thank you I'm Charlotte McLeod with the investing News Network and here today with me is Doug Casey you can find him online at International man.com and he has a podcast on YouTube called Doug Casey's take he's also the author of three novels just a reminder before we get started that if you enjoyed this interview make sure you subscribe to our Channel Doug thank you so much for joining me today great to see you thanks Sean I hope I don't offend any of your viewers with my um ideologically
tinged t-shirt so sheep with a mask honored because the covet hysteria is largely over at this point but uh I still have the t-shirt from the old days so I don't think they will probably be offended so great to see you we have a lot of directions that we could go in today and I think where I want to start is with the issues that we see going on in the banking sector in the U.S as well as elsewhere in the world these were really making headlines just a couple of weeks ago but it already seems to be fading so I want to check in
with you on what you think interest is going away so quickly and what do you see as being next for the banking center well I've been pointing out for a very long time because it's been true for a very long time that the banking industry itself is well I was on a foundation of quicksand I mean I don't want to get into a discussion of the details of sound classical backing but in the past when Banks were first formed and really up until about a hundred years ago deposits were strictly divided into two
types savings account deposits and checking account deposits totally different businesses totally different types of deposits they've been merged and melded today and in the last 100 years central banks all over the world have become immensely possible profitable for the banks by printing up money and allowing them to lend out several times the amount that's deposited with them so answer to the question without getting into the Weeds on all this I just wanted to mention these things is that no the banking
situation hasn't been solved all the debt in the world uh at some point it's going to collapse either with a catastrophic deflation a la 1929 or a runaway inflation allowed Germany in the 20s they painted themselves into a corner well it's my favorite Clinton back of me right now uh so um no the banking situation is going to uh reappear as a problem again and again and again because the whole industry is based on what a monster with fraud which is fractional reserve and Central Banking
so stormy weather ahead certainly I think it feels that way and one of the issues that is really coming to the fore right now is we see these banking issues is detolorization move away from the US dollar so I wondered if you could speak a little bit about that and what that looks like to you what we should be watching there yeah this is a very important thing uh for decades many decades actually but certainly starting 1971 with the when gold was taken completely out of the monetary system with the Nixon's
evaluation uh the dollar has in effect been linked with and backed by oil it's called the Petro dollar but uh among the many other things that the Biden Administration has destroyed is that system when they nationalized all of the Russian assets they could get their hands on how much was that 300 billion 600 billion depends on whether you're counting just the Russian government's assets or the assets of so-called oligarchs as well I suppose but um at this point the Bell has rung and people can see
that if you own dollars even outside the United States because all dollars clear through New York uh the U.S government can take them away from you at will the way they did to the Russians now the Chinese have been designated an adversary and they say the Chinese are sitting on over a trillion dollars worth of government securities and they realize that that's a hot potato that the U.S could do to them take a a trillion dollars worth of assets away from them just by stealing them stealing it and the fact
and in fact this can happen to any country so this is the reason why uh in addition to recognizing that the dollar is being printed up like a third world currency uh that uh people are trying to get away from the dollar now what's happened is that the Russians and the Chinese and they're being joined by the Indians and the Turks and other Brazilians uh everybody's trying to get out of the dollar system because they realize that the dollar is an unstable currency backed by nothing but faith in the US
government and that is uh diminishing rapidly so they're coming up with an alternative currency and an alternative way of trading with each other without using dollars this is really really serious for Americans because since about 1980 the major export of the U.S has not been boeings it's not been wheat snapping anything except for dollars the US government ships up dollars and because everybody expensive dollars US everybody accepts them uh there are now trillions we don't know how many trillions of
dollars floating around outside the U.S that actually are a liability against the U.S government but actually against the American people and at some point when Fates and dollar is lost those dollars are all going to come cascading back into the U.S in exchange for land and securities and other real Goods so we'll have a lot more money in the U.S as foreigners want to dump the dollar and less real wealth owned by Americans it's going to be a catastrophe so you've kind of laid out there what
