My name is Wayne Winegarden am a senior fellow with the Pacific Research institute. For those who aware pride, were a think tank advance free market policy across a number of areas health care, education we have a whole new free cities project. You can learn about all of these and more at pacific dot org. Okay. I just mentioned today really honored to have with us a New York Times bestselling author and as she to say, a recovering invest ment banker, a carol roth. And we will also welcome your questions. So please any questions you have for carol about fantastic book please and to those in the chat box and were going to try to get to those at toward the end of our are our together and carol you know youve written really what is an incredibly its an important book its provocative its also especially the title its terrifying and you will own nothing but the book is you really just also correct me if im wrong the point of the book is youre trying to help people be aware of these trends and so that they can navigate what is, in a sense, an emerging Global Financial issue. How do we preserve and grow wealth kind of given all of that so i guess to just throw something in in that big kind of 40,000 foot level, lets why is private ownership so important for individuals and families. Well, wayne, thank you so for having me here. And for pr. I do wonderful work and everybody should supporting the work that youre doing out and i take the whole of ownership and the American Dream very serious firstly i came from a blue collar family and neither of my parents from college and they worked their way up and had the opportunity for me to go out and seize that American Dream and. I wanted to make sure that we preserve for for everybody and over my more than quarter of a century of experience in working with people and helping them create wealth and go after Wealth Creation opportunities and preserve the wealth that theyve created. Theres one thing that ive learned above. Theres just one complete truth out there, and that is that wealth comes ownership. You have own assets and, particularly those assets have the opportunity to retain value and to appreciate in value. So the first time i see this meme, youll own nothing and youll be happy across social media several years and i saw ads tied the World Economic forum, which is littered with the business and political leads. I thought like, this has to be raw, right . We know that wealth comes from ownership. Why would the business and political lead who have benefited from being owners, why would they be the end of private property by 2030 . Somebody must have taken this out of context as. Often happens right on social media. And it took very Little Research for this particular case to find the video which is still on the World Economic forums twitter stream, at least as were having conversation. And you know, you get that first prediction of aids all eight, by the way, are fairly terrifying. The first one, which came from Global Futures council, thats it says on the video, is that youll own nothing and youll be happy. And so there are a few things that struck me from that. You know, one was obviously the barriers to ownership that were talking about. The second the phrase it was, youll own nothing. It wasnt will or nothing they werent predicting that outcome. They gave the tell in the way that put that out there that that somehow there is a class of people who will still be owning many things, but you just wont be owning anything. So that sort of struck me and then youll be happy and this idea that if you could buy in to this concept of what a free life you would have wouldnt it be great . Couldnt just be the instagram, yolo lifestyle of i, you know, im just to traipse around the world and nothing its one of those pipe dreams that we know people throughout history who have not had ownership of property and havent had their private Property Rights enforce. They have been unfree, they have been unhappy and. Many cases, theyve lost their lives. So you have to ask yourself why, you know, why is that that theyre pushing youre not only the non ownership but the buy in piece and. I think as we see the Global Financial stakes shifting, which can get into and you have people who see that happening, you know, they want to make sure that they stay wealthy and powerful, but the will that was left out of the yall and if they can get you to buy into that concept, you just go along with this and that youre going to rent your life as a subscription or a service and become the product. It makes it much easier them. If youre going along willingly versus them trying to have to force upon you is the justification that youll be happy they its like a carefree, no responsibility lifestyle. I mean, how do you justify youll be happy. So i dont justify at all. I the the literature that i have seen whether is you know from organizations like the wef or the media cover is this concept that yes its very carefree. You wont have a trouble in the world its sort of what the government does you know come in and depend on government and will take care of you instead of going out there and finding your own way and getting your success. Its a very different mentality that obviously has outcomes. And as we know that, you know, that doesnt really work out in reality. But the dream sounds amazing. You know, it great that youll have this wonderful place to live and you know, if is a leak in the roof, someone else will come fix it and you dont have to worry about mowing the lawn because its somebody elses problem. But the implications of that are many. And i think for a lot of people whos battling sheets have been racked by, im sure many of the things that well talk about and certainly a lot of things i talk about and you will know nothing, i think theres a psychological mechanism going on. If youve been told that youre a victim or youve been told that the American Dream is no attainable for you, or its to be really challenging you see your Balance Sheets, you see the cost of everything that have been inflated by policy, and youre just not feeling really great about it. Its much easier you to lie to yourself and, to others and say, well, this isnt something i wanted anyway. I to have this detached life, right . And its really actually sad. You know, you want young people to be excited to be going out in the world and, say, yes, i want it to own things they also particular that the younger generations have been trained for non ownership theyre living in these digital where they have basic take in what i call roi return on investment. Its a it with roic return on equity or return on ego are we redress ego and theyre trading the investment aspect for clicks and like x and you know im going to go and spend all