Stagflation, Oil Spikes & War: Why America Isn’t Ready | 3/20/26

Politics without the soap opera with unfiltered constitutional conservative truth.

The conservative review with Daniel Boehm.

And welcome back fellow American patriots and Minutemen standing at the ready to fight

a new for the issues that matter on this Friday, first day of spring as things grow because

God ordained it as such.

One thing that's not growing is our economy and the brains of the Republican Party and

the fake conservative movement.

We're going to try to do that here today at CR podcast, your host, Daniel Hurwitz.

We've been talking a lot about economic stuff, fiscal stuff.

I haven't talked a lot about the war in Iran, but I want to talk about it through the prism

of the economy.

And the fact that, you know, we want to be tough on Iran, but the problem we have is that

when you suck on every other issue, including the economy, it creates two problems.

It creates a logistical problem and it creates a political problem.

So the logistical problem is you need a wartime economy to support a war.

We have a sucky fragile stagflation economy with record prices, very low employment, no

real manufacturing and output.

So when you go through a war, you're subject to shocks in the system that are natural.

If the war is going well, I'll be going to have problems particularly with the Straits

of Hormuz with oil.

And I've said before I support clearing the shipping lanes permanently and getting rid

of the menace that spikes the price of oil, even if that's going to cost, you know, a

month worth of temporary spikes.

But the problem is what if you have an economy that can't handle it?

Because we're so weak and this is the problem with Trump squandering, frankly, his first

term, causing all the COVID debt and then coming back and doing nothing but sophistry.

So yeah, I mean, we're not in a position to wage war.

He's asking for $200 billion for it.

We don't have the money and it's going to bankrupt us, it's going to create more inflation.

So this is sort of the problem there.

And whoever controls logistics wins war.

It's not about tactics as much as it's about logistics.

And when you don't have an economy behind it, it's very difficult.

So I want to get into that with Tracy Schuchart, our financial doctor, as I like to call

her.

So we'll do a little bit of a round robin in the second half of the show about the state

of our economy, the state of oil prices, gold, silver, what's going on with all that,

treasuries, statflation, cat-backs, you name it.

But there's also the political aspect too that when you're so unpopular on your demeanor

on the economy, on everything else, so then it's going to make things that even should

be popular unpopular.

And I think a good example of this is immigration.

And I want to get to the last 24 hours, Trump has announced a number of things.

Number one, it's been revealed by the Wall Street Journal that he wants to move away from

mass deportation.

Number two, he came out with this AI regulatory framework that preamps the states, but

then has window dressing to attempt to deal with some of our concerns, but it doesn't.

And then he's demanding a farm bill, okay?

And you know, all the while, he's also demanding Pfizer reauthorization.

So I want to juxtapose all those issues together to show that it's the exact wrong focus,

making an economy, a culture, a society that's too ultra processed.

That's too fake, too much reliant on asset bubbles and the stock market and fake cat-backs

and the surveillance state.

And let's do more of it.

That's the solution, rather than focusing on farming and ranching.

Oh, actually, no, I support a farm bill.

Yeah, except the farm bill is nothing but the Obamacare equivalent to healthcare.

This is that to agriculture where it just distorts the market and supports corporate farms

and supports favored crops that ought not to be subsidized.

So let's start out with immigration.

Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told his inner circle some mass deportation policies

went too far.

The desire for an immigration reset is being driven in part by Trump's White House chief

of staff.

Susie Wiles, no surprise there, who believes the president's immigration team has turned

one of his marquee issues into more of a challenging issue ahead of the midterms.

As a result, the admin is attempting to change not only how it talks about the issue, but

also what actual enforcement looks like.

And they note that basically they surrendered after Minneapolis, which we saw, and that

arrests have ticked down from 1,200 a day or from 1,500 a day to 1,200 a day.

By the way, that's only 438,000 a year.

So that would wind up being less than 2 million at the end of this term.

