Interview: The World After the Petrodollar

0:00Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes Dr. prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue urgent care kit.com slash blue. Joining us today is Jonathan Deaver. And he has a substack and he has a series of books coming out of the GRIFFT trilogy, which seems to be appropriate for today's situations that we've got. But he has on his substack, which is deaverdialong.com. You can see article they just put up, the petro dollar isn't dead. But America's financial free ride may be ending.

1:03So we're going to talk a little bit about what the petro dollar is, what it is current state of the American dominance in terms of the dollar. And what is going to happen as we lose that? Because I see that devolving from us very rapidly. Is the former state representative in Ohio, a former chairman of the financial institutions, housing and urban development committee. He retired as an attorney. He founded a company. He's a CEO of a Wyoming chartered digital bank. And the author of, of course, the GRIFFT trilogy that we're talking about. Maybe there's some 3D chess in that. I don't know. But joining us now is Jonathan Deaver. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Appreciate the time. Let's talk a little bit about what the petro dollar is. And of course, everybody knows that part of that was the oil trade. Certainly it's one of the called the petro dollar. Is it simply the agreement with the Saudis? Because they're no longer exclusively paying for oil or accepting payment for oil and the dollar.

2:06What is going on with the petro dollar in your opinion? Well, so I think the basic idea is very simple. So for folks that don't understand it, you know, oil is traded globally. And the dollar has been the dominant currency used to price and settle the buying and the selling of the raw material oil itself. So these oil producing countries, they'll receive dollars when they sell their oil. And then the dollars have to go somewhere, obviously. So some are spent on imports, some are spent on investments in other countries, some find their way into our financial markets here in the United States. Which also includes our United States Treasuries, which is the backbone of how our system works. And it creates kind of a reinforcing system. So the way I like to describe the petro system, petro dollar system is everybody's got a toll road in their state. And everybody's got to love hate relationship with these things, of course. But the road becomes valuable because people use it. And then everyone else uses it because other people already use it. So it's kind of this cyclical thing.

3:06And the more roads get used because people use them, people don't really like them, but it is what it is. And so the dollar position is really much more than oil. But the oil trade has developed this network of dollar-based commerce and it just constantly gets reinforced. Now the system didn't appear just one night. We just didn't wake up to the petro system. It really started back in the 70s for those of us that are old enough to remember the oil embargoes and the hyperinflation of the 1970s. President Nixon was really the one that took us off the gold standard. And that set us into this really kind of interesting reset of what our dollar means and what it means in the global environment. And he really used his treasury secretary at the time was William Simon to create an economic relationship with Saudi Arabia and those other oil producing states to facilitate using this dollar as the settlement vehicle for the buying and the selling of oil. And so essentially the value of the dollar is really because what Simon says, right? So we create this fiat currency system and we're able to just create more of these dollars out of thin air and have been able to do that for quite some time.

4:15That's going to have a huge impact on us when we lose that. And I think when we go back and look at the unique financial position that we had with all that, I guess looking back to when Biden began the sanctions against the United States. The sanctions against Russia, that was really I think in my opinion when things started to turn against the financial system that had been our superpower. And it's like you're burning this thing down, you know, if you're going to have a monopoly, you can't weaponize it, you can't boast about it, you got to kind of play your cards close to your chest, but they started using it as a weapon. And then Trump doing the same thing. And of course, the other aspects, I think of the trade is the agreement that we're going to be able to provide security in the Middle East. And that that has really been kind of burned down. I think when we look at the folly of what's going on with this around war, when we look at the state of our moves, we look at the inability to even protect and help to protect Saudi Arabia, but the fact that we have been a source of instability.

5:15What do you think about that current situation? Well, I think one of the things that people forget is when you are the national or international reserve currency, there's been five or so in the last 500 years before us, it was Britain, right? Great Britain. It was the pound sterling. That was the dominant currency before us. And we rose out of the ashes of war two as the stabilizing currency for the world. And the hard of that was the British Empire and they controlled roughly 25% of the real state of the world. They had the largest navy, the largest army, and they were the global police officer for a lack of a better word. So part of the power of the reserve currency, it's a catch 22, of course, is that it gives you the dominance in the economy, the global economy, because it also gives you the military. And you have to be able to print money at Nazim when you need it in order to create that stabilizing force. So the reserve currency is a very powerful tool in the hands of what I like to call a moral country or moral nation.

