Patriot Power Hour #331 - 2026 Predictions

M hmm. Do you want statement of purpose? Should I email you? Should I put this on your action item list? You decide your own love love involvement. We are the Proper Broadcasting Network. You are now listening to the Patriot Power Hour, the newest show of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. 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 Future danger dot com. Patriot Power Hour Live in twenty twenty six. Yeah, it's January first, twenty twenty six. I've been the Breaker of Banksters here with Future Dan. What's going on? Future Dan? We are a coreter of the way through the twenty first century, halfway through the twenty twenties. Y two K just a few seconds ago. But it's been twenty five years. It's true. Crazy where we're at now. We've never broadcast on January first. This is special, very much so. Last year we did on the eighth of the ninth. So we're coming straight out the gates fast, trying to set an all time record number of shows this year, more than last year. I think we had forty last year. Forty out of fifty two weeks, not too bad, mostly planned. Let's go for like forty four this year. What do you say we got a good start. What is our record in a calendar year. I'm gonna add that to my twenty twenty six New Year's resolutions. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I do have a couple four Patriot Power Hour, and it's to really dive deeper into the transcripts and build a full checklist of every episode, have a transcript for everyone going back, and then I can really answer that for you, like, hey, we had forty six on this year? Was our all time year? I'm gonna say like forty four to forty six would be our record. There was a weeks where we had with COVID too, twenty twenty probably. Well, COVID year that twenty twenty had at least one special in my twenty twenty I remember doing that, So it might have been twenty twenty that we got up into the mid forties. And we always take a break on a quarterly basis, So it's forty eight. It's the top that we could have ever done. Forty six might have been a forty four was probably better than our ten year average. There you go. So consistency is what brings us to episode three hundred and thirty one, heading into our ninth year of Patriot Power Hour, and geez, I guess, heading into our sixth year on PBN Prepper Broadcasting Network. That was late January of twenty twenty. So what can we say? Time flies? But we got a lot of news currently we're going to get to in this dashboard and then predictions because the next year is gonna go like the wind, and before you know, it'll be December twenty twenty sixth and we're gonna be making some of the predictions now that will be reviewing next year. And also a delayed but improved now of Silver coming out at twenty twenty five and going into twenty twenty six. Ben lead the way. All right, let's hit the dashboard first. Although I love talking about Silver and I love talking predictions, I really want to focus on the news right now because this dashboard, although not particularly severe dangerous, does have a lot of important information, a lot of headlines, and actually a couple you know, mid range mid rating, especially economically. So let's just run right through it, starting left to right. DOJ reviewing five point two million more pages at Epstein files. Last week, Christmas Week had a lot of news come out on Epstein and different files, Lots lots of the last couple weeks since we were last on air. A lot more being reviewed and coming out. I want to see some arrests, but let's continue to news. President says Venezuela has been attacked, says America may bomb Iran again. I ran saying they're formally at war with the West, so some things heating up there. China conducts war drills around Taiwan, simulating a blockade of key ports. We'll be talking some predictions with Taiwan later this episode. Taiwan armed forces on alert as China encircles island and launches massive live fire drills. Chinese war games encircling Taiwan two different articles. We'll explore both get more details. And California governor candidate pledges to arrest federal agents and take away their driver's licenses. This just a low grade but worth looking after and tracking. Insurrection declared is the indicator going to be talking about potential insurrection predictions in twenty twenty six coming up. So that's why I want to start with this dashboard. Future DAN gonna be launching off this into the predictions. Economically, the dollar is facing the end to its dominance, drops the most in ten years in twenty twenty five, prices going up, dollar is dropping. Importer bankruptcy surge. This under firms widely failed, which we've not seen much of this indicator recently, not since twenty twenty. But we're seeing some of these importers with the tariffs bank simultaneously collapse. Yes, just overnight, thirty one billion into the banking system, largest liquidity injection since COVID. It's not just lowering interest rates that the Fed and banksters can do. They can do a lot more. And that's what they're doing. Why is the question we'll talk through it. We're seeing the strain of the flu come out, making older people sicker. Flu cases on the rise. Keep an eye on that African swine flew suspective of escaping a Spanish lab. This is tied for the most dangerous headline of the night of the week. We're always keeping track of anything like this. African swine flew suspected of escaping a Spanish lab in Mount Etna's Northeast Crater erupts for the first time in twenty eight years. Future, Dan, that's the news blitz. Where do you want to go from here? Yeah, it's pretty diverse, isn't it. It's many vectors for being threats. But well, we witnessed last year and if it carries the CRUs within two to four weeks, none of these. Indicators might be the ones we're talking about. Well, that's where the predictions is gonna come in. There are certain themes that we've kept on Patriot Power Hour for the full time we've been on air, but certainly in the last couple of years with these predictions, there's always a category or a news article that comes out of left field each and every year, sometimes more than that, And we can't see the future perfectly, so we won't be able to catch on to that. But I know you have a couple categories that are new to twenty twenty six we're gonna run through. I might have a couple of new ones as well. So it's gonna be a blend of what Patriot Power Hour and pbn's all about. Prepping for financial health, right food and water, and freedom of speech, all that kind of the basis, but then maybe some out of left field in terms of news. Though the dollar facing the end of its dominant dollar drops most in ten years, and this importer bankruptcy surge, I would say that's all going according to plan. From Trump's point of view, he expected some importers to go bankrupt with tariffs, and well, the dollar wants to go down, so we can export more. If the dollar goes down, other countries can afford our goods to be exported and manufactured here. That's all within the Trump plan. It's just will this overshoot? Is the question. It is. But again that that kind of news. It's a slow level, it's topical. It's not deep dangerous trend in any regard on either of those indicators. But thirty one billion dollar repall on New Year's Eve? What's that about. Let's take a look at it. The one and only Fitix survival in check. A dollar goes down, silver goes up, you know it. That's this a big part of the silver run, but not all of it. We'll get into more of it. But looking at actually in fact we are here on x zero, Hedge posted this these what we got thirty two Excuse me, thirty one billion dollars injected into the banking system. Not in the middle of December, not in early December. This is literally when everything is quiet on New Year's Eve. This entire week, everything is pretty much shut down, but especially last night, you know, New Year's Eve, thirty first, But we saw thirty one billion, which is easily the most of the year. And there has not been much of this injection. Going back to COVID. Pre COVID, we were seeing these crazy overnight, crazy overnight repos if you remember Future DAN, and then at some point it was those reverse repos those that happened. But now we're back again to the repos, and it's so weird, you know, it even throws me for a loop. And I've studied this quite a lot. Let's just say we went from having you know, not enough liquidity, to have it way too much liquidity, to now again no liquidity. It's all drying up. And with that, we're gonna need more interest rate cuts, We're gonna need more bailouts, quantitative easy, all this injections, all this crap. And just as we've talked about that it's really good for silver, that's good for physical assets and bad for dollar based bank accounts. How about that? Right? And for those that are are are new to some of this FED speak repo stays, we're repurchasing agreement and it's basically a quasi governmental organization like our central bank, our federal Reserve system, just inventing money and putting it into you know, in ones and zero digits, just transferring it overnight to supposedly private too big to fail systemically important banks. Question for you, Ben, do you think there's any that got to the end of twenty twenty five with some you know, yet to be known about major losses one of those systemically important banks? You know, was it on the verge of going sideways without that injection? A couple of ways I want to put this First, if you've ever been living paycheck to paycheck and had to play little games with transferring monies and doing all that, you know, when you're at that stage, you're at the very last stage of bouncing checks and having problems. Luckily I'm not in that phase anymore, but coming straight out of college had to do that. Now, imagine these two big to fail banks that are having to get this sort of overnight injection and little games promises where it's pretty much ensuring their checks don't bounce. Now they're implicitly guaranteed not to bounce. This is more of an interest rate game than anything. But it's pretty much, Uh, the way I boil it down is what I just said, like a poor college kid trying to not have a check bounce and you know, doing cash advance here and you know all this little shell game stuff. So you're, well, I think I just heard a moment ago is that you know the you know, it's just a short term thing. They're playing games with numbers, but everything just pans out. That's that's not true that thirty one billion hadn't been forthcoming. There could have been some you know, real market correction, some real lasi fare let it be, let it fail action? Could it not? So I would say possibly, and it would What would happen is the banks would not lend amongst themselves and they would stop trusting each other. Yeah, and that's where you have a real lock up and liquidity problem. So this is kind of trying to prevent that, almost as like a lubricant to the gears of the banksters, like, ah, these are going to grind to a halt. It's really bad rusty machinery. It's a total fraud for so long, but we can still grease the wheels for a while. They've done more than this in the past, and they've done it a lot, you know, for me. So that's what I guess. What I meant is, it's not likely last it was the night, But well, do you have a lot of credence to what you were saying though about could there be something underlying this? Probably possibly something something underneath the hood is breaking. It seems for this to suddenly happened, and it certainly seemed that way the last time we saw it. But we saw it last time just months before COVID, and then seven months later. All the thing's been sideways. So powerful interests aligning things, get things set up inten intentionally collapsing or letting things get broken. So the lender of last resort, the United States government and it's surrogate, the Federal Reserve, can can you know, patch it up in a way that all of the moneyed interest benefit. That's that's one way of looking at it. But there's another thing I've been trying to say for a while now is if this stuff is controllable, and if it can be controlled for political reasons to bring parties into and out of power. For example, there's a major banking crisis, a systemic failure in early twenty twenty six. Is that does that help one party win in the midterms the other lose? And what I've been trying to say is this isn't a year for that. There's too many presidential emergency powers that could be invoked if all that collapses. And my point is, you know, Trump still has three years in his term a little bit more right, So it's a long time to leave someone with that much power. And if you accept that premise, then what happened with the repos might be unplanned, might be Nope, there is no human control of the mechanisms of the mega financial structures in place right now, and when they start to crack and creak, you know, it's like an earthquake coming. None of them can control that. That's where I was going to go with it, and you hit it pretty much, nail on the head. I know that's your especially your feeling mine. I don't know. I still think they and we've talked about this, they can kick this down till twenty twenty eight. You think they absolutely will if at all possible, so they if things break before the twenty twenty eight presidential election, it's it's because they lost control. It's not a purpose. What I'm looking at here, which I think could be an undercurrent of a potential banking failure, is the price of silver just since uh this is November fifth of twenty twenty five, So about two months ago silver was forty six dollars, about a two trillion dollar market cap, two trillion dollars of silver in the world. Since then, it's nearly doubled in just two months. But what you'll see is it really accelerated from really since our It did have a pretty steady march up in price from let's call it Thanksgiving when it went from fifty three up until our last episode we were alive, it was about sixty six, so that was quite a nice jump. But what I'm looking at here is what happened on Christmas Eve and the first trading day after Christmas Friday, at the twenty sixth, we saw silver go from seventy two dollars to eighty four dollars in pretty much like two trading days. And it's supposed to be the lowest volume days of the year December twenty sixth December twenty sixth, So a couple things here. In my opinion, the banksters are way underwater, but I have not realized those losses on the silver paper fraud scheme they've been employing ever since before I was even on air or even had my blog twelve plus years ago. So this huge run up in silver is horrible for a lot of these banksters. But that's only one part of it. There's certainly the yen has been destructing. The whole carry trade with the yen is over with Japan's raising its interest rates, which I could talk about for hours, but that's just destroyed liquidity worldwide because the yen is no longer able to be used and abused and borrowed into infinity. The Bank of Japan, for the first time in like thirty years, is raised interest rates and they're going to keep raising it, which means free money is over. So that's really putting people underwater, not really people banks this you know. Anyway, Put that all together and there's something saying, yeah, red alert, red alert, liquidity crisis, liquidity crisis, yep. And they'll paper it over and it's not happening until when When when do you know, Oh I don't know, like next Wednesday or Thursday, after the holiday weekend? When when do you know that they've lost control? This is something's breaking. What's the next sign that? What's the next kind of headline that you'd and us a bait fucking right underneath this headline under the indicator banks simultaneously fail. Oh man, Well, we'll hold silver for a little bit later when I do my silver analysis and we'll do our predictions here in a little bit, so I'll focus on the main question, like when do I know a bank has failed or it's on the way to fail? Is that kind of or the whole systems? Uh? Yeah, it's you know, it's it's starting to look fragile, looks like it looks like things are out of control, emergency fed meeting kind of thing. Yeah, I've I've written about this. I've expected it to happen by now and it hasn't. But I still think it'll be the same thing the bank holiday where they're like, hey, things are out of control. We're going to close a little early for the weekend. Don't worry, we'll be back on Monday. If they say that, you better go to your local costco or whatever and stock up. If they close a day or two early in the week or whatever and say, yeah, we'll be back. Don't worry, We're just taking a day or two holiday. You need everybody's bank the day is just everybody's bank is shot ordered shot. Yeah, as a quarantine, similar to bend the curve in fourteen days is what I'm saying, like, Hey, my bank's not infected, but we got to quarantine all the banks. My bank's okay, but we got to shut them all down to be safe. That that would be extreme if that happened next week. But what would be an intermediary headline? Maybe that is happening in mid to late January twenty twenty six. If so, what do you listen for coming in between more repo just more repo news, which is covered by virtually no one, right. That's something they can't really hide or cover up. So that's a great one. The fact we're seeing that it all is very noteworthy. But if we start going instead of thirty one one billion, it's one hundred billion plus and it's like every single night. Bank stocks, bank stocks just the whole financial sector on Wall Street just starts to smiffly decline as a as a block. They can't ignore that, no. And I mean that's where they might have the bank holiday or in or stock market holiday, where it's like, hey, we've had multiple limit down days. It's a crisis. We're gonna we're gonna take a little break. But what I'm looking at right here is silver. Just keep watching silver. It's up just in the last hour, so it's up another dollar, back up to seventy two sixty. If we see silver regain eighty plus dollars, we see silver up to one hundred dollars by the spring, that's gonna mean huge, huge problems for the banking system because they're admittedly short silver physical silk. So every dollar that silver goes up, they lose billions of dollars. The question is is it like one billion or is it thirty billion. We don't know what kind of leverage and derivatives they got. Yep, important financial news tonight. So that's what we know right now. I think. Very very much striking out as yellow official news right might might be nothing, might not have another headline again, and it'll be just a little blip on the radar that doesn't have any you know, sequel to it, or or maybe not. Well, let's run into some predictions if you're if you're ready for it. We're doing that or are we doing you know, a complete analysis of the silver I think he cracked a door open on talking. About the silver market today. Maybe okay, still. That I could. I can do that. I mean, you don't have to twist my arm for that. I kind of make it relatively succinct for people. I know not everyone wants to listen too much, like for ten minutes of silver, but it is. I'll keep it very high. On this, on this note, coming out what you said a moment ago shorting silver certificates, paper silver, I'm something about that. It makes sense when you say it, but I'm still kind of disconnected from how how could just those shorts in and of themselves be large enough to destabilize these modern, you know, mega systemically important eligible for RepA loans kind of. Firms, Right? I tie that one together for me, I wouldn't have suspected silver had that big of an influence on these these modern monetary theorists institutions. Wow, it's all comes I will say this, The silver market is not as big as real estate by any means, So I would say the unrealized losses in the commercial real estate market are worse than the silver. But that's kind of marches along in a more predictable manner. This huge loss in silver, it just kind of happened out of nowhere in the last year, rather than the steady march of maybe loss on real estate that they could sort of control and paper over. More So, part of it's that so big, almost out of nowhere. It doesn't have to be. Okay, let's see, if you know much about margin trading, you can trade foreign exchange or crypto or all types of stuff at ten x, twenty five x one hundred x. Now if you trade out one hundred x, you bet be very careful because your one thousand dollars loss can instantly turn into one hundred thousand dollars loss. That's what essentially the banksters have done. There's more than one hundred paper contracts and shares and derivatives and all that ounces, hundred ounces of that paper for every one ounce of real physical So even though we're only talking about a few billion dollars of silver, maybe that one bank is short. The thing is they leverage that over by fifty x or one hundred x, and all of a sudden, it's one hundred billion dollar potential loss on their balance sheet. And we're not done with it yet either. Like if silver just stopped right here at seventy or seventy five bucks, man, these banks would be underwater, but would be hurt. But it's like logarithmic or exponential or something like that. It's more than linear, like from here on out. So if silver does go to one hundred bucks or a hundred and fifty bucks, I mean, it's just something will break. Some people are even thinking China's behind this in a way, kind of thinking this will be a way to as a domino to knock over the Western financial system. I'm not a you know, I'm not on board with the Chinese, but maybe they have found it. And I've talked quite a lot about how they're buying a lot of physical silver and gold in the last decade, so maybe they are putting the pressure on here themselves. Wow, Okay, that makes sense to me. And I was over the holidays talking to family. I'm like, I expected this to happen ten or fifteen years ago, but now it's happening and the fundamentals are stronger. So let's get in real fast jump into the silver analysis I did. I wanted to pretty much break silver price into what it's going to be in five years and what it'll be in about twenty five years. So we just talked about how only cow it's been a quarter of a century since y two k. It seems like forever ago, but also not that long ago. Well, twenty fifty sounds like science fiction, but yeah, it'll be a lot of us will be alive in twenty fifty A hopefully, I certainly hope to be, And so I wanted to see what silver might be in twenty thirty but also in twenty fifty. So that was the basis of this analysis featured Dan. I'm not going to show it on the screen, but let me know if you have questions otherwise, I'm just gonna go high level through this. First, I wanted to hit on silver demand, and really there's a few major thrusts of demand that are going to grow over the next five years, but especially twenty five years. It's coming from batteries, electronics, AI and electric infrastructure, nuclear plans pretty much that call it the industrial case and then the monetary case, which we've just been talking about the collapse of monetary systems, Fiat currencies. Everyone's buying silver bars, silver jewelry, scrap silver, or of course silver boil and silver coins and gold to but we're focusing on silver, which we could talk about later. But you know, so there's the demand side, and I spent let's call it many tokens of AI research plus my own time efforts, blood, sweat and tears researching the demand side of things, and there's really no case to be made that silver demand is going to go down in the next five years. Definitely not go down in the next twenty five years unless we have thermonuclear war. Everyone dies. Yeah, we all need silver. Putting that to the side, the point is silver demand is absolutely going up. In some of the permutations and examples I went through, silver demand could go up by a factor of two in the next five years, and even maybe by a factor of four by the year twenty fifty four times more silver demanded. That doesn't sound like a lot, but here's the thing. There's already more silver being used right now than being mined new silver. How does that happen? Well, a lot of silver is either scrapped or sold, you know, recycled. But my point is there's major, major deficit right now, just today, in twenty twenty six, January first, twenty twenty six, a lot more silver is being used than mined. We already talked about how that demand for silver is guaranteed to go up, and I think it could go up, you know that two or three x. Meanwhile, even if silver price is double where it is right now, based on my research, silver supply won't even be able to double by twenty fifty. There's just not enough silver mine's out there, and it takes ten to fifteen years to get these silver minds up at running. So even if they wanted to open one right now, it would take many, many years. So anyway, demand is going up pretty much guaranteed supply, you know, is I think it's gonna be constant. I think I don't think supply is gonna grow, But as I don't think supply's gonna go down either, because as price goes up, yeah, more people will actually sell their grandma's silver plating or whatever, right silverware, So I think supply will be constant. I think demand's gonna grow crazy, both from AI and from monetary Fiat currency collapse. And with that, where's silver price is gonna be? Well, my opinion, I think by twenty thirty, very high likelihood silver will be above one hundred dollar. It doesn't sound like much right now because silver is seventy three dollars, but remember silver was only like forty bucks this time last year, so uh, there could be some drop in silver, especially if there's a big global depression. But again, I think silver going up big time, and I and I think silver could be above two hundred and fifty dollars by twenty fifty. Now, Chat GPT tried to put some percentages on this and some numbers. I'm not gonna get dragged down in numbers because that's, you know, not a great format radio. It is not a great format for running through spreadsheets. But that's my high level. Demand is going to go up big time because of AI and energy as well as monetary purposes because of all the Fiat currency collapse. Meanwhile, supply at most is going to be flat unless we get an asteroid that hits US and has a bunch of silver that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. There you go, future Dan. That's my very high levels snopsis. I think you're a. Little bit of a bear on on supply meeting demand, especially if the war in Ukraine was settled and Russia could re enter the Pol's economy, because that's a lot of territory with a lot of unmined silver. And we have it too. Right if national parks and other forests, know not parks, but forests were opened, you know, it's some price point you're talking about getting up to one hundred undred and fifty two and fifty ounce. There's there's gonna be a lot of money flowing into opening new mines. And maybe today they take five to ten years to start, but at some price point, it can happen faster, I'm sure, especially in South America and Africa. So I supply will lag and price will rise. I agree with that premise. I'm not sure supply won't try. You know, there won't be a strong attempt to increase supply. Is it money to be made sitting in the ground. Right. My assumption in the analysis that I put through was one hundred dollars announced silver, and based on that, they said in the next five years, there essentially will be no increase in supply from the mines, but over a twenty five year period there could be some. Now, if silver goes a two hundred dollars announce, yeah, that might be a different story. If one thousand dollars an ounce, yeah, they'll be blowing the hell out of anything that potentially has silver, and they'll find the supply at a high enough price. Of course, I was looking for a one hundred dollars. And I'd be curious how much of silver is into jewelry and and and pure silver is It would is very soft jewelry. It's not made that way, right, it's alloyed. So the Alloyd jewelry that's still you know, you know, many carrots, it's valuable, it's still not pure silver. At some point the you know, the costume jewelry grade that, you know, melting that down and extracting the real silver from it is a hazardous process, a costly process, produces a lot of fumes that have to be handled, you know, carefully, because it's deadly. Right, So it's not worth it right now. Right now, even at seventy five an ounce, every single molecule of silver that ever becomes jewelry pretty much stays that way, right, it's not worth it to transform it back, So it's ready to be bullying or it's ready to be industrial at some point. You know, people, right now you can send in your you can mail away your gold jewelry, right your low carrot gold jewelry. It's worth it for gold to melt it down, hasn't been for silver. Wonder how soon it will be worth it for silver? Hey, great point, that's what. There's always a price pretty much for anything. But I always like to point out there's a time frame, there's a time period now opening up Russia to trade, that would be a huge influxus supply. But I would suspect that would be a huge boon to the economy, which be an extra demand for silver as well. But also remember other precious metals and rare minerals and metals can be used instead of silver. So if silver triples and prices and these other metals stay the same, they could be substituted. But the thing is platinum and palladium and a lot of these others are also going on up fifty sixty one hundred plus percent a year in the last year. So it's not just silver and not just gold either. Here real quick, right now, recycling is about thirty percent of the supply. I asked if in its estimate, if silver price went up to two hundred and fifty dollars, then they think recycling or pretty much silver that's already out of the ground, that that would that would be melted down, could rise to fifty percent of supply. Which, yeah, so that'd be a lot, but that I don't know how long that would last. That's a one way trip as well. So I honestly I inherited instead of silver gunningwear, right, silverware. Sitting in like boxes that are like. You know, from great grandparents, you know, handed down, right, just family heirloom, right, But it's at some price. You know, it's gonna be time to send those in. They're not one hundred percent silver, right, they're silverware, so you to eat with them. They're they're alloyed. But you know the prices that you're talking about, those things are coming out of the attics, those are those are those are getting sent in and being turned into cash. Now, keep in mind, I have numbers going so I actually analyzed silver demand and supply from twenty or the year two thousand to the year twenty twenty five, and then I did my projection go forward silverware. In the year two thousand, about three hundred million ounces of silver was used in silverware. About one thousand million ounces or one billion ounces were used in jewelry worldwide, so one billion ounces of silver and jewelry. That was actually over a five year period, so I'd be two hundred million. Sorry, I guess what I'm trying to say here, though, I'm looking at the increase in demand of electrical components from the year two thousand to the year twenty twenty five. That was up about one point four billion. So all the jewelry that was created in the last twenty five years, you could just pretty much pour that all into electronics in terms of the amount of new electronics that's being made. Plus the jewelry will continue to be made, or people just won't buy any more silver jewelry and it'll just only go to AI chips. I mean, that seems just as realistic. Funny enough, though, the demand for silver bars is up by a factor of eight. How about that from one hundred million ounces to eight hundred million ounces that's probably the biggest jump right there. Yep, anything else you wanted to welcome the new year in On the topic of silver, ben. I mean it's been a great use and kind of use case of AI plus my own research techniques to jump into the supply and jump into the demand. I'm still very confident that silver is going up, up, up, But that doesn't mean, you know, sell the farm to buy some. We have some folks in chat right now saying they think it's gonna go you know, sixty eighty one hundred plus dollars. It's already past sixty. Hey. I still think if you don't have any, you might be able to scoop some up if there is a depression or some sort of bank holiday. But I also you know, remember silver dropped pretty much got cutting half during COVID, went down to like twelve dollars announced at one point. So yeah, get off zero and get some physical silver in your hands as soon as possible. But on the other hand, you know, be ready, there might be might be a sale to have you know, be had and have some powder ready, dry powder. Yeah, well, a different levels, right if you look at if you're prepping for thirty plus day or maybe even multi month, multi year real collapse scenario. Then what silver is worth now isn't necessarily that important. What silver can do then is what's important. And I think large ounce bars in that scenario, you know, a ten ounce bar today, in that scenario, that that object might be. You know, you might not want that such a big increment, right you would. You wouldn't be able to do much with it, and it'd be it would be risky to do something with it, you know what I mean? For sure, it's uh wow, hard to transport and easily and easily found with X rays and whatnot, especially if you have ounces, and ounces valuable. Be too valuable, like it'd be could it could it could be you know, in a completely collapse disaster situation. That's like only twenty five thousand dollars of Fiat today, right, you. Can't break it. Smaller pieces of silver actually seem like a good prep to me, you know, literally a quarter ounce like the quarter it might be a smarter piece to hold. Yes, that junk silver, I believe before nineteen sixty four ninety percent silver, and it just looks you could hide it in plain sight in your house. Just have some crappy pennies in there, and then throw your real silver in there. They'll just think it's dimes and nickel, you know, dimes and quarters and don't think nichols. But anyway, Hey, a dollar twenty five minimum wage, So a silver dollar and a quarter back in nineteen sixty four, that would be equal to like sixty bucks an hour. Now, so should minimum wage actually be sixty bucks? No, I'm not saying minimum wage should be sixty dollars, but I am saying the value of the dollar sure has gone to craps since the mid sixties. If you know a dollar twenty five minimum wage, it had sixty dollars or more of silver in today's dollars. That's kind of crazy. So move it to contemporary news that is somewhat related. I'd say, uh, have you have you caught win that the Trump administration is playing at two hundred and fifty dollars trump bill? I thought I saw something else, but no, I did not see a Trump bill two undred and fifty dollars Trump bill. The two fifty for the tour and fiftieth anniversary of the United States of America with him on one side, And something's celebrating the the tour and fiftieth anniversary on the backside, and I don't. I'm pretty sure he can't do. It without a law, or he'll just go ahead and do it and cause people to sue. I don't that might be news that we're talking about this year. I was going to say, you need to do it one hundred dollars bill. You know, the two fifty is a new one hundred dollars bill, So it does make sense from that point of view, But I don't know if it's good marketing for him. Everyone makes fun of the Zimbabwe like billion dollar bill. If we do see some bad inflation, hyperinflation, and that might have Trump's name right out on it. Everybody thinks like you and me, does not everybody everybody out there and the wide you know, bad broader public, majority of them. I don't have any idea what you're talking about with the Babwe million dollar bill. They don't know what it means. They don't know why they would even have explained to them. They wouldn't necessarily even begin to understand why that would, you know, be a problem for them here now, if the Trump if the Trump for a fifty dollars bill someday ends up being what you need to pay for to eat at McDonald's, and then everybody will know let's be pretty late by then. Well for all of our safe let's hope that's not the case. So this is just a proposed thing, or he's gonna go forward with it. I don't even know. It might just be kind of just trolling it out there to get give people, you know, upset and reacting negatively. It's hard to tell these days. I'll give you that not as bad as Trump coin. So we're gonna jump into particulars. But there's also you know, just massive fraud being uncovered in Minnesota, Maine, Ohio. It's just probably the tip of the iceberg, just daycare centers that aren't even like real getting checks. What's your what's your thought on you know, what's transpired in the last week and where this ends up going. A lot of a lot of empty buildings in po boxes getting millions and millions of dollars? Are there a few in there that didn't get the fair shake or maybe they really were doing something? And then maybe but now when you have like fifty of these and multiple independent investigators finding very similar, very similar stories and really just frauds. So I just want to see people actually go to jail, you know, I want to, I wanna. I want them to do it the right way through the court of law and have You know, I don't want a witch hunt. But if no one's going to jail for twenty plus years for stealing millions of dollars, then they got away with it is how I look at it. So we'll see if there's a rest and people actually go to jail, or if they get off on some sort of technicality or some George Soros DA throws the case right something judge says, Actually, we're just gonna let him go slap on the wrist. That would be pathetic, but that's kind of what I expect. Unfortunately, that's almost inevitable in many cases. But there's gonna be some big enough that federal charges. There's gonna be scapegoats for this pretty sure. Yeah. I don't commend any financial fraud, but I guaranteed if I tried to even steal twenty thousand dollars of charity money, my ass would be in the slammer. Let's just say that. Yeah, what do you predict for this year. Oh man, I got a lot of predictions. You want to just start going from top to bottom. Well, why don't we tell our audience like the main categories. Then we can just punch through each category. The goal is that we're gonna call a percentage confidence level that it does happen whatever the question is. And if we're close, we're just gonna take an average. And if we're we're pretty far apart, you know, a wide divergence between me and my co host, then we're gonna probably track those numbers and hold ourselves accountable at the end of the end of this year next December. All right, let's go ahead and make that happen. Then high level, yes, roll. We have financial which you know that is kind of the mainstay of patriot power, so financial related. We have precious metal and hard asset related, which is similar to but separate. We have geopolitics in war. We have regime collapse, so we name several regimes and we'll determine whether we think they'll collapse in twenty twenty six. Domestic US domestic whether that's insurrection Act, national Guard, election, unrest, etc. We have a few there. We have a couple wild cards, one surrounding a cyber attack, you know, will there be a major cyber attack or internet outage? So we have twenty. I think a few of these I might skip because they're redundant. So my guess is I have about fifteen that we've talked a little bit about. But we're all so we haven't given any of our predictions. We ran through the list high level, but we don't know each other's thoughts quite yet. And I know you have a few and I have a couple other that aren't on this list. So I'd say there's at least twenty. Let's do them. Let's do them. What category are we going to do first? Let's start with make it simple. At the top, macroeconomic financial, the US enters a recession in twenty twenty six. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We'll call that real growth. So let's just do yes or no. US enters a recession in twenty twenty six. For a yes, what what percentage when you put that. Ten percent? Yes, that happens. Okay, I'm putting it at a fifteen. I think a little higher, but it's pretty close. I think there's still could be a chance something that comes out all right, but not much so. The consensus average percentage is twelve and a half for that one recession in twenty twenty six. Lock it in twelve point five percent chance of a recession in twenty twenty six. Do you want to expand upon your answer at all? I feel like I should go lower. But if there's a major bank collapsing tonight that we don't know about, there's certainly enough time left in the year for us to get a get that kind of negative growth, So got to be at least ten percent probably for me. That's how I looked at it too. We're not on any trajectory for a negative corter of growth at this time. But you know, a bear Stearns failure like in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, Lehman Brothers or another COVID or some site of major terror attack, right, if a major terror attack anything like that could lead to potentially, of course, the banking crisis too. So I twelve point five percent consensus is pretty good. I think that's fair. Hopefully it's lower, but there you go, twelve point five How about this? Currently the federal reserve rate is at about three point five percent in the next twelve months. What's the chance that they cut it from three point five percent to two point five percent pretty much one hundred bases point cut in the next twelve months. What's the chances of that or more or more? I'm fifty to fifty on that. It depends on who Trump gets in as a FED chair. Remember we got other FED governors under pressure and one that was fired but still awaiting adjudication. So if Trump's able to pack that reserve board the voting members of the phomach, he could get it below two and a half this year. I think that's uh, I'm gonna put it. You know, I think fifty percent is a great consensus. I was gonna say maybe a little higher, but I think fifty is good. In fact, looking at poly market right now, the implied odds of poly market is that by April there's a very good chance will be at least halfway to what we would need. You know, again, if we need one hundred basis point cut from now till December, well, poly market currently says there's a very good chance we'll get half of that in only one third of the year, So very very strong chance there and if there is some sort of terror attack or banking crisis or COVID two point zero or any of that type of stuff, I really do expect massive cuts. So actually, how about I'm gonna raise mind to sixty percent, which would make our consensus fifty five. You cool with that? Yeah, consensus average percent chance on the cutting of the federal reserve rate below two and a half percent is we'll go with fifty five percent this year. Yep, fifty five percent consensus a little bit better than a coin flip. We definitely think they're going to try to cut pretty aggressively too. How about this US national debt to exceed forty trillion dollars. If twenty twenty six had the exact same deficit as last year twenty twenty five, then the dashal debt will be like forty point two trillion at the end of the year. So we need a decent cut and spending and or decent in provement in revenue or both, really or else national debt will exceed forty trillion. Do you think we'll be able to slow the rate of debt or do you think national debt will exceed forty trillion? What's the chance that the debt will exceed forty trillion. Well before I make that percentage prediction, I would say what we just talked about, right, bringing if rates are cut below two and a half percent, that is bringing down the annual interest paid on the debt a bit, maybe drops in the bucket in the long term. But on this. Particular question over under on the forty that numbers right in the middle. Right, if we keep the same rate, we're gonna if you keep the same rate, we're gonna actually supersede it. So we'll you know, tariffs, will those come in and have a massive revenue bonus to the government, And then there's a lot for curve ben right, pulling back on the tax rates, which they did do with the bill last year, you know, bringing it back over the curve that that actually could generate a lot of revenue. So you've picked a number here, forty trillion, that's really close to you know, is it gonna be over that or under that? I think it's over it. I think we're gonna pass it. But I'm only about sixty content that we will. Okay, I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with seventy percent. So let's just make our consensus sixty six two thirds. What do you say? Sounds right? All right? Two thirds sixty six points sixty sixty sixty sixty six sixty seven. I feel like there might be a chance for tax revenue to go up from growing and just from underlying inflation. The dollar's worth less. I just don't see them cutting or even managing spending. Even if they've cut out some of the corruption, which is awesome, there's just so much spending. I just don't see the spending stopping. So I think, yeah, pretty good chance arkansensus two out of three chants will end up above forty trillion. On this note, can I throw in a bonus prediction? Real quick? Go for it. It's not even in this category, but it's related to what you're talking about. Uh, what's your chance that yes or no? The the US government will go unfunded and shut down this year for more than ten days? How many days did it go? Was it ten? Unfunded and shut it was? It was longest ever? Was last fall at forty something forty three days? Okay, so we'd only need ten days of what happened for forty plus days last year. In that case, I'd say that's it eighty change. Yeah, I'm going ninety. We can go eighty five consensus on a shutdown. I think we're gonna get at least a ten days shutdown or ten days worth. They might fund it and have it shut down and do three more days and shut down. We're gonna get ten days of shutting down in this and I think it's come at the end of January of February, but we'll make. It for the year. I think that chance is strong not to derail your macroeconomic finance predictions. Let's continue now. That was a great one. That would be big for the Brier score, and I think it's kind of contrarian. So if we hit that with that confidence will definitely outperform any of our peers. All Right, last one, four macro. I mean we have some precious metals and stuff, but in terms of actual macro, well, we've talked about a lot already today. Will a top ten bank either fail or be forced to sell to another bank pretty much be acquired or merged because it was going to fail or be bailed out where it still has the name City Bank or Bank of America or whatever. But it takes on billions and billions or even trillions. Will a top ten bank collapse or be taken over or be bailed out? Future Dan, what's your chance on that? Well, you know, if that repond news wasn't showing up since yesterday, I think, yeah, that's near term kind of a bias, a recency bias. I'm liable to fall into it if I put this number too high. This number is already like on a constant basis, you know, a solid twenty five every single day, right, like any of these things could you know, it's just a bunch of human beings and they make the wrong decisions and that they collapse their bank and everything falls with it. I mean, bear Stearn's right, so it can happen again. I don't want to fall prey of the recency effect, though, so I think in this year, I'm gonna take with twenty five. I'm gonna sick with the baseline of that. That's pretty much always liable to be happening at a twenty five percent chance. I think, in the current environment we're in, that's the right way to put it. It's the baseline floor is twenty five percent one out of four years, you know, on average, you could expect one of these huge banks to fail. Now the question is how come one of these has not failed. I would say that this is where it comes. It's difficult to say did this actually trigger the clause or did this qualify or not. But if you remember the collapse with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and a few others, if those had not been all intense and purposes bailed out, helped out, fixed, controlled failure, if that had not happened, then we would have had a top ten bank fail. But they nipped it at the butt at the regional level, so it did not get to that level. So I guess, to be strict, that would not have been considered a top ten bank. But that's everything's so connected these days, and of course there's been so many small and medium sized banks that have literally been swallowed up by the big fish in the last thirty years. Well, I'm going to say twenty five percent, and let's just stick with that as the consensus. I think twenty five percent chance that there's a bailout or a collapse, or a failure or a forced merger of a top ten US bank. I think that's right. I will say, last year, we were much lower. I think we were only ten percent. I think we only said ten or fifteen percent last year, which is doesn't sound normal for us to say that, but I think we had good reason to think last year when it happened. But now I think there's more and more chance every year. Almost I definitely forecast this same prediction a year from today is higher twenty twenty seven, that the chances of that, and that that starts to smell of the controlled demolition to me. Okay, maybe that floors goes up a few percentage until it's almost like a fifty percent chance by twenty twenty eight. Yeah, you know, bring about the ultimate demise of the entire MAGA movement. Somebody who's in control of banks might be interested in that, I would think. So, to say the least. Now, that's mostly what we had for regional banking national debt. Let's head right into metals metal prices and throw some bitcoin in there, because bitcoin rough twenty twenty five down for the year. Right now, bitcoins standing out about eighty nine thousand dollars hit a high of about one hundred and twenty five k. Here's the question, will bitcoin have a huge bounce back year in trade above two hundred k, not end at two hundred k or higher, but just reach two hundred k or higher in twenty twenty six. What's your chance percent chance? True? Yeah, probably thirty percent chance. Oh okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with that. I was actually possibly gonna go a little lower. I was thinking about twenty five. But now that I think in thirty Bitcoin is so volatile, both good and bad, I think it's a thirty percent chance is a good shot. So thirty percent chance consensus that bigcoin at least touches two hundred k. What about below seventy k? That's not very far from here? Yeah, that that one much harder. I would go eighty five. Whoo, eighty five, I'm going I do go ahead, expand on it. You know, it's if some of these dominoes start to fall together, right, a bank collapses, the chance of you know, bitcoin going under seventy is ninety five, ninety eight percent chance, right, But but then that would be temporary. Then also, you know, later rebounding and breaking past two hundred, I'd move it up from thirty to you know, a seventy percent chance That's what I predict is the banking system starts to come apart, as it seems the the big money players have to sell their bitcoin to cover their losses. The price plummets, and then after that it bounces back and goes to the moon. I see that scenario. But right now, it's a pretty good chance it could get under seventy from where it is. I think you laid that out quite well. I'm going to say fifty percent chance it touches seventy k or lower you had eighty five. I think we might have to have split on that one. Yeah, let's split that one. Yeah. So this is not a consensus percentage confidence level. We're going to. Split on the the boundaries of bitcoin in a big way, all right. I will say it's still quite a high chance at fifty I embarrass on it. But for the same reason you just said that, I could see it going blow seventy and then skyrocketing to two hundred all by the end of the year potentially or doing the opposite, having a great first half, and then we have a huge crisis and it drops a whole bunch. So stay nimble, stay on your toes. Sell high by low, hold your hold out to your ass people. Precious metal prices. We've talked a lot about silver. Let's just go with it. Silver in twenty twenty six, silver trades up of seventy five dollars an ounce. Well, it's at seventy two eighty six right now. It's up almost a dollar since we've been on the air. Hit might hit seventy five bucks by tonight, but it hasn't hit seventy five bucks. Do you think you know, what's the chance that goes above seventy five bucks? But it was like last week, So perhaps we should lift that ceiling because that that might that might be one hundred percent chance. I would say it's like a ninety plus percent. So how about we go up to trade above one hundred bucks? Make it rang? Okay? Yeah? Will we will we break one hundred dollars an ounce on silver in in any market? Commacks, how do you want to measure that? Oh? Good question, Commacks spot. I guess that's the most accepted price. I almost want to say, what is American silver eagles worth on like on some bullyon site, But no, William is just the comas. Yeah, I think I think breaking one hundred is better than better than fifty percent chance, maybe maybe fifty five for me. All right, I would put it at about sixty five. So do you want to do a consensus. Of sixty Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. All right, sixty percent chance that it trades above one hundred dollars. Hey, that's pretty bolish. How about gold? Gold's at forty three hundred to five thousand. Yep too, about five grand, that would be you know, twenty plus percent increase this year doable, But holy cow, it seems like five thousand so much. But what's your what's your percent chance on five thousand for gold? Yeah? I think I think of pretty much the same sixty sixty five percent chance. Yeah, I was gonna go with sixty Actually as well, Silver has massively outperformed and the gold and silver ratio has come much more into line. Historically, silver was so undervalued compared to gold, especially like four or five months ago when gold was above four grand, but silver was still like forty bucks. It was like one hundred to one ratio. We're seeing I think like eighty to one right now. And if we did get one hundred dollars silver and gold at five grand, that would narrow it even more to fifty to one. Some people think the well, I won't go too much on a diet tribe, but the natural relationship could be ten or fifteen to one, meaning silver should be going up three or four x compared to gold, or maybe uh, gold needs to drop in value a lot compared to where it is. Not sure, I mean it could go either way, but both you and I think there's like, what we're gonna say, sixty percent chance that gold above's five grand and sixty percent chance that silver aboves one hundred. What's what's the biggest divergence in you know, either of our lifetimes right in living memory? Yeah, like what. One to fifty is gonna be the historical average in that timeframe or what? Gosh? I think we were just went through one of the highest of all time, but one in fifty is pretty low compared compared to what it's been in the last like last twenty five years. This is a great question. I need to go go look at it. I think kind of long term average is like that sixty to one, fifty to sixty, but it's pretty In ancient times it was like twelve to one because like for a lot of reasons. But the amount of silver in the crust of the earth compared to the amount of gold is like a twelve to one ratio, So how the hell did it become one hundred to one? Because the banksters are playing games with all the paper. Or just people naturally prefer gold more. That too, especially for jewelry and for monetary I mean, the central banks all have gold. They don't have silver for a reason. But silver is the people's money, not the king's money for a reason. I'm gonna actually try to out of all this is what I like about chat GPT. I've already done all the research. I got many many sources and all the types of information. Now I can search through that very quickly, and I'm gonna see if in the data I have plus allowed to go find more give the long term silver to gold ratio in table and graph format. We'll try to answer that. Yeah, you know, keep moving two. Since Bretton Woods, since the modern modern financial order, that'd be what that would that would make sense to me to look at since forty five. Perfect, We'll look for that. We'll look at that. It's churning and burning in the back, and I know I've seen some graphs and articles on this over the many years in the past, but very interesting to watch how it reacts and how it's looking now with this huge price movement. All right, I think we've hit gold and silver bitcoin. Let's see, did I have anything else on that? I don't think so, where was it? Yeah? Anything else you had on gold, silver, bitcoin or anything else financial? Really? Nope? No, I think we're good there. Uh. I think geopolitical includes those regime collapses. There are special kind of geopolitical there. They'd be like real pivot points in the history of certain countries. But maybe we'll give you the geopolitical person look at those regime collapses as that category at the end. All right, let's make that happen. You want to get started on them? Yeah? What you got. Regime collapse? We're going to start with Venezuela. Well, do we want to define what a regime collapse is first? Well, let's build up to those. Yeah. Yeah, the current government falls. And so it's not just it's not like the second in command takes over and everything continues. That's not a collapse. It's a full on regime, the entire regime collapsing. Death. Yeah, jail change governments, change the government in the cases that we're talking about, you know, it'd be a change to Yeah, a republic that votes. Probably all right, And maybe I misheard you because I was trying to multitask poorly. You said you want to do the regime last. Yeah, maybe to make that the culmination because that those are those are pretty serious events if they happen this year. Right right, Well, I think the first part of geopolitics, war, et cetera, then would be questions and predictions we've made in the past. Just do it and again starting with Ukraine, formal ceasefire in Ukraine, formal ceasefire in Ukraine in twenty twenty six, what do you think. Yeah, it's tired than last year, only because the Russians are taking territory and eventually the regime in Kiev is gonna just have to take what remains. So probably it's above fifty chance this year. Okay, maybe maybe even a seventy five percent chance. The piece talks have been going on for a really long time. There's all kinds of settlements that are you know, already agreed to in principle. It's the you know, very specific issues and I imagine that has to do with where the you know, the actual DMZ is drawn. Right, the militaries on both sides are gonna, you know, be fighting to have the most advantageous you know, pieces of land to depend right. Look out, look how Korea ended, right, Lots. Of negotiations, lots of you know, back and forth until finally, you know, the. Guns fell silent. And in that timeframe, there's you know a lot of feerce fighting to get you know, just control one other piece of high ground or you know, the benefit of the defense of one other you know, stretch of river before it actually ends so. Pretty high you think you're going with eighty Oh, it. Seems to me Ukraine's blood dry. Okay, I mind, uh, I was thinking lower than that, but I'm kind of convinced me to go higher. So I'm just going to tell you and go with the consensus of seventy five. I don't hope. I'm not being too too hopeful. I think I was too pessimistic early on. I'm not saying that the other way around. I'm not saying cease fire holds forever. It can broke it pretty damn quickly. If they get to the negotiation where both militaries are for any amount of time trying to, you know, do a ceasefire. Seventy five percent chance of that? If you ask me, what's the chance that within a week of that the ceasefire is broken? That's greater than fifty percent chance too. Okay, that's I think that's almost two scores. Do you think we should bifurcate that? Do you want to? Uh? I think I just did. I take this eighty five percent chance of a ceasefire and a fifty percent chance that if there's one achieved, it'll break. Nice. I'm gonna go. I don't know if we need to do a consensus or split. I'm gonna say seventy five and fifty, so a little bit less that it happens, but also the fifty to fifty that it breaks. So that's good. That's good. I better than we were this time last year, or certainly three or four years ago. In retrospect, hopefully it won't be too high and false. But that's what we do this for. How about China initiating kinetic action against Taiwan. Hmm. They don't have what it takes to do that, and they've watched Ukraine and they may want to, you know, keep their military satisfied and the hard the hardliners in the military and their population, you know, well aware that the potential exists of them trying to do it. They're not going to try to do it. It would it would It would go to World War three. It wouldn't. It wouldn't. There wouldn't be a way to stop it once it started. It would snowball. And they're not ready to fight World War three with us. All right, I'm gonna put that at ten percent. But I like the reasoning. But I guess I was thinking of more of a blockade, or are they you know, sink a vessel. Hopefully that wouldn't lead to full war. Maybe it would though, but. Yeah, well look at you know, look at the Cuban missile crisis, look at looking at the amount of nukes that went into Cuba, look at the amount of firepower that was going to be levied against Cuba. And listen to all the people that were involved back in the day saying that none of them knew how to stop just just you know, shooting at a Soviet ship, just how do you stop that from or or you're bombing an air building Cuba or missile site in Cuba. How does that not immediately spiral into World War three? Just full exchange of nuclear weapons. They didn't know how to stop it. Nothing's changed since then. Still don't know how to stop it once it starts. That's why it's pretty much unthinkable to the continuing existence of the regime in Beijing and the regime in Moscow and the regime in Washington, d C. How do those how do those organizations continue to exist? They took the chance of, you know, unloading those weapons on each other. It's been it's been a pretty stable kind of you know, equilibrium there since the sixties. I don't see that breaking. We we, if anything, we have capabilities that you know, uh, you know, make our chances of being successful in this regard even greater than ever before. An amphibious invasion of Taiwan. I mean, every everybody going there is really really badly exposed while they try. Yeah, something like that, I would put less than a couple percent chance. But in terms of some sort of strike on a vessel or some sort of limited exchange, i'd I think I'll put that at ten percent still. In reality, maybe maybe even higher in reality. But the other part of that reality because of everything else I spoke about, because there's giant domestic, you know, populations. If it happened, it's going to be absolutely classified. Every government involved is going to hide it. We had lethal encounters with the Soviet Union in the air, along it all, along the border with the Soviet Union for that entire time. We're only beginning to learn about some of them after that, you know, fifty or sixty years later, when they're declassified. That's how that's how destabilizing an event like that would be. No one could just you know, we can't shoot down and kill a Russian pilot and just say oops, and they'll be like, yeah, no, no problem, forget about it. It's it doesn't it would be. It would be private. It would be very private if it happen. Well, in twenty twenty five we saw strikes on Iran. A question here is Middle East war expands to include a new state actor. This is what we didn't talk about. I don't know if you want to modify this or how. You want to on the Middle East, but sounds interesting. So you're talking about new belligerent that wasn't fighting in the Middle East last year. And who would that be at least at least openly, right, because they're you know, pretty much everybody's at war clandestinely Saudi Arabia, right, Okay, it could be it could be Turkey in a war with someone that we didn't expect. There's been a lot of variables to this, so I'm not sure how you do it. Yes, no confidence. Vote, right, that's what we didn't really smooth out on this one. It's a good sub category, but we got to turn it into something actionable and miserable. So and that would be a new Mid East war too, sovereign states at war with each other in the region that you know of southwest Asia right to include Egypt. I guess, So what's the chance of that in twenty twenty six? Yeah, this that in that region, it's it's a tie. So at least fifty every single year. From my perspective, that place is going to take a very long time to settle down and not be warlike. I think it's a less than fifty percent chance that will happen in my life. Hmmm. I guess a new state actor is the question, and it would have to be public and outwardly not clandestine type of stuff going on, because I'm sure Saudi Arabian Turkey has already got some stuff going on, but you know, if they're actually doing full on air strikes openly, that would be new. Hmmm. I'm might just defer to you on this one. It's a tough one to judge. Chance there's gonna be another big new war in the Middle East this year, that's what That's what I'm willing to say. It's safe safe to say is at least half a chance that it may or may not involve Israel, it may or may not involve Iran, it may or may not involve Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or or it will It's the Middle East, always a high chance, but something's gonna somebody's gonna need to be fighting with each other there. And that's why it's hard to kind of put a number on it, because I feel like a probably every state actor already is part of the quagmire over there, but we're gonna look for to make it more of a distinct judgment. This will be a judgment call at the end of the year to say if we want or not if we if we were erect or not, you were correct. You're the only one that made the real prediction here. You want to go higher and lower than fifty percent with me. I mean Trump would argue that he's gonna get it down to very low chance. Right. He wants to bring peace to the Middle East. It's definitely an objective of the president. I find it so hard to just define it. I feel like they're already all at wardabil East, every state actor, almost even China, but not literally dropping bombs. So it's just how you define it. I guess. Yeah. The spectrum of war, there's low intensity, mid intensity, high intensity, and Middle East is one of those regions where low intensity warfare is. The clandestine level is constant. Right, that's like the hundred. I guess we'll consider this high intensity fifty chance high intensity of a new state actor, not just Israel hitting Iran again or something. Okay, So if you start to talk about high intensity, now you're talking about tank armies and navies, right, full conventional warfare, right, Okay. Uh, that you know, if you're going to define it that way, I'm not sure it's a fifty okay, but but mid intensity with special forces and air forces then you know, yeah, at least a fifty chance. Interesting, you'reing the non state actors from the equation too. The giant part about the war in the Middle East is so many non state factions, right, yeah, exactly that that are are They're not they're not in charge of any territory per se, but they they're bringing the war, so right, that's. Kind of that I was thinking as well, exactly exactly what. Else we got geopolitically. Now we're on the regime collapse aspect unless you had a couple. Yeah, let's let's inog. You know, this is our inaugural prediction on certain tyrannies on Earth ending in twenty twenty six. And the last time we saw that happen in a big, big wave was eight ninety one, with the fall of the you know, the Warsaw Pack and eventually the Soviet Union itself. We see some long term tyrannies come apart. Now, the the ripest apple that fall from the tree is Venezuela. Don't you think. I would expe I think Iran it's got to be right up there, But Venezuela's got to be more ripe or more rotten perhaps, but Venezuela and iron are both up there. Because the news tonight that isn't necessarily directly dangerous to us, so it's not on the heat map dashboard, right, so it doesn't doesn't become part of that segment of the show. But there are reports tonight that the government is facing mass protests, protesters overtaking you know, government sites, military sites across the country. So the regime in Tehran is not clearly empowered tonight. Now this is new just a few days ago. You know, chance in Venezuela falling this year, especially under the pressure that's it's facing now from Trump, I would have said that was higher, But current events in Iran at least right now, make it seem like that Iran's right up there as well. Yeah, I got a feeling Venezuela and Iran both about fifty chance they collapse. What do you put in a mat ooh ooh. So, well, because there's two other countries we're going to put on this, you know, in these predictions, and that's gonna be Cuba near Venezuela, and it's going. To be North Korea. Right. If you look at those regimes, right, those are those are Cold War relics, right, those are so Soviet satellite states, right, So you know they have an entrenched tyrannies dictatorships for many, many, many many decades, right. And it's family based, right, So it's it's not pure socialists Marxists, communist Marxists. It's it's kind of this feudal socialism, you know, tyranny that you got in those two states. But Azuella much newer, right, Chave has gained power in nineteen ninety nine, and Iran you go back to seventy nine, right, twenty years further back. So it's almost as though the you know, the chances of any of these become free cast off their dictatorships is you know, in direct relationship to how long those regimes have been, you know, solidifying their power. I see that on the extreme With North Korea, for sure, I would say they got five percent or less chance. I think only if China gets pissed at them when they otherwise they're protected. China's protect North Korean. As you said, they've been around the longest or one of the longest of the four. Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna go ten percent. We can do a combined seven and a half percent on North Korea. Okay, regime bawling in twenty twenty six. How about Cuba. A little bit more, maybe fifteen. I would say it is the highest it's been since the Cuban missile crisis right now, because everything on the news is talking about how the massive US Navy, Coast Guard, Marine Corps Special Operations Air Force presence in the Caribbean is locking down Venezuela, going after their drug boats, going after the sanctioned oil tankers. But in order to put that in place, those that fleet those forces, they are absolutely surrounding Cuba right now. And the Secretary of State's family fled that tyranny. Don't don't make a mistake. Marco Rubio's pointing a finger at Venezuela. But that's not the only regime he'd like to knock off this year. So where do you put that one? At? The castros are old, not even I'm not even studied up on. You know, is there any young leadership that's going to be there when you know they're you know, Fidell died, but Raoul and you know the children, How stable is that? I don't know, I don't know it's a big secret right now. No, it's talking about it, right and when it's not being talked about, it might be in total play. Right now, I'm gonna go with thirty percent chance Cuba that regime falls this year. And if you how about if Venezuela falls, is it pretty much guaranteed Cuba does too. They are almost linked here. What do you think they're no cubas Cuba is linked to to Russia. Can Russia just show up and resupply that regime with whatever material it needs? It's a it's it's a Russian satellite state, right But can Russia really afford to support Cuba with the losses it's accepted in the last few years in Ukraine? Right? You know? Is there any benefit from Bouten's point of view of having Cuba as a satellite anymore? I mean, the they prefer it, they'll they'll support that regime up to a certain point. I don't think Russia is strong enough and I don't I don't know if China would step in and make, you know, support the Cubans to the very last. But I don't predict any kind of war with Cuba that that that regime might collapse from within. It's it's rotten to its courts, communist regime. It has to happen someday. I hope to live to see it. And I think there's thirty percent chances this year. Could be it. And I don't think that. Don't think that Trump doesn't know this. He's old enough, right, he's old enough. He watched Reagan, he was he was a kid when Kennedy was dealing with this, right, like bringing freedom to Cuba. Would he would gladly have that on his resume? And I do. There's a fifty to fifty chance that Maduro and his regime collapses in Venezuela this. Year, all right, So we got fifty to fifty Venezuela, he said, Cuba thirty, I will yeah, okay. And I think he said on North Korea, yeah, did we do? Ran did? Yeah? So I would have thought that that regime came apart at the seams and collapse. It would have been last summer. But they were in shock from just they just couldn't believe that they'd gotten bombed like that, right, And and the Israelies just went right after the senior leadership god as many of them as they could So it could be a fact that you know, it takes time, right, the consolidation or the failure to consolidate power, the motivation to stay in that Islamic regime, or or you know, the building pressure to become a you know, different kind of society. I think the chances there are higher than Cuba, but lower than Venezuela. Forty five I put it. I put it at forty five. Forty five. I think forty five is good for Iran the Venezuela. I'll go with yours as well. I think Cuba is less. I'll put it at twenty. I guess, but circumstansis on Cuba would be a twenty five percent chance that that common regime falls in twenty twenty. Six consensus of twenty five on Cuba and Venezuela. I just essentially tailed yours with Venezuela. Andy Ron And actually, yeah, how most of the Ron regime was killed? How did it not collapse? I guess they are reforming or so they has collapsed in real time right now. Is really didn't get most of them, got a big chunk of them, but not most of them. What do you think is the critical amount that they'd have to take out they weren't able to do it. I guess well, they'd always have up and rising leaders that were if there was you know, spirit, if there was motivation, if there was belief that continuing the exlomic you know, regime in the form that they've done since nineteen seventy nine, they can get endless amount of young people to rise up in the ranks if there's you know, a belief system behind it. But you know, as we saw at the end of the Soviet Union, you know, by nineteen ninety one, there was no belief there anymore. It just it just fell apart. It just stopped being that way. There was just no one that would lift a finger to save a way of life that had been so miserable for the people. And I think all four of these regimes at some point are coming to that fate. Which ones come first? And how fast? Is I guess the question. Way quicker than this time last year. This might have been the biggest acceleration of any category in the last year or two. That'd be the Trump effect. I would expect that. I don't expect this to be happening. If Kamala had one, for example, all right, turning domestically. You ready, let's do it. We got a few more and we'll wrap up the night. It's gonna be a two hour season opener, twenty twenty six opener. I like it. Good motivation, good way to start the year. All right. Domestically, all right, very specific Insurrection Act invoked, posse commentatus suspended, what's sent. The chance of that in twenty twenty six is higher than it's been in a long time. The reason for that some one of the headlines you ran tonight, Swallwell the congressman that was obviously an honeytrap with a Chinese agent, and it was never held to account. Now running for the California governor is campaigning on arresting federal officers, the first time any state attempts at It's just handing the legal basis of a you know, declaring insurrection on as over flattered to Donald Trump, and I think he, I think you take it. So I think that's greater than fifty percent. I'll say sixty percent ahead of these elections this summer, that that some local official does something that yes, that's that that we have a lower level we have a state or local official who's actually in insurrection with the United States government and its laws. I think it's at least sixty percent chance this year. All right, I'll stick with that. We can make that the consensus sixty percent chance. All it takes is one All it takes is one dummy to make it truth. And then what happens after that? Do other states try to act up and continue to be an insurrection and do they think that they can go to court and have Trump's declaration of it, you know, insurrection and the emergency powers that would that would come with that, right, that would that now we're talking about you know, United States Army active units on the streets, right, they could do that in West in the District of Columbia. It's a federal district without suspending posse comma tas. You can't do that everywhere else. But it just takes the decision of the president to suspend it. After that happens, where do we go from there? That could be you know, one of the cases this year for some serious trouble in conjunction with you know, domestic rioting. Well, you took it. The next category right out of my hands, domestic rioting. This could be focused on election related or otherwise we could split them, or we can just say civil unrest. How do you want to quantify it? Though? That's that's the key. It's not really binary, right, It's like how much rioting? Before we were agreeing it was the riots of twenty twenty six. I'm open to suggestions on that, but it can't be one night of looting in one city, right. That happens pretty much every year. Somewhere I got an idea. I'm gonna have to run it through the system, but I want to find out how much money the twenty twenty Summer of Love riots cost. I think it was like five billion or more. So let's use that as the minimum level. Let me search this how much damage monetary damage was done? And should just call the twenty twenty BLM George Floyd riots nationwide? Yeah, that that is a way to try to quantify it, But it comes to problems, right, what if they haven't finished measuring it by the time the year ends. I think if you have, you know, a non monetary it's it's a legitimate way to do it. It's just it will lag right knowing those numbers, there will only be estimates for the longest amount of time knowing when you know, you could check the box and say yes that that constituted sustained riding, you know, might be hard. But if we did something like. The amount of nights that any major city United States has police forces that are not in control of you know, not you know, ninety nine percent of their territory, right, big blocks on fire, just just crowds running them up without any control. Right, that's pretty easy to grade whether you had that. I think. I think the. Chances of that on a three night sustained basis in two or more locations in twenty twenty six is at least a ninety chance there's gonna be riding this summer like that, I think. And nothing like that happened in twenty twenty five, right, Or do you think or do you think any activities? Oh yes, oh yes it did. Oh yes, it did with with the ice facilities, yep. Right, you know that's why the in fact, the Marine Corps was brought out to uh Los Angeles to protect the federal facilities. Right, So was that that was expansive enough to qualify? I guess or I guess I got lost on the ninety nine of the territory or jurisdiction not being able under their control. They could not, I guess, but. They could not control the crowds near those facilities, those dhs ICE detention facilities in Portland and in la you know, the crowds were on you know, they're riding, right. That's when that's you know, every time there's a protest that at some point the police looking at you know, you know they're not It's not just you know, a coin flip. There's there's criteria that those police commanders use and at a certain point when it's dangerous to the public because the police cannot control the crowd, the protest gets declared to you know, an unbelawful assembly, and you know, in most cases it descends completely into a riot from there. We're going to have that. I take ninety percent chance that we have that three consecutive nights in two or more separate cities this summer at the same time among those cities and. George Floyd riots. You know, that was for seven to ten days across dozens of sites, right, right, So I'm. Doing like just a small type of thing. Yet, Yeah, I'd say we around those ice you know, dhs ICE facilities this summer we had the same thing happened last summer. Anyone who lived out west or knows about forest fires, they'll say, hey, it's five percent contained, it's zero percent contained, it's fifty percent contained. Often it's zero percent to start, so or five percent. Maybe that's why the in terms of the rioting or that crowd was zero percent contained for a while. I could easily say that ninety percent on the lower bound of what you were saying. Three days straight, more than one location, and it's kind of declared unlawful assembly, maybe arrests and violence. I think for George Floyd level, let's look at this. You know, it was pretty much every major city at something. But based on the numbers here, more than one billion and insurance claims paid. Of course, there's a much more damage that was not covered by insurance or only partially covered, et cetera. So more than a billion dollars and insurance payouts, and half of that happened in Minneapolis Saint Paul, by the way, and uh, it's a little a little side note. I would say there's I'm gonna call it a one out of three chance that we hit in terms of dollar costs insurance claims. We'll use that as the gauge thirty chance we have riots equal or worse in BLM. Yeah, I mean think about think about this way. The last time that Trump is in power, last summer that Trump is in power before an election that you a federal election, it's rioting. Now he's not on the ballot directly this summer, but you know, bringing up bringing bringing forward riots. Is it's in the playbook. For sure. And if we have I mean, there's a lot of reasons we could have these bank failure's a lot of reasons we can have these wars, a lot of reasons we could have these riots. So you know, each one might only be a few percent, but they keep stacking. You know, they're they're not all exclusive of one another. That's why we're preppers here at PBN. Guess what future Dan. That's about it. On the predictions, I think I have one more bonus, maybe two more. Was there anything you wanted to throw in though. No, I got no more bonuses. What's your bonus? No more bonuses? This could be a tough one to quantify, but let's try to do it because I think it's worth it. A major cyber attack disrupts US financial and or energy infrastructure to find major, great question. Let's let's start with energy infrastructure. I'm thinking power outages or massive refineries put down natural gas, gasoline, diesel, oil, electricity. And like a like riding. How long would the outage have to occur and how deeply and widely is the outage to qualify as major? Yeah, that's really tough to say. I maybe let's start with at least ten percent of the US population affected directly. Well effect or how like you lost power for an hour? Yep, no, no, no, Well we might have to like extend it to longer than one hour, but yeah, ten percent of the nation loses electricity or internet for seventy two hours or longer. Grid goes down for seventy two. Hours, for seventy two hours, for at least ten percent of the US population. From cyber attack. From cyber attack, yeah. Boy, it'd be tough to do without also sabotage physically, like straight up physical sabotage and conjunction with that, right. I would, I would have a higher a lot higher number. That's a much more dangerous situation, right, It's a lot easier to attack that stuff physically and knock it out right little Molotov cocktails into some you know, you know transformer lot is a better chance than cyber. So just cyber alone, I got, I gotta be stuck on just cyber. We don't have to but for this question, I mean, we could have more questions. We want to focus in on the risk of cyber in and of itself. I think the chances of a purely cyber attack that can see can succeed at that is like twenty percent, or maybe that fifteen percent. All right, I was going to put more of a ten percent. And if it's only for seventy two hours, it's only for seventy two hours. It's not going to resemble something in the movies. And I think you know, with the you know, quantum can be computing. That's that's that's coming, right, There's a lot of research going into it, which is an entirely different technology from from artificial intelligence, although the two of them together could you know be for you know, a revolution in computing that you know is pretty historic, right, We could we could be we could be looking at machines and code that can do things you know, selvil order magnitude you know, better than than today just in a decade, right, And and part of that, part of that quantum computing pushes is the cryptography that would make everything. You know virtually impossible to crack. Right, it's gonna it's gonna be good for defense, it's gonna be good for security. And you know, in the history of warfare, and this is a domain of warfare, you know, the you know, offensive weapons and defenses. It ebbs and flows right at different. Times in history different I think we're moving into a phase where cyber attacks you talked about y two k earlier, it never happened. We've never had anything like that happen. I think it's more of the realm of a plot of a of a Hollywood thriller than reality. And hopefully the system becomes more decentralized and more resilient as time goes on. I feel like it has. Internet's definitely more widely distributed than ever. Just look at starlink by itself satellite. But in terms of like the entire grid going down from a cyber attack, I think that's very low. But in terms of some sort of disruption or major you know, major supply chain hiccups that could affect everybody, lead to shortages or some costs, but not a total grid down. That might be my cop out. Now that the chances of the financial institutions using it as an excuse for having to take bank holidays, whether in reality they should have been able to defend it, or if whatever really was a problem in the first place, that's a different matter that one could be, that one could be a scapegoat when in reality there's absolutely no excuse for them to have not had everything perfectly secured. Good point. It's kind of a black box. We don't know how compromiser system was or was not or at all. We'd have to kind of rely on them and maybe some whistleblowers could come out eventually. But good point there for sure. Yeah, I know, I know. I've spoken to people that work at firms that do cybersecurity for banks, and I've heard the dollar per hour rates of some of the cybersecurity experts that banks will pay to have that kind of capability. Right, We're talking about really smart people that are paid very very well. So I do not think we have a technical limit, and I do not think any of our geopolitical foes or private hackers have an edge against what could be the proper defense right now. Right, But if the bank chose not to do it, and the bank needed a way to have an excuse to bring about a reset, Oh maybe not in twenty twenty six, but the year after, you know, bring down you know, a political dynasty and lay mega out in history is a failure. Yeah, sure, watch out for the cyber attack. Wink, wink. I'll worry about it. I won't really worry about the cyber attack at that point. I'll worry about you know what kind of shatters the banking. System is in. And I'm gonna be blaming them if they can't secure themselves from in a cybersecurity perspective. That's a good way to put it. Benefit of the doubt has been used up any good will or marginal case, I'm not giving the banksters any benefit of doubt. Tell you that, Well, there's a lot of predictions in there as a great piece of analysis on silver to educate me. Really appreciate that. And we're hitting it off on New Year's Day of twenty twenty six, every broadcasting on New Year's Day, so we're laying down the path to have a great year, Hatriot Pardcasting. Yes, sir, not a great one in the book Gosh three and thirty one. Our goal is to get three seventy five by into the year three seventy five. That would be forty four future Dan. There we go, all right, another goal, another prediction, Another goal, other prediction. Now this is the easy part. We got to actually execute. Hopefull y'all have some great plans, predictions, resolutions, whatever, but don't forget you actually gotta make them happen. So we got some irons in the fire we're going to make happen. I know PBN in general does, so it should be a great year. Good show, Ben. We'll be back amy for Thursdays now, but might be a little bit earlier in the week. And that means we'll talk to you next Thursday eight pm on seven or eight pm. We'll let you know on Broadcasting Network. Thank you to our audience. Have a great new year. Hey, I have a great new year as well. Catch you guys next week. Food storage and preservation are at the heart of self reliance. Our sponsor, pack Fresh USA features made in America products. I Shotpackfreshusa dot com for Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers for my home food storage. But they do all kinds of products. Go to PACKFRESHUSA dot com and check out their Prepper University and order their box set of Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. It's a seven mil, one hundred pack of Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, labels, and even a food storage guide. Here's my question to you, are you really gonna build that kit? Look? It's twenty twenty five, It's time to get honest. Are you gonna build out that get home kit? That bugout bag? 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