And that's just a rest.

So removals are exponentially lower because we refuse to update the INA and end judicial

supremacism.

So it's actually much lower than that.

Mark Wayne Mullin said, my goal in six months is that we're not in the lead story every

day.

Wait a minute.

No, actually you want that to be the lead story.

What do you want the economy?

So this is what the administration does.

So Trump grabs a hold of our issue immigration, messages it like an idiot, doesn't look sincere,

then is horrible on the economy, which taints every other issue.

That's just the reality.

So it makes everything else unpopular.

Then as the nerve to say, you know what, yeah, messed deportations unpopular.

So now we're not going to do that anymore.

Dude, you're losing because of the economy.

It's not because of of best deportation, it's not the issue.

It's because of the economy.

And that you squandered your first year with stupid tariffs, stupid ballrooms and a compilation

of random demand side tax provisions in a weird bill, your one bill that you had to pass

something that no one can even articulate or run on, that's the problem.

And then your entire moonshot economically is now is now AI and generative AI and cat

Dex and and more insinification, more surveillance state, rather than producing things of substance.

But I just want to show you guys what we could have had.

When DeSantis was asked about the same thing, a bunch of Florida sheriffs said, yeah,

we shouldn't have messed deportation.

We should focus on the criminals.

Here's the difference between a person that has a heart, soul and brain and a sincerity

of purpose.

You tell me what would bleed through to the voters more.

Take a listen here to bear when they had limited resource.

They have more resources now because they got an influx of.

I stand with following Florida's policies, which has said, you can't have a situation

where Biden can bring in 10 million people.

And then we're not allowed to remove them back to their home country.

This idea that unless you're an ax murderer, you should be able to stay, that is not consistent

with our laws.

And it's also not good policy.

We have different people that are victimized by illegal aliens every day in this country.

Not all of them have criminal records at the time.

In fact, probably most of them don't.

But under some view, it's like, okay, yeah, you come illegally, and then you stay until

you commit a really violent crime.

That just doesn't work.

It's incoherent.

It's not.

And it's not what the president ran on.

And so to send a letter to him, asking him to go back on his campaign policies, I would

not advise that to be done.

So folks, that is what it means to have a serious statesman.

But of course, we couldn't have that because we had to crush a generation of thinkers all

to serve this one man that now supports the opposite of everything he said.

We're in his second term.

I want to want you guys to remember, it's not just about the last 14 months.

He has failed to enact a single immigration bill in his entire time.

We're left with nothing.

And this is where we are, but it didn't have to be that way.

Just know that's an indictment in all these people.

So then the next thing is, oh, AI, AI.

So they came out with their AI federal framework, okay?

Now I warned you guys that David Sacks was working on a rope adope.

The problem is what they're doing with the data centers and the slop.

It is so indefensible that they have to embrace it.

So it's a political tactic.

What you do is you tell your opponents, you're right, you're right.

So they put out a four-page document and you and I would not disagree with a thing

in that document.

It's a talking point.

It's boilerplate.

Oh, we're going to protect children.

We're going to make sure there's no intellectual property stolen.

We're going to make sure it's going to be great and then it's only going to help people.

And then at the end, it has a provision.

Oh, and states are preempted.

Now it says, but they're only preempted things on things that should be federal, not things

that should be local in nature.

So make sure to say all of our talking points.

Oh, they'll pay for their own electricity, which is completely impossible for that to

happen.

And what it's designed to do is create a rope adope where you defuse the opposition and

you give just enough window dressing to our concerns as a pretext that now you can

come in with the main course.

Okay, now we're going to prevent the states from doing the real things that are needed

to be done.

And it's sort of like when you have kids that all they care about is eating dessert and

they don't want to eat dinner.

So it's always, yeah, eat a half a potato here, a tiny piece of chicken there.

But they're really not planning on eating much because it's all about getting the dessert.

It's the same thing here.