6:16So I would argue that during that period of time, England was a moral nation in a moral country. When they came out of that, we took its place. And our country is found on a lot of those same principles, you know, the Magna Carta principles, the de J. O. Christian values that shaped a lot of their common law and shaped our nation's constitutions that our framers worked off of. And so that morality that we've used historically has what's created a balance around the world. So yes, it may be a little irritating when we're involved in all these conflicts out around the world, but regardless of presidency, and you'd point it out, not only President Biden, but President Trump. But before him, it was President Obama and Bush and Clinton and the original Bush and Reagan and Carter. All of these men had the ability to interject and using the economic power of our reserve currency status to quell conflicts around the world and create that global security. So it's a catch 22, right? And that gives us enormous advantages, but it also comes with great responsibility and part of our struggle, right?

7:21And so the last time we've paid down our debt or even made a payment toward our debt was Bill Clinton in the late 90s and prior to the hat it was in 1969 and prior to the hat it was Calvin Nacoolidge, I believe, was the last one to make some payments on the actual debt. So where we are now is we are accelerating our spend and we're not being responsible when times are good. That is the key to Congress. They must be responsible when times are good. They must reduce spending. They must take the advantage of the economic growth to reduce and retire debt to deregulate us when the times are right, regulate us when the times are right. But the problem in Washington is that neither party has an interest in governing and our politics has gotten so vitriolic that the basic things that you alluded to are just not getting done. And so if we can't agree on what's in the national security best interest of the United States and we turn that into a partisan chess match on CNN and Fox News and on Twitter, we've got bigger problems that are more so structural, but also just our ability to communicate as human beings that have to govern.

8:24I agree. Yeah, it's really kind of become about owning the other side and about sound bites and that type of thing. They are not interested at all in governing. And of course, as I look at it, it seems to me like for the longest time they've been kicking off responsibility to, for instance, the bureaucracy. And you know, we got a pass it so we can find out what's in it type of thing. And there's a lot of truth to that. Quite frankly, they don't want to work out the details. They would rather have somebody else actually do the details. Well, we'll start this thing and hand them the tools and the power and let them run away with this. And nobody is really taking responsibility. I like what you're talking about. And as I look at this, I think Uncle Ben would have to say that with great power comes great responsibility. And it seems like we're kind of like the kid with a superpower on the block that starts bullying people and that kind of backfires, I think, in a long term. It does in the long term. I think where we are though is that we've got we've got about 15 years to get our house in order based on just general consensus.

9:27There's a couple of big major things that are coming due in the early 2030s that most people are not really paying attention to because, you know, I guess what was it, Bill Clinton's chief advisor said don't let a good crisis go to waste. No, well, we're going to have a bunch of crises hitting at the same time. Our national debt to GDP is already over 100%. As are most of the economic power blocks in the in the world by 29. We're going to have the vast majority of the world, the debt to GDP as a ratio is going to be over 100% for the first time ever. There's no other place to go, sadly, right? That can take on the responsibility that we're we're we're shouldering. We have a social security problem that has never been addressed that we've known about since I was a kid in 2032. They've always known that that's our cliff. There's going to be a 22% drop off in the revenue that's needed to maintain that fund. Congress has stolen from it for repetitively. There's no money in it. I hate to tell people that, but it's true. Yeah, it's a trust fund with a negative balance.

10:29We also have the exponential on our national debt this year alone. They said it was going to be 1.9 trillion on debt that we were going to add by CBO estimates. Well, we hit that before September. We're now at 2 trillion and climbing. So the estimates are going to be far less than we can anticipate. Interest rates are higher. A lot of the debt that we incurred when it was cheap money. Everybody got those little cheap mortgages out there. Well, the government did the same thing and they just refinanced. And instead of taking the differential on the interest rate and paying down the debt, they just borrowed more and spent more. So now we've got this low interest rate debt that has to get paid back at higher rates. And even our own secretary of the Treasury, a couple of years ago said we're going to need another Brentwood sometime by 29. So we have all of these global things coming together at the same time. And then we have all these domestic things coming together at the same time. And Congress is sitting there arguing over details that don't matter to the average American who is trying to figure out how to put food on their table, pay their mortgage.

11:31And retire in a dignified manner. That's right. Yeah, we have this debt spiral that is talking about the massive amount of debt that we've got. Most of it has been added in the last couple of administrations. And so nothing is being done about that. And I guess the question is, you know, in your opinion, what does this look like in terms that you think we've got maybe 15 years before we think it kicks in or you think it's going to be something happens sooner than that. Well, so there's two different paths, right? It depends on the speed with which we get there. The erosion of the dollar dominance is already taking place. We're seeing the national use is at about 57% somewhere in that number. I wrote about that in that article. But it's slowly declining over time. And as that declines and other people look at different assets, our ability to be that sovereign power, that ability to be the superpower to maintain our current status, our current lifestyle, et cetera, erodes. So the speed with which we get there is also determining on what we do politically.

12:36So if we give away, you know, another trillion and a half or 1.2 trillion and helicopter money to everybody. Yeah, that accelerates that curve. That accelerates the curve, right? It takes us from two trillion and that the 3.5 trillion in one year that accelerates it. We have to borrow that at high interest rates, right? Relatively so. So it depends on what Congress does or doesn't do. If we look at Great Britain as an example of what happens when you come off that status, that's a technical modern model. The only problem is there's no one to step into our shoes like we were able to for Great Britain in the 1950s. What about China's role on all this? Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home.

13:39Say $45 with code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue, urgentcare kit.com slash blue. We talk about the fact that most Western countries are really under water in terms of debt to GDP. They have currencies and debts that are looking awful. What do you see happening is China the next one to take over the financial reins? There's something like bricks. What do you think is going to happen? That's the unknown. China is not large enough economically to step into that role. Their debt to GDP is over 100% as well. They're not nearly as bad as their neighbor or Japan, of course. Japan's doing the best they can do to get to 300%. But there's really nobody left to step into that role. So that's what's going to get interesting. The advent of some of these new technologies specifically with point on computing and AI and the new financial technologies that are out there make things a little bit more interesting. There's ways to make these systems work better.

14:39I think what you'll end up seeing most likely is regional conglomerations of nations coming together with their own settlement systems. So think Swift, which is what we use. But I think you're starting to see that already in the Asian countries. They're starting to look at how they can do their settlement using their technologies and they have coalitions and treaties to service their needs. So I think you're going to see more and more of that. But what the unknown piece is, and this is what I always say about America, we plan for six months, basically election to election. We govern for six months, we campaign for 18. And we need to really start thinking about 5, 10, 15, 20 years down. We need members of Congress who are going to be looking and thinking long term. We can continue on a path forward. We just have to be disciplined when times are good. When times are bad, we all know what that means. We all got to buckle up, we all got to work together, we got to row the boat in the same direction. But when times are good is when the discipline is really important. It takes me back to just rereading the story of Joseph and the story of Daniel.

15:42These were men of great responsibility. Joseph knew that there was going to be trouble ahead. He saved and he was a good steward. Daniel worked across four emperors. And back then, if they didn't like what you did, they just killed you. So here's a guy who was able to administer a vast empire and do a very good job. And we just need men and women like that that can serve and get us right sized. I agree. Yeah, and I think the real strength of America was that we didn't have central planners and central control. There needs to be, I think, actually, perhaps the government needs to do even less in my opinion and get out of the way. Every time they start to get in and start to manage things, then there's different motives for that. And when we look at the Swift system, again, that was one of the things that got weaponized. And so in a sense, we are forcing the hand of people to go to an alternative system. If you get cut out of the system that you, and you can't deal in it anymore, you got to create some alternative way to trade.

16:43And that's what we're seeing in terms of the way this is being weaponized. It's like we have a golden goose and you decide you're going to use it as a club. It's pretty easy to kill that goose, isn't it? Let's talk a little bit about what happens in terms of the T-bills. Because again, we're already having problems selling the T-bills. I've had to raise the rates and things like that. Ultimately, what happens with that? Do you think this is going to fold into some kind of a stablecoin situation? Well, I think what the digital currency components do is it provides a new system. It's a new standard. I think that's the utility behind when you listen to a sailor and a few others when they talk about Bitcoin as an example. What are they stress? They stress the limited supply of 21 million. And that there's a whole bunch of that, even that's been lost. So the actual supply is very limited. And theoretically, gold is as well. It's a limited supply and that's why it holds its value in theory. But it's an unknown, it's not quantifiable. It's based on arithmetic and averages.

17:44We basically assume as out there and we have some assumptions on what's being mined. So we have a rough idea. But with a digital currency, exactly what you've got, there's going to be some challenges in a country like ours. Because we have this pesky little thing called the Constitution. And we have rights. And the problem with the digital universe is that it's fraught for an opportunity to be abused without the right regulatory environment. And without the freedoms with which you were alluding to earlier, right? Less involvement, less intrusion. If you look at China, they have a digital currency, but they've also tied it to a credit score, which is not based on your ability to pay, but completely on your behavior. Whether your behavior is what they approve of or not. And that determines your ability to buy and sell. It determines what kinds of groceries you can get. It determines where you can go to eat, whether you can travel, whether you can go see family and friends, whether you get a good rate or no rate on a house. It's all tied to your behavior, not your financial capabilities. So it's fraught for abuse in the wrong systems.

18:46I actually did a conversation with a gentleman on a Cornell very fascinating. He was Bernie Sanders chief economist. So we were on opposite sides of the economic debate. But what I found interesting was his philosophy on the utility of the stablecoin, which was that when we spend money as a federal government, we approach it like a shotgun. We just shoot it. Anybody who shoots a shotgun knows that when you pull the trigger at a target, those little pellets, they go all out and you know, at 30 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards, they're the way you get from it. The more spread out it is and the less likely you were to hit the target. And that's kind of how the federal government spends our money right now, right? Maybe 10% or 5% of the money that leaves Washington hits the intended recipient. But with the stablecoin theoretically, if done correctly, a dollar goes to the person that it's intended to receive because it's kind of like that a pellet gun where you can make sure it hits the target dead center. So from his perspective, that's the utility of it. I find that very interesting. So there may be some common ground for the folks like maybe yourself and myself that are concerned

19:49with civil liberties and independence and also the utility of how do we bring a small sea conservatism back to our Congress who has helped bent on spending money, Willie Nellie. I agree. Yeah, the problem is the credit system as you alluded to. That issue is there whether you're talking about CBDC or they're talking about stablecoin. The ability to prevent somebody from doing a transaction. The ability to seize money just like that. And so that part of it doesn't really change. It seems to me what changes with a stablecoin and I always call it CCBC, which is a chronic capitalist digital currency. But when we go from a central bank digital currency to a chronic capitalist digital currency, they are requiring now they back it up with T-bills. And so I don't really know if it has that capability like Bitcoin of a fixed number of these things. It seems to me like if your stablecoin is built on something that is inherently unstable.

20:52I don't know exactly how that works, but does give them control in an unprecedented way over our finances and over our ability to spend and to do things doesn't it. Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue. Urgentcare kit.com slash blue. It very well could, but I also wouldn't kind of you know, putting my banker hat on for half a second. The reality of it is is that I don't carry a lot of cash. I'm sure you don't either. Money moves in and out of your checking account. Your savings account. It's zeros and digits, right? It's a new miracle. Each digit is one to zero, right?

21:53One to three, right? Six, seven, eight, nine, zero. That moves digitally and electronically. What the blockchain does is it provides a ledger so that there's a source of truth so that way you know where things are going. And you're right that in the stable coin era and also with the SPDIs that are kind of the incubator for a lot of this in the banking space. Every dollar that goes in, if it's not being held in a checking account, has to be held in treasuries because the difference is as a regular bank can hypophicate, which means they can lend out a hundred percent of every dollar that comes in. They don't have to keep anything in reserves. Whereas the the special purpose depositories have to have all of your deposits ready at any given time, a hundred percent of it. So in that regard, it's a little bit more safe. And then they mandate that those monies are invested in treasuries for that particular reason has to be in a relatively liquid asset. So the idea being that if it's invested in the United States Treasury, you're going to get a rate of return anywhere from like one to four percent right now

22:56off the treasury, but your money's safe with the federal government because it's insured and guaranteed in that T bill. So when you came back to me as a customer, you would be able to receive a hundred percent of your money. You can never make a run on the bank. So there's some utility there as well. So the again, the devil is going to be in the details on how we manage this. If this is run at the state level, at the bank level, and this is not a national thing, again, going back to what you're saying, no centralized control, but the treasury automatic, you know, the treasury and the Fed, they determine the fiscal and the monetary policy, they determine how many dollars you're going to go out of the system, and they also print them, right? So between those organizations, that occurs. So the idea being is that the money is already technically digital. During COVID, they just pushed a button and sent five trillion out. Right. How many they sent out. So most of it's digital anyway. At this current state in the game, the question is going to be who can control it. And whether they can programmatically allow you or disallow you to use your funds. And so when we look at what's happening with the futures,

23:57we look at the different, the situation in the Middle East, how they are changing into new routes in terms of energy trade and other issues like that. Talk a little bit about that, how people are adjusting this. And what is the role of goal perhaps in all of this? Is there a role for goal that you see? Well, there's always a role for for gold. That's never going to go away, right? And a lot of these European Union, or I'm sorry, not European Union, but the Gulf states are not going to be just getting rid of the dollar overnight. It wouldn't happen that way. Like the UAE as an example is building physical routes to get oil around the straight-up hormone. The straight-up hormone is an option, right? So there's lots of different physical routes that are being developed. And when they're using this, these other routes, it's going to continue to move that oil through there, right? Kuwait is still at pre-war levels. So we still have a lot of the transportation that's currently going through that area just a different way.

25:01But the United States, we don't use that oil per se for our gasoline. So when people conflate the price of the gas at the pump or the diesel cost with that, it's really not a causation issue. Most of the oil that goes there goes east, right? It goes to the Asian countries. They produce all of our plastics, and then we import all of that, of course. So there is a cost associated with a lot of the things that we consume. And plastics are everywhere, right? I don't think people realize it, but 90% of the things that move through hospitals has a petrochemical in it. So it's a vastly used resource. So even though we may not be using it for gas and diesel specifically, it is being used in other areas where we consume it. So really, the international markets, for now, the dollar is still using that currency and trade largely because the financial system wants to absorb US dollars. So the physical infrastructure and the financial infrastructures of these two things are continually reinforcing each other, which is a good thing for now.

26:04But because of what we're engaged in with this war in Iran, we're really watching the systems getting tested on each side. And so for now, the dollar is still dominant, but when you look at the international monetary funds reports, you have to start thinking about what's going to happen in the next three to four, even ten years. Yeah, and it's a matter of fact, even though this, a lot of this oil and diesel is headed for Asia and places like that, not necessarily directly to us, when we look at first oil embargo from OPEC, that was simply against the United States to punish us for the role that we had in the war that they had with Israel. And at that point, I'm only getting about 15% of our oil from that area. And yet that disruption to us, even though we're a large customer, that disruption to us created a disruption in global petroleum markets. And it seems to me like this is an even bigger thing. And it is kind of, you know, we go back and look at how in the 1970s,

27:07how many things got changed and reset as a result of what was going on with the OPEC oil embargo. This is a major shock to every system, I think. It is, but I think, you know, when the government faces an energy shock, there are sometimes there's more of a need for dollars. I mean, that's kind of the ironic part. So when that happens, then everybody's got to sell assets in order to raise the cash, of course. So there's a lot of different reasons why governments move monies and move securities. It's not necessarily tied to oil per se. I think, you know, the one thing about the financial system specifically in the United States, but even internationally, is that it's extremely complicated. So it's hard to put an actual correlation between one piece and the other directly, without a little bit more data. And I don't believe at least at this point that this is a red flag for an abandonment of the dollar per se. I think what this does demonstrate more so is that we do have this amazing advantage,

28:08economic advantage in the system, and we benefit enormously because the other part of the world needs in once dollars. They kind of need them for their management. So it's, we're still remaining dominant, but what it is is a true test for us on whether or not we're going to manage this correctly and whether we're going to arrest some of the things that are coming to a head at home. You can't have the international component and a domestic component scaling at the same time. That's our biggest challenge. And of course, the ability of the Federal Reserve to manipulate things, their hands are tied a great deal by this massive debt that we've got. If they were to raise the interest rates like we saw Vokrdu in the past, they couldn't possibly do that and still cover the payments. Good day. That's kind of the conundrum we're in. Vokr had a completely totally different problem he was trying to solve for. Some people say he got it right, other people say he got half the equation right, other people call him a genius, because it just depends on your personal philosophy. But he was able to successfully tamp down inflation for us, which was great.

29:13But it did come at the expense of a larger debt. But I don't blame him for that. That's not what was not his job. That was Congress's job. So it kind of gets us back to getting back to these basics. What is Congress going to effectively do? You mentioned it earlier in our segment here that they're offloading most of their responsibility to an unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic environment and bureaucratic state, which largely falls under the auspices of the executive most of the time, right? Not all the time, but most of the time. And so now we're being hijacked by the politics of our time. So every time a new administration comes in, the policy's fundamentally changed. And there's a stagnation. So if you're a civil servant bureaucrat, your job is to survive, for the next four years, the next two years or three years, so you have a change over administration or a change of Congress, right? Where you get a new rule and therein lies the problem in the rub. We don't have consistency of policy inside of these agencies and organizations.

30:13Yeah, I agree. It seems like their major concern is, let's just raise the debt ceiling or get rid of it altogether. That seems to be the bipartisan approach. We've got this debt ceiling and we keep having to stop and reconsider that. Let's just get rid of it. There seems to be a total disconnect and disregard for the idea that ought to be any kind of fiscal responsibility in Washington. I don't see either party talking about that anymore. I think the MMTers must have won the day. That's the only thing I can think of. But, you know, and there's some sound economic theory in that. However, when the rubber meets the road and the bill comes due, they don't line up all the time. So, their version is, well, you just raise taxes enough in order to set your policy, right? So, they just don't raise taxes to get where they want to go. Rather than sometimes you have to reduce taxes, sometimes you have to spend more than you take in. But then there's a big chunk of time where you need to pay it off. And when we've had good economic times, I mean, I can think the 80s, the 90s, man, they were great.

31:16We had some really good economic times there. Bill Clinton took advantage of it, but he had a partner in Newt Gingrich, who was doing the heavy lifting in Congress, who wanted to get it done, who made a contract with America, and actually did it. Wouldn't that amazing? You actually have a guy running for Speaker who promises American people something and does it? I mean, it's kind of an anomaly anymore. Well, we don't have that promise from John. God bless the Speaker. We don't have my John's making promises. He does know what to say about you and the stuff. You'll have to check on it and come back to you later. Well, maybe I have met the current Speaker a few times. He's a very nice gentleman. But again, it's like we're, you know, I kind of wanted six promises for 26. That would have been a good campaign message, you know, at least can we get six things. But that was a good era where you had, it just showed you that you can take a president who's pragmatic and you can take a Congress who's rolling the roll up their sleeves and do some heavy lifting and they can come together to pass something for our benefit and for the benefit of the next generation. And they balance the budget and they paid down. Forget it was like 450 billion as they was a payment to the debt.

32:17It was really amazing because it hadn't happened since 1969. But we had all these years in between where we've had good, solid years where we could have done that. And, you know, I think about it this way. It's, you know, my mother, I lost my father this year. My mom's on so security and she's on a limited income. And, you know, to think that if she lives well into her 80s, which she probably is going to live to 100, knowing her, she's great. She's going to see a 22% haircut because Congress can't do their job. Yeah. This is something they've known about for a long, long, long time. And it's not necessarily a complicated fix, but they just haven't done anything. And that's typical of what we're seeing. So my concern is when we have all these domestic components coming together, we have the international components matching at the same record speed. And we have the fiscal realities of the way the world's working. Once all those start getting gone or creating in the next decade, we've got some serious problems in our country. We need serious leaders to start talking about them now and planning for it.

33:18And that's my biggest concern. I agree. Yeah. When we're talking about somebody's on a fixed income, it's not that much to start with. And you cut that by 22%. That's in the face of inflation, which is really ramping up as well. So yeah, it is crazy. Let's talk a little bit about breaks. What do you make of that? And is there something that's going to come out of that? Are they how much of an independent system do you think they're going to be able to put together? Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue. urgentcare kit.com slash blue. Well, I think that the bricks folks are currently doing what they think they need to do to create kind of an alternative in their side of the world.

34:24And essentially what that is, it's just for folks that are not familiar with it. It's a combination of city states or states and countries that have come together to kind of create their own, I guess, basket of currencies. So a little bit of this currency, a little bit of that currency, a little bit of this currency to kind of create some stability in the region and they settle with one another in that way. And or that will use a commodity. So I think that goes back to what we were originally talking about is that as we have these different segments and groups of the world trying to figure out what they're going to do with the dollar dominance kind of phasing out. Like I said, you know, we have about 57% of the global for foreign exchange is in dollars, which in a weird way is slightly up from where it was a year ago, but it's still roughly about the same. And these other nations are filling the gap. You know, the China, China has been promoting greater use of their currency for international trade. Russia has shifted away from Western markets largely because of the war that they have with the Ukraine and these other Asian countries are, you know, they have some choices now, which they didn't have before.

