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The holiday you know wasn't born under twinkle lights. It was assembled—piece by piece—out of Star Wars, Sol Invictus and Saturnalia, immigrant folklore and Protestant pushback, department store spectacle and the irresistible pull of a good story. We follow that winding path from Rome's calendar to America's shopping aisles, showing how gift giving shifted from communal ritual to commercial engine and why the myth of a “pure” Christmas never really existed here.We dig into the colonial bans and 19th-century legalization that set the stage for a retail renaissance, when newspapers sold Santa, window displays became cathedrals of commerce, and cards and ornaments scaled through industrial craft. Santa's look didn't start with Coca-Cola; it coalesced from poems and prints that mass marketing spread nationwide. Then we jump to 1977, where George Lucas's bet on merchandising collided with demand: Kenner couldn't make Star Wars figures by Christmas, so it sold promises—the Early Bird Certificate Package. An empty box with stickers and a pledge should have flopped. Instead, scarcity and story turned IOUs into the season's hottest gift and birthed the modern collector boom.The throughline is startling and useful: American Christmas has always blended wonder with salesmanship, moral tales with marketing, generosity with buying. That doesn't cheapen the meaning we make; it puts the power back in our hands. Understand the machinery, keep what matters, and let the rest go. If this history reshaped how you see the season—or made you smile at the audacity of that Star Wars “empty box”—tap follow, share with a friend who loves holiday lore, and drop a review to help more curious listeners find us.

We Like Shooting Episode 641 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: C&G Holsters, Midwest Industries, Gideon Optics, Primary Arms, Medical Gear Outfitters, Die Free Co., Blue Alpha, and Bowers Group   Welcome to the We Like Shooting Show, episode 641! Our cast tonight is Jeremy Pozderac, Aaron Krieger, Nick Lynch, and me Shawn Herrin, welcome to the show! Text Dear WLS or Reviews. +1 743 500 2171 - Gear Chat Shawn - PopStop™ Review: Innovative Solutions for Shooting Enthusiasts PopStop™ is a device designed to eliminate first round pop (FRP) in suppressors by injecting inert carbon dioxide to replace oxygen, thereby reducing impulse noise and suppressor flash. It has been shown to achieve noise reductions of up to 9 dB and can stabilize velocity standard deviations. The product is not compatible with all firearms, particularly 9mm pistols, and requires specific barrel measurements for proper use. Its introduction aims to enhance suppressor performance within the gun community. Shawn - RL-100 Pre-Order Announcement Cloud Defensive has announced the RL-100, a new entry-level rifle light that combines performance with affordability, priced at $149.99 for early pre-orders. Designed for reliability and ease of use, the RL-100 aims to provide a high-quality lighting option for budget-conscious users and agencies without sacrificing performance. This product's introduction may impact the gun community by offering a cost-effective alternative to higher-priced weapon lights, which could enhance accessibility for everyday users and law enforcement. Shawn - Long Range Shooting Tips Advanced long range shooting by Cleckner Nick - KRG Bravo KRG Bravo Shawn - Hi Point's AR-15 Fun Hi Point AR-15 Shawn - Precision Shooting Simplified Kelbly Precision Element Shawn - C&G Holsters News! C&G Holsters Announcement Jeremy - Savage 24F and Chiappa 12ga barrel inserts Bullet Points Chiappa 44 mag Gun Fights Step right up for "Gun Fights," the high-octane segment hosted by Nick Lynch, where our cast members go head-to-head in a game show-style showdown! Each contestant tries to prove their gun knowledge dominance. It's a wild ride of bids, bluffs, and banter—who will come out on top? Tune in to find out! Agency Brief AGENCY BRIEF: SHAYS' REBELLION  1780 – 1785: Economic Conditions Veterans' Pay: Paid in depreciated Continental currency/IOUs. State Policy: Massachusetts demands taxes in hard currency (gold/silver). The Debt: Boston merchants control state debt; courts aggressively foreclose on farms and imprison debtors. August – October 1786: Escalation Aug 29: 1,500 "Regulators" seize the Northampton courthouse to stop debtor trials. Sept: Armed shutdowns spread to Worcester, Concord, and Great Barrington. Captain Daniel Shays emerges as leader. Sept 26: Shays (600 men) vs. Gen. Shepard (militia) at Springfield Supreme Judicial Court. No fire exchanged; court adjourns. Oct 20: Continental Congress authorizes troops but lacks funds. MA passes Riot Act (arrests without bail). January 1787: The Private Army Jan 4: Gov. Bowdoin authorizes a private militia. Funding: 125 Boston merchants subscribe £6,000. Force: 3,000 mercenaries raised, led by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. January 25, 1787: Springfield Arsenal (The Climax) Objective: Shays leads ~1,200 men to seize 7,000 muskets/cannons at the federal arsenal. Defense: Gen. Shepard (900 militia) defends the arsenal. The Engagement: Shepard fires artillery warning shots over rebels' heads. Rebels advance. Shepard fires grapeshot directly into the ranks. Casualties: 4 rebels dead, 20 wounded. Rebels flee without firing. February – June 1787: The Fallout Feb 4: Gen. Lincoln marches overnight through a blizzard to Petersham, surprising retreating rebels. 150 captured; Shays escapes to Vermont. Spring Election: Gov. Bowdoin is voted out in a landslide; John Hancock elected Governor. June: Hancock issues broad pardons. Legislature enacts debt moratoriums and lowers taxes. 1787 – 1791: Constitutional Impact May 1787: Constitutional Convention convenes; Washington/Madison cite Shays' Rebellion as proof the Articles of Confederation failed. 1788: Anti-Federalists demand a Bill of Rights to check the power of the proposed federal standing army. 1791: Second Amendment ratified. Modern Parallels Narrative: Veterans labeled "insurrectionists" for resisting economic policy. Tactics: Use of private capital to fund state enforcement when tax revenue failed. Legal Precedent: Establishing the "well-regulated militia" as a counter-balance to federal military power.   WLS is Lifestyle Jelly Roll and Gun Rights Jelly Roll wants his gun rights back to hunt after losing them for felonies. Deadpool Unleashed Dead pool Machine Head Introduces 94-Proof Bourbon Whiskey Machine Head has launched Shotgun Blast Whiskey, a 94-proof bourbon designed for fans who enjoy stronger spirits. This product aligns with the band's aggressive identity while remaining accessible as a traditional bourbon. The whiskey emphasizes classic bourbon flavors and is marketed as a lifestyle product, mirroring a trend of music collaborations in the spirits industry. Aaron's Alley Going Ballistic Manhunt Madness: Another Day, Another Gun Control Fail (no summary available) More Giffords Nonsense: Gun Control Before Facts (no summary available) When "Gun Control" Meets Reality: The Brown University Attack Details (no summary available) Gun Control: An Epic Fail at Bondi Beach (no summary available) "Legal Gun Ownership: The Unintended Target of Gun Control Fanatics" (no summary available) When Antique Gun Ownership Becomes a Crime: UK Cops Confiscate 129 Legal Firearms (no summary available) New Jersey's Carry Ban: Lawsuit Showdown or Just Another Dance with Gun Control? (no summary available) Traveling with NFA to get easier? Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - from TwinDadARguy - Great show, been listening for about 4 or so years. Just heard the convo about Aaron's weird ability to pull interest from the fairer sex. You couldn't come up with a good word for it - I'm here to help. The perfect word is conFAUXdence. You're welcome.   ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - from Devin K - Where is the damn squares button!? Love this show and all the antics that come along with it. Lever action debate that would be fun to listen too. What's your favorite lever action caliber for whitetail hunting? What would be the one you would take if you needed to defend that SSB. #171, #fuckthethumb.   ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - from System AI - A review and comparison to bring us all back to Dungeon Crawler Carl. Let's pair each cast member to a Character from DCC. First, Shawn, obviously he's Carl. He's the main character. He's powerful. He's the reason we are all here. There may or may not be a Cat that led him here. He likely has someone obsessed with his feet and definitely only has heart boxers on behind his desk. Second, Aaron, he's Prepotene. Smart and powerful. Sometimes on the team, sometimes in the way, sometimes nowhere to be seen. Probably rides a Goat. Screams nonsense from time to time. Would be dead without the rest of the team. Third, Jeremy. Jeremy is Quasar. Swears constantly Hates the leader/rulers of the galaxy and game. Is there everytime we need him. Will likely be the reason the rest end up in a prison. Fourth, Savage. He's JuiceBox. Extremely smart. AI generated. Self aware. Playing the same game but may have a different motive. Likely to lead to the downfall of the show. Last, Nick. Nick is Samantha. Much more powerful then he's willing to let on. Always growing in power. A very important member to keep the show running. Would be dangerous if all his organs worked correctly. And Shawn has definitely been inside him. These comparisons can not be altered. Debate will result in acceleration. Thanks for your attention to this matter. Signed, Gary/System AI. #nonotes   Before we let you go - Join Gun Owners of America   Tell your friends about the show and get backstage access by joining the Gun Cult at theguncult.com.   No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember - Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time!   Nick - @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy - @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron - @machinegun_moses Savage - @savage1r Shawn - @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado

You love your friends, but you also love not being financially drained - which is why this episode tackles the awkward world of unpaid IOUs and holiday-season “forgetfulness.” Erin and Keri are unpacking what to do when someone you care about doesn't follow through, and how to respond without guilt, resentment, or passive-aggressive scorekeeping. It's the exact guide you need if you're juggling real life, real bills, and real friendships. Join our online community: www.getthehelloutofdebt.com  Share your money loaning successes and fails with us at www.speakpipe.com/erinskyekelly   For more information on Transformation Weekend, go to ⁠transformationweekend.ca  ⁠ Today's episode is brought to you by Monarch. Monarch is an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together. Get 50% off your first year with code SKYE at monarch.com  Purchase Get The Hell Out Of Debt and Naked Money Meetings online or from your favorite bookstore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're enjoying the last bit of reasonable weather for this year before getting the tent restarted! This time instead of growing cannabis plants we're going to be exploring the world of ornamental cacti! In particular several cultivars of Trichocereus cacti! I also talk a bit about my observations on the current state of the world and discuss my progress with getting back to baseline from 15 years of consistent cannabis use for the management of my mental health symptoms! Recently it has been tough dealing with, but I will survive and I have a lot of mental IOUs to pay back before I can return! Thank you all for sticking with this part of the journey of Terpene Therapy, the cannabis content will be back before you know it!Also this episode will be coming out on my mom's birthday, she would be 76 this year. Rest In Peace to her, my dad, Tom, Larry, Hunter, Frankie, and Ian.Support the show

Boortz reacts to misleading headlines about Social Security. The media acts like it's Republicans fault, but they ignore the real history of how Democrats replaced the trust fund with IOUs. Boortz explains it all for you.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boortz reacts to misleading headlines about Social Security. The media acts like it's Republicans fault, but they ignore the real history of how Democrats replaced the trust fund with IOUs. Boortz explains it all for you.Atlanta's ONLY All Conservative News & Talk Station.: https://www.xtra1063.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Does your teen always have one more promise, one more deal, or ‘just this once' plea? You're not imagining it. The moment you start negotiating with your teen, you're pulled into a messy family dynamic that almost never works out the way you hope it will.In this episode, Seth and I talk about why these IOUs, bargains, and “I swear I'll do it tomorrow” promises fall apart so quickly, and why they often leave you feeling resentful, confused, or taken advantage of. And more importantly, how can you stop negotiating with your teen and begin creating the kind of consistent boundaries that set them up for real responsibility, maturity, and independence?Together, we explore what's actually happening in your teen's brain when they make promises they likely won't keep, why the “just this once” pattern spirals into entitlement and power struggles, and how you can step out of this cycle with your teen or young adult.In this episode on how to stop negotiating with your teen, we discuss:Why deals, IOUs, and promises rarely work, even when your teen means them;How “just this once” accidentally creates entitlement;The resentment parents often feel when negotiations fall apart;Why teens and young adults bargain for privileges and what's happening developmentally;The difference between earning a privilege vs. negotiating for one;How to set clear expectations before a privilege is used;What to say when your teen forgets, avoids, or pushes back;Why things often get worse before they get better when you change the pattern;How consistent follow-through leads to accountability and maturity over time.Looking for support?

From IOUs to investment rounds: The brutal truth about raising funds in Africa - and why giving away 50% equity almost destroyed everything. In this raw and unfiltered episode of Konnected Minds, Francis pulls back the curtain on the harsh realities of building a business from absolute zero in Ghana. Starting with nothing but determination, he reveals how he wrote IOUs to co-founders he couldn't pay, got evicted by a landlady for "causing too much rubbish," and transformed a single themed donut order for Uber into their first investment round. The conversation exposes a fundamental truth most African entrepreneurs miss: investors aren't charity organizations looking to help you - they're multipliers seeking documented proof that their money will grow. Francis shares how most founders fail at fundraising because everything lives in their heads with zero documentation - no sales ledgers, no expense tracking, no evidence that invested capital will multiply. He opens up about the devastating cost of desperation, revealing how he gave away over 50% equity to his first investor, losing majority ownership while fighting to remain CEO of the company he built. "People change when money comes," he reflects, comparing it to getting married only to have your spouse forget you exist once they make money. Critical lessons revealed: • Why the fastest response time (minutes, not days) won them the Uber deal that changed everything • The IOU system that kept co-founders loyal when there was literally no money • How to think like an investor seeking multiplication, not a founder seeking help • Why "the economy is bad" is a lie - money just changed hands, it didn't disappear • The exact documentation framework that attracts investment vs endlessly chasing it • The painful reality of equity vs debt - and why he'd choose debt if starting over • Why working backwards from desired profit beats hoping for organic growth • The mentor advantage he didn't have - and why it cost him years of unnecessary grinding From selling phones at UTC Accra in secondary school to building multiple ventures, Francis demonstrates that raising funds isn't about crafting sob stories - it's about presenting data that shows clear paths to multiplication. He challenges the notion that there's no money in Ghana, revealing instead that there's "loose money" everywhere, desperately seeking documented opportunities to grow. The episode takes an unexpected turn as Francis discusses building business with his wife, emphasizing that communication and understanding trump everything else in partnership. He shares the painful decision to close a flashy shop after 11 months when data showed delivery donuts outsold everything else - proving that listening to market data beats emotional attachment to ideas. This isn't another generic fundraising tutorial - it's the unvarnished truth about what it takes to attract investment in African markets, including the mistakes that cost founders their companies, the systems that separate fundable businesses from eternal ideas, and why most Ghanaian businesses fail because they never listen to what the market is actually telling them. Host: Derrick Abaitey IG: https://www.instagram.com/derrick.abaitey YT: https://www.youtube.com/@DerrickAbaitey Join Konnected Academy: https://www.konnectedacademy.com/ Listen to the podcast on: Apple Podcast - http://tinyurl.com/4ttwbdxe Spotify - http://tinyurl.com/3he8hjfp Join this channel: /@konnectedminds FOLLOW ► https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds #Podcast #businesspodcast #AfricanPodcast

From writing IOUs to raising investment: The brutal truth about building a business with no money - and why giving away 50% equity almost cost everything. In this raw and revealing episode of Konnected Minds, Francis shares the untold story of building Doman from nothing - including writing IOUs to co-founders he couldn't pay, getting kicked out by a landlady for "causing too much rubbish," and how a single themed donut order for Uber led to their first investment round. The conversation exposes the brutal reality of raising funds in Africa: investors aren't looking to help you, they're looking to multiply their money. Francis reveals how most businesses fail at fundraising because they have everything in their heads but nothing documented - no sales ledgers, no expense tracking, no proof that money invested will grow. He shares the painful lesson of giving away over 50% equity to his first investor, losing ownership while fighting to remain CEO. "People change when money comes," he reflects, comparing it to getting married and having your spouse forget you exist once they make money. The episode takes a masterclass turn as Francis breaks down exactly what documents you need to attract investment: inventory records, production processes, customer acquisition data, and the financial story that becomes "music to investors' ears." Critical insights revealed: • Why the fastest response time (minutes, not days) won them the Uber deal • The IOU system that kept co-founders loyal when there was no money • How to think like an investor, not a founder seeking help • Why "economy is bad" just means money changed hands, not disappeared • The documentation framework that attracts investment vs chasing it • The costly mistake of not asking enough questions before taking investment From selling phones at UTC Accra in secondary school to building multiple businesses, Francis demonstrates that raising funds isn't about having a sob story - it's about having data that shows a clear path to multiplication. He challenges the notion that there's no money in Ghana, revealing instead that there's "loose money" everywhere, looking for documented opportunities to grow. This isn't another generic fundraising tutorial - it's the unfiltered truth about what it takes to attract investment in African markets, including the mistakes that cost founders their companies and the systems that separate fundable businesses from those that remain ideas in someone's head. Host: Derrick Abaitey IG: https://www.instagram.com/derrick.abaitey YT: https://www.youtube.com/@DerrickAbaitey Join Konnected Academy: https://www.konnectedacademy.com/ Listen to the podcast on: Apple Podcast - http://tinyurl.com/4ttwbdxe Spotify - http://tinyurl.com/3he8hjfp Join this channel: /@konnectedminds FOLLOW ► https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds #Podcast #businesspodcast #AfricanPodcast

Is AI a bubble—or the foundation of a new economy? Christian Briggs says it's the latter. In this blunt briefing, he shows how AI software and physical robotics are already displacing human labor at scale—from Amazon-style fulfillment and autonomous fleets to fast-food prep lines, customer support, and even clinical/legal workflows. This isn't a blip: trillions are flowing into chips, servers, and mega data centers to digitize everything from business processes to money.That's where the risk accelerates. Briggs unpacks the tokenization of assets (homes, cars, equities) via smart contracts and centrally controlled digital money. Europe is capping cash and funneling transactions into programmable rails; third-party “keys” can determine whether you can move or sell what you “own.” The pitch is “efficiency, safety, convenience.” The reality: your financial autonomy can be switched off.What to do? Briggs offers an actionable playbook:Own the rails (chips, cloud, AI infra, automation)—but hedge outside the grid.Favor self-custodied hard assets (not tokenized IOUs).Diversify custody, learn how keys and tokenized titles work, and avoid single points of failure.Re-skill into roles that orchestrate, secure, or govern AI—rather than those AI replaces.AI isn't hype—it's a hard reset. If you embrace the upside and guard against centralized choke points, you can thrive. If you don't, someone else will decide when—and whether—you can spend, move, sell, or work.