And I got to say, I don't even believe in any of this stuff.

Like you might think, oh, I want to regulate it.

I mean, as we talked about yesterday, and I'm sorry, yesterday's show came out late.

At least the audio version, but I talked about yesterday, yeah, there are certain things.

You can't allow it to have porn, you know, dangerous things, deep fakes, obviously stealing

copyright issues, you know, things like that, privacy issues, surveillance, what they do

with the data.

This all needs to be dealt with.

But my main issue is not even the safety side of it.

It's the efficacy side of it.

I disagree with the entire premise, the entire premise of this is, look, the future is

data centers.

We need to put our lives on the cloud and literally create a surveillance state.

And somehow that's going to create superintelligence and cure cancer and everything's going to happen.

Oh, there's just a couple of problems, like, Trinity, safety, miners, okay, we'll deal

with that.

No, the entire premise that we need a whole of government approach for generative AI built

upon the most expensive, painful, harmful and least beneficial component of AI that we

need a whole of government approach to gas like that.

No, I disagree with that.

Oh, we need to make sure we deregulate, okay, well, why don't we deregulate for building

the power we need?

Like, for example, we need more oil refineries in this country.

Why don't we have a national agenda on that?

We need more farms and ranches.

Why don't we have a national agenda on that?

Why is it always just to service this?

I'm okay with getting rid of onerous regulations across the board.

But why is it only this that this is the key to economic growth?

It's not.

It's the low latency narrow AI that they're steering investments away from it.

And even if you bought into this a few years ago, any president with a brain would look

at where we are now, a trillion dollars into CapEx, even Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve

have admitted that it has not produced anything.

So this is not what we should be sinking our teeth into.

But to the extent that you're actually going to support the talking points in the bill,

Marsha Blackburn has a bill doing that.

But for example, Marsha Blackburn's bill repeals section 230 immunity that we all said

three minutes ago.

We all supported a big tech, you know, censorship.

That's not in the framework, by the way, of the White House.

So the White House is a press release, okay?

You can't disagree with the word it says.

But Blackburn's bill, and I can't say I support everything in it yet.

I haven't read all of it.

But it at least puts pen to paper and codifies their talking points.

So if you don't see the White House supporting that bill, then it's a fraud.

And by the way, that bill does not have the final thing, which is state preemption.

And again, this ties into the other priority, like we talked about yesterday.

Fies the reauthorization section 02 without any reforms.

Notice everything is about the surveillance state, the cloud.

This notion that we need to put our entire lives on the cloud.

Every living organism in the world needs to be surveilled and aggregated with data.

No, we need narrow robotics.

That's what we need.

This has the most harm.

And then you need it's an unsustainable model that for all of time, you're going to have

to constantly be building computing power that sucks up all this stuff just so we can

spy on people and produce fake Iran war, you know, images.

It doesn't make any sense.

Like everything is going to service the cloud.

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By the way, we talked about this with 5G.

Why do we need a 5G tower?

They want to make a 5G on every block, just like a flock hammer.

We already have it into law that if the telecoms companies can show that there is a gap in

coverage, then they could come in there and preempt the locals.

So they can't block it.

Okay.

So why do they need it if there's no coverage gap?

The answer is there's no coverage gap, but they need it for the data centers, okay?

Because if you're going to put everything on cloud and have smart cities and run everything

on the cloud, so then yeah, you need an in an ordinance amount of this stuff, even within

a few blocks, a very heavy concentration of it, and it's inconceivable that something

like that is is particularly safe.

But this is what it's all about.

Notice everything the administration wants to do is preempt locals from keeping the quality

of life of their community.

And then on section 8 housing, that's part of the housing bill.

Now it doesn't mandate preemption, but it gives guidance and incentives, which will

essentially lead to that.

Flock cameras everywhere, 5G everywhere, and preempting localities from dealing with

data centers everywhere.

Carbon capture.

They wanted to preempt localities from dealing with that to what the hell?

