Episodes

Dan Ferris: Hello, and welcome to the Stansberry Investor Hour. I'm Dan Ferris. I'm the editor of Extreme Value and The Ferris Report, both published by Stansberry Research.

Corey McLaughlin: And I'm Corey McLaughlin, editor of the Stansberry Digest. Today, we'll talk with our colleague and Crypto Capital editor Eric Wade, who has a new book out.

Dan Ferris: And Corey and I will talk about debt spirals and death spirals and their effect on things like, oh GDP and economic growth.

Corey McLaughlin: And remember, if you want to ask us a question or tell us what's on your mind, please e-mail us at [email protected].

Dan Ferris: That and more, right now on the Stansberry Investor Hour.

OK, debt spiral and death spiral. We've got to get our spirals straight here. So I got onto this story from a Bloomberg article. I guess it came out Tuesday... and it's about Nassim Taleb. And Nassim Taleb, of course, works with Mark Spitznagel at a firm called Universa and Universa is a – I think you'd call it a tail hedging firm. Some people call it a Black Swan fund – but they prepare you for extreme events in the market, extreme crashes and things... and they make a lot of money when they happen. I think they made a billion dollars in 2008. They formed Universa in maybe 2007, and they saw what was coming, so they formed this fund. And they had a previous fund called Empirica, which they formed in 1999, OK? And they saw the dotcom thing coming and they made a boatload of money when that thing crashed.

So they had some sort of an event at Universa which is based in Miami and Taleb said that we're headed for a debt spiral, that the U.S. government is headed for a debt spiral. And he called it a debt spiral... meaning when you just keep borrowing, you borrow to pay off the borrowing because you've borrowed too much and it just gets out of control and becomes a spiral. Then, he said a debt spiral is a death spiral. Probably. I think the death he might have been referring to, which they didn't make clear in the article, maybe the death he was referring to is the currency because there's only one way to get out of that situation. That's to print a lot of money. At some point the printing begins, right? So that's why we're talking about debt spiral and death spiral.

And I was ready to leave this topic alone and not discuss it today. And it was in my Stansberry Digest, but then I saw another piece came out also from Bloomberg, and it's a transcript of a podcast in which they talked about the debt spiral and this time they were pointing out that the annual government interest payments on U.S. government debt will soon be larger than what we spend on national defense. It went over a trillion dollars in 2023 – just the interest on the national debt, which totals about $34 trillion and rising all the time. You can Google "debt clock" and you get that debt clock, and it's just moving. It's always moving, always rising.

But the guest on the podcast was Phillip Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Like, OK. And his quote was "It's a slow spiral, but it's still a spiral of rising debt and rising payments on the debt, the situation is unsustainable," he told the Bloomberg folks. So look Taleb is talking his book. Swagel? I mean is he even allowed to say stuff like this in public? It's concerning when the guys inside the government start saying it. Then it gets concerning.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, you have the government agency responsible for advising Congress on what to do or what the numbers will be when they pass bills and whatnot saying we're in a debt spiral... and the other people like Taleb who are talking out in public and more freely is calling it a death spiral. They're both true, right? It's happening. I mean it's been happening for a long time. When does it stop? I think this is why – you know, I'll bring up the Fed since they were just at this meeting last week. That's why they're talking about cutting rates in the second half of the year. The costs – they'll never say it – but the government costs are just so high. And that's not even talking about the situations of corporations that will need to refinance at higher rates along with that.

And then what's in the end, the solution is, or sorry, the outcome is either the currency gets weaker and there's more inflation. Like it's when I don't know what – you know, we're talking about the cost of just servicing your debt more than national defense, which is already enormous to begin with. So a person on the street would be like what is going on here, what is happening and, why do I have to pay taxes? That's why.

Dan Ferris: So I got a cool story that is basically – I'm glad you brought up the Fed. Really. Honestly I am glad, even though we hate that topic, right? I saw an interesting story that was posted by Rudy Havenstein, who that's not his real name team. He's an anonymous financial and political commentator on X, formally known as Twitter, of course... and he was listening to a podcast or he might have been a guest on it, too... but he posted a quote from one of the guests... and the basic idea was that the government is allowing migrants to stream across the border in record numbers knowing that it will have a depressing effect on wages. And the fellow was saying – I think he was a contractor who's in the homebuilding or apartment building business or something and he said, "We see this. Some of the crews that cost a lot less than they used to cost, the faces are changing constantly and they're always foreign faces who don't speak English and they're changing constantly. And they charge a lot less, so we don't hire the more expensive local people."

And he said what they're doing is they're letting this happen to depress wages, which is their way of fighting inflation because what does inflation mean? Well, inflation means that we need to raise interest rates some more. So to try to push rates down, they're letting people stream across the border. And he was very adamant and he says, "This is not a guess. I know for a fact that it's being done for this purpose, and it's happening, and it's going to continue to happen at least until November which I just – I mean I used to be the guy who said, oh these sound like conspiracy theories... but they keep coming true... so I don't say that anymore.

Corey McLaughlin: I was just going to say, I don't know if the Fed is letting it happen.

Dan Ferris: No, the government.

Corey McLaughlin: The government, OK. The government certainly is letting a lot of stuff happen at the border, and I think the effect is definitely depressing on wages and totally affects the labor market, like of course.

Dan Ferris: I didn't mean to suggest that the Fed is behind this. The Fed, of course, is in charge of interest rates, etc., and reacts to inflation by raising interest rates and reacts to whatever the opposite of inflation is, you want to call it disinflation, by cutting them. But the government, those people are responsible. They're held responsible allegedly by voters for the economy and certainly for bringing in enough money to pay off the government debt. So yeah, we live in interesting times.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, it's a mess. It really is.

Dan Ferris: But Corey, I got other things about this. Like, for example, hasn't this been the case, like haven't we had too much debt forever. Like the U.S. government, according to this Bloomberg transcript, it's been since like 1835. That was the last time the U.S. government was debt free. And we piled up debt. We went to World War II, but we came back. The economy boomed, took care of it and here we are, like we've been over – like the amount of U.S. government debt has been greater than GDP since 2014.

Corey McLaughlin: Yes.

Dan Ferris: And so far so kind of good, I guess, right, I mean.

Corey McLaughlin: I mean I don't know. So I don't know. I mean you're right, yes. We've been here. The U.S. has been here for a long time, but not in the rate of change which I would like to look at. Like I'm looking at so federal surplus or deficit as a percent of GDP. So what's happening each year, annually and for the longest time since after World War II and all the way through about the 1980s, it was an averaging a deficit just about negative 1%, negative 2%, negative 3% of GDP. Today we're at -6 and have been under 5 since 2019.

And yeah, there's been spikes of deficit during recessionary times when the money printer goes whirling. But the general trend of the deficits are becoming a bigger portion of productivity, too... and so I think that is an issue. And a lot of it is government spending to – if you look at the GDP numbers too, a lot of that can be attributed in one way or another to government policies, government spending and so any positive growth in it.

So I don't know, it's like, again the currency gets the short end, which means the wages for real people and it gets tougher every time a dollar is printed. Every time a new dollar is printed, it makes life harder for a lot of just ordinary Americans. So at what price – is it worth it? I don't know, like to what end are we heading? It's an age old question, right? These are not new questions, but I think the concerning part is like the percentage of reliance on the deficit seems to be going up.

Dan Ferris: Right, the degree to which we rely on deficit spending, yeah. Yeah, the thing with all of this is that over time you become kind of inured to it because the same people look at this and say, "Hey, that's – like the guy from the Budget Office, from the CBO, says it's a slow spiral," but it's a spiral and so you just kind of slough it. Yeah the debt's been going up forever. It's just been going up and up forever. It's been over GDP for a decade. It's just another thing that happens. And I think this would fall into the category of an inevitable bad outcome, but not imminent or maybe imminent. We don't even know that much.