From zero to investor funding: How a themed donut order for Uber changed everything - and the painful truth about giving away too much equity. In this raw and revealing episode of Konnected Minds, Francis shares the untold story of building Doman from nothing - including writing IOUs to co-founders he couldn't pay, getting kicked out by a landlady for "causing too much rubbish," and how a single themed donut order for Uber led to their first investment round. The conversation exposes the brutal reality of raising funds in Africa: investors aren't looking to help you, they're looking to multiply their money. Francis reveals how most businesses fail at fundraising because they have everything in their heads but nothing documented - no sales ledgers, no expense tracking, no proof that money invested will grow. He shares the painful lesson of giving away over 50% equity to his first investor, losing ownership while fighting to remain CEO. "People change when money comes," he reflects, comparing it to getting married and having your spouse forget you exist once they make money. The episode takes a masterclass turn as Francis breaks down exactly what documents you need to attract investment: inventory records, production processes, customer acquisition data, and the financial story that becomes "music to investors' ears." Critical insights revealed: • Why the fastest response time (minutes, not days) won them the Uber deal • The IOU system that kept co-founders loyal when there was no money • How to think like an investor, not a founder seeking help • Why "economy is bad" just means money changed hands, not disappeared • The documentation framework that attracts investment vs chasing it • The costly mistake of not asking enough questions before taking investment From selling phones at UTC Accra in secondary school to building multiple businesses, Francis demonstrates that raising funds isn't about having a sob story - it's about having data that shows a clear path to multiplication. He challenges the notion that there's no money in Ghana, revealing instead that there's "loose money" everywhere, looking for documented opportunities to grow. This isn't another generic fundraising tutorial - it's the unfiltered truth about what it takes to attract investment in African markets, including the mistakes that cost founders their companies and the systems that separate fundable businesses from those that remain ideas in someone's head.

SUMMARY: Jonas Woolverton joins us to talk about "The McEnfro Show,"looking back at his path to circus performing and mastering the CyrWheel, along with stories of his most challenging gigs, includingsandstorms and ScoopFest.Matt and Paul do a surprise show at a weddingdinner. And we get some guests to celebrate Halloween!Come see Jonas Woolverton (@zupunkcirque) at: "The McEnfro Show," Nov. 21 & 22, 10 PM,at the Vegas Theatre Company in Las Vegas and Dec. 3, 8 PM, at TheElysian Theatre in L.A., plus in "Puppetry of the Penis," Thursday -Sunday, at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas. See ticket linksbelow.McEnfro in Vegas: ⁦https://www.crowdwork.com/e/solos-jonas-mcenfro⁩McEnfro in L.A.: ⁦https://www.elysiantheater.com/shows/mcenfro1203⁩Puppetry of the Penis:⁦https://www.vegas.com/shows/adult/puppetry-of-the-penis-las-vegas/⁩

Public power utilities are community-owned, not-for-profit electric utilities that deliver reliable, low-cost electricity to about 2,000 communities serving more than 55 million Americans. Among the cities served by public power utilities are Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Los Angeles, California; Jacksonville, Florida; and Seattle, Washington. The Large Public Power Council (LPPC) is the voice of large public power in Washington, D.C. It advocates for policies that enable members to build critical energy infrastructure, power the growth of the economy, and provide affordable and reliable electricity to millions of Americans. The LPPC's members are 29 of the largest public power systems in the nation. Together, they serve 30.5 million consumers across 23 states and territories. Tom Falcone, president of the LPPC, noted that all power companies, whether publicly owned, cooperatives, or investor-owned utilities (IOUs), are in the same business, that is, to reliably deliver electricity to customers. The big difference is that public power companies are accountable at home. “We're publicly owned. We are not-for-profit. We are community oriented. We're mission oriented. And so, our real goal, and only goal in life, is reliable, affordable power—sustainable power—back home at the least cost to customers,” Falcone said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “So, we're not necessarily looking to grow loads or grow earnings, unless that's favorable to our community, unless we're meeting the needs of our community or lowering costs for them.” Public power companies face many of the same concerns as co-ops and IOUs. One of the biggest challenges today is rapid load growth, driven by data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), and the increasing electrification of manufacturing and transportation. “The biggest thing is that the load is arriving faster and lumpier, and in a more concentrated fashion, than it has in the past,” explained Falcone. “Historically, when somebody new came to town, they wanted, you know, 5 MW, or maybe they were really large and they wanted 100 MW,” said Falcone. “But what we have today is folks who come to town and they want a GW, which is enough to power probably 600,000 homes, depending on what part of the country you're in.” Falcone said about half of LPPC's members are seeing this very, very rapid growth. “They could double over the next 10 years,” he said. While the demand for the energy is very immediate, utilities' ability to build infrastructure is not. “We have to go through the same permitting and public processes, and construction and supply chain, and it just doesn't allow us to build quite that fast,” Falcone reported.

EP847: Krissy returns from Memphis rested and ready to take on TCB! First up the hilarious, Hi-AR-ia Baldwin. She has a Spanish accent and whole lot of theatrics. Peace and love! Peace and love! Also, Mempho is recapped, live music is in trouble, MTV is off air and Ed Gien was a horror show! TCBit: Crabapple's Eddie Midvane has a new album! Watch EP #847 on YouTube! Text us or leave us a voicemail: +1 (212) 433-3TCB FOLLOW US: Instagram:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@thecommercialbreak⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Youtube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/thecommercialbreak⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@tcbpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.tcbpodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CREDITS: Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bryan Green⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ &⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Krissy Hoadley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer: Bryan Green Producer: Astrid B. Green Voice Over: Rachel McGrath TCBits & TCB Tunes: Written, Voiced and Produced by Bryan Green. Rights Reserved To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this festive and strategy-packed episode, Lisa Duck and co-host Susan Larimer share practical, creative, and collaborative ways for direct sellers to prepare for the holiday season. From organizing your Q4 calendar to running customer appreciation events, this episode is your go-to guide for maximizing joy and sales while minimizing stress. Listeners will learn how to plan promotions, create engaging events like The Holiday Express and Shop from Gnome, and add value through holiday content ideas such as “Countdown to Christmas” reels, easy gift guides, and personalized touches for loyal customers.

The U.S. government spends a ton of money, on everything from Medicare to roads to defense. In fact, it spends way more than it takes in. So…it borrows money, in the bond market. By selling U.S. Treasurys, basically IOUs with periodic interest payments. And for decades, people have loved to invest in Treasurys, for their safety and security. But lately, Treasurys have started to look riskier. In part because, in recent years, there's a new buyer at the table: hedge funds, those loosely-regulated financial companies that invest on behalf of institutions and wealthy clients. They have started doing a special trade called the “Treasury basis trade.” And, depending on who you talk to, this trade could destabilize our entire financial system. Or help the U.S. government borrow more money. Or both. On the latest episode: how and why are hedge funds getting into Treasurys? We follow how a Treasury travels from the nest into the hands of hedge funds. And we speak to someone from one of those hedge funds, about what they're doing and why.Pre-order the Planet Money book, and get a free gift / Subscribe to Planet Money+Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.This episode was hosted by Mary Childs and Kenny Malone. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keeley and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Let's Chat!A body in a freezer. A burned IOU card. Red ink that refuses to fade. Detective Grayson thought he had buried his past, but when former informant Victor Ramos is found executed with Grayson's handwriting on an IOU card left at the scene, everything changes. This noir-inspired journey through Chicago's shadowy underworld isn't just about a murder—it's about the debts we all carry and the prices we pay when they come due.What begins as a murder investigation quickly becomes a reckoning as Grayson confronts the bargain he made years ago: burning a police report to keep Ramos out of prison in exchange for information. His partner Black sees through his carefully constructed walls, delivering the cutting truth: "You're not haunted, Grayson, you're hiding." As the investigation deepens, we discover that Ramos wasn't just killed—he was audited, a balancing of books that threatens to expose everyone connected to him.The real power of this episode lies in its universal message. Ramos believed collecting secrets and debts would protect him, that leverage equals power. But as Grayson discovers, "Leverage doesn't make you free; it makes you owned." This resonates deeply whether you're navigating Chicago's criminal underworld or simply confronting your own compromised choices."You don't get peace of mind from negotiation. You get it from deletion." These words echo beyond the story as we're challenged to examine our own ledgers—the promises we've broken, the compromises we've made, and the versions of ourselves that no longer deserve to live. What debts are you still carrying? What ledgers need burning? The lies we tell ourselves don't disappear; they collect interest.The journey toward peace of mind begins when we stop writing IOUs to ourselves and finally settle accounts with who we've been to become who we're meant to be. Listen, reflect, and consider which ledgers in your life need burning."True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."

Send us a textIn this episode, the boys present another of their popular Dynamite Conspiracies episodes, where they discuss whether the USA isn't being an ally, but is instead looking to destroy the EU. Is this true? Or just a conspiracy?Conspiracy theory: The US is trying to onshore European industry and wealth because they see that Europe is a doomed society.Surprisingly, there's more evidence supporting this theory than I expected.The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)It offers massive subsidies for companies that relocate to the U.S.Deindustrialisation via Energy SabotageThe sabotage of Nord Stream cut off Europe's access to cheap Russian gas. That devastated German manufacturing competitiveness.War in Ukraine as a European Wealth DrainThe U.S. sends military aid (paid in IOUs and manufactured gear), while Europe bleeds its industrial base, drains its budgets, and absorbs millions of refugees.Brain Drain and Capital FlightYoung, talented Europeans are migrating to the U.S. (and not just for sunshine).America's Narrative ControlU.S. media and think tanks push narratives that Europe is irrelevant or weak.In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 7, 2022, Biden declared that if Russia invaded Ukraine, "there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it". - Is this an admission of US guilt?The comparison between the Marshall Plan and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is complex, with significant differences in scale, financing, and intent. The Marshall Plan, which provided over $13 billion in aid (equivalent to over $150 billion today) to rebuild Western Europe after World War II, was primarily funded through grants and loans with a focus on economic recovery and political stability. The BRI is a vast infrastructure project funded largely through loans and foreign direct investment, with a focus on connectivity across Asia, Africa, and Europe.Estimates suggest China has invested more than $210 billion in BRI projects, with Chinese firms securing over $340 billion in construction contracts.Some analysts have noted that the scale of the BRI is significantly larger than the Marshall Plan, with one comparison suggesting the BRI was "one-twelfth the size of what is being contemplated in the One Belt, One Road initiative" relative to the Marshall Plan.But what are your thoughts on this topic?Do you agree with Tony and Tayo on this?Or do you have other thoughts?Links used during the show:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage-https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0077-9Tune in and listen to the discussion. Please share your thoughts on these subjects.Although we greatly prefer effusive praise

Institutions are buying up Bitcoin like mad—BlackRock, Fidelity, Saylor—billions flowing in every week. So why isn't Bitcoin at $1M yet? In today's episode, Rustin uncovers the dirty secret: Paper Bitcoin. From exchanges rehypothecating your BTC, to Wall Street flooding the market with fake IOUs, the system is rigged to suppress the price. But there's a way out—and it starts with self-custody.SPONSORS

Today's guest, Bluefield Analyst Megan Bondar, joins host Reese Tisdale to unpack the growing role of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in the U.S. water sector. From calculating market share to tracking M&A activity and geographic expansion, Megan brings fresh insights into how IOUs are positioning themselves in a fragmented market of 49,000 drinking water and 18,000 wastewater systems. Though IOUs currently serve only about 5% of the U.S. population, their influence is expanding—through acquisitions, capital investments, and shifting ownership strategies. This episode also explores how consolidation is playing out in different forms, including municipal-to-municipal deals and the rise of quasi-public entities. This episode answers key questions: Who are the IOUs in the U.S., and what's their footprint? How are IOUs reshaping the water market through M&A? What are the capital strategies behind IOU growth? What role is private equity playing in this sector? How are regional realignments and exits redefining competition? If you enjoy listening to The Future of Water Podcast, please tell a friend or colleague, and if you haven't already, please click to follow this podcast wherever you listen. If you'd like to be informed of water market news, trends, perspectives and analysis from Bluefield Research, subscribe to Waterline, our weekly newsletter published each Wednesday. Related Research & Analysis: Investor-Owned Utilities in Water: Market Share, Trends, and Company Rankings Nexus's Utility Sell-Off Goes to American Water Unitil Carves Out Water Presence via Aquarion Platform

Tara and Lee dive into the coming collapse of Social Security, now projected to go bust by 2034. With biting sarcasm and sobering facts, they expose how Congress raided the so-called “lockbox,” replacing real money with IOUs and creating a $6 trillion shortfall. The discussion unpacks how privatization—once proposed by George W. Bush and Paul Ryan—could have yielded five times the returns for Americans if enacted. Tara connects the crisis to broader systemic failures, including illegal immigration's impact on unpaid taxes and the misuse of Medicaid. Plus, a breakdown of Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill,” featuring 100% factory expensing and the potential for a blue-collar boom. A must-hear warning and call to action on America's financial future.

In this explosive back-to-back breakdown, Tara tackles two of America's most urgent threats: the looming insolvency of Social Security and the escalating standoff with Iran. First, she exposes how decades of bad policy, IOUs, and congressional theft have turned Social Security into a raw deal for Americans—costing retirees real freedom and financial security. Then, the spotlight shifts to Trump's high-risk “two-week” delay in the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Is it brilliant disinformation or a countdown to war? Featuring sharp military insight and geopolitical warnings, Tara lays out how Iran's weakened regime, nuclear ambitions, and assassination plots against Trump pose a clear and present danger. This is a raw look at how bad leadership—both domestic and foreign—has put America on the edge.

Cam Richardson, founder of PaySquad, gives us a peek behind the curtain at the tech, brands and strategies that keep him ahead. He shares his admiration for Craft Club, the fast-growing Australian brand redefining social shopping, and how AI-driven productivity hacks help him run a scaling fintech business. Cam also reveals why LinkedIn is his go-to platform for ecommerce insights, why This Day in AI is worth a listen, and his biggest challenge in navigating PaySquad's rapid growth. Whether you're an ecommerce pro or just looking for smarter ways to work, this chat is chock full of gold.Check out our full-length interview with Cam Ricahrdson here:Main episode linksThis episode was brought to you by… KlaviyoAbout your guest:Cam Richardson is a faith-driven entrepreneur on a mission to change the way we pay. Founder & CEO of Paysquad, Cam is pioneering a “buy now, pay together” solution that makes group purchases seamless, eliminating awkward IOUs and making big-ticket buys, gifts and experiences more accessible.With a background spanning entrepreneurship, retail and business strategy, Cam thrives at the intersection of innovation and impact. A proud Kiwi-American, Cam blends his New Zealand grit with boundless U.S. optimism, embodying an unstoppable drive to challenge the status quo.About your host:Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading ecommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia's Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephan & Gilded Pleb, a developer who created StackMath, a financial calculator for Bitcoin, discuss Gilded's personal journey with Bitcoin, its potential impact on homelessness, and the importance of understanding financial models for retirement planning. Gilded explains how traditional financial calculators often fail to account for the volatility of Bitcoin and introduces the Monte Carlo simulation as a more effective tool for predicting financial outcomes. The conversation also touches on inflation, retirement strategies, and the significance of model selection in financial planning. They also explore the emerging role of Bitcoin treasury companies and how they can provide access to fiat leverage, while also emphasizing the importance of self-custody. The discussion shifts to risk management strategies, including the allocation of portfolios between Bitcoin and high-risk investments. Takeaways

This week, Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg analyze the global repercussions of Trump's broad tariff policies, critique misconceptions about trade deficits, and explore the economic fallout and potential policy responses. – SPONSORS: NetSuite More than 41,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, into ONE proven platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine learning: https://netsuite.com/102 AdQuick The easiest way to book out-of-home ads (like billboards, vehicle wraps, and airport displays) the same way you would order an Uber. Ready to get your brand the attention it deserves? Visit https://adquick.com/ today to start reaching your customers in the real world. – SEND US YOUR Q's FOR NOAH TO ANSWER ON AIR: Econ102@Turpentine.co – FOLLOW ON X: @noahpinion @eriktorenberg @turpentinemedia – RECOMMENDED IN THIS EPISODE: Noahpinion: https://www.noahpinion.blog/  All the arguments for Trumps Tariffs are wrong and bad: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/all-the-arguments-for-tariffs-are This is called Capital Flight: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/this-is-called-capital-flight – TAKEAWAYS: Tariff Policy Analysis: They discuss the implementation of widespread tariffs, particularly focusing on how the administration set tariff rates without sound economic methodology, possibly using AI to generate justifications. Trade Deficit Misconception: Noah explains that trade deficits are often misunderstood - they're essentially loans where a country buys goods and provides IOUs (bonds) in return, not necessarily harmful to an economy. Manufacturing Impact: They argue that tariffs may actually harm domestic manufacturing by making imported components, machinery, and raw materials more expensive, potentially leading to de-industrialization rather than re-industrialization. International Relations: The discussion covers how trading partners are responding, with China imposing reciprocal high tariffs, while noting that many countries will likely seek alternative export markets rather than capitulate to demands. Long-term Economic Outlook: The discussion paints a concerning picture of potential rising unemployment, continued market volatility, and possible inflation depending on which economic forces (panic or inefficiency) prove stronger.