This is like the worst manifestation of agenda 2030, then even the Democrats proposed.

And suddenly we're all for it, just like we're from 5 to 702, because met a Tom.

And then he has the nerve to come out with like a one line tweet on his truth, the truth

social, Congress passed the farm bill.

The farm bill is not about food and farms.

It's literally consolidating this corporate monopoly behind two or three row crops, giving

a bunch of subsidies to wealthy landowners that don't even farm, you know, with none

of the bigger forms in it, just pass a farm bill, more subsidies, harm them with the tariffs

and then throw more money at it.

The entire economic vision sucks.

It takes everything wrong with our economy, too much reliance on the stock market, too much

of a fake productivity, ultra-process productivity, too much of a surveillance state.

And just not just turbo-charge it, but make it that that is the entirety of the economic

message.

Oh, and then now I want to prosecute a word I ran.

Well, you can't do that with a garbage economy.

But anyway, I want to bring in Tracy.

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So folks, as I've been saying throughout the lead up to this war, it's an old adage.

To win wars with logistics, not necessarily tactics.

Logistics are more important and to win logistics, you need a robust economy.

And you know, there's a lot of things I think we need to do foreign policy wise.

I'm not an isolationist and I think we need to be tough.

But in our own interest, not referring Islamic civil wars and stupid things like that.

So yeah, I mean, I am very much in favor of getting rid of the Iranian threat in the

streets of Hormuz as I said before, I don't even have a problem with temporary spikes in

pricing and oil to do the surgery, just like when you do surgery, you have a temporary

period of pain.

But that's provided that you don't have a stagflationary economy that is so fragile.

It can't really absorb this.

And when you have a PPI like we had this week, we're built on top of such a high plateau

of pricing, joblessness is at a control for young people.

So and then now they're asking for 200 billion bucks and it's like, something doesn't make

any sense.

I mean, we have a trillion dollar military.

We should be able to degrade their capabilities without spending, you know, 50 million

a pop to blow up a $100,000 facility.

And so, you know, a lot of us are sort of caught in this where we know Iran's a problem.

We know Hamas Hezbollah a problem.

We wanted to turn it.

Now, as I mentioned before, it's also hard to support because Trump himself is inconsistent

on foreign policy as well on that front.

He should have just let Israel do it for free last year rather than stopping them.

And then now going 200 billion dollars worth ourselves.

But how do we deal with this when we have an economy that is completely in the toilet?

It's worse than it's ever been.

We're not producing anything.

Manufacturing's been in the toilet.

All they want to produce is data centers that are good for nothing, but surveillance

date number one and chat slop number two.

It's funny.

Trump is complaining about the propaganda, these AI videos for my rent.

It's like, yeah, well, that's what data centers are for.

That's what they're good for producing, not low latency, narrow AI that could be used

for, you know, robots and weapons and things like that.

You can't suck on the economy and be a good wartime president.

So now we have obviously oil prices spiking.

We have, again, somewhat inconsistent that they want to take off sanctions on Iran, which

sort of defeats the purpose, then why go to war with them.

We also have gold and silver getting hammered at a time that you would expect them to be

doing very well is that a short term trend is that a long term trend.

So I figured we'd do a check up and bring back our favorite doctor of the economy, Tracy

Schukard, senior economist for Ninja trader live.

She also has an amazing sub stack, very high quality, renegade resources, check it out.

And of course, Chigurl, CHIG or L without the extra I on Twitter, and she's with us

in person.

Happy Friday and welcome to the blaze.

Happy Friday.

And thank you very much, Daniel.

It's been quite a week.

It's been quite a week.

Okay.

So you are the energy expert and the commodities grew.

Give us a tour of what is the state of play with oil.

I don't like reacting to every spike and drop in oil and gold in the stock market.

But give us the deeper, longer term view of what is going on with oil in general before

the war and what the oil has, and what the war has now done to its trajectory.

Well, we, before we were kind of at very depressed prices, right?

And we had all of the oil producers basically come out on their earnings call.

If you listen to their earnings call, really starting, you know, Q3, Q4 and Q1.

And all basically saying oil prices are too depressed.

We have no capex plants whatsoever.

And so that's kind of where we were depressed oil prices, no capex.

So, you know, it's looking like the Permian is starting to decline.

Wells are getting gasier.

And so production is kind of production is maintaining, but, but that's because they

include NGLs, which are natural gas liquids in that.

So which is becoming a larger and larger portion.

So our, we have a decline in pure oil and low prices and no capex, that's how we started

this war.

Now, we are in this war and obviously we have the straight of the whore moves that closed.

That is 20% of all global oil trade flows through there, not to mention everything else,

but just for global oil and product trade.

It's 20% of the global trade.

That's a huge amount.

Now we're, and of course, then we saw oil prices spike and they've been kind of volatile

and very headlight reactionary at this juncture.

Obviously, the big news when it dropped, we've spiked overnight on Sunday night when we

opened after, you know, the weekend of the first.

And then, of course, we spiked again once we bombed Iranian South Park field, gas field.

And now we're still in kind of this volatile realm right now, and probably will be for

a while.

The thing is, is that I know the president is talking to oil producers and he wants them

to produce more, but there are, you know, first of all, you can't just turn on it well.

It just doesn't work like that.

It takes, for even for shell wells, if you already have a drilled but uncompleted well,

duck well, even if you have that in your backlog, it still takes six to nine months to bring

up to par.

Also, this is a geopolitical oil price spike.

And we know what happens after that.

We have oil prices come right back down.

We saw that last June when the first 12-day Iranian war happened and oil prices spiked

high, came back, came back down until oil producers are, there are time horizons 5, 10,

15 years.

They're not going to go out and spend a bunch of money and oil prices drop back to $50.

They're just not going to do that.

And so we're kind of in this predicament, at least in the United States and elsewhere,

where oil producers really can't do that much.

And the other problem is, is now we have such a backlog of ships that we're running out

of tankers right now, because they're all just sitting idle.

And the other tankers, we have prices spiking, obviously, for that.

And we're running out.

So even if you could produce more, there's nowhere to put it.

You can't send it out.

There's like a war for tankers right now.

And so the longer this lasts, unfortunately, is going to become a larger and larger problem.

So Tracy, let me ask you this, don't all roads lead to refineries, that if you look at

our inefficiencies, on the one hand, our production is this sweet light crude.

But then our refineries are not capable of refining that and have to refine the darker crude.

So then we have to import it and rely on that.

So Republicans stand up for the last generation, Drill Baby Drill, oh, Drill More Oil, but isn't

the real log jam in our ability to be independent and have enough oil that is ready for our economy

and all of our economic needs, shouldn't that infrastructure, like if you want to talk

about CapEx, I know the White House, but I'll say the number one emergent issue is to make

sure we have more data centers for AI, that's going to do everything.

But shouldn't actually the Manhattan project sort of mindset be towards either more refineries

and also the type of capacity that could deal with the oil we have?

Yeah, well, we, honestly, we need both because diesel runs the economy and you can't get diesel

out of a barrel of WTI, it's just not possible.

So we do need heavy crude.

Luckily, we have neighbor north that we buy a lot of heavy crude for.

So we need both types of refineries.

But what we have been, the problem is in the United States is that our last refineries

is built in 1977, okay?

And we've had declining refining capacity because we've had refineries shut down.

We have two in California, shutting down now because of the hostile business environment

in California.

That's a whole another story.

But you know, that's two more refineries that are going down that's Philip 66 and a

Valero refineries.

So we have shrinking refining capacity and we, the President Trump just announced that

that we are going to build a new refineriant Texas with reliance who is an Indian company.

It will, it will refine WTI.

So that's great news.

But you know, if that doesn't happen overnight, you know, it's going to take a few years

to get that built.

So I mean, we should have really thought about refining capacity, you know, 20 years

ago, maybe.

No, but it's not the Republican party and I got to say Trump, their big focus has been

on just drilling in the abstract, but then also ethanol and biofuels.

So doesn't that also sort of degrade the refineries and defer our capacity to junk?

Well, yeah, and you know, unfortunately, and you know, we have a lot of ethanol plants,

obviously, but you know, that industry is heavily subsidized, obviously.

And you know, farmers are paid for, you know, it's basically we didn't know what to do

with all of our corn, really how that all started and why they started putting it into your

fuel.

Oh, you mean because we have these five year farm bills where we make where the most

subsidized thing is corn, because I don't know why we just decided to do that.

Unnaturally, tip the balance to corn, distort farmland in terms of what we grow.

And then we're like, oh, okay, let's use it for fuel.

And then refineries now have to buy a rinse credits.

Yes, to a total.

Like, so this is my problem.

We're not focused on the right things.

And if you're going to go to war, you have to be prepared, we should have, you know, I mean,

we should have had this and also pipelines, obviously.

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Obviously, we need a ton of pipelines and we still need a ton of pipelines because if you

want to power these data centers, we need gas pipelines.

And so, you know, I still expect, and I've been talking about this for two years now because

of the AI thing, you know, I think, you know, pipelines are good investment right now have been

because now you're talking about some of these data centers are going to tap directly into

gas pipelines instead of having to go through utility companies.

So we need a lot of pipelines also.

So the other thing also is so, so there's the oil Achilles heel here and then there's the

also the debt Achilles heel.

So the debt is almost like, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's made our economy sort of like an

end of life patient where you're in a vicious cycle where things go wrong and you have to go

in and do surgery, but you can't because the body couldn't sustain it and so weak.

We're now at a point where the the stag and the flation are so bad that it can't absorb

anything. So I'm strong international defense and you have to be careful with when you deploy

the military, but we need to be able to do it when we need to do it. But the problem is because

we're Medicaid nation, okay, that's what we are. So we're we're just endless entitlements

and welfare. It's 2.8 trillion more in debt servicing over the last 14 months since inauguration day.

The PPP came in so hot despite the economy being flat, which is which is astounding.

So when they come and ask for 200 billion more for the war, what is that going to do to the

economy? Well, I'm sure that well, I know that a lot of people aren't exactly thrilled about that.

I mean, we are we are hooked on debt. I mean, that is it. We can't get rid of it. You don't have

anybody. Neither side of the aisle is going to give up any kind of, you know, fiscal spending,

whatsoever entitlements. So, you know, another 200 billion, you know, it almost doesn't even

sound like that much at this point because we're talking trillions, which is crazy to think about.

But, you know, it's another 200 billion that's not in the budget. It's not. It's got to come from

somewhere. Where is it going to come from? You know, we're going to issue more debt for that. What

are how are we going to handle that? Were you able to see did you see the PPI numbers?

Yes, it came in there. They came in hot, very hot.

So, my question to you is how much of that do you believe is the baseline

core inflation from the debt and the money supply and how much of that is the tariffs beginning to

show its head? Right. And that's interesting. You pointed out because Powell in his pressur this week,

he sort of he was very focused on inflation over the labor market this time. If you remember

back in December, he was more concerned about the labor market. He was all about inflation when

he was speaking this week and he said, you know, I think we're still going to see a pair of tariffs

pass through in this market even though we haven't been able to see it. So, I do think maybe we are

starting to see that companies have absorbed as much as they possibly can and now they have to

pass that off to the consumer. For those who don't understand the inflation, if you could just

explain and plain English, how and why is it that you could have such a high price level in this

country given the economy is pure hell that we're really not producing much. People are in debt,

there's joblessness and so typically if the money ain't there, the money ain't there, you can't

charge it. The prices go up when you have a wealthier, more productive, humming pop economy.

