Patriot Power Hour #299 - Tariffs; Gold $3,150+; Q2 '25 Geopolitical & Economic Outlook

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[00:00:12] You are now listening to the Patriot Power Hour, the newest show of the Prepper Broadcasting Network.

[00:01:04] This live episode features the situational awareness you need to practice self-reliance and independence. Introducing your hosts, Ben, the Breaker of Banksters, and Future Dan, the editor of FutureDanger.com. Ben, the Breaker of Banksters, here with Future Dan. We are live April 1st, 2025, episode 299, Future Dan. Nearly up to 300. Wow!

[00:01:33] 299 on April Fool's Day. Not many jokes to be had. Maybe I'll try to throw one or two in there. But we got so much serious information coming up in the next hour, folks. So, yeah, I try to look at the brighter side of life most of the time, but very serious show ahead. And we're not playing any pranks on you today. At least I'm not, Future Dan. I don't know about you. No, I got none either. This is serious stuff we talk about.

[00:02:03] Certainly is. Well, Q1 is past. We are now in the second corner of 2025. We'll talk a little bit about economics and even geopolitical outlook for Q2. But, Trump, this is kind of funny, though. Trump is hilarious, by the way. He decided to have Liberation Day, Liberty Day. Not sure exactly what it is called, but the tariffs go into effect tomorrow, the 2nd of April. He said not the 1st of April.

[00:02:31] He doesn't want it to be an April Fool's joke. He did say that. I heard him. And that's going into effect. We have gold at $3,150. We have panic in the markets. We have a lot to talk about economically now and with the tariffs coming about, Future Dan. What are your thoughts to start off the night? Yeah. So, let's get back to some basics real quick. Let's talk Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations.

[00:03:00] What that treatise was in the time of the founders and some of its main points. And then let's compare it to reality in the 21st century. Can we do that real quick? Let's make it happen. All right. Five main points straight out of the Wealth of Nations, summarized by Grok in two prompts, I might add fairly easily.

[00:03:22] I just said, quote the Wealth of Nations, the top most quoted parts of the book. And then I asked to just summarize the main points concerning trade in the barest terms. So, that's what I'm going to give you, the barest terms. Number one, free trade benefits all. Number two, self-interest drives trade. Number three, division of labor boosts trade. Four, government should step back.

[00:03:50] And five, monopolies harm trade. Hard to disagree with those, right? The last one, monopolies harm trade. Well, the greatest monopoly possible is a government that controls the economy. That's a super monopoly. Whether you call it communist, fascist, something in between. I call it totalitarianism, pretty much. Oh, just to be clear. You know, monopolies apply to businesses, right? Yes.

[00:04:19] I guess I'm extrapolating upon that. But we're coming now kind of to the tariffs and to. I love free trade. And I was absolutely schooled in the wealth of nations and the laissez-faire, etc. That that was optimal if we could have everyone play by the rules. And let's just say a lot of other countries aren't playing nicely.

[00:04:45] But China in particular, absolutely not playing by the rules. So that calls into question, can those other four. And I love this top five. I want you to read them again. We can go through and talk about them. But yes, free trade is awesome. But if your trading partner is an enemy of humanity, like I consider the Chinese Communist Party, then, you know, we might have to look at bending the laissez-faire a little bit.

[00:05:14] Yeah, so when you have like prison labor in your factories in China, political dissidents imprisoned and working in factories, you know, or people that are so suppressed, so oppressed, so surveilled that they're, you know, they don't even dare even act as dissidents.

[00:05:36] You know, they're hopeless and their labor cost is, you know, centrally controlled by the government. You know, that's the counterpoint to free trade benefits all, right? Doesn't benefit us or them when we're trading with nations like that. Division of labor boosts trade.

[00:05:56] You know, specialization is great until certain functions become produced at no level in the United States. We were talking right before the show, right? You know, there's footwear and then there's, you know, all the components to national survival in a calamity, in a war, right? Right?

[00:06:24] So supply chains, specialization can only go so far. I don't think Adam Smith's treaties, Wealth of Nations, it didn't consider that. It just, it didn't have the foresight. It's how I interpret it is an ideal and maybe one end of a spectrum, right?

[00:06:47] And you want to try to strive towards that, but it's not just a two-dimensional line like left or right, up or down. There's the Z axis as well, three dimension. And it all comes together that, look, humans are economics, not spreadsheets and not philosophies.

[00:07:08] So throw that all into a crazy, crazy mix with a bunch of monkeys hopped up on chemicals in our brain, dopamine. And otherwise, look, economics is messy. It'll never be perfect free trade. And they're always going to be striving for monopolies, bad actors. Let's just say that.

[00:07:30] So you need a basic framework, minimal but basic in my opinion, from the government to, it's a slippery slope, but you got to have some sort of framework, judicial system, and even tax code, business code to keep things somewhat fair. Otherwise, the bad actors will come through. It's not like the people that play fair will dominate a system if there's no rules.

[00:07:59] It's always the people that are cheating that get over the long term on that. And since, you know, General Agreement of Terrorists and Trade, NAFTA, many other free trade agreements, and the era in the 90s when Congress basically passed laws that gave the president the power to set these tariffs, right? Previously, you know, the executive didn't have that choice.

[00:08:25] Congress had to pass laws, but it's all been delegated to the presidency. And Trump's going to use it big time tomorrow. What is an economic outcome? I don't like the word stagflation. Stagnation and inflation. So it never made sense to me. I guess it did.

[00:08:51] It described, you know, kind of late 70s in the United States. I mean, that was when that term came up. What would be the portmantel for, you know, massive unemployment while you have inflation? Is that possible? Is there no word for it because it hasn't happened? Can't happen? Weimar Republic is a good example where it's a deep, deep depression, but there's hyperinflation at the same time.

[00:09:18] In America, we never got that extreme where you're like 100, 200, 500, 1,000% inflation yearly and then monthly and then weekly while there's still like 20, 25, 30% unemployment. So it can happen, but it can't happen that long. It's almost like the way I look at it.

[00:09:36] So inflation is one force and the opposing force deflation is also known as market crash, unemployment, things going down in value. So there could be periods of really high inflation and there could be really levels of really bad unemployment. But usually they don't both happen at the same time or if they do, they're only temporary.

[00:10:03] But, and the big but, is what happened with hyperinflation not only in Germany, but a lot of other countries since. It's because they print and they try to cheat. So they try to cheat with the debt and with their obligations and they're able to kick the can down the road for a while. But eventually it all comes home and it blows up and not only they have crazy inflation, but they got massive unemployment. And it's not just for a month or two. It's like for multiple years.

[00:10:33] And when that happens, you really have destruction of civilization in real assets. Like actual factories are destroyed and looted. Actual houses are torn down to be used for firewood. Like it's not just numbers on a spreadsheet anymore. It's actual destruction of human assets, right? So that's where it's more concerning to me and probably the preppers out there. All right. So I did ask Grok for a word.

[00:11:01] A portmanteau combining inflation and unemployment. I got five results. Three of them are like, nah, I got two of them though. Which one do you like better? Okay. Yeah. Uninflation or unflame it. Uninflame it. Uninflame it. Uninflame it. Unemployment mixed with inflation. Uninflame it. That's kind of cool. It's in the middle.

[00:11:28] Uninflame it sounds better, but I prefer Weimar collapse. So if we have uninflame it, all the prices are going up at the same time.

[00:11:41] All the multinational corporations out of the United States that can't pass on the price increases to customers and don't want to take a hit to their margin, profit margins, start reorganizing and firing people to make up the difference. That's a direct assault on the federal reserve.

[00:12:11] That's a direct assault on the federal reserve. Which may not happen, by the way, but it seems like a lot of countries are folding.

[00:12:41] We'll see. Trump is yanking the chain of Wall Street big time. I was listening to Bloomberg Radio today. They got expert after expert on there with no expertise on any idea what's going to happen. If he just yo-yos these announcements. One of them was just speaking.

[00:13:05] Within the past hour, I was listening to Bloomberg Radio just saying that tomorrow we will know and tomorrow it'll be set. And tomorrow we'll have a way to position our clients because they're, you know, the mutual fund, you know, advocating investment Wall Street types. She's not going to know this person was talking about because Trump could change it the day after tomorrow. Very much so. Very much so.

[00:13:36] And you and I talked about how, yes, the money will be collected from these tariffs, especially if they go on for months or years, which I think is unlikely years, but maybe a few months. But that's not even the big effect. A big effect is rallying the base, the American people, that, hey, we want to make things in America again,

[00:13:59] especially national security type items and key infrastructure like whether microprocessing, vehicles, medicines, all around. We need to at least have a good portion of our, you know, made in America. We could still buy some abroad, but also make just massive awareness that all these other countries have huge tariffs and other barriers against U.S. trade.

[00:14:25] Like Canada has crazy barriers on U.S. agriculture products as well as bankings. They don't even like let U.S. banks bank in Canada. And it's just anyway, long story short, they have been for many years screwing us over and that's getting shown. Screw us over or just taking care of their national security?

[00:14:50] Because if those restrictions weren't there, the entire nation of Canada would, you know, it'd be smarter to buy food from America, right? We could produce it at a lower cost. There would be no Canadian farmers. There would be, you know, no Canadian banks, right? They'd all be absorbed or outperformed by massive multinational American banks. And that's the point.

[00:15:13] Like when the Wealth of Nations was written, Adam Smith didn't anticipate, you know, just the power with which massive international movements of capital can wipe out, you know, homeland industries, right? It made a lot of sense in the late 1700s that, you know, to press in that direction. It made a lot more sense after the Cold War to most Americans.

[00:15:42] What Trump's about to do is going to unsettle decades of U.S. trade policy, but it will be taking us back to the 1890s, all right? So McKinley was doing this, 50% tariffs on all imports. It's just a mechanism that is going to have profound effects.

[00:16:03] But if there's unenflament, even for a quarter, we're going to hear it, that drumbeat, we're going to hear that so hard for one quarter. But after enough quarters, I think foreign investment might actually fly into the United States, right? Trying to set up your factories and build in the United States, that might be a real thing. Dang.

[00:16:27] Trump's been flaunting some real key wins all across the board, different companies, foreign companies, investing hundreds of millions of dollars here, there, whatnot, different factories, which is great. Want more for sure? And there will be, but that's where the politics come into play. Like if you had a nice 10-year runway to make this happen with no worries about politics, oh yeah, stay the course.

[00:16:56] Do the other part of the equation, which is cut wasteful spending, which they're doing a good portion of, while also lowering taxes on the middle class. So you add the tariffs and you subtract income tax, especially on the middle class. Maybe let's just say those making under 500K a year. Then that's great. Keep the tariffs and it'll be totally fine.

[00:17:23] It'll balance out, but it would still take several quarters, if not several years for it to truly balance out. There would be some rough patches, but it would work out great. But if we're looking at the midterms in like, you know, what a year and a half, 18 months until the midterms. And then of course the next presidential election be here before you know it. You know, there might be some bad news economically. It'll be hard to grow through this. If they truly keep these 20, 25% tariffs on a lot of these foreign goods.

[00:17:53] And a lot of those remain, let's just say through the end of this year, even, and then get lifted after that. But it's still half a year or more of that 20, 25% tariffs that they really went into effect. Absolutely would lead to your, whatever you call it, uninflation or something. So yeah, the fact Trump's if so, so that's a risk to Trump. Of course, maybe he's really willing to bite the bullet. Thinks it's worth it for all these different reasons.

[00:18:21] Or maybe he would kind of back down. Do you think Trump though would back down, especially against Canada? It won't, it won't, it won't come off that way. He's not going to back down. It's going to be framed as a victory every single time. And the technical term is uninflamment. Get it right. Uninflamment. Flay. Uninflamment. Yeah. Everyone loses in tariffs.

[00:18:48] Tariffs, if you look at it from a, let's just think human society, like how much trade and wealth is produced on all of earth, irrespective of everything except for just the value of trade. It will definitely go down because of tariffs, because a lot of, a lot of, you know, friction, a lot of problems. I think what you'll see is a lot of shortages.

[00:19:12] So you're going to have shortages, COVID-19 style maybe, where it's really hard to get things or take several months and it's expensive. And there's like a surcharge on top of it, 50 bucks for some sort of like auto part out of Japan or something. Again, if this isn't just a negotiating technique, it'd be awesome. I don't want any tariffs on almost all the countries. China, I do. And a couple others for sure. But if they've lowered their tariffs, I want to lower ours.

[00:19:42] Still have some and lower the income tax. I mean, I want to get rid of the income tax. That's how I want people to remember. We need to lower the income tax. If we can leave the income tax where it is right now and then we add tariffs, there is more tax on the average U.S. person, myself included. Yeah, I think you're kind of talking about things like comparative advantage, allocative efficiency, Pareto efficiency, gains from trade. Right.

[00:20:11] There's all kinds of economic core ideas that surround. Ultimately, ultimately, letting people trade freely increases prosperity. So that's the part Trump's never going to admit. But I think this is leverage. Right. It spans all dimensions of power. It reaches outside of the economic sphere, international security.

[00:20:38] And what I hope, you know, ultimately is that this administration targets the worst human rights abusers. And there's so many instances in Europe where basic human rights are not being respected by governments, getting concessions across the board, including what used to be our European allies. And militarily, they are. They still are.

[00:21:05] So, you know, we're going to see what happens. I don't think the tax revenue ultimately is what historians are going to talk about. Because it's a sales tax ultimately. Right. And the reason we have an income tax in the United States is if you leave it to a sales tax, individual taxpayers at the point of purchase can make decisions on what they're going to buy and not buy.

[00:21:34] And ultimately could drive down revenue of the government. Governments don't want a boycott of high, highly taxed things. And so, you know, the idea was, you know, we'll just all stick everybody with an income tax. Sales tax would be a lot fairer. But it would be a lot more. It would increase our democracy, in my opinion, a national sales tax. But this is effectively functioning like that.

[00:21:58] There's going to be goods that, honestly, you know, we could tariff Canada for lumber. And suddenly we have a lumber industry here that can make up the gap. Right. The prices shouldn't have to rise. But it's going to take a while for electronics and anything digital to get back in the United States and be affordable. I'm hoping when that happens that there's actually still an ethos, that there's American companies that build stuff to last.

[00:22:24] Like, like try to achieve world supremacy in products that are just sturdy, functional, easy to use and last. Right. You know, I would always do that. I'd always pay more for that. Who? Musk with freaking SpaceX, especially Tesla's. I'm not 100% sure.

[00:22:50] We'll see how those look in 10 years, 15 years used car market of Tesla's. But the freaking Falcon 9 rocket, Starship, the Starlink, those are all pushing the edge worldwide. I mean, better than NASA, better than Russian space agency, better than European space agency. And I'm a nerd when it comes to space history.

[00:23:15] And I've worked a little bit with and around space launch industry. And SpaceX went from doing no launches to more than half of the tonnage. It's actually higher than that, if I think. But it's like, let's just say more than 50% of all the tonnage launched into space in a year worldwide. Not just for America, but for the entire world. SpaceX. And they have all the reusable. And that's made in America.

[00:23:45] And they have a freaking, what's it called? Star base, I think, possibly in Texas. And a lot of jobs there. So anyway, that's a good example. But I agree. It's. I have and do seek out made in America products. Sometimes it's hard to find. Sometimes it's hard to tell. A tariff is a great way to price signal to people. Hey, this is not made in America. Now it's more expensive.

[00:24:11] And that'll give people that are companies that make products in America. They'll have even more reason to advertise or even go from, hey, we used to make part in America. How about we make it all in America? And we advertise 100% made in America. So, yeah, those are great effects of all this. But those would take. That would take months and years to start truly working out. But this is the type of transition we're about to start on tomorrow. I'm all about it.

[00:24:42] And doing it by way of a tax, you know, that's one prong of it. There's other ways. And I'm not just saying subsidies and paying off everybody to come to America. But, hey, especially those critical items. I don't have that list in front of me. Maybe you can find it or Grok has it. But there's a list of certain industries that Trump essentially protected.

[00:25:06] Steel, aluminum, vehicle manufacturing, microprocessing, semiconductors, all that. But several others. So, there is some protectionism going here. Which, again, a little part of me, the Adam Smith part, cringes a little bit. Like, ooh, there is going to be people losing their jobs. And there is going to be price increases. It's just how much and how long. We'll find out. There's going to be job games when the industry comes back.

[00:25:34] Yeah, it might take until after the midterms, though. All this on the whole probably points towards inflation rather than unemployment. And inflation means lower rates to respond or higher rates. That might not be the direction Trump wants to drive it in. But I think we're going to know a lot more when we broadcast our 300th episode of Patriot Power Hour next week, Tuesday night. Oh, yeah.

[00:26:03] That is coming up so fast. Episode 300. Do you want to preview that real quick now? Or just a little teaser for a preview later in the show. Do you want to go to the dashboard? Your call, man. How do you want to do this? Ah, let's just. We don't want to bury the lead too much. We already took us 26 minutes to get to it. So, episode 300, Patriot Power Hour. Future Dan, what are we in store for? Sure.

[00:26:30] We're going to look back at the history of Patriot Power Hour from its inception as your solo broadcast, which one day I joined. And later you invited me to do this together, which that's when the numbering counts. It's actually more than 300 Patriot Power Hours. If you go back to some archive that my co-host might be able to tell us where it is.

[00:26:55] In any event, we're going to bring out some J6 footage filmed on site that day in 2021 and review that. And probably talk about the news next week. However these tariffs start to fall out, there'll be either crow to eat on what we said tonight or we'll start to get an indication of what's next.

[00:27:20] But I do think the economic column on Future Danger by next week, 300th episode, is going to be including headlines that we probably shouldn't ignore. I think this next week or two is going to be extremely important in the news cycle. And for, well, Patriot Power Hour 300, it will be super important and a lot of fun going back, looking where we've come, where we're going.

[00:27:48] The footage, by the way, folks, I've seen it a while back and it's pretty intense. And it'll be the first time this sort of footage or this, you know, this footage is shown. So this is published. There you go. The first time this footage has been published, so you can't find this footage anywhere else. Published by a network dedicated to bringing news and information to the Prepper community, the Prepper Broadcasting Network. There you go.

[00:28:18] The premiere of this footage will be Patriot Power Hour 300. It might have a couple special guests to review that J6 footage as well as talk about, well, PPH, PBN. In the future. While we're doing a plug real quick, how about we just ration and ruin. We'll be coming right after 300. We might even have a little bit more news about that.

[00:28:43] What can you tell our listeners about ration or ruin our new exercise coming down the pike?

[00:28:50] The fourth installment of the Azure Hotland exercises that you and I undertook to put our money and sweat and tears where our mouths are and go simulate a plausible scenario that in extreme situation, you might be advised to have rehearsed, practiced. So we've done others in the past.

[00:29:20] I won't recap what we did, but we're going to try something new, which is do some rationing, have a food supply and work through a longer period. This will be the longest Azure Highland. We're going to do it for a month. Monthlong. Monthlong exercise is going to involve eating a restricted diet to replicate a scenario where your supplies are low.

[00:29:48] And you have to resort to rationing to continue to survive. And we're going to include foraging, maybe some fishing, some movement outdoors to different sites to see what we can get off the land in lawful and logical ways in our area.

[00:30:11] And a couple other events I'll bring James Walton, Dave Jones, yourself and I together to simulate other activities, but basically really going to focus on the food this time. I haven't done that yet. So looking forward to it. All right. Our fourth exercise, fourth annual, I suppose it's going to be called ration or ruin.

[00:30:37] So next week, episode 300 Patriot Power Hour, the J6 footage and some other interesting stuff, some guests. And finally, we'll be reviewing all the news, which in of itself, a heck of a lot of content these days. Then a few weeks later, it looks like we're narrowing in on early May, but we're going to announce that we'll have the official rule set. So we're all operating on the same rules and parameters.

[00:31:06] But it's not a competition this time. Not a competition per se, but we're having it so other hosts and other listeners can follow along, either just follow along with what we are doing or participate in the exercise themselves. But you're right. It's not a contest exactly this time. Yep. In fact, we're going to include product reviews. We're going to be commenting directly on products that are advertised to the Prepper community, some name brands.

[00:31:35] We're going to choose them. We're going to consume them. We're going to compare and contrast their advantages and disadvantages. All right. And final plug before we go to the news blitz. We are live right now on X on YouTube and on Rumble. If you're watching live, whether this episode or future episodes, comment, add your question to the chat. We'll try to address that. Say hi.

[00:32:02] If you're listening on the podcast, like the great, great majority of folks are, that makes sense. I listen to almost all my podcast content the day after while I'm commuting or doing chores. But long story short, it's a lot of fun to interact live and check out the video, some of the memes and some of the articles. So we're live Sunday or excuse me, not Sundays, Tuesdays, Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Eastern all spring. Join us live.

[00:32:32] Comment, questions, suggestions, feedback. You want to be a guest even let us know. We can get you a link. There you go. Future Dan, you ready for the news blitz? Yeah. Let me read our news for April 1st, 2025. Again, there's no fool's day in here. This is serious news. Column one, chat logs review FBI gagged its agents after New York Post's publication of Hunter Biden's laptop story.

[00:33:03] Judicial system, FBI being part of it, continues to be distrusted in that regard. And that's dangerous. Aliens voting is dangerous too. Millions of aliens receive social security numbers. Some even voted. Doge has documented millions of aliens referred to the DHS by Doge for illegal voting prosecution.

[00:33:28] That's red hot aliens voting being proven in the month of March, 2025. Calm to security news. We got some overseas. We got some at home. China launches military drills around Taiwan. We talked about that last week. April timeframe and I think it's September are the two most logical military months of the year for an invasion to take place.

[00:33:57] And at home, authorities probing fire that damaged headquarters of New Mexico Republican Party. That's on the heels of many headlines pointing to basically attacks on Tesla dealerships. So things are getting violent on the streets. Column three has more economic indicators tonight than it has pretty much all last month.

[00:34:27] Gold prices are soaring. That's the indicator. Your 18th record high was achieved like last week or late just within the last six days because it's a headline here. But gold price I think topped at $3,157, Ben. There might have been another peak to that, but that's pretty close to the top so far. Could go through the roof tomorrow with these tariffs.

[00:34:56] Wall Street sell-off is deepening. It could get a lot worse tomorrow. That stock market crashes indicator might hit an unseasonable high. April is not typically a month of crashes, but tomorrow is Liberation Day for tariffs. Core inflation in February hit 2.8%, higher than expected.

[00:35:21] Post-47, reciprocal tariffs, as I said earlier, will overturn decades of trade policy. But you can see trade severely declines. That's green. That's topical news. Hadn't happened yet. Might not happen. We're going to see how Trump plays his cards. Economic news dreadfully disappoints. We've got five recession indicators now raising the alarm.

[00:35:46] That would be a good headline to pop open, Ben, for our review later. Column four, Texas reaches 400 measles cases with outbreaks in five states. Mine and more, earthquake. Thailand, they're racing to find survivors. Last total headline was 1,600 dead. It may reach much higher. Vaccine effects exposed. We've got a claim and a headline linking to an article.

[00:36:15] COVID and vaccine likely causing surge in aggressive cancers from space. Backdoor asteroid has not been spotted, but along those lines, another asteroid flew past Earth within 20% of the distance of the moon. Clouds and conspiracies. Another interesting article documenting concerns over the push to make rain. That goes into the category of weather, weapon exposed.

[00:36:46] Where are governments with that actual power these days? We'll explore that. And honeybee deaths hit record high. Scientists are scrambling to find the main cause. Animal die-offs have appeared again. There's your news. Heat map, dashboard, blitzkrieg, April 1st, 2025. What do you think, Ben? Well delivered. Lots to talk about.

[00:37:14] How about we just start with column three, economics, since we talked about tariffs and whatnot in the first half of the show. We'll just follow through with that and then hit a bunch of other important topics, non-economics. What do you say? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Gold, 3157. It's unbelievable. It feels like gold was under $2,000 just a few months ago. Yeah, it was a year or two ago. But from COVID until now, it's more than doubled.

[00:37:43] And it's gone up more than $100 just in the last trading day or two. And 18 record closes this year. I mean, that's like almost every other or every third trading day. It's a new record high for gold. That rarely, rarely happens, let alone at these all-time high prices, of course. So gold is doing quite well.

[00:38:09] Do you think Trump is looking to revalue gold on the balance sheet? I've heard that could be part of what's going on. Because currently, the U.S. gold is valued at like $48 an ounce. And if he raised it to $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 an ounce, $5,000 an ounce, that wouldn't get rid of all of our debt. But it would definitely help the asset column.

[00:38:38] Honestly, I'd have to understand that better. That's just some arbitrary price if the government says gold's worth. Yeah, so everyone talks about the national debt, right? And you have liabilities. You have assets. And on our asset side of the books, we have a bunch of gold in Fort Knox, right? And there's also some at Federal Reserve in New York, et cetera. But everyone knows tons of gold in Fort Knox. Belongs to the U.S. government.

[00:39:08] Well, the U.S. government has a lot of other things that we own. Land and buildings. They don't even really get into like mineral rights and stuff necessarily. But anyway, we of course have a lot, a lot of liabilities. All the debt spending. Then you throw in the Social Security and stuff. And it's a crazy amount of liabilities.

[00:39:27] But my point is gold around the Great Depression was like $25, $30 an ounce when FDR tried to get everyone to turn their gold in. Another arbitrary price set by the government. It was near market price at that time. But you're right. It was kind of arbitrary. Because they minted coin. Right. So it's this trend, right?

[00:39:51] The government's always trying to set the price of gold inside, was always trying to set the price of gold inside its currency until Nixon took us off the gold standard. But I don't know what Trump could do without putting us back onto the gold standard. Then what does the U.S. government recognize as the price of gold? Yeah, that'd be interesting. That'd require a lot. We'd have to have Congress do it. That would be so destabilizing to the economic order.

[00:40:20] Or there's no one in D.C. that wants to do that. No, I shouldn't say no one. But few in power would even consider doing that. If you could, and we don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole if it doesn't work well, but ask Grok what the value of U.S. gold holdings are. It's going to come up with different valuations.

[00:40:46] One that the government says it is and one that market price. And that difference is like several hundred billion dollars, if not trillion dollars. Again, we have a $2 trillion per year deficit. So this ain't going to fix everything. But we have a lot of gold and it's valued at like what it was worth during Nixon's time. Like 40 or 50 bucks instead of 3,157 bucks.

[00:41:15] So there's official book value that the Treasury says it's worth. And then there's market. Okay. This Treasury values its gold reviews at the statutory. I mean, Congress has set this in statute price of 42 and 22 cents per fine troy ounce. That is in given the amount of gold that we supposedly have as a government. It's 11 billion.

[00:41:44] Market value is, if it's all there, 775 billion. Right. So what was it again? And 44? In the book value, it's 11 billion. Okay. Let's just do the values. And so 11 billion and it was 700 and what? 775. 775 billion.

[00:42:11] So it's valued only 1.4% of its market value. Well, wait. Wrong. Wrong. According to the most recent high, it's actually 823 billion. Yeah. You have more. Yeah. 1.336. So let's just call it less than 1.5%.

[00:42:37] So let's just say there's a lot of room there, but it's less than a trillion dollars anyway. So again, that's half of one year of deficit spending. That's not very much. But my point is some people think, well, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole too much,

[00:42:58] but in the strategic Bitcoin reserve, they talk about revaluing gold and using some of those proceeds to buy Bitcoin. Will they actually do that? I don't even think they should, but, and I love Bitcoin, but I love gold too. I think they should mark to market as they say, and show the true balance sheet that we do have 800 plus billion dollars of gold,

[00:43:27] not 11 billion dollars and some weird statutory BS, you know? Yeah. I gotcha. I gotcha. If that happened, then actual gold price though would zoom up temporarily at least. So some people think they're trying to front run that right now. Some people also just worried about World War III or massive tariff trade wars and are piling into gold. What is it? Who knows? I'm just glad that I have some.

[00:43:53] I hope you all out there have been listening to Patriot Power Hour and PBN the last darn near decade and have some gold and silver. If you don't, it's still not too late to buy it. I'd still buy some if you don't have any. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of book value gold, look up the Par Value Modification Act of 1973. That's what set it, you know, the current book value at 42 and change per ounce. Interesting.

[00:44:23] Might be even a little too nerdy for me. Maybe I should do it for my homework though. All right. What else? Five recession indicators now raising alarm? Yes. Let's go to that. That's a great one. Let's check to see if they're raising our alarm. All right. Consumer confidence, one. Or is this a political piece? It is Newsweek. Well, we'll go through it. Let's see.

[00:44:52] Let's get our... Consumer confidence is a joke. It's a poll. Right. And we know that them were poured into those polls to just distort it. So expectation index. Yeah, I don't know if that's... I don't know if that means anything a week from now. Credit card, late payments and default rates. That's a little more concrete, don't you think?

[00:45:16] More concrete and harder to fake or manipulate compared to an opinion poll for sure. And not only are the dollars on the credit cards at highs, but so are delinquent. And we talked about this last show and multiple shows in the past of how it's creeping up there.

[00:45:39] But delinquent, defined as late payments more than 90 days late on your credit card, has doubled since early 2022. And it's not like the economy was in the greatest position early 2022 after COVID. There was the stimulus and the PPP and all that crap. But still, there was a fair amount of economic distress. And so they have doubled since then. Wow, that's a lot.

[00:46:08] Point number three is business uncertainty. This is, again, an opinion poll, in my opinion. Right? Although, honestly, businesses that import and export are highly uncertain tonight. That is a lot of uncertainty. Business owners hate uncertainty.

[00:46:30] So I think a distinction we can make is if we had perfect information about business uncertainty or about consumer confidence, if we had 100% unbiased data about every consumer and what they actually were feeling, that would be very important. But we do not trust University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, for example.

[00:46:56] I do not, you folks, if you do, I do not trust KPMG. Well, if you jump down to Trade Policy Uncertainty Index, this is according to St. Louis Federal Reserve information. Right. We heard Atlanta Federal Reserve is up there. Now we've got St. Louis Federal Reserve. So University of Michigan might as well be Federal Reserve University. Right.

[00:47:20] It's right up there with the Harvards and the Yales with regard to Federal Reserve officials and people that work there, business school, freaking Michigan. I'm a Big Ten guy, but I don't like Michigan. What can I say? So trade policy uncertainty and then inflation expectations. Yeah. But again, more University of Michigan. Yeah.

[00:47:43] So these are, you know, these five quote unquote indicators from Newsweek, one gets close to the standard of a future danger indicator. And if it was a separate headline, and it has been in the past, the credit card late payments and default rates, that's generally dangerous news. Right. Because how far can that go on before banks start to simultaneously collapse? The rest of these are opinion polls.