You never know what is the trigger for the next big issue in financial markets or in the economy, even though you see this stuff coming a mile away. And yet stocks make new highs, at least some companies, some of the Mag Seven companies anyway are putting in great earnings reports. Meta rose 20% on Friday. It's just like –

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: – life seems to go on. Life seems to go on. I mean –

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah. Well that's why debt exists. That's why it's here. Like because of course it can work in the short term. And it has. And so maybe it's much ado about nothing. Maybe the debt clock can run up to however many digits possible and we'll all be fine, but it doesn't sit right, does it? Right? I mean –

Dan Ferris: I guess –

Corey McLaughlin: – yeah, it erodes just a lot of the value of productivity, I think. I mean it's just – and there's so many different –

Dan Ferris: It seems to, yeah.

Corey McLaughlin: – tools. Yeah, it seems to. There's tools and all these different mechanisms connected to debt in America, and it's never-ending and it's hard for a lot of people to understand why.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, yeah, that's true. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment... he's been talking for years about you add – I forget when he started talking about or when the threshold was reached. I mean, he's 81. He's been around forever, and he's been brilliant forever too. And he says the utility of the next dollar of debt, it just goes down and down and down once you hit a certain point. And apparently we've been at that point for some time. Yeah, I don't know. This is one of those things. It's like I feel like you have to know about it... but most of the time you're looking at it and saying, well what do I do? And you know, it's kind of like, well, I mean I haven't changed my 401(k) in three years or whatever. Do I need to change it now? Well, probably not.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean you can try to fight the system, but it's a big system. I mean you can –

Dan Ferris: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk over you, Corey, but I do have a point to make here, which is that like the productivity issue which you bring up is interesting because some people point to 1971 and say, see labor became less productive starting then, which of course that was the last vestiges of the gold standard when Nixon cut the tie between gold and the U.S. dollar. And you'd think that would be a really big deal, and it kind of was. Well, it certainly was... but the country survived... and economic growth continued. I'm not saying it was the same for everybody, but here we are. Like it wasn't the end of the world. It was the end of something, and there are a lot of theories about what it was the end of, but the end of sound money certainly was not the end of the world.

And I keep thinking to myself all of these problems, they don't seem to hurt us as badly as you think they're going to and I think that speaks to the strength of the U.S. economy because it was a genuinely, mostly overwhelmingly free economy for a long time during a period of great innovation. And I just think that that force is so powerful that it's like civil war, OK, fine... seizing all the gold in 1933, fine, whatever... cut the ties to gold in 1979, fine, fine... and all of these things, you know... even things like the Patriot Act and all the government incursions into our lives, fine, fine, fine.

And we're still here and we still have one of the greatest economies that's ever existed and probably the greatest one that's ever existed in history on a scale this large certainly. And I'm gobsmacked by that. No wonder experienced, knowledgeable people – and I was just thinking of our colleague, Whitney Tilson, who called that Meta Platforms trade a while ago. He says he's a "make-money investor." So these other things, they tend to bother him a lot less. He spends a lot less time worrying about them... and he spoke about it when he was on the, on the show, yeah, and it makes sense.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah. And you say worry from the top down, invest from the bottom up, right?

Dan Ferris: Right, yep.

Corey McLaughlin: Yes, this debt –

Dan Ferris: Cheers to that.

Corey McLaughlin: This debt problem seems like a huge glob of a mess, right? Like all the garbage, those garbage chunks that were coming out under New York City like years ago. They were backing everything up. That's what I think of the debt as like. But, yeah, in the meantime the system is what it is. You can fight against it or you can kind of try to learn it and understand it and where the real risks to your money are and your investments. I mean, that's, I think, where you want to think and where the advantages are, too, from it.

You know, like the government spending on defense is not going anywhere anytime soon. So if things are going to get cut from a budget, it's going to be somewhere else... and we'll see what the political situation comes to this year and whoever gets in power, what their thoughts are on the budget. If it's the current administration, nothing's going to change. If a new one comes in, you might see some changes on the margin here and there.

But yeah, I know the debt's a huge issue that seems – it's difficult for a lot of people to understand... but yeah, your point about, like, in the meantime, yeah, you can only live your life right now. We can't worry about somebody else's debt for forever. I mean, I would just try not to worry about my own debt and handle my own business.

Dan Ferris: That's right, yeah. It's interesting worry top down and invest bottom up and kind of keep your eye on the horizon maybe we should add to that little bit of advice.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: So, yeah, all right we could talk about this a long time, mostly because this situation's not going to change for a long, long time.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: And hasn't changed in a long time so.

Corey McLaughlin: Intractable is the word of the day here. Like, it's just –

Dan Ferris: There we go.

Corey McLaughlin: It doesn't move. It doesn't change.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, well, it changes... but I get what you're saying, yeah.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, yeah.

Corey McLaughlin: It's a one way change. The direction of change doesn't change. All right. Let's put a lid on this for now. I'm sure we'll get back to it soon and let's talk with our guest, our very good friend and colleague, Eric Wade. He's our crypto guy but he's so much more than that. He's a very knowledgeable fellow, very successful investor. He's been around the block a few times. He's got almost as much gray hair as I do. And let's talk with Eric Wade. Let's do it right now.

Dan Ferris: Nvidia may be America's top-performing stock after more than doubling this year alone, but if you're holding Nvidia or thinking of buying it to get a stake in the $7 trillion AI market, you're going to want to see Marc Chaikin's new AI prediction first. Marc is a regular on many major news outlets from Fox Business to CNBC and he built the stock indicator Wall Street uses to find winning stocks. His award-winning system flashed buy on Tesla before it climbed 335%, Moderna before it climbed 300%, and Riot Blockchain before it climbed 10,090%. It also found Nvidia at the start of 2023 before its massive bull run.

But right now, Marc is stepping forward to warn people to stay away from Nvidia. "My system has indicated that Nvidia is no longer the best stock to buy to profit from AI," Marc says. In fact, it just flashed buy on a totally different AI stock. Today, he'd like to hand you the name and ticker symbol of his No. 1 AI stock to buy right now. For a limited time, you can get this information for free at AIFrenzyReport.com. Again, that's AIFrenzyReport.com for a free copy of his new report.

Eric, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to see you again.

Eric Wade: Thank you. Always a pleasure to be here, and our conversations always – it's just always fun for me to talk to you and listen to you talk to other people. But yeah, it's even more fun to be here in the pilot seat.

Dan Ferris: All right. So we have a couple of orders of business today and the first one of course is like, you're like our crypto guy, you're my crypto guy, you're Stansberry's crypto guy. So when we have you on the show, even though we're going to talk about some other things, we've got to talk crypto because I think people explain like Eric Wade, tune in, they got their notepads ready and they're taking notes. So I know, I'm curious. I feel like we haven't talked to you about crypto in a while... and I just feel like asking, what's up, what's going on, and is there anything I should buy or sell or panic about?

Eric Wade: OK, that's fair. And it has been a while. We've been busy. While we haven't been talking to you, we've been busy... and there's a lot going on with crypto. But one of the things that I'm watching for this year – and there's a lot of narratives big, big picture conversations that people are thinking about. Obviously we just got American investors approved for bitcoin spot ETFs... and that's exciting because it means people can buy bitcoin performance. They don't hold the bitcoin. Is it?