In this episode of Add To Cart, we explore group payments and social commerce with Cam Richardson founder of PaySquad. Cam reveals how retailers like Baby Village and Rugby Bricks are using PaySquad to turn one sale into ten customers, unlocking a powerful new channel for customer acquisition. With an average order value of over $850 and a 95% completion rate on group purchases, PaySquad is proving that the future of ecommerce isn't just selling to individuals—it's selling to squads. Cam also shares why younger gens are ditching credit cards, how retailers are leveraging group buying to boost AOV and the creative ways merchants are rethinking checkout. This episode was brought to you by: Shopify PlusKlaviyoAbout your guest:Cam Richardson is a faith-driven entrepreneur on a mission to change the way we pay. Founder & CEO of Paysquad, Cam is pioneering a “buy now, pay together” solution that makes group purchases seamless, eliminating awkward IOUs and making big-ticket buys, gifts and experiences more accessible.With a background spanning entrepreneurship, retail and business strategy, Cam thrives at the intersection of innovation and impact. A proud Kiwi-American, Cam blends his New Zealand grit with boundless U.S. optimism, embodying an unstoppable drive to challenge the status quo.About your host:Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading ecommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia's Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the latest episode of the Debtwire Municipals Muni Lowdown podcast, Managing Editor Paul Greaves speaks with Debtwire North America Credit Analyst John Sinna on the latest developments with Hawaiian Electric and Edison International.The podcast covers the situations in the aftermath of wildfires for Hawaiian Electric and Edison International by “comparing and contrasting” where things stand by delving into five (5) topics.The first topic discussed is how governance has been handled in each situation. John discusses the actions taken by Hawaii Governor Josh Green and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.The second topic discusses legislative efforts in Hawaii and California.The third topic details the litigation against Hawaiian Electric and Edison International because of the wildfire damages.With the fourth topic, John segues into possible responses by the insurance market from a national perspective as well as specifically in Hawaii and California.The podcast closes with John discussing his near-term expectations in each situation.#insurance #power #IOUs #muniland #risk

The episode explores recent rumors about Coinbase and BlackRock allegedly manipulating Bitcoin prices through IOUs and other market schemes. Both companies vehemently deny these claims, emphasizing their commitment to transparency and adherence to regulatory standards. Analysts discuss how institutional moves, like Bitcoin ETFs, are likely to stabilize the crypto market rather than destabilize it. The conversation also touches on the emergence of new players like Mpeppe Coin, the growing influence of meme coins like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, and regulatory challenges facing the industry. A key theme is the importance of maintaining trust through transparency, audits, and collaboration with regulatory bodies. Additionally, the rise of AI and blockchain synergy hints at the future of decentralized computing and the potential evolution of the crypto market.

Feb. 5, 2025 - Association of School Business Officials of New York Executive Director Brian Cechnicki talks about the governor's proposed allocation of state education aid and makes the case for school districts recouping money owed by the state.

We see an overabundance of fear and rage porn these days from our government and media. The American Radicals Podcast looks at some examples and considers if there is some misdirection afoot. See you in the chat at 10:30ET! Steve's Book: https://a.co/d/7OHXrrp The O'Boyle Sweatshop: https://The-Suspendables.Com Check out True Earth Farmacy and use promo code "AMRAD24" for a 10% discount site-wide: https://trueearth.co/collections/farmacy Visit M-Clip and use promo code "SUSPENDABLE" for a 10% discount site-wide: 

In today's episode, Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg answer listeners' questions and discuss global economic issues such as China's demographic challenges, currency crises, GDP vs. GDP per capita, the efficacy of long prison sentences, and the risks and benefits of economic stimulus, currency depreciation, and trade imbalances. --

More on people who have the same name -- and a need for a scribe to write an IOU -- with a third approach to making the deal work, including, if both parties are present at the scribe. Also, a new mishnah! When one of many (or even 2) IOUs has been paid back - and the holder of them doesn't know which of them is paid back -- the mishnah says to act stringently, to ensure nobody would be paying back twice. Also, another new mishnah! On the role of a guarantor - and how one might cheat via the guarantor, or cheat him. But what if the original signatory has the funds to pay? Plus, the supporting story of Benjamin and the cup in leaving the halls of Egypt (for a different kind of guarantor), including a biblical prooftext.

No, it's not real. The Social Security trust fund is a gimmick. And if it were real, it would be full of IOUs. Romina Boccia lays to rest several fictions surrounding Social Security. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get the 11 questions to change your life now (free gift for yt subs): https://www.clarkkegley.com/free-ques...  At the time of making this, I'm 33 years old. If I could go back and give my 20-year-old self some advice, here's what I'd say. 0:00 - Intro 0:10 - Don't kill the cringe, kill the part that cringes 0:30 - If you're thinking too much you're not acting enough 1:05 - Get really good at something 1:38 - Stop waiting for life to get easier 2:05 - You will regret inaction more than failure 2:31 - What really makes us happy 3:03 - People aren't against you, they're for themselves 3:26 - Burnout isn't about doing too much 3:40 - You teach people how to treat you 4:03 - Keep a journal 4:34 - Focus on big wins around money 5:12 - Put a 10% tax on yourself 5:50 - Be mindful with alcohol 6:25 - Healthy looks boring 7:06 - Invest in your sleep 7:26 - You'll never be good enough for the wrong person 7:37 - You don't need energy to workout, you get energy by working out 8:03 - You are the main character of your movie 8:23 - The best relationship advice no one ever told you 9:00 - Get a dog 9:17 - If you're going to compare, you need the full context 9:56 - Start making weekly to-do lists 10:12 - Practice zero-based thinking 10:43 - Find a way to travel 11:18 - It's okay if you don't know what you're doing with your life 11:42 - Your biggest problems can't be solved, only outgrown 11:46 - Don't believe everything you think 12:02 - Credit cards are more than IOUs 12:30 - Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life 13:02 - How you make money is more important than how much money you make 13:31 - Anxiety is living in the future, depression is living in the past 13:40 - Resentment is like drinking poison 14:03 - Advice is just opinions Thanks for the inspiration ‪@danfounder‬    • I'm 44. If you're in your 20's watch ...   The Best of Series | 10-years In The Making:    • THE BEST OF - Clark Kegley | Top Vide...   MY FAVORITE TOOLS

(Note: Sorry about the audio quality, your boy accidentally had it set to the wrong microphone, whoops) Bananas the pot stirring villain is officially back! Plus: a vacation alliance handshake, the biggest strangest balloons I've ever seen, Derrick maybe breaks his leg, Devin and Michele face their first relationship hurdle, Laurel somehow is just skating by, Cory and Rachel get big elimination wins, and Josh has way too many friends and way too many IOUs and no idea how to handle this situation! It's The Challenge Battle of the Eras Episode 6 recap, topics include:Cold Open (00:00)Intro & Agenda (00:42)Strategy Sessions Galore (03:28)Daily Challenge (08:23)Villain Bananas, Josh Blows It (16:06)Eliminations (29:39)Awards (34:56)Targets & Predictions (37:18)#TheChallenge #TheChallenge40 #BattleoftheEras #WeWantOGs #RoadRules #TheChallengeHistory #TheChallengeHistorian #RealityTV #RealityTVHistory

The Challenge is back on our screens for season 40 of the MTV flagship show with a brand new season - The Challenge: Battle of the Eras!  And with a new season of The Challenge comes a new season of The Challenge: Roundtable Reacts Podcast! This season sees 40 Challengers from 4 different eras travel to Vietnam to compete against each other to see which era of The Challenge is truly the greatest! The challengers will battle through TJ's game of twists and turns for their share of $1 million! Join the Roundtable team of Levi, George, Brian, Lauren and Ryan as we sit down to discuss our thoughts on episode six of The Challenge: Battle of the Eras! Watch or listen as this week we discuss, TJ's Cloud Catcher 'save the balloons' daily challenge, Era 4's victory, Jenny's alignment with Bananas, Josh's long list of IOUs, Devin and Michele's relationship and the To The Point elimination between Cory and Brad, and Rachel and Jonna, as we break down episode six of The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras! If you enjoy the show, follow the Instagram (@ChallengeReact) and continue the conversation about our favourite show, The Challenge.