my time to generate, you know, a lot of attention for myself. I get that dopamine hit and i feel but i dont know how many likes it takes to pay your rent or to then actually invest in a house. I think its an infinite number. So weve had this sort of training for young people and weve seen the implications for that is that many of them arent getting drivers licenses or getting them later than you previous generations did. And theyre struggling with things like home ownership. And so, you know, there is this this training under, you know, many different facets, whether its from big tech, whether its from the the climate catastrophize or whatnot, that that keeps reinforce, saying that, oh, yeah, no, its good, good. You definitely dont want to own things. Youre going to be so much happier. And if they dont think, you know, they can actually things to begin with, they just start to go along with that narrative. Right. And know. And the irony of course being that the ownership creates the growth innovation to address the of Global Climate change of these other issues that were dealing with. One of the things that struck me and looked at to turn our conversation toward is you mentioned this earlier, the obstacles, because one of the things i think your book does excellent, you will own nothing. Ill keep talking by the title. But the the that theres lots of different unrelated obstacles that are out there there actually when you kind of put the picture together and connect the dots you see that theres all of these obstacles. Sure. Just class, family to gain wealth to have outside ownership. One of those and im an economist, go straight for the fiscal policy and, National Debt, and you have a whole chapter about this where our National Debt for the first time, which about size of our entire economy and this is one of those kind of warning bells that typically go off when you have that much debt. Thats the size of the economy, people start to really get concerned. So i guess this is thought open to you, you know, because you have a great chapter talking how debt impacts our prosperity, our National Power and from an individual perspective ability to to amass well so i love to kind of hear your your thoughts on that though ends up being even more timely expected at the time that were recording this is right after the us is just received a credit downgrade from. Fitch just the second one in history, the first one in 2011. Youre still being in from s p and fitch issued. A warning at that time. And now they have gone and said, okay, were going to were going to take action and its funny because that year, the rumblings everybodys incredibly surprised this. But as you said, weve got debt to gdp on public basis that is exceeded 100 . I think its almost 125 as were having a discussion. The imf has put out numbers which to janet yellen, the treasury secretary, has noted previous slave seems to have forgot about them in recent that the debt to gdp reload becomes unwieldy somewhere in the 70 to 80 range as the, you know, many of us would like to see it much lower, but thats the place where it really starts to top out and become a concern. We, the treasury and the cbo has put out many charts and many analysis that has said were on an unsustainable fiscal path. So the idea that all of a sudden were waking up and going, oh, wait, you know, the fiscal situation of the United States isnt great, is a little crazy. And i think its one of the reasons why were seeing shift in the global order because you know with debt comes because the people who are power at the governments and at the Federal Reserve, they only have so many things they can so many levers that they can pull and then theyre out of options. So if you think about the government know everybody likes to think that they money because they collect it and because they can also make up money. But its you know, if you think about money as the proxy for productivity, theyre not actually producing anything value. So its not like theyre out creating something and adding to the productivity to to back up that money. So they only have so many choices right . They can take more. They can extract from us via taxes or, fees or whatever direct amounts. And at some point, you know, not only does that become politically unpopular, but we know it has impact on the economy. You know, you cant keep taking money away from people and not have that have an impact their own receipts. In fact, weve seen as weve had these temporary tax cuts outside of a little blip for covid that the government has actually increased the receipts that theyve collected when, theyve cut taxes. So thats one mechanism that they could they can use they can cut services, which is also very politically unpopular. And i used services. Many of them are promises, you know, things that we could have other. But the things that the government has promised you we could cut back on that we saw how well that out for france several months ago when they decided they were going to the retirement age from 62 to 64 and a bunch of people decided to burn down paris and response. So thats a challenging road that a lot politicians dont really have the backbone. And then their option is basically issue debt, which at this point youre not only takes away from your basically our our productivity in wealth because you have to have more money going towards debt service and whatnot. But were at a point where theres nobody left to that debt. You know, its not like theres this huge demand from other countries. We have some of the biggest countries in the world that have actually been getting rid of their treasury, albeit, you know, we have some renewed investor demand for low duration treasuries like tbills because Interest Rates are super high from a long term financing standpoint. There isnt just, you know, tons of interest in having that finance thing. And if you look at some of the work thats been done by other economists, youll see that before 2014, youd have other Central Banks that are were financing our deficits. But really, since 2014, weve been financing it ourselves. So the fed has been monetizing the debt, coming up with money out of nowhere and purchasing the debt. We saw that via a covid. And then weve seen the outcome of what happened when the fed did that, they added 9 trillion to their Balance Sheets and we have been paying the price for that quite literally in terms of a decrease in purchasing power in massive increase in inflation. So all of those mean have some sort of an impact from you you know that direct grab of your wealth the decrease of your purchasing power or the cutting of promises and. Those are the only choices that they and so it becomes desperate and they do things that more ridiculous. And when look