Everybody who's listening to this I know knows that if you buy an ETF, you own shares of an ETF, you don't own the underlying – they do, right – gold commodities, anything. So buyer beware. But it does mean we, the industry, gets not only new customers, folks that don't want to self-custody their bitcoin any more than they wanted to self-custody some gold or to be their own property managers for a rental property or something, right? We've got that new class of investors, but we also get a new class of advocates BlackRock, Fidelity, etc. They're advocating for the investment... and that brings about its own kind of price discovery, right?

I feel like the cottage industry of Elizabeth Warren and her accolades saying that bitcoin is terrible and it should be out of business, how can that survive versus Larry Fink and Abigail Johnson saying, no, we've got billions of dollars flowing into this. So that's a narrative. Then we have the bitcoin halving coming up this year, which is programmed in to reduce the amount of new bitcoin flowing into the market, right, as we have new bitcoin buyers flowing into the market. So that's going to be kind of exciting because if there's less new supply but there's potentially new buyers, that could be a recipe for positivity, price rising rally.

And I know AI was the story of the year last year, AI stocks, meme stocks, etc... but it hasn't run its course yet in crypto because AI, if you want to hire your AI to do something for you, it's turning out the AI likes to spend crypto as a solution, right? I can program in whatever AI I'm trying to have do things for me, if it needs to pay someone to do a job or pay another AI to do a job, right, because we're turning the corner from AI being a great idea, but what do I do with it to being more autonomous and do things for me. That 2024 is going to be a quiet year of the AI's doing more and more things in the background and using crypto as currency because an AI having a bank account sounds kind of silly, but an AI having a bitcoin wallet sounds less silly.

So those are kind of the three big pictures that we're thinking about as could be the drivers for 2024. And then of course the industry itself loves innovation. We love anything that's good. We want to make it better. If it's fast, we want to make it faster. If it's cheap, we want to make it cheaper. We're seeing a split. Going back to that we have a new class of advocates, we're seeing a split, that there's more and more cryptos built that solve corporate problems.

So that's another big catalyst for this year is corporations that are saying I don't just want to buy some bitcoin and hold it, but I do think I can run a piece of my business on blockchain if it has these A, B, and C characteristics. So that's another growth area for 2024. And of course the Stansberry take on cryptos all the time is of course we want to make money off of this, but can I find a cryptocurrency or blockchain that in some way solves a real world problem and real human beings are going to use? Because then I can sort of judge it, right? If I know the problem you're solving and the market you're addressing, it may be a little easier to find that that magic project product market fit. So yeah. OK.

Long, long answer for a short question, but I feel like 2024 is going to be pretty exciting. We've got a great foundation and we're still looking to the stars. We're looking to move some crypto projects and the Stansberry take on it is more and more so we're finding cryptos that solve real world problems that improve upon where we've maybe maxed out what a computer and a website can do and we can take it a step further at things to blockchain. We're pretty excited about that.

Dan Ferris: All right. I mean that sounds exciting. It sounds exciting to me when you talk about AI wanting to pay for things, because I was just, as you were speaking, I was saying, well, it would certainly make sense that it would be a lot more difficult to program access to a bank account whether this trusted third-party-type institution then to simply give it access to your very own crypto. Is that the point?

Eric Wade: Yeah, that's, that's the point. The pragmatic part of, well, I can just program that in and it gets back to a little bit of the ethos of blockchain to start off with is immutable and you can't stop me, etc., in the way that – I don't know what Bank of America would do if they found out that one of their customers was an AI. Would they rewrite their TOC or would they close the account? Right. So bitcoin won't close the account if it finds out. I mean let's say half-jokingly, if I hired an AI, if I told an AI I know I'm going to Baltimore in a few months for something, just sit here and look for the best flight or something and then buy it for me, right? It could be something that simple, but let's say the AI ran into a point where it needed to click on a box to prove it was not a robot. Well, it is the robot, right?

Dan Ferris: Yeah.

Eric Wade: So thinking somewhat humorously, could the AI go to Fiverr and hire someone to click boxes saying it's not a robot for it? Well, how do you pay someone on a Fiverr, right? And I know we're laughing about it, but AI is going to have its own interaction limitations and banking limitations... and crypto blows through all of that. And hey, maybe 2025 Elizabeth Warren is going to be up ranting about how, oh my goodness, AI's clicking boxes for us and we've got to stop it. I don't know, but we're not slowing down to worry about that. We're trying to build out what can we help humanity advance and maybe get back some of our sovereignty and maybe get back some of our privacy and independence thanks to a completely different wave of technology that would deeply. Yeah, that went deep.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, that went deep. What else you got? We do have a huge topic to move on to but I just want to make sure you sort of cover the waterfront here and it sounds like in big picture you sort of have.

Corey McLaughlin: And so I'm going to flip a little bit if you give me a second to talk about two tokens that we like, cryptos that we like what they're doing, not entirely related to AI, so it's going to seem like I'm shifting gears here. I am but it's more like right up my alley are these two that I think could really benefit in 2024 and 2025. The first one that I want to introduce people to it's called GET, G-E-T. It's job, to tell it quickly, its job is to try to be better than Ticketmaster at the ticket experience for live events. So if you're going to go see a concert or festival –

Dan Ferris: That shouldn't be hard.

Eric Wade: Right, it shouldn't, right. And it's a huge market, and people hate Ticketmaster and even Ticketmaster didn't please Taylor Swift, which you think everybody would work their butts off to please Taylor Swift. But yeah, so GET is in the business of trying to make that experience better, not just for the fans but also for the venues and also for the promoters and also for the artists. And then it uses that technology to better the experience long after it's happened with memorabilia and collectibles and stuff like that and that the technology that drives it is all on blockchain.

But what I like about what these guys are doing is you don't have to care about blockchain or even like blockchain for this to work. I mean if you have a phone and you want to go to a concert, you can use their app and beep the ticket, just like we're used to doing now – everything is digital now – without having to worry about the blockchain. The blockchain part has been kind of hidden behind it. So I think they have a good future for that and they're addressing a huge industry.

And then the second one I wanted to bring up, if I can kind of kind of nutshell this down into it's almost like an opportunity to be with like a Fidelity or a JPMorgan. Like if you wanted to do something with stocks but not own a stock itself maybe somebody who deals with investing in stocks, there's one called DEXTools. DEXT is the symbol, and their job is to make decentralized exchange investing using the power of blockchain to make it better, so that someone who's used to trading in Fidelity and researching, looking at charts, etc. to bring that kind of experience to decentralized token trading. So it's called DEXTools, DEXT and they're just making it better for real investors to gather up all the information they need on a token. They address multiple chains. They have all kinds of great, like I said, research and charting tools... and they run it like a real business where they actually have advertisers that pay for it. So it's maybe you don't like advertising, but ad-supported businesses and service-supported businesses in a way like a picks and shovels or providing services where they charge people or charge products to be listed on there, etc. So it's a solid business and it means you don't have to necessarily pick the next winner. If you're picking the organization that services the industry, you don't have to know who's going to win the next technology race. If you say, well, no matter who wins, cryptos like DEXTools are going to do well.

So those are the two that I wanted to make sure I got out in front of people so that when they tune in they think, OK, I heard something I haven't heard before, maybe something they can take action on. Now, obviously all investing is the individual within your own risk tolerance... and when we talk about buying cryptos, we talk about buying a very, very small amount, especially if you haven't done it before. Start with a very small amount – an amount that you're willing to lose if you do it wrong – and build from there.