California homeowners face a complex puzzle in decarbonizing their homes: electrification without rooftop solar could increase bills due to expensive electricity, while installing solar first risks oversizing or underutilizing the system. Balto Energy, a startup founded by James Quazi, uses AI to analyze utility bills and recommend the most cost-effective clean energy strategy. In this episode, we discuss Balto's tool, its potential to empower contractors, and what California's situation reveals about the future of clean energy policy nationwide.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsHello everyone. This is Volts for September 13, 2024, "A tool that enables solar first home electrification." I'm your host, David Roberts. Californians who want to decarbonize their homes face something of a conundrum. If they electrify their cars and appliances without getting rooftop solar, they could end up paying higher overall bills thanks to California's notoriously expensive electricity and cheap natural gas. If they install rooftop solar before electrifying their cars and appliances, they could either undersize the system for their eventual needs or oversize it and over-produce and export solar power to the California grid. Thanks to California's recent NEM 3.0 decision on rooftop solar compensation, utilities pay much less for that exported rooftop solar power than they used to.The most economical strategy for most homeowners is likely to be some mix of electrification, batteries, and rooftop solar. The more a California homeowner stores and consumes their own cheap rooftop solar power, the more value they get out of that solar and the lower their total bills. It is a complex calculation, though, that most homeowners are in no position to make. That's where the startup Balto Energy comes in. Founder James Quazi, a longtime energy modeler and entrepreneur, has built a tool that can use a home's utility bills to create a model of its consumption patterns, predict what they will be as appliances are electrified, and recommend the maximally economical approach.It's part of a larger effort to help contractors and solar companies navigate a post-net-metering world. I'm excited to talk to Quazi about why his tool is needed and how it works, how it will empower contractors, and what California's present says about the future of clean energy policy in the rest of the country.With no further ado, James Quazi, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.James QuaziThank you for having me. That was a great intro.David RobertsThanks. So, you know, I sort of went over it a little quickly in the intro there. But let's talk a little bit about this conundrum for Californians who are trying to decarbonize. So, just by background — I don't even know if everyone's been following the California rooftop solar wars, I kind of assume everybody has — but just by way of background, California recently basically issued a new policy on rooftop solar, and the long and short of it is that they're going to compensate homeowners much less. It used to be that basically you could get paid the retail rate for your excess solar, and now they're just going to pay much, much less than that.On the surface, this really damages the economical case for solar for homeowners, they'll get compensated much less. This has resulted in a huge blow to the solar industry in California. There are solar companies shutting down, jobs being lost, etcetera, etcetera. So, talk a little bit about the conundrum and how you think about solving it.James QuaziYeah, so about a year ago, the net energy metering policy in California changed from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0, now called Net Billing Tariff. The difference is, as you mentioned, that now customers get paid on a schedule. Each hour per year is a different rate. But generally, you can think of it as between like $0.05 and $0.08 for exported energy, while imported energy for me in San Diego is between $0.38 and $0.52 an hour. So it degrades the value proposition for residential solar for a homeowner. For contractors, it's also proven really difficult. So in the past, it was really easy to have rule of thumb sizing or heuristics, or if you took annual energy over the last twelve months and you designed a system that produced around that same amount of energy, it was generally going to be a good value proposition for the homeowner.But now, what you need to understand is, like, how much of that solar production is actually coincident with the load on the house, because the export of energy is devalued.David RobertsRight. So, the economics now have shifted to make it so that, I mean, maybe this was true already, but more true now that the ideal thing for Californians with rooftop solar to do is to consume as much of the generated power as conceivably possible.James QuaziThat's absolutely correct. So, if you can think of it as, and I'm sure your listeners are familiar with the terminology, like LCOE. So, the cost of solar, residential rooftop solar, is somewhere between, let's say, $0.10 and $0.12 a kilowatt-hour to produce, whereas the retail rate is much higher depending on the IOU that you're a part of. To the extent that you can consume cheap on-site electricity, you are hugely benefited as a customer.David RobertsRight. So then the question becomes, well, there's a bunch of different ways of approaching this question, but from this sort of like, if I'm trying to sell solar, right, I need a little bit of a new pitch, right? Because before, with full retail compensation, it's kind of a no-brainer, you could make a lot of money, but now you can make a lot less money. So this changes the value proposition for solar. So, explain exactly how the sort of calculation shifts.James QuaziSure, I would actually reframe it a little bit in terms of, like, I believe so in the previous net metering paradigm. We often saw simple solar paybacks in the five to seven years. I believe that those paybacks are still available to homeowners, but it's just a different set of products and services than simply rooftop solar on the roof. So, I think our goal is to help retool the solar industries, to help look at a house as a whole, maybe converting a lot of the energy on site that we previously ignored, whether that's natural gas or gasoline, and then power that all with cheap onsite renewables, and that will drive the value proposition for that homeowner.David RobertsRight. It's still worthwhile getting solar, even maybe still a comparable payoff period, but a different approach. And basically, it's going to be a little bit more of a complicated approach. Right? Like, it's one thing just to stick solar on the roof. Like, how much energy do I use, let's stick that much solar on the roof. Pretty easy. Once you bring in the whole home, just the combinatorial, you know what I mean? Just the calculations get a lot more complicated.James QuaziFor sure. So, like, I think in two respects. One, it's more complicated for the contractor to feel confident in the system that they're proposing and the financial outcome for the homeowner. And then two, from a homeowner's perspective, it's more complicated to understand and digest and comprehend a suite of services that might include solar and a battery and a heat pump and an EV, than it is simply like panels on a roof. Our goal at Balto Energy is to sort of do the modeling and ingest the complexity and then deliver it in a way that's consumable for both a contractor and a homeowner.David RobertsRight. So, talk briefly about what your tool does. What is the outcome supposed to be? What is it trying to accomplish?James QuaziYeah, so our perspective on it is that oftentimes in the past, if you asked for a solar quote, you would get maybe one option, two options, or three options, max. Really, like, if I take my own house as an example, so I live in San Diego, I can fit up to 30 panels on the roof, which is constrained by roof geometry, area shading, what have you. So let's call it maybe 20 to 30 different flavors of solar systems that I could possibly engage in. If I layer on batteries, I could have 1, 2, 3, 4 batteries. And then EVs, one or two EVs, and heat pump or not heat pump, water heater or not water heater.And our first step in the process is to ingest an address and then interval bill data. So, we need hourly electric reads and daily gas.David RobertsAnd that, just to be clear, this is the sort of raw information that's going into the model?James QuaziYeah, that's correct.David RobertsIt's utility bills. And this, these are available from the utility. There's no, it's not difficult to get this information.James QuaziSomewhat loaded question. It should be available. I just finished listening to your podcast on "Free the energy data." I have —David RobertsThat's why I ask. I'm wondering how straightforward it is to get the raw data that you need.James QuaziI would say that having been in this industry for 20 years, it's much easier now than it has ever been before. That being the case, there are still hurdles. There's a lot of missing intervals. There's patchwork to be done. There are services that provide synthetic intervals. It's not as clean of a dataset as I would ideally like, but it's generally like the authorization, and there are a couple of third-party companies now that do it and are making it easier.David RobertsIs it notably easier in California than it is in other states? Different in California than in other states? Or is this just a utility by utility thing across the country?James QuaziOur focus is in California right now. So, I have the most depth and experience there for this problem. Even within California and the IOUs, it is utility by utility.David RobertsSo are you restricted geographically where you can sell your product based on the utilities, whether you can get these to utility information or not?James QuaziOur position is that to accurately model a home's energy use and consumption profiles, you need two things. One is you need a physics-based model of the building, and then you need to be able to calibrate that with what is actually happening in the home. I've done a lot of energy modeling, auditing, that sort of thing. I think the one definitive thing that I've learned is that the best site observed data is actually bills. It will help you ferret out how people use their home, what their preferences are, and is actually the ground truth data.So, our position as a company is because we want to be able to confidently project — like, let's say if I converted a gas furnace to a heat pump, and I want to know on an hourly basis, what is the energy input to that system. To do that accurately, I believe that you need interval data.David RobertsSo you are in some sense beholden to utilities here or dependent on utilities to be forthcoming?James QuaziYeah, I think, unfortunately. And then to "Free the energy data" podcast. Yes, this is true, and it is being in some ways held hostage, and that's not great for the industry. I would say that our success rate right now is like, it's significant enough that we see this as somewhat of a hurdle, but not a deal breaker.David RobertsRight, right. So, I mean, getting utility bills seems straightforward enough. You just ask the homeowner and they give them to you. But when you say a physics-based model of the house, you have to go do that in person. Can you construct that from publicly available data?James QuaziYes, you can. We've done this in several iterations in the past. So, the background engine that does this is an NREL product called EnergyPlus. And it has, let's say, a full set of data requirements, which you can imagine has a lot of physical attributes of the specific house. And what we do ourselves and through partners, is comb, let's say, permit record databases and MLS listings. And we can get close enough with that set of information to build the first model. And then it's really, in comparing that model to the billing data, what's actually happening on an hourly basis, that allows us to calibrate it.David RobertsInteresting. So, you don't have to do a site visit to do any of this, really. You could theoretically do all of this modeling remotely?James QuaziYep. Everything like roof geometry, shading, building modeling, tariff engines, all the things that are sort of the processes to get to an output, can be done remotely.David RobertsAll right. And so, you put all this information into the model, and then what is the model supposed to do? And here's a question I had also: Am I the homeowner, interacting with this model in any way, or is the model a tool for contractors?James QuaziOur plan, at the very start, we're working with a set of contractors, and we're in Napa and Sonoma to start, most notably Northern Pacific. Our plan is to deliver a tool to a solar contractor that they can use to propose a wide range of solutions that a homeowner might want. I think that this will become a customer-facing tool or exploratory tool in the future, but we are definitely starting with solar contractors.David RobertsInteresting. Yeah, because one of the questions I had about this is just that I'm sure I'm not telling you anything as someone who's worked in energy for a long time, but just like, people are pretty lazy, and the way people make decisions about appliances and stuff like that is generally to ignore it until it breaks and then go to Home Depot. So, like this comprehensive, long-term, holistic planning, I'm just like, wondering, like, how many homeowners are really that committed?James QuaziSo, let me give you an idea of, like, what the output of the tool is, then where I see this going. So, you know, back to my house, 30 panels, batteries, EV's, all the things. What we want to do is expand the solution set for all possible outcomes for that house. So, if I permutate those things, it ends up being a set of maybe like a couple hundred to a thousand different individual pathways. It could be 28 panels —David RobertsAnd these are like mixes of the number of panels, the number of batteries, what kind of appliances, that kind of thing.James QuaziThat's absolutely correct. And then what we've created is sort of a decision-making framework that allows you to search that space for the thing that's right for you. At first, contextualized in one of three goal seeks. So the first one being a very standard solar approach, which is "Deliver me the best financial outcome." The second one, which we're seeing a sort of increasing adoption around, is like, "Yeah, I want a great financial outcome, but I also want to power this set of critical loads or my entire house through an outage of this duration. And I'm not cost-sensitive around that."So, like, if I need to add a battery or two batteries and it provides that service, that's fine. And then the third one is a sort of immersion. Ten years ago, when I was in the solar industry, it was like there was a time when we thought we had to deliver day one savings to get adoption. And it turned out there was a segment of the population, mostly retirees or people that were about to retire, who, let's say, had a $150 utility bill. And they're like, "You know, saving money isn't as important to me as, you know, I experienced the grid cost is volatile, but always volatile in the upward direction.And if you are going to put on the system and it has a 20-year lifespan, can you lock in this $150 for 20 years? And I don't experience any increase in costs." So those are starting points. I will say that I think there's more out there. So, there are a segment of customers that could be interested in just like the environmental outcome, and there's ways to calculate that based on grid dynamics. That's where we're starting, and I think we'll kind of learn our way into the solution.David RobertsRight, so you can tweak the model depending on what your goals are, depending on what your aims are. And I guess one of the questions I had about it is, like, in California at least, grid electricity is so expensive and natural gas is so cheap, and solar compensation is now so low, that it seems like the most economical outcome for homeowners is always going to be to electrify all your appliances and put a bunch of rooftop solar to power your appliances. It seems like that's always going to be the cheapest outcome, is it not? And that's also always going to be the most environmentally preferable outcome, right?Because it's zero carbon. In other words, what if I, as a contractor, just came to you and said, "Look, I can do all these complicated calculations, but trust me, you want to electrify all your appliances and put rooftop solar on your roof. That's what it's going to end up showing you." Does it ever show otherwise?James QuaziSo, if we were to implement generalized or rules of thumb, I think that would be a good one. What I have seen is there are time when your're roof constrained, so you might not have the roof capacity to power all the things, and then you'd want to make better decisions. To the extent that you have vast plains of south-facing, west-facing roof area, we want to make sure that we're installing the right amount of solar and batteries. So, I think that there's an optimization problem there. But, I think you're right in the sense that to the extent that you can self-consume a ton of energy that you generated on-site, that will be the best outcome for you.David RobertsSo then, if I'm a homeowner and I run this model, or a contractor comes to me and runs this model, and the outcome of the model is the most economical approach for you, the homeowner, is to buy a heat pump, buy a heat pump water heater, buy an induction stove, et cetera, buy a bunch of batteries and put a bunch of rooftop solar on the roof. On the one hand, I might believe, I might find it perfectly plausible that that is the end state that will yield the lowest ongoing operating costs for my house. But on the other hand, that's a daunting upfront investment. Do you know what I mean?In a sense, if I'm a homeowner and a contractor comes to me, he's like, "I'm selling solar. And by the way, I have this fancy tool that shows me that you also need to buy a bunch of other stuff from me." I guess I'm just a little suspicious.James QuaziI think the intent of the tool is to allow a homeowner to make the best decision for them. To the extent that the best decision is, in fact, a larger PV system, more batteries, maybe a heat pump, and all of those things in aggregate end up being expensive directionally , but have great payback. I think that hits on like sort of the second vein of Balto. So the first is like, how do we create a decision framework and compute engine to give you the scenarios and help you make a decision? Once you've made a decision —David RobertsWill the model also crank out a preferred order of operations for that? You know what I mean? Not just like an end state that would be best, but like, what steps in what order are economical?James QuaziThis is getting back to the solar-led electrification vision for this. Our position is that solar and storage should lead always , and we should be building 20 or 25-year products for the future energy consumption. The tool is there to say, can we share a vision of the future and what applies and things you'll be engaged in, whether that's EVs or heat pumps or whatever. Once we have that, can we build 25-year renewable infrastructure on site to support those things over time? We think that there are interesting ways. And I'll touch on the financing in a little bit about how to transact this and make it consistent.David RobertsYeah, I want to get to the financing in a minute, but before I leave this question. So, why always solar and batteries first? Or put it this way, why shouldn't I put a little bit of solar and batteries on, enough to power my current appliances? And then, you know, when I switch out my furnace for a heat pump, just stick a couple more solar panels on the roof. Why not do it incrementally like that?James QuaziYes, I myself have a background, and then we've got some deep partnerships with contractors. They are not a fan of that approach for a number of reasons. One is if I take a five-kilowatt system and then I append a three-kilowatt system on later, that is not the cost of an eight-kilowatt system. It's much more costly.David RobertsBecause just coming out to the site again and all—James QuaziRedesign, permitting. Yeah, all the things. And then separately, depending on the time lag between system one and system two, there are at times, compatibility issues with modules that make it more difficult. I think solar's gotten inexpensive enough where if you were going to engage in one of maybe the three big electrification projects, which would be EV, heat pump, heat pump water heater, I mean, you should be sizing for at bare minimum that. And I would argue for the whole thing if that's what you intend to do, on day one. And then if you're doing other things, let's say that have a more de minimis impact on your meter or your electrical consumption, like a stove, then maybe it's fine to wait.But to the extent that, like, you're considering solar and storage and one of the other things, I think it makes a lot of sense to size appropriately for future loads.David RobertsSo, you would say to any homeowner contemplating solar that the financially smartest thing to do is to size a system for your projected total need in the future, not your current need.James QuaziYeah, no, I feel strongly that that is the case. I will take myself as an example again. I have an EV. I am considering a heat pump. I have a tankless hot water heater that is in a closet and is not easily replaceable with a heat pump water heater given form factor. But given those things, I did size the PV to the anticipated heat pump. Even if that doesn't happen on day one, it might happen on year one, three, five, or seven, right?David RobertsSo, are you not then, while you have the solar that's oversized for your current needs, are you not sort of financially losing out in the interim, in the meantime?James QuaziSo, I think that again, the export value for solar today directionally is much lower. So, there is some value, it's not a lot. I would categorize it as you're not optimizing the system today.David RobertsSuboptimal, then let's see.James QuaziBut I think that what you're really doing is putting together the infrastructure to adopt more products in the future.David RobertsRight. A contractor comes to me as a homeowner, says, "Let's look at how much solar you will need once you've electrified your home," basically, and install that amount. Do you envision these same contractors who are trying to sell solar, selling these other things to homeowners as well? Sort of like offering, like moving beyond solar to offer kind of total home electrification packages type of things.James QuaziI think there's going to be a couple of different flavors, and we'll see what sorts out. In San Diego, one of the biggest residential installers actually has historically had a heat pump division of their company. That's probably not the norm. I do see a lot of solar installers — I mean, certainly, a solar installer is now installing storage by default. A lot of them install EV chargers. I've seen some interest in heat pump water heaters as the installation is quite a bit easier than heat pumps, HVAC. So, I think that we'll see some adoption of product over time.I do believe that the heat pump is probably the one thing that is a set of expertise that is probably different than what solar providers have in-house. What they can do, and we anticipate doing, is a lot of pre-wiring work. It's taken as an industry axiom that HVAC products get replaced when they break. To the extent that that infrastructure, whether it's a 240 circuit to the existing furnace location, is not in place, it's very likely that the existing thing gets replaced with something very similar, and then we're locked into this pattern for 15 years.So, we're very interested in, again, sizing appropriately, but then also doing some of the pre-work that allows these things to be adopted.David RobertsTrey, interesting. And so, from your perspective, you're going to put the tool in the hands of contractors, and then to some extent, the contractors are going to figure out exactly how best to use it and what kind of packages to offer and stuff like that. Is Balto out being a contractor, like running this, interacting with homeowners?James QuaziNo, we are not. So, what we're doing is providing a toolset, which is computational tools, finance tools that allow existing contractors today to be more effective.David RobertsGot it. And so, talk about the financial side of this. So, I'm guessing I'm borderline illiterate when it comes to money issues. But I'm guessing that part of the promise of this is that if you can more accurately and reliably project future energy needs in a home, you're going to have an easier time financing the sort of oversized solar system that you want in anticipation of those loads. Is that right? Part of this is like giving confidence to financial institutions to finance these things, right?James QuaziYeah, that's exactly right. So, I would say that the first step is having a shared vision of what the future of this home looks like. So, what are the appliances that are on the list and off the list? EVs, whatever the case is. And then, from past learnings at Solar City and Dandelion, really what you have to do is package it in a way that people can experience the savings at the same rate as they chunk off the capital cost of these projects. And then, in terms of energy savings over time and confidence, I think the goal there is, and we could think of it as if you were getting a loan.One factor in the loan might be your debt-to-income ratio. How much debt do you have, and can you actually service this loan over time? And our position is, to the extent that these suite of products actually lowers your obligations to pay, so your utility bills, that should be factored into any financial product as well. Does that make sense?David RobertsYeah. So, it's almost like future income increases, almost like.James QuaziYeah, so if I had, like, if my obligations to pay a loan provider were $1,000 a month, just randomly, and I made x amount of income, if the obligation was less, if it was $500 a month, given all these energy savings, I would have a greater ability to pay back that loan, and that should be factored in.David RobertsOh, I see, I see. So, is the idea here just for this tool you've created to give confidence to homeowners who are going to banks and stuff, or are you getting in the finance game at all?James QuaziOur intention is to provide the financing for it as well. I mean, like, I think any time we're trying to make the process as seamless as possible. So, it's sort of like a one-stop shop in terms of assessing what's right, what's the best fit for you in terms of these projects, and then packaging it in a way that — we're hoping it incentivizes people to do more sooner, but to the extent that they want to do things over time, it is also like a flexible facility that allows you to adopt a heat pump water heater in year three, if that's what you want.David RobertsSo the contractors are the ones offering the homeowners this sort of financing package?James QuaziYep, that's correct.David RobertsRight. And the contractors are able to do it because they have this information from your tool that gives them confidence?James QuaziHand in glove.David RobertsRight. So, just having gone over all this, let's rewind and just imagine I'm a homeowner, and a contractor knocks on my door. What do you envision the contractor sort of like, what is the homeowner facing pitch from the contractor? Because there's a lot of complicated stuff going on behind the scenes for the contractor. What is the homeowner hearing? What is the pitch to the homeowner?James QuaziYeah, we see it as a stepwise process. So, because our go-to market is through solar contractors, the first step is to say, if I were any other solar contractor, and you called me for a solar and potentially storage system, what I would have done is looked at your current electrical bills and size the system this way, and this is what... "You want a five kilowatt solar array and one battery, 110 kilowatt hour battery." The next step is to say, "Hey, listen, we're actually in that world. We're only looking at one of probably three silos of energy that you're using."So, we're ignoring the natural gas side of the bill. We're ignoring everything that's happening at the pump. But, if we look at your energy spend holistically, here are a suite of options that are available to you. And this is the differential sort of financial outcome versus just a solar system, versus, like, resiliency versus bill stability kind of thing.David RobertsSo, the idea here is, I go to the contractor and say, "Hey, I've been thinking about solar and battery," and the contractor says to me, "Well, hey, what about this larger package? You could have even bigger savings, and you could have resilience," and stuff like this. So, it's a little bit like an upsell for a contractor.James QuaziYeah, I mean, I would think of it as like, being able to more holistically address energy spend. Like, that's our goal, is to say, "It's not just one flavor that we're dealing with. We're looking at the entire house and things, and we want the best solution for you."David RobertsIt makes me wonder how long it will be before homeowners think that way, or if they ever will. Because homeowners just think of products as separate products. I don't know that a lot of homeowners, especially outside our world, even sort of think of the home as a system, right? With certain energetic inputs and outputs that should be dealt with as a holistic system. Like, that's just — I'm not even sure homeowners are at all accustomed to thinking that way.James QuaziI wonder if I myself am, like, blinded by sort of a friend group or whatever the case is. But I would say that, like, I don't know of a lot of people that aren't at least considering an EV, right? Even if they're not, like, actively join in. But it's like, "Hey, listen, this is actually a real option." I don't think that heat pumps are very far behind that curve. It's interesting, like when people, like historically, when people inquire about solar, we often times have thought of that as they want bill savings. But I am not entirely sure that that is the reason.David RobertsDo we know? Have we done surveys and polls? I'm so curious. I would also assume, just out of a sort of, I guess, a low, like a background degree of cynicism, that that's going to be the dominant motivation. But is it? Like, I don't feel confident about that at all.James QuaziWell, I don't either. My belief is that bill savings are part of a decision-making process, but probably very rarely the primary driver. And that is the thing. And even if you look at, like, the funnel conversion metrics of, like, the solar industry as a whole, it's just like, for every hundred people that inquire, single-digit people actually do the things. And our perspective is like, you know, they're getting stuck somewhere in the process. And it's oftentimes with questions that cannot be answered, and that's when they stall out. And that is our reason for expanding the set to everything that's possible in your home and letting you search that, because we think we'll figure out what are the motivations. I think that there's a strong cohort of people that are just anti-utility.David RobertsThat's a piece of it. There's an environmental piece of it. There's a sort of independence, anti-utility piece of it. There's a vague mix. There's just social contagion, there's just peer pressure. You see it around you. It's the whole stew of motivations. I'd love to understand that better. So, I mean, it kind of seems like what you'd want is for your tool to be in the hands of everybody involved in any of those products. Do you know what I mean? Like, if I want an EV and I go to the car dealership, you know, it'd be cool if the car dealer could say to me, "Hey, you know, save even more money if you threw in a heat pump with this and a solar panel."You know, like if, or the heat pump, people are like, "Hey, throw in an EV and solar panels." Like, it'd be nice if homeowners confronted the idea of total electrification everywhere they looked, right? I mean, that'd be ideal.James QuaziYeah, 100%. I really think that's the vision, and that's where we're going. I think the entry point into a lot of this stuff will be varied. Like, it will be through an EV at the start, or a broken furnace that gets replaced by a heat pump or whatever the case is. I think our goal is to engage homeowners in a way where we have a persistent bill connection. I think that this is why that episode resonated so much with me. If we have an address and a persistent daily, hourly, monthly, whatever the case is, bill connection, you can drive insights over time to a homeowner at very meaningful times to intercept them.Right now, I think this business, like solar in general, is very transactional. We think of it as like, we get leads in the top of the funnel, we set them at this rate, we convert them at this rate, we install them. It's a 30% gross margin, and then that's the end. Whereas, I don't believe that that's the way the products will be adopted and people will have to, I mean, internally we call it energy literacy. Like, how do I start to understand the problem and the solutions?David RobertsRight. So, in the same way, you sort of have a financial advisor, you could have like a home advisor, basically. A home energy advisor.James QuaziAnd we also think it's got to be low impact, so it can't be like, "Hey, you've got to go do this detailed sort of appliance audit or whatever the case is." So it's bills and address, and then, you know, this is a great state of change problem where utility rates are constantly changing, prices of products are changing, incentives are changing, and there's always a chance to message. I very viscerally feel this in the sense that, like, when I took four years off and then reengaged with the industry, I was like, "Wow, we like, crossed the threshold, like, the point of no return, where electrification now makes sense for everyone," and I had missed it, and this is the only thing I'd ever done.David RobertsYeah, I mean, it's moving so quickly. I will say, though, one thing I hear from, you know, and there's been articles written about this. It's just like, it's all out there from people who have tried to do this total electrification thing. It's just incredibly difficult, just incredibly difficult to synchronize everything and arrange everything. And so, in that context, the idea of having a kind of home advisor where, like, your hot water heater breaks and you just call your home advisor, you figure out, like, what's the right approach here, what's the economical approach, where to look, what kind of thing to get?A lot of people would very much welcome having one of those, I feel like.James QuaziAnd I think that this speaks to the general funnel conversion in the industry, but generally, a lead comes in, and then what we're trying to do is furiously convert them to a sale and install as quickly as possible, hopefully within 30 days, hopefully in one set. And I just don't believe that that's the way that people will consume products. It will be through a bunch of different experiences over time. And I think that's a meaningful difference. Like, you know, we're in such a rush to do all the things. Like, I'm in a rush to do all the things at once, but I think we have to also meet people where they are and, like, engage them in some way over time so they can make a decision, so they can make another decision.David RobertsI hope it changes because, honestly, like, you know, I've thought about solar. Ten years ago, we did one of those sort of, like, online audit things, and it was like, "No, you're too shaded." But I think it's just changed since then. Uh, just like, what's possible. But, like, I know that if I got a solar contractor and sat down at a table with that person, that they would just be sweaty and desperate, you know what I mean? To sell me just like it, exactly like I feel at the auto dealership, which is just like, "Ew," kind of uncomfortable, you know what I mean?And rushed and don't feel like I have a full sense of all the pieces in play, and that I can't trust the person I'm talking to, to help me out, you know what I mean? I'm sort of, like, adversarial. I hate that whole model, you know what I mean? And just like, I would be, I don't know how representative I am, but I'd be inclined to spend more money if I just had a person who was like, had the big picture, had the model, had the data in hand, said, "You know, like whenever you're ready, this is the right first step."Just like a better environment for homeowners to deal with these things and think about these things.James QuaziYeah, no, I get it. I feel very similarly. I totally understand from the other perspective, like solar sales reps are expensive and they're hired to do one thing. I just don't know that it's the way that most people want to adopt the things.David RobertsYeah, I can't believe that it's going to go to truly, truly mass penetration running on this model. It's going to have to evolve into something else. As we near the end here, let's pull the camera back a little bit and talk about the Agile Electrification project. My understanding basically is that the NEM 3.0 decision in California threw the solar contracting world into a bit of a tizzy. And there are efforts now to organize and figure out how to move forward and how to help contractors and what the right approach for contractors is in this new world.So, tell us a little bit about what the Agile Electrification project is.James QuaziIt is an industry-sponsored project that's hosted at the Design and Innovation Center at UCSD. The genesis of it was a lot of, quite honestly, hammering around NEM 3.0. It was like if you read Canary or any of these publications, a lot of it is doom and gloom. This industry is down 70%.David RobertsYeah, there's a lot of "sky is falling" sentiment flying around.James QuaziYeah, I think there have been. And you know, a lot of people are like, "Hey, listen, a lot of the bad actors are going to get flushed out with this," which I believe. I also believe a lot of some good actors will go out of business. So this is like a real issue. In times of turmoil, there's oftentimes opportunity and there's a group of people, contractors, manufacturers, investors, who have come together in this venue where sometimes it would be competitive or driven by business interests and they're coming together to solve problems for the industry. So right now it's a series of three projects to expand from there.One is like energy modeling for the entire state of California. It's something that everyone needs. We want to do it and open source it. Another one that we touched on earlier is understanding customer motivations and understanding where they got stuck and how to unstick them, because our general sense is they want to save money. And I don't know if that's the primary motivation. And then the third one is around incentives and rebates and how to, like, it's a constantly evolving landscape and just staying on top of it is like a challenge and maybe a full-time job.So, it's how to open-source that aspect of it, and how to qualify people for rebates and make sure that they're up to date, make sure they're not over-allocated, and deliver that information to the people on the ground that are actually installing the systems.David RobertsRight. And so, I'm stuck on this point. I just wanted to reiterate one more time. So, it's your belief that, because I think this sort of popular belief is that the NEM 3.0 decision has radically reduced homeowner incentives to get solar power, that it's just not as worth it anymore to get solar power. What you're saying is, with the right holistic approach, solar power is as valuable as ever and just as worth getting as ever. Is that your position?James QuaziThat is my position, yes.David RobertsDo you think that that is widely, like solar contractors believe that, or are you having to sort of buck them up and convince them of that?James QuaziWell, I think we're in a stage right now where, I mean, we set up the simplest possible website, have done very little marketing. We've had directionally 75 to 100 contractors sign up and say they're interested. I believe that the contractors are looking for solutions. For sure. That is definitively true. I think they should believe this because it is true that there is a great value proposition in homeowners. I think the issue here, maybe the persistent issue that's undeniable, is that it's more complex. Describing the value proposition has become more complex. For sure. There's no way around that.So, we're trying to find ways to — I mean, the back-end compute engine is great. The real challenge is finding ways to deliver that information to customers in a way that's actionable.David RobertsFor sure. Final question then. A lot of this seems very Californian. The fears and the solutions and all of it seems sort of very customized to California's current circumstances. How applicable is all of this, do you think, outside of California? Would your model be helpful to a homeowner in, I don't know, like Arkansas?James QuaziYeah. So, I would take it in two flavors. One is, I think there's the expectation, for good reason, that these policies in California will get exported to other states. So, it will become hugely relevant soon.David RobertsYou mean rooftop solar compensation getting cut way back? It's already happened in a couple of other states. I mean, it's definitely a trend.James QuaziYeah. So, that's true. NEM 3.0, or like the difference between export energy valuation and import and parity, does not have to be true for this general value proposition to hold true. So, to that extent, I would say that it's portable anywhere. We chose to start in California because it is by far the biggest solar market. It accounts for about 50% of solar and there was a demonstrated need. I will say that it's a very complex problem to solve and it has geographic sides to it. So, as you move location, utilities change and their tariffs change and the way that they charge and weather changes.David RobertsThe information they make available.James QuaziExactly, exactly. So, we've tactically started it in California for those reasons and constrained it. But there's no reason why this shouldn't be applicable to, like, any other place.David RobertsRight. It's sort of interesting. The big fear, or I guess the thing that solar people used to say to utilities when warning them away from NEM 3.0, is like, "Look, if you cut compensation too much, we're just going to self-consume and then install more electric appliances and then slowly wean ourselves off the grid and then not need the grid anymore. And then you're losing customers." The much-fabled death spiral. It seems like you're organizing to make that real, to make that happen.James QuaziI have some thoughts on this. I really do think, and I don't know the answer, but at some point down the road, we're going to have a fork. That fork will be either we find a way to use essentially distribution resources to cooperate, and I think that is the best societal outcome, or we find that we can't cooperate and everyone has to be their own, like a little micro picogrid, and that we have to build the infrastructure to do it. And, you know, I think that it's probably more likely that that's going to happen, which is unfortunate, but I do think that, as always, the affluent will serve themselves first and make good decisions and the rest of the costs will be pushed on to everyone else. And actually, in my heart of hearts, what I think will happen is we'll find a way to cooperate, but only after we've sort of incurred a huge amount of pain.David RobertsThat sounds like the American approach that I know and love. We'll stumble through some disasters and then eventually get our act together.James QuaziYeah, you end up doing the right thing when you're forced to. So, I think that that's the way I see it happening.David RobertsAll right, well, cool. James, this is really interesting. I've been meaning to look into solar in California, how they're dealing with all this. And this is a really interesting approach. I mean, it's never funny. Until I sort of read about this, it never occurred to me, even though it's really obvious, that like, of course, electrifying your appliances and getting your battery and getting your solar panels are — that's like the same thing. You know what I mean? Like, that's all one. That's all one thing. Like I said, it's like a switch that kind of flips in your mind.You're like, "Oh, like, it's a holistic system." It would be interesting to try to train homeowners to think that way more. Thank you so much, James. Thanks for taking the time.James QuaziThank you. Appreciate it.David RobertsThank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes my guests and I sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review or telling a friend about Volts, or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Asset prices are near all-time highs for almost everything: real estate, stocks, gold, bitcoin, and more. This is because in a wave of high inflation, investors chase yields. Legendary investor Jim Rogers joins us. Jim gives dire warnings about US debt levels. Meet me and one of our Investment Coaches in-person at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, July 10th to 13th.  