Episodes

On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey are joined by Bob Murphy. Bob is the chief economist at technology firm infineo, author of more than a dozen books, and a passionate advocate of free markets. He explores a wide variety of topics on this week's podcast, from how history is repeating itself... to the U.S. dollar's inevitable fall from dominance... to the harmful consequences of low interest rates.

Bob starts the show by explaining what exactly infineo does, how it's making life insurance an asset class, and the advantages of tokenizing life insurance – including a more attractive annual rate of return. He also discusses one of his books, the Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Even though the book is more than a decade old, and even though it's about the U.S. economy in the 1920s and 1930s, its lessons are still relevant in today's economic context. As Bob notes...

This time, there's going to be a big crash no matter what. But it depends [on] what the people in power do in response to that to see is this going to just be, "Oh yeah, that was a bad recession for 18 months"? Or is it going to go down in history as one of the worst things since the '30s?

Next, Bob talks a bit about the presidential election, the effects of Donald Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and the government's out-of-control spending problem. He predicts that the U.S. dollar will lose its status as the world reserve currency by the 2040s, and voices concerns that the U.S. is following China's lead toward a Big Brother police state...

You're just going to get more and more surveillance, sort of like the merging of big business and the government, drones policing the streets and whatnot. I think that stuff is all coming... You can have constitutional protection, it's just that if you speak out against D.C., you can't rent a hotel room anywhere... That's kind of how they do [things] in China. Technically, the government doesn't even have to do anything to you, but they've got this interlocking hierarchical system of social credit scores where the hotel won't rent to you if you speak out online against the government.

Finally, Bob shares his thoughts on the current state of the economy. He covers hyperinflation, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's actions, the inverted yield curve, and former Fed economist Claudia Sahm denying the validity of her own 100%-accurate recession indicator. Bob also talks about the harm caused by low interest rates and how they lead to malinvestment, allowing bad businesses to stay alive...

What's insane is just how [people are convinced] that low interest rates are a boon to the economy. It's like a gift the central bank gives the economy, and the only downside is price inflation might be too high, and that might bother some people. But in and of itself, low interest rates are [considered] helpful. It's like giving [the economy] an energy drink or something. And I think that's wrong.