Dan Ferris: All right. Well thank you for that and I'm sure you've satisfied people's desire to hear what they are used to hearing about from you, but now we have a big job. We are here to talk about your new book called America vs. Americans, by yourself and Phil Herel, subtitled "How Capitalism Has Failed a Capitalist Nation and What We Can Do About It." Big topic. Like if you told me you were writing a book, I would not have guessed anything like this, but I actually I haven't read it. You just sent it to me recently and I admit having not gotten to more than like, there's like an intro and then another little section then chapter one. So I got into that, and I guess what I really want to hear is – the fact that I haven't read it I think is kind of meaningless because –

Corey McLaughlin: Well because it's just coming out, Dan, so, yeah, it's perfect.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, right, yeah, we just got it.

Eric Wade: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: I want to hear you tell me about this idea you have of not American capitalism but something you call American laborism. I want to hear about that.

Eric Wade: OK. So, and for your listeners, little bit of backstory is Dan hasn't read the book, but he's sure participated in some intellectual debates about some of the subject matter in it. Because the first time I brought it up cold in front of Dan, I was glad he wasn't armed because he immediately made me defend my positions intellectually. Let's put it that way. And if you can imagine being on the – if you can imagine being on the other side of an intellectual debate with Dan, and it's something that you're trying to get a new idea out, you put me through my paces.

So the general idea of American laborism is – and I may jump back and forth through time with this – but the general idea is we wanted to create an economic system. It's not politics now. Economics and politics in America are so intertwined because our government is our largest piece of our business and our government runs our health care and they're the big – right? So government economics and politics are a lot closer together than they should be, but we wanted to write an economics book, and the basic idea being that what if we created an economic system that respected labor in the way that capitalism respects capital? So that's the foundation was, is there something we can do better?

And for everybody who's listening out there, I'm a capitalist and I've done well under capitalism. Capitalism literally is what brought me and my family out of living in the bottom slice of America's economy. So I don't knock capitalism, but I think I can improve it. And now I'm going to jump back in time just a touch in that a lot of people don't give a lot of thought to the notion that capitalism replaced something, right? We're steeped, especially in America, we're steeped in capitalism... and we all know that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system ever, right? That's a fact. And the other choices that are out there, capitalism blows them away. Right? Would you rather have capitalism imperfect or any of the other ones? Of course, we take capitalism all day, every day.

But a lot of people don't even think about the fact that, well, if we weren't always capitalists, what was before that? In the Western world, mostly practiced what was called mercantilism before capitalism. And mercantilism, in a very short nutshell, and any economic historians out there, you're going to have to just bite your tongue on this one and forgive me, I'm trying to get the word out as quickly as possible.

But mercantilism believed more that there was a set amount of resources out there and trading these resources around was more what the business of the world would be and it had almost no respect for labor whatsoever. It actually brought about a very dark period in our humanities history with colonialism and exploiting resources. Because if you believe that there's a set amount of resources out there and you find some and you do whatever it takes to get those back to your shores, it makes sense, right? It's dark and dirty and it made us mistreat human beings and labor dramatically. That was the beginning. We had slavery before we had capitalism.

So Adam Smith comes out – a Scotsman – and says what'd be pretty cool would be if we did something different, and I'm going to paraphrase Wealth of Nations into about 15 seconds. A lot of people don't remember that capitalism took over slowly but surely. Capitalism was pretty much born in 1776 when America was born, and we didn't start out capitalists. But the cool thing about capitalism was Adam Smith believed, and this is contrary to what most people think about dirty capitalists or whatever, Adam Smith believed labor should be treated better and it should earn more, that labor should earn more. One of his solutions, one of his ideas for it was, well, why don't we move into cities where we can partake in the industrial revolution? Capitalism and the industrial revolution are Siamese twins that were born together and grew up together, and one helped the other.

And so when I mention that, not to put your audience to sleep, but because when I say I think I can improve on that, I don't want people to think, well that's a ludicrous, never been done before scenario. Right? Like would you like to go back to mercantilism? No, you wouldn't, right?

Dan Ferris: Yeah, I have to interrupt you because the primary feature of mercantilism was government interference. It was protectionism, right?

Eric Wade: Right.

Dan Ferris: And it was nationalism. That's the primary feature.

Eric Wade: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: So in other words, the same – like there's nothing wrong with capitalism. Capitalism has failed no one. Government intervention into it has failed everyone. Mercantilism was just the belief that we generate wealth with trade, but they attached this government interference into it... and that, of course, is a terrible idea. So these systems like – frankly, I want to hear less about what you don't like about these other things. I want to hear what laborism is. I want to know what it is. Not necessarily why other things are bad... and I'm like I can't tell you how much I'm chomping at the bit on that. I'm like –

Eric Wade: OK, fair point.

Dan Ferris: It just sounds cool and different and new. I just want to know.

Eric Wade: So laborism, one of the things we're doing is we want to take people who need help and educate them to a point where they don't. And I don't think even a capitalist would argue with that right? If you were in America, right now –

Dan Ferris: Where would they stand in the way of it? That's right.

Eric Wade: – one of the wealthiest countries of all time – right. So if you need help, I propose we educate you until a point where you maybe don't need help anymore. OK? So that's one of our tenets of it. And why would I come up with that as a solution? Well, because I also believe labor, like Adam Smith – we actually dedicated the book to Adam Smith – I believe labor that earns more is good for us. And you say capitalism's best, takes care of everybody, nobody has failed because of capitalism. I would disagree with that and advisedly, I know disagreeing with –

Dan Ferris: It is specifically as capitalism has failed no one. Government interference into capitalism has failed everyone.

Eric Wade: And as much as I hate the government, I'm going to still go ahead and disagree with that, because if you're born with no capital and you want to be a capitalist, what's the advice of – the advice isn't go get some capital. It's usually, well, work hard and amass some capital, right? So in our book we're making the contention that if one of the answers to so you want to be a capitalist and you have no capital, if the answer to that is, well, go convert some of your labor into capital, then that makes us believe that maybe labor should be the bottom layer, maybe labor should be the foundation.

And we believe if you have capital, you'd probably love American laborism because we're going to stay out of your way. We're going to reduce your taxes, and we're going to make the dollar a sound investment again with actual asset-backed American dollar. It's not the capitalists that we're worried about. It's the involuntarily poverty-stricken people who have no capital and want to participate in capitalism. Yes, I understand. There's always the idea that you could become a sports star, you could become a singing star, you could invent something. I understand that there are on ramps to becoming a success in America that don't necessarily require capital. Maybe they require innovation or talent or something else, or I did that. I'm not saying we need to shut down capitalism.

I'm saying we need to upgrade it to where we now have an answer for the 30 to 40 million people living in America that are involuntarily poor. And I'm not just talking about the homeless people. I'm talking about people that are living at the bottom that think I can't be a manager at work because I don't have the right certifications or I didn't ever finish my associate's degree or, hey, I don't even speak the same language as everybody else, right? There's so many examples of giving someone some education, training – and don't just think in terms of college either. We're not limiting this to free college for everyone. What we're thinking is if someone wants to pursue better, then let's start with education.

Dan Ferris: How are they prevented from doing so now though? I don't understand?

Eric Wade: Well –

Dan Ferris: Is it illegal, is it illegal to learn English? I don't know.

Eric Wade: No, no, it's not, but I'm saying I want to make it free. I want to make it on a federal level –

Dan Ferris: Nothing is free. Nothing is free.

Eric Wade: Yes, And OK, it's –

Dan Ferris: Everything costs money.