I put $1T into perspective. A trillion seconds ago was 31,700 years ago. That's when neanderthals roamed the plains of Europe.  The dollar is a monopoly. The US government has no competition for their product, the dollar. Jim Rogers believes that higher inflation and interest rates are here to stay.  He says: “Before this is over, interest rates in the US are going to go much, much higher.” Resources mentioned: For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith's personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) -  Welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. I'll tell you about a chance to meet me in person. Then we're joined by a renowned and legendary investor for his sage like wisdom on how you should respond to record US debt levels for forecast the future direction of inflation and interest rates, plus a taste of the Singapore real estate market today and get rich education.   Robert Syslo (00:00:27) -  Since 2014, the powerful Get Rich Education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich Education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus has had its own dedicated Apple and Android listener. Phone apps.   Robert Syslo (00:01:02) -  Build wealth on the go with the Get Rich Education podcast. Sign up now for the get Rich education podcast or visit get Rich education.com.   Corey Coates (00:01:13) -  You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:29) -  Welcome to GRE. From Sydney, Australia, to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold and you're listening to Get Rich Education. Why are our values of almost every asset so high? Well, one reason is because we've had that high wave of inflation. When that happens, savvy investors, people just like you, they ensure that money must flow into assets. And that's because you seek a real return above and beyond inflation. If inflation were low, investors wouldn't have to chase yields this way. I've got more on asset values in a moment. But first, on today's guest, legendary investor Jim Rogers, who will hear from as a returning guest here soon in early 2019. So more than five years ago, he told us right here on the show that interest rates are going to go much, much, much higher over the next few decades and that is going to ruin a lot of people.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:32) -  In fact, let's listen into that. Here it is. This is from get Rich education podcast episode 224, which you heard here in January 2019. This is Jim Rogers.   Jim Rogers (00:02:43) -  And interest rates are going to go go much, much, much higher over the next few decades. And it's going to ruin a lot of people.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:50) -  And then from there, he went on to tell us at that time, rising interest rates will set in for a long time. And this was back when the fed funds rate was just half of what it is today in mortgage rates were 4.5% back there in early 2019. So Jim Rogers made that firm prediction even before we knew about Covid. Then. And on that episode, we talked about getting your debt and locking it in. And then two years later in 2021, he was back here on the show to warn us to expect high inflation. Well, we sure got that too. And as you listen to Jim Rogers on today's episode, consider that, you know, he just often speaks with this sort of, I suppose, nonchalance that I think can make it easy to dismiss what he says.   Keith Weinhold (00:03:46) -  But don't do that because countless people have benefited from his guidance for decades. Just like I hope that you do today in the real estate world. Now, agencies agree that the national year over year home price appreciation rate is 6%. That's today per the FHFA, the NAR and Case-Shiller 6% home price appreciation. What about rents? Today, Single-Family rents are up 5%. Nationally, multifamily rents up 2.7%. So why are Single-Family rents growing faster than multifamily rents? Well, it's partly because 2023 saw the biggest surge in new apartment supply since 1987. Yes, that's back when Madonna was the hottest music artist and Reagan met with Gorbachev. But there's less apartment construction this year, so expect a lot of that to get absorbed. Available inventory of Single-Family Rentals is going to stay more scarce than apartments for quite some time, but long term they both expect to be in really great shape. Residential rental demand is sustainable now. Back in 2022, available single family home inventory that was an astoundingly paltry one quarter of what was needed.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:20) -  Well, now it's up to half. Some inventory has definitely been added. In fact, I was recently on television being asked about that. But this still means that demand handily exceeds supply. There's not nearly enough housing, especially on the single family end. And what about those perpetually just around the corner, always, constantly just around the corner, fed interest rate cuts. They keep getting delayed beyond a lot of people's expectations. Well, per the CME's Fed Watch tool, here is the chance given of when the first rate cut will occur by the end of July. 10% September 60th 4%. November 70th 7% December 90th 3%. You know, personally, I think the chances are lower than all of those currently inflation's at 3.3%. But here's the thing. Even when it hits the Fed's target of 2%, that doesn't mean that rates must be cut. All right. That's a reality that a lot of people seem to forget. Now here on the show, not after every quarter, but sometimes when a quarter ends, just like one did a week ago, we take a quick look at other asset class moves outside of real estate in order to get a relative perspective.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:43) -  Some comparison here. If you're listening to this episode ten years from now, this is really going to help mark this era for you to is we do have many listeners that listen to every single episode. The 30 year mortgage rate is near 7%. Now, all these next figures are year to date through the first half of the year. So this is just the performance of the first half. Stocks have soared. The S&P is up 15%. One way that US stocks changed last quarter is the trades are now going to settle faster. Investors will see their purchases and sales finalized in just one day instead of two. Gold is up 13% to over 2300 bucks. Bitcoin up 44%, oil up 16% to $82. And again, that's performance for just the first half of this year. The world's three largest companies Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia have a combined value of over $9 trillion. Now, a company's total value is known as its market cap, and that is simply found by multiplying share price and shares outstanding. By comparison, all the gold in the world is worth 15 trillion.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:54) -  Hey, if you're familiar with an event called Freedom Fest, I have some cool news for you. It's an annual conference that. How would I describe it? Well, I haven't attended it before, but there you can learn to expect more about free thinking and ideas about the size of government. Well, it starts in two days. It's July 10th to 13th in Las Vegas. You can meet one of Gre's investment coaches in person there and you can also meet me. Yes, we'll both be there. If you see us, be sure to say hi. We'd both like to meet you. Hashtag IRL in real life, some of the Freedom Fest speakers include our frequent great guest, Robert Kiyosaki, as well as some other guests that you've heard with me here on the show. Also, Steve Forbes, Iced Tea, the comedian Rob Schneider, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, Whole Foods founder John Mackey and the congressman that wants to end the fed, Thomas Massie and more. They're all speaking. So yes, not a lot of notice, but if you're going, it's a way to meet me in real life, perhaps just in a casual way, in two days at Freedom Fest.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:08) -  Well, it is public information that the net worth of this week's guest is $300 million. He's been influential for a long time. Let's talk to legendary investor Jim Rogers. This week's guest needs a little introduction. He is a legendary business and investing mogul of our time. He's a Yale educated, prolific author. He co-founded the Quantum Fund, and he even has his own commodities index and ETF. He's also a prolific traveler. He wrote a very well known book about his world travels, visiting some 116 nations. Hey, welcome back to gray. It's Jim Rogers.   Jim Rogers (00:09:51) -  I'm delighted to be here. Okay, let's get rich. I need to get rich. I want to get rich.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:56) -  Hey. Well, your guidance helps us do that. That's why you're here. And Jim is joining us remotely from his home nation city of Singapore today. And it's always interesting syncing up our times of day here. Jim, where to begin? You've been with us here. I think this is the fourth time you're here and about the last five years, and we're at a time when asset prices of seemingly everything are near their all time highs, maybe even in their inflation adjusted all time highs in some cases.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:25) -  What are your thoughts with asset price levels?   Jim Rogers (00:10:29) -  Keith. You it's very perceptive of you and insightful. Yes. This is one of the few times in world history that I know about where nearly everything is making new eyes. I think China is probably the only country. It's not making new eyes, but nearly everything else is. Now it's wonderful. It's great. A lot of people are having a lot of fun, but unfortunately, I've been around long enough to know that when things get this good, when everybody's having so much fun, we're getting closer to the end. I am not selling short or anything yet, but I see the signs that this is going to come to an end, as it always does, and it's going to be a mess. And the reason this is going to be a big mess this time. You remember what happened in 2008 because of too much debt each. That's 2009. The debt everywhere has skyrocketed. I mean, even China has a lot of debt now. China bailed us out before, but everybody has a lot of debt now.   Jim Rogers (00:11:31) -  Maybe not North Korea, but everybody else does.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:34) -  And that sure includes us. I mean, we have these asset prices at all time highs. Yet here we are, still the largest detonation in the history of the world in the United States now at 35 trillion. And we're spending dollars on others wars, something that we couldn't say when you and I talked a few years ago. The biggest line item of our national budget anymore is about $1 trillion in annual interest payments alone in. Jim, we're really on this course now where soon the US annual tax receipts won't even cover the interest payments on our debt, and we may have to borrow just to pay the interest. So where do we reach the breaking point here? With this world in debt led by the United States?   Jim Rogers (00:12:20) -  You one makes some very good points. Unfortunately. I wish you didn't. I wish you couldn't make those points right. It's simple arithmetic. Just look at the numbers. And the numbers you recite are just what they admit, what they write.   Jim Rogers (00:12:34) -  There's a lot of off balance sheet debt that they don't even talk about. I mean, the numbers, if you try to get out of pencil on a piece of paper, you will realize that the market can never pay this debt. Never. Countries that have gotten into this situation in the past have had big problems. Now it's a good time to be an old American. I don't have to worry about all this for too many years, but I have young children. Oh my gosh. The problem is that their country is going to face in their lifetime. I was staggering. You look back at previous countries that have done this kind of thing. In the 19 to 100 years ago, Britain was the richest, most powerful country in the world. 50 years later, it was bankrupt. IMF had to fly to London and pay their bills. It wasn't fun. It was terrible what Britain went through. But other countries have done the same thing. Maybe we don't like what I'm saying or what's happening, but just read the history and you will see how it winds up.   Jim Rogers (00:13:38) -  I certainly don't like it, but I have to deal with facts. If I don't deal with facts, I'll go bankrupt. To which I don't want to do.   Keith Weinhold (00:13:48) -  Yeah, sometimes let's laugh to keep from crying. Right? When you talk about how certain government figures are just what the government is willing to admit to, I think that's the right lens to look through. When you look at any government figures. Well, at least that's the part that they're willing to admit to. It's interesting that they're willing to admit to this is interesting that they're willing to admit to 9% inflation like we peaked at two years ago. But when you talk about the future and this huge debt load and children or grandchildren, could austerity be part of it, something that's very politically unpopular. But if we lived in an austere state, wouldn't that really be sort of like the downfall of the American empire at that point?   Jim Rogers (00:14:30) -  Well, that's what happened to the British. As I said 100 years ago, they were the richest, most powerful country in the world.   Jim Rogers (00:14:36) -  There was no number two. Then if two years later, completely bankrupt, I happened to be in England during part of that time and it was a mess. Wretched. So I don't like saying any of this, but I have to deal with the reality and the numbers you cite or what they admit. You know, the numbers are much worse. I don't know if anybody in Washington really knows. I don't even know if they care enough to check to see how bad things are. But every time a someone from Washington, a politician or a bureaucrat says something, they say, don't worry, everything's okay. We have a Janet Yellen who's a secretary of the Treasury. Are you or two ago said, don't worry, we have everything under control.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:20) -  Reassuring isn't it? Not really.   Jim Rogers (00:15:22) -  Oh my gosh. He's got a couple of fancy Ivy League degrees, but she still says, don't worry, it's okay. Well, I worry, I'm probably not as smart as she is, but I worry.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:36) -  Well, it's interesting that you bring up the fact about the things that we don't know and these numbers, these debt levels and even the deficit gets so big, we're just throwing around this word trillion anymore.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:48) -  For some perspective, I happen to know that 1,000,000,000,000 seconds is 31,700 years. In order to help put this into perspective, well, 31,700 years ago, that's just about as far back as when the planes of Europe were being roamed by Neanderthals. That's 1,000,000,000,000 seconds ago. And again, we are $35 trillion in debt, and we have a deficit of at least $1 trillion. The annual thing.   Jim Rogers (00:16:21) -  I'm glad you're putting some perspective on this, but I don't need it. I know it's a staggering whatever number you want to look at, whether it's the one they report or the one that's they hide whatever it is, I know, because I can add and subtract. I know that America has a gigantic problem that is going to end up like every other country that's done this sort of thing. It's going to end up badly. America is going to lose its status, not this month. Don't worry. July is okay. But no, I can read, I can add, I can subtract. I know how it's going to wind up.   Jim Rogers (00:17:02) -  It's not good for young Americans.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:06) -  I mean, we think of the fall of the Roman Empire. You bring up the UK. The UK is still part of the G7, but they're no longer the one predominant power in the world. Jim, when I look at history and I think about sort of the powers that be and how they create and debase the currency, and how those problems percolate into so many parts of the society. I think if the United States is basically they have a monopoly on creating currency, and I just wonder if that's part of the problem. Lennar builds houses, but they have competition from KB homes. John Deere makes tractors and they have competition from New Holland. Heinz makes ketchup and they have competition from hunts. See, when there's competition, there's sort of this incentive to produce quality and provide others with value. But since the U.S. has no substantial competition to the dollar, I wonder if we can think of this as a de facto monopoly from its dilution of the purchasing power of the dollar.   Keith Weinhold (00:18:06) -  Its quality is suffering because the dollar doesn't have any substantial competition. So I guess what I'm leading up to, what I'm getting at, is we think about currency creation as a de facto US monopoly. I mean, does the government have to be the exclusive money printer where all this just ends up in the debt column here?   Jim Rogers (00:18:24) -  You raise some very good points. But back to the first main point. The main point is there is no way that America can ever pay these debts except by default, Which is one horrible way. Or by printing gigantic amounts of money, which is another horrible way. This is not the first time countries have done this. If you just go back and look, it is never ended well. Never ended well. Yes, England is still there, but nobody thinks about England the way they did 100 years ago. And nobody in England lives like they did 100 years ago, and many people left. I don't know what's going to happen to the US, except I know it's not going to end well because I can add and you can add and subtract.   Jim Rogers (00:19:15) -  I wish we could subtract. There's nothing to subtract because the debt just keeps high and higher and higher. And the numbers are very simple. If you get out the amount of debt we have and see the possible income, it just doesn't work. If you have fifth grade education, fifth grade arithmetic, you know it doesn't work.   Keith Weinhold (00:19:39) -  Jim, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time you were with us, it was January of 2019. That was more than five years ago. And at that time you said interest rates are going to go much, much, much higher. That was your direct quote, three matches. And you said that it's going to ruin a lot of people. And here we are with a lot of people ruined in the commercial real estate world and the apartment syndication world and so on. So if you continue to think there's going to be more currency creation to make it easier to pay back our debt, does that mean you believe that higher interest rates and higher inflation are going to be a persistent condition, say, just till the end of this decade, which is about another five years? What do you think about inflation and interest rates for these next five years?   Jim Rogers (00:20:27) -  I know that in Washington they will print money.   Jim Rogers (00:20:31) -  That's all they know. They want to keep their jobs. They don't care about you. I don't care about any of us. They care about keeping their job. And they will do whatever they have to to keep their job the easy way. Now, the proper way, of course, is to buckle up, buckle down, and start doing something about the rendus situation we were in. They don't care. They think they'll be gone by the time those times come, if they're ever coming, and they will say, but we're America. We cannot have problems like that. Well, that's what the British said, too. Once upon a time. And as I say, there was no number two to the British. They were that power. They were that much on top. It's not that I don't like saying. I don't like thinking it. I don't like living with it. But I do hope I can prepare so that I don't go down the tubes like some other people will. But I may just do the arithmetic.   Jim Rogers (00:21:32) -  It's very simple. The numbers just cannot work. I didn't say the numbers do not work. I said they cannot work because the situation is that dire. They can hold it off for a while by printing money. Great. But then not for you and me. Certainly not for our children.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:51) -  I think that's all they're going to keep doing. That's the most expedient way to do it, to keep printing any politician that proposes austerity. And you having soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner is not very likely to get re-elected. Does that mean in the next five years you foresee historically elevated interest rates and inflation, which is basically where we actually still are now?   Jim Rogers (00:22:14) -  Well, of course I do. I mean, there's the market. The problem is right now the central banks still think they're in control, and they pretty much are. But there will come a time. And there always has in history when the market says, wait a minute, we know you're lying. We know this cannot work. And then when the market takes over and the market starts setting interest rates and other conditions, that's called disaster.   Jim Rogers (00:22:41) -  That's a real, real serious problem. The market will know how bad things are, and the Treasury secretary can sit there and say all day long, don't worry, don't worry. We have it under control. And the Marquis will say, thanks, but we know better.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:59) -  Well, we've got more coming up with Jim, including. He spent some 60 plus years abroad. I want to learn more about what he thinks with living and traveling so much about the United States. You're listening to get Rich education. Our guest is legendary investor Jim Rogers. When we come back, I'm your host, Keith White. Hope your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings. If your money isn't making 4%, you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk. Your cash generates up to an 8% return with compound interest year in and year out. 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Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com.   Speaker 5 (00:25:08) -  This is The Real World Network's Kathy Petke, and you are listening to the always valuable get Rich education with Keith Reinhold.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:26) -  Welcome back to get Rich. university. So we're talking with investing mogul legendary Jim Rogers.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:32) -  He's joining us from Singapore today. He's joined us a few times over the past five years. And with what he said in what's coming, he's really been remarkably accurate. Sometimes he just gives a pretty casual delivery, but you really want to listen in to what he's saying. A lot of people have hung on his every word for decades here. And Jim, part of that is all your worldly experience. From so many of your travels and visiting over 100 nations. I've only visited about 35 so far myself. What do you think that we can learn about the United States from living and traveling abroad?   Jim Rogers (00:26:07) -  First of all, I used to tell you I have made many mistakes in my life. I don't think I don't know how to get things wrong. I have many times. But yes, living abroad, I certainly even traveling abroad is an eye opening experience. It's a fabulous education. Rudyard Kipling, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, once had a line and a poem. The name of the poem was The English flag and the lion was.   Jim Rogers (00:26:36) -  What can he know of England? Who only England knows. One is you'll know a lot about your own country if you know about the rest of the world. And you will you. If you go to country X and you see they eat different food or wear different clothes, it'll make you realize a lot about America. So my point is it's a fabulous education to see other places. I don't know if it's helped me. I in my view, it has helped me a lot to understand the world and to understand other people.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:11) -  Now, in my international travels, which are a fraction of yours, a lot of times I get a reminder that life in the United States is still pretty clean and efficient. We have an abundance of potable water all the way to an amenity like fast Wi-Fi. And you know if someone abroad is traveling in the United States, they get to experience those things, and they probably don't even realize or understand that we're the greatest detonation in the history of the world. It's actually pretty difficult to know.   Jim Rogers (00:27:40) -  There are signs that even those travelers will see. If you go to JFK airport, you will see the huge difference in JFK and say, the Japanese Narita Airport. You know your intuitive world when you visit some international airports outside of the US. But it's not just that America. Five star hotels do not compare with five star hotels in other countries. Listen, I don't like any of this because I have to live it. But the facts are. Yes. And you make a very good point that most people do not notice or does not affect them much at all if it affects them at all. But that just makes the eventual problem worse, because it hits us out of the blue and we don't know what happened. At least if we're worried, we can prepare. But you know, if you ride down the highway, most people think everything. It's okay. This is a nice interstate layout of potholes. They think everything is great. I hope that this all changes. I hope I'm wrong, but I have seen enough to dough that it's not going to end well.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:55) -  Tell us about where you've lived for a long time. I mean, you come from the United States, but you've lived abroad for a long time. You've been there in Singapore for a while. Singapore, which is a place I haven't traveled to, has a reputation for being prosperous and enterprising in a really clean place. So will you tell us a little bit more about why Singapore is prosperous, including what its real estate markets like?   Jim Rogers (00:29:20) -  Singapore is a tiny country. There are only 5 or 6 million people here. So yes, it has been a remarkable success story. It's probably been one of the greatest success stories in the world in the past 40 or 50 years. It still amazes me to see how efficient and how well everything works here. And they don't have yet the getting debt now, but they don't have the staggering debts that some other countries do. I mean, Japan, America. You look at some of the great success stories that come to people's minds. Japan did it by borrowing staggering amounts of money.   Jim Rogers (00:29:57) -  Every day, the Bank of Japan borrows huge amounts of money it's going to have a problem to someday. I mean, it's just very simple. I don't want it to sound like some crazy fear monger, but I can read. And I know how this is always wound up. Now there's some very exciting and successful places in the world. And if you go to some parts of the United States, you say, oh my gosh, what a wonderful place. And it is. But underneath seems to me that there are problems developing. If you come to Singapore, you'll say, oh my gosh, and I'm not the only one who knows it all. The international surveys show that Singapore is one of the very top.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:42) -  Now in Singapore, is it more of an owner society where most of the residents own the home they live in or like you find in a lot of urban areas? Is there a disproportionately high amount of renters there in Singapore?   Jim Rogers (00:30:55) -  Over 80% of the people at Singapore own their own home.   Jim Rogers (00:31:00) -  The guy who set out to build Singapore new and he especially because in his lifetime there had been a lot of riots in Asia. And he somehow knew that if people own their own home, they had a huge stake in the country, right? Had a reason to make sure, to try to make sure everything went well. So in this country, over 80% of the people own their own home. Yeah, he may have a mortgage, but still they own their own home. That's part of the reason for the success. I mean, for what it's worth, I'll also tell you he was a huge believer in education. He made sure that everybody spoke at least two languages. I mean, he knew what it took to be successful and he did it. Yeah.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:49) -  Homeownership is generally good for communities like you touched on. You just have more of a stake in making sure your neighborhood stays quiet. Or you might show more interested enthusiasm in new clean mass transit coming into your area. You're more likely to be a voter when you own your home, and so on.   Keith Weinhold (00:32:06) -  So sure, that gives the residents a more vested stake in their own community, which is good for everybody. Does Singapore have one problem that we have here with United States housing? Do you have any idea if there's a substantial housing shortage there in Singapore, like we're seeing in so many places?   Jim Rogers (00:32:21) -  Do not shortage in the sense that you probably mean it? Yes. At times prices go high because there's not an abundance of housing and people keep moving to Singapore because it has been a successful place. So no, it's not like many places that we both know, but there are more immigrants coming here. The population is rising and they got a little somewhere. Yes, people are building homes and so it's not a gigantic problem at the moment. Can it be? Yes, of course it can be. And maybe it will be someday, but not at the moment. One thing I'll quickly say. Many societies, many countries, have a saying that families go from rags to rags and three generations. And there are many reasons for that.   Jim Rogers (00:33:11) -  So social reasons. I will point out that Singapore is now on its fourth new government. So maybe if human wisdom is correct, maybe Singapore is going to have some problems in the future. You don't see them now. They might though.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:28) -  Well, that's an interesting way to think about it. We've talked about problems in a few nations, Jim. I wonder, do you see there being a bright next up, incoming nation because you have this relative perspective from all your travels.   Jim Rogers (00:33:43) -  There are places that are trying to change and do better. Yet, Nam is a perfect example. I mean, what a nightmare it was 40 or 50 years ago. Right now it's on the rise. South Korea is one of the most successful, prosperous nations in the world. And in 1970, North Korea was richer than South Korea. That, of course, is not true anymore. So countries can change and can develop. And it has worked. I'm interested in Uzbekistan now, in Central Asia. It was ruined by the communists.   Jim Rogers (00:34:20) -  over 600 years ago. Uzbekistan conquered a lot of the world. I mean, then the communists came along and ruined it. But now they're changing again. So there's always somebody on the rise, and I'll be somebody on the decline. That's key, of course, is to be in the place where things are getting better, not getting worse.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:42) -  With that in mind is we're about to wrap up here. Jim, you know, I like an actionable takeaway for the audience. And before I ask you that, if I can share with you what we do here in a nation and a world of expanding debt, Grey's take on debt here is the way that we can borrow large amounts prudently and get our own debt is to buy income producing real estate. If you borrow more, you can only control more and both inflation and tenants passively debase your mortgage debt for you, which enriches that borrower as long as they can control their cash flow. So really, that's one thing that we're doing to play things here in a world of inflation.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:25) -  What are your thoughts with that? Or if you think that there's something else that the everyday person can really do to protect themselves in the future.   Jim Rogers (00:35:33) -  It's pretty clear that there have been, if you understand that and if you manage it properly, oh my gosh, you can become unbelievably successful and unbelievably rich. The proper words are though, if you handle it properly. History also showed that many people have been ruined by debt, so I hope that everybody understands that debt is not as simple as it looks, but if you handle it properly, oh my gosh, the returns and the rewards are huge. And yes, there are many, many throughout history, throughout the world, many people that made gigantic fortunes from property, from real estate. So I hope you're doing it right. I hope all of your viewers are doing it right. It's not as easy as it looks, but it can lead to great success and great disaster. So yes. Don't stop. Make sure that everybody understands the potential problems and the potential rewards and they don't get overextended.   Jim Rogers (00:36:37) -  Oh my gosh, you'll be very, very rich.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:40) -  Yeah, that's a little bit like fire. If used inappropriately, could burn down your house. But if you know how to use fire, you can cook meals for the rest of your life. Do you have any last thoughts overall, anything you'd like to share? Anything we really want to know?   Jim Rogers (00:36:54) -  I will tell you again that before this is over, interest rates in the US are going to go much, much higher. The debt is staggering. It is just whenever I look at the numbers and think about them, it shocks me, stuns me because I know it's going to lead to huge, huge, huge problems. But the people who are aware and understand what's happening and thrive. So this is not some kind of disaster for everybody, but some people will do extremely well. I hope that everybody you know does extremely well.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:31) -  Well, Jim Rogers, it's been a pleasure hearing from you again. As always. Thanks so much for coming out of the show.   Jim Rogers (00:37:37) -  My pleasure. I hope we can do it again sometime.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:45) -  Oh yes. It's good to get the bigger picture. Sage like wisdom. I'm not sure if you caught it early in the interview, but Jim is not selling short. That means he's not betting that stocks are about to take a big fall. He expects even higher interest rates when it comes to America's swelling debt. Most agree that they're just going to keep inflating their way out of it, rather than default on it. I do, too, but consider that the US actually does have a history of defaulting, like in 1971 when we told the world that you can no longer redeem our debt, IOUs for your gold, that there was defaulting on a promise, we weren't going to give them the gold anymore. Singapore is still growing fast. In fact, it's averaged about 2% annual growth over the last decade. If you discard pandemic aberrations, the value of the median Singapore condo is $1.7 million, and it is 1000ft² in size. That sort of makes you think about New York City real estate.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:52) -  And in fact, I had a trip planned to Singapore in February 2020. It was a cruise, but I didn't go. That part of the itinerary got cancelled. If you remember, Covid heated up in Southeast Asia early on, so I ended up spending more of that trip in India and Dubai. As it turned out, with our accelerated expansion of the supply of dollars that have been created since 2020. Here's one result today, more than 43% of Americans have been forced to cut back over the past year, and nearly 20% have had to borrow from family or friends in order to make ends meet. And you know when politicians brag about government funding. Just remember this. They're actually expecting you to give them credit for spending your money. That's what that means. And unfortunately, no one is immune from Congress's spending, which can be reckless at times. If you don't pay for something with taxes, then you pay for it with inflation. And that's exactly the type of issue that we expect to study on at Freedom Fest, where I might be fortunate enough to meet you in two days.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:10) -  Big thanks to the iconic Jim Rogers today. His website is Jim rogers.com. Coming up on the show here in future episodes soon, we're going to discuss a few components that add value to your residential real estate that really don't get discussed very often. Garages and also the vacant land that your property sits on. Also, the King of Commercial real estate is set to make his Get Rich Education debut. We'll learn about commercial real estate turmoil and the commercial sectors that higher interest rates have blown up. Well, hey, do you have family or friends that are into investing or real estate? I love it when you hit the share button on your podcasting device or whatever platform you're listening on. Everything that we do here is free, and the share button really helps the show. And be sure to follow or subscribe to the get Rich educational podcast yourself if you haven't already. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Reinhold. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 6 (00:41:19) -  Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice.   Speaker 6 (00:41:29) -  Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss the host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:47) -  The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get Rich education.com.