[00:48:12] Last week, we talked about the delinquencies going up for commercial real estate, meaning businesses not paying their rent. And we talked about how that is like the very, very end of a business's life is not paying rent. They'll do everything in terms of cost cutting before they get kicked out for not paying rent. That's like pretty much bankruptcy game over. And that has gone up big time. Well, this is the consumer.

[00:48:38] At least the credit card debt and the delinquency rate is real. And we've been tracking that for quite some time. It's I don't have the graph at hand, but it's darn near equal to financial crisis 2008. In terms of percentage of folks that are delinquent, as well as those making only minimum payments, by the way, there's very large percent are only making minimum payments, even if they're on time.

[00:49:07] So, yeah, all this data is pointing to it. But I kind of put the final if maybe my own bias and thoughts on it. Sure. This information is like six to 12 months in the making. Everything that we see now is from last year. This is all Biden's. And the way I look at it, they're going to say, of course, this is Trump's recession or Trump's inflation or Trump's whatever.

[00:49:35] However, all this has been baked in the cake for years, if not decades, by the central banks and the banksters and the Biden's and the Obama's. And, yeah, Trump did have a lot of debt spending, too, in his first term. So put that all together. Tariffs might cause some of this, maybe even a little bit of a tipping point. But it's it's this would be Biden's recession, in my opinion, from an objective point of view. That's how history should look at it.

[00:50:02] Can a tipping point ever be little if it's tipping? Depends if they want to let everything else fall with it. I've always said they got one more bailout or, you know, kick the kid down the road. But doesn't mean they'll use it, especially if Trump's in office. They may hoover him. You think that'll happen, but you think it's a few years from now. Yeah, well, he has no time left to react. Hey, I missed a headline. I missed an indicator.

[00:50:30] I missed a grade one indicator when I read the heat map dashboard. I failed to scroll. This is a big one. I did open it. Go for it. Open. Yeah. Americans are dipping into their 401ks. 401ks are getting rated. We've seen this indicator. You know, that headline shows up now and again. You know, I'm checking back here. March of 23. A lot of times in 23. Big, big headlines. Four, five of them in 23.

[00:51:01] One in 22. Two in 2020. This is sort of a binary kind of indicator. Either it's happening or it's not. If you get a headline, it's nearly happening or it's, you know, with the red severe grade two or it's happening. But again, by itself, is it terribly dangerous? No, but it's a sign. Well, we were seeing how credit card delinquencies have doubled since 2022.

[00:51:30] But back in 2022, 401k hardship withdrawals were also hitting their own record high at that time. But now it's been going up and ups, you know, year by year, month by month. And, you know, if you had a 401k, you're cashing it out. If you had a credit line, you're running it up. And eventually it ends up you're homeless. Hopefully you're sleeping on someone's couch or somewhere to go.

[00:51:58] But it's just keeps you're falling down the social ladder. And that's what we're seeing here when it comes to credit card delinquencies, when it comes to mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, auto loan repossessions, all those are starting to hit new highs, all time highs that is. And we're not even officially in a recession or massive stagflation or any other sort of, you know.

[00:52:23] So imagine if unemployment doubles and inflation's 10% annualized. There's a lot of personal austerity to be had in there. Be, you know, let's be realistic, right? Credit cards. I agree with that. You know, probably things that people can overcome. What businesses don't like about that is, you know, now, you know, that, that hits the companies that are selling them things that they can't afford. The market's going to suffer.

[00:52:55] It will. Especially the 401k because they're going to be withdrawing directly from there. But yeah, they still get their taxes out of it. Get the penalty. So look at that. Newsley lets you rate its trustworthiness. Huh. I'll give them credit. You probably have to log in to do it. So. What do you want to put? Does it let you score it?

[00:53:24] I'd give them a. Trust Vanguard. Less than moderately, but let's see. Can you actually judge this thing right now? That's cool. Vote on that. Yeah. It's going to tell you have to log in. Reader averaged 4.2%. We gave them a two. Yeah. Didn't have to. But in future dangers credit, we don't discriminate.

[00:53:54] If the headline has and suggests a potential dangerous event leading to an indicator activating, it's up. Let the reader decide if you, if you value that news or not. But four out of five of those are fluffy, in my opinion. They're not concrete enough to, you know, bring the indicator above anything but topical. Grade one. Here's the gold. Here's the gold.

[00:54:24] I already talked about that. But quite an improvement in gold. Silver is not at its all-time high, but it's also been seeing some nice increases. Bitcoin's at about 85,000. So not great. But just today, up 2,400. So 2.96% on gold. Or excuse me, on Bitcoin.

[00:54:48] And yeah, there's a lot of talk out there about how the market's already lost X amount of trillions. And market is crashing. The market is not crashing. It would have to drop. In my opinion, the Dow would have to be below 35,000 to consider it a crash, if not lower. So we'll keep an eye out on that. It's at 42,000 right now. So that's the market I'll put out there. 35,000 or lower, it's time to start panicking maybe.

[00:55:18] Well, I take exception to that. It's not the total amount of points down, right? It's the severity, the velocity within which it happens, right? So 10%. Right, how many days? Yeah, one market session, one day session that we get a 9% or 10% drop. The indicator stop market crashes on future danger will be black on red.

[00:55:47] That market is crashing. And you and I both know they won't let it crash from 42,000 points down to 35. They'll intervene. They'll prop it up. There's a biggest generation that the United States ever had. And they are in their retirement age, the boomers. They're not going to let it happen. It must not pass. Oil. I don't think oil will spike too much.

[00:56:17] It'll only have more reason to drill, drill, drill here in America. I feel like we talked about, you mentioned austerity or kind of tightening the belt for credit card. I think we as America should as well. There's just tons of waste. Not to mention the corruption that Doge is finding and all that, which is horrible. Tons of corruption. But there's just a waste. All of us, from top to bottom, try to be a little less wasteful. I think that's part of the equation too.

[00:56:46] I want more oil. I want more production here in America. But let's be a little less wasteful. You want more thrift. A little bit more thrift, a little more self-reliance, a little less hubris with consumerism. How about that? There you go. Outside economics, as this episode, 299, approaches its clothes.

[00:57:14] What do we want to talk about outside of economics? Let's get future danger loaded back up here real quick for the new viewers and listeners that joined us. Welcome to the Patriot Power Hour. This is episode 299. The first half hour or so, we talked a lot about tariffs, a lot about economics. We talked through the news blitz.

[00:57:38] We talked about how on episode 300 next week, we're going to have the premiere of some January 6th footage shot right on the ground. We'll be having some guests on the show as well to talk about that. So episode 300 coming at you next week, as well as ration or ruin the announcement of a prepper exercise, our fourth annual prepper exercise. It's going to start in May.

[00:58:06] We're going to have a little more detail out, hopefully in the next week or so. And ration or ruin. So it's a pretty big milestones coming down the line, a lot of work to be done, but it's totally going to be worth it future day. Yeah, it will be. Yeah. I'm looking at these other articles. I think we're a wrap. None of these are jumping off as, you know, outstandingly new and unique. The aliens voting, the more is going to follow on that.

[00:58:37] Right. We're going to see the outcome of what is happening when we actually have the midterms. So lots of topics we are talking about that we're not talking about here. Ukraine, deportation, all kinds of popular electoral kind of demagoguery that just not there in terms of rating it in terms of the threat environment that you live in the United States. All in all, though, economics is heating up.

[00:59:07] We're going to have a lot of news this spring about it. That's a prediction. We certainly will. I think I have to remind myself sometimes how future danger is framed. And so it's important for listeners and viewers to realize this isn't just what's going on out there. It's what's a potential threat. What's something you need to be looking out for to execute your preparedness plans.

[00:59:32] So there's a lot going on in Ukraine right now, but nothing that's threatening in such a way that would show up on this. That doesn't mean it'll change next week. For example, heck, our economics was pretty quiet almost all the first quarter. And look at it now. No time. Make a real quick turnaround. And all this stuff was brewing in the past quarter.

[00:59:57] And I mentioned that here or there on the show, like, hey, our economic situation has not been fixed. It's just kind of quiet for now. Well, geopolitically. There's a lot of problems out there, but pretty quiet right now, all considered. On the Liberty front, a lot of good things are happening. A lot of battles and corruption going on as well. So, hey, I think it's pretty good for a wrap.

[01:00:24] I would say keep in mind a lot of the good things going on as well. And don't be satisfied, though, either. In particular, what RFK is doing. Hope he keeps pushing it with regard to vaccine schedules, with regard to cleaning up the food and water in this country.

[01:00:43] And if only I could talk about a story, which I absolutely cannot, about the EPA and a particular organization that got a lot of money from the EPA and the Biden administration. Is now being pestered by DOGE, meaning Congress is after their ass. And I've been able to see some of the information behind that.

[01:01:08] And it's good to see at least some of the criminals are running scared or at least having to rack up crazy amount of legal bills to defend their ass from all the fraud. Anyway, a lot of that's going on. We don't really report or talk much about that because we're looking for the next threat. But, yeah, let's keep pushing for some of this good reform and good news while also preparing for some of the bad news. But that's all I got, really, myself.

[01:01:36] I got some meatloaf in my kitchen I want to eat, honestly. But a good show. Broke the fourth wall. We're almost there. We're almost there. All good. I'm going to be hungrier in May, too. I know that. Darn ration or ruin. We're not rationing yet, but it's coming.

[01:02:00] As if we were unawares and we're suddenly struck with a major calamity and the food is limited. How are we going to do it? How are we going to manage that? I've never done that for a month. We're going to be going without a little bit of food, Ben. And so tonight I think I'm going to enjoy my meatloaf knowing what's coming. It's going to really refine my fishing and trapping and foraging skills, let me tell you what. I'm going to be very focused on fishing well.

[01:02:29] I'm actually going to start prepping for that and practice fishing now. I've gone fishing, but not to as my only source of food on the weekend. So I better get it together. It'll be fun after it's over. Yeah. Well, you listeners get to listen, learn some lessons at our expense. Maybe even join in if you want. If you'd like to join in, DM us, send us a message. There's a way to participate in this, but it's not going to be easy. It's not, but our information is in the description.

[01:03:00] So hit us up on X or on email. Future Dan, next time I'll talk to you on air, it'll be episode 300. It'll be a good one, sir. Looking forward to it next week. Join us all. Thank you to our audience for listening to episode 299 of the Patriot Power Hour.