back at the changes and, you know, kind of major financial over time, its not usually an outside force that has made them collapse you know, it may be part of the final straw or the catalyst, but these empire is all collapsed from the inside you know, whether its the roman empire or the or the british, its because they do the same things, the same pattern that rhymes over and over again with these governments getting to bed big and taking on too much debt. And then they cant fund the military and it weakens. And its the same pattern over and over again. So this scenario sets up the whole not only for the shifts in the Global Financial order, but also for the implication and for your wealth. Some which we have started to live through, some of which, you know, may be coming, but none of which are great. The prosperity of the middle and working class and and to one of the things that really reinforces what you were saying in the book is the idea that with these higher Interest Rates were now going to be or soon will be spending more on interest than national defense. And that when you talk about the British Empire the book and in the dutch and the romans that really the rhyming of that is kind scary. It is. I mean, one of the things i like to share on a frequent basis is that think because Technology Evolves that your civilization has evolved as human nature has evolved the background may have evolved, but human nature remains very constant, which is why we see rhymes throughout history. And these things. Oh, i feel like ive seen this movie before. Oh, then i saw the sequel. Now were in the trilogy. I kind of know how this ends and it its staggering and know, unfortunately, even though many of us have seen this along the way of seeing the signposts the nature of who have that power is to just wait until somebody elses problem so theyre just to prolong it as long as and do what they can to get what there is and get out of the way even though theoretically, you know, the system comes down in meaningful way or changes in a meaningful it really will impact, i believe, to everyones detriment. But the short term myopia that we see, whether its wall street or with, you know, some of these global central planners, just ends up being the same thing every time. And i know Everyone Wants to think its a big and theres some big master, honestly. Its just basic human nature and human nature. Unfortunately, is just highly, highly predictable. Its like a swarm of bees just of going for the waterfall. No one directing it, but here we go. This this really kind of dovetails well into this thing. You you talk about in the book called the good ideas the bad outcomes. Because i think that we talk about excessive Government Spending or excessive regulation, it really comes from that or something you could kind of tell our listeners kind of what that and why its so important. Yeah. So i actually got this in part from peter teal. I was at an event, alex epstein, his great book, fossil future and they were having a discussion and peter put this great framework around it that resonated with some of the other frameworks that i had used. But a lot of the things come out of theres an issue or perceived and people really believe in it or some some heartfelt thing that they want to do and. Its a its a good idea. And ill take the climate scenario of the environmental. Its like we all to be good stewards of the planet we want to breathe clean air. We all want to make sure that the animals are weak while taking care of. I think that, you know, thats pretty universal. So maybe there are a couple of anarchists that dont want it, but most of us can can believe it. The challenge is that it ends up morphing into this model when you have Central Planning and so it starts out with this good idea and then there is a class of till called them racketeers i call them profiteers just because think that thats slightly more generous but he might be more right in that and there ends up being a whole class of people who really rise that by jumping on this idea and really trying to shape it and control that. Theres a ton of to be made. And again, very human nature. And its somewhat in nature, but have to kind of understand the reality of it is that, okay, we see this as green movement. Think about all of the money that we can make around this. Its a normas and it puts us in the position that if we get in early and we it and its to our benefit, of course were going to go along with it. We cant go along with Something Else even Something Else makes more sense because we havent figured out how to make money from that. So know we know who is beating us and were to be on that team and you get these, what i call he called them, i believe the useful and it goes back to that are we return on ego people who then entrench this into society and theyre not necessarily getting the benefit but theyre getting other benefits right. They get to put in a moji in their bio and they can wear a t shirt, put a sign on their lawn, they get a pat on the head. They might even get invitation to the white house for a photo because they are on the right side of the narrative dictated by these group of people who are saying, doing this for the good of society and for the children, it always is. And its really just been co into something that is a cash grab at and i think the best and worst becomes really damaging because you know everything gets viewed through this very myopic lens. We saw this during covid. We weve had this conversation before where its like, oh, were so focused. This one thing that we kind of have forgotten about, like the entire ecosystems thats impacted. And so i feel like this happens over and over again where you have something where we like we basically all agree its a good idea and Market Forces you could solve for it very nicely. And then it gets coopted into Central Planning and it ends up turning out with these outcomes and a lot of the extraction in the interim. Yeah. And when i was reading you would really kind of approach as it rewards the crony ists right youre one that taught me this im not going to call crony capitalism because its not capitalism, its cronyism. But thats if you look at the Global Change and solar power in electric vehicles and theres a lot of reason to believe that neither one of those is the solution we need to address because theyre highly polluting they are ineffective theyre wasteful, theyre expensive i mean, these these are not ready for at bare minimum yet acrimonious. Right. They make a lot of money of it. And this falls kind of right into that that kind of that framework you were setting up that people the chicano ego. Im driving a tesla so im of the solution when youre probably part of the problem. But if good and elon