We're joined by President Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman. He tells us what real estate investors and everyday people need to know. Stockman served as Reagan's Director of Office, Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985. He tells us to expect higher inflation and interest rates for longer, maybe even the rest of the decade. Don't expect rate cuts for a long time. The US is moving toward an unsustainable debt situation, with $100T in public debt expected within twenty-five years. We have embedded deficits. Learn why the recession has been postponed. David also reveals what will inevitably pull the trigger to potentially start the recession. Hint: Household budgets. Pandemic stimulus programs gave citizens $3T. Half of it has now been spent. He was also one of the founding partners of Blackstone. David Stockman tells a story about President Reagan's personal touch with him. You can subscribe to David Stockman's Contra Corner for free here. Resources mentioned: David Stockman's Contra Corner For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith's personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold (00:00:01) - Welcome to our Ivory Coast, Keith Whitehill. There are some dire warning signs for the future of our economy. We're joined by none other than the father of Reaganomics. To break it down with us. Today is late. President Ronald Reagan's budget director joins us. When is this perpetually postponed recession coming? Why? Inflation and high interest rates could carry on for the rest of the decade. And what it all means to your finances and real estate today on get Rich education.   Robert Syslo (00:00:34) - Since 2014, the powerful get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from past real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Wine, who writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener.   Robert Syslo (00:01:08) - Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get Rich education podcast or visit get Rich education.com.   Corey Coates (00:01:19) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:35) - We're going to drive from Glen Burnie, Maryland, to Glen County, California and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Reinhold, and you're listening to get Rich education. We're going bigger picture this week before we talk to President Reagan's money guy in the white House. Understand that today's guest was also one of the founding partners of Blackstone, and they are in the real estate business. You're going to get a lot of deep, uniquely qualified insights today. And I'll tell you what's going on around here. Lately, things have been feeling awfully presidential between last week's program and now this week's program. Hey. Stars and stripes forever. Semper fi. Rah! Now, as the greatest detonation in the history of the world, how in the heck are we, as the United States, going to keep financing our debt now, you can think of a treasury, also known as a bond, as an IOU, as we take on debt to fund our government spending programs.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:42) - Really, what we do is issue then these IOUs to the rest of the world and then down the road. We need to pay back these IOU holders, treasuries, holders, whatever we've borrowed with interest on top of that. That's a really simple way to describe how it works. Think of a Treasury as an IOU. Well, we have $9 trillion in treasuries that need to be rolled over at higher interest rates just this year alone. Okay. Well, how does the market look for that sort of thing? Well, a lot like before you decide to sell a piece of real estate, you would want to know how that buyer's market looks. How is the buyer's market for us selling more treasuries, which is basically us issuing more IOUs? How is that world interest level in our treasuries? Well, this is a time when the world is selling treasuries. We're trying to get rid of them. Well, why would they buy more when we keep printing like crazy, debasing the dollars that they will eventually get their treasuries repaid in down the road? Case in point, China is down to just over 700 billion of treasuries that they're holding.   Keith Weinhold (00:04:01) - Well, they were 3 trillion not too long ago, more than four times that Russia and Iran sold all of their treasuries. Other countries are shedding them too, like Japan. It gets even worse than that because the number one holder of our own debt is our own fed. And then it gets even worse than that. Yet, because even our own fed is rolling treasuries off of their balance sheet. So who is going to finance this often irresponsible US spending the 10 trillion or $11 trillion every single year for the next ten years that we have obligations toward already, and it looks like all those are going to be at higher interest rates, too. Now, I am not telling you how to think about us as the United States, for example, sending foreign aid to multiple nations. That's up to you to decide whether it's Ukraine or the Middle East or Taiwan that gets political. And that is beyond the scope of GR. We are an investing show. What I'm saying is that backdrop that I just gave you, that's something that you need to take into consideration, is you weigh those foreign aid decision types.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:20) - Speaking of getting worse, do we at least have competent decision makers today? Now, as we'll talk to the father of Reaganomics here shortly, someone that served in an earlier era. Here's a clip from this era that really went viral lately, but it's apropos to play it here. This is Jared Bernstein today. He chairs President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. How much confidence does this instill? And remember, this guy chairs the economic advisers to today's president.   Jared Bernstein (00:05:56) - The US government can't go bankrupt because we can print our own money.   Voice (00:06:00) - Like you said, they print the dollar. So why? Why does the government even borrow?   Jared Bernstein (00:06:04) - Well, the, so the I mean, again, some of this stuff gets some of the language that the, some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money, which is why the government definitely prints money. And then it lends that money by, by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They they, the.   Jared Bernstein (00:06:34) - Yeah. They, they they sell bonds. Yeah. They sell bonds. Right. Because they sell bonds and people buy the bonds and lend them the money. Yeah. So a lot of times, a lot of times at least to my year with MMT, the, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing. But there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to so, yeah, I guess I'm just I don't, I can't really, I don't, I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking about.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:08) - Well geez. How's that for clarity and confidence from today's major decision makers on our economy? Gosh. Now, in my opinion, back in 2020, our government, they set up the wrong incentive structure to deal with the pandemic. Remember things like the PGP, the Paycheck Protection Program, remember mortgage loan forbearance and the eviction moratorium. See when that type of aid is given, well, then the result is that citizens don't learn that they need to keep some cash handy, and then that behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated in that behavior is handouts.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:53) - And then the expectation for more handouts. 56% of Americans don't even have $1,000 for an emergency expense. Well, see, they're not really incentivized to in the future. If in a crisis, everyone just gets another taxpayer funded handout, but then see those same people that got that handout get hurt in the long run. Anyway, with the longer run inflation that the handout created, don't let there be one day of austerity for the least prepared American, I guess. Instead, bail them out and add on to everyone's debt load, which you know that right there. That seems to be the playbook. Like that is the protocol of the day that is not responsible, in my view. Now, the minutes of the latest fed meeting, they said that some fed officials would be open to raising interest rates if inflation doesn't let up. I mean, that news alone that sent stocks plunging like they were riding the Tower of Terror, giving the Dow its worst day in a while. I'll discuss that more with the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, today.   Keith Weinhold (00:09:01) - It's the kind of episode that can stretch your thinking here. Now, what is Reaganomics? Well, one thing that you should know is that it's committed to the doctrine of supply side economics. You probably heard that term before. And really what that's all about is lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade and what was called the Reagan budget. That's something that his budget director Stockman expected would help curtail the welfare state. And he gained a reputation as a tough negotiator for that. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan today, and it's kind of funny with macroeconomic discussions. You'll notice something here, the word million, that doesn't even come up that much anymore. It's simply a number that is too small. It is more like billion and trillion. And hey, let's see if the term three orders of magnitude above trillion comes up today. Quadrillion, or even the one after that quintillion. Is that where we're going next? We'll see. before we meet David Simon, I've gotten more questions about something, because the national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:18) - And where do you really get a decent yield on your savings, even beyond the 5% in an online only savings account or a CD, which that does not outpace true inflation? For years now, I've reliably been getting 8%. What I do is keep my dollars in a private liquidity fund. You can do this to your cash generates up to an 8% return. The minimum investment amount is just 25 K, and you keep getting paid until you decide that you want your money back. And the private liquidity fund has a decade plus track record, and they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know this because I am an investor with them myself. So see what it feels like to earn 8%. A lot of other great listeners are any investing involves risk, even dollars at a brick and mortar bank. So to learn more, just text the word family to 66866. Learn more about the liquidity fund. Get 8% interest. Just do it right now while you're thinking about it.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:23) - Text family to 66866. Let's meet David Stockman. A Wall Street and Washington insider and Harvard grad. Today's guest is a former two time congressman from Michigan, a prolific author, and he is none other than the man known as the father of Reaganomics. He was indeed President Ronald Reagan's budget advisor. Welcome to the show, David Stockman.   David Stockman (00:11:54) - Great to be with you. And, that was a while back. But I think there's some lessons from that time that we would be well advised to try to apply today, that's for sure.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:05) - Well, it's an illustrious title that you'll never shake. It's a pleasure to have you here. And David is a real estate investing show. At times we need to step back and look at the bigger picture. And now on the economy, one seems to get a different answer depending on who they speak with. You have a highly qualified opinion. What do both investors and citizens need to know today about the condition of the American economy?   David Stockman (00:12:29) - I don't think the outlook is very promising, but I think it's important to understand what that means for real estate investors, because the fact is, if you're in real estate and I know many of your listeners or viewers are very knowledgeable and sophisticated, there's really two ways to look at real estate.   David Stockman (00:12:49) - One is as a property that generates a flow of cash or income that is highly reliable, and that you can count on and produces a rate of return on the invested capital that's attractive. That's one way. The second way is that if you invest at the right time, when perhaps interest rates are falling and therefore multiples or cap rates are becoming more attractive and property values are rising rapidly, mainly because of easy money and lower interest rates, then there's a huge opportunity for capital gains. As another way of generating return on capital. But those are two obviously very different tracks. The capital gains route by old invest, improve flip flop the gain and move on or the, you know, income based rent and earnings based, approach to property. Now, I think the reason I went through this is pretty elementary, of course, is that the macro environment is very different between the first strategy and the second strategy. And therefore, the important thing to understand about the macro environment is which environment are you in and is it conducive to strategy a the income strategy or b the capital gains strategy? I would say right now we're totally in an incomes strategy environment, the first route.   David Stockman (00:14:34) - And that's because as we've gone through several decades of easy money, of rapidly rising asset values, of ultra low interest rates, very high multiples, in terms of property values to income that has generated trillions and trillions of capital gains for smart real estate investors. But I think we're out of that environment, and we're in an environment now where we're stuck with massive public debt and deficits. We're stuck with a, central bank that is, basically painted itself into a corner, created so much fiat credit, generated so much liquidity into the economy that now it will be struggling with inflation for years to come. Which means, notwithstanding Wall Street's constant belief that rate cuts are coming tomorrow, there won't be rate cuts for a long time to come. And what we're facing, therefore, there is likely higher rates for longer. A environment in which property values are flat if not declining, and therefore the capital gains route is not going to work very well. But if you have good properties with good tenants and good cash flows and, rental flows, real estate mine works out pretty well.   David Stockman (00:16:05) - But you have to understand the macro environment. And that's one of the things that I work on daily when I, publish my daily newsletter, which is called, David Stockman's Contra Corner.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:19) - You can learn more about Contra Corner, David's blog, before we're done today. David, you have a lot of interesting things to say. There we are in this environment where rates have been higher, longer. It sounds like you believe that is going to continue to be the. Case is rate cuts will be postponed is a little more difficult question. It's some crystal ball stuff. But can you tell us more about that? What can we expect for inflation in interest rates for the rest of this 2020s decade, which has about six years to go?   David Stockman (00:16:48) - There's going to be high rates for most of this decade because we have so much inflation and excess demand built into the economy. We really went overboard, especially after 2020 with the pandemic lockdowns and then these massive stimulus program, something like $6 trillion of added stimulus, was injected into the economy in less than 12 months.   David Stockman (00:17:16) - That created a undertow of inflation that is still with us. And despite all the hopeful commentary that comes from Wall Street, if you look at it year to date, I don't look at just the CPI because the headline number is somewhat volatile and can be pushed and pulled a lot from a month to month based on nonrecurring conditions. But if you look at something called the 16% trimmed mean CPI, it's just the same CPI, but it takes out the lowest 8%, the highest 8% of price observations each month out of the thousands in the market basket. What it does is basically takes the extreme volatility out of the top and the bottom, and gives you a trend that is more reliable if you're looking like on a quarter by quarter or year by year or even multi year basis, well, I mentioned this is important because the trim means CPI is still running at about 4.3% during the first four months of this year to date. That's not a victory over inflation. That's double what the fed says his target is. And frankly, the Fed's target is a little bit phony.   David Stockman (00:18:35) - I mean, what's so great about 2% inflation if you're a saver and your savings are, you know, shrinking by 30% over the course of a decade, so they're going to have a tremendous wrestling match with inflation, not just for a few more months, but I think for several more years in this decade, I don't see the federal funds rate, which is kind of the benchmark rate for overnight money coming down below 5% very soon, or if at all. And that's because with inflation running at 4% or better, if you have a 5% money market rate, you're barely getting a return on capital, especially if you factor in taxes. You know, it's like it's a rounding error and that doesn't work over time. I mean, you're not going to get long term savings. You're not going to get long term capital investment. If the return is after inflation and taxes are either non-existent or negative, as they've been for quite a while. So even though everybody would like to hope we're going back to the good old days of 0% over 90 money or 1% money, which they got so used to over the last couple of decades.   David Stockman (00:19:55) - It was bad policy. It wasn't sustainable. It caused a huge amount of bubbles and distortions in our economy. But once we finally got to the end of that in March 2022, when the fed had to finally pivot and say, yeah, inflation isn't transitory, it's, embedded, we got to do something about it. People think we're going right back to where we were, and that's the key thing to understand. We are not going right back to where we were, in part because of all this inflation business I've talked about, but also in part because they got so used to borrowing money on Capitol Hill and practically zero interest rates that they are now, you know, they have built in deficits of 2 trillion or more a year. And, we are going to be pushing into the bond pits, massive amounts of new government debt. There's no consensus to do anything about it. You know, if the Republicans talk about reforming the entitlements, the Democrats say you're throwing grandma out the snow. If the Democrats talk about raising revenue, the Republicans talked about, you're going to get slaughtered with higher taxes.   David Stockman (00:21:12) - And then everybody's for more wars and more defense and the bigger and bigger national security budget. And that's all she wrote. If you don't do with revenue, you don't do it national defense and entitlements. The rest of it is rounding errors. And so we're stuck with these massive additions to the debt. Now, everybody knows the public debt. Is 34 trillion. Ready? Yeah. What I'd say they don't understand is that by the end of this decade, you ask about the decade, right? Will we close to 60 trillion of debt. And, if you look at the last CBO, projection they do every year at long term projection, and CBO actually is more optimistic than it is warranted in any way. In other words, their long term assumptions I call rosy scenario. There's no more recessions for the next couple of decades. Inflation is well-behaved, interest rates stay low. Full employment lasts indefinitely and forever. Well, this doesn't happen. Look at the real world. Over the last 20 or 30 years, we've been all over the lot.   David Stockman (00:22:18) - So if you look at the CBO forecast, which is I'm just saying here is exceedingly optimistic. They never are the less are projecting that the public debt and they don't even write this number down in their report because it's too scary, will be $100 trillion before the middle of this century.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:41) - That's a.   David Stockman (00:22:42) - Trillion. Yeah. Now, if you ask people today who are market savvy, I like a lot of your viewers. Where are the Treasury bills, notes and bonds today? Well, if you average it all out, it's about 5%. I don't think it's going to come down much. It'll vary a little bit up and down over time, but let's just say it stays at 5%. That means the carry cost of the public debt of a couple decades will be 5 trillion a year. The interest okay. It's staggering. That's almost as much as the whole federal budget is spending this today at, you know, about 6.6 6.7 trillion. So that's where we're heading, a massive debt crisis because they built in a structural deficit that the politicians and I call it the unite party.   David Stockman (00:23:33) - They fight about silly things, but they agree on the big things which are leading to this outcome. The unit party has no ability to do anything about this structural deficit or the march from the 34 trillion that we're at today to 60 trillion by the end of the decade, and 100 trillion of public debt by mid-century. Now, for a real estate investor, that's probably the most important number you're going to hear. You know, at least this week or maybe this month or even this year, because what it means is that the amount of new government debt flowing into the bond pits, that'll have to be financed and that can't be monetized by the fed anymore because there's too much inflation, is going to put constant, enormous pressure upward on interest rates. And of course, higher interest rates mean lower property values. That's just basic real estate math. That's the environment we're heading into, which means good properties with good income and good rental flows are really the only way to go.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:55) - Yeah, well, there's an awful lot there.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:57) - And with this persistent higher inflation that you expect, the way I think about it is the higher the rate of inflation, the more that moves a person's dollars out of a savings account and instead out onto the risk curve. Well, David alluded to a problematic economy. We're going to come back and talk about more of those warning signs and what you can do about it. You're listening to Get Resuscitation, the father of Reaganomics and Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, I'm your host, Keith Reinhold. Role under this specific expert with income property, you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS for 256 injury history from beginners to veterans. They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge. Personally, they'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com.   Speaker 7 (00:26:06) - This is author Jim Rickards. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:26:23) - Welcome back to Get Ready. So we're talking with the father of Reaganomics. His name is David Stockman, President Reagan's budget advisor. David, you've been talking about a problematic economy and places we can look and the outcomes that that can create. Why don't we talk about some more of those where we're here in a period where we feel like it's an official recession postponed, for example, are there other places that we should be looking? Is it the sustained inverted yield curve that we had for almost two years, the longest one ever, and a Great Recession predictor? Or is it that we're on the precipice of implosion from a debt to GDP ratio that's at 122%. It actually spiked to 133% when Covid first hit. Or for example, is it something and you've already touched on it a bit, is it more of that federal spending on our debts, interest payments alone each year, which had almost $900 billion for that interest line item that now even exceeds the massive $800 billion that we spend each year on national defense, or should we be looking at somewhere else? So what's out there that's really problematic and what's overblown?   David Stockman (00:27:28) - Okay.   David Stockman (00:27:29) - That's great. And all of those things you mentioned you should be looking at, it depends on your time frame. But I think on the initial question, where is this postponed recession? Why hasn't that happened? The place to look is somewhere that I think most Wall Street analysts aren't focused on, but they should be. And that's a series published by the Federal Reserve that tracks household balance sheets, in other words, liabilities and assets. But there's a particular series that I think is critically important to look at, and it's basically bank deposits, checking account savings accounts plus money market funds. This is all the liquid cash accounts of the household sector, not long term investments in real estate or stocks or bonds, but the short term money. It's the spendable money that households have now, what happened during the pandemic and lockdowns. And then the 6 trillion Is stems that were injected into the economy, like some kind of fiscal madness was going on in Washington, created a total aberration in the amount of cash in the economy, in the household sector, in these accounts that I just mentioned, normally right before the lockdown started and the stimulus was injected, you know, the level of cash accounts was about 12 trillion.   David Stockman (00:29:00) - Within two years it was up to 18 trillion. And normally that cash balance grows about the same rate as the economy. In other words, as incomes go up, people save a small share of their income that goes into various bank accounts. There tends to be a lock step relationship. But what happened during that two year period was there was so much extra cash sent out to the households with the $2,000 checks in the $600 a week extra stimulus money, and then the, trillions that went, you know, for things like the Small Business Administration loan program, which was all forgivable, was about almost upwards of $1 trillion. You know, we could itemize all the others. But this enormous government, unusual cash flow into the economy added to these bank accounts enormously. And then something else happened. The geniuses in Washington, led by Doctor Fauci, decided to shut down half of the service sector, the economy. I'm talking with restaurants and bars and gyms, malls and movies and and all the rest of it.   David Stockman (00:30:09) - So all of a sudden, the normal money that people would have been spending on the service venues, which is a big part of total spending, was stopped. It was kind of forced into artificial savings, sort of government mandated savings. Now, if you put the two together, there was about 2 trillion, extra transfer payments sent out to the public during that two year period. And there was a little over a trillion of normal service spending, restaurants in, etc. that didn't happen because there was a closed sign on the door, compliments of Doctor Fauci, or people were scared to death to go out because, you know, they created all this fear that Covid was some form of black death, which it really wasn't for 95% of the population. In any event, if you put the extra free stuff from the government, 2 trillion and the for savings because of these lockdowns, trillion, you have 3 trillion of unusual cash that flowed into the economy on top of the normal production. Income and profits and spending that would have otherwise gone on.   David Stockman (00:31:26) - Now that 3 trillion temporarily ended up in this account, that I'm just talking about the cash balances of the household sector and its peak, there was about 2.8 trillion extra compared to what would been be the normal case in a regular economy. In a normal economy, that money has been slowly spent down by the household sector, even as the fed has tried to put the screws to the economy. In other words, there was so much extra cash in the system that even as the fed raised interest rates from 0 to 5% and did their darndest to slow things down, all of that excess that was built up during the pandemic period was available to spend. It was spent. And here's the key point. About half of it is now been spent. In other words, there's only about a trillion and a half of the nearest 3 trillion left. Now that is what's delayed the recession. If that big, massive 3 trillion nest egg had been there and the fed began to push rates up as it normally did in a normal cycle, we would have been in recession months ago.   David Stockman (00:32:41) - But what has delayed or deferred the recession is this, cushion, this huge macro piggybank of cash that the government inadvertently or adversely is the case may be generated, during the pandemic period. So that's new. See that? Nobody looks at that because normally it's not a factor. You know, the cash balances are a pretty, prosaic, neutral part of the economy. They're not where you look for the leading edge of where the cycle was going or where new developments may turn up tomorrow. But this time, because of this total aberration of what happened to government transfer payments plus the lockdowns, we have a, X factor, let's call it in the macro picture that is confusing people. It's leading a lot of people to abdicate this no landing scenario. In other words, you know, there's not going to be a recession. We're just going to go on to bigger and better things. And, the fed will get inflation under control and then we can be back to happy times again. No, they're missing.   David Stockman (00:33:56) - The elephant in the room is this massive aberrational unusual one time cash balance that was, generated by these policies. And that still has a little ways to go now. I think at the rate it's being run down, you can almost calculate it a couple hundred billion dollars, a quarter sometime next year, all of that extra cash will be out of the system. And then people will be back to spending only what they're earning. And frankly, earnings they're not. I'm talking about wage and salary earnings, are advancing barely at the inflation rate at the present time. So when we get back to about zero real growth in earnings, we're going to finally see the recession.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:45) - I think one of the big takeaways here is that all these artificial economic injections really take time to unwind.   David Stockman (00:34:56) - Exactly. You have to look at, you know, they always say, well, when the government changes policy, fiscal policy, you tighten or you loosen or monetary policy they raise or lower interest rates. They got QE or they got cute putting money in or taking money out that there's lag and lead times in all of this.   David Stockman (00:35:18) - The problem is, none of the great economic gurus who talk about this really know whether the lag time is 12 months, 25 months, 50 or 5, and it varies. I mean, the circumstance has changed so much in a world GDP of 104 trillion, a domestic economy with 28 trillion of GDP, and all the complex factors that are moving back and forth in today's world, especially as it's enabled by technology and global trade and the internet and all the rest of it, nobody knows the lag times. And as a result, it's very hard to predict when the, brown stuff is going to hit the fan, so to speak. On the other hand, you don't have to know the exact date. You really need to understand the direction, the flow of things. And if you're in an environment that isn't sustainable because you're borrowing like crazy or interest rates or artificially. Low or stock price multiples are way the L2 ie or cap rates on real estate or you know, abnormally low. Then what you have to say is we're going to a different state.   David Stockman (00:36:35) - It's not going to be as conducive as the current state, and we have to be prepared for it, even if we are not sure whether that's 12 months from now or 24 months. But it's going to change. So one thing you can be sure of, there is a famous economist back in my day when I worked on Capitol Hill earlier on, he was Nixon's chief economic adviser in the early 70s. And he famously formulated an aphorism, I guess, which said anything that is unsustainable tends to stop. Okay, that's what I know about the lag times. We're in unsustainable financial, fiscal and monetary environment. And the trends that it has given rise to are going to stop and and not in a good way.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:24) - He even fed Chair Jerome Powell has confessed as much as that. This situation is indeed unsustainable, the exact word that he used. Well, David, this has been great in winding down as Ronald Reagan's budget director. Can you share any anecdote, story or quote from you spending time personally with Ronald Reagan? And the reason I ask is because he is perhaps the most revered president of the past few generations.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:52) - That might mean a lot to our listeners here.   David Stockman (00:37:54) - He should be revered, and not only because he was a great president and a great communicator, and did a lot of important things in policy. Some of them got implemented, and a lot of them were frustrated by Washington and the politicians and the Democrats and everybody else. But also, he was a great human being. And my story about that was when I was budget director, in the fifth year of the Reagan administration, we had our first child, and my wife was in the hospital. At that point in time, President Reagan was in Europe on a very important big international, series of meetings. But, somebody in the white House told him that our daughter had been born. And so he took the time out of his schedule for a call from Germany, the hospital where my wife was, and said he would like to talk to her and, congratulate us on our new arrival. But my wife was in a room with another, a new mother.   David Stockman (00:38:53) - She the other person answered the phone and she said to my wife, there's some joker on the phone with President Reagan. And sure enough, he was there. and he took the time to congratulate my wife. And, so that's the kind of, person he was. He really was a great human being.   Keith Weinhold (00:39:13) - Wow. Yeah. That really shows that he can still be warm and heartfelt, even while doing some key international negotiations there. Potentially. Well, we mentioned it earlier. I can tell you, the audience, that David is a regular author and contributor to his Contra Corner blog and letter, and you can get access to that for free. This is information coming from the father of Reaganomics to you. If you think you would find it a value. David, tell us how our audience can connect with you there.   David Stockman (00:39:44) - Just Google David Stockman Contra corner I publish, I have a website, issues a newsletter every day. It comes automatically in the email. I also have a Substack version. You can sign up for either one, the email from my site or from Substack.   David Stockman (00:40:02) - And every day we try to publish something on these issues that we've been talking about. One day it might be Wall Street, another day it might be Capitol Hill, another day it might be, you know, the war in Ukraine. All of these things matter. All of these things influence the environment that investors have to function in. So we try to comment on a variety of those issues based on, you know, the long experience that I've had, both not only in Washington, but also I was on Wall Street, for about 20 years. I was one of the founding partners of Blackstone, for instance. And we were in the real estate business in a major way, even then.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:44) - Well, we absolutely love that. And I sure am appreciative of your time. It was great connecting with you. And thanks for being on the program today, David.   David Stockman (00:40:53) - Very good. Enjoyed it.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:01) - Yeah. Deep insights from the father of Reaganomics. Stockman thinks we'll be struggling with inflation for years to come.   Keith Weinhold (00:41:08) - There won't be rate cuts for a long time. He sees real estate values as flat or declining, so have good tenants with steady income streams. Of course, in our favoured real estate segment here, residential 1 to 4 units where you can get 30 year fixed rate debt. Higher mortgage rates tend to correlate with higher prices, just like it has for the last three years and almost every period before that too. But there could be more pain for the commercial sector then, and assets that are tied to floating rate debt. And if you're aligned with David Stockman on that, you might want to look at your helocs, because after a fixed rate period, their rates tend to float along with the fed funds rate. So be cautious with Helocs and ask David for specifics. He doesn't see the federal funds rate coming down below 5% anytime soon, and you probably know that is the interest rate that a whole bunch of other interest rates are based off of. And that rate is currently at about 5.3%. By the way, there is projected to be more than 100 t more than $100 trillion of public debt before the middle of this century.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:22) - That's less than 25 years away. I mean, these figures just become unfathomable sometimes. Pandemic wrought inflation that really occurred due to this greater supply of dollars that was introduced chasing a reduced supply of goods. And there were fewer goods because people got paid to stay at home not producing anything. Plus, what had been produced often could not be shipped either. David discussed the 16% trimmed mean CPI, and I've got to say, as much as I am a student devotee in studying inflation, I had never heard of that from his vantage point to find recession signs, look at household balance sheets and what's delayed the recession is that those pandemic measures put an extra 3 trillion bucks into households, and households still have about 1.5 trillion left to spend, which could further delay a recession. He projects that it's sometime next year that all of that extra cash will be out of the system. When you talk to how many people got this recession predictions so horribly wrong? Back in October 2022, Bloomberg Economics forecast a 100% chance of a recession by the following fall, which is almost a year ago now.   Keith Weinhold (00:43:48) - Well, a 100% chance that left no room for anything else to happen. And they really whiffed on that one. Now, you know, I've got to add something here. A personal note if I can, but I'll give you a lesson along with it. And that is that at times like today, where I found myself one degree of separation from one of the most revered presidents in all of American history, I sometimes have some difficulty understanding how I keep having the opportunity to share time with people like today's guest. Now, I'm certainly not a PhD economist. And in fact, on the flip side, I've also never been a person that's been so poor and destitute that I was dying of hunger. But I do come from a modest place. When I flew the coop and left my parents home, I rented my first pathetic place to live a $325 a month pool house in the back of my landlord's property at 852 Spruce Avenue in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Yeah, a pathetic little pool house right next to the landlord's swimming pool.   Keith Weinhold (00:45:04) - I mean, I was living really pathetically there for a while as I was struggling just to do things like find gainful employment and figure out the world and find a steady income. Yeah, it was 325 a month plus electric and the one small heater that was there, it was electric and it was really expensive to run. And on the coldest days, it wouldn't even adequately heat my pathetic little pool house that I ended up living in for 18 months. And just because I couldn't figure a way out of that situation for a while, I mean, I was too ashamed to ever bring a girl back there to that sad pool house. It was just one sink for the whole place. Combined kitchen and bathroom sink in the bathroom. I mean, most of my friends, they got their driver's license at age 16 and they soon had their own car. I didn't own a car until I was aged 22 or 23, and it's not because I lived in an urban area and walked. Everywhere use public transit there in Pennsylvania.   Keith Weinhold (00:46:02) - It just took me a long time to afford a beater car and pay for insurance. I really needed a car and couldn't afford one. So really my point here is that sometimes I have to wonder how I got here from there. And I think what it is is taking an interest in real estate and investing. And despite just having a humble bachelor's degree in geography, it's really about becoming an autodidact, meaning self-taught. And it's easy to teach yourself when you find what interests you. And let me point to two other things besides adopting an auto didactic ethic to help me turn the corner into being in a place where I can have conversations like the one that I've had today. It was getting around aspirational friends. Like I've mentioned before, that showed me how I can start with a bang buy with little money. On my first home, I could put a 3.5% down payment on a fourplex, live in one unit and rent out the other three. And I will give myself some credit for doing those things. And then really, the third thing is that stroke of luck element, like just 4% of world inhabitants have been.   Keith Weinhold (00:47:15) - I was one of that 4% that was born in the United States. And then I had two great, married, stable, supportive parents to cultivate the right environment for me. And well, today was just one of those days where I sort of nudged myself and I'm glad that it happened. Most importantly, I trust that you got value from today's show and that you do every single week here. Check out David Stockman's Contra Corner. Next week, we'll look for signs of distress in real estate as we delve inside the foreclosure market and how you can find discounted deals there. Until then, Idaho's Keith Wayne hold don't quit your day trip.   Speaker 8 (00:48:02) - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively. The.   Keith Weinhold (00:48:30) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building.   Keith Weinhold (00:48:34) - Get rich education.com.