happens to the us as the US dollar falls out of favor and of course it doesn't sound very good if we follow it through outside of the U.S what are we going to possibly see when we get the rise of a new Reserve currency or how does it look for you well the Russians and the Chinese uh two adversaries to the U.S uh have had to trade things between each other using dollars which is really rather perverse to use their adversaries or even their enemies currency but they don't trust each other's
currency really either I mean the Chinese don't trust the ruble and the Russians don't trust the Iran so much so I think what's going to happen is the gold is going to be reinstitutionalized as actual money because none of them must each other's central banks and each other's Fiat currencies they're all Fiat currencies uh some are better managed than others of course so what's happening now is that the Chinese have a major gold exchange in Shanghai and you can trade here you won there for
gold and Export the gold so we actually are going back to a um subtle gold-backed system again but it's going to become much more obvious as a real gold back system in the future and I think that's one reason why gold is going higher I've been involved in goals personally since the early 1970s I bought a lot over the years I've always used it as a savings device but the gold away forget about it that's what savings are all about and it's been okay I've gotten like we've got like 50
to 1 returns in 50 years it's fine for a savings vehicle and occasionally it's a good speculative device right now relative to everything else in the world price of cars houses meals clothing gold is reasonably priced I'd say but my guess is that as the world descends into chaos and I think that's true we are going to see chaos later this year and throughout this decade there's going to be a panic into gold because it's the only financial asset that's not simultaneously somebody
else's liability so it's again going to become a good speculation as well as a good savings vehicle so I don't know if I answered that question directly or got off the topic uh but yes the dollar is on its way out I mean it's going to nobody uses the but currencies all have a half-life they're just things created by central banks gold is uh as I said before the only financial asset it's not simultaneously somebody else's liability there's going to be a panic in the gold at this point
and out of the dollar because there's so many of them they're like hot potatoes outside the U.S I think you did answer the question and you definitely brought up a lot of points about gold that I want to go back to before we do though I want to ask you about Central Bank digital currencies and how they fit into the mix here because you're talking about how gold is becoming more prominent among countries that don't want to use the US dollar certainly we've seen central banks buying gold quite heavily in the last
months so how does how did Central Bank digital currencies fit in there for you how do you see that interacting well they're a control mechanism uh on the part of governments over their subjects and it's also they're hoping a way to keep the economy propped up you know they've gone to um negative interest rates until recently I thought it was metaphysically impossible to have negative interest rates and actually it is negative interest rates which we which we had at the peak there were about 17 trillion
dollars worth of bonds that are that that had negative interest rates I mean it's it's actually a form of tax on Savers so they've tried that and they've tried quantitative easing uh funny how that words that phrases become accepted because it really means just money printing but everybody doesn't say money printing they say quantitative easing they've tried that and inflation's gotten out of control but it's going to get much more out of control in the years to come
because most of the US government's deficits are not financed by taxpayers or by Chinese lenders financed by money printing selling government bonds to the Federal Reserve so kind of the last arrow in their quiver it seems to me our Central Bank digital currencies and at that point all of your money is nothing but a digit on your cell phone or in your computer and at that point everything clearing through the Federal Reserve it means that they're in a position to debit or credit your account with your naughty or
nice uh to do anything at all they want uh it was bad enough just having paper currency instead of gold is money but paper currency itself is going to disappear so you're going to have zero privacy uh the powers of B will know absolutely everything that you buy or sell or own uh this is a catastrophe uh in many many ways it's going to end very very badly these people are overreached uh I'm not sure exactly how it's going to unfold but they're trying to implement it in almost every country in the world
and uh we'll see the degree to which the average well I guess the average consumer the average American the average citizen in the world doesn't have much Choice as to whether he accepts it or not because if you don't have gold and silver to use to buy gasoline or food and paper currency is disappeared and ATMs are going to disappear with them well if you want to do anything it has to be using your cell phone and the digital currency so you're going to be totally manipulated by the uh this is
it's really serious it's a disaster it's a catastrophe I hate to sound so gloomy uh Charlotte but the fact is is that Western Civilization which is the best thing that uh has ever evolved uh has been going downhill slowly starting at with about the time of World War One and The Descent has been accelerating so that at this point I'm not even so worried about the markets collapsing I mean they can put more money and prop them up here and there I'm really worried about civilization and the culture itself
collapsing which I think is obviously happening all around us so I just wanted to explain the reason for my bearishness On The World At Large which is one reason I don't like to watch the news so often it's it's nothing but you know listening to what politicians are doing what new things they're imposing on us what new stupidities are being you know minted on Washington and other major places like Brussels of Moscow Beijing uh it's horrible so um just wanted to explain why I have
a gloomy cast to uh the way I look at things at the moment although once again let me try to balance that by saying that I'm a Believer in the singularity this is Ray kurzweil's thing and at some point we'll reach it and uh the future will prove to be not only better than we imagine but better than we can imagine so let's say we're just going through a real tough patcher for the next decade or so I think that does help us understand your line of thinking and it's pretty interesting to me because usually when I
have these conversations with people for our YouTube channel we're talking about the immediate events people right now for example want to know what is the Fed going to do next what's going to happen with interest rates what's going to happen with inflation and the banks etc etc whereas you're really looking forward to the future and seeing where we could go so for the day-to-day are you essentially not looking at that very closely and focusing on the really long-term big picture well look
truth be told most of the reading I do book wise is ancient history which is completely you'd think it's completely irrelevant to what's going on daily in the markets but I am involved in the markets from day to day I trade Commodities uh not every day because it's not something I want to trade every day but I watch the price of soybeans and wheat and copper and 30-year bonds and all this type of thing so I'm involved in that way I'm very active uh in my specialty areas which
are resources primarily oil companies and mining companies I mean that's my area of specialty uh and I have opinions on all the different markets but uh you know I'm not one of these guys that in this over financialized world that we live in and the world is or financializes entirely too much attention and capital that's devoted to uh Securities and buying and selling as opposed to producing real wealth those are two different things um so yeah I'm I'm involved with all these
things on a daily basis and uh but I'm not one of I'm not a Trader you know I'm not Hello New York by hello Chicago bye hello Los Angeles Chicago and New York are buy and sell I don't go in for that type of thinking uh trying to second guess the next tick on one commodity or another I mean that's a Fool's game quite frankly in my opinion I think that that helps understand as well and over financialized is a great word to describe the world today I think that makes a lot of sense I wondered if
you could maybe talk a little bit more about your strategy right now because one thing that I see in our comments from people who are watching our videos people want to know what they should do what their money with right now in particular they want to know how they can protect themselves from the circumstances that are coming so if there's anything that you could share on that note yeah sure uh the main prediction that I want to make is we're going to see chaos Financial chaos and other types of chaos
the situation is going to get totally out of control and the economy and the markets are going to be going up and down like an elevator with a lunatic at the controls which I think is quite a good analogy it's accurate so that being the case what am I doing right now I'll tell you what I'm doing how I'm positioned and have been for some time um I've been long oil uh but especially medium-sized oil companies especially small Canadian companies many of which are yielding eight to ten percent in
current dividends uh and I think those Dividends are going up because I can build a case why oil even from its current level of about eighty dollars is going a lot higher uh I'm positioned in natural gas companies uh medium-sized ones once again uh same kind of dividend yields I like the ones especially in Alberta in Canada which is well it's not saying much but it's the prettiest province in Canada in Canada and there you they have those same kind of yields a natural gas as we speak is
probably the cheapest commodity out there you ought to pay attention to it because the 25-year low in natural gas was a dollar fifty that was reached about 25 years ago today it's trading at around 220. in real terms it's half the price of its previous all-time low so natural gas I think is an excellent place to be right now so that's another observation that I'll make so oil gas small companies that produce them uh and metals uh all the metals quite frankly are I think reasonably priced right now
uh gold is oh look it's if it's reinstituted as something resembling day-to-day money or if not that at least money for trading between government blocks I think it's got to go a lot higher so I think we're in a new bull market for gold oh it's going to from two to three thousand a year dollars in the next year or so that's my guess my bet but uh as important it is for you to own individual gold coins I'm talking about small coins like sovereigns and uh water Eagles and quarter Maple Leafs
that type of thing uh I think Speculator one of the best places to be is now cyclically smaller gold stocks which are very very cheap they're they're like all-time lows relative to the price of gold and at some point uh the public is going to pile into them and since they're not even small caps they're not even micro caps they're not even Nano caps some of these stocks are Pico caps uh they could be quite explosive in the past oh the whole Market of small gold stocks and you can include copper and uranium
but I'm a big boy on uranium as well and a number of other metals let's go on ten to one with individual stocks going to 100 to 1 and I've personally owned stocks that have gone a thousand to one not over a lifetime I'm talking about over over three years it's absolutely absurd how volatile these things are but now nobody's interested in them nobody owns them they're really cheap so uh that's where I am that's where I am I own a lot of real estate uh not all in the US oh in fact most is not in the
US because you got to diversify politically is your biggest danger today is political not Financial or economic uh it's political so you want to diversify internationally um okay that kind of sums it up I think that was a good a good sum up of what you're looking at I want to touch just a little bit more on what's going on with the gold price because you mentioned you see it as pretty reasonably priced right now we're at about I think 2020 per round it's the last time I checked might be a little
bit different that's close to an all-time high and normally you know investors are told don't buy at the top right so can you go into why it looks reasonably priced free at this level even though it's so high well I do agree that uh I hate buying things at their highs I I tend to be a bottom Fisher which is why I'm buying natural gas right now which is an all-time low I like that more uh and it's true that gold relative to the price of food and clothes and cars and houses it's kind of where quote unquote should
be but I'm buying gold because I think it's going to be reinstituted as money and uh they're going to be buying a lot and because people are going to be dumping dollars so where are you going to put your financial assets is the question anything can happen with the stock market which is still close enough to its all-time high or the bond market which is now going into a definite bear Trend but don't want to own bonds they're a triple threat to your Capital currency risk uh interest rate risk default risk now
bonser the kiss of financial death at this point uh stocks are still overpriced I can build an argument why the NASDAQ and the s p are still way too close to their highs uh not interested in them so where are you going to put your money in real estate well problem with real estate is it rests upon a borrowed money mortgages and uh that's a dangerous foundation so I own a lot of real estate but it's all for cash it's mostly Farmland outside of the US so it comes down to Gold where else are you
going to put your money unless you want to speculate in stocks which you just talked about stocks I like and stocks I don't like so uh yeah I agree all-time high don't like that but I think we're going to go to new all-time highs we'll see would you put money into silver as well would that be a place to to store money for you I would and I do because silver is um a much much smaller Market than gold and much more volatile than gold and unlike gold um most of the gold that's ever been
mined and we don't know but it's someplace in between six and seven billion ounces of gold are in existence someplace it's an inventory it's not used up silver is used up in industrial ways so that makes it more volatile much smaller Market uh no inventory is Big inventories to hit the market and uh there's a certain you know and it's been used as money most of it through most of History so yeah we could see silver explode upwards with gold I'm bullish on so I'm bullish
on Platinum too because it's mostly mined in South Africa and South Africa is collapsing as we speak oh it's horrible I have relatives that are South Africans and the stories actually beggar belief you don't care about them in the news very often there's 192 official countries in the world and in North America we don't get much news on any of them I think the world result revolves around us it doesn't I mean the US is only four percent of the world's population things are bad and getting much worse
and for good reasons they're getting much worse in South Africa so I'm bullish on Platinum because it's a little bit like silver it's like a yeah so feel a bit about silver and platinum all right I want to ask maybe a little bit of a fine question so earlier in this interview you mentioned the singularity and when I was getting ready for this interview I went back and watched some of our previous interviews from years ago you mentioned that also way back in 2019 and we're also talking
about AI you're telling us about how powerful it could be in helping to look at all the data that's out there in the world and definitely in 2023 we've seen AI really come to the Forefront here so I wanted to get your updated thoughts there and ask you if you see that as an investable Trend or is this something that's going to help us get through the rough patch that we're in and through to that brighter future yeah well AI has the potential the potential to be the uh current equivalent of gunpowder now
gunpowder is a wonderful thing in lots of ways the problem with gunpowder and I'll compare it to AI uh is that uh initially the powers of B controls gunpowder and used it to keep the peasants down but eventually the cat got out of the bag and when the average guy got gunpowder he could Dethrone the armored Knight on his horse which he couldn't easily do before I think it's going to be like that with AI so to start with the bad guys uh who at this point I hate to characterize some businesses as being bad guys but
places like Apple and Google and Facebook and all the rest of them oh and subtly totally captured by the walksters people have that view of reality that those people do so um it's going to be very dangerous to start with it's going to Aid uh the state to monitor everybody and predict what they're going to do and uh it's uh it could be very dangerous in the short run oh well of course in the long run like Kane said we're all dead but um in the long run it's a very very good thing because it's going to help
humans control and understand reality better so I think it's a fantastic thing a wonderful thing but in the short run again especially over the next decade it's a very dangerous thing because of who controls it and who uses it how do we benefit from it directly by investing oh you know I don't know how you're picking a winner with the AI race uh I I really don't so when it comes to I don't know how to capitalize on that Trend directly indirectly it's going to be absolutely wonderful for Humanity
it's gonna upset a lot of things a lot of people are going to become unemployed they're going to have redundant useless jobs but you know like IBM used to say uh uh machines should work people should think of course the problem is AI thinks better than most people and the Art of critical thinking has been pretty well lost uh at least in the U.S so uh maybe I can teach people to think critically again you know good reason not to watch mainstream television it's corrupting yeah yeah okay I think
that helps us understand where you're at with AI right now as we're finishing up I want to ask about the path forward so we've been talking about the far out future quite a bit what is the immediate future looking like for you when do we how long does it take us to get through this rough period that you see coming I mean you've spoken in the past about the greater depression would you still use that term as something that we're going to go through and how how does it look like for you as we move forward
hopefully getting through this well the greater depression term that I coined uh what we're going through now this depression which I Define several definitions we could use but the one I like best is it's a period of time when most people's standard of living drops significantly so we've entered upon that well some years ago quite frankly uh what's it going to look like well it's going to last longer and it's going to be much worse and much different than the unpleasantness of 1929 to 1946
so um I think in light of that what you have to do is learn how to speculate which is an art in itself very different from gambling different from investing so that's a different subject that's one thing uh I think they're wise to accumulate a lot of gold and silver coins in your own possession it's real wealth that you can put your hands on not just digital uh diversify internationally Farmland like at the moment I'm on a farm in Uruguay oh small farm by South American Standards only a thousand acres but it's
nice so uh I've got I've got cattle and pigs and chicken and a couple miles of river and ponds with fish stuff like that so I think that's a good idea having that makes me feel makes me feel good and I like being in the country I don't like being in the cities now I think the cities could become rather Wild and Woolly in the future and be like the BLM days of a couple of years ago during the heart of the covet hysteria on steroids so uh yeah I like the idea of being in a rural area with kind of rural oriented people
who are used to working with their hands and dealing with reality as opposed to digits they're so nice I think that we can wrap it up there unless you had any final thoughts that you would want to share with our investor audience no uh be sure you keep me honest Charlotte if you have me back on again uh bring me up to speed as to whether I was right or wrong more or less in this interview we'll check back on that thank you so much for being here it was really nice to talk to you again and hopefully we
will do it again soon once again I'm Charlotte McLeod with the investing East Network and this is Doug Casey [Music]
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