is making a lot of money hes always you know people may like and may hate him but it a corniest in that he makes all of his money selling things that the government seems best hes the best at it. Yeah hes the best. And thats thats really terrifying because that denies the opportunities that you youve been talking about so important. Yeah, i want to say, you know, it also begets these control mechanisms because part of making things stick is you putting this infrastructure of control and in place and if youre somebody whos really about the environment and you look at what the people who are the purveyors of im so concerned about the environment theres a Climate Emergency all the Climate Emergency people live in waterfront mansions and are flying on private jets to, eat steaks and tell us that the water levels are rising and, you know, we should be cutting back on fossil fuels and you shouldnt eat meat. So you really have to Pay Attention to what theyre doing. But then think about the stupid things that theyre making us do in lives. You know, you cant have a gas stove or you know you cant have a ceiling fan when like there whole countries like china that now because were turning away from fossil fuels are trying to ramp up both on the fossil fuel and in mining of minerals that are you know is very disruptive for the environment for some of these green solutions. And theres none of this, you know, things that will actually the needle if you believe the thesis begin with thats being addressed its all these small stupid that would move the you know even if we all into them but now established the control mechanism and have taken away our our sovereignty, our quality of life for no real outcome and so i think that thats something to be very aware of as you know, next time somebody wants to take your straw or whatever it is it is this what are they really trying to move the needle or is there Something Else going on here . And ive yet to see anything that was really trying to move the needle and or that the people who are pushing this narrative are actually doing in their day to day lives when they start acting like a Climate Emergency, then perhaps ill believe theres a Climate Emergency. But first, walk the walk. Yes. Now you know what also struck me and this is an issue weve been researching right at a prize i something near and dear to my heart, environmental, social and governance is both in investing and in management paradigm. People probably have heard the acronym esg and this is really that seeing phenomena that were talking about with the government but the private sector isnt immune from this either. So i was hoping you could spend a little talking about kind of your take on esg and kind of what how that kind dovetails into the same story or get my take. And then i want to get your take. You guys appear ive done a phenomenal job. I know this has been a passion point and we need more people, more advocates bringing it to light. I to tell everybody whos watching what esg is but i actually cant because there is no clear standard for it and thats by design i mean we know what environmental social and governance theoretically mean but terms of what actually constitutes it changes and. Thats really the point here. I call it business social credit that basically a bunch of people who arent taking any risks, they dont have any skin in the game theyre not actual stakeholders, but they like to call themselves stakeholders, but theyre nuts and they want to outcomes and theyre that by bullying businesses as with hey, youre not going to get access to capital or were going to hurt your share price were going to remove you from Management Team or the directors know some very mafia esque types of scenarios and a lot of times its using our capital its using money that you know hardworking people have paid in to Pension Funds and funds is being managed by these these Big Companies that are throwing out these directives and its basically like a bunch of planners wealthy wellconnected people say, well how do we get businesses to do the things that we want to do . You know, we dont want to spend a bunch money. We dont actually make the investments. You know, how do we bully them into doing these things . And thats what esg has become. And has been a lot of pushback, a lot of areas, because it has a little bit of that bad outcome model on both sides. And case you have the profiteering issue with, you know, a lot of individuals who are saying that a word esg fund just slapping an esg label on things to extract and there have been many, you know, across the globe entities that have been slapped with what call greenwashing based, equally saying that youre doing something in a esg manner, but indistinguishable from anything you have done before. But now, you know, whatever etf you were running or fund, you were running, extracting enough fees and you have to put a highlight around it with this label, youre extracting more fees. So thats one piece thats just, you know, just a basic profiteering extraction of fees. But the scarier part for me is the fact that its impact ing the investment outcomes and, you know, the innovation that comes with with more free market principles. Companies are being distracted from doing what is in the best interest. Shareholders, people either are through their, you know, blood, sweat and, tears, their hard work or by risking their capital who evade investment in the business and our shareholders of the business, theyre that thats the fiduciary of the board of directors is as opposed to be making sure the company is doing what is in the best interest of those people and it always sort of aligns is right because if you are doing whats for the customers and whats good for the employees, that ends up being a Healthy Business that up being good for the business now chasing this like weird and moving targets that you know is Something Different like oh, weapons are bad. Oh wait ukraine war weapons are good, you know, but private jets are bad. Oh, but amazon to deliver packages. Okay, but those ones are good. You know, its just so hypocritical and flimsy as it is. But if it was a strict standard, i mean, who gets to make that standard that your Accounting Firm is at blackrock . Is it, you know, a bunch of weirdos in davos . Like why did why should they you know, why are the shareholders and the customer owners and the real stakeholders of the business actually making those decisions . And so that has a lot of implications for individual wealth in terms of the fact that your company is will do worse and it is the statistics have shown they do worse when theyre not focused on driving the shareholder value. And we can make some discussions about, you know, they should be focusing more long term