the product you’ve purchased, we’ll take it back very easily. Uh, silver is, you know, people talk a lot about it in the context of, you know, the lump it with gold but has very different characteristics. Um, how do you think about silver today? I love silver today. Uh, it’s, it’s a metal at times as hard to love because every time it makes a big gain, it can give it up pretty easily. It’s more volatile than gold, but gold’s about 90% monetary metal in 10%. Commodity metal silver’s about 50 50, but what silver has going for it is, uh, a couple of unique characteristics that virtually no other metal comes, uh, as close to, which is conductivity of heat and electricity. Silver is amazing in that it’s the best at conducting both heat and electricity. I’ve got a one ounce silver coin on my desk here, and if you take this coin and hold it between your fingers and take an ice cube. You can literally cut that ice cube in half in about 6, 7, 8 seconds with a pure silver coin because the heat from your fingers gets transmitted to the coin and goes right through the ice cube. That’s just a simple example of how conductive silver is for temperature, and we have a structural supply deficit in the silver market that we’ve had for about five years now, where the industry. Is consuming more silver than comes out of the ground on an annual basis. So we’re eating into the above ground supply. Uh, so fundamentally that’s the supply and demand equation favor silver. Uh, plus because gold is moved up so much in price, silver is getting a rotation into it because it’s underperformed relative to gold until just recently where it’s played catch pretty sharply in just the last three or four months. If you measure. How many ounces of gold, uh, how many ounces of silver it takes to equal an ounce of gold, the gold to silver ratio back in April. That was a hundred to one, you know, which was an extreme. Today that ratio is a, is a little under 70 to one. It’s 67, 68 to one. So silver has played up in ketchup in price. Where is that historically? Uh, well. Normally it’s between about 40 to one and 80 to one with about 60 to one as the, as the pivot point where it’s in, they’re in equilibrium. But in the last four or five years with gold leading and silver lagging, we’ve routinely been in the 85 to 90 to one range. Uh, and we actually hit a hundred to one in April of this year, uh, which was the highest it’s been, um, except for when we had a kind of a knee jerk in the medals during COVID, which was an anomaly. Uh, didn’t last. So, but anyway. Silver is playing ketchup because it’s been undervalued relative to gold. Um, and we’ve seen, you know, people that wanna be in the metals, but think gold’s a little expensive. They’ve rotated out of gold, and we’ve seen some of that money move into silver and also into platinum. Now, platinum was under a thousand dollars this time of year ago, and it’s almost $1,900 announced today. So it’s almost platinum’s up, uh, almost a hundred percent now. This year where silver’s up 120% this year and a lot of this demand is driven globally. We’ve seen huge demand in silver in India this year because gold is so, has become so expensive, and that’s what I mean by a global run on the, on the bank. It’s not just China, Japan, it’s India too, and Europe as well. Physical buying and et f buying ETFs are available around the world in precious metals now that really haven’t been very impactful until this year. Um, but that’s what the world’s doing, you know? No discussion these days on gold is complete without at least mentioning Bitcoin. Uh, you know, and, and it’s, it’s interesting because, um, you know, even within the, uh, uh, gold world, I mean, there’s, there’s some prominent people who are really bought in to Bitcoin. Like I, Lawrence Lepert has been on the show multiple times now, and Larry’s all in. Um, just curious as a, you know, as a gold person, what do you see where, what do you see the role or do you not believe in this thing? Do you believe it is a, a parallel? Um, I, there’s so many things that you say about gold. That I’m like, yeah, you can say that about Bitcoin too and carry, you know, millions of dollars in your pocket. You can, you know, it’s, uh, there’s a very little amount of it. Um, obviously it’s new, right? Gold has been around for, since the beginning of time and, and now we’ve got 2009 for Bitcoin. What is your view? How are you seeing it? May, how are your colleagues seeing it in the gold space? Well, a couple different points to make here. Um, you know, when, when Bitcoin came out in 20 10, 20 11, you know, one of my friends in the, in the precious metals business told me I should buy it when it was 20 bucks and I didn’t get it. So I didn’t do it, and that was a big mistake on my part. But Bitcoin has one advantage that no other currency or gold has, which you can move serious money over borders easily. You’re right, you can carry it around in your pocket, in your wallet and, um, you know, you carry a lot of value around and transfer it at the, you know, click of a button. And no co counterparty risk, just like you said with gold, right? Yeah. Well, there’s some modest counterparty risk with, with bitcoin that you, you have counterparty risk with gold and theft as well. Um. Bitcoin is volatile. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s very volatile. It’s still the speculative investment. I mean, it was 124,000, you know, four months ago, and now it’s about 85,000, 90,000. So there’s volatility there that gold doesn’t have. But more importantly, what I’ve seen in my career is a generational divide. The older, older people, you know, 45 and older, like gold and silver. Younger people that grew up with phones in their hands like Bitcoin. The volatility in Bitcoin that we’ve seen in these two big selloff cycles in Bitcoin have not the first one, but the second one have helped to bring some of those younger people into the stability of gold, especially in the year when gold is doing pretty well. ’cause it then it kind of has a little bit of that Bitcoin allure, which is, you know, get rich quick. But, um. Bitcoin’s volatile, but it’s here to stay and it is now the most respected cryptocurrency. Like I almost bought Ethereum, you know, 10 years ago when one of my friends was explaining both to me and said that Ethereum basically had better fundamentals. But you know, it’s kind of inventing, it’s kinda like investing in a. What, uh, beta, beta max instead of VHS back in the day. Some of the older people remember that. You bet on the wrong horse, you know? Yeah, exactly. Well, you’ve, uh, you know, you built this, uh, firm on transparency, integrity, uh, in an industry that doesn’t always have the best reputation. Right? So for investors who decide that precious metals belong in their portfolio. Uh, how can they get a hold of you? Well, our website is, uh, A-M-E-R-G-O-L d.com. Uh, we don’t have, you know, 10,000 items on our website. We have a, we have a small listing of what available products are because we stick with mainstream items, products that are primarily easy to sell, uh, competitively priced, widely traded, and easily understood. Um, uh. Uh, email address is info I nfo@amggold.com. Uh, we have a toll, toll free number 806 1 3 9 3 2 3. Uh, we’re consultative in nature. We’ll, we’ll answer any questions. Happily, gladly, uh, no transactions too small or too large. What we really wanna do, uh, is help people because if we do that, we help ourselves. And when you treat people right, it, it comes back. And our industry does have a chair of bad actors. And, um, you, you wanna make sure that you do business with someone reputable that’s been in the industry a long time. And I understand some people may wanna do this locally where they can actually walk into a place of business. Do this instead of over the phone. So look for dealers that have, you know, longstanding, uh, businesses and good reputations. If you see a reputation that, uh, has some complaints, you know, there are other choices for you. But, um, we just try and help people buck. That’s really what we try and do. We certainly have the reputation for it. Dana. So thank you so much for being on Wellfor podcast. Well, thanks for having me. It’s great to see you again, and I wish you a great success in 2026 and a happy holiday season. You too. 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 wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to Show England. Hope you enjoyed it and, uh, I will. Uh, I should admit though, that if you go back and you listen on my, uh, past shows, this is one that I was wrong on. I, I’ve never been a gold bug. My biggest issue with gold. Um, has always been, you know, from an investment thesis that it doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t yield anything, and what’s the point of owning it rather than owning, uh, real estate. And actually, if you just look at what I said, it’s, it’s still, it’s still, it’s still kind of true, right? I mean, you can argue, well, yeah, the real estate markets really did, uh, did struggle over the last couple years. But listen, at the end of the day. The real estate market struggled because of leverage, right? Gold. There’s no leverage, no one’s borrowing, buying gold on leverage, and so it can go up and down and it doesn’t really hurt anybody. If you take the last couple decades and you know how much people made from, uh, real estate versus Bitcoin, even though there’s this huge, uh, huge uptick in Bitcoin now it’s, it’s probably the case that they come out pretty close. If not, uh, you know, real estate still being the winner. But anyway, uh, I do want to say and admit that I was wrong. That, uh, that the gold wasn’t really worth, uh, owning. I think, uh, you know, I wish I had owned some, just like a lot of people wish they’d own Bitcoin at $6,000, right? Um, in fact, I will say that one of the things in hindsight that I think of is gold in many ways for the last several years was on sale. And I haven’t really been talking about this as much, but I’ve been reflecting on this a great deal about making sure that as an investor you wake yourself up once in a while and ask, okay, well, what’s on sale? Well, gold was on sale for a while. Silver was definitely on sale. Right? Um, doesn’t mean you have to go in, have, you know, 50% of your portfolio in something like that, but when something’s on sale, it’s not a bad idea to look around. And maybe get, you know, get a little bit of exposure. I do think that real estate is there right now. I think real estate, you know, if you’re in the credit investor group, you’re seeing on a routine basis 30%, uh, discounted offerings from just a couple years ago. And I do think that’s on sale right now. But there are other things as well, arguably. I mean, I, I actually think that Bitcoin is, uh, uh, sort of on sale right now. I mean, sitting at 86,000, anybody who thinks it’s not gonna go to a hundred thousand at some point in the next, you know, 12 months is, I mean, I think it’s highly unlikely that it doesn’t go to a hundred thousand, right? So think about that right now. That’s like a 14% gain right then and there. Anyway, sometimes it’s good to just look around and see what’s on sale. Uh, that’s my message for this week. Uh, this is Buck Joffrey with Wealth Formula Podcast 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.

Jerry and Willie start the hour dissecting the dysfunction of New York football, with Willie suggesting the Jets skip a rookie QB and instead target a veteran "bridge" like Kyler Murray or Mac Jones. The guys hear from a "fed up" Carl Banks, plus, an emotional Pete Alonso regarding his departure from the Mets. The debate heats up over Jalen Brunson's Knick legacy and Jerry's shocking "Napoleon Dynamite" ignorance, before the duo wraps up wondering if John Harbaugh could be the coaching savior the Giants desperately need.

In this episode of Coin Stories, Natalie Brunell and Strategy CEO Phong Le discuss why Bitcoin adoption is accelerating, even as market sentiment turns cautious. Phong explains how Strategy thinks about long-term fundamentals, stable yield above inflation, and why access to sound money should be available to everyone. Topics include: Strategy's "USD reserve" and addressing the FUD around dividend payments Why Bitcoin fundamentals matter more than short-term price action STRC: A 10.75% yielding "bank account" product: what it is and who it's for Banks coming into Bitcoin: custody, services, and why legacy finance is moving in now Phong Le's refugee-to-CEO story — and how that shapes his view of money, freedom, and resilience Follow Phong Le and Strategy on X at https://x.com/Strategy  ---- Order Natalie's new book "Bitcoin is For Everyone," a simple introduction to Bitcoin and what's broken in our current financial system: https://amzn.to/3WzFzfU  ---- Coin Stories is powered by Gemini. Invest as you spend with the Gemini Credit Card. Sign up today to earn a $200 intro Bitcoin bonus. The Gemini Credit Card is issued by WebBank. See website for rates & fees. Learn more at https://www.gemini.com/natalie  ---- 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  ---- Ledn is the global leader in Bitcoin-backed loans, issuing over $9 billion in loans since 2018, and they were the first to offer proof of reserves. With Ledn, you get custody loans, no credit checks, no monthly payments, and more. Get .25% off your first loan, learn more at https://www.Ledn.io/natalie  ---- Natalie's Bitcoin Product and Event Links: For easy, low-cost, instant Bitcoin payments, I use Speed Lightning Wallet. Play Bitcoin trivia and win up to 1 million sats! Download and use promo code COINSTORIES10 for 5,000 free sats: https://www.speed.app/coinstories  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  Genius Group (NYSE: $GNS) is building a 10,000 BTC treasury and educating the world through the Genius Academy. Check out *free* courses from Saifedean Ammous and myself at https://www.geniusgroup.ai Earn passive Bitcoin income with industry-leading uptime, renewable energy, ideal climate, expert support, and one month of free hosting when you join Abundant Mines at https://www.abundantmines.com/natalie  Bitcoin 2026 will be here before you know it. Get 10% off Early Bird passes using the code HODL: https://tickets.b.tc/event/bitcoin-2026?promoCodeTask=apply&promoCodeInput=  Strategy World 2026 in Las Vegas on February 23-26th - Use code HODL for discounted tickets: https://www.strategysoftware.com/world26  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   Ditch your fiat health insurance like I did four years ago! Join me at CrowdHealth: www.joincrowdhealth.com/natalie  ---- 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

NATO suspects Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to disrupt the Starlink network. A failed polygraph sparks a DHS probe and deepens turmoil at CISA. A look back at Trump's cyber policy shifts. MacSync Stealer adopts a stealthy new delivery method.  Researchers warn a popular open-source server monitoring tool is being abused. Cyber criminals are increasingly bypassing technical defenses by recruiting insiders. Scripted Sparrow sends millions of BEC emails each month. Federal prosecutors take down a global fake ID marketplace. Monday business brief. Our guest is Eric Woodruff, Chief Identity Architect at Semperis, discussing "NoAuth Abuse Alert: Full Account Takeover." Atomic precision meets Colorado weather. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today on our Industry Voices, we are joined by Eric Woodruff, Chief Identity Architect at Semperis, discussing "NoAuth Abuse Alert: Full Account Takeover." Tune into the full conversation here. Selected Reading Starlink in the crosshairs: How Russia could attack Elon Musk's conquering of space (AP News) Project West Ford (Wikipedia) Acting CISA director failed a polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation (POLITICO) Dismantling Defenses: Trump 2.0 Cyber Year in Review (Krebs on Security) MacSync macOS Malware Distributed via Signed Swift Application (SecurityWeek) From ClickFix to code signed: the quiet shift of MacSync Stealer malware (Jamf)  Hackers Abuse Popular Monitoring Tool Nezha as a Stealth Trojan (Hackread) Cyber Criminals Are Recruiting Insiders in Banks, Telecoms, and Tech (Check Point) Scripted Sparrow Sends Millions of BEC Emails Each Month (Infosecurity Magazine) FBI Seizes Fake ID Template Domains Operating from Bangladesh (Hackread) Adaptive Security raises $81 million in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Ventures. (N2K Pro) NIST tried to pull the pin on NTP servers after blackout caused atomic clock drift (The Register) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Another chapter in the battle for Warner Brothers Discovery, as Larry Ellison steps in to back Paramount Skydance's offer. How the father & son combo could help seal a deal, and where the development puts Netflix. Plus the financial sector just underperforming the broader market this year, but could 2026 see a bank breakout? Why one bank researcher says there's big opportunity in small banks. Fast Money Disclaimer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alex Harper grew up in Cleveland, Ohio with a good family and a normal upbringing, but at just 16 years old he made a decision that would change his life forever. While still in high school and later in college, Alex began robbing banks, eventually landing on the radar of federal authorities and being sent to federal prison for the first time. After his release, he tried to turn his life around, but bad decisions and old patterns pulled him back in, leading to more bank robberies and a second prison sentence. In this episode, Alex shares how he went from a regular kid to a repeat federal inmate, what federal prison was really like, and how he eventually found his purpose and truly turned his life around. _____________________________________________ #TrueCrime #PrisonStories #FederalPrison #BankRobbery #LifeAfterPrison #CrimeStory #RedemptionStory #LockedInWithIanBick _____________________________________________ Thank you to K9S.ORG for sponsoring this episode: Donate anytime at https://k9s.org/ Connect with Alex Harper: https://www.instagram.com/votealexharper/?hl=en Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Robbing Banks at 16 – How It All Started 01:35 First Arrest, Probation & Learning the System 04:22 Life After Prison: Supervision, Temptation & Pressure 06:00 Family, Childhood & Where Things Went Wrong 09:00 Early Gambling Addiction & Sports Betting Obsession 13:25 High School Double Life & First Bank Robbery 15:53 Escalation: More Robberies & How He Avoided Getting Caught 21:22 Bank Robbery Tactics, Mistakes & Hard Lessons Learned 25:54 College Life, Personality & Living Two Lives 29:44 Law School Dreams vs. Gambling Addiction 35:23 Getting Caught: The Moment Everything Fell Apart 41:31 First Time in Prison: Survival, Hustling & Reality Check 53:54 Running Gambling Operations Behind Bars 01:03:12 Released From Prison… Then Slipping Back 01:13:20 Second Sentence & Destroying Family Relationships 01:27:00 Depression, Accountability & Choosing Change 01:37:20 Life After Prison: Recidivism, Struggles & Reality 01:55:24 Finding Purpose, Giving Back & Redefining Success 02:08:00 Why the System Makes It Hard to Stay Free (Final Thoughts) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CNUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND RUSSIAN SANCTIONS Colleague Henry Sokolski, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Sokolski criticizes the lifting of sanctions on Russian banks for nuclear projects and highlights the dangers at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant. He warns against potential deals allowing Saudi Arabia and South Korea to enrich uranium, arguing this brings them dangerously close to bomb-making capabilities. NUMBER 4

In this double-header episode of Bits + Bips, Steven Ehrlich first speaks with Figure CEO Mike Cagney about why most tokenization projects fail, how Figure built an onchain mortgage replacement, and why he believes big banks may now be leading blockchain innovation. Then, Jason Brett joins the show to explain how an upcoming crypto market structure bill could expose President Trump's World Liberty Financial as centralized, and why that matters for DeFi, regulation, and the industry's credibility. Sponsors: Uniswap Mantle Host: Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guests: Mike Cagney, Co-founder and CEO of  Figure Technology Solutions Jason Brett, Former Banking Regulator With FDIC Links: Unchained: Inside Robinhood's Big Super App Plan: ‘There's Still a Lot of Work to Be Done' Coinbase Launches Stock Trading and Prediction Markets How the GENIUS Act Creates a Built-In Advantage for Banks and Deposit Tokens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices