Podcast appearances and mentions of richard vague

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality—but also, paradoxically, economic growth—is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged—and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality—but also, paradoxically, economic growth—is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged—and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality—but also, paradoxically, economic growth—is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged—and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality—but also, paradoxically, economic growth—is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged—and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

If properties are empty from population decline, they'll lose value and rent. If this happens, then what's the timeline? Richard Vague, the PA Governor-appointed Secretary of Banking and Securities from 2020-2023, joins us.  US and world birth rates keep declining. As population declines, per capita GDP often increases. Richard believes that inequality will widen. Most models show the US population increasing for several decades. A median model is 342M today up to 383M in 2054. Opposite of what the Fed thinks, Richard believes that lower interest rates can quell today's persistent inflation. The US has had 9 instances of high inflation. It's often spurred by wars, which create shortages. I tell Richard about GRE's Inflation Triple Crown and ask his opinion. Real estate values rise as debt-to-GDP rises. I point-blank ask Richard if an economic crisis is imminent. Resources mentioned: Follow Richard Vague: Join.TychosGroup.org 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”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com 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. The phenomenon of population decline is spreading throughout the world. Will that come to the US and obliterate real estate then? A bit of a debate on the affliction of inflation and what this all means to real estate today on get rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info. The modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are. At no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple. Text GRE to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Day dream letter and it wires your mind for wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:01:18) - Make sure you read it. Text GRE to 66866. Text GRE to 66866.   Corey Coates (00:01:30) - 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 (00:01:46) - We're going to drive from Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin to Mono Lake, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get Rich education. Real estate is obviously a strong, proven store of value. Now, what's interesting is that most economists agree that money should be three things a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Well, please don't take offense here. This can sound a little crude, but there's one thing to call those that use dollars as a store of value, and that is poor. How is a dollar a store of value when you've had 20% plus cumulative inflation over the last three years alone, the dollar is a poor store of value. We're going to get into inflation with our other esteemed guest and gubernatorial appointee today. He has some opinions on inflation, and you may very well feel that I poke him on this topic today.   Keith Weinhold (00:02:58) - I'll also get his input on our inflation Triple Crown concept, where real estate helps you win with inflation three ways at the same time. But first, he and I are going to discuss the specter of population decline. And well, it's not always a specter to people because some feel that the world is better off with fewer people, environmentalists and others. Japan's native born population is falling at a rate of almost 100 people per hour. Yeah, you heard that right. Well, is that coming to the United States and how bad would that be for real estate? Before we go on with those discussions about population decline and then inflation, here's something cool. Is your first language Spanish, or do you have any Spanish speaking family or friends? If you do, you're in luck! I'm proud to announce that our real estate Pays five ways video course is now available in Spanish and it is free. Yes, all five course videos leverage depreciation, cash flow, ROA, tax benefits and inflation profiting. All broken down by me in Spanish.   Keith Weinhold (00:04:15) - You can see those five videos. And again they're free at get rich education. Comment espanol tell to familia e amigos. That's all right there on the page at get Rich education. Com slash espanol. And hey, if you're a business owner or decision maker and would like to advertise on our platform, well, we'd like to check you out first and look at this slowly. Oftentimes I use the product or service myself. Get rich. Education is ranked in the top one half of 1% of listened to podcasts globally, per lesson notes on air every single week since 2014. Some say that we were the first show to finally, clearly explain how real estate makes ordinary people wealthy. For advertising information and inquiries, visit get Rich education.com/ad let's get rich education compered. Today it's the return of a terrific guest. This week's guest was with us last year. He's an economic futurist, keynote speaker, and popular author. He's the former secretary of banking and securities for the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Today, he runs a group that predicts financial crises called Tycho's.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:40) - That's really interesting. Joining us from Philadelphia today. Hey, it's great to welcome back Richard Vague.   Richard Vague (00:05:47) - Thank you so much for having me. It's real privilege.   Keith Weinhold (00:05:50) - Vague is spelled vague u e just like it sounds. If you're listening in the audio only. Richard also has a YouTube channel where, among other things, he discusses topics like population decline and inflation. Two things that we'll get into today. But before that, Richard, how exactly do you get tapped by the governor of Pennsylvania to have been appointed his banking secretary? Anyway? How does that really happen?   Richard Vague (00:06:16) - Well, I served under Governor Thomas Wolf, a superb governor here at Pennsylvania. We kind of were both very familiar with each other, and I had already written a number of books on banking crises, including The Next Economic Disaster and A Brief History of Doom. And he had read those, and so much to my surprise, he showed up in my office one day and asked me if I'd consider it.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:40) - Wow, that is really cool.   Keith Weinhold (00:06:42) - All right. You kind of led with your writing in your books for making that happen. Richard, here's a big question that I have for you. At 8.1 billion people today is Earth's overpopulated or underpopulated?   Richard Vague (00:06:58) - Well, there's a lot of very valid points on both sides of that. You know, there are a number of folks who decry the level of population we have because of its destructive impact on the environment. And there's a lot of folks that note that it's population growth that really has made our economic growth so vibrant. So there's a real contention on that issue. We tend not to take a position, but what we do know is as world population growth is slowing, which it clearly is, that is going to make economic growth much more challenging in a whole lot of places around the world, some of which you're actually starting to see population declines, like China.   Keith Weinhold (00:07:46) - I want to get to that slowing growth in a moment. We talk about overpopulation versus under population. Some in the overpopulation camp thinking the world has too many people they're referred to as Malthusian, was named for Thomas Malthus, who in 1798 he said the world would exceed its agricultural carrying capacity and there was going to be mass starvation.   Keith Weinhold (00:08:09) - Malthus was wrong. He didn't consider technological advancements. So I guess my point is the future can be really difficult to predict.   Richard Vague (00:08:18) - Yeah. Without question. You know, the big innovation came in the early 1900s when we figured out how to synthetically manufacture of things like fertilizer, which allowed arable land area to increase dramatically. It kind of took them out of this equation off the table.   Keith Weinhold (00:08:36) - Yes. With the mechanization of harvesting and the engineering of foods, there sure have been a lot of advancements there to help feed more people. And yeah, Richard, you talk about population decline. Of course, the world population overall is still growing, but its rate of growth is declining. So before we talk about the United States, you mentioned China. Why don't we discuss population decline more in global terms, where even nations like India are already struggling to exceed the replacement birth rate of 2.1?   Richard Vague (00:09:10) - Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomenon that, you know, we haven't faced or perhaps even thought of for a couple hundred years because population growth accelerated so dramatically with the Industrial Revolution.   Richard Vague (00:09:22) - We've really not known anything but rapid growth. And frankly, it's easier to grow businesses. And the economy is old. But now we're seeing places like China, Japan, Germany that are facing population declines in places like India, which, as you said, is comparatively a younger country. Nevertheless, facing this prospect as well, then in 1980, the average age in the US was 30. Today it's 38. In Germany I believe it's 48. So the world is getting old in a way that it had not previously in the industrial revolutionary period.   Keith Weinhold (00:10:03) - I think a lot of people are aware that many parts of Europe, Japan, South Korea are in population decline or they're set up for population decline. But yes, some of these other nations that we think of as newer nations or growing nations, including India, are not forecast to. Grow in, Richard. Are we really down? Of course. There are a number of outliers. Are we down mostly to Africa that still have the high birth rates?   Richard Vague (00:10:29) - As the world has become more urban, the need for more kids has declined.   Richard Vague (00:10:35) - It's in an urban environment, become an expense rather than a benefit. So that alone accounts for the deceleration. And then you have folks that are getting married later, having kids later, and you simply can't have as many kids when those two things are true. So it's a combination of events, and there aren't that many places left that have higher birth rates. And even in Africa it's declining or decelerating. So the world's just moving in that direction.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:06) - Yeah. It's really once we see the urbanization trend in a nation, what lags behind that are slowing birth rates, oftentimes birth rates that don't even meet death rates in some places. It kind of goes back to the Thomas Malthus thing again, if you will. When you don't have a family farm, you don't need nine kids to milk the cows and shuck the corn and everything else like that. You might live in a smaller urban apartment.   Richard Vague (00:11:33) - But we're all just has it been thinking about this issue? And it's upon us now, and it's going to change everything from governments to handling debts to infrastructure to growth itself.   Richard Vague (00:11:48) - So we need to start thinking about this issue much more deeply than we have.   Keith Weinhold (00:11:54) - Is there any way that an economy can grow with a declining population, and how bad will it get?   Richard Vague (00:12:02) - An economy will obviously struggle to grow if the population is declining, but the per capita GDP and increase as population declines. And in fact, we might see that early on in a population decline situation. I think that's actually been true in Japan over the last few years. The population is down, but GDP per capita is actually increasing slightly. So I think it's longer term. When you talk about trying to service the debt that we have amassed with the smaller population, that we're really going to have issues.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:41) - Talk to us more about that. The servicing the debt part of a declining population.   Richard Vague (00:12:48) - The debt doesn't shrink on its own, you know, so it tends to grow because, you know, it's accruing interest.   Keith Weinhold (00:12:54) - It always seems to go one direction.   Richard Vague (00:12:56) - It always pretty much only goes in one direction. So it's pretty simple.   Richard Vague (00:13:00) - If you have growing debt and I'm talking about public debt and private debt, and you have a declining base to service that, you have more people in retirement who are not paying as much in the way of taxes. It's going to increase the challenge, and it may in fact, increase it considerably. As we look at a few decades.   Keith Weinhold (00:13:21) - We need productivity to pay down debt that's more difficult to do in the declining population. We talk about technological advancements, some things that we cannot foresee. Did you sort of lead on to the fact that some of this might help us be more productive, even in a declining population, whether that's machine learning or robotics or AI? What are your thoughts there?   Richard Vague (00:13:45) - That's something that's been predicted for quite some time. You know, if we look back not too far ago, economists were wondering what we were going to do with all of our free time, right? Because, you know, automate. And this goes back to the 20s and 30s and 40s what we do with all our free time.   Richard Vague (00:14:01) - So we again have conversations along those lines. You know, it's not inconceivable that we could all be sitting there, you know, sipping our Mai tais, and the machines could be doing all the work for us. And servicing debt might be easy in that scenario, I doubt it. I don't think that's what's going to happen.   Keith Weinhold (00:14:19) - The more technology advances, the more complex society gets. That continues to create jobs in places where we cannot see them. I mean, case in point here, in the year 2024, we're more technologically advanced than we've ever been in human history, obviously. Yet here in the United States, we have more open jobs than we even do people to fill them.   Richard Vague (00:14:39) - Yeah. And I think one of the things that all of this does is increase the march of inequality. You have folks that master the technology become engineers, software engineers and the like that are going to be the huge beneficiaries of these trends. But folks that don't have the skill sets aren't going to benefit from these trends.   Richard Vague (00:15:01) - And even though in aggregate, we may continue to see per capita GDP increase, our track record over the last few decades would suggest that inequality will increase just as markedly as it has in the past, so we'll have some societal issues to face.   Keith Weinhold (00:15:19) - That's concerning as inflation. Continues to exacerbate inequality simultaneously, which we'll talk about later. But population decline is of concern to us as real estate investors because of course, we need rent paying tenants. So this could be pretty concerning to some. You've probably seen a lot of the same models that I have, Richard, let me know. In the United States, population is projected to increase for several decades by every single model that I've seen, maybe even until or after the year 2100.   Richard Vague (00:15:53) - The projection is by 2050, we'll have about 380 something million people, and today we're at 330 million people. So clearly the population is going to continue. It's just kind of the relative portion of those populations. And what I think we're seeing, and you as real estate investors would know this better than I, is a shift towards the type of real estate out there.   Richard Vague (00:16:19) - Right? So instead of new homeowner development, it's retirement development that I think is going to be the higher growth sector with the real estate industry.   Keith Weinhold (00:16:31) - And we're surely going to see fewer offices be built, something that may never come back. And then when we talk about things like birth rates and population growth rates here in the real estate world, I sort of think of there as being a lag effect. It's really not so much about today's births in the United States, because people often rent their first place in their 20s, and then the average age of a first time homebuyer is an all time record high 36. And all those people are going to need housing into old age as well. So to me, it's sort of about, oh, well, how many people were born from the 1940s to the 1990s?   Richard Vague (00:17:10) - Well, there's a very useful tool that's pretty easily available called the Population Pyramid. You can find that on the CIA World Factbook site for every country and including the United States. And it shows exactly what you're talking about, which is the number of folks, you know, between 0 and 10 years old and into 20 years old and so forth.   Richard Vague (00:17:32) - So you can kind of make reasonable projections about the near term based on the data that the CIA World Factbook is kind enough for by I believe the UN has this data as well, so you can make informed judgments about the very thing you're talking about here, which is how many folks are in their 20s to over the next ten years versus the last ten years.   Keith Weinhold (00:17:54) - Yeah, that's reassuring to real estate investors to know that we expect several decades of population growth in the United States. However, it may be slowing growth. So we talked about births, I mentioned deaths. Well, you tell us a bit more about immigration, something else that can be very difficult to project here in the real estate world that we have a popular analyst called John Byrne's research and Consulting. Their data shows that we had 3.8 million Americans added to our population last year, much of it through immigration. That's a jump of more than 1%, an all time record in our 248 year history in one year alone. So can you tell us, at least in the United States, a bit more about immigration in the calculus for population projections? Richard.   Richard Vague (00:18:42) - Immigration is a huge factor in the demographics of every country in the US, from a pure population growth standpoint as benefited by in-migration, including illegal and migration. That is a positive comparison versus a lot of countries that are either more restrictive art is desirable destinations for immigration and the life. So it has benefited us from a pure population standpoint. But what we clearly see is there are cultural ramifications that are difficult for us to deal with. We have the percent of folks that are in the United States that were born in another country. It's the highest it's been, I think, at least in a century or more and perhaps ever, that is really difficult for the general population to absorb. We see this in the headlines every day. We see it the concern, we see it in the political rhetoric. It's a real issue. So you have a very real conflict between the economic benefits of immigration versus the cultural divisions that that immigration creates. And that's not going to be easy to digest or to resolve. I think we probably end up continuing to compromise, but it continues to be a political lightning rod right into the foreseeable future.   Keith Weinhold (00:20:14) - And there are so many factors here. Where's our future immigrant diaspora? Is it in places in Latin America like Guatemala? In Honduras, in Colombia. And are those people going to come from there? So there are a lot of factors, many of which aren't very predictable, to take a look at our future population growth rate in the United States. We're talking with economic futurist, author and Pennsylvania's former secretary of banking and Securities, Richard Moore, and we come back on the affliction of inflation. This is general education. I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Role under this specific expert with income property, you need Ridge lending Group and MLS 42056 in grey 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. You know, I'll just tell you, for the most passive part of my real estate investing, personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom Family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in returns, or better than a bank savings account, up to 12%.   Keith Weinhold (00:21:44) - Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited for some of them. It's all backed by real estate and that kind of love. How the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains and your W-2 jobs income. And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 66866. Oh, and this isn't a solicitation. If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to six, 686, six.   Speaker 4 (00:22:33) - This is author Jim Rickards. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your day dream.   Keith Weinhold (00:22:49) - Welcome back to get Rich. So we're talking with economic futurist, author and Pennsylvania's former secretary of banking and securities. His name is Richard Vague. And Richard, before the break we talked about how many more people are there going to be on this earth.   Keith Weinhold (00:23:03) - We know for sure that there's also the growth of the number of dollars in this nation. So we're talking about inflation here. You talk an awful lot about the affliction of inflation and the history of inflation. And I think a lot of people when we talk about the history of inflation, maybe we should begin chronologically. They don't realize that inflation wasn't always with us. Since the birth of this nation.   Richard Vague (00:23:30) - We haven't had that many episodes of inflation. We look at it pretty hard. We see nine what we would consider nine instances of high inflation. Most of those have come with war. So we certainly had that. The Revolutionary War right of 1812 and the Civil War and World War one and World War two. But inflation has been brief, contained and rare in the history of Western developed nations. We had our bout in the 1970s that related to OPEC and the constraint of the oil supply. It normally relates to the decimation or constraint of the supplies and the supply chain. We saw it again with Covid.   Richard Vague (00:24:17) - A lot of folks consider it to be a monetary phenomenon. We just don't see that in the data.   Keith Weinhold (00:24:24) - So we talk about what causes these bouts of inflation. You talked about nine of them. Well, he talked to us more about why wars often create inflation. Of course we're trying to create a lot of supplies during wars, but they tend to be only certain types of supplies.   Richard Vague (00:24:40) - World War One is a great example. Probably, you know, two thirds of the farms in Europe were decimated. So for a couple of years, there simply weren't the kind of crops that are needed for nutrition being grown in Europe, we Corps and the like. So the US had to, frankly, export something on the order of 20% of its crops to Europe to prevent starvation. Well, it's pretty easy to see that if the US if the supply has been decimated in Europe, we're having to ship, you know, a huge chunk of our crops to Europe, that the price of wheat and corn would go up.   Richard Vague (00:25:21) - And that's exactly what happened. It's also pretty easy to see that as those farms came back on stream and began growing crops, that the price of wheat and corn would drop. And that's exactly what happened. So you have this relatively short lived period of 2 or 3 years where the decimation of supplies caused inflation, and that's fairly typical.   Keith Weinhold (00:25:45) - Supply falls, demand exceeds supply and prices rise much like what happened with those Covid shortages, as you mentioned, what are the other major causes of inflation other than supply shortages that have caused these nine bouts of inflation?   Richard Vague (00:26:03) - Well, let's talk about major developed countries, which I would include Western Europe, the United States predominantly. That's pretty much the only thing that has brought sustained high inflation is supply constraint. We don't see instances of high government debt growth or money supply growth ever causing inflation. Now when you get to smaller countries where they are borrowing in a foreign currency, where they have a trade deficit and where they yield to the temptation of printing too much money, and I don't mean by printing, we use that term in the United States, and it's absolutely a fictitious term.   Richard Vague (00:26:50) - We don't print money in the United States. We have it printed money since the Civil War. So in a third world country, they can actually go to a printing press and start paying with cash for government supply needs. And you can see it very clearly when it happens and it very quickly leads to high inflation. You know, this is in places like Argentina and the like. So that would be the big issue in these countries. It's they borrow at a foreign currency. They have a trade deficit. They yield to the temptation of actually printing currency. It can get out of control pretty fast.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:26) - It feels immoral. As soon as more currency is printed, it dilutes the purchasing power surreptitiously of all those people that are holding that currency. What about Richard? The government printing. And we can put printing in quote marks, say, $1 trillion to fund a new infrastructure program. A technically that is inflation if we. Go back to the root definition of inflation, inflation being an expansion of the money supply.   Keith Weinhold (00:27:54) - But talk to us about how something like that does or does not dilute the purchasing power to fund, for example, a big infrastructure program.   Richard Vague (00:28:03) - Well, it just never happens in Western developed economies. And one of the reasons it doesn't happen is the government issuance of debt does not increase the money supply by a nickel. If the government issues debt, it actually withdraws or shrinks the money supply because folks like you and me would buy the government security that reduces the number of deposits in the system. The government immediately turns around and spends exactly that amount. So the size of the money supply from government debt projects remains exactly the same. It doesn't increase.   Keith Weinhold (00:28:42) - Does that act, however, increase our total absolute amount of national debt, which is currently $35 trillion?   Richard Vague (00:28:51) - Of course it does. Absolutely. But the increase in our debt is money largely played to the households. So what normally happens is when the government's dead increases, household wealth increases by that amount or a greater amount. So take the pandemic. In a three year period, government debt increased by $8 trillion, which means its net worth declined by $1 trillion.   Richard Vague (00:29:18) - Well, households were the beneficiaries of that household net worth in that three year period increased by $30 trillion. So, you know, net net, of course it increases their debt, but it dollar for dollar typically increases household wealth.   Keith Weinhold (00:29:33) - That wealth effect can feel great for consumers and families in the short term. But doesn't increasing their income substantially in a short period of time drive up prices and create this debase purchasing power of the dollar?   Richard Vague (00:29:46) - If we got our little green eyed shades out and went to try to find examples of that, we got a database of 49 countries that constituted 91% of the world's GDP. We just wouldn't find examples of that. And in the US, it's very easy to measure that. The number you're looking for is GDP. And we don't really see big cuts in GDP. You know, a wild swing in GDP would be 3.5% versus 2.5%. That's not a factor in any observable way. And what happens in inflation.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:19) - Richard, the term that I think about with what's happened the past few years in this Covid wave of inflation is the word noticeable.   Keith Weinhold (00:30:27) - People don't really talk about it. Consumers, families, they don't talk about inflation much when it's near its fed 2% target until it becomes noticeable. And now it's so obvious with what you see at the grocery store. So it's really infiltrated the American psyche in a way that it didn't five years ago.   Richard Vague (00:30:45) - Inflation, even moderate inflation, is a highly consequential thing to the average American consumer. And two things happened to increase our inflation. Covid supply chains decimated supplies and kicked up prices. And then a second thing happened that was even more consequential. And that is Russia invaded Ukraine. And you had two countries that were, if you add them together among the largest providers or suppliers of oil and wheat, and almost instantly the price of oil and wheat and other goods skyrocketed. It was those two things, Covid, plus the invasion of Ukraine that drove our inflation up to 9% in June of 2022. Now, in July, it dropped to 3% and it stayed at 3% ever since. But we had already driven prices up in the prior year or two.   Richard Vague (00:31:49) - And those prices even though the increases have moderated, those prices haven't come down right.   Keith Weinhold (00:31:55) - Nor will.   Richard Vague (00:31:55) - They. Now we have, you know, the threat of war again. So, you know, the price of oil just touch $90. Again, I would argue that, you know, it's going to be hard to see inflation come down. Much for like that 3 to 4 range because of the geopolitical situation. And one other thing that I would suggest is holding up inflation. And that's the Federal Reserve's interest rate. You know, if inflation is a measure of how expensive things are, high interest rates make things more expensive, right?   Keith Weinhold (00:32:27) - It's an irony.   Richard Vague (00:32:28) - It's almost exactly the opposite of what the orthodoxy at the Federal Reserve studies or believed. For whatever reason, if you're at an in an apartment in the apartment owner has leveraged their purchase of the apartments by 50 or 70 or 90% and their interest bill goes up, guess what? They have to. Charge you higher rate. I think some meaningful component of the stubbornness of inflation relates directly to the Federal Reserve's persistent interest rates.   Richard Vague (00:33:00) - I think the best thing they could do would be to pull interest rates down 1 or 200 basis points.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:07) - Well, that's interesting because the fed funds rate is pretty close to their long term average, and we still got inflation higher than their target. So tell us more about what you think is the best way out of this somewhat higher inflationary environment that we're still in Richard.   Richard Vague (00:33:22) - Well two things. I think the geopolitical impact on oil prices is you. And I think the interest rate impact, particularly on real estate prices, is huge. Those are the two things holding up inflation. So if you wanted to improve inflation, you'd lower interest rates and then you'd run around the world trying to calm down these hot spots. And you'd have 2% inflation.   Keith Weinhold (00:33:47) - Coming from some people's point of view, including the Fed's. If you lower interest rates you would feel inflationary pressures. So then go ahead and debunk this because the conventional wisdom is when you lower interest rates. Oh well now for consumers, you don't incentivize them to save as much because they wouldn't be earning much interest.   Keith Weinhold (00:34:06) - And if rates to borrow become lower, then you're incentivizing more people to borrow and spend and run up prices in fuel the economy. So what's wrong with that model?   Richard Vague (00:34:16) - Well, there's no empirical support for it. In 1986, when inflation dropped to 2%, interest rates were in the highest interest rates had been coming down by, you know, almost a thousand basis points over the prior 3 or 4 years. Money supply growth was 9%. So the two things the fed says are most the biggest contributors to rising inflation were both amply present when inflation dropped to 2%. So I just can't find any data to support the Fed's theory. And by the way, that data is not esoteric. That data is really readily available. You and I can go look at it. It's not a complicated equation. But over the last 40 years, in what at the age I call the great debt explosion, aggregate debt and the economy in 1981 was 125% of GDP. Today it's 260% of GDP and almost that entire 40 something year span.   Richard Vague (00:35:21) - Inflation and interest rates went down. Somebody, somewhere is going to have to show me the evidence for me to believe what the fed is canonical, which is almost a sacred balloon.   Keith Weinhold (00:35:33) - Well, that's a good look at history. In fact, something I say on the show often is let's look at history. And what really happens over having a hunch on how we think that things should proceed. You mentioned some inflation figures there. Why don't we wrap up inflation? Richard was talking about today's inflation measures. We've got the producer price index, the PPI, the widely cited CPI, which I recognize what you were stating earlier. And then of course there's the Fed's preferred measure, the core PCE, the core personal consumption expenditures. Richard, it's also funny to me when any measure is called core, it's core when they remove the food and energy inputs because those things are said to be too volatile. And of course, not only is food and energy essential, but what's more core than that? So perhaps the core rate should be called the peripheral rate.   Keith Weinhold (00:36:22) - But in any case, do you have any comments on the measures of inflation that are used today?   Richard Vague (00:36:28) - It's like you say, it's everything you just mentioned and more, because they're not just core inflation. There's something called super core, which I think is probably even more peripheral. Right. And I like your terminology better than the Fed's, but there's a lot of things to look at right now. They're all kind of coalescing around this at a low to mid 3% range. We got a new number coming out. It'll probably, you know here in the next few days. And it'll probably be a little bit higher than the last number, but we're talking about the difference to a 3.3% and 3.5%. And to me there's no difference between those two numbers. We were at 9%, as we just said, in June of 2022. And we're at a moderate level of inflation now after having suffered a rise in prices. It's not going to disappear. It's not fun, it's not comfortable, but it's moderate rabble.   Richard Vague (00:37:22) - It's not a big drought.   Keith Weinhold (00:37:24) - What's the right level of inflation in your opinion?   Richard Vague (00:37:28) - Okay. Anything fundamentally wrong with the the 2% number that the fed saw I think, you know, at 3 to 4% were probably on the high end of, of what might be considered acceptable. But again, it's not the fact that it's 3% that's the problem. It's the fact that it was 6 to 9% for a couple of years. Yeah, that's the problem. It'll get take a while for everything to adjust to that. In the meantime, you know, with all bets are all that you know, there's if these wars get further out of control and we see 90, $200 oil prices again, we're only about we're 50% more efficient users of oil today than were were in the 1970s. We're still a little bit over dependent.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:11) - Here at gray. I espouse how in everyday investor they can do more than merely hedge themselves against inflation, much like a homeowner with no mortgage would merely hedge themselves. But you can actually profit from inflation with a term that I've trademarked as the Inflation Triple Crown.   Keith Weinhold (00:38:27) - I'd like to know what you think about it. The inflation Triple Crown means that you win with inflation three ways at the same time, and all that you need to do in order to make that happen is get a fixed rate mortgage on an income property. The asset price increase is the inflation hedge. The debt debasement on your mortgage loan, that's an inflation profiting center. Is inflation debases that down while the tenant makes the payment. And then thirdly, now rents might only track inflation, but your cash flow is actually a profit center over time too because it outpaces inflation. Since as the investor your biggest monthly expense that principal and interest stays fixed and inflation cannot touch that. That's the inflation triple Crown. It's available to almost anyone. You don't need any degree, your certification or real estate license. What are your thoughts on that? Profiting from inflation the way we do here I think you're absolutely correct.   Richard Vague (00:39:22) - And I think you put it very, very well. And that's not just a trend at the individual property level.   Richard Vague (00:39:28) - We studied macroeconomics and we look at aggregate real estate values. And frankly, real estate values rise as debt to GDP rises. The more money there is, the more my dollars are chasing real estate and the higher real estate prices will go. So it's absolutely been the gin to put it into numbers in 1980 household. Well, this a percent of GDP was about 350%. Today it's almost 600% most household wealth that in the form of just two things real estate and stocks in somewhat equal measure, that's 80 or 90% of also. Well, so if you wanted to make money over the last 40 years and presumably over the next 40 real estate, one of the two places you could go.   Keith Weinhold (00:40:24) - Well, Richard, as we wind down here, you run a group that predicts financial crises. So I'd be remiss to let you go without asking you about it. We've had a prolonged inverted yield curve, and that's been a terrific track record as a recession predictor. Is a financial crisis imminent? Tell us your thoughts.   Richard Vague (00:40:41) - No, it's not. The predictor of financial crises is a rapid rise in private sector debt in ratio to GDP. We saw it skyrocket in the mid 2000 and we got a crisis in zero eight. We saw it skyrocket in the 1980s and we got the crisis in 87. We saw it skyrocket in Japan in the late 1980s. And you got the crisis of the 90s. We saw it skyrocketed in the 1920s and we got the Great Depression. That is the predictor. You know, we've studied that across major economies over 200 years. There really are exceptions to that as it relates to financial crises. Our numbers right now on the private debt side have been very flat, and they've really been very flat since 2008. They actually got a little bit better in that period, and they've been very flat over the last few years. We're not looking at a financial crisis in the United States. Other parts can't say that China is looking at a they're well into a massive real estate crisis there. We see companies there crumbling, declaring bankruptcy.   Richard Vague (00:41:53) - That's because they've had runaway private sector debt in China for the last ten years. And there's a few other countries that are facing that as well.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:02) - A lot of Chinese overbuilding there during that run up to, well, if you, the follower, are into using history over hunches to help you predict the future, Richard Baig really is a terrific resource for that, as you can tell. So, Richard, why don't you let our audience know how they can follow you and learn more?   Richard Vague (00:42:22) - You're so kind to say those words. We hope we provide something of value. You can get our weekly video if you go to join Dot Tycho's group.org and Tycho's is spelled E, ICOs, ICOs group. Or we send out a weekly five minute video because if you're like me, you have a short attention span and brevity is the soul of wit. I also have a book that came out recently called The Paradox of Debt. Yeah. Which, you know, covers a lot of the themes we've talked about here. You know, it'd be an honor to have anyone to pick up either.   Keith Weinhold (00:42:58) - Well, Richard, it's been a terrific discussion on both population decline and inflation. It's been great having you back on the show.   Richard Vague (00:43:05) - You have a great show. It's a privilege to be part of it. Thank you very much.   Keith Weinhold (00:43:15) - Yeah, big thanks to Richard Vague. Today he hits things from a different angle. With population decline perhaps not taking place in the US until the year 2100. Of course, we need to add years to that. Real estate investors might not have falling population growth in that crucial household formation demographic age. Then until the year 2125, well, that would be 100 more years of growth from this point. And yeah, I pushed him on our inflation chart somewhat. Richard isn't the first person, though I have heard others maintain that lower interest rates also lower inflation, where most tend to believe that the opposite is true, including the fed. In any case, wars drive inflation because they create supply shortages. That was true over 100 years ago when World War one and today with Russia, Ukraine.   Keith Weinhold (00:44:17) - I mean, is there any one factor that drives price increases more than supply shortages? The short supply of real estate itself is what keeps driving prices. And Richard asks us to look where some don't. That is that real estate values rise as debt to GDP rises. In his opinion, there is no financial crisis imminent. We need to see a rapid rise in private sector debt in proportion to GDP first. And you know what's remarkable about this economic slowdown or recession that still hasn't come, but it's been erroneously predicted by so many. It's the fact that recessions are often self-fulfilling prophecies. People have called on a recession for the last year or two. And that mere forecast alone that tends to make real estate investors think, well, then I won't buy the property because my tenant might lose their job in a recession. And businesses don't hire when everyone says a recession is coming. That's exactly how a recession becomes self-fulfilling. And despite two years of that, it still hasn't happened. That's what's remarkable. Anyone sitting on the sideline keeps losing out again.   Keith Weinhold (00:45:37) - You can follow Richard. Big Tycho's is spelled Tycho's. Follow a joint Tycho's group.org. Richard and I talked some more outside of our interview here, and he had a lot of compliments about the show. In fact, more compliments than any guest has given in a while. He had not heard of our show before last year. I'm in Philadelphia somewhat regularly and I might hit him up the next time I'm there. We'll get lunch or something. Check out Gray in Spanish at Get Rich education comma. Espanyol. Thank you for tuning in today where our episode was Bigger Picture education. Next week's show will be substantially more hands on real estate. I'm Keith Wayne a little bit. Don't quit your day dream.   Speaker 5 (00:46:24) - 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.   Keith Weinhold (00:46:52) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.

Jan 2, 2024 – US debt levels, as well as many other countries around the globe, are growing at an alarming rate. Richard Vague, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of Banking and Securities, shares the key findings from history when it comes to debt forgiveness...

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers here.  Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter@Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roxanne Patel Shepelavy sits down with Richard Vague, a modern Benjamin Franklin (though more gentlemanly) to discuss the connections between the accumulation of wealth in America and the issue of debt. In the 1970s, the cost of a home was 3x a worker's annual income. Today, it is more than 7x. Why the growing disparity? Richard Vague explains.

In der 219. Folge von „bto – beyond the obvious – der Ökonomie-Podcast mit Dr. Daniel Stelter“ nehmen wir das umfangreiche Feedback zur Folge 218 auf, denn die Überlegungen zur Reform der Erbschaftsteuer, vor allem aber zur Finanzierung des Umbaus der deutschen Wirtschaft, haben für erhebliche Diskussionen gesorgt. Das ist Anlass genug, breiter auf das Thema „(Staats)schulden“ einzugehen. Obwohl sich die Schulden bereits auf hohem Niveau befinden, droht in den meisten Industrienationen ein weiterer deutlicher Anstieg. Wenngleich Deutschland in dieser Frage relativ gut dasteht, können uns die Folgen von Schuldenkrisen trotzdem erheblich treffen. Interessanterweise gibt es sogar in den USA Stimmen, die auf eine Abkehr von dieser Schuldenwirtschaft setzen. Dazu im Gespräch der Unternehmer und frühere Minister für Banken und Wertpapiere des US-Bundesstaats Pennsylvania, Richard Vague. Er plädiert in seinem neuen Buch „The Paradox of Debt“ für neue Formen der Schuldenüberwachung und Schuldenrestrukturierung als Mittel zur Schaffung größerer sozioökonomischer Gleichheit.Täglich neue Analysen, Kommentare und Einschätzungen zur Wirtschafts- und Finanzlage finden Sie unter www.think-bto.com. Sie erreichen die Redaktion unter podcast@think-bto.com. Wir freuen uns über Ihre Meinungen, Anregungen und Kritik.ShownotesHandelsblattEin exklusives Angebot für alle “bto - beyond the obvious - featured by Handelsblatt”-Hörer*innen: Testen Sie Handelsblatt Premium 4 Wochen lang für 1 Euro und bleiben Sie zur aktuellen Wirtschafts- und Finanzlage informiert. Mehr erfahren Sie unter: https://handelsblatt.com/mehrperspektiven Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe PrivatbankWerte schaffen und die Zukunft gestalten! Das geht mit Zeedin, digital und persönlich. Profitieren Sie von der langjährigen Expertise der Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe Privatbank und von der Beratung unserer Investment-Experten – und das bereits ab 25.000 Euro.Mehr Informationen zur digitalen Vermögensverwaltung Zeedin gibt es unter www.zeed.in Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friday's First Hour: WHO 13's Elias Johnson on a recent assault case story he covered. Plus, Richard Vague on the national debt and interest rates.

Mike Ferguson in the Morning 11-16-23 Richard Vague from the Institute for New Economic Thinking talks about federal spending and economic issues facing our nation.  Check out Richard's new book "The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis" here: https://www.paradoxofdebt.com/ More info on the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Debt-Prosperity-Without-Crisis/dp/1512825328 (https://www.richardvague.com/)  (https://www.ineteconomics.org/)  (https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/rvague) Website: https://newstalkstl.com/ Livestream 24/7: http://bit.ly/newstalkstlstream Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/NewsTalkSTLSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, The Two Mikes spoke with Richard Vague who was a banker for 30 years and most recently retired from the post of Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Mr. Vague recently published a book called the Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (Published by the Pennsylvania University Press/available at Amazon and elsewhere). Mr. Vague said that he believed that the U.S. economy is slowly steadying and that in comparison to other parts of the world it's in "okay shape". The Chinese economy. for example, is being greatly weakened by "out of control private sector debt." In the United States, Mr. Vague, said the Federal Reserve has overdone interest-rate hikes, and they seem to be bound to stay too high for a while. He also noted that the housing sector is still a worry as there are only an inventory of 800,000 unsold houses in the country; at the time of the 2008 economic disaster there were 2 million unsold homes. Home sales are the most important swing factor in the American economy, a satisfactorily large inventory of unsold houses -- if paired with more reasonable interest rates -- contributes to spurring economic growth. At the same time, Mr. Vague noted that there are areas in that sector that are "booming", such as warehousing, Special Laboratory Spaces, and Medical Spaces. SponsorsTriangle Fragrance: https://trianglefragrance.com/?sca_ref=4171318.dUndUHDKz3 Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikes Our Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.us

Today, The Two Mikes spoke with Richard Vague who was a banker for 30 years and most recently retired from the post of Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Mr. Vague recently published a book called the Paradox of Debt: ¬A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (Published by the Pennsylvania University Press/available at Amazon and elsewhere). Mr. Vague said that he believed that the U.S. economy is slowly steadying and that in comparison to other parts of the world it's in "okay shape". The Chinese economy. for example, is being greatly weakened by "out of control private sector debt." In the United States, Mr. Vague, said the Federal Reserve has overdone interest-rate hikes, and they seem to be bound to stay too high for a while. He also noted that the housing sector is still a worry as there are only an inventory of 800,000 unsold houses in the country; at the time of the 2008 economic disaster there were 2 million unsold homes. Home sales are the most important swing factor in the American economy, a satisfactorily large inventory of unsold houses -- if paired with more reasonable interest rates -- contributes to spurring economic growth. At the same time, Mr. Vague noted that there are areas in that sector that are "booming", such as warehousing, Special Laboratory Spaces, and Medical Spaces. Sponsors Triangle Fragrance: https://trianglefragrance.com/?sca_ref=4171318.dUndUHDKz3 Cambridge Credit: https://www.cambridge-credit.org/twomikes/ EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=twomikes Our Gold Guy: https://www.ourgoldguy.com www.TwoMikes.us

Former FBI agent Thomas Baker joins us to discuss how agency has fallen from grace. Next, managing partner of Gabriel Investments Richard Vague rings the alarm bell on the US Debt. Then, retired police officer Randy Sutton provides his take on the ongoing manhunt for Maine shooter. Finally, we take your calls in open phones across America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before our PA Governor-appointed public official guest joins us, I discuss how autonomous cars expect to change real estate. Richard Vague, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Banking and Securities from 2020-2023 joins us. We're in the state capital of Harrisburg, PA. We discuss America's beginnings in real estate and banking from around 1800. He tells us about the health of banks in the wake of recent failures due to higher interest rates. I ask Richard about full reserve banks vs. fractional lending banks. Great Britain prohibited colonists from owning land west of the Appalachians.  The basis of early land wealth were crops grown on the land—wheat, corn, tobacco, indigo, and rice. Mortgages around 1800 were often 50% LTV and 6% interest rates. Here in the 2020s, Richard believes that private sector debt is a larger problem than public debt. Wherever debt growth is most rapid are where the economic cracks exist. Inflation benefits the Top 10% of the economic strata. Private debt becomes unsustainable around 225% of GDP. In the US, it's currently 160%. You become insolvent when you cannot make interest-only payments. That's true for you as an individual, or a nation. If these topics interest you, check out Richard's new book, “The Paradox of Debt” at ParadoxOfDebt.com. Timestamps: America's beginnings with banking, real estate, and debt [00:00:01] Discussion on the historical influence of Pennsylvania banking on the formation of US banking, including figures like Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton. The impact of autonomous vehicles on real estate [00:02:54] Exploration of the potential effects of autonomous vehicles on real estate, including reduced need for parking and changes in commuting patterns. The role of the Secretary of Banking and Securities in Pennsylvania [00:09:20] Insight into the responsibilities of the Secretary of Banking and Securities in Pennsylvania, including oversight of banks and consumer protections. The fractional reserve lending system [00:10:44] Explanation of how banks operate through fractional reserve lending and the possibility of full reserve banks. The origins of the US banking system and the role of Thomas Willing [00:12:06] Discussion on the founding of the US banking system and the involvement of Thomas Willing, the first banker in the United States. The land crisis of 1796-1797 and its impact on Robert Morris [00:14:14] Exploration of the financial crisis caused by land speculation and how it led to Robert Morris, a prominent figure in credit ratings, ending up in debtor's prison. The formation of the nation and its intersection with banking [00:21:50] Discussion on the short-term loans and interest rates during the formation of the United States and the role of debt in the westward expansion. Private sector debt and its growth [00:25:30] Exploration of the significant increase in private sector debt since World War II and the focus on the potential issues associated with it. Debt growth as an indicator of economic crises [00:28:23] Insight into how rapid debt growth, particularly in the private sector, can serve as a predictor of economic crises and the shortcomings of economic models that exclude debt as a factor. The paradox of debt [00:31:47] Debt creates wealth, using leverage and appreciation to generate wealth. The end game of private debt [00:33:29] When the requirement to service debt slows the economy down to near zero. Inflation profiting with real estate [00:37:42] Real estate is not just an inflation hedging vehicle, but an inflation profiting vehicle due to fixed interest rate debt and rising rents. Resources mentioned: Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/472 Richard Vague's new book: ParadoxOfDebt.com For access to properties or free help with a GRE's 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 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com 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:   Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Welcome to. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. I'm sitting down in Pennsylvania with the governor's appointed state secretary of banking and securities. What were America's beginnings with banking, real estate and debt? Learn how this affects you as an investor today. And what does America's day of debt reckoning look like today on Get Rich Education?   Speaker 2 (00:00:28) - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get rich education.   Speaker 1 (00:00:44) - Welcome from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold and you're listening to Get Rich. Education has been the Keystone state of Pennsylvania this week. In just a few minutes, you'll hear my sit down with secretary of banking and Securities for this great state of Pennsylvania from 2020 to 2023. The rather distinguished guest also sits on the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania's Board of Trustees. And before we're done, I'll be sure he understands at least one core principle here and get his opinion on that. Yeah, I visited seven US states so far here in the past month and I'll continue to visit so much of the United States.   Speaker 1 (00:01:28) - In fact, I might have done more driving this past month than at any time in my life. Now. Some people are really car people. We have this kind of car culture in the United States for some evidence that younger people aren't as interested in that is older people. I mean, some people, they get really excited about new car features or new dashboard interfaces or hybrids or EVs and charging stations. You know, none of that is really that interesting to me. However, you know, the one new car feature that I actually really care about and I'm waiting to go more mainstream. Any idea the one game changing car feature that I really can't wait to get here because it's really going to improve your quality of life. And mine and I talked about this way back in Get Rich Education Episode 13 in the year 2015 is something that is still expected to have substantial ramifications for real estate, and that feature is autonomous vehicles, also known as driverless cars. I mean, as much of the world that's automated these days and digitize, it feels like something is out of whack to have all of this technology that you have in your car today.   Speaker 1 (00:02:54) - Yet even if you're on cruise control out on Interstate 80, like I have been a lot lately, you've mostly got to keep your eyes glued to the car bumper in front of you. Yes. And the car that reliably drives itself. That's the new feature that I really want. I mean, imagine for you to be able to get some sleep or scroll your phone or I know that it sounds funny, even exercise while your car drives itself. And of course this still pretends to have a real impact on real estate. Cars will really need to be owned. It's just the subscription service that you order. A car comes to pick you up and then it drops you off where you need to go. So these cars just continue to stay in motion out there. You don't need a garage so much. And this means that cities won't need nearly as much parking. So parking lots are less important, parking garages are less important. And since you can be more productive while you're a passenger in the car drives itself, well, therefore, those neighborhoods that are say no one hour outside of the center or metro area, well, those areas won't have as much of a price discount because autonomous cars lower your time expense in commuting.   Speaker 1 (00:04:16) - But autonomous car adoption has been slower to develop than a lot of people, including me, expected. I mean, there have been a lot of experiments, But see, what happens is an experimental autonomous car crash that just makes more news than a human created car crash. And that has really slowed adoption. So yeah, I'm not so into cars. The only feature that's on the horizon that really gets me interested is winning back some of my time with autonomous cars. Hey, we have a ton of great podcast episodes lined up here at some of the most brilliant minds in the real estate and money world. Continue to join me coming up soon. Here on the show is the return of a really dynamic guest. He goes by the nickname the mad scientist of multifamily in the industry. Some call the amount of multifamily, mobile home parks self in other commercial real estate investors that have these floating interest rates, the amount of those people, it's almost insane. Higher rates are going to bring those deals down and investors will keep losing money in those deals.   Speaker 1 (00:05:27) - That's what the mad scientist of multifamily and I are going to focus on them. Yes, these people that learn how to perhaps do syndications through TikTok videos, they are losing their deals. Isn't that really is too bad because that reputation seriously that. The good operator, so we're going to sort that out for you. Then on a later episode here, one of the sharpest economic minds in the entire world joins us to discuss why the recession didn't happen as soon as he and a lot of others thought and what that means for the future of stocks and real estate and commodity prices. All of that is in the near future here on the show. But today I'm visiting my home state of Pennsylvania, where I've lived most of my life. It is the fifth most populous state, despite not being that large by area and despite the fact there are still a ton of rural areas in Pennsylvania, and of the five biggest states, Pennsylvania may very well have the deepest history. So we'll dig into some real history today.   Speaker 1 (00:06:31) - Pennsylvania banking was influential on the formation of United States banking, including that of Robert Morris. He's a pretty well known name, but he was succeeded by a better no name. Right after Robert Morse, we had Alexander Hamilton in that banking role. But yeah, Pennsylvania Robert Morris, he is known as the very financier of the American Revolutionary War. As we're about to discuss the nation's beginnings, America's formative years in land and real estate hundreds of years ago. Look, if a hundred years ago, a colonist or an early American, if he or she said this, I'm going to buy a piece of property and develop it. Okay. What do you think that meant when they said that today? If you said, I'm going to buy a piece of property and develop it, well, most people would think that you're going to build a housing development. But back then it probably meant that you were going to clear your land of trees and planted for agriculture and you're going to grow wheat or corn or tobacco.   Speaker 1 (00:07:37) - That was the discussion you were having then. What crop are you developing on your real estate? It sure wasn't. Are you going to develop apartments or condos or single family homes? That's how it might sound today. In fact, the 1790 census that shows that roughly 90% of the American population was employed in agriculture. 90%. So your real estate income was largely derived on your crop yield, which you might use to pay your debt on your land. Let's start this interview that I expect to be wide ranging as we'll take it from yesteryear up to the present day. This week's guest has served as secretary of banking and securities for the great state of Pennsylvania from 2020 to 2023. It is a cabinet level agency here in the state capital of Harrisburg. He was appointed to that position by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf today. He is managing partner of Gabriel Investments as well based in Philadelphia. And today he's the author of an interesting new book. It's titled The Paradox of Debt A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis. Welcome to Richard Vague.   Speaker 3 (00:08:53) - Thank you so much for having me.   Speaker 1 (00:08:55) - It's good to have you. For those of you listening in, the audio only vague is spelled vague. You and Richard, as Pennsylvania's secretary of banking and Securities, I know that you have various deputy secretaries that assist you. Tell me. I'm going to venture to guess that that role includes acts like the oversight of banks and various consumer protections. Are they important parts of that role?   Speaker 3 (00:09:20) - Without question. The fundamental job is looking to the safety and soundness of the banks chartered here in Pennsylvania to make sure they don't fail. And we all saw the importance of that recently. Silicon Valley bank failed in California. And I think if we'd had the caliber of examiners out in California that the folks here in Pennsylvania or that might not have happened.   Speaker 1 (00:09:44) - That's a nice compliment to those that have that oversight here in state, Richard. It sure has been interesting with interest rates actually not being historically high, but at the rate that they change and the rate that they spiked, making some things break everything else to tell us about that role with the oversight that you had of banks and consumer protections in Pennsylvania and really what everyday depositors are concerned with.   Speaker 3 (00:10:10) - Everyday depositors are concerned with getting the highest yield they can. Sure. And certainly they've been rewarded more lately than they have been over the last, let's say, ten years prior to that. But they also should be concerned about the safety and soundness of the bank they deposit with. And I think a lot of folks forgot that lesson. You know, a few years passed from a crisis and folks aren't worried about whether their bank's going to be around so much anymore. I'm really pleased to report the banks here in Pennsylvania are in really good shape.   Speaker 1 (00:10:44) - Richard, I don't even think that everyday depositors understand the fractional reserve lending institution system, which is really how most banks operate, and that is when a depositor gives the bank money or the money goes ahead and lends that out, that difference, that spread being their arbitrage, which is how they stay in business. I've got a rather interesting question, perhaps are full oil reserve banks feasible as the norm? And what I'm talking about there is banks that can't lend depositors money out and instead that bank needs to profit by charging fees to depositors.   Speaker 1 (00:11:23) - Now, I know everyone likes to get something for free, but would that be a more responsible system? Are full reserve banks feasible at all?   Speaker 3 (00:11:31) - If you did that. You know, that's something I've studied quite a bit, and that was a very active question, by the way. Yeah. In the founding of our banking system here in Pennsylvania in 1781, it's a question that's been around forever. Any economy needs to have money created in order to grow, and the banking system is what does that now. But if you banned that in the banking system, it would just have to happen somewhere else.   Speaker 1 (00:11:58) - Were there any prominent names that were involved with the setup of banking in Pennsylvania?   Speaker 3 (00:12:06) - The name that you hear the most is the guy named Robert Morris, who was the head of it was in effect, the secretary of the Treasury during the Revolutionary War. But his senior partner was the original banker in the United States, and his name was Thomas Willing in history has more or less forgotten him. And that's, by the way, the subject of my next book.   Speaker 3 (00:12:30) - I'm in the Middle of writing a biography of the origins of the US banking system and our first banker, Thomas Wells.   Speaker 1 (00:12:38) - There is a Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania, of course, and we're talking about history here, Richard. And I know that you have an excellent sense of history about the nation's beginnings in land and in real estate. Can you speak to that?   Speaker 3 (00:12:55) - The United States was all about land from the very beginning. You had massive land grants like to William Penn to found the state in the first place. But almost immediately after the founding of the country, you know, one of the reasons we had the American Revolution is because Great Britain prohibited colonists for owning land west of the Appalachian Mountains. And that was very frustrating to people like George Washington and others who had surveyed really lush pieces of land in the Ohio Valley. Immediately after the success of the revolution, the wealthy investors in America began buying millions and millions of acres towards the west, in the Ohio Valley, in Kentucky, in New York, in western Pennsylvania and the like, and got into trouble and brought the first financial crisis in US history, the land crisis of 1796 and 1797, because they were buying all that land on credit, either from the landholder, the private landholder or the the state or commonwealth that the land was in.   Speaker 3 (00:14:14) - They bought this under the presumption that the value of real estate would always go up and of course it just didn't go up fast enough. And Robert Morris to speak of someone actually ended up in debtor's prison because he overextended himself, which is somewhat ironic since he's something of a icon for credit ratings and credit prudence. And yet he was very much of a wild speculator and ended up in prison destitute.   Speaker 1 (00:14:45) - This is really interesting. Okay. And nefarious character early on in America's private real estate development, when the Appalachian mountain range in the late 1700s was deemed as the frontier to a lot of people.   Speaker 3 (00:14:59) - Absolutely. Everybody was looking west of there for the big games and the big opportunities.   Speaker 1 (00:15:06) - I mean, this is part of Manifest Destiny and the American Dream. So can you tell us more about a lot of that land in the early days west of the Appalachian Mountains? How much did the government claim is theirs and sell to private landowners on credit? And then how much were private landowners taking and were they allowed to make land claims and then sell it to someone else? Or tell us more about those early beginnings of that real estate setup?   Speaker 3 (00:15:34) - Well, that's exactly right.   Speaker 3 (00:15:35) - Most of that land was owned by the colonies, which in 1776 became states. The states own that land. The states all incurred massive debts in prosecuting the revolution itself. So by the time you get to 1783, 1787 states are deeply in debt and bondholders of state debt are not getting paid interest. And one way to alleviate that crisis was to sell land and selling it an acre here, an acre. There wasn't going to do you any good. So the states were selling land of 100,000 acre parcel a year, a million acre parcel there. Now, the guys that bought that, at first they were thinking, we'll do it, we'll develop towns, will lay out the towns, will survey them, will sell them, will attract settlers into this realm, will sell it plot buy plot to these settlers. But it was pretty clear that was a pretty slow way to make your money back. So they started looking to the wealthy in Europe and started sending brochures and agents to Europe to in essence, be able to flip their land in Early on, they were very successful at that.   Speaker 3 (00:16:54) - Guys like William Bingham, who was the richest man in America, and Robert Morris, who was one of the richest, would make, you know, 100,000 here and 100,000 there, which is tantamount to making tens of millions. Now that ended. They started doing bigger speculations. There weren't the settlers to buy it. The Europeans got a little bit smarter. You had a major national financial crisis, including, by the way, it wasn't just those Western lands. One of the biggest parts of the financial calamity was in the new town of Washington, DC, where they were moving the government, and people came in, including Robert Morris, thinking it's the seat of government where this is going to be a boomtown. And a lot of folks got into deep trouble speculating on plots in Washington DC.   Speaker 1 (00:17:42) - And if you're the listener, think that this sounds rather unorganized and free wheeling. Of course, we just need to think back a little bit earlier as to what happened when we as colonists went ahead and wrested the land away from the natives as well, of course.   Speaker 1 (00:17:57) - But yeah, Richard, you talked about some of the draw and the appeal to some of the land around Washington, D.C. there along the Potomac River. But just generally overall, in a lot of cases, this new American government, who were the land sellers trying to attract or were they trying to attract them to do, for example, was it to only and to set up a farm for agriculture or was it for trapping or what attracted people to this new land grab, if you will?   Speaker 3 (00:18:24) - The basis of wealth early on in the United States was the crops that we grew. And that obviously, first and foremost was wheat and the biggest supplier of wheat, not just in the United States, but to Europe was Pennsylvania. That's why Philadelphia became the largest city in the United States. Then just south of US and Maryland and Virginia. You had tobacco, which was our number one crop, but it was our number one export. South of that, you had indigo and rice. The further north you got, there really wasn't a lot of arable land.   Speaker 3 (00:19:03) - And that's why, you know, places like Massachusetts had to turn the manufacturing so heavily. It was really that. And fishing for cod were the only thing they could do. So, yeah, absolutely. We were a breadbasket for not just the country, but the world almost from the beginning.   Speaker 1 (00:19:21) - You talk early on about the extension of credit and how that enabled settlers to go ahead and own some of this new land? Is this sort of the early formation of long term mortgages? When did that.   Speaker 4 (00:19:35) - Occur?   Speaker 3 (00:19:36) - Well, absolutely. You know, really from well before independence. One of the problems you had is that there wasn't enough currency to really facilitate economic growth. So they began issuing paper currency in various forms. And a lot of these were very successful. This was done at the state level. And what they would do is they would create land banks. And so you would go in and take your land as a farmer. You would take it to the land bank and you could get currency up to half the value of your land and you'd pay interest on it.   Speaker 3 (00:20:14) - So it was really was a de facto mortgage, a.   Speaker 1 (00:20:18) - 50% mortgage, a.   Speaker 3 (00:20:19) - 50% mortgage, and you could spend that currency. They were well managed early on. Most of these didn't work, failed. And the first real commercial bank was Thomas Williams Bank in 1781 and Philadelphia.   Speaker 1 (00:20:35) - What were interest rates like at this time in these formative years of our nation.   Speaker 3 (00:20:40) - For bigger transactions, the range was really just 5 to 6%. It might get down to four, might get up to seven. Interest rates in the U.K. were closer to five and us, they were closer to six. There were breakdowns by a slice of an interest rate, so there wasn't an interest of 5.1% or 5.2%. And for high risk transactions, you could easily get into the same interest rate realm that some of our usurious lenders do today. Yeah, you see situations where folks in dire straits would borrow for an interest rate of 5% a month. A lot of loans in those days were very, very short term. There were the land loans that were long term.   Speaker 3 (00:21:28) - Most commercial banks made loans for 30 to 90 days, and they really were meant to bridge the period from when you, as a merchandiser bought your wholesale supplies to when you sold them as goods to the folks in your town. You could roll those loans over. But they were very short term back in those days.   Speaker 1 (00:21:50) - That is interesting. Those are really short term loans. And this is pretty parallel with what I've read around that time, that interest rates seem to be about 5%, something like that. We're talking about the formation of this nation, its beginnings in land, in real estate, and how that intersects with banking and the mortgage market and really part of the manifest destiny in the westward expansion of the United States. Yes, we are talking about a popular four letter word debt, and that word debt has only become more popular in America with consumerism here in past decades. So when Richard and I come back, we're going to talk more about debt today in the United States. In his new book, The Paradox of Debt, you can get that at Paradox of Debt.   Speaker 1 (00:22:35) - More we come back with Richard. I'm your host Keith Wayne hold you're listening to Get Rich Education. Jerry listeners can't stop talking about their service from Ridge Lending Group and MLS 42056. They have provided our tribe with more loans than anyone there truly a top lender for beginners and veterans. It's where I go to get my own loans for single family rental property up to four plex. So start your prequalification and you can chat with President Charlie Ridge personally, though even deliver your custom plan for growing your real estate portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending Group. You know, I'll just tell you for the most passive part of my real estate investing personally, I put my own dollars with Freedom family Investments because their funds pay me a stream of regular cash flow in. Returns are better than a bank savings account up to 12%. Their minimums are as low as 25 K. You don't even need to be accredited. For some of them. It's all backed by real estate. And I kind of love how the tax benefit of doing this can offset capital gains in your W-2, jobs, income.   Speaker 1 (00:23:48) - And they've always given me exactly their stated return paid on time. So it's steady income, no surprises while I'm sleeping or just doing the things I love. For a little insider tip, I've invested in their power fund to get going on that text family to 668660. And this isn't a solicitation If you want to invest where I do, just go ahead and text family to 66866. This is author Jim Rickards.   Speaker 4 (00:24:22) - Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Reinhold and Don't Quit Your Day Dream.   Speaker 1 (00:24:37) - Welcome back to Get Rich Education. We're talking with the guest that served as the secretary of banking and securities for the great state of Pennsylvania since 2020. Today, he's the author of an interesting new book. It's titled The Paradox of Debt A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis. His name is Richard Vig. He's joining us from here in Pennsylvania, where we are together today. And Richard, I know that you have a lot of commentary about modern debt and what we can do about today's debt and how debt really seems to have expanded a lot since Nixon pegged us from the last vestige of the gold standard back in 1971.   Speaker 1 (00:25:14) - I guess really the preeminent question, Richard, is should debt be a concern? We read all these stories about unrelatable numbers, about how the United States has $33 trillion of stated public debt. What's problematic?   Speaker 3 (00:25:30) - There's a lot more private sector debt than public debt. And I think private sector debt is the area where we need to focus and where our concern needs to be. Private debt has increased since World War two from 35% of GDP to 160% of GDP. Wow. So it's almost quintupled. There's about $41 trillion worth of private sector debt. That's a bigger number than the government debt number, and that's globally as well. There's about a $150 trillion worth of private sector debt and only about $90 trillion worth of government debt.   Speaker 1 (00:26:09) - And what is private sector debt? Are we talking about automobile loans, credit card loans, student loans?   Speaker 3 (00:26:14) - It's roughly divided between business and household debt. So if we've got 40 trillion in debt, it's about 20 business and 20 households. And within both of those categories, the single biggest type of debt is real estate by far.   Speaker 3 (00:26:31) - So within household debt, it's about 20 trillion. Almost 14 trillion of that is mortgage debt. On the business side, it's about 20 trillion. About 6 trillion of that is commercial real estate debt. So there's never been a time where real estate debt, household and commercial has not been really kind of the driving force of the economy.   Speaker 1 (00:26:57) - You got public sector debt and you got private sector debt. And, you know, it's kind of funny, Richard, if someone asked me what the difference between those two is, there's a few different directions you could go. What I like to tell some people is, well, the government can just print dollars, okay? Everyday consumers in businesses, they don't have that handle. So the government can print dollars and they can call that whatever name they want to quantitative easing. Maybe they want to call it currency creation. But over here, if the individual tries to do something like that, it's called counterfeiting. So, yes, it can be more problematic. Individuals cannot print their own dollars at home.   Speaker 3 (00:27:32) - That's exactly right. And that's why private debt is the area that we should focus more on. If you think about the great financial crisis of 2008, mortgage debt in 2002 was $5 trillion. By 2007, it was $10 trillion. It had doubled in less than five years. And we all now know that was millions of mortgages that it should never have been made. That was mortgages where the individuals had no income, no job, no assets. Those were homes that stood empty for years. And in many cases, they had to get torn down.   Speaker 4 (00:28:10) - Yeah.   Speaker 3 (00:28:11) - If you want to look out for trouble, the place to look is in the private sector debt. And the way to detect it is wherever it's growing very, very rapidly, that's where you're going to have a problem.   Speaker 1 (00:28:23) - So that's therefore a way to help predict economic crises. It's debt growth or I guess you could really call it credit growth as well, right? I mean, both credit and debt are basically the same terms for the different side of a transaction wherever the growth in that is most rapid is really where the economic cracks are.   Speaker 3 (00:28:43) - That's exactly right. And the fact that the Federal Reserve did not spot that in 2005 and six is one of the great stories of our time. They build economic models that don't even include debt as a factor whatsoever. Everybody finds that very surprising. It's called the DSG model, and it models the future of the economy without taking into consideration anything about debt.   Speaker 1 (00:29:12) - Why is that excluded? Mean, I'm a bit taken aback by what you just told me. Think you can tell.   Speaker 3 (00:29:18) - It's the fact. And economists got so theoretical going back a couple of decades that they started separating out financial economy from what they call the real economy. And they just stopped studying the financial economy as kind of a secondary matter to the real economy. The real economy would be, you know, the wheat and the automobile that gets manufactured and so forth and so on. My argument is those two things are inseparable. You shouldn't and cannot consider one without the other. And that's a huge blind spot in our Orthodox economics profession.   Speaker 1 (00:30:01) - Tell us more about how what we've discussed ties in to the thesis of your book.   Speaker 1 (00:30:06) - Richard The Paradox of Debt. What's the paradox?   Speaker 3 (00:30:10) - Paradox is that debt creates wealth, but it also creates calamity. So, for example, in the pandemic, 20 through 22, government debt alone increased by $8 trillion. Household wealth increased by $30 trillion. So the money the government spends does not disappear. It actually goes into the checking accounts of households. So at the end of that three year period, households had 8 trillion more in deposits in their checking accounts. And the flood of new money had pushed up real estate and stock values. So cash in bank accounts increased by 8 trillion, and the value of real estate and stocks increased by 20 something trillion. So households were $30 trillion better off at the end of 22 than they had been at the end of 19. However, most of that, like 80% of that benefit, went to the top 10% of the population. And that's for the very simple reason that most assets, most stocks and real estate are held by the top 10%, like 65% of all the stock in real estate in the country is held by the top 10%.   Speaker 3 (00:31:32) - The bottom 60%, six 0%, only hold about 14% of the stocks in real estate. So for real estate and stock values go up, it's the most well-to-do that get the benefit.   Speaker 1 (00:31:47) - That's right. And it's really the listeners on this show that we want to help take from poor or middle class and help them understand something you said in just a couple of minutes ago, that debt creates wealth, which is a paradox to many. The title of your book is The Paradox of Debt. So here what we often do is get 75 to 80% loans on an income producing property where the rent income meets or exceeds all of the expenses. And this is creating wealth. How is that wealth generated debt? A 75 to 80% loan debt is leverage and leverage appreciation actually makes compound interest look pretty slow. So a very concrete example in a sense of the paradox of debt that we're using right here at Get Rich education. Richard.   Speaker 3 (00:32:31) - You have described something that is not just true about real estate transactions, but it's true about the economy as a whole.   Speaker 3 (00:32:40) - That's the essential analysis. Yeah. And to put some macro numbers on it, in 1980, total debt in the economy, government plus household was 125% of GDP. Today it's 260% of GDP. Yeah. Yeah. And that exact same time span, household wealth, net of debt went from 352% of GDP to 600% of GDP. Debt created. Well.   Speaker 1 (00:33:12) - Yes, those are some astonishing figures. I guess as we're winding down here, Richard, one might wonder, well, where is the ceiling? When is the day of reckoning? When do we reach a calamity? How do we know that there's too much private debt and how does that actually look?   Speaker 3 (00:33:29) - We have a chapter on that very subject in the book there. It's pretty easy to see that there's an end game on the private sector side. And right now we're at about 160% of GDP. We think that that's probably somewhere in the 225% of GDP range here in the United States when there's so much debt that the requirement to service that debt slows the economy down to near zero.   Speaker 3 (00:34:00) - On the government debt, for the very reason you suggested that limitation doesn't really exist, the government could refinance its debt in perpetuity. As we said a moment ago, that ends up in the bank accounts of households anyway. So the thing I look to and I'm concerned about is private debt. Even though if you go flip on the cable news channels, you would think the world's about to end because of our government debt.   Speaker 1 (00:34:26) - Now tell me, am I oversimplifying things here, at least with private debtors, everyday Americans, when an interest only payment on your debt exceeds your ability to service it each month? Is that the path to bankruptcy right there?   Speaker 3 (00:34:42) - You got it. And whatever you say about an individual, you can say about the economy as a whole, because GDP is really just the sum of the individuals and businesses in the US. So if all the individuals and businesses are approaching this, the circumstance you just described, economy is not going to grow well there.   Speaker 1 (00:35:03) - Any last things that you would like to tell us about you very well received book because again, it's called The Paradox of Debt in the subtitle is A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis.   Speaker 3 (00:35:14) - We cover the same material for the other six largest countries in the world. So if you read the book, you're not just going to learn about the US, you're going to learn about China, Japan, Germany, France, England and India. And I think it gives you the kind of fulsome grounding you need to better understand the news stories that we get such a barrage of every day.   Speaker 1 (00:35:38) - That's right. We need a frame of reference and putting our own more domestic debt into perspective here. Well, Richard, if someone wants to get a hold of the book, remind them of how they can best do that.   Speaker 3 (00:35:49) - Thank you so much. Go to Paradox of Debt or go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and just search for that and it'll be right there.   Speaker 1 (00:35:58) - Oh, Richard, you've helped expand our debt mindset somewhat here on the show today. It's been great having you here.   Speaker 3 (00:36:05) - It's been such a privilege. Thank you for having me.   Speaker 1 (00:36:14) - A lot of interesting history with Richard Vig today, this great state of Pennsylvania's secretary of banking and securities.   Speaker 1 (00:36:20) - One concept that really hasn't changed throughout history that we discussed there is that inflation mostly benefits those at the top. Again, check out Richard's book at Paradox of debt.com. But yes, real estate, it is still known as an inflation hedge. You still hear that term thrown around a lot but I really try to use a different term not hedge I don't like hedge. Okay. In the investing world, the word hedge means something that you do to offset risks. I don't like that word used with real estate. So therefore, the word hedge that really correlates with a defensive strategy. I mean, hedge, that's probably a better term for gold. Gold is a hedge against inflation. That makes sense to me. But where I draw the distinction is that investment property bought with a loan is not merely a hedge against inflation. That's why when I coined the real estate pays five ways back in 2015, the fifth benefit, it's not called inflation hedging. It is called inflation profiting. Now, if you're only looking at the overall capital price of your real estate, even your own home, well then it's dollar denominated price alone.   Speaker 1 (00:37:42) - Well, that could be a hedge against inflation. But that's only the beginning, because when you get the fixed interest rate debt with it, now you're profiting because inflation debases your debt while the tenant makes all of the payments. And then as your rents rise with inflation, the reason that your monthly profit, your cash flow rises faster than inflation is, of course, due to the fact that your principal and interest payment stays fixed and feels really low over time. That's the inflation Triple Crown that I just described right there. And that's why when you buy investment property, REIT real estate is not just an inflation hedging vehicle, it is an inflation profiting vehicle. And today real estate isn't just scarce. It is still about 60% below the needed supply. And then amidst that, within that, single family homes are even more scarce. And then entry level homes that make the best rentals are even more scarce than that. But here on the show, we connect you with those builders and providers that are making the most in-demand properties available.   Speaker 1 (00:38:59) - Oftentimes these single family homes that are entry level. So therefore, in this environment, if you can get a hold of those, you are going to own a scarce asset that everyone wants. That's what we help you do here. But mortgage rates have been a hindrance for adding investments. But with our referral network here, we have largely solved that problem for you. We have providers that offer 5.75% mortgage rates because they buy down your rate for you less. We're going to show you've heard how a Marketplace income property provider is offering an astounding 4.75% mortgage rate. And although it has some shortcomings, there are also 2.99% seller financed investment properties that you can tie up. Yes. Today. So profit from a scarce asset that everyone wants and benefits from higher inflation. And today it really tilts toward you, often giving more consideration to new build properties because builders, they're the ones that are aggressively buying down your rate for you today. And new builds also have lower insurance rates last year. To make it easier for you, we started our free investment coaching service so contact your investment coach to help get you started.   Speaker 1 (00:40:19) - Some of our more popular markets lately are in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia in summer. So whether you like to connect with the provider on your own, if that's what you like to do or if you don't, you can then just utilize our service free of charge investment coaching. You can do all of that at GREmarketplace.com thanks to Richard Vague today until next week I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream!   Speaker 5 (00:40:57) - 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.   Speaker 1 (00:41:25) - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.    

At age 20, you're actually happy to trade your time for money.  At 30, many have realized that they don't want to work at their job for the rest of their lives.  At 40, if you have collected things that pay you to own them, you're financially-free. Instead, by age 50, corporate ladder-climbers often realize that their ladder was leaning up against the wrong building. Most people play the wrong financial game all their life. You want to get financially-free first. You can get debt-free later. “The Debt Decamillionaire” concept is revisited. Learn how to get 4.75% mortgage rates for Florida income property with what is known as a “builder-forward commitment”. Start here.  What about hotly spiking Florida property insurance? We discuss how premiums have been kept in-check with post-2004 built property and more. Expect $3,200 rents on a new-build $474K duplex with 4.75% mortgage rates in Southwest Florida. SFRs are available too. Start here.  There's free PM for the first year too.  Resources mentioned: Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/471 4.75% mortgages in Florida: GREmarketplace.com/Southeast If you'd like help with one of  GRE's Investment Coaches (free), start here: GREmarketplace.com/Coach 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 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com 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   Monologue transcript:   Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Financially, you need to play a game worth winning. It's not about being debt-free. Instead, I discuss how at each age-when you're 20, 30, 40, 50 and beyond, it's about being financially-free.   Then, in an era where mortgage rates are 7 to 8%, we go straight to the source, in Florida, on how to get 4¾% mortgage rates on new-build property. Today, on Get Rich Education. ___________   Welcome to GRE! From Framingham, MA to Dillingham, AK and across 188 nations worldwide, yeah, you & I are back together here on Episode 471 of Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold.    You've got to play a game worth winning - with your personal finances. Most play the wrong game.    Now, you're already initiated on this. Debt-free just means that you don't owe anyone anything. FF means that you've got enough passive income that you can do what you want to do, when you want to do it. FF is the flex.   Now, when you're around age 20 - you might be new to full-time employment.  And you know what, it actually can feel kinda good when you're in your early twenties are you're being paid what feels like a respectable income for the first time in your life.   Now, ten years go by, and by the time that you're 30, you know, I think that a lot of work-a-day job types - you might tell yourself, ya know, making money is alright at this point. But I really don't want to do this for the rest of life.   Maybe around age 30, you pursue alternative avenues of more RESIDUAL income.    But some people just keep plowing ahead hating big chunks of their life and devoting energy at a full-time job, because somehow, you feel like you HAVE to.   Others, though it's a minority, it's you. Because, instead, maybe around age 30, you tell yourself that you'd rather start building things that pay you to own them.   The mindset supersedes the grindset.   And by age 40, you're out. You're out of that soul-sucking job and you're living that life that you've always dreamed of living already. It sure could happen earlier.   And by age 50, you're so glad that you chose the financially free financial track in life - rather than the debt-free track.   Back on the slow, scarce debt-free track - the people that mistakenly think that debt-free is the game worth winning - they're still losing their zero-sum, non-replenishable resource of time in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and maybe 70s.    Perhaps somewhere around 30, abundantly-minded, aware people like you developed your divergent, not-running-with-the-herd FF path instead.    You believe that money is an abundant resource - because you start having it all around you.    You built a financial windfall for yourself with simultaneous RE cash flow, leverage, and arbitrage while you're young enough to enjoy it.   Instead, the “work at a soulless job” type tries to get debt-free, climb the corporate ladder, and believes that money is a scarce resource (which is why they think they need to be debt-free). They defer their life and get eaten up by inflation and zero passive cash flow.   THAT person, by age 50, is asking themselves where all the time went. It went to a job that you're not passionate about - and you can't change history. All those time chapters of your life… are… gone.    And you begin to realize that the corporate ladder that you climbed… was leaning up against the wronggggg building for decades.   Those are two paths of those in their productive working years - the “there's never enough” debt-free world vs. the “money is abundant” FF world.   If you retire debt, like paying off a mortgage early, all those dollars are gone, when they could have been leveraging, say, 5 properties at once.   Now, if you're late to realize this, like you didn't have the FF epiphany by 30 or whatever. It's not too late.   You'll remember that in recent months here, we had two GRE listeners come on the show for two different episodes - Scott Saunders and then Shawn Finnegan.    Shawn - you might remember that was the inventor of a home gym system - he didn't hear this show & start until he was 52 and he's gotten to his first $2,000 of passive cash flow fairly quickly.    FF beats DF. And FF is the game worth winning.   Retiring debt early means your dollars can't be employed in true wealth-building activities.    Now, look. You might call me old-fashioned on this. But I like the integrity of doing what I say that I'm going to do, following through, and following up.   We check back at the end of the year to see how GRE's housing price appreciation forecast from the previous year actually went.   Back in January, we had the return of an agricultural RE principal where the cash flows DIDN'T hit what were targeteded, so we followed through and discussed why THAT happened.   And now…   You might remember that a few years ago, here on the show, I introduced you to the novel concept of being the Debt Decamillionaire.    That means that you've achieved $10M in debt - which doesn't sound like an achievement to most people. That's the Debt Decamillionaire. I recommended this as a desirable path for you - though many could deem it iconoclastic or even heretical.    If the only thing that I knew about you is that, say, you had $10M in real estate debt, I'd know that the chances are good that you're a financial WINNER.    Yep, it's actually unlikely that $10M in debt would make you a loser.   Not only would you have to be creditworthy to even get $10M of debt… just think about if you would have tied up that much debt, say, five years ago.   Well, how has it actually gone for the person with $10M in income property debt over the past 5 years?    We've had perhaps… 25% cumulative inflation since then - with higher wages, prices, salaries, and rents.   So then, your $10M debt is whittled down to just $7½M of inflation-adjusted debt.    So inflation passively beat down your debt for you, plus your tenants would have paid it down to somewhere below $7M.   So now, you'd be $3M wealthier, just off the debt debasement alone.    Meanwhile, over on the asset side, your property value that you borrowed against might have gone from something like $12M up to $18M… and all   While it created ALL that leverage plus some cash flow and tax benefit for you at the same time.   If you only managed to tie up $1M in investment property debt, then just take 10% of all those numbers.    And pat yourself on the back for being a debt MILLIONAIRE. Ha! Not Debt Decamillionaire.   Instead, high inflation made the debt-free approach hurt - really sting over the last five years. The opportunity lost!   DF is playing small ball, saying money is a scarce resource, and it even correlates more with people being addicted to a paycheck.    There's a benefit to a paycheck. But is the trade-off worse? Paycheck dependence is like you being addicted to a TIME thief.    That is, unless you get an unusually extraordinary amount of meaning from your work. In that case, great.    Now, a high interest rate environment could narrow the gap between how much better FF is than DF. But we're not in one of those. We're in a historically average interest rate environment.   But in just a few minutes here, we'll bring in a prominent American homebuilder of BTR homes that'll tell you how to still get mortgage rates as low as 4¾%.    In fact, the time in the market cycle is really right for talking about this. You'll remember that last month, Housing Intelligence Analyst Rick Sharga & I discussed why today's market is a good opportunity for residential REIs.   It's a bad market for primary residence HBs It's a bad market for flippers   It's a bad market for real estate agents - with lower sales volume.   And it's a… decent market for many homebuilders.    I am in Chicago today.    Next week, I'll be in - my home state - the Keystone State of PA. I'll Sit down with Richard Vague, the Secretary of Banking and Securities for the great Commonwealth of PA from 2020 to 2023, there in the state capital, Harrisburg.    It is a cabinet-level agency.   He was appointed to that position by PA's Governor. He also sits on the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees.   I'll be sure he understands some core GRE principles here and get HIS opinion on those. That should be a really interesting episode next week. I don't know what kind of turn that's going to take.   To review what you're learned so far, I think you already know that FF beats DF.    Rushing to be debt-free exacts an opportunity cost on you. It postpones what you really want - Financial Freedom… and once you get FF, if you do desire to be debt-free then, hey, great!    Let's discuss how to get lower Florida insurance premiums, 4¾% mortgage rates and a free year of property management.    A lot of our listeners have acted on this. And I don't want you to miss out because I don't know how long it can last. ___________   Usually, you see fewer investors that want to exchange their properties in a higher interest rate environment, because you're trading in a lower rate property for a higher rate property.    But here, 1031s look more attractive because we've bent that back with rates down to 4.75% + lower insurance premiums on post-2004-built Florida property plus 1 year of free PM.   So many of you have been acting here on this - either by yourself at GRE Marketplace, or working through one of our free Investment Coaches. So, if it can help you, don't miss out. This won't last forever.   You can get started at: GREmarketplace.com/Southeast   Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. DQYD!

On today's show, Dr Carole Lieberman discusses the psychological impact of the terrorist attack on Israel. GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Dr Carole Lieberman, internationally renowned as ‘The Terrorist Therapist', is a Board Certified Beverly Hills psychiatrist, 3-time Emmy honored television personality, radio talk show host, best-selling author and professional speaker. Since 9/11, recognizing that what the world needs most is help coping with the ultimate monster under the bed… terrorism, Dr Carole has devoted herself to encouraging people to break through their denial and giving them the psychological tools they need to survive. X: @DrCaroleMD GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Richard Vague served most recently as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As the author of "The Paradox of Debt" (2023), "The Case for a Debt Jubilee" (2021), "A Brief History of Doom" (2019), and "The Next Economic Disaster" (2014), Richard Vague established himself as a clear and independent voice in the ongoing conversation about the role of private sector debt in the global economy. https://www.richardvague.com/  

Jason discusses the impact of national debt on economic debates between inflation and deflation and its role in wealth redistribution. He highlighted the potential value of war due to rebuilding and defense contractors, and emphasized the importance of a commodities investing strategy when dealing with natural disasters or wars. He also talks about the potential for a Federal Reserve pivot in response to economic concerns, which could lead to lower mortgage rates and interest rates. He argues that national debt might not be as significant as commonly thought, citing the "frog in warm water" example. He then invites his listeners to join the Empowered Investor Pro group.  Then Jason welcomes Richard Vague as he discusses the relationship between government debt and inflation. He presents empirical evidence that challenges the commonly held belief that government debt always leads to inflation. Vague argues that historical data shows that inflation is often caused by supply constraints, such as during times of war or other disruptions, rather than simply by an increase in government debt. He also points out that monetary systems have evolved over time, and there have been periods in history where there was no central bank or even a national currency, yet inflation was not rampant. Vague suggests that the supply of currency is elastic and that significant over-issuance is required to trigger inflation. Overall, Vague's argument is based on historical data and challenges the traditional view that government debt is a direct cause of inflation. He emphasizes that the relationship between government debt and inflation is more complex and nuanced than commonly believed. Key Takeaways: Jason's editorial 1:29 The debate between inflation versus deflation continues with Richard Vague 2:05 Financial impact on the current war in the middle east 3:35 Packaged commodities investing strategy and interest rates 8:04 Awesome Empowered Investor Pro Zoom meeting 9:06 How much does the national debt matter Warren Buffet: "Be fearful when others are greedy; and greedy when others are fearful." Richard Vague interview 11:14 National Debt- should it be a concern not 13:31 Spending yourself to prosperity and comparing Japan debt to GDP ratio and inflation 16:18 Inflation Induced Debt Destruction and the correlation between government debt and inflation 21:26 Government debt's connection to inflation- it's NOT in the data 25:21 Given all the data, why this is true 27:45 Currency supply and demand 30:18 Supplying and buying the US debt simultaneously  32:32 Modern Monetary Theory 33:17 International trade and manufacturing 38:39 Some of Richard's books: Paradox of Debt and A Brief History of Doom and more Quotables: Warren Buffet: "Be fearful when others are greedy; and greedy when others are fearful." Milton Friedman: "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."   Follow Jason on TWITTER, INSTAGRAM & LINKEDIN Twitter.com/JasonHartmanROI Instagram.com/jasonhartman1/ Linkedin.com/in/jasonhartmaninvestor/ Call our Investment Counselors at: 1-800-HARTMAN (US) or visit: https://www.jasonhartman.com/ Free Class:  Easily get up to $250,000 in funding for real estate, business or anything else: http://JasonHartman.com/Fund CYA Protect Your Assets, Save Taxes & Estate Planning: http://JasonHartman.com/Protect Get wholesale real estate deals for investment or build a great business – Free Course: https://www.jasonhartman.com/deals Special Offer from Ron LeGrand: https://JasonHartman.com/Ron Free Mini-Book on Pandemic Investing: https://www.PandemicInvesting.com

Richard Vague, author of  A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis.  When we talk about...

Richard Vague, author of “The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis,” discusses the current state of debt in America and what can be done to promote stability and prosperity.

Is it bad policy that drives debt and inflation? We can see the causes of inflation. We can also see the payoff and pain of debt. Richard Vague and Leighton Grey have an eye opening discussion about economy, debt and how it can stimulate the economy for the better, if used responsibly. With cost and inflation at an all-time high in Canada, what is the solution when calamity drives costs up and makes life more difficult and expensive? Watch & listen to find out. 

Vice Chairman Evan Power of the Republican Party of Florida was back to visit VERONICA LIVE to discuss the Republican Debate this week, the upcoming Florida Freedom Summit and how Florida is leading the way in the game of politics.Attorney Keith Gross, Candidate for U.S. Senate joined VERONICA LIVE to update us on his campaign. Keith shared why he is a better candidate to represent Florida instead of Senator Rick Scott and how he recently added $20 million to his campaign war chest in his fight to win the seat to represent all Floridians. Richard Vague joined VERONICA LIVE to discuss his new book The Paradox of Debt - A New Path to Prosperity without Crisis. Richard discussed what paradox is and why debt is essential, and our economy relies on it. Interesting look at debt and how it impacts countries around the world and us... the consumer.Chris Skates joined VERONICA LIVE to discuss his new book Moonshine Over Georgia. The book is based on actual events that Chris' grandfather shared about pursuing moonshiners throughout the state of Georgia. Chris also discussed how he was a speechwriter for a governor, a leader in energy, worked in the Trump administration and survived cancer.

Richard Vague joined VERONICA LIVE to discuss his new book The Paradox of Debt - A New Path to Prosperity without Crisis. Richard discussed what paradox is and why debt is essential, and our economy relies on it. Interesting look at debt and how it impacts countries around the world and us... the consumer.

Debt: Engine of Prosperity or Road to Ruin?   Takeaway: Gain a more comprehensive understanding of the role of debt in the economy Money Learnings: Richard had a pretty typical upper middle class upbringing. He  got an allowance and had a part-time job Bio: Richard Vague's career has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, government, and the arts. He recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Vague previously was managing partner of Gabriel Investments, an early stage venture capital company; was also co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company; and also co-founder and CEO of two banks – First USA, which was sold to Bank One, and Juniper, which was sold to Barclays PLC. He is author of numerous books. His new book is Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis (Univ of Pennsylvania Press, Juuly 11, 2023). Learn more at richardvague.com   Highlights from this episode:    Richard Vague discusses how he fell into a career in banking accidentally after dropping out of college and needing a job to pay for school Richard talked about what inspired him to write his book “Paradox of Debt” Vague explains how excessive mortgage lending led to the 2008 financial crisis Discussion about government spending and debt actually creates wealth by injecting money into the economy The paradox of how debt is both beneficial in growing the economy yet also increases inequality and leads to financial crises over time Vague recommends being skeptical of both government and the private sector, as both are capable of doing good and harm. pardoxofdebt.com https://www.richardvague.com   Richer Soul Life Beyond Money. You got rich, now what? Let's talk about your journey to more a purposeful, intentional, amazing life. Where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Let's figure that out together. At the core is the financial well being to be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want. It's about personal freedom! Thanks for listening! Show Sponsor: http://profitcomesfirst.com/ Schedule your free no obligation call: https://bookme.name/rockyl/lite/intro-appointment-15-minutes If you like the show please leave a review on iTunes: http://bit.do/richersoul https://www.facebook.com/richersoul http://richersoul.com/ rocky@richersoul.com   Some music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast   Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.

TODAY ON THE ROBERT SCOTT BELL SHOW: Remembering 9/11, ‘Never forget' new meaning, Stella Morabito, The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer, Birth certificate questions, New Mexico Gov tyranny, Constitutional oath violation, Richard Vague, The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis, Removing parasites, Congestive heart failure, Homeopathic Hit - Rhus Tox and MORE! http://www.robertscottbell.com/natural-remedies/remembering-911-never-forget-new-meaning-stella-morabito-the-weaponization-of-loneliness-how-tyrants-stoke-our-fear-of-isolation-to-silence-divide-and-conquer-birth-certifica/ Remembering 9/11, ‘Never forget' new meaning, Stella Morabito, The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer, Birth certificate questions,... http://www.robertscottbell.com

Showdate:  8/31/23 Bill site -- WriteYourLaws.com    Show site -- BlogTalkRadio.com/citizenaction    My articles -- GregPenglis.Substack.com    Paid subscriptions available! Contributions -- GiveSendGo.com/ActionRadio   www.Paypal.com/Paypalme/ActionRadio "We the People Give Our Consent to be Governed, through Writing the Laws by Which We are Governed!" ***** Action Radio Show Notes:  Greg Penglis - Creator and Host. 0:00 - It's time for all GOP and Conservative Public Officials for an "I Am Spartacus" moment! 1:00:00 - Special Guest, Richard Vague, on his book, The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis. 2:00:00 - Further discussion of issues raised in the previous hour. ***** Our Discount Code is - WYL - and applies to all products on the slideshow and below! MyPillow!  Discounts up to 66%!  https://www.mypillow.com/wyl Graith Care Affiliates! 10% Discount! https://graithcare.vitafyhealth.com/code/WYL Strike Force Energy Drinks!  20% Discount Code - WYL. www.strikeforceenergy.com.  ***** Live show 7-10 am Central time weekdays, then podcast. Use the "Keyword Search" window at the top to find previous shows! International Skype online call in - Skype name - live:.cid.fddbac53a2909de1   Email:  Greg@WriteYourLaws.com

1207 Have you ever wondered about the intricate relationship between private sector debt, economic growth, and wealth creation? Today, we're diving into a thought-provoking conversation with a distinguished guest who is reshaping how we understand the economy. He's an accomplished author, economist, and financial expert, and his insights have the potential to reshape the way we perceive private sector debt. Get ready to explore the paradoxes, the dynamics, and the solutions that lie within the American economy. Let's welcome to the show Richard Vague! Website: https://www.paradoxofdebt.com/ Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-vague-68010220/ __________ Go to www.BusinessBros.biz to be a guest on the show or to find out more on how we can help you get more customers! #Businesspodcasts #smallbusinesspodcast #businessmarketingtips #businessgrowthtips #strategicthinking #businessmastery #successinbusiness #businesshacks #marketingstrategist #wealthcreators #businessstrategies #businesseducation #businesstools #businesspodcast #businessmodel #growthmarketing #businesshelp #businesssupport #salesfunnel #buildyourbusiness #podcastinglife #successgoals #wealthcreation #marketingcoach #smallbusinesstips #businessmarketing #marketingconsultant #entrepreneurtips #businessstrategy #growyourbusiness Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/d/6164371927990272 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/businessbrospod/support

When we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean “government debt.” However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms, and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy. In this iconoclastic book, Richard Vague examines the assets, liabilities, and incomes of the entire country, private and public sector, to reveal its net worth. His holistic analysis shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiraling inequality―but also, paradoxically, economic growth―is ever rising private debt. The paradox is that while debt is essential and our economy relies on it, it also brings instability unless it is periodically deleveraged―and that is very hard to do. It can, however, be carefully managed, and Vague ends the book by showing how to do so in policy areas ranging from trade and housing to financial policy and student debt. Underpinned by pioneering data analysis and the author's lifetime of experience in the financial world, this book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the deep, underlying dynamics of the American economy.  Get Richard's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Debt-Prosperity-Without-Crisis/dp/1512825328 Visit FSN https://FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com

Guest Richard Vague, author of The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis joins us to discuss The Debt Paradox, Schrodinger's Middle Class, and how most people aren't getting richer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Do you have a business that you're considering raising money for? On today's Daily Path Podcast episode, Joe Winters Jr. interviews Richard Vague, whose an economist and author of several books. Richard shares his expertise on government debt and how entrepreneurs can scale the smart way using it. ---- Are you a service-based entrepreneur interested in providing business speaking, coaching or consulting services to create a new revenue stream but don't have a proven process to monetize your expertise? If so, learn more about our intensive coaching program. Podcast Sales Mastery is for the service-based entrepreneur that offers business speaking, coaching or consulting services and want to launch a b2b podcast show so they can position themselves as an authority, empower more lives, and attract high-ticket clients to their business. Apply for Podcast Sales Mastery here or work one on one with Joe Winters Jr. by visiting https://www.joewintersjr.com⁠⁠ ---- Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joewintersjr/

Understanding Debt + Finding Success with Richard VagueSome areas discussed include:How Entrepreneurs Can Leverage Government Debt to Scale Business in a Smart Way!Do's and Don'ts of Profit Building: Using Debt Strategy like BillionairesHow Government Debt Crisis Will Impact Business and How to Protect Your InvestmentsReal Estate, Wall Street and Other Debt Factors Keeping Entrepreneurs apart of the Middle ClassAbout his company: Debt is top of mind and top of newsfeed for everyone at the moment. US private-sector loans have tripled relative to income since 1950 and government debt is also at an all-time high. With ongoing discourse about the debt ceiling flooding the media and establishing this as a key topic throughout the upcoming election year, it's more important than ever to spotlight independent, bipartisan experts and their insights to ensure that audiences across America and beyond are receiving well-researched, factual information. That expert is Richard Vague. Soaring debt burdens individuals, stifles growth, compounds inequality, and brings falling living standards for millions. To put it plainly: the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is disappearing. Vague is on a mission to revolutionize our understanding of debt, shape the policies we create to tame it, and create a future in which prosperity is accessible to all. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and venture capital, Vague most recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—though, he did briefly consider entering the field for the 2020 Presidential election! His newest book, The Paradox of Debt, was released on July 11th, 2023. Visit the Guest Website HERE.That Entrepreneur Show- Top 1.5% Global Podcast: Where founders of companies and brands share their entrepreneurial journeys, lessons learned, tips for success, and more each Friday since 2019.Brought to you by speaker coach, Cesar Cervantes - Specializing in helping you get your transformative message to the TEDx stage. Guaranteed. To schedule your free brainstorming session, visit CesarCervantes.tvEmail: PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comWebsiteLanci's BooksYouTubeInstagramFacebookLinkedInDigital Editing / Podcast Guests Inquiries, email PodcastsByLanci@Gmail.comAdventure by MusicbyAden | https://soundcloud.com/musicbyadenHappy | https://soundcloud.com/morning-kuliSupport the showIf you enjoyed this week's show, click the subscribe button to stay current.Listen to A Mental Health Break Episodes hereTune into Writing with Authors here

On this edition of the Book Club, Richard Vague talks about his newest book, The Paradox of Debt: A New Path for Prosperity without Crisis. Richard is an established and independent expert on the role of private sector debt in the global economy and a retired Secretary of Banking for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. You can learn more about Richard at ParadoxOfDebt.com and LinkedIn. Get your copy of the Paradox of Debt HERE You can learn more about us at LifeBlood.Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood.Live.  Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood

@markasher32 Richard Vague about his new book PARADOX OF DEBT. then pet bar boutique_ Scottsdale  drop but and then Lisa McCormick Kinship  drops by and then @Masrtering_Money #debt #pets #news #bullying #annuities 

Richard Vague, author of "The Paradox of Debt: a new path to Prosperity without Crisis." The book discusses both government and private debt - and the paradox that some debt is healthy and perhaps even necessary for economic well-being .... and how too much debt can do great harm.

In this edition of In The Author's Voice we take a closer look at debt and the role it plays in our economy. Richard Vague is a former Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania his new book is the "Paradox of Debt."

Links from the show:* The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis* Connect with Richard* Rate the showAbout my guest:Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking, energy, credit, and the arts, Richard Vague has recently served as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is author of numerous books, including An Illustrated Business History of the United States, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Get full access to Dispatches from the War Room at dispatchesfromthewarroom.substack.com/subscribe

Richard Vaguehttps://www.paradoxofdebt.com/Kristin Sunantahttps://www.mentalhealthnewsradionetwork.com/This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3240061/advertisement

Economics Explored host Gene Tunny chats with Richard Vague, a prominent American businessman and investor, about his new book, "The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis." Richard, who has previously written about “The Case for a Debt Jubilee”, shares powerful insights into the benefits and drawbacks of debt, discussing how it can help grow household wealth while also promoting economic instability and rising inequality. He also offers thought-provoking ideas for helping households and businesses manage and reduce their debts. Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. Note: this episode was recorded in mid-June 2023, i.e. before the Supreme Court decision regarding student loan relief, which is why the decision isn't mentioned in this conversation. About this episode's guest: Richard VagueRichard Vague served most recently as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As the author of The Paradox of Debt (2023), The Case for a Debt Jubilee (2021), A Brief History of Doom (2019), and The Next Economic Disaster (2014), Richard Vague established himself as a clear and independent voice in the ongoing conversation about the role of private sector debt in the global economy.What's covered in EP195[00:04:39] Debt and the global financial crisis. [00:11:23] Debt always grows faster than the economy, Richard argues. [00:12:53] Increased debt and higher net worth. [00:17:23] Paradox of debt and inequality. [00:23:01] Type one and type two debt. [00:28:50] Regional banking crisis in the US. [00:32:13] The paradox of debt: summary. [00:35:10] Debt forgiveness in the private sector. [00:41:43] Debt restructuring in banking. [00:47:48] A win-win-win solution. [00:49:53] Massive job training as something Richard would like to see.Links relevant to the conversationWhere you can buy Richard's new book The Debt Paradox: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis:https://www.amazon.com.au/Paradox-Debt-Prosperity-Without-Crisis/dp/1512825328Richard's previous book The Case for a Debt Jubilee:https://www.amazon.com.au/Case-Debt-Jubilee-Richard-Vague/dp/1509548734Gene's conversation with Allen Morrison about the Enterprise China model which he mentions this episode:https://economicsexplored.com/2022/12/26/enterprise-china-what-western-businesses-need-to-know-w-prof-allen-morrison-ep171/Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and other podcasting platforms.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit nonzero.substack.com0:00 Richard's banking and business bona fides 2:51 Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? 10:06 What actually caused SVB's collapse? 18:46 Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 31:41 Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout 38:13 The Fed's oft-forgotten original role 43:32 Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? 45:09 Overtime preview: Richard's career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Richard Vague (Gabriel Investments, The Next Economic Disaster). Recorded March 21, 2023. Richard's article about the SVB crash in Democracy Journal: https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/the-svb-failure-why-it-happened-and-what-it-means/ Comments on BhTV: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/65853 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods

Richard's banking and business bona fides ... Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? ... What actually caused SVB's collapse? ... Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 ... Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout ... The Fed's oft-forgotten original role ... Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? ... Overtime preview: Richard's career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! ...

Richard's banking and business bona fides ... Was the Silicon Valley Bank crash a harbinger of worse to come? ... What actually caused SVB's collapse? ... Richard: SVB failed risk management 101 ... Costs and benefits of the SVB bailout ... The Fed's oft-forgotten original role ... Did the deregulation SVB lobbied for doom it? ... Overtime preview: Richard's career highlights; cognitive empathy in commerce; how to hire like a boss; and more! ...

Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture In conversation with Richard Vague David Rubenstein is the co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world's most successful private equity firms. The host of The David Rubinstein Show and Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein on Bloomberg TV, he is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The American Story, How to Lead, and The American Experiment. He is chairman of the boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Gallery of Art, and as a leader in patriotic philanthropy, he has provided long-term loans of his rare copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and other historical documents to the U.S. Government. Utilizing his own three decades' experience and conversations with some of the biggest names in finance, his new book is a master class in investing. Venture capitalist and longtime Philadelphia-area philanthropist Richard Vague serves on the Penn Medicine board, is Chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and is the president of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It and A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises. (recorded 11/28/2022)

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew is joined by Richard Vague, author of The Case for a Debt Jubilee. Richard Vague is Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the author of A Brief History of Doom (2019) and The Next Economic Disaster (2014), Richard Vague established himself as a clear and independent voice in the ongoing conversation about the role of private sector debt in the global economy. His illustrated business history of the United States offers a more general audience a clear-eyed view of 250 years of wealth creation and the people and personalities who drove that growth — and hold it today. And now, Richard's new book, The Case for a Debt Jubilee, offers a compelling case and policy recommendations for new forms of consumer debt relief. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking and energy, credit, and the arts, Richard has served since 2020 as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In this episode, Richard explains the current state of American debt in the private sector, how that affects the economy, what the government response to COVID adds to this calculation, and how investors should be looking at their relationship to debt while building their portfolios.   Episode Links: https://www.richardvague.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Richard Vague who serves as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Banking and Securities and he's going to be talking to us today about debt and the American household. So let's get into it.   Hey, Richard, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me today. I really appreciate you taking the time.   Richard: Well, it's a real privilege. You guys have a great show and I'm honored to be on it.   Michael: Thank you, appreciate that. So we are here today to talk about something that I think is on every real estate investors mind. And well, most real estate investors might…, and that's debt and you've got a really unique position to be able to talk about debt. So for anyone who doesn't know who you are, where you're come from, and what your background is, you can give us a quick intro, a quick insider's peek into what those things are.   Richard: Well, I was in the banking industry forever and ever, which included some amount of mortgage lending a lot of consumer lending. I spent about the last 10 years in venture capital, which obviously includes more equity than debt, but includes both but kind of as an outgrowth of the Great Recession of a decade plus ago, I've written a series of books, including: The next economic disaster and a brief history of doom and more recently, the case for a debt jubilee that really get deeply into debt and both the positive and negative aspects of debt. So it's a topic that remains heavy on my mind.   Michael: It's your… sounds like and for anyone interested, where could they find those, that book?   Richard: Well, if you go to my own website, which is https://www.richardvague.com/ , and Vegas, spelled V as in Victor AG, UE, you can see all those books.   Michael: Okay, fantastic. So let's dive right in and I'm curious, Richard, in your opinion, I mean, how and why is debt such an issue in in the states in this country?   Richard: Well, you know, over the course of pretty much my own lifetime, certainly in the last couple of generations, you know, let's call it World War Two forward, household debt has tripled, you know, in 1950-ish. Household debt, if expressed as a percent of GDP was about 50% and today, it's about 160%. So there's a lot of it around and a lot of households, you know, have accumulated debt of several types so that they really struggling we see households that have a mortgage, perhaps even a second mortgage, they have student debt of their kids, they may even have some residual student debt of their own, they may have had a surprise medical bill that they had to finance through debt. So you, you see folks with this kind of unhappy portfolio of debt that's really weighing them down and affecting their, their lives quite significantly.   Michael: Yeah, okay and as investors we joke is the wrong word, because it's no joking matter, but talk about good debt versus bad debt. And would you agree that there is such a, such a discrepancy between the two is such a difference between the two?   Richard: Absolutely, in fact, I'm writing a book right now called: The Paradox of debt, which gets to that very issue, because debt is necessary economies absolutely couldn't function at all, without debt. I mean, that includes, you know, your local retail store, the inventory they have in their stores, you know, done on a debt line of credit, the grocery store that you go to, their shelves are stocked by debt. Folks buying their homes, which I know is a near and dear subject for you guys couldn't really achieve that without debt. So there's any number of things that are necessary and positive about debt. But then there's the other side, normally, when it debt accumulates too rapidly or gets too high, and as all sorts of effects that are in the other direction.   Michael: Okay and how do you make that distinguishment? I mean, if someone listening is thinking about scaling the real estate portfolio and plans to go get a ton of debt really quickly, I mean, they could be hearing what you're saying and think, oh, you know, maybe I need to pump the brakes. So how do you distinguish between the good debt and bad debt or maybe what's too rapid versus too slow?   Richard: Well, I'd make a distinction between how I measure it for a country, which I spend a lot of time doing and how I would measure it for an individual. I think the, the real issues are an individual relate to how much leverage you have on a particular property. You know, if you're leveraging properties at 100%, or 95%, as many folks were doing here a decade or so ago, you know, you need to have really thought it through carefully. And if you, if you have several properties like that, I mean, I, my own expectation is that here over the next couple of years, we're going to have a real flattening of evaluations of real estate, you know, almost inevitably, given the, the boom, we've seen here recently, you know, mortgage rates are going back up. So you know, anybody who's financed real estate, kind of at the hilt, if you will, need to thought that through very, very carefully, because that could, that could unwind on it pretty quickly. And then there's carrying the interest payment on it, you know, if you have a situation where your lenders being so kind as to charge interest and in the form of a bullet, which means you don't have to serve as it currently, you can get a little too optimistic. So you have to make sure that your income is sufficient to carry the interest on an ongoing basis and give it still give you plenty of room to live your life otherwise. Folks that really want to get out there over their skis, you know, that's, they can certainly do that. They just need to be aware that they're doing that they need to have thought through the downside or the risk associated with that.   Michael: Okay and talk to us a little bit about what some of those downsides and risks are, because there are many people that subscribe to the thought of well, if it cash flows, and it's a safe investment from a cash flow perspective, I can always afford to service that debt and so the value is going up and down, doesn't really affect the ownership of on a day to day basis. So curious to get your thoughts.   Richard: Well, I mean, that's a wonderful situation, you know, they should be happy that they're in that situation to begin with, you have a property where the rental income covers the expense of your debt and expense of the upkeep of that real estate, more power to you. But there's a lot of folks, there's a lot of folks that go beyond that. Beyond that level, you know, if you had a nice portfolio of income yielding net income yielding properties, you've done well.   Michael: Great, great. And so where is it that people start to kind of get beyond and start to get themselves into trouble?   Richard: Well, I think now is one of those periods, you know, that, you know, maybe not to the extent that hopes 2006 was, but you know, all of a sudden, everything I read is about how real estate values have gone up and are going to continue to go up and that's when they stretch, that's when they start to say, well, if they're going to be going up at this rate, I can afford to buy a property where the rental income doesn't necessarily cover it, or is it right at the razor's edge of covering it in so let me just leverage up and get a lot more property. Because I'm going to be covered by the appreciate subsequent appreciation of the property and you know, that that's just kind of the cycle. You know, I'm, I'm 66 years old, so this will be, you know, which cycle this will be this, like, really seen it. And, you know, you see, you see folks who have, you know, have their pencil out and have a green eyeshade out nevertheless, they get a little bit overly enthusiastic and don't really calculate what might happen.   Michael: Yeah and that makes a ton of sense. So it sounds like when folks start flirting with speculation, much more so than kind of sound investing principles from a cash flow perspective, that's when you can get really burned.       Richard: Yeah, I mean, if you're careful about what you do, can do. Real estate is a great business, real estate's the largest business in the United States, the oldest business in the United States. It's always going to be there. You know, it's, it's what makes the world go round?   Michael: Yes, I was hoping you might say that.   Richard: Well, I mean, let's put it in perspective. There's about $35 trillion in private sector debt in the United States, right this moment, about half that's real estate debt, that's 16 trillion.   Michael: Wow!   Richard: You know, it all energy lending combined is about $1 trillion. You know, all healthcare debt combined is maybe a trillion and a half. Real estate is kind of the center of the universe and has been since this country was founded.   Michael: Oh, my God, I had no idea was so significant. And when you say private sector, I mean, does that include private businesses and corporations or is that like everyday people like you and me get mortgages on homes to live in?   Richard: Simplistically, we just define that as households and businesses.   Michael: Okay and you said 16 trillion, is that right?   Richard: Yep.   Michael: That's such a large number.   Richard: Well, let's talk about the Great Recession: In 2002, household mortgage debt, which is now 11 trillion was 5 trillion. By the time you got to 2007, it was 10 trillion. So in less than four years, mortgage debt doubled. It had taken, you know, 50 years to get from zero to five, it took four and a half, you know, three and a half, four and a half years, to double from five to 10 trillion. And since that time, you know, it's only grown to about 11 trillion, you know, it actually declined some, and has come back up. So, you know, it's very, I in retrospect, to some it was very, obviously, a runaway debt period. We're certainly not in that today and I don't expect we will be, but it's something we keep our home.   Michael: Okay and so what should your kind of average everyday investor do with that kind of information? Is that something that says, hey, you know, let's kind of keep tabs on it and see if we're headed towards a recession? Do they need to be looking at such a macro level? Are they able to focus more so on kind of the micro with their local sphere of influence?   Richard: Well, they should spend most of their time focused on the micro. The macro is a very easy thing to keep tabs on, it'll take them five minutes a month, if they want to do that the information is contained by it's on the Federal Reserve website.   Michael: Okay.   Richard: They come out with fresh data quarterly, the there's some folks that actually augment that monthly, it takes, and we keep charts that, you know, go back, you know, decades and the most important thing is just aggregate real estate debt, divided by GDP, and seeing how that changes over time. For this past decade, that number has actually been very flat, which should give a real estate investor an enormous amount of confidence. It's starting to trickle up a little bit now. Which should, would you say to us that we should continue to be confident, you know, forgetting the dimension of REITs, for short, it's just talking about the level of activity. And but it's not hard to tell when there's a boom or bust. It's not going to happen in a week or a month, it takes a year or two, or three and you can see it coming a mile away with the through that simple exercise.   Michael: And so if someone goes and is tracking this and spending a couple minutes a month, as the percentage as real estate debt as a percentage of GDP goes up, that's where we started need to get concerned. Is that what you're saying?   Richard: Yeah, it not just a little bit, it needs to go up a bunch, it went up, you know, like 20, or 30%. In that period between 2000 to 2007. It wasn't like you had to get your microscope.   Michael: It was obvious.   Richard: It was, it was… it was the hockey stick. So I you know, I can't, I can't see, you know, I can see rates going up putting a an effectively a curve on real estate activity right now. I cannot see runaway lending, which is an even bigger problem that we've seen in the 80s. And we saw in the 2000s. I can't see that being an issue for a while and I think that's a helpful fact.   Michael: Okay and I'm so glad you mentioned that, Richard, because you said it so nicely into the question I wanted to ask, which is, I think so many of us, especially in the last two to three to four years who have gotten a mortgage, it feels like we've gotten a full cavity search, you know, from from lenders. And so, aren't they there and by law have to protect the consumer to a degree. I mean, they're looking at our debt to income, they're making sure we can afford these properties and so isn't that a really great backstop to preventing that that runaway lending?   Richard: Of all the Dodd Frank did and it was a gigantic bill, that's the single most useful thing that was contained in it, the very simple concept that the lender has to be able to demonstrate that the borrower has ability to repay ATR and yes, that has been an eye eyes view it is probably the most valuable maybe the one of the very few valuable things about Dodd Frank, but yes, it does.   That doesn't mean you can't get into other areas beyond real estate and get into trouble but real estate at the moment and by the way, it also would suggest to me that you know, clever people somewhere going to figure a way out around that. So, so that you know, they're able to kind of sidestep they haven't yet but it's like in the credit card business right now. This is not real estate, but this is no people buying goods like computers and clothes and things like that. Well, you know, they've come up with things that are different from lending, they talked about, you know, that, that are kind of built into the purchase. So you can't even see that you're getting a loan, you know, it's kind of a deferred payment plan. And so that, you know, sure enough, somebody is figuring out what, kind of an end run here, and I'm sure that'll happen in real estate.   Michael: Yeah, I could definitely see that happening, too. So talk to us a little bit about COVID. And what you've seen, the kind of average American household debt do as a result of COVID. Because I think everyone had their predictions for the real estate market. Oh, no one's gonna pay rent, it's gonna come crashing down. Everyone who owns this realty is in trouble and really, we saw the opposite effect. So I think something we've heard less about is what you're kind of household debt look like as a result of COVID. So wondering if you have any insights there?   Richard: Yeah, we track that very carefully and it has gone up a little bit, but not nearly as much as we would have guessed. You know, I think, I think in retrospect, what Congress did, and what the Fed did, was extraordinary, it was far beyond what I would have expected, you know, we've gotten, in essence, you know, 3 trillion of support, including $1,200 checks and $1,400 checks and we've had markets, you know, from municipal markets to certain portions of the real estate market, being held up by Fed liquidity. So, I've… was stunned and impressed by what Congress in the Fed did, you know, for all their dysfunctionality in other areas, they came through there. So I think that what they've done for that market is kept that market is as healthy as you could have ever hoped. Now, a couple other things, one of them is a lot of that mortgage forbearance and real forbearance is just now ending.   Michael: Right.   Richard: So I don't think, you know, everybody's optimistic, you know, I've, I've talked to the fed regularly, and, and others, everybody's got all their fingers and toes crossed, and thinks that while there's going to be issues with that, they aren't gonna be nearly as is widespread, as we would have guessed a couple years ago, but we don't know. We don't know how that's gonna work kind of work its way out.   Michael: Why, why are they so optimistic to set a curiosity? Because given those set of facts, if you tell told me, and which I have heard, but people didn't have, you know, didn't make their mortgage payments for X amount of time, and now they're getting tacked on, either to the end of the loan, or they're kind of accruing, there's different ways of doing it. That just sounds like a situation right for a bunch of people losing their homes.   Richard: You know, I've been trying to figure that out for a year and a half, now. And, you know, I think most most banks, you know, this is where I will speak a little bit about my current job. But, you know, we spent a lot of time talking to folks about that. And the, the level of commitment by the lenders to successful outcomes is very high. So I can't speak for a given situation, I can't predict the future. But I knew I do know that generally, lenders are as motivated to avoid having to go through the very expensive and difficult process of foreclosure or eviction and things like that is anyone go. I hate to speak universally. But I certainly think that's the bias.   Michael: Okay. Well, that's I'm so glad to hear it because I think a lot of folks would, would argue or have heard the opposite of the big bad bank wants to take my house back, because then they could go sell it and make a profit. But what you're saying is, again, anecdotally, that that's not been the case, from your experience.   Richard: It's very expensive to a bank to go through that process. It's 1000s of dollars, for a bank to go through that process…   Michael: Say more, say more on that, because I think that's a really interesting insight that people probably don't know much about.   Richard: I mean, I don't know what more to say. Other than that, I've never met a banker, and I'm sure they're out there. I've never met a banker who preferred eviction and foreclosure, they would much rather have a gentler outcome. I'm not those bankers. I don't I'm not in charge of those policies. So I can't speak to it. But as a general matter, in my career before I was in this position, I've never met folks that were inclined that direction. I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, I'm sure there's plenty of problems that are going to occur, but the general bias that I'm familiar with, is it folks, you know, they they view the cost of foreclosing on home, as being 1000s upon 1000s of dollars. And by the way, not just as a On 1000s of dollars, you know, hiring a huge staff to handle it. In the process of going through the logistics, the staffing concerns, are very, very high. So I'm not gonna say there's not going to be trouble, it'd be, it'd be crazy of me to say that, but but I think that the tone that I, that I hear out there is different than that.   Michael: Okay, that's great to hear. That's great.   Richard: I was gonna make one other point. And that is the inventory levels of unsold houses is at an incredibly low level right now. You know, before, if we go back to 2002, 20 years ago, my recollection is the volume of unsold houses, I'm going to say was 1,000,008…   Michael: Okay, countrywide?   Richard: Countrywide. You know, the mortgage data that's released by the industry that, that we pick up. If you guys aren't looking at that data, you need to, this is like the mortgage banking Association now. The inventory of unsold houses by the 0708. At a point when it was clear, we had built way, way, way too many houses, it was 2.7 million.   Michael: Okay.   Richard: So it went from 1.8 to 2.7. Today, it's 1.3 million, it is the lowest it's ever been on a ratio basis and that's really the issue. So you already had you know, everybody was still licking their wounds from the Great Recession. Inventory were being kept low by the caution of the industry and then COVID hit and for like, half a year or a year or more, you couldn't build houses because of the lockdown, right? You could you couldn't send an appraiser to that, right, I remember that controversy in those early months. And so you know, what was already a problem was compounded by. So I personally think the biggest driver of the sustained high valuation of homes right now, is the fact that we have such a low inventory going in and that has to be a good fact for your listener.   Michael: That's a great fact. And so, and that probably compounded and is only exacerbated by low interest rates.   Richard: Without a question.   Michael: Okay and so how do you, and I'm gonna ask you to break out your crystal ball here a little bit. But so how do you foresee things changing? Because inventory isn't going to change in the foreseeable future, I mean, you just physically can't build enough homes to meet demand. But so rising interest rates is the seemingly silver bullet, if you will, to kind of curtail this, this crazy demand. How do you see those two things? I mean, how do you square those two things?   Richard: Well, they're going in exactly the opposite direction. So you might just pretty easily come to a conclusion that it's going to be more of an equilibrium, in terms of valuations, and so forth. I happen to believe I spent a lot of time thinking about inflation. I think this inflation is not going to last more than let's call it two years. You know, unless we have another wave of COVID, that's beyond what we expect. So, you know, let's say we have somewhat higher mortgage rates for a couple of years, then I would expect mortgage rates to abate again, because I think kind of the fundamental direction of, of economic activity is to a softer, slower level. So I think interest rates are going to go down. So I think I wouldn't be surprised to see things achieve something of a rough equilibrium over the next couple of years, and then get back on a positive path after that.   Michael: Okay, all right. Well, I'm keeping my eyes peeled. I know that.   Richard, and I want to shift gears here and go in a very different direction with you and I'm curious to get your thoughts or recommendations for some of our younger listeners out there who are kind of just getting started maybe out in their career and we talked even on the episode today about good debt versus bad debt and consumer debt and credit card debt is often so linked to the bad debt. But it seems like that's a necessity in order to go get good debt. And so what should people be doing to set themselves up for success in this country, from a debt perspective?   Richard: Well, I think you make a wonderful point. You know, you I couldn't remember the time my dad told me that, you know, I told, I was probably 14 years old or something like that. And I told him, you know, I'm gonna have the best credit record the world because I'm never gonna borrow for anything… He laughed at me and said, well, you won't have any credit record whatsoever, if that's the case, you got to borrow some. So I think viewing it kind of the way you outline is a right way to view it, which is a limited use of credit that establishes that you're responsible repair of debt, you know, maybe an auto loan and one or two credit cards is, is more than sufficient.   Michael: Okay.   Richard: For that, and being very careful and responsible about those things, living within your means will set you up very, very nicely, because the things that work against you and a credit score is having too many what are called trades, you know, every card or car, whatever you borrow against is called a trade. So, if you had 10 credit cards, and two automobile loans, and a home loan and a vacation home loan, you would, that would be what you know, 14 trades. And you know, having 14 trades works against you somebody that has four or five or six has, you know, gets a benefit and their credit score and somebody has too many as as a detriment, the other thing that works against you is borrowing too much of your, the line that you've been provided. So if you have a line of credit of $4,000, and you're borrowing one or 2000 against it, that works in your favor, and if you're borrowing 3900 against it, that works against you. Obviously instances of delinquency and charge off work against you quite heavily. So you know, having a few sources of credit and, and managing those responsibility will put you in good shape.   Michael: Okay and any tips, tricks, tidbits, pieces of advice for folks to help prepare their credit, if they are thinking about wanting to qualify for a mortgage for an investment property at some point down the road?   Richard: Yeah, I think most banks will work with you. I mean, it takes time to repair your credit, right. So you know, getting curl, I mean, it's the, it's the things you would think intuitively, getting current is the biggest single thing of all, you know, laying everything down, may or may not help you that much.   But if everything you know, if any part of your data is delinquent, you're kind of out of luck. So thing having things being current, if you've have a burden of too much debt, frankly, most banks will give you some kind of relief. If you work with their collection department, they'll give you relief in the form of a more favorable interest rate or the elimination of interest rate or, in some cases even might reduce your principal or what have you. There are a lot of sleazy credit repair entities out there, they'll advertise on TV, and they'll charge you a fee to repair your credit. I think by and large, those are the ones to be avoided there. There's a few that are not for profit, that will help you that genuinely are dedicated to the right thing. You know, there's the one that comes to mind is an outfit called in FCC, not for profit. There's not a penny drops to their bottom line. It's all, all their work is to help consumers. So I either work with the bank or with a not for profit, like an FCC, and they'll get you, they'll get you on a plan that that makes sense.   Michael: Okay and if someone is finding themselves in trouble or trouble around the corner, it sounds like getting in touch with their lender proactively ahead of time is going to be a good move.     Richard: Absolutely.   Michael: Okay.   Richard: But it's not fun.   Michael: I was gonna say it does sound like a fun conversation.   Richard: It's not fun and in and altering your lifestyle to spend less is complete not fun. But you kind of have to face up to it if you're in that situation.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Makes total sense. Richard, this has been super informative, really a lot of good stuff here. Any final thoughts for folks before I let you out of here?   Richard: Only that you guys are terrific and your show is, is one that folks are our you know folks benefit from and I'm, I'm impressed and glad that you're doing all this good work.   Michael: Thank you so much, for sure. Really appreciate it. If folks have additional questions for you want to get in touch with you, learn more about you. Where's the best place for them to do that?   Richard: Same place https://www.richardvague.com/ - V A G U E.   Michael: Easy enough. Richard, thank you again and look forward to staying in touch. We'll talk to you soon.   Richard: Thank you.   Michael: Alright everyone, that was our episode, a big thank you to Richard for coming on super informative, I know I learned a ton about debt and the history of debt and just kind of the whole outlook of the real estate market going forward. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your episodes, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing!

Feb 22 – Today on FS Insider we speak with Richard Vague, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Banking and Securities, to discuss the key insights and solutions he explores in his must-read book: The Case... Subscribe to our premium weekday podcasts: https://www.financialsense.com/subscribe

SUMMARY: Discover how personal and public debt has reached an inflection point. Richard Vague joins Andy to discuss realistic ways to reduce student loans, home mortgages, and small business debt.   SHOW NOTES: 2:42: How Is Personal Debt The Real Crisis? 4:48: What Is The Paradox Of Debt? 7:21: How Is Debt Different Depending On Wealth? 10:43: How Have Debt Policies Become Exhausted? 12:05: How Do You Deal With Student Debt? 17:05: Can Debt Be Maxed Out? 21:32: How Does The Overton Window Impact Politicians? 25:33: What Does A Realistic Debt Alleviation Policy Look Like?

Click Here for the Show Notes Get a New Business Formation for as Little As $0 Download your FREE copy of The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing. IF YOU LIKE THIS PODCAST we would love it if you would go to iTunes and Subscribe, Rate & Review our podcast.

In this HCI Podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhwestover/) talks with Richard Vague about government and banking impacts on the future of business and work. See the video here: ???https://youtu.be/J7jVEH3Kj_k.  Richard Vague (https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-vague-68010220/) serves as Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary. Prior to his 2020 appointment, he was managing partner of Gabriel Investments and chair of The Governor's Woods Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. Previously, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas company. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two banks and founder of the economic data service Tychos. His new book is An Illustrated Business History of the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 21, 2021). Learn more at richardvague.com.      Please leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts!  Check out the LinkedIn Alchemizing Human Capital Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/alchemizing-human-capital-6884351526333227008/.  Check out Dr. Westover's book, 'Bluer than Indigo' Leadership, here: https://www.innovativehumancapital.com/bluerthanindigo.  Check out Dr. Westover's book, The Alchemy of Truly Remarkable Leadership, here: https://www.innovativehumancapital.com/leadershipalchemy.  Check out the latest issue of the Human Capital Leadership magazine, here: https://www.innovativehumancapital.com/hci-magazine.  Ranked #6 Performance Management Podcast: https://blog.feedspot.com/performance_management_podcasts/  Ranked #6 Workplace Podcast: https://blog.feedspot.com/workplace_podcasts/  Ranked #7 HR Podcast: https://blog.feedspot.com/hr_podcasts/  Ranked #12 Talent Management Podcast: https://blog.feedspot.com/talent_management_podcasts/  Ranked in the Top 20 Personal Development and Self-Improvement Podcasts: https://blog.feedspot.com/personal_development_podcasts/  Ranked in the Top 30 Leadership Podcasts: https://blog.feedspot.com/leadership_podcasts/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hcipodcast/support

Richard Vague serves as Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary. Prior to his 2020 appointment, he was managing partner of Gabriel Investments and chair of The Governor's Woods Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. Previously, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas company. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two banks and founder of the economic data service Tychos. His new book is An Illustrated Business History of the United States. We discuss: The first business, Real Estate The Slave Trade Pioneering innovation Business & War Debt and a Debt Jubilee Learn more at richardvague.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/responsible-leadership/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/responsible-leadership/support

Summary: How do we minimize the ever-increasing debt? I have Richard Vague on the podcast to talk about the pursuit of financial stability—which has become extremely difficult in our times. His mission as a public official is looking at debt and putting together strategies to remediate this. Highlights: -Richard preaches a messages of financial stability, which he represents in his books -Perhaps a debt jubilee is what we need -His mission as a public official is looking at debt and putting together strategies to deal with this -Public and private sector debt are growing faster than GDP -Anytime debt in a sector grows too rapidly, it means over-capacity is being created -A debt boom creates illusory good times—jobs are being created, tax revenues at the government level are increasing, etc. Things appear to be really good -It is only in the aftermath that we see desire to do something about it, and oftentimes capitalism gets blamed -Vague puts out practical ideas for remediating debt that has been accumulated -What incentives can the government put out to avoid these debt situations? -The level of new homes being built right now are is below what it was in 2007 -Growth in debt has also come from lending standards/private equity lending -They estimate that there are 90 million empty residences in China -It used to be believed that credit creation went hand in hand with the increase of the money supply, but this is not necessarily the case -Our country is not in an enviable position in terms of debt -There is a mess coming down the road that will be hard to manage Useful Links: Financial Survival Network Richard Vague

Join Shalom Klein on his weekly radio show, Get Down To Business with guests: Devora Zack Dani Petrie Richard Vague

Richard Vague, who serves as Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary and author of his new book An Illustrated Business History of the United States joins Enterprise Radio. The post The Story of U.S. Business Is the Story of Real Estate appeared first on Enterprise Podcast Network - EPN.

Episode 165 of the Business Bookshelf podcast - Richard Vague - author of "An Illustrated Business History of the United States". Richard is Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the author of A Brief History of Doom, a chronicle of major world financial crises, The Next Economic Disaster, a book with a new approach for predicting and preventing financial crises, and the Illustrated Business History of the United States - which is the subject of our interview. From Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, and Cornelius Vanderbilt to Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates, with Madam C.J. Walker, Martha Stewart, Jay-Z, and many more in-between, An Illustrated Business History of the United States is a sweeping, lively, and highly approachable history of American business from the nation's founding to the twenty-first century. The book can be purchased here - https://amzn.to/3ljkhSb. Contact the host Lance Peppler by emailing lance@ideastorm.co.za. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/businessbookshelf/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/businessbookshelf/support

How was it that, within a decade after the nation's founding, America's economy dwarfed those of European countries? What does our history of ingenuity and economic diversity tell us about our future?  Ali Velshi does a breakfast chat with Richard Vague, author of "An Illustrated Business History of the United States," to compare notes.

The massive Chinese real estate company Evergrande is unable to pay its debts. This has sparked some rare protests in China and is spooking international financial markets. A key question now is whether or not the government of China will let Evergrande collapse -- and whether or not the collapse of this real estate giant will have knock on effects throughout the region and the world? Richard Vague is Secretary of Banking and Securities for Pennsylvania and an author who has written extensively about global financial crises. He explains how debt has fueled economic growth in China and discusses the potential international implications of Evergrande's insolvency. We kick off discussing how Evergrande got buried in such deep debt and what that says about the role of debt in fueling China's massive economic growth over the past decade. He then explains some policy options available to the Chinese government and some of the potential international implications of Evergrande's insolvency. Richard Vague's article in Democracy    

SUMMARY: Discover why massive government spending does not lead to inflation. Richard Vague, Secretary of Banking & Securities of Pennsylvania, joins Andy to discuss his research into the origins of inflation.   SHOW NOTES: 6:48: Does MMT Work? 8:48: How Does MMT Not Cause Inflation? 14:02: Why Should We View The U.S. Economy A Wartime Economy? 20:10: How Is Personal Credit More Important Than Government Credit? 23:46: How Are Stocks & Real Estate Tied Together? 26:57: Is Commercial Real Estate Dead?

• The Bizgnus time machine gears up for a remarkable podcast • “Business and politics were more overtly intertwined” (Total Recorded Time is 17:06) Longtime members of the Bizgnus audiences will be delighted to note that we have finally recharged the batteries on the company's Wayback machine and it has taken us back in time by two centuries to the 1820s in the United States. Actually, it is not the dusty Wayback machine which has never worked for us but a remarkable new book, “An Illustrated Business History of the United States,” (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2021) by the Secretary of Banking and Securities for the state of Pennsylvania, Richard Vague. One of the continuous threads of the American economy, from founding to present day, is real estate, he says. “Real estate continues to be a huge part of the U.S. story because the uses of real estate are always being transformed,” says Mr. Vague. “We've seen that happen right before our eyes during the pandemic when the use of commercial office space has diminished but at the same time, we're seeing a boom in the use of real estate for internet companies as storage and distribution facilities.” The book covers U.S. history from the founding to about 2015. In it, the reader will find not just data, but example upon example of life in various epochs. “Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made a fortune selling opium in China, and this wealth made up a substantial part of the inheritance that he passed down to Franklin,” Mr. Vague writes. might also hear of the opening of a canl connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River and thus New York City. “The Erie Canal was the most important and transformational business achievement in early American history,” Mr. Vague says in his book Please click here to watch our Bizgnus interview: https://youtu.be/CjkMNhOlDQU Please click here to listen to the audio and download the audio file: And something often “overlooked” in today's political arguments was central to the growth of the nation. “Business and politics were more overtly intertwined in this era. Everyone admired U.S. senator and attorney Daniel Webster for his intelligence, rhetorical power, and knowledge of constitutional law. But as senator, Webster sent a private law client a bill because he had inserted an amendment favorable to that client's interests into a piece of legislation. No one at that time viewed this as a conflict or an ethical transgression,” writes Mr. Vague. Richard Vague's day job is Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary. Prior to his 2020 appointment, he was managing partner of Gabriel Investments and chairman of the Governor's Woods Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. Previously, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas company. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two banks and founder of the economic data service Tychos. His new book is “An Illustrated Business History of the United States” (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2021).

• The Bizgnus time machine gears up for a remarkable podcast • “Business and politics were more overtly intertwined” (Total Recorded Time is 17:06) Longtime members of the Bizgnus audiences will be delighted to note that we have finally recharged the batteries on the company's Wayback machine and it has taken us back in time by two centuries to the 1820s in the United States. Actually, it is not the dusty Wayback machine which has never worked for us but a remarkable new book, “An Illustrated Business History of the United States,” (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2021) by the Secretary of Banking and Securities for the state of Pennsylvania, Richard Vague. One of the continuous threads of the American economy, from founding to present day, is real estate, he says. “Real estate continues to be a huge part of the U.S. story because the uses of real estate are always being transformed,” says Mr. Vague. “We've seen that happen right before our eyes during the pandemic when the use of commercial office space has diminished but at the same time, we're seeing a boom in the use of real estate for internet companies as storage and distribution facilities.” The book covers U.S. history from the founding to about 2015. In it, the reader will find not just data, but example upon example of life in various epochs. “Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made a fortune selling opium in China, and this wealth made up a substantial part of the inheritance that he passed down to Franklin,” Mr. Vague writes. might also hear of the opening of a canl connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River and thus New York City. “The Erie Canal was the most important and transformational business achievement in early American history,” Mr. Vague says in his book Please click here to watch our Bizgnus interview: https://youtu.be/CjkMNhOlDQU And something often “overlooked” in today's political arguments was central to the growth of the nation. “Business and politics were more overtly intertwined in this era. Everyone admired U.S. senator and attorney Daniel Webster for his intelligence, rhetorical power, and knowledge of constitutional law. But as senator, Webster sent a private law client a bill because he had inserted an amendment favorable to that client's interests into a piece of legislation. No one at that time viewed this as a conflict or an ethical transgression,” writes Mr. Vague. Richard Vague's day job is Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary. Prior to his 2020 appointment, he was managing partner of Gabriel Investments and chairman of the Governor's Woods Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. Previously, he was co-founder, chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas company. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two banks and founder of the economic data service Tychos. His new book is “An Illustrated Business History of the United States” (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2021). For more information: richardvague.com

In this episode, Jason talks about Lennar & KB Home's new "Build Your Own Home" strategy, since millions of Americans ditched the cities for "pandemic-friendly" suburbia, the housing inventory's incredible 40 Year Low, Producer Price Index by industry in the FRED website. And what is the downside to Jason's trademark "Inflation-Induced Debt Destruction?" Deflation by Technology.  Jason also continues his talk with Richard Vague, author of Illustrated Business History of the United States, from The University of Pennsylvania Press, which offers a more general audience a clear-eyed view of 250 years of wealth creation and the people and personalities who drove that growth — and hold it today. The WEALTH TRANSFER is happening FAST! Protect your financial future now! Did you know that 25% to 40% of all dollars ever created were dumped into the economy last year???  This will be devastating to some and an opportunity to others, be sure you're on the right side of this massive wealth transfer. Learn from our experiences, maximize your ROI and avoid regrets. Free Mini-Book on Pandemic Investing: https://www.PandemicInvesting.com Jason's TV Clips: https://vimeo.com/549444172  Asset Protection, Tax Savings & Estate Planning: http://JasonHartman.com/Protect What do Jason's clients say? http://JasonHartmanTestimonials.com Easily get up to $250,000 in funding for real estate, business or anything else  http://JasonHartman.com/Fund  Call our Investment Counselors at: 1-800-HARTMAN (US) or visit https://www.jasonhartman.com/ Guided Visualization for Investors: http://jasonhartman.com/visualization

China's Lehman Brothers Moment, The US-Mexico border crisis and media censorship, walkable communities, UN's Agenda 21, California Gov. Newsom's new zoning law and buildings codes. He also welcomes Richard Vague as they talk about his new book, Illustrated Business History of the United States, from The University of Pennsylvania Press, which offers a more general audience a clear-eyed view of 250 years of wealth creation and the people and personalities who drove that growth — and hold it today. As the author of A Brief History of Doom (2019) and The Next Economic Disaster (2014), Richard Vague established himself as a clear and independent voice in the ongoing conversation about the role of private sector debt in the global economy. Following a career that has spanned fields as varied as banking and energy, credit, and the arts, Richard has served since 2020 as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Richard also serves on the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees and the Penn Medicine Board of Trustees, and on a number of business boards. He is chair of FringeArts Philadelphia, chair of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and chair of the Innovation Advisory Board of the Abramson Cancer Center. He also serves on the Governing Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Vague is the founder of the economic data service Tychos (tychosgroup.org) and the email newsletter service Delanceyplace.com, which focuses on nonfiction literature. The WEALTH TRANSFER is happening FAST! Protect your financial future now! Did you know that 25% to 40% of all dollars ever created were dumped into the economy last year???  This will be devastating to some and an opportunity to others, be sure you're on the right side of this massive wealth transfer. Learn from our experiences, maximize your ROI and avoid regrets. Free Mini-Book on Pandemic Investing: https://www.PandemicInvesting.com Jason's TV Clips: https://vimeo.com/549444172  Asset Protection, Tax Savings & Estate Planning: http://JasonHartman.com/Protect What do Jason's clients say? http://JasonHartmanTestimonials.com Easily get up to $250,000 in funding for real estate, business or anything else  http://JasonHartman.com/Fund  Call our Investment Counselors at: 1-800-HARTMAN (US) or visit https://www.jasonhartman.com/ Guided Visualization for Investors: http://jasonhartman.com/visualization  

A huge part of the history of the United States is the history of business. Yet this rich story is often overlooked in our traditional textbooks -- until now. Today on Flipping America we are going to take a little stroll through American history, looking through the lens of business. We are going to talk about the government's role in creating structures that allowed the enterprising capitalists in this free country to develop the most powerful national economy in the history of the world. We will see how real estate has historically been a true wealth builder, and as we go, we will note some lessons and applications for use today. Richard Vague, is an author, who serves as Pennsylvania Banking and Securities Secretary. Prior to his 2020 appointment, he was managing partner of Gabriel Investments and chair of The Governor's Woods Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization. A few years ago he started researching the wealthiest people of each generation in American history and found very little had been written about the growth and development of American business. So he decided to write a book. The result is the Illustrated History of Business in the United States. It is a beautiful book, well-researched, well-written, and beautifully illustrated on high quality paper. And it's available now on Amazon. I had a most fascinating conversation with Richard that I'm going to play for you in its entirety today. I learned much and you will as well. Topics include: The government's role in developing American business Banking Infrastructure Interference Real estate as a wealth builder Trend spotting in transportation From history to the future - what's ahead for American business? What's ahead for real estate investments?

A casual observer of modern economies might be forgiven for feeling that life is pretty good. And they might reasonably credit neoclassical economic principles for facilitating what appears to have been a great leap forward in global prosperity. At the same time, we are occasionally confronted with news of looming global calamities, which are a product of the exact same policies that brought about this apparent prosperity: irreversible climate change, unprecedented global private credit, global asset bubbles to name just a few. Our guest this week, Professor Steve Keen, has spent a lifetime demonstrating why neoclassical economics is fundamentally self-terminating because it fails to account for realities imposed by the physical world. He walks us through the root issues and describes an economic framework for sustainable growth and more even prosperity. In particular we discussed: The roots of the 2008 global financial crisis and how he predicted it in advance How the 1972 report “Limits to Growth” successfully forecast how the global economy would run headlong into resource boundary conditions Richard Vague's findings that accelerating growth of private credit has presaged every major financial collapse in the past few centuries How the misguided work of two economists in the early 1990s has led to catastrophic policy and climate consequences The financialization of housing and its impact on home prices, demand for private credit, and a return to feudalism How to incorporate resource consumption and waste into modern economic models The character and potential positive impact of a modern debt jubilee   Professor Keen is not a man who minces words. Pour yourself an Irish coffee and settle in for a jarring ride. This is “ReSolve's Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management. Thank you for watching and listening. See you next week. *ReSolve Global refers to ReSolve Asset Management SEZC (Cayman) which is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity trading advisor and commodity pool operator. This registration is administered through the National Futures Association (“NFA”). Further, ReSolve Global is a registered person with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.

HOUR 1Tom and Rick overview their weekend (heavy with rain and events Olympics overview by the numbers / https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/08/08/tokyo-olympics-numbers?email=tomandersonalaska@gmail.comViolence in Chicago saw over 45 deaths last weekend and even a police officer was killed / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2RrCL7MIrQWoodcarver Mike from Mat-Su on the violence in Chicago to curb violence and citing Mayor Giuliani's policies in NYC Tom reads an excerpt from DelanceyPlace.com from An Illustrated Business History of the United States by Richard Vague / https://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?4442An exodus is occurring in Kindergartens across the nation (over 1 million 5-year-olds weren't enrolled) / https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/07/us/covid-kindergarten-enrollment.html?campaign_id=29&emc=edit_up_20210809&instance_id=37498&nl=the-upshot®i_id=78313692&segment_id=65781&te=1&user_id=0d6450a88091f9336b9867d8fc8d27b0U.S. Senator Cassidy (R-LA) along with 17 other Republican Senators support the Infrastructure bill that should pass this week with $550 Billion in new spending / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fl7snYn5TgHOUR 2 COVID restrictions tightening with new Delta variant and liberties being limited (Congresswoman Stefanie Stefanik NY-R) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsaSqiNrh50Dr. Gorka on the current ideological battle and Reagan's forecast of such / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsx2lpqMKqMRick talks about the power outage Friday and why Tom didn't have a show Best of Day 16 of Summer Olympics Tom McGrath reminds the Paralympic Doug in Palmer talks about the U.S. vs Japanese in baseball and his surprise that the U.S. lost

Economic historian and INET board member Richard Vague, talks about his latest book, The Illustrated Business History of the United States, which reveals a number of misconceptions and myths about the development of the US economy

Private debt is an asset class that has fared strongly against the backdrop of the current global crisis. On 15 April 2021, IQ-EQ hosted an exciting virtual debate on the topic of ‘Debt is dead. Long live debt!' between experts Richard Vague and Gabriel de Alba, moderated by IQ-EQ's Group Head of Funds, Justin Partington.Richard Vague is the Chairman of the Governor's Woods Foundation and author of The Next Economic Disaster. He has previously been co-founder, chairman and CEO of Energy Plus and the co-founder and CEO of First USA and Juniper Financial. Gabriel de Alba is an international investor who has recapitalised, restructured and built businesses across the US, Europe, Canada and emerging markets.The debate addressed six core statements relating to private debt:1.     Private debt seems to thrive in crisis only. Agree or disagree?2.     Private debt is a safe investment in a changing environment. Agree or disagree?3.     Is this the right time for debt, and how best to execute a debt strategy?4.     ESG will ensure further transparency in private debt as per other asset classes. For or against?5.     Covenant-lite loans are often referred to as the scourge of corporate lending. Agree or disagree?6.     Debt is dead. Long live debt! Agree or disagree?If you'd prefer to read a recap of the key debate highlights, please click here.

Center City venture capitalist and philanthropist Richard Vague has a stimulus plan that will boost the economy and address inequality. Will the political class listen?

Richard Vague, Secretary of Banking and Securities for the state of Pennsylvania and INET board member, discusses with Rob Johnson the need for stronger economic measures, the different economic strategies of the US and China, and the dangers of enormous private debt burdens.

Richard Vague is Acting Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Previously, he was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company operating in states throughout the U.S. that was sold to NRG Energy in 2011. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two credit card companies – First USA, which grew to be the largest Visa issuer in the industry and and Juniper Financial, the fastest growing credit card in its era.  Richard currently serves on the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees and the Penn Medicine Board of Trustees. He is chair of FringeArts Philadelphia, chair of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and chair of the Innovation Advisory Board of the Abramson Cancer Center.  He also serves on the Governing Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Richard is also the founder of the email newsletter service Delanceyplace.com, which focuses on non-fiction literature.    He is the author of A Brief History of Doom, a chronicle of 6 major world financial crises, and The Next Economic Disaster, a book with a new approach for predicting and preventing financial crises.

In conversation with Joe Torsella, State Treasurer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Venture capitalist and longtime Philadelphia-area philanthropist Richard Vague serves on the Penn Medicine board, is Chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and is the president of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It, an examination of the role of public debt in financial crises. In his latest book, Vague employs insights gained through years spent in the banking industry and analysis of historical economic disasters spanning the last two centuries in order to illustrate how our current system can break the cycle of calamity. Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture (recorded 10/7/2019)

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 494, originally published in March 2015. In the introduction portion of the Creating Wealth show, Jason Hartman answers two voicemail questions left by his listeners. He then introduces Richard Vague as his guest for today's show. Richard Vague is one of the few economists who are currently talking about the problems of massive private debt. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster and talks to Jason about China's economic problem along with some interesting facts and correlations about the US economy.  Key Takeaways:  8:00 – Jason talks about the 6 ways the government can get out of its mess.  11:20 – Jason answers a listener voicemail question.  18:50 – A listener asks about 3D printing a house. Jason shares his thoughts.  24:30 – Jason introduces Richard Vague to the show.  29:15 – Richard talks about China's debt problem.  35:10 – Private debt growth leads to higher interest rates.  38:15 – Richard gets his stats by looking at all consumer and business debt.  42:30 – A lot of economists don't include private debt in their model.  49:00 – What should we do to avoid the next economic disaster? Richard explains.  51:10 – Quick recap, what are the stages of an economic crisis?  Mentioned In This Episode:  The Next Economic Disaster by Richard Vague www.Debt-Economics.org

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 494, originally published in March 2015. In the introduction portion of the Creating Wealth show, Jason Hartman answers two voicemail questions left by his listeners. He then introduces Richard Vague as his guest for today's show. Richard Vague is one of the few economists who are currently talking about the problems of massive private debt. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster and talks to Jason about China's economic problem along with some interesting facts and correlations about the US economy.  Key Takeaways:  8:00 – Jason talks about the 6 ways the government can get out of its mess.  11:20 – Jason answers a listener voicemail question.  18:50 – A listener asks about 3D printing a house. Jason shares his thoughts.  24:30 – Jason introduces Richard Vague to the show.  29:15 – Richard talks about China's debt problem.  35:10 – Private debt growth leads to higher interest rates.  38:15 – Richard gets his stats by looking at all consumer and business debt.  42:30 – A lot of economists don't include private debt in their model.  49:00 – What should we do to avoid the next economic disaster? Richard explains.  51:10 – Quick recap, what are the stages of an economic crisis?  Mentioned In This Episode:  The Next Economic Disaster by Richard Vague www.Debt-Economics.org

Richard Vague, from Texas originally, is a Philadelphia-based managing partner of the venture capital firm, Gabriel Investments. He’s the author of A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises and The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It. He’s been in and around the policy world for years and is considering a run for president as a Democrat. He intends to make his decision about that sometime this fall.

Ali Velshi and Richard Vague sat down to discuss Vague's new book, A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises. EDIT: The audio from the Q&A was salvaged, so this episode has been updated to include it.

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again. Where are now? The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly. Read the book to find which sectors and countries. Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again.  Where are now?  The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly.  Read the book to find which sectors and countries.  Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again.  Where are now?  The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly.  Read the book to find which sectors and countries.  Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again.  Where are now?  The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly.  Read the book to find which sectors and countries.  Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again.  Where are now?  The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly.  Read the book to find which sectors and countries.  Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com

Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Vague sees the rise and fall of private sector debt as the key factor explaining the cycle of economic crises experienced by developed and major developing economies over the past two centuries. The early stages of a lending cycle look and feel good. Everyone is happy, the lenders think they are smart, the borrowers feel they have everything under control. Then the lenders and borrowers take it to another level, and then another, and then it collapses, time and time again.  Where are now?  The good news is that debt/GDP levels aren't too bad, but in certain sectors of the economy and certain countries, they are flashing red, brightly.  Read the book to find which sectors and countries.  Vague makes his data available to researchers at http://www.bankingcrisis.org. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Very few people would like to again experience the anxiety or the financial losses that arose from the 2008 financial crisis. But it has happened before and it will happen again.  Steve talks with Richard Vague, author of A Brief History of Doom: 200 Years of Financial Crisis. [...]

Greg Seltzer is a Corporate Attorney and Partner at Ballard Spahr, and his specialty is Mergers & Acquisitions. Over the past decade, he’s been the architect behind some of Philly’s biggest deals. He's represented The City of Philadelphia, Guru Technologies, CookNSolo, Richard Vague and Gabriel Investments, REC Philly, Philly Startup Leaders, The Phillies, Di Bruno Brothers, Comcast, World Cafe Live, and DuPont, just to name a few. He's also a Certified Public Accountant, and he holds an MBA. Additionally, Greg is extremely passionate about music. He's published two books analyzing its ties to current events, and in 2017 he created Philly Music Fest. Like many festivals, it happens annually, and showcases dozens of artists. But, this festival is the only one to exclusively feature Philly-based musicians. Support Philly Who? Donate via Paypal, Venmo: @podphillywho, Become a Monthly Patron, Purchase a T-Shirt or Hat, Become a Sponsor

Today’s MacroVoices All-Star is Professor SteveKeen, who weighs in on Richard Vague’s new book, A Brief History of Doom. Steve says Vague has it exactly right, and his analysis of what caused 2008’s Great Financial Crisis jibes almost exactly with Steve’s own analysis of that event.

Richard Vague is currently one of the managing partners of Gabriel Investments and the president of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival. He is also the author of The Next Economic Disaster, a book with a new approach for predicting and preventing financial crises. Previously, he was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Energy Plus, an electricity and natural gas supply company that was sold to NRG Energy in 2011. Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two credit card companies – First USA, which grew to be the largest Visa issuer in the industry and which was sold to Bank One in 1997, and Juniper Financial, the fastest growing credit card issuer of the past decade, which was sold to Barclays PLC in 2004. Vague currently serves on the Penn Medicine Board, the boards of the Franklin Institute, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, the Arts and Business Council of Greater Philadelphia and Friends of Rittenhouse Square. He serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. Vague is also editor of the blog and email newsletter service Delanceyplace.com and of the website Debt-economics.org. Support Philly Who? Donate via Paypal, Venmo: @podphillywho, Become a Monthly Patron, Purchase a T-Shirt or Hat, Become a Sponsor

How billionaires hide their money and avoid taxes with reporter Will Fitzgibbon. Richard Vague of Gabriel Investments says funding for pensions and Medicaid is draining funds like education. The surprising social life of pumas with Mark Elbroch of Panthera. Apple Seed stories with Sam Payne of BYUradio. Brian Walsh of Elon Univ says we have President Lincoln to thank for the modern funeral. Harvard's Nancy Koehn describes leaders forged in crisis.

In the introduction portion of the Creating Wealth show, Jason Hartman answers two voicemail questions left by his listeners. He then introduces Richard Vague as his guest for today's show. Richard Vague is one of the few economists who are currently talking about the problems of massive private debt. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster and talks to Jason about China's economic problem along with some interesting facts and correlations about the US economy.    Key Takeaways:  8:00 – Jason talks about the 6 ways the government can get out of its mess.  11:20 – Jason answers a listener voicemail question.  18:50 – A listener asks about 3D printing a house. Jason shares his thoughts.  24:30 – Jason introduces Richard Vague to the show.  29:15 – Richard talks about China's debt problem.  35:10 – Private debt growth leads to higher interest rates.  38:15 – Richard gets his stats by looking at all consumer and business debt.  42:30 – A lot of economists don't include private debt in their model.  49:00 – What should we do to avoid the next economic disaster? Richard explains.    51:10 – Quick recap, what are the stages of an economic crisis?    Mentioned In This Episode:  The Next Economic Disaster by Richard Vague   http://debt-economics.org/

Join Scott Cluthe on FACEBOOK HERE  Get a FREE Book from 1,500 Titles from Scott HERE   8 PM EST-7 CST-6 MST-5 PST Call in: 347-308-8478 Scott Cluthe talks live with the author of the new book, The Next Economic Disaster-Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It, Richard Vague Current debates about economic crises typically focus on the role that public debt and debt-fueled public spending play in economic growth. This illuminating and provocative work shows that it is the rapid expansion of private rather than public debt that constrains growth and sparks economic calamities like the financial crisis of 2008. Relying on the findings of a team of economists, credit expert Richard Vague argues that the Great Depression of the 1930s, the economic collapse of the past decade, and many other sharp downturns around the world were all preceded by a spike in privately held debt. Vague presents an algorithm for predicting crises and argues that China may soon face disaster. Since American debt levels have not declined significantly since 2008, Vague believes that economic growth in the United States will suffer unless banks embrace a policy of debt restructuring. Philanthropist and former banker Richard Vague is a managing partner of Gabriel Investments and Chairman of The Governor's Woods Foundation.Vague was also co-founder and CEO of two credit card companies - First USA, which grew to be the largest Visa issuer in the industry and which was sold to Bank One in 1997, and Juniper Financial, the fastest growing credit card issuer of the past decade, which was sold to Barclays PLC in 2004.

-- On the Show:-- We review a number of Donald Trump's predictions about what a Joe Biden presidency would be like to see if any of the predictions came true-- A MAGA activist is found guilty of election fraud for his fraudulent vote in the 2020 presidential election-- Former Vice President Mike Pence has been added to the witness list for one of Donald Trump's forthcoming Georgia criminal trial-- Caller prefers Nikki Haley, then Joe Biden, then Donald Trump-- Caller asks about requiring a test to vote-- Caller discusses anti-democracy Republicans-- Caller talks about the American health care system-- The Friday Feedback segment-- On the Bonus Show: Hunter Biden indicted again, Jamaal Bowman censured, and much more...

-- On the Show:-- Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, convicted felon for his participation in the Janaury 6, 2021 Trump riots, joins David to discuss his crimes, his beliefs, and his new campaign for public office in Arizona-- Stunning GPD growth numbers from Q3 put the US on track for 5.2% annualized growth-- Desperate Republican Congressman Guy Reschenthaler complains on the floor of the House that unemployment under Joe Biden went up last month to 3.9%-- Fox News propagandist Maria Bartiromo attacks Joe Biden over his involvement in securing the release of hostages held by Hamas-- Elon Musk has a total meltdown on stage while being interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times Dealbook event, telling advertisers who left Twitter/X to go "F" themselves-- President Joe Biden has surpassed failed former President Donald Trump in a new Morning Consult national election poll-- The discussion about Donald Trump's apparent cognitive decline goes mainstream, with a lengthy segment on The View discussing the matter-- Voicemail caller says food is terrible in red states-- On the Bonus Show: Henry Kissinger dead at age 100, Nikki Haley wins endorsement of Koch network, most women do not want to date Trump voters, much more...

-- On the Show:-- Republican Senator Mitt Romney says that even many Democrats are better than Donald Trump for President, wildly triggering MAGA Republicans-- President Joe Biden explains the timing of the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel as related to the potential for normalization of relations between Arab countries and Israel-- Donald Trump's polling surges again, hitting a new record high for the 2024 Republican primary and putting him above 60% for the first time-- Jenna Ellis, one of many former lawyers for Donald Trump and his campaign, turns on MAGA and calls it a cult-- Failed former President Donald Trump has an epic meltdown as Joe Biden continues to do things-- Fox News reporter Lucas Tomlinson reports that "people" are asking about Biden's age on Nantucket, but the only person who asked about it was Tomlinson himself-- Donald Trump is brutally booed when attending the Clemson-South Carolina college football game-- David was turned into Tucker Carlson by AI in the process of having his content stolen-- Streamer Ian Vaush attacks David as a "bloodthirsty psychopath" while providing not a single citation-- Voicemail caller unleashes disgusting hate on David amidst wild allegations of socialism-- On the Bonus Show: Former police officer Derek Chauvin stabbed in prison, Elon Musk sues Media Matters, George Santos says he expected to be expelled from Congress, much more...

-- On the Show:-- Vivek Ramaswamy, 2024 Republican presidential candidate, joins David to discuss his campaign, his recent attacks on Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, his private meetings with Donald Trump, recent polling and much more-- Republican Congressman James Comer melts down during a Congressional hearing when Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz brings up his own intra-family loan-- Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin attempts to fight Senate witness and Teamsters President Sean O'Brien during a hearing, and Senator Bernie Sanders has to prevent the fight-- Jenna Ellis, former Donald Trump lawyer, says in leaked video that she was informed by a top Trump adviser that Trump was "not going to leave" the White House-- Fox News host Brian Kilmeade floats the baseless conspiracy theory that Donald Trump's cognitive gaffes are deliberate-- Failed former President Donald Trump shares a sick fantasy about a citizen's arrest of Judge Arthur Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James-- Truth Social. Donald Trump's right wing media platform, has lost $73 million since its launch-- Facebook has shut down all David Pakman Show monetization for a supposed "hate speech" violation determined by some kind of machine learning algorithm-- The Eggman leaves a voicemail pointing out how odd and bizarre it was when Kari Lake touched Tim Miller during the viral confrontation played on yesterday's show-- On the Bonus Show: Congress on track to avoid shutdown, Biden and Xi to announce deal crackling down on fentanyl export, Kevin McCarthy accused of elbowing fellow congressman, much more...

-- On the Show:-- Tobias Rose-Stockwell, author of the book "Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy―And What We Can Do About It," joins David to discuss the book, social media, echo chambers, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/49jnhEY-- Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham turn on fellow Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville over his refusal to allow military promotions because he is against abortion-- A stunning new Quinnipiac University poll has Robert F. Kennedy Jr polling 22% in a three-way race against Donald Trump and Joe Biden-- Hamas official Ghazi Hamad promises the end of Israel and says that they will repeat October 7th type attacks over and over again-- Republicans say that President Joe Biden will be impeached in 2024-- Donald Trump badly mangles the English language, inadvertently telling his followers not to support MAGA tyrants-- Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump will and have started to testify in the New York civil fraud trial against Trump's business-- Donald Trump melts down on Truth Social as his sons are set to testify in the New York civil fraud trial-- Voicemail caller responds to requests for David to debate a vegan by attacking veganism and vegetarianism on the basis of sustainability-- On the Bonus Show: George Santos avoids expulsion in the House, financial disclosures assert that Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has no bank accounts, the unexpected decline in dementia, much more...

-- On the Show:-- As Donald Trump's brain continues to fail, Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany focuses on Joe Biden forgetting a CBS reporter's name-- Video reveals Sidney Powell discussing the "screaming matches" she had with Rudy Giuliani-- Caller wonders if Republicans have hit rock bottom yet-- Caller asks about responsible platforming-- Caller asks about when Republicans will come up with a new pet issue-- Caller is undecided between Trump and Biden-- Caller asks about belief in science vs religion-- Caller criticizes Democrats on the topic of sanctuary cities-- The Friday Feedback segment-- On the Bonus Show: George Santos' ethics report, Biden documents report coming out soon, and much more...