on the short term. There are some issues in there. But, you know, esg just further corrupts that and that theyre using your capital as a way to to do this bullying. And so its really putting, you know, your investments at risk. Then were not getting the innovation from the companies. So its just net net a really bad outcome for creation opportunities and of the the fundamental factor and foundation that have driven the success of the United States. I agree with everything you just said. So its huge i would say better what i would in this was, you know, ive been on this issue and show myself to be really old here. But back in late nineties, early 2000 it Corporate Social Responsibility csr and you had to triple bottom line and so to me the esg is that went away we had the dot com bust and people realized okay well now lets talking about silly time because you had csr funds and icr funds outperformed in the late nineties. Now mind you, csr funds were just basically investing in all the tech stocks. So you were basically saying if are overweighted in tech during tech bubble, you will outperform. Go figure, go for exactly. Go figure. So you know moving to today, you know to me its the same its the same concept. But whats really happening is theres a political agenda and that political agenda is not getting through congress where it belongs, rightly or wrongly. Right. Take Global Climate change, perhaps we should have cap and trade. I dont think so. But perhaps we should perhaps we should have carbon taxes. I dont think so. Perhaps we should that needs to be debated in congress. Who is setting the policy . Environmental policy of the United States . Thats is kind of that thats their purview. Yeah. The not getting that done through congress. So whats happening . Well, were going to try to go the back door and get companies to actually act as if policies were passed and were going to pressure them. And again, its the same thing. Were going to use that scarlet concept, save humanity, kind of the same throughout time. Were going to were going to put that Scarlet Letter on you. If youre not actually compliant with what we deem to be it, who is this . We you know, thats a really good question. But thats what you see is now you see oil who do an incredibly Important Role in society. Right. We have our modern lifestyle oil. And its not just about powering cars and natural gas and its also about, you know, ive, you know containers, right. We dont have plastic without oil you dont have i you know it is its complete pletely pervasive in our lives and yet youre having Oil Companies saying oh well were beyond all bp was was beyond petroleum. I think theyve theyve given up on that moniker. Hopefully, they have. But its so i see it as a political kind of end around proper processes. And then what youre then doing undermining kind of way corporations operate, you do create again. Cronyism creates opportunities for profits and the economy is about incentives. If the incentives in the economy are set so that can make more money being produced, then i can in terms of trying to serve my youre going to see more people become cronies. And so thats what weve seen youve seen it with, you know, financial firms. Youve seen it with public Pension Funds. Theyre all going that way its their fault, their incentives. So dont be surprised. You know if you if you if you put me down on the floor, i dont be surprised. The dogs come in and eat it. Its the thing that you know and so were again undermining, the efficiency of our companies in the name of whats really a indefinable concept and because you cant define it then expose it can be anything oh look he has to outperform because that outperformed but its just a Broad Based Fund that doesnt in firearms but you know its and so and first of all im so glad that you added to that because as i said, youve done so much work, but one of the things that really stood out to me is the fact that you said youve been following this for so long. And thats one of the very interesting pieces of information that i uncovered my research. Is that so many of these good ideas gone bad are the same ideas that have been repackaged over and over again. I mean, even esg, you know, larry fink, who is the ceo of blackrock, the largest asset manager of the world, who has been a huge, quote unquote catalyst, which is a very kind word in terms of ensuring that companies comply because of his his ability to or not allocate cap at all and to vote for directors and the like. Hes been very that weve all figured out what esg is and said add a recent retreat that okay well im going to use the esg anymore because its been politicized now he didnt say hes going to stop doing the things that he was doing that that wasnt his problem, which is my problem. I dont care what you call it, but it was oh, im mad that you figured out this. And so weve already some changes to Impact Investing in Sustainable Development and youre just going to keep seeing this cycle and through with different words and phrases. So i think its really important for people to understand the underlying concept because its going to come with some lipstick and a new bow and its going to be the same old tired. Another thing thats been. Since nine, 1071 is this concept of stakeholders which is kind of central to this. Klaus, the head of the World Economic forum, when he first started the pretest tester, which was called the european management, he did it in concert with a book. And this concept of a stakeholder, which, again, somebody who isnt actually the vested in anything but is trying to weasel in and say, im important, you need to listen to me. Its something that he has been pushing. Now for more than 50 years. So the persistence of, these ideas and obviously the ability profiteer around them, which is allowed to continue on, is staggering. And so we just keep seeing them come up in different ways. Thats why we know when somebody is like, oh, you know this, you will nothing thing as as a new thing. Its a new thing. You know, its marxism, its communism. Its something that, you know, klaus schwab pushing in 1971, the between a stakeholder versus a shareholder, somebody who does it alone versus somebody who does own. So, you know, maybe you havent heard this particular word or phrase before this packaging, but these really bad, damaging concepts have been there. The difference today. And i think why its more impactful, as we said, is because of these shifts, the Global Financial order, the fact that the is financial house is disarray, the fact that the fed has not kept the dollar stable on an International Stage and people are getting very of playing the game and letting the u. S. To be at the at the head of the Table Running the game. So it feels different and it has more urgency now. But the the infrastructure thats been trying to push this, the people who are trying to push this, many of them have been at it for quite a long time. And there was a question from from someone who was listening in. He was asking about whether this is just coming from the un agenda 2030. I think you kind just answered that in the sense that the agenda kind of is another factor thats adding to the pressure. Its obviously not the only. But now and i think thats something thats different this time than previously is now we have these the World Economic four, the un, all of these of International Bodies who are in effect advocating for the exact same type of let me give you a date and you can go back and source this in the book. But so thats was part of my research is that the un un has been pushing this agenda the nineties in concert with the World Economic forum under different names and so they had people sign on to their principles for response investing and other sustainable goals. So they have been pushing way before the number 2030 ever popped up. You know, now thats the target. But this has been going for a long time and, you know, some people may say, well, why do you pick the other wef or whatnot when a name of a person or a name of a group or a couple groups up once or twice, maybe even three times, i can go, well, its a coincidence, you know, these are big groups when every bad idea that i look into ends up with the same groups of people can no longer say its a coincidence its a coordination, right . I mean, this the same groups of people over and over, to the extent that i see somebody who is to reimagine, rethink or change something thats pretty darn well, i always go back and i look to see if theyre affiliated with the wef and every time, except for once they are, there was one time theres a group that youre doing thats super weird and theyre doing this development, this that was in Person Development that has no Parking Spaces in tempe, a suburb of phenix. They want you to to have a walking city in tempe, arizona, the suburbs of phenix. And so i went through their people and they did not i did not see any ties there. But that was the only time when i havent got up yet, of course these people are all connected and walking city in tempe may make sense in but in august quite apparently nobody can visit you like you cant even have theres guest parking the whole thing is just it looked like a prison complex it was like kind of stagger but very on trend and why i was alerted to it because now ive been talking about these zero nothing concepts. Ive got people saying like every crazy thing that they see and sending it to me on social media and i have to kind of ferret through it. So you i came across that from somebody is lead and went wow this is this is pretty scary but right on trend with exactly all the things that were talking i would love steer our conversation to the Federal Reserve because you talk about them in a number of different chapters and theres theres a lot to talk about because theyre getting into Digital Currencies right. And thats thats an issue. Theyre actually. Theyre subsidizing to compete with people directly when theyre trying to purchase their homes. And so but, you know, both of those, not to mention the inflation we about earlier, all of these are working against our ability to gain assets because youre undervalue youre in the currency. Youre youre youre inflating demand for houses. Cbdcs are central bank currencies. Thats a real issue. So i dont know which one you want to take on first, but id love to Start Talking about some of those things. Yeah. So i mean the Federal Reserve, the takeaway for with after, you know, having been studying them for a very long time is that in concert with the but very much driven by Monetary Policy they have been the biggest enablers of non merit based inequality. I dont my end inequality for you know Michael Jordans the best basketball star and you know so he should get paid a lot more than you know somebody who isnt very good but when its by Monetary Policy, its done by government policy. And thats whos getting to pick the winners and losers, the merits and the talents and the free thats a huge problem. And they have driven trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth from main street to wall street. And i think thats a huge, huge takeaway. One thing that you mentioned is this idea of a central bank, digital currency. And when im out talking to people in my sphere, many of them who, you know, tend to be a little bit more financial inclined, it is the number one concern of people because there has been a Movement Towards bitcoin and cryptocurrency on the basis that those who have been the quote unquote stewards of the dollar and have supposed to theyre supposed to keep it. Right. Thats part of their official one. One of two pieces of that, both on an International Stage and on a domestic stage. Right. Because we have, the worlds reserve currency, theyre in charge of that they have imagined. Theyve managed to do absolutely neither. Usually you have to make a choice. Okay. Well, going to favor the domestic for the global or the global for the domestic and just managed to do neither which is creating massive issues for our wealth and has has been this epic transfer of money. So the idea that these people who have our house down, the arsonists are now coming to help and now theyve got a little water bottle and they want to throw it on there and put out the fire. Its just just so frustrating to me. But they want to take this idea, these these bitcoin and cryptocurrency people who want to decentralize the currency, they dont want to have the government and the fed have all of this control over the monetary system. They want to just, you know, be able to have something thats more free, whether or not. You agree with their thesis. You know that that issue underpins it. What the fed wants to do is capitalize on that interest with a bunch of people who dont know anything. Decentralization versus centralization, and have a fully centralized currency. And there a video that was making the rounds the other day a professor from cornell who was at the World Economic forum, and he was talking about all these things that could be done with the cbdc, including the ability to probe around them and to track it and to basically restrict whatever it was that the government wanted to restrict. So if you know that the climate agenda burgers are bad, meat is bad. And carol and wayne go out for a burger and we both had, you know, more than three that month then, you know, cant pay anymore or they to control inflation you know basically now their tool were going to change Interest Rates their tool could be we