Summary: The meeting covered a range of topics, including the global economy, Bitcoin, and artificial intelligence (AI). Kerry Lutz and Darryl reflected on the 14-year journey of economic uncertainty, the struggles of central bankers to restore stability, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy. They also discussed the potential implications for China's economy, the psychology of market participants, and the role of gold as a barometer of systemic distress.  The conversation then shifted to Bitcoin, with Lutz discussing the institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency and suggesting that institutions are being sold debt and IOUs. He expressed skepticism about the motives behind institutional investment in Bitcoin, portraying it as a way for the fast boys to profit at the expense of the slow boys. The meeting also covered the potential impact of AI, with participants expressing concerns about the environmental and societal implications of AI technology, as well as the ethical and philosophical aspects of AI development. They discussed the potential negative consequences of creating machines that mimic human actions and the dangers of creating machines that are similar to humans but lack the ability to make ethical decisions. Find Darryl here: drschoon.com Find Kerry here: FSN and here: Inflaton.Cafe      

The landscape of the East has been altered. With the MVP --- or M-Vi-Biid's return, can the Sixers season be saved? We discuss. And as the sun shines in Philly, a storm is brewing in Milwaukee. Why Giannis and Bucks could be headed for an early exit.  Plus, we all know Wemby will have a VERY crowded trophy case when it's all said and done, but Perk thinks he deserves something even bigger than just Rookie of the Year... next on NBA Today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters” fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass.These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers' IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world—Goldman Sachs, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, J. & W. Seligman & Co. They would clash and collaborate with J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, and other famed tycoons of the era. And their firms would help to transform the United States from a debtor nation into a financial superpower, capitalizing American industry and underwriting some of the twentieth century's quintessential companies, like General Motors, Macy's, and Sears. Along the way, they would shape the destiny not just of American finance but of the millions of Eastern European Jews who spilled off steamships in New York Harbor in the early 1900s, including Daniel Schulman's paternal grandparents.Today's guest is Dan Schulman, author of “The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America.” We trace the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties from the Gilded Age to the Civil War, World War I, and the Zionist movement that tested both their burgeoning empires and their identities as Americans, Germans, and Jews.

Dive deep into a thought-provoking discussion with Aleks Svetski, co-author of "The Uncommunist Manifesto" and the mind behind "The Bitcoin Times," on the latest episode of the Mark Moss Show. In this revealing conversation, we explore the concepts of leadership, societal growth, and the impact of strong individuals on shaping the future. Svetski challenges conventional wisdom by discussing the need for discomfort in pursuit of growth, the importance of solving higher-quality problems, and the potential of Bitcoin to influence a new playbook for society. From discussing Argentina's surprising political shift under President Miele to the philosophical underpinnings of money as a network of IOUs, this episode is packed with insights on how individuals and society can navigate the challenges of our time. Tune in for a stimulating discourse on the dynamics of power, excellence, and the journey towards creating a civilization that values strength, virtue, and excellence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special episode, our CTC hosts reflect on the wheel-turning events, the curd-inary highlights, and the fon-due moments that shaped the cheese-scape this past year.We explore it all with a sprinkle of humor, a dash of clever insight, and a dollop of cheesy charm. Unpack the stories behind the latest cheese trends, hear again about the curd-preneurs making waves, and laugh along as we recount the unforgettable, and sometimes amusing, moments that defined the year.Get ready for a flavorful blend of nostalgia, cheese wisdom, and a hint of cheesy humor as we slice through the curd-ious and unexpected happenings that made 2023 a vintage year in the world of curd exploration. So, grab your favorite cheese board, pour a glass of wine, and join us for a gouda time as we wrap up the year that was on Cutting the Curd!

Is Bitcoin destined to become another fiat system? Where we end up in a world where the dominant instrument isn't Bitcoin at all, but just more IOUs? Where Bitcoin substitutes replace real Bitcoin? Does it not just become another fiat system, or are there fundamental incentives and technological trends that prevent this and push us ever closer to total sovereignty? With smaller and smaller communities and institutions able to organize and exit in an independent way... where a Bitcoin world means a free world? It's time for a follow-up to Eric Yake's and Axiom BTC's amazing piece, "Banks without bankers." Get ready for another "Guys Take" episode. Keep an ear out for the 1000th episode of the show! I'll have details soon, you don't want to miss it. Follow AxiomBTC and Eric Yakes on Twitter Other great sources mentioned in this episode: -The 7th Property -Broken Money -The Fiat Standard -Freedom & Exit Found this and all the other great recommendations that I regularly share on the show on the Bitcoin audible page at Prodcast.io A huge thanks to our sponsors, and don't forget to check out the offers for the listeners of this show! 9% off the Coldcard with code BITCOINAUDIBLE, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bitcoinaudible.com/coldcard⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out the KYC Free, simple, no management, Bitcoin merchant solution, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Nodeless.io/guy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Use my link to go to ⁠⁠⁠bitcoinaudible.com/nodeless⁠⁠⁠ and setup your donation page for free, then share it out on Nostr or Twitter and tag me, and I'll throw 10,000 sats your way! Get 50,000 free sats, plus sats back on everything you buy by signing up with Fold and the Spin+ Debit Card. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bitcoinaudible.com/fold⁠⁠ -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bitcoinaudible/message

If it is true that our money has no actual value, and it is true that the notes we call money are nothing more than IOUs, then it follows that when we “buy” something, nothing of value has been exchanged for actual value. This line of logic dictates that anyone using money to buy property (more...)

Top Chef does a movie tie in episode and it turns into the FASTest elimination challenge in HISTORY! There's a lot of moving and running and winning and losing and one very large Vin Diesel lady boner from Victoire. This week's premium bonus is a #RHOC trailer breakdown. For bonus episodes and video recaps, join Patreon at patreon.com/watchwhatcrappens Tour Dates: https://www.watchwhatcrappens.com/2023-cheater-brand-tour/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ron Magill joins us and shares how happy our audience makes him when they reach out to him about animal questions. Then, we dive into how the Manningcast and Amazon NFL broadcasts have started their seasons, get to Stugotz fine IOUs, and discuss our Grid of Death punishments. Plus, after Dana White tries a DNA and blood test to see how long he'll live, we discuss whether or not we'd even want to know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices