Lead-Lag Live

Unraveling the Federal Reserve: A Deep Dive into Monetary Systems, Government Intervention, and Libertarianism with Chris Rossini

• Michael A. Gayed, CFA

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Are you ready to challenge what you know about monetary systems, libertarianism, and the role of government intervention? Join me as I sit down with Chris Rossini, a veteran in the field, who has spent the past decade working closely with Ron Paul. Chris will reveal how the Federal Reserve's power to monetize government debt has sparked global events like World War I and significantly impacted the value of your dollar.

Ever wondered who truly benefits from the Federal Reserve system? We'll shine a light on the elephant in the room, discussing how the users of the dollar pay the price while government and banking systems rake in the benefits. Watch out for our take on the military-industrial complex, the media, and how these powerful entities are lured towards the printing press. Ponder upon the possibility of a food crisis being the catalyst for change, as opposed to a financial one. 

From understanding the complex relationship between gold, silver, and fiat currency to discussing the risks of governments and banks hijacking money, we've got you covered. Tune in as we explore the manipulation of market systems, the impact of 0% interest rates, and the rise of the woke agenda and investments. Don't miss our robust debate on the pros and cons of investing in the stock market from a libertarian standpoint and how this perspective has been shaped by Dr. Paul's influential work. This episode promises to be a thought-provoking journey, challenging our understanding of economic systems and government intervention.

Nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. 

The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.

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Speaker 1:

The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions. Don't forget to follow at LeadLagReport on Twitter to join these conversations live and check out the LeadLagReport at wwwleadlagreportcom. Use promo code podcast30 for two weeks free and 30% off to get access to award-winning research and anticipate stock market crashes, corrections and bear markets. And now onto our LeadLag Live discussion hosted by Michael Gaiat.

Speaker 2:

My name is Michael Gaiat, publisher of the LeadLagReport, and joining me for the hour is Chris Rossini, who I'll tell you, if seen with his interviews with Ron Paul, will touch on some of his relationship with him as well as what he's trying to accomplish. But, chris, welcome Interest in the audience. who are you, which background, what have you done throughout your career and what are you doing currently?

Speaker 3:

Yes, thank you first, Michael, for inviting me on. I appreciate it very much. Yeah, my name is Chris Rossini. I am. I work for Ron Paul and I'm a co-host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report on Fridays. I've been working for him for almost a decade now. I think this is my 10th year. Before that, i had regular jobs. I was. I originally wanted to be a stockbroker when I was younger and I interned at Merrill Lynch back in the day, back during the dot-com boom, and then after that I had other jobs that were not really financial related, but always within me I had this desire. I had a libertarian streak in me, so I got into writing and I got involved in the libertarian movement and things turned out very well. I ended up working for the chief libertarian, ron Paul. A lot of luck was involved, but a lot of hard work too, and that's where I'm at today.

Speaker 2:

So talk through that. How did you actually hook up with Ron Paul?

Speaker 3:

I started very. I started actually just reading. About 10 years of reading went before actually getting involved with it. And there were other people Peter Schipp, i'm sure you everyone knows I helped him with his newsletter. So I started very at the bottom just working for free for whoever would take me. And then I hooked up with a guy named Robert Wenzel. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago but he was an excellent economist, libertarian, and through that we ended up interviewing Daniel McAdams, who was right around Paul's right hand man and also the co-host of the Ron Paul Liberty report, and through that I ended up becoming friends with Daniel McAdams and ended up working with Ron Paul.

Speaker 2:

So it was relationships and doing good work, i suppose I mentioned the libertarian and I've had a number of people from the Mises Institute on some of these spaces. But yeah, maybe define the term libertarian. I have to evolve over time, just like the definitions for Republican and Democrat.