Eric Wade: And I agree with that except in our dream world of American laborism, the price you pay would be some of your time and sharing some of your labor. So we've very closely intertwined education and labor. That I'll give you free – if you waved a magic wand and made me the emperor of the American laborism America tomorrow, I would say I'll give you free, unlimited education for life, but the price you pay is you're going to contribute a day of work every week. That's how you pay for it. That's your tuition is a day of work. And that day of work goes toward helping other people that are also anywhere in the community. But think of it like an internship at a university or helping around the other people that need, that are trying to come up.

So the price we ask for people is to not just go out and pay for college or pay for schooling. It's you pay for it with some of your time, and we've set this flywheel in motion. That if you need some education and I'm asking you for some labor to get that education, then every day you consume education, your labor becomes worth a little bit more. At least we expect that to be the case, right? That it could be as simple as getting a certification or as simple as learning a new language or something like that? Well, that's not simple... but I mean it's something as easy to define... or it could be I want to learn bookkeeping or I want to learn a trade or something like that... but your labor becomes worth more and more and more.

So to us, that is the off-ramp from poverty or the on-ramp to capitalism is that your labor becomes more. And because we're not restricting people's access to this, imagine you take me up on this and you become a wonderful student and you start learning like crazy, and then you find that your labor is worth $100,000 a year or $200,000 a year. Fantastic benefit, right? We've now brought you up out of poverty by teaching you something and the idea that the only price you have to pay for it is some of your time means that we can now make this whole system self-sustaining and I think that's one of the big goals because I'm aiming for it. I want a hard dollar that is asset-backed. We can't have that now, right, because our social programs cost more than we're willing to – right? We're going into debt and we're printing more dollars to pay for the things that we vote for ourselves.

Dan Ferris: And they don't work either.

Eric Wade: But if I had no worse sustaining system – and they don't – well, if they did work we wouldn't have 30 to 40 million people living in poverty in America, right? We're spending trillions of dollars and we've been doing it since the '50s, '60s, '70s, and we still have poor people in America. So I have an answer for that and they all weave together with I could give us a hard dollar that's backed by assets. I can give us eliminate poverty. I can lower taxes and stay out of capitalists' way. If you want to stay being a capitalist.

So one of the prices that society pays for this, again in the scenario where you wave a magic wand, you put me in charge, is that we will have a lot less government because our government spends money phenomenally well. They spend tons of money, so much so they can't even track it. And that's one of the things that I got more excited by blockchain is that, wait, we could convince the government to run all of their expenses on blockchain and then we can track it all.

So why aren't we doing that now, right? If people take one thing away from this book, you may disagree with me on everything other than why wouldn't the government be able to track it? We've passed laws saying that our government needs to be able to track all their expenditures and we still can't and don't and we still have black budgets and – right? So, boy, did I go off a rabbit hole on that one?

Dan Ferris: No. It sounds like to me the essential ingredients here are hard money and smaller government, and that would solve a lot of these problems. I mean people can't accumulate capital because their money isn't worth anything... but if you have hard currency backed by something like gold, you can accumulate it and people do it all the time. I mean, people still accumulate capital... but it makes it a lot harder when the store of value is constantly falling and they don't have as much of it as other people, right?

Eric Wade: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: So if you, if you're starting out like these folks, you're saying, well I saw something on Twitter today that was a young woman who has a full-time job and she's not asking for a handout, but she was just at the end of her rope because she's got a household to take care of and it costs $1,600 a month in rent and she makes a little more than $2,000 a month. And obviously, she needs to do something.

Eric Wade: Yeah, and she's not doing anything wrong.

Dan Ferris: Right. She's not doing anything wrong and we don't really know what she's doing, we just know those data points. But I sort of, I thought, well, who hasn't been here unless you're born into something more? I certainly felt that way quite often when I was even paying as little as $400 a month rent for a place that had no air conditioning in Baltimore in August, the windows did not open in Baltimore in August.

Eric Wade: Wow.

Dan Ferris: And the carpet was really just a thin layer of industrial carpet glued to the cement floor, and it was really like a trickle of water pressure. I was like coming up to that place every day was no fun, so I get it. But I think the world you're describing of smaller government and hard currency is of course you're singing my song, Eric. You know that.

Eric Wade: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: But I wonder is the necessity of these other layers. I mean if we had harder currency, which by the way would also close up the wealth inequality, which is caused not by capitalism at all. In fact, capitalism accounts for great social mobility, as you yourself described and as I've witnessed in my own life. But what causes that inequality is the interference mostly of the central bank, right, and mostly the way the currency has been managed and their priorities to take care of an elite group of bankers, right, before they take care of anybody else. That's going to cause a little bit of inequality, and which it gets wider and wider all the time for that reason.

 

I guess I'm loving the ingredients. You're making a dish that's just – I'm saying, boy, something smells good in the kitchen. I just don't understand everything that's in there. So for example –

Eric Wade: Most Americans –

Dan Ferris: Go ahead.

Eric Wade: No, I was just going to say most Americans don't even think about the fact that the country was born and existed to 140-some-odd years without a central bank. And the central bank was created supposedly so we could smooth out the boom-bust cycle of a boom-bust country, right? We're boom-bust people... and when we see something we like, we maximize it until it's unsustainable. So we bring in this central bank, this middleman for just about everything and then say, but you're managing Americans, right? That Americans are going to boom bust. We're going to maximize. We're going to take it to its extreme every time until it's unsustainable and then we pay our dues and we rebuild.

So bringing in a central bank, it's a false expectation I think to be able to strap Americans to that. I mean it would work great with – a central bank would work great with a computer network that only wanted to do the same amount of work every day or something. Well, Americans aren't like that. Americans want to rise up. Americans want to succeed. We want to find something great like a Stanley mug, and then everybody has a Stanley mug and then poor Stanley is, oh my goodness, I need to make 18 million mugs and then the next month they stop selling. So, right, we're boom-bust people with a bank that was supposedly chartered to tamp the boom bust. So I know you probably have more, but can I take the luxury of turning back on you and ask you a question?

Dan Ferris: The floor is yours.

Eric Wade: So we all want hard money. We all want a smaller government... but if you ever bring that up to people, have you ever had someone then challenge you back with the, well, what about blank program, right? Well, what about who's going to support the arts? Who's going to pay for the such-and-suches, right? That's what they always come up with, they, whoever it is that wants the bigger government, in any discussion, anybody who ever – because agree or disagree, Americans always – I mean, we're buffet culture, right? We always want more than we paid for.

I think that's in our DNA... and I think we've talked ourselves into believing – maybe I'm wrong, agree, disagree, challenge me, tell me I'm wrong – I think we've somehow tricked ourselves into believing that if we pay $2 trillion in taxes and get $4 trillion in services that we're getting more than we pay for. And that's where our deficits and that's where our soft money comes from.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, in the way we think – I would couch that purely in the way we think about government, but it's – I don't even know if that matters now that you bring it up. But you're right. We have this idea that we can get more now. We pull all our spending forward in the form of debts and deficits and we vote. You know, people vote. Those who vote. I can't speak for personal experience on that one, but those who vote, vote for more stuff now. They don't vote for a lot less government. They won't vote. The only person I could vote for would be Vivek Ramaswamy because he's the one who said he's going to take a Javier Milei chainsaw to the U.S. government.

Eric Wade: That was pretty exciting to hear him talk about cutting 75% of the staff, wasn't it? That was pretty exciting.

Dan Ferris: Oh god.

Eric Wade: Yeah.

Dan Ferris: I just indulged that moment and just let it wash over me instead of shaking my head. It was wonderful.

Eric Wade: Yeah, Vivek, if you're listening now, you might want to pick up my book because I think there's – I'm not saying we agree on everything, but when he was on the campaign trail talking about reducing the size of government like that, I was like, can you wait to say that until February 6th so my book is out because we're going to reduce the size of government. If I get that magic wand and get put in charge and I don't want to be in charge, I want somebody smarter and better than me to be in charge.