35:35So that's the, that's really issue is like where is this going to go now that there's choice, even though the dollar is the dominant currency in the world. And, you know, a central bank can diversify its reserves. And so if they have their own reserves, they have the right to do that. If they have their own central banks, they do have the right to do that. There's nothing that can prevent it from happening. But I think as we're seeing the kind of the dollar dominance, slowly tail off and get smaller and smaller as a percentage, you're going to see more and more of these groups get together and try to find their own path. Yeah, as we're talking about the disruption from the Iran war and a lot of people reacted that in different ways had some countries seeing their income cut others seeing other issues that they had to liquidate some of their gold holding. So that's had an issue on the value of gold. Trying to mean while saw that as gold on sale and they've been loading up the trucks with that as the price went down, they seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on backing up other currency with gold.

36:35What do you think about that? What about goals role in all this? Is that going to be a key commodity that they're going to use to back up any kind of alternative system? And I guess really as we've been talking about macro economics, let's talk a little bit about what all this means for us as individuals, you know, what what is a safe haven for us? Well, I think I can start with the safe haven part and we can back into gold, but gold is a safe haven. It's been used as money and is used as a commodity for millennia, right? As far back as any culture, any society. So it's always going to be a solid thing. I personally think gold is undervalued at its current rate. You know, gold has been largely an animal statute until 71 and then it freed up as you know. So the price was fixed by Congress, not by the market. Gold is always going to be bought and sold depending on the economic and monetary policies of those particular nations. Right. So as the as their their legislators or as their their governing bodies, it's in charge of spending dollars or their particular currency, they have to offset that and they have to hold assets, right.

37:44So sometimes it's in treasuries like we were talking about. So it's treasuries. It's gold, but gold is a hard physical asset. So people do that. So as you're if you're an individual asset holders win when the government inflates, they always do. For those that can't think through that for half a second, because I know sometimes this stuff's really confusing. If you looked at the value of a house, say in the 1970s versus today, same house, you probably bought it for 20 grand today. It's a $400,000 house. Nothing's changed. It didn't other than maybe you painted it, maybe put a new door in it, but it's just the dollar is worth less. The government every time it touches something, it goes down or from the standpoint of the value of the dollar when they when they touch real estate and they started playing with the mortgage market, things inflated when they when they messed with education, higher education. We've seen a massive inflation of education during my lifetime specifically started, you know, they got involved in it in the in the 90s and it's it's taking a nose dot. Same thing with health care. Health care used to be very, very affordable. $50 was your average insurance premium per month for someone, you know, all the way up until the 90s until they started playing with health care.

38:52So every time the government gets involved, it does add to cost because they're not motivated by the same things that motivate the doctors or the hospitals or the regular folk to provide the care. And so there's a lot of philosophical and political reasons why people do things, but at the end of the day when the government interferes, they create processes and systems that that create cost. So if you're looking to save your money by assets, asset holders win in this game. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it is a very troubling thing. Now what if we have, yeah, how do you see the sun folding? You don't really see this all happening all at once. You see it happening in a gradual way. Some other people believe that it's going to be some kind of a sudden crash that you know, we things get worse gradually than suddenly to quote him in way, but how do you see this rolling? I'm assuming that a Congress is going to not wake up. They're going to continue down the same path doing whatever they've been doing in terms of self preservation.

39:54And they're not going to take a statement like position. They're just going to play political games. How do you see this rolling out time line? Well, I think that is the, that is the conundrum. Are they going to roll up their sleeves and get to work? Are they going to wait for a crisis and weaponize the crisis for political gain? Those are the questions that you and I don't have the answer to. I don't have a crystal ball. But what I do know is that the people that are going to be the victims or the beneficiaries of this are going to be American people and the folks around the world whose nations are reliant upon our security, our safety and our soundness as a country. So there's billions of people around the world that rely on us to get it right. And so we also have to think about them. It's not just our citizens. So it's important for my family, your family, my children, my mother, your relatives. We want them to be safe. We want them to be healthy. We want our nation to be stable. But again, it's going to come down to Congress on whether they're going to do the heavy lifting. And I always encourage either side of the aisle if there's somebody reasonable, roll up your sleeves, get good at something, understand something and work on it and fix it. That's why you're there. You're a steward that Congressional cedar, that senate seat doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the people who sent you there. So you've got a job to do.