How is it that you could have an economy like this with prices so high?

Well, I think there's two things. We have a K-shaped economy, right? So, the top portion of that

K that can afford everything where the bottom portion is really struggling. As you mentioned,

if you start looking at default rates, right? We have automobile default rates,

our credit card default rates, our mortgage default rates are up. So, the bottom

half of the economy is really, really struggling. The top half of the economy is, or the top 20 percent,

maybe less than that, and now is carrying the economy essentially.

So, look, I know you work in this industry, and I'm not against the stock market, it is what it is,

but to your point, US household wealth just hit a new record, 2.2 trillion,

but I'm sorry, it rose by 2.2 trillion to 184 trillion in quarter four, buttrist by stock portfolios.

So, I mean, do we now have a problem that our entire economy is built on a perception of a

perception, of evaluation of companies and industries that's completely divorced from what they

are actually producing and generating, and is that responsible for this K-shape?

Yes, well, yes, and yes, part of that, and we're also a debt nation. I mean, everybody charges

everything, generally in economics, when prices rise, people can't afford things, then you have

deflation because nobody's outspending, but we aren't seeing that because of the well factor of

the very few, and because we're a debt-ordination, I mean, even consumers are, right? Everybody's

living off of their credit cards, and so we have an issue with that, and then as far as valuations

are concerned, well, absolutely, you only need to look at the AI sector to look at that. I mean,

granted, they have pulled back this year, valuations have gone down a lot, but, you know, there

were ridiculous multiples, right? And all these companies are doing now is taking on debt to build

out these data centers. They're not even, you know, they're teetering it on, you know, profitability.

They used to have cash cushions, and now they're not. They're all issuing corporate bonds.

And I think the markets, you know, before this happened, I think at the beginning of the year,

we saw some investor concerns over kind of these high valuations and the fact that these so far

companies are borrowing more than they are doing anything else, and we have, we don't know if they

you build all these data centers, how profitable is this going to be? We don't know.

I mean, Goldman and Powell both seem to indicate it didn't really contribute anything other than

unproductive debt. It did not contribute anything. Right. It's not producing anything. I don't

understand how this is sustainable. So how come Wall Street and venture capital hasn't

barked at it? Like how do they still get capital? Um, it's amazing, right? Because I think it's

the craze right now. It's the phase every and everywhere you hear is we got to get their first.

We got to get their first. We got to get their first against China gets, you know,

I mean, to all Europe's far behind on everything. But still, you know, it's a race to we've got to

beat China to this. We've got to beat everybody else to this. And so that mindset is permeated

Wall Street. And that's all they care about. But even after watching the last few years,

like I could understand a few years ago, right when it came on the market, the first chat

slot, but look kind of cool. Okay. And now it's like, wait a minute, you really mean to tell me

that if we put every living organism 24 or seven and everything it does on the cloud and spin

up a turn up a magic eight ball oracle, um, it will spit out a cure cancer. It will spit out the

best doctor, the best lawyer that this this this generative AGI. I don't understand how they

could still believe in that when China has like 120th of the amount of data centers that we have.

And instead they're focusing more on freight train synergy, like, like low latency stuff that

you could program on a laptop. Right. It doesn't require all this. But it's actually narrow AI.

Like they're not, I mean, I don't know if you agree with me, but my thesis is you know why they're

not competing because the only thing this stuff is good for is the surveillance state and they

built it long ago before data centers. Also good point that is very true. It's just like this whole

thing is driving me nuts. So as as a long-term a commiss investor, I want to I want to get to the

crux of what's really bothering me in my heart. And I know a lot of people because everyone listening

here we're all we we long believe in free market capitalism. We believe that nothing's perfect,

but it's the best system that creates an equilibrium between job seeker and employer producer and

consumer that everyone is greedy producers are greedy companies are greedy, but consumers are

greedy too. So you reach a price point that that works for people. And what I'm watching now is an

economy where clearly the balance has been tipped away from the worker and the consumer to a

point where you have no leverage. So Southwest could treat you like garbage now like take its loyal

base and trash it and get away with it. No one tries to take pride in productivity.