Dan Ferris: I'll tell you what I want. I want no one in charge, which is the better, which history has proven as the far superior alternative. Capitalism is with no one in charge except in charge should mean courts of law, this bare minimum utility functions at most.

Eric Wade: Sure. And our proposal is just to take over the executive branch just of the United States federal government. So states that want to California or Connecticut, their people to death, go ahead. Vote with your feet. Right, we'll go back to the American experiment. But yeah, executive branch, federal government. Of course there still has to be justice. Of course, there still has to be law enforcement, but does there have to be 85 quintillion pages of the federal code? Does the federal government have – does our federal government have to be the largest employer? Does it? Do we really need that? Does anybody think that that's what's helping? If every single thing else in America was perfect, I would say now, that's the winning formula, right? But you can't both say there's 30 to 40 million people living in poverty and the federal government is doing its job, and that's where we come for.

So you said something I love. I love the analogy of it smells good. What are you cooking? Smells great. And part of how we answer the American tendency for I want $4 trillion worth of services and only pay $2 trillion in taxes, part of how we answer that is by saying, you know what, your benefits should be tied to education, so that you eventually – I hope you like the sound of the way this rings – is that by tying someone's benefits to education, you're investing in them, right?

Because there's people living in America that have been on programs their entire lives or on and off them, right? There's people that are older and have been in and out of the system, etc... and you have to wonder did they make progress. And if we had said every time you come to pick up your check or that I load your debit card nowadays because it's all digital. if there was a class attached to that, then there could be no argument that you've made some progress.

Imagine being on America's system for 50 years and having to take a class to get that, right? Fair is fair. I know people will push back on it. The Progressives will probably say I want benefits with nothing attached to it. I'm not trying to besmirch Progressives as if they all think together, but that's an argument that comes up a lot is I don't want to have to work to get welfare, for example, etc. And I'm willing to take that battle on. So that's another smell that I think people who like the things I'm saying about low taxes, hard dollar, small government might like and say, you know what? That does make sense that rather than just give someone enough money to get some food – because we all agree, all Americans hate seeing people starving... but rather than I just hand you that money, how about I say here's some money and a book, here's some money and a quiz, here's some money and a lesson, etc. Right?

Like if we could tie these together and make the 50, 60, 70 years we've been paying benefits to people in this great social experiment of having a safety net in America because safety nets used to be community and church and then we federalized safety nets and suddenly we now have the least educated populace in American history, and we have people that are – we also have some of our citizens that resent other citizens for asking for and getting help and we can fix that, right? If we said, well, they're not just asking for and getting help, they're taking classes and bettering themselves and providing some of their labor for it.

So it's a big concept and there's a lot more to it than I can just threw out into one quick conversation, but the idea is capitalism's fine for those who have capital. Works great. But if you're in that lower section that you want to start coming up, what if I invested in you, rather than just handed you some money? What if I invested in your education? What if I saw you as a long-term investor? Me, the federal government, what if I saw you as a long-term investment? Then I could then say I can get myself back onto a budget because I'm not just handing out money. I could balance my budget. I could maybe reduce their taxes. And so that's what the book is trying to tackle, is you can't just take one of these, right? And you're one of the smartest guys I know and if I gave you the power to put us onto a hard currency tomorrow, could you?

Dan Ferris: No, that's not the way it works. What you do is you take away the government's ability to ram a fiat currency down our throats, then the market will take over. This idea of being in charge is false. That's the problem. We have a super silliest bunch of idiots who think they can plan these things and design these things and you can't. They happen. They're what happened when you leave people alone to interact peaceably. So the idea of if I were in charge I'd do this or that and that is not the way life works and that's not why capitalism – capitalism is essentially just private property rights.

And it sounds like what you're telling me is this is a different way of operating a much smaller – thank God, go Eric – federal government but still offering what you're just sort of loosely overall calling benefits. The problem with the benefits is that when they became federalized, like you're essentially, to a great degree, you're often supplanting heads of household. So you're providing incentives not to work and you're providing incentives to have children and –

Eric Wade: We reverse that.

Dan Ferris: Yeah.

Eric Wade: Yes.

Dan Ferris: But the incentive to work is by not giving benefits. That's the incentive to work.

Eric Wade: Our incentive to work is there's no cash benefits under this... and we haven't brought this up, but it's in the book, chapter one. There's no cash benefits on the federal level, zero cash benefits. If you need food, then that's part of your deal with the – and then almost think of it like a student going to a college where they live in the dorm and they eat at the cafeteria. And I don't mean that literally, but get that concept of if you need food I'm not going to give you a debit card. If you need clothing, I'm not going to give you a debit card, right?

Because America, our benefits have been reduced down to we're going to load your benefits onto your debit card, right? And it's dehumanized a lot of people and it's made it so that there is no incentive to work. In most cases people have a disincentive to work. And I'm not talking about replacing the government. What I'm talking about is reining in the government so my economy can work. I don't want this to be seen as political. The benefit of this is a tiny government. I'm not saying I want to –

Dan Ferris: Absolutely.

Eric Wade: – force the government into – what I want is I want an economy that works better with a tiny government. I want an economy that takes care of everybody on its own, right? Like you said, like what if there were no in charges? What if all we had was this set of you want some help? Great, go to the college and ask for it. Go to the school and ask for it because that's where you're going to find your help is by tying your benefits to your pursuing education. And we don't need a lot of government for that. We could reduce the government dramatically.

Dan Ferris: We need less.

Eric Wade: Because the economy doesn't need a huge government to function, right? We don't have a government – we don't need to have 40% or whatever of our money going to our government if we do this. So, yes, it looks like I'm tying government and economy more and more. It sounds that way because of the fact that I'm trying to reduce the government dramatically by doing this. I'm trying to eliminate a lot of what the government thinks it needs to do and therefore the budget that comes with that and therefore the fact that they spend more money than we have so they need to soften our dollar. It's almost like a color wheel, right, where you just pick what color you want me to start on and we'll keep going around the circle until we get back to that color again.

Dan Ferris: So, Eric, here's what it sounds to me like you're really doing. What you just said, reducing the government, no cash benefits, hard currency. What I suspect is if there were a movement called American laborism and they were waving your book around and said this is the blueprint, man, what we would find out is that it's just – it's not laborism. It's capitalism... and it's real capitalism because we don't have the hard currency, which is a huge tax on the lower and middle classes especially, right? Non-asset owners, right? That's a huge tax plus there's actual huge taxes and we're burdened with this massive thing which now, as Corey and I were talking about the start of the program, where every dollar of deficit which is then funded with debt becomes less and less and less and less productive.

You know, it just adds more fiat. More gasoline poured on a fire is what it really is... and what you're saying is put the fire out, stop pouring gasoline on it, use a hard currency... and then you have this other idea that one of the utility functions of this much smaller government is to educate those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. I suspect it'd be – as soon as you enact those three things, I said I think there'd be a lot fewer of them, you know.

Eric Wade: Right.

Dan Ferris: I mean if you were waving this book around and there was a real movement, it would be a capitalist revolution. It would be Javier Milei.

Eric Wade: Yeah, it could be. And when we watch that election, thinking could you just wait until my book drops, please? because you'd be an advertising wing of this between Vivek and Javier. So one of our let your mind wander fantasies is could we get this to a point where when the antifa type crowd is done with their antifa-ing and they come home and they drop their bookbag on the chair and their bookbag spills open and there's a copy of America versus Americans sitting right next to their dads, sitting right next to their grandpas, right? Because the antifa might say why don't we all get free unlimited education and the dad might say why don't I get 10% tax rate until the deficit is paid off, until the budget is paid off, until the debt is paid off, which we estimate we can do it in 30 years, by the way. Pay off the national debt 30 years in the book. And then the grandpa is saying, well, I want my Social Security to be safe and I don't want to have my – when I was your age, that Snickers cost a nickel, right?

So I have something in there that I think can address these three, and all three of them could be on their social media saying why don't I have free education, why don't I admit, right? And then dad says why don't I have 10% taxes? And grandpa says why don't I have a hard dollar and a Snickers that cost a nickel and gas that cost 35 cents or something or – right? So imagine trying to come up with a system that all three of them can get what they want because I don't particularly like compromise. What I like is why don't we work on something we all get what we want out of this?

Now, the one thing that – there's two things that I think are worth reading into the book. I don't want to turn anybody off from the book that was maybe thinking there's something in here they like, but I will say one of the prices we pay for this is I do not believe in progressive taxes. Me personally. And the book does not believe – I believe progressive taxes are unfair, and they are literally saying you folks who are at the bottom don't deserve to participate in government. It sounds fair. Rich guy pays more, right? That sounds fair, but it is by definition not fair where the federal government treats its citizens differently.

Dan Ferris: Right. The biggest taxpayers have the most power. Sure, you're exactly right.

Eric Wade: Right, right. And it sounds fair, and we've convinced ourselves it's fair, but it's not fair. And the book really goes into – if someone loves progressive taxes, I challenge you, buy the book, read the piece on progressive taxes and then tweet me or X me or whatever how I'm wrong on that because I don't believe in progressive taxes at a federal level. Again, if California wants to charge outrageous taxes, and I'm a Californian, and I pay them because the sunshine tax, right, for living in California, that's different. I'm talking about the federal government. The federal government should say all of my citizens are equals.

And so we believe we have a formula in the book that we can say 10% federal tax right now and 2% once we get the debt paid off in 30 years. We're thinking of it like a home mortgage. If you can pay off your house in 30 years, we could pay off our debt in 30 years. And that's one of the things that really frustrates me about America now is we're becoming very good at, well, who's going to manage this sinking of the Titanic the best? Right? Like, OK, we've hit the iceberg. We're sinking. Who we need are the best bailers or boat rowers, right? Nobody's talking about, well how can we get back from this? How can we literally pay this off? How can we get to where we're not handing our grandkids $34, $84, $904 million, right, of debt.

Nobody even attempts to turn this around, and we do. We have an answer for that. I would think that's worth – especially if you're a young person thinking, boy, you're handing me $34 trillion worth of debt and you think I should listen to you, older generation? Anybody could run a wonderful economy with $34 trillion unanswered for dollars sloshing around, right? I mean how is the American economy so strong? Well, we spent $34 trillion we didn't have. It would be like remaking your house and spending it's a $100,000 house, but I've got a $300,000 remodel budget. Of course it's going to look beautiful. It's going to look amazing.

Dan Ferris: And people walk in and they say, "God, this place is gorgeous." That's right.

Eric Wade: It's gorgeous. Dan, how did you do that on your budget? Well, I ignored my budget. I spent $34 trillion.

Dan Ferris: Yeah, that's it.

Eric Wade: Of course, capitalism works. We spent $34 trillion sloshing around out there.

Dan Ferris: That's not capitalism though, Eric. That's where you and I disagree.

Eric Wade: I know. I was trolling you.

Dan Ferris: It's absolutely not capitalism.

Eric Wade: I was trolling you.

Dan Ferris: But anyway, you're right though. What you're right though is that that is what the narrative is, right. We have all this debt, so capitalism doesn't work. Have all this government debt, so capitalism doesn't work. The banking system is a fraud, so capitalism doesn't work. And none of it is due to capitalism. It's all due to the intervention of government. But let me tell you this though, Eric, I have to say something to our listeners about this. Hearing you talk about this makes me want to read every word of this book because I say –

Eric Wade: Thank you.

Dan Ferris: – here's why this is valuable and here's why I admire what you've done. We could use the analogy of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Buffett is an original. He's a guy who took on – it's said that he has processed more financial information than any individual on earth. I heard someone say that. It's probably true.

Eric Wade: Might be, yeah.

Dan Ferris: And he's created, he was the creative force, the creator. That's you. I'm just Charlie Munger, who you know at best, and I flatter myself purposely just to make a point where he says, I just want to learn the best of what everyone's already thought. But you're rethinking things from the bottom up, as an original thinker does.

Eric Wade: Thank you.

Dan Ferris: And it's wonderful that you've done this. People should do this and you've done it in systematic enough way that you've got a book out of it. And what you're doing is like you're intellectually discovering, in my opinion, in my opinion, you probably haven't created a new real system called laborism... but it doesn't matter because what you've done is so valuable. You have rethought what's wrong with things and you're arriving at so many of what I believe to be the correct answers in an original thinker's way. That is why I must read this book.

Eric Wade: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Ferris: Because I'm not an original thinker. I need to read this to experience the original thinker running through these ideas and coming up with his own approaches, which is something I certainly never would have done. Laborism, I wouldn't have thought of this. So by talking about this and explaining it, you've inspired me. And like I said, I went into the first chapter. I just life took over. I've got no time anymore because I've got nothing but deadlines. And now I have to read it so I say bravo.

Eric Wade: Well I thank you for that.

Dan Ferris: And I hope the world waves this book around and there's a mass movement based on it.

Eric Wade: Yeah, we would like to see this on it. Yeah. And for your audience, there's a chapter in there of how is this even possible, right? Because people don't have to find Investor Hour without thinking for themselves a fair amount, right?

Dan Ferris: One would hope.

Eric Wade: And the first question that probably comes out of people's minds is OK, sounds great, Mr. Creative Dude. If you know anything about me I wrote a screenplay with my wife that was sold to Adam Sandler. Sounds like another one of your fantasy ideas. OK, Eric, this isn't the screenplay... but it's a fantasy that's never going to happen. Well, that's why we put a chapter in there is how is this even possible for the people that are looking at it. And as you'll find maybe as a little bit snarky in the opening of the book of, I believe there will be people who look at this and say, OK, what a great idea, that makes sense... and then there will be people who say, nah, that's not going to work and it takes the whole rest of the book to maybe convince them.

And so I very, very much enjoy being on Investor Hour because I know I'm talking to an audience who, whether they hear something they agree with or disagree with, they think when they hear it, right? And they debate back because I've heard stuff on this then I think wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. And then you maybe go read the article that backs up what any of the guys or ladies that come on here that say and you think, OK, now I know where he got that because – right? because it challenges you to think that. And that's what we're hoping to do with the book is that the idea that can we upgrade capitalism and can you upgrade the best thing that's ever happened to people like us? Well, yes, because we've gotten to a point where capitalism is the best but our government takes way too much of our money.

If I can finish with one final thought, I agree with you that us being massively in debt and us having a soft currency and us having all these things are not capitalism. I'll go even further than that and I'll say capitalism, and this is coming from the mouth of a guy who wants to upgrade capitalism, but capitalism is so powerful that it even works with a shit ton of debt and a ton of bad government, right?

Dan Ferris: Yes.

Eric Wade: It's not that capitalism caused those. It's that capitalism is this buffet that we can walk up to and say I'll take the roast beef, I'll take the crab legs, I'll take – right? And just keep stacking stuff onto our plate. And we've got these two, three, four plates that we're carrying back to our table. And I'm just thinking we can take what America loves about capitalism and solve the tax, hard dollar, poverty issues because we all want that. We all want to solve that, but right now we don't have a government that'll allow us, so let's push ourselves in that direction.