want to just restrict demand were just going to turn off access to spending. You cant spend the money or with the cronyism were talking were going to give you more if you spend it at these approved places which have to be happened to be the approved places, our friends who extract wealth and its just increased doubly sinister and given the the issues weve been through there are so many carrots that they can use to get people who arent financially literate to grant this approval needs to happen to push to this happen if you saw what happened with the stimulus checks right. There were people like you wayne, like me, who were standing up and going, dont take this money. You dont want the thousand dollars. You dont want the 1200 dollars youre going to pay 10,000 a year for the rest of your life. Minimum by taking this. Dont do it. It doesnt work. And the people are. No, you know, i need stimulus. I need my donny and my bucks. You know, i need to have that. Theyre to do the same thing with cbd, right . Theyre going to say, im going give you a hundred digital us dollars if you just give me one. And people going to go, wow, im a this is amazing. It was that old saturday night live skit which i referenced in the book with dan aykroyd pretending to be jimmy carter during inflation and being like, wouldnt you like to have a multimillion dollar house and wear a 75,000 dude . Its great because, you know, they actually understood the concepts like money printing back then that have been lost the conversation and so you could see that you could see the inflation control being a target you could see ubi, hey, come on the digital dollar is the only way that give you a guaranteed income. All of these things that are going to further destroy the value of the dollar, the Wealth Creation opportunity, but give them tool to potentially pay down their debts by just devaluing everything. And so thats a really scary outcome and it becomes even more scary. And i talk about in this the book as i marry it with things like social credit, whether its on the beat side with esg or on the individual side, a formal or informal social credit system. But again, you Say Something on social media or we dont want you to have access to a firearm or whatever is now they have the mechanism to fully control access to the money that represent us your productivity, your hard work, your investing bent and there is nothing that i can think of that has more of a potential to kill our individual freedoms our personal sovereignty, our agency, more than a central bank, digital currency. Its just ironic, it seems, that the unbanked, which is supposedly something were concerned about, would actually get have even more issues under a cbdc because theyre really outside of the financial. I mean, i dont expect you to respond to that because im not sure there is a response beyond just the irony of, you know, the is not just hurting things in the future too, though you talked about and i learned this reading your book and i thought that thats really amazing that there actually the basically subsidizing corporate nations to compete with you to buy your own homes you dont mind if we if we want to actually get ahead if you want to gain wealth how does the middle gain wealth. Well to homeownership i mean thats the primary asset in most. And now the Federal Reserve is subsidizing companies to inflate the value which i guess is good if you own a home. But if you dont, youre never getting in. Yeah. So this is a huge point of frustration and i also learned several things in this research. So im glad that that it was new to you as well but this idea that you can rent the American Dream where we started, you know, the biggest asset as you noted on households Balance Sheet is long term driver of family and legacy is staggering and what happens coming out of the Great Recession financial crisis this has all been done by policy. Obviously most people know that wall street got to bail out wall six people, 6 Million People lost their homes to foreclosures, short sales. And there was a complete favoring there. But i dont think people realize the implications of the policy that followed you theres this 15 year period of, you know, interface variance by the fed nine of that with zero Interest Rate policy gave abundant cheap capital to wall street and they inflated the assets of everybody everything every asset class. And you that was great as you said for them for the holders. But if you were somebody who was a saver or a retiree or you didnt want to take on that risk, you didnt get that benefits. So that all went to them. And when they ran out of assets classes and said, well, you know, where are we going to find a return on our investment, were to find yields, you know, at this point, without taking on more risk, all of a sudden do do, do, do, do. They started looking Single Family homes and 2010 this was an amazing statistic i found in the research before 2010 there was no meaningful Institutional Capital in the Single Family home market, none. It didnt exist there. Certainly corporate entities that were mom and pops that, you know, did did some of that. But it wasnt this effort where you had wall Street Investors that backed by Jp Morgan Chase and blackrock and capital and whatnot, going out and buying tens of thousands of homes. Fast forward to the end of 2022. Very period of time. Corelogic said that one in every five homes has been purchased by a corporate investor. And again, these are flush with, cheap capital. They can make all cash offers they dont have to do a walk through. They dont care what it looks like because they not looking to live in their and consume it and build that wealth. Theyre looking to take it and fix up a little bit and rent it they dont want to flip it back to a family. They want to rent you. The American Dream. And they are you look at their financials, theyre ten ks. Theyre annual reports. You will see their language that. They like the middle class because theyre stable and theyve got great jobs and theyre perfect to extract runs from. And that see this as a golden asset class a once in a year generational asset opportunity which is crazy because youre now taking that opportunity that is the biggest way that families create general wealth and youre taking that away from them and its coming on both sides coming from you know, the up of the assets and the the cheap capital, the competitors and then youve got these completely wrecked Balance Sheets on the other side personal Balance Sheets that have been wrecked, inflation. So youve got these consumers who have increased their debt loads and Credit Card Debt loads and have dipped into their savings. And for the young people you have Balance Sheets that are wrecked by debt from what call the