Speaker 3:

Yes, it's the same with libertarian. It's a shame we have to categorize ourselves, but there are many libertarians that I wouldn't consider libertarians. The libertarianism that I guess categorize myself would be the Ron Paul type, where our Bain philosophy is non-intervention in the economy by the government, also non-intervention overseas. The purpose of the military is to defend America only and not to meddle around the world. Then it's also as much of volunteerism as possible between individuals, and we are very far from that today. But there are many libertarians that go way beyond that and they extend what they believe libertarianism is, and that's fine. There's conflict within every grouping I guess whether you're a Republican Democrat, nobody's 100% sees things the same way. But we advocate our version of libertarianism, which is as much of voluntary interaction between individuals and countries and companies and everybody else in between and as little government involvement as possible.

Speaker 2:

Okay. I think defending is obviously a big differentiator in terms of how different parties view each other At this point. No matter who is in power, government debt just does nothing but want to go up. Right, you can argue that what you'd expect in any kind of democracy, because you get elected for promising more. You don't get elected for austerity, even though it's, in many ways, the better option. But where do you think politicians have lost their way in terms of just even thinking about fiscal spending? We got into a world where it seems that modern monetary theory is not a theory, it's actually half. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat. Republicans want to spend more on military, democrats want to spend more on social. It's still spending, and I'd argue they're both social.

Speaker 3:

Yes, When did they lose their way? It's been a gradual process. I think the creation of the Federal Reserve was a very big catalyst, and all this and that was back in 1913. And while perhaps originally their intention was not to monetize government debt, that is what ended up happening. World War I occurred, you know, coincidentally only a few years afterwards, and the US would not have been able to get into World War I if the Fed was not there. So the Federal Reserve monetizes government debt And what that means is if the government wants to do something, whether it be a war or a fair, they don't have to come to us, They don't have to directly tax us, They don't have to ask us.

Speaker 3:

In fact, in my opinion, I don't think they really care what we think, because they can create a government bond And if no one is willing to buy that government bond, the Federal Reserve will create money out of thin air and buy that government bond. So basically, the government indirectly prints money, you know, via the Federal Reserve. You know constitutionally they're not allowed to do that, but the government is very crafty in finding ways around the Constitution. Just like they're not allowed to censor us, So the social media would access their proxy and censor us instead, with the government, you know, as we are learning from the Twitter files, you know directing it. So it's the same thing with money printing. Government is not allowed to print money. It's supposed to represent us, what we want. They're supposed to be the ones to say yes or no to things. But they found a loophole by creating a central bank, And the central bank will print the money. They gave it a monopoly, saying that this is the dollar that everyone must use and you have a monopoly on creating it. And so the Fed creates the money, gives it to the government and they spend it And they do basically what we want. You know what they want. You know each week it's a new Monday, So you know more billions maybe going to Ukraine. Do you think they're asking us? Do we want to send billions to Ukraine? No, they tell us And that's how it works. So there is no incentive. You know that's the last thing you want.

Speaker 3:

If you're interested in limited government, now a lot of people like this, A lot of people want unlimited government. But if you're interested in limited government, the population must have a financial check on that government. The people, the citizens, the taxpayers must be able to say no, you're not allowed to do this. I am not going to give you the money for this. Well, we don't live in that world today. They don't ask us. They tell us this is what we're spending money on, And then we get the bill perhaps not in the mailbox, saying this is your percentage of you know of what's going to Ukraine.

Speaker 3:

How we find out is we go to the supermarket and our bills are triple what they used to be And our gasoline is triple what it used to be. So that's how we pay the bill, And it's very crafty, because 9.9 out of 10 people will never connect that this is how it works. They go and they go to the supermarket and think it's the greedy supermarket or whatever they're told to think, Or that it's peaking, Or, you know, it's very easy to snow people and tell them why prices are rising. But the prices are rising because they created trillions of dollars out of thin air And that depreciates the money that's in your wallet and your bank account, And that's why prices are rising.

Speaker 2:

You typically said with World War I, that's where all this started. I've said this many times before that I think our current environment can be traced back to the Iraq war. I saw this staff at Brown University that showed that, or estimated that, the Iraq war cost the US, aside from the lives, around $8 trillion, which is roughly the Fed's balance sheet, incidentally, right, just more of a. So that point about sort of central banks really enabling war as sort of the main imbibedest for creation, as opposed to the banking stability which is what the original concept was, i think is important more And that gets into the discussion around Sam money versus Fiat. Now, a lot of people will correctly argue that all Fiat goes down to zero. Why is the solution not not something from the constitution side or the legal side? Why is it that you know we have to have a discussion about Fiat versus non Fiat as opposed to just having better laws?

Speaker 3:

Well it's, you know you have to look at the incentives of the people involved. We have Fiat money. Now I mentioned how the government created the Fed, you know, with the Federal Reserve Act. So it was an act of government, but there were different interests involved. Now the bankers, they have a huge interest in this, you know. They, in the ability to create money, have the ability to bail themselves out, so they can take on all the risks that they want and they do all over the world And if something blows up, the big ones, the important ones, quote unquote, will get bailed out. Now that doesn't mean that, even though this is one Federal Reserve system, you have a lot of small banks. They're, you know, they're very selective, they'll let whatever they think can fail. But the Federal Reserve is a cartel of banks, you know, kind of like OPEC is a cartel of oil producing countries. So there was a very big interest in the banking, in the banks, to have the Federal Reserve system because now they can, you know, take all the risks that they want, gather in all the profits And when there's losses, you know, you inflate the money and everyone else covers the losses.

Speaker 3:

Now, from the government's perspective I, you know, alluded to this already. They want unchecked ability to spend money. So you know they work hand in hand. And then you have on top of those two I think those are the two main beneficiaries the government and the banks of the Federal Reserve system. And then you can expand outwards. You have the military industrial complex, you have the media, you have everyone else who gathers around the printing press that you know what's their share of it. So you it's. The amount of interest involved becomes so overwhelming, you know, and they're big corporations. And then you could even expand the, expand it out of this country to other countries. They want it to be around the printing press and have their reasons for why print this money for us, print this money for this, print this money for that.

Speaker 3:

So everybody, and the one who are out of the loop is everyone else, the common people all over the world, because everybody around the world uses dollars And it's when they inflate and destroy the value of it. Everyone, you know all the common people in the world they use dollars, are paying the price for it. So there are so many vested interests, not just the banks and not just the government, that want this system and will do anything to keep it going, just so they can, you know, be beneficiaries of it. That's why, you know, i live in the Northeast. If anybody ever goes to Washington DC, you'll see. That's where all the money is, the mansions they're living it up And it's buzzing with constant traffic because it's all the interests go to Washington to get their piece of our pie.

Speaker 3:

So, you know, that's why this is a very tough situation because, even if I or myself, you speak the truth and other people understand it, we have very powerful people that you know. They know many people and explain to them, you know, what's going on, which is, you know, far from the truth. So this is a very big uphill battle to get, you know, the sound money back. But, you know, eventually there may be a financial crisis that is so huge and so all-encompassing that even the people involved, you know, realize that it's time to change.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, i mean I think maybe I'm wrong in this, but it's my sense that, from a historical perspective, it's not necessarily a financial crisis that causes and forces a change. It's a food crisis, right, i mean. Yeah, you're back to wheat prices with Egypt and Mubarak, right, i mean, that was the catalyst, to the extent that people are distracted by social media, by virtual realities, and food prices are still somewhat affordable. This is, i think, probably is more likely to stay the same, but either you need that kind of food shop to really force them actions.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's. I agree with you 100%, because what we're dealing with is a very tiny minority of people. Now, there may be many of them, maybe many thousands of them, but many thousands out of seven billion is a very tiny amount of people. So they have to make sure to use Roman Empire terms of bread and circuses. They have to keep the people placid And you may be disgusted with what's going on, but as long as you go along and don't cause any trouble, you'll get stimulus checks, you'll get welfare checks. That's why they make up rights. Every single day there's a new right to something and they'll keep you pacified with your new right and whatever benefits you receive from this made up right. So they're very good at providing bread and providing circuses, and we have.

Speaker 3:

If there's one thing that we have a super abundance of is entertainment. We have endless entertainment. Whether you're streaming, whether you're on the internet, there are more options to entertain you and keep you pacified than probably ever existed before. So the Romans, i'm sure, would have loved all the streaming services and the endless movies and shows and this and that and reality shows to keep people content Maybe not happy, but content. And so, yes, but once the stomach is affected. Once people are hungry, then everything else goes out the window. Ukraine will not matter if Americans are hungry. All the empire adventurism will not matter if we're hungry. Now we haven't gotten to that point and I hope we never do, because who wants to live through something like that? But at that point, that small minority of people now have to change things, because the masses are waking up and what they're doing is not working.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you alluded to it a little bit earlier. You have a society where people don't understand basic finance. There's no standardized home act type of curriculum for people to go through in their formative years. It's interesting. I've just talked about this. It makes me wonder if, because of artificial intelligence, the dynamic gets worse. I'll make the connection, the sense that already people are not educated when it comes to this stuff To your point. They blame the local grocery, not trillions of dollars that are printed. They're simply reacting, and responding, which is emotional. Ai gives you answers, so you don't actually have to do any real hard work to think, because you are more likely to get snowed by our dear leaders, right, when people are just more and more used to getting an answer rather than actually thinking what drives the solution?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we're going back to World War One and all that Before that the propaganda was. I've read people from back in those days saying the propaganda for that World War One was so intense, it was the greatest propaganda campaign in history. It pales in comparison to today because, as good as the internet is we're having this conversation on the internet, as good as Twitter is, and there's a susceptibility because we're human beings, we're social beings to follow the herd And the people that be ungodly shepherds are very good at understanding herd behavior and herd mentality that people will act differently when they're in a crowd versus when they are by themselves and able to think things through. So social media and the controlled media outside of social media are very good at maintaining narratives. Now, they're not perfect and they fail a lot, but they at least get their short term gains. So you know for people that, and their goal obviously is to have some kind of unified, you know, single thought process, which I believe is a possible. But when you turn on all the TV stations and they're all saying the exact same words and the exact same order describing things, you know you can see what the game is.

Speaker 3:

Obviously, these are controlled narratives and they want you to, wherever you look, whether it be left or right or straight ahead or up or down, to see the same exact message. If you go to the movie theater, you're going to see the same message. If you go to a Major League Baseball game, you're going to see the same exact message. And I remember going in the airport as this whole Ukraine thing started, and saying we stand with Ukraine, big banners in the airport. So, wherever you turn, whatever the narrative is, you're going to see the same message And most people, the way that humanity is, will think well, i can't think otherwise.

Speaker 3:

What would be wrong? You know what's wrong with me if I'm thinking the exact opposite of everything that I see around me? So yeah, an AI is just to streamline the process and give you the answers. You know, without you doing any thought. An AI, just like everything else, can be used for good, but it could also be used for bad, just like airplanes can be used for good, for transporting us around the world, where they could use be used for dropping bombs on people. So the tool itself is either good nor bad, it's just how it's used by people. Unfortunately, there are very powerful people that have access to a lot of levers, and they will definitely use AI to their advantage.

Speaker 2:

So not to sound defeatist, but you know, and I'm going to totally agree with everything you're saying and you know I'm not exactly bullish on humanity from a lot of perspectives, but I guess why even bother trying to go against the green then? I know that sounds strange, but the reality is like you talk about things which nobody is ever going to change. Despite everybody talking about draining the swamp, the swamp is still there.

Speaker 3:

This is. You know, what I'm saying now is more to get the word out. And it sounds dire, like you said, and while in the short term I am pessimistic, in the long term I can't help but be optimistic because I believe that the truth always prevails, no matter what, no matter, i don't care if it's globalists going against the truth, that the truth will beat the globalists. Now, it may not be in my lifetime, but it will be in someone else's lifetime. So I'm very optimistic long term.

Speaker 3:

And you know, when we just went through a very, you know, unfortunate situation with COVID, where we were fed lies after lies but look, it didn't work out, you know, if the goal was to have us all updated with vaccines and constantly showing that we were updated every six months, they did not get that. We don't have to show our passports anywhere, at least here, no, but talking about the entire world, that there may be places that still have goofy laws, but here are the goal and they were doing it in New York City, in Philadelphia, they were trying it, they were pushing, but look what happened The truth ultimately prevailed And there are no vaccine passports that we have to show. We don't have to go get updated. You know I love the propaganda they were using, like we were recharging a phone battery, that we would have to do that every six months And if you want to participate in society, you have to show your phone wherever you go and show that you are, you know, doing this Now, irrespective of what people think of vaccines themselves. That is as tyrannical as it gets to have to prove that you are doing this in order to participate in society. Now, that is what they want. They were very explicit, bill Gates and all those that were calling us on television. They were saying well, this is what the out's going to be and it's not how it is.

Speaker 3:

So they do not prevail all the time. They do not prevail in their wars. They were going to make Iraq into a little America with McDonald's on every corner and people. You know they did nothing of the sort. They failed miserably in all these countries. In Libya and Syria, they were going to overthrow. Assad has to go. You know we could just go down the line and they do not get what they want. You know sometimes they do, but what they tell us that they're going to do, they don't necessarily get. So we need to be optimistic about that. These people are not omniscient, they're not omnipotent, they're just people with a lot of power and a lot of money and apparently nothing else better to do And they just, you know, inconvenience all of us and COVID was a major inconvenience, you know in trying to achieve, you know, these goals that they've imagined for themselves. But we have to be optimistic that they, you know, ultimately will not prevail.

Speaker 2:

Just to reset the room for the remaining minutes. Everybody, please make sure you follow Chris here on Twitter And if you want to come up and ask questions, click that bottom left micro West button. And, as always, this will be a podcast under lead lag live. All right, so again, let's go back to the name of the Twitter space sound money versus see it. The moment I hear sound money, my mind goes to gold or goes to Bitcoin. Yes, because those are the narratives and there's validity to them, although I think there's a lot of things that are wrong about the narrative. But let's define what sound money is from a libertarian perspective and what you know from sort of the school a lot of libertarianism. What's been the most promising form?

Speaker 3:

of it. Yeah, this is where it gets kind of tricky, because you know we're going up against central planners who believe that they can plan how things are going to be. So we don't want to fall into that trap of saying that A has to happen in an MB and then C and B, because now you are acting like a central planner, assuming that you know things that you can't possibly know. So how to get to sound money, i cannot answer, because life is far too complex, with far too many variables, with far too many interests. So to say that it's going to happen this way, you know you run the risk of sounding like a Bill Gates and you don't want to do that. So you can, however, state what the ultimate goal is, and that is sound money is obviously money that cannot be created out of thin air.

Speaker 3:

So gold and silver and precious metals are very hard to produce. Anybody who has seen the show Gold Rush on Discovery knows the tremendous cost and risks involved in mining gold. And even the best miners after you know, you know it's a small percentage of gold that they are able to mine. So the ability to inflate the gold supply while it's there is very difficult, at least at this time. Now, can that change? Of course So, but at this time, gold, and all the way up until this time, has been very hard to produce. That's the exact opposite. Right now, jerome Powell can go to his keyboard and type in $1 trillion and a trillion dollars is created. You know, from a keyboard. Obviously, the process is a little different than that, but to the point I'm trying to make. So what we want is money that cannot be counterfeited, whether it's gold, whether it's something else.

Speaker 3:

The important part is that the market decides, not the government, not, you know, the experts telling you this should be money. Well, i see a lot of interesting things about Bitcoin. You know this can't be dictated. It must be by the market, because that's how you know why gold and silver have been money for thousands of years, is it's a market process. This is what the people want. They trust, you know. They trust that and that's why it's called its stability and value through thousands of years.

Speaker 3:

It's only later that government comes in and hijacks it for its own benefits and the bankers to for their own benefits, and they've done tremendous benefits, not deny it. But it must be sound in that sense, which means that it can't be counterfeited And, even more importantly, nobody has the legal ability to counterfeit. You know, i believe there's very few federal laws. One of them was if you counterfeit, you get put to debt. That's how serious, you know, they took counterfeiting. But today it's the exact opposite. It's legalized, institutionalized, and that's why we have fiat money and they can create it based on their own whims, and that's what they do, and this is what it looks like We're living through it.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk about the non-obvious unintended consequences of that, because people listening to this would say, ok, i mean all that valid, and people have put an insanity alarm on that for some time. But aside from and granted it's a big aside from inflation right that that causes, there's not much else that maybe does to affect their lives. What are some of the real risks? very long term, if the system perpetuates the way that it is beyond the obvious answer of inflation.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's. It does affect our lives greatly, because what the government does besides, like you said, inflation is they use it against us. They direct investment And investment again. They're playing central planners. They believe that they're playing SimCity For those gamers out there who know what SimCity is that this is all just a game and they're going to allocate the pieces. That's what they do with the money that is printed. When the Fed prints the money, the government then allocates to big pharma and then allocates to a military industrial complex. So now wars are fought and if you are affected by that, you perhaps not directly. Thank God we don't have that here, but the wars are always out there And unfortunately, because it's always out there, americans turn a blind eye. But that's what the money is used for. The money is used for woke agenda. If you look at this woke stuff, it's happened in the last 10 to 15 years when money was at 0% interest, which is insanity.

Speaker 2:

I know I did drop you, but I'm still glad you went that direction because I put it face to face. I forget his name now off the head, but he's based in the UK And I may then argue with him that all of this far left and far right, i'd argue, is directly because we've had zero interest rate. Yeah, when capital is free, you can throw any cockamity, do good idea out there, it's going to get funding.

Speaker 3:

Exactly. And that's exactly what happens, because everything's a good idea, 0% interest rates, and so that's BlackRock, i believe, had access to capital, and BlackRock is one of the poster boys on. If they invest in these companies, and you're going to do, it's not an accident that these companies, their major investors, are Fidelity and BlackRock and State Street, and these companies are woke, and then the companies that they invest in are doing all the woke stuff. They're so bad for business. Since when do people destroy their businesses? If there's one thing that people care about is it's not losing money. And purposefully, it looks like these companies are losing money. They're losing market cap by the billions.

Speaker 3:

Why would you do this? And a precedent has already been set. It's been done one after another, but light and this and that and target, and you'd think that these companies would be like, okay, let's not go down that road, but they do, there'll be somebody else that will follow them. And that doesn't happen normally. Normally, companies want to make as much money as possible, and to do this for social causes, sexual causes, whatever, is just very out of the ordinary. And that doesn't just happen naturally. That happens artificially, and that artificial part is a 0% interest rates And then these big monolith companies that are investing in these public corporations. I don't know how it works, but I'm putting the pieces together that somehow it works where you have to follow this woke agenda.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, so that's how it affects us. It also affects us because when the government spends on windmills and solar panels and this, and that when they do that, they are crowding out other profitable opportunities, so they could be putting you out of business, even though you're doing what the consumer wants. You're doing it profitably, you're doing it. But when government comes in with its big bags of cash and says, no, this is how money is going to be wasted, or they call it investment, but it's waste then that affects you personally. So this inflate. Oh, also, they propagandize us with our own money. So all of this propaganda that we see from every angle, this one message, whatever it has to be, that's using inflated money to propagandize us. So we're paying for it in so many various ways. Besides just going and seeing the prices, this money that they create is used against us in many different ways, even ways that I can't really think of off the top of my head right now.

Speaker 2:

Has interest increase in Ron Paul's framework over the last several years? I know you do a lot of work on the editing side and the content that's put out there with Liberty Report, but has there been any kind of steady increase or decrease in interest, or are people just getting more and more apathetic?

Speaker 3:

In the last 10 years it's been a steady increase, which is we're very happy with, but because it's not going in the opposite direction, but it's not near mainstream. There's plenty of ways if we adopted the mainstream ideas or we could make a lot more money and have a bigger audience, but that's not what our goal is. Our goal is not necessarily the size of the audience, only that A. We keep these ideas alive because somebody has to keep them alive, otherwise people will never you'll never hear about it. So that's the role that we play. So we're not looking to be a Joe Rogan, even though obviously we wouldn't turn something like that down but that's not the goal.

Speaker 3:

And also, what we're talking about here in our conversation here is not bubblegum conversation. This is deeper stuff that requires a lot of thinking, that requires a lot of contemplating and most people are just not like that. And that's not to shame or look down on anybody, because we're like that in other areas. Well, i may be able to speak like this in other areas about this subject. In other areas I'm a total dunce. So this is not talking down on people. It's just that our lives are busy and to put time aside to think about stuff like this is not a mainstream thing and it perhaps never will be, but it doesn't have to be Because, like I mentioned earlier that these things that are taking place are being done by tiny minorities, it works in the opposite direction, too. Good things happened because of tiny minorities. Most people end up following whatever happens to be the latest fashion, but those latest fashions are always put into place and started and kept alive and kept burning by a small group of people.

Speaker 2:

I'm curious just to hear some of your thoughts on some of these newer players that are suddenly rising to prominence. As far as disability, given that next year is an election year, obviously I'm trying to get Vivek Ramaswamy on a Twitter space, so hopefully I will soon, in July, but yeah, he's getting a lot of traction. Rk obviously get a lot of traction. Any hope at all for the likelihood of somebody non-mainstream? Yeah, taking the taking the electors next year is this kind of like every other season where these people come up But they never really get too far.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, i don't, i don't know. I you know My gut instinct is that these individuals will not get close to to winning only because of, you know, the it's a system itself and if you see what the system did to Ron Paul when he ran, it was blatant. What they do to Donald Trump, regardless of what one thinks of Trump, you know they want to keep him out of the election, that's for sure, and it seems like they'll go to any cost to do that. But so, whether it be mired and in legislation and impeachment and jail and everything else, so you know, the deck is pretty stacked, but you never know, because Trump didn't win that 2016 election, which he was absolutely not supposed to win. So you never know. But obviously it doesn't look good, but you know you always have to leave that opening That the unexpected can have various ETF issuers and one of the issuers has a suite of funds that focuses on Investing like congress.

Speaker 2:

It's investing like Nancy Pelosi on the Democrat side, one that's investing like the Ted Cruz's You know rogan side, and the fascinating thing is that the different parties obviously have different sector Overweights. So if you were a democrat congressman, you're more likely to skew towards technology. If you're a republican, you're more likely to skew towards energy and tend to just sector makeup. I'm curious what would like a, what would a libertarian portfolio look like if you were to say, okay, this is what libertarians would actually invest in? where would the overweight be? You mentioned gold. I assume that's a big part of it commodities or raw materials, but what else?

Speaker 3:

Honestly, i don't think I have an answer to that question, because I don't think that there is one answer Of how would I answer this. I really I don't know, because our economy is, you know, pretty tightly controlled, perhaps not in the soviet sense, but in the more musolini type sense. So you know what you're. There's always the political Angles. That's why I personally don't invest in the stock market, why I'm not against it. I just, you know, i don't trust the companies and the and the fact that it's all you know They're work with politicians, because that's not a true marketplace.