Dan Ferris: So this is, to me, it's not a remaking of capitalism or an upgrade. It's a dramatic upgrade to our political situation. But actually, Eric, you did mention a final thought, but you've anticipated my final question, which of course you've answered before. It's simply if you had one thought you wanted to leave listeners with today, what would it be? And if you just want to repeat your final thought, that's fine, but that's the question before you now.

Eric Wade: Well, I knew there was a great question and I always tried to do a good job for your readers. And this is something we touched on earlier is that for everybody out there who bemoans that we don't have a hard currency, do you want to do – do you want to live in a world where we do? Do you want to have that? We think we do. But give it a thought for a second is how do we get there? What would that world look like? What programs do we cut? What do we say no to? And then would you be willing to entertain that I have an answer for that? Of yes, I can give you that. I can give you that hard currency back and the small government, but something's got to change in order for everybody to get what they want on it.

So the final question I ask the reader is do you really want that or just say you want that? And if you really want that, can you at least admit that some things would have to change in America? Not get worse. I'm saying get better. Some things would have to change for us to have a hard currency. I don't believe it's possible right now with the programs and laws that we have in place. I don't believe we could go on a hard currency. But the book tells us how we get there painlessly, painlessly get to a hard currency and low taxes and save Social Security and free unlimited education for everybody. That wasn't a question, was it? I stump-speeched the question, didn't I?

Dan Ferris: No, that's fine. Thank you for that. Thanks for actually coming on here and kind of inspiring me to read this thing. It sounds like a lot of good ideas and, like I said, a lot of original thinking arriving at all the best parts of what's great about America. I know we'll have you back soon and we'll probably talk more about crypto.

Eric Wade: Thank you.

Dan Ferris: We might talk more about this, we'll see. But thanks a lot, Eric.

Eric Wade: Thank you. Thank you, guys. Great conversation.

Dan Ferris: The Fed wants you to believe they've got inflation under control, but I believe we've only seen the beginning of a devastating new crisis. If you don't prepare now you can see your savings evaporate as inflation and interest rates soar even higher over the next two years. It all traces back to a golden thread that ties together the biggest financial calamities in America's history. But it seems the entire financial world is falling into the very same denial trap that led to massive devastation the last time this crisis played out. If you know your history, you know there will be winners and losers and now is when you decide which one you'll be.

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So, Corey, my friend, you were –

Corey McLaughlin: I was listening.

Dan Ferris: You were quiet during this interview. You must have thoughts.

Corey McLaughlin: I was listening, yeah. I do. Good conversation between you guys, for sure. I didn't really want to jump into it. The only idea I have, I mean this fits with exactly what we were talking about at the beginning of this show, with the amount of debt in the country versus productivity sounds like. You know I mentioned it was an intractable problem it feels like when you talk about the debt, but Eric appears and he's come up with a solution to it, so in this book and that can take care of it over time. And so it sounds like it's intriguing because he's talking about instead of just throwing more printed money at the problems, to actually connect that to something productive, which would be different than what happens a lot of times now.

And so that concept is just fascinating. You hear about it kind of with bringing back service programs for young people to do whatever X amount of work for however many years and then get some benefit from that. So there's some of that out there already... but he has different ideas, too. I haven't read the whole book either, but I've skimmed through it enough to know that there's different – yeah, of course, remember Eric's our crypto guy, too. So there is a crypto connection here.

Dan Ferris: Oh yeah. Like I said, it's just interesting to me that he sat down and created this whole original framework. But I believe as soon as you say hard money, limited government, what you're doing is you're enabling capitalism to then lift a lot of those other folks out of poverty who would like to be lifted out. I didn't get into it, but pet peeve of mine is this idea of free education. What it really means is government-funded schooling, and schooling and education are not the same thing. Anybody can go get an education. You can actually take online courses. Khan Academy exists. You can go in there and take online courses in anything and everything. I mean they've got history and physics and chemistry, all the hard sciences, all the stuff that's valuable to study and math and everything.

And so there are resources that don't require you to pay huge tuition bills and don't require that enormous expense. And I think one of the reasons why schooling is so expensive, I mean this is no great revelation, but obviously government-backed student loans have created quite a horrendously bad effect on the price of schooling and besides that, it should be expensive to go to the best school in the country, right? We know Harvard's going to be expensive.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah. Well that's a whole other thing. Like what is the – like is there a problem with some people having more than others? Like that's also an essential point here. Are we all supposed to be exactly the same? Like what would we be doing? I'd just be a robot and making –

Dan Ferris: Yeah, that's right.

Corey McLaughlin: – making the same amount of money as everybody else or making no money at all. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Ferris: No, you're exactly – I'm right in line with you. We don't need like pro-government programs and government systems to force any of this on us. We just need to be left alone and people will seek education. They'll seek betterment. They'll work. They'll accumulate savings if it's worth doing so, if they can, if their currency isn't constantly deteriorating and if it maintains its value or pays 5% or whatever it is, yeah, all that stuff will be great. And we won't have all this income inequality if we're not constantly making sure that we save the bankers and the –

Corey McLaughlin: Right.

Dan Ferris: – connected, politically connected folks. Whatever we do, we can have mass unemployment, but God please save all the bankers, backstop their fortunes, backstop Jamie Dimon's fortunes or this whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket.

Corey McLaughlin: Right? Exactly.

Dan Ferris: I think that's probably wrong.

Corey McLaughlin: And the point about, yeah, anybody could run an economy with $34 trillion in debt. Yes, totally true. I mean like –

Dan Ferris: For a while.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, for a while. I mean we're seeing it right now, so it's – yeah. Anything that can stop devaluing the currency as much as has happened since the 1970s, I am a fan of. However we can get there, you can debate, would be great... but that would be wonderful. That would solve a heck of a lot of problems and not lead to more problems, related problems, I think, so.

Dan Ferris: So it sounds, like I said, an interesting, intelligent guy has tried to rethink things and in doing so has happened upon timeless principles of prosperity in the process and it's kind of wonderful. And he knew they were there, He's benefited from capitalism, and he thinks he's rethinking that whole idea, but I think he's discovering it in a new, in an original way, as you would expect from a guy like Eric and it's valuable to me. Like I said, I'm not that kind of a thinker.

Corey McLaughlin: Yeah, and obviously very timely topic because we see every day we have this push and pull between capitalism and whatever alternatives people think or say they want. I mean more and more each day I'm like why in the heck would anybody be a CEO of a company? Like it's so hard. And be a fan of the government? It seems like it makes your life more difficult. But maybe there's some solutions in Eric's book to help with that.

Dan Ferris: Right. So the book is called America vs. Americans by Eric Wade and it comes out in a day or two. You can preorder on Amazon and you'll be able to just buy it outright in a couple days. Check it out. I've got to read this thing now. All right? That's another interview and that's another episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we really, truly did.

We do provide a transcript for every episode. Just go to www.investorhour.com. Click on the episode you want, scroll all the way down, click on the word "transcript" and enjoy. If you liked this episode and know anybody else who might like it, tell them to check it out on their podcast app or at investorhour.com, please. And also do me a favor. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and while you're there, help us grow with a rate and a review. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Our handle is @investorhour. On Twitter, our handle is @investor_hour. Have a guest you want us to interview? Drop us a note at [email protected] or call our listener feedback line, 800-381-2357. Tell us what's on your mind and hear your voice on the show. For my co-host, Corey McLaughlin, until next week I'm Dan Ferris. Thanks for listening.

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