largest predatory lender in the world. The Us Government who ties up minors and people who are 18 years old with and six figures of debts for many cases degrees that dont produce a return investment. And basically its a huge wholesale transfer wealth from young people to colleges and their administrators. So you got the Balance Sheet issues on one side, you have the increasing prices on the other and then sprinkle in your government regulation adds almost 100,000 to the cost of every new and all of the state and local nimby policies and the disruption of the labor market by the government policies, which means you dont even have enough people to build these homes if. You could get past all of those hurdles and its really creating a massive issue and were getting more people feeling that america dream is out of reach or theyre going to rent it, which is, you know, again, central to this thesis of we want that. We want people to be able to own things and to participate fully have that stake in the American Dream. They go against it. You own nothing. Its its policies. They restrict, they expand demand. And then worry that houses are. Shocking. Shocking how that works. Were kind of running out of time here. And i really want to get to what the final chapter in the book, because to me, thats it. You know, after going through all this, you can almost be a little depressed. Yes. You you actually say, okay, there are some really kind tried and true sound financial things that people should be doing that even though we have all of these headwinds, you know, until we change policies which we need to do, you know, these are the strategies we should be pursuing and it really just theres tried and true strategy. I was hoping you share kind of that final chapter with us. Yeah. So the final chapter, a little easter egg for you guys. So final chapter is chapter 11 and its a little play on the fact that chapter 11 is usually bankruptcy and releasing you of your assets and you have no ownership. And so i wanted to basically turn that its head and make chapter 11 about owning everything that you possibly can. And as you said here, i think that the advice that i give is really the same types of things that i would tell you in any scenario. But i think that going and learning about all of these issues is one, it creates a different lens to look at them through and to it creates, i hope, more of a sense of urgency. So the overarching thing, the thing i would absolutely tell you to do is ignore what the elite are saying and watch what theyre doing. Every one of these people who are talking about, oh, we need to get rid ownership or we shouldnt travel. All these kinds of things are doing exactly the opposite. I mean, we live in a time when the purveyors of socialist. Socialism have three houses, right . So when theyre telling you not to own anything, theyre predicting non ownership like go try to own everything that you possibly can because thats what theyre doing theyre buying homes. Theyre buying productive land, things, farmland, land that you could ranch on land that has timber, land that has water rights, associate with that we want to keep that decentral so if you have the wherewithal to do you have Central Banks around the world who are loading up on physical metals. So that may be something for you to consider. So its looking at these Different Things that these these people who are smart wellconnected, wealthy and powerful and want to keep that in place are doing try to mimic that as much as possible. I do think diversification is important. One of the challenges that we have is that we never really know time frames, we dont know duration and we dont know catalysts. We can see the trajectory of these things happening when. I go back and look at previous financial world orders. Its one thing to look at a 20 year period out of a couple hundred years ago. That was a relatively short period of time. But in your life, 20 years is very meaningful. So it takes you know, its very difficult if something today or 20 years from today, its a very different outcome. And you dont want to, you know, all of the run up, lets say, in stocks because completely diversified away because youre worried about Something Like that. So you want to have a diversified portfolio that kind of sets you up and hedges you for a lot of different. I think thats really important. And then when this last thing is to sound like im a prepper, ive been told, and what i will tell is theres a nuance here. I think that being a prepper in way is nothing wrong with thats, you know, a lifestyle makes sense for a lot of people. But people who are preppers live that life every single day like this is, how they live and breathe. I think the difference between that and being prepared is that when you do preparation, its kind of like thinking about your house burning down. You know, you want to have your escape plan, you want to buy your insurance before you see the fire. You can deal with it. You do the preparation to remove that burden and know if and when something happens. Youve thought through it and youre not panicking or frozen in that moment and trying to deal with that. So if we a cbd put in place and all of a sudden you have the the access to your money shut down for some period of time, that maybe theres a period of chaos, what are you going to do have you thought through getting small denomination, Precious Metals . Have you thought through youre talking to people, your community, you know, whos got the chicken, who can lay eggs and you know, where am i getting the medical care from again, hoping it doesnt come so were not saying that it will, but its not a completely chance and never going to happen, given the backdrop of the scenario. So at least think through those things come up with a plan that if, you know, a cbdc comes into play or we do some sort of global chaos that youve kind of thought through how you can manage through these periods. Because, you know, as i said in the mark twain says, history doesnt repeat, but it often does rhyme. And theres a lot of rhyming thats happening now, sounding a lot like a childrens poem. So make sure that youve youve through those things and you may feel a little about some of those things, but i dont know anybody whos been in an issuer or even if it doesnt happen, its anguish i had been so prepared. That was a a bad use of my time or care. We kind of run out of time, but i just want to thank you so much for kind of sharing wisdom. And, you know, the book is called you will own nothing. Its fantastic. Its available at amazon was i think its still on New York Times list. So please go buy it. It is worth your time and thank you everyone for for listening in. We really appreciate it. And wish everyone a good