41:08And if we can get folks to start thinking that way again, I think we've got a shot at it. That's the biggest challenge that I think we have facing right now. I agree. Yeah, my instinct is I think they're going to let this develop into a crisis because they do like crises, right? It's always something that they can use. And I think that they would like to see that happen. As I look at it, I see such a global crisis happening. I just wonder if that's going to devolve into a world war like we did last great depression. And then that really brought on a war because that seems to be the way they ultimately when you have a gigantic crisis and a poly crisis, it seems like the answer to that is always taking us to or what do you think about that? It seems to be a historical pattern. I mean, we're about 80 years out. So we're due. I know it sounds terrible to say, but we're do historically speaking. If you look at the historical patterns. Yeah, fourth turning. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that makes us a little bit different today than then, but it doesn't change human nature, of course, is the speed with which information, knowledge, policy, money can move.

42:10Right. We are instantaneous. We can pick up the phone and talk to somebody on the other end of the world. And we can just hang up right now and call someone over there. They'd pick up and it would be just as clear as this conversation. Sure. That didn't happen in 1930 and in the 1930s, they didn't have that ability. So the ability to communicate effectively to get your message across. We don't have language barriers. We have Google translate. We've got all kinds of tools at our resources where we can be human, but at the same token, a lot of that technology is also torn us away from our desire or willingness to be human and sit down and talk with people. That's the outside of it. Yeah. The human nature aspect of it doesn't change even though that technology does it sometimes just magnifies both the good and the bad aspect of our nature, doesn't it? It does 100% and it's just like they say, you know, money is not the root of all evil, but money magnifies the evil within you. Right. So it's going to magnify the good or the evil that you have with it in you, but money itself is just a intangible piece of paper. It has no feelings. It has no emotion. It's not a person. It doesn't do anything.

43:13But once you put it into the hand of a person, then it becomes either a weapon or a gift and a blessing. So I think that's kind of the reality of it, but you're not wrong. Historically speaking, that normally what happens is there's conflict. And out of those ashes will arise someone nation typically were a group of nations that has the ability to economically drive the next 80 to 90 years. We came out of World War II and you know before that it was England and they came out of the chaos before that and it's just an economic cycle. Sometimes these things happen peacefully, you know, the the the the Dutch didn't they just kind of folded, you know, there wasn't a word for the Dutch to lose their status. So sometimes these things just unravel and someone rises the sad part though is that today there's so much conflict everywhere. Yes. The moral authority with which it's going to take to navigate that is also limited based on the nations that are out there and have the economic power and where we're all to stand ground when we need to.

44:19I agree. Yes, also a bit about your trilogy that you're working on the gift trilogy that's when is that going to be coming out and give us a little bit of an idea about what that's about. Well, sure, I my first book will come out the first quarter of next year and it's called the gift for the better part of last 15, 20 years I've been just writing and piling things together and I noticed a pattern. I like to call it the kind of a pattern of extraction. So you know, we get these great wonderful gifts that are God given and sometimes mankind comes up with this great thing and then it turns into this weapon where it gets used for darkness and bad things and it becomes a tool to extract things from people. And I've recognized a definitive pattern and so I started writing about it and it turned into way too much to put out in one book. So I've broken into three pieces. So the the first book is just to get people to understand the pattern. So when you're watching the news, you're reading an article, you're seeing something on social media, you're going to be able to identify a gift right out of the gate.

45:22That was the goal with the first book is to get you to understand that pattern to start getting to thinking right. And then the second book is where I really started and that was just the cost, the human cost of the victims of these types of things. You know, what happens when farmers are just their entire legacy farm is destroyed by either big ag or some big corporate interest or what happens when the government abuses a system or a politician abuses a system and the human cost of these things. And that's where I started. So the second book is humanizing it. So we can understand what it is. And then my last book was is the solution. How do we fix it? Oh, that's one we need right away. Well, we anxiously anticipate the revelation of these this trilogy that is there in the meantime, people can find you at Diver that's D-E-V-E-R dialogue.com. Thank you so much for joining us. It's fascinating and we're coming into some interesting times. And I think, you know, whenever we look at that, that's really as a crisis. I remember there was an investor advisor who talked about the Japanese character for Chinese character for crisis was danger and opportunity.

46:31And I think that's really where we live at this moment. I'm going to be living there for the next few years, I think. So thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Diver. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. The Common Man. They created Common Core, a dumb-down art children. They created Common Past to track and control us. They're Common's Project to make sure the Commoners own nothing and the Communist future. They see the Common Man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away. The most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation.

47:32They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find at theDavidnightShow.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. TheeDavidnightShow.com. TheeDavidnightShow.com