Speaker 3:

A true marketplace is you know what the consumer You're supposed to anticipate, what the consumer wants, and then you're supposed to provide it at a profit. You know you take a big risk. Now, what that does occur, a and a sense, and in our economy, but it's so. You know, the government is involved in every single industry, down to the minutia. So I don't know what to say that a libertarian per se because you are a libertarian You should invest in in this. You know that's an individual decision that people just have to, you know, make it based on what's best for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I just thought it's pretty interesting. Um, just think about the priorities from a sector allocation perspective.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, i don't, i really I don't want to make anything up, i nothing comes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, i don't get, i just.

Speaker 3:

I don't want to sound foolish.

Speaker 2:

That's really fine. So of all the Um conversations have had with Ron poll and the deep that have interviewed, Has there ever been anything in the last Decade or so that really surprised you after a conversation where you said to yourself, Wow, okay, I never thought of it in those terms and it was almost like a game changer. So you know some domain but something new in the domain comes in that really kind of hit you hard nothing really stands out.

Speaker 3:

I mean one thing, couple things about dr Paul. You know he's 88 years old And works. He's a workhorse. He does his show five days a week And he, you know, we the co-hosts, we have different days that we do it, but he's five days a week. So he and his life has a big purpose and he reaches, you know, we'll reach, you know, you know, 40,000 people a day. So that's, you know, that's a sports stadium a day that we're reaching.

Speaker 3:

Uh, so He has taught me the. You know that this is a persistent struggle that's going to consume his whole life And to keep that going, that's the point of it is to just put the words out there. And another thing about him that the public couldn't know is he's very he jokes a lot. We, we have a lot of fun doing it, even though we're talking about garbage topics, you know, sometimes it's. You know we talk about war a lot of times and the details of it and the human corruption, the cronyism, but we have a good time doing it, hey, because You know you really need to, because see your own life, you got to enjoy As much as you can, and so those two things he's very funny He's, he jokes a lot and very persistent and we'll do this, i believe You know, as long as he possibly can.

Speaker 3:

He's 88 and hopefully he's got another 10 to 20 years left In doing it. So those two things have been, you know, and he sets up a great example as, just as a person You know, he's not combative. He doesn't attack people personally, you know, and that happens Constantly in our society. We go, we make things personal. He's strictly about the arguments and I try to be that way too, you know from learning from him.

Speaker 2:

Grace for those that want to um follow more of your thoughts, your work, and maybe even get involved Where we point to professionally is Ron Paul Liberty report, and we are live Five days a week, monday through Friday, on rumble.

Speaker 3:

So you go to rumble and search for Ron Paul Liberty report. We, the two main things that we focus on, are foreign policy and monetary policy, because Not because everything else is insignificant, but those are the two big umbrellas that everything else falls under. So if you're interested in either of those topics we cover in five days a week based on The current news, and we apply, you know, our principles to the current news. I personally am on twitter. Obviously, you are on twitter spaces at chris russini And yeah, so that's. Those are the two main ways to connect with me.

Speaker 2:

I'm just curious why. Why rumble as opposed to youtube?

Speaker 3:

We were on youtube. But you know we started to see our traffic was unexplainably Not. You know it didn't make sense to us what was happening over there, and I don't want to accuse them of anything. They did take down our rfk interview But uh, you know it. Just when we were looking at the numbers It wasn't making sense. And rumble has been much better in that respect and we have The same amount of subscribers actually exactly the same, i think it's three. We just get 314,000 subscribers on both. So and rumble is in a much shorter time. So you know, whatever is happening on youtube, we still put our show there four hours later, then our live show. But you know rumble has proven to be that there's a lot more freedom of speech there interesting.

Speaker 2:

I may not publish this on youtube, then I may just do a rumble myself. Anyway, everybody, please make sure you follow Chris here on twitter. Thank you, chris appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

Michael, thank you very much.

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Michael A. Gayed, CFA

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