Am I correct in assuming that it gets back to what you said with with AI CapEx

that the incentive structure to reward CEOs is all based on

juicing up the stock market price and not actually producing anything. It is that why consumers

and job seekers are at such a disadvantage. Well absolutely because everybody's focused on

the stock market and you know President Trump is very focused on the stock market too.

And Bondy even was talking about the stock market and so that is you know seems to be everybody

focused on this is how well we're doing as a country because our stock market is up and then

look at everything in the economy like you know underneath the sheets so to speak it's not

looking that pretty right even if we you know are at almost all time highs in the stock market

and and realize that those are only a handful of companies as well right they were not talking

about being broad based like the Russell 2000 we're talking about the S&P 500 in the NASDAQ

and just a handful of companies in in those index markets as well I mean you're looking at you know

six stocks maybe count 30% waiting 35% waiting in the S&P 500 that's crazy.

Well never forget you know which company Nvidia took over that it replaced in the index

right was it Ed Moran? Ed Moran. Yes but like Jensen's the only one who actually

has made a profit on that he actually has gotten wealthy from this Jensen has done very well

from this whole thing but the economy at large it's it's garbage and like one of the things that

awesome curious about your thoughts as an investor you know do we really have a free market when you

have the force of government so federal state and local pensions all funneled through the stock

market but then like you said what's the stock market it's dominated by you know a handful of

companies mainly in the tech sector so doesn't that again give them an unnatural flow of capital

that they didn't really have to earn through providing a great product at a nice price point.

Well of course and you know and we are now the government is now taking stock income in companies

which is even more bizarre right so now you have a government picking and choosing which companies

they want to survive. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile I don't know if you knew this but

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yeah but don't forget that the executive branch is exempt from the stock act on insider trader

it's only congress that is the problem not the people at treasury and commerce that literally

know an hour before they're about to create a partnership and I mean like this is what I just

don't understand I mean three minutes ago in 2024 I know that's a long time for people but

I'm only in my 40s so I don't have you know I don't have dementia yet and we all decry this K-shaped

is everything unnaturally as towards what I call an ultra processed economy that it's not free

market it's some of the things that Bernie Sanders also observes but we would argue his government

interventions caused a lot of this so you know that leaves us to looking for other things and we

were all into gold as a hedge against this so I want to maybe close with this if you can take your

expertise in commodities because I'm very perturbed that it seemed like gold was doing very well

as the stock market was doing very well and then now with Iran you see the treasuries going up

you see the oil crisis you see the general maelays around a war this normally would be like

the equivalent of a mosquito breeding ground for the price of gold yet gold is taking a

bigger hit than the stock market and the silver as well could you address both of them why it appears

to be the inverse of its typical pattern yeah well I mean conventional wisdom says we're you know wars

are supposed to be bullish for precious metals right and but the Iran conflict is kind of doing

something the textbooks don't cover and it's pricing in inflation and pricing out rate cuts

simultaneously and the rate channel side of gold is winning in all this because it is tied to

real yield so that portion of gold is currently winning also you have some uncertainty in the stock

market right now and so what are you going to sell first what's been working right particularly

if you're getting caught maybe upside down or margin called on some of your other positions

because even though the stock market has been volatile but you know kind of just sideways this year

even though a little bit volatile underneath this surface this individual stocks this dispersion

is very volatile so you have individual stocks that are very volatile this year and so if you're not

just you know in holding an index right that um or you know an ETF this by whatever your

name does visual stockholder those stocks have been moving wildly and so you might have to get rid

of something that you you know that has been working and it's kind of that we you know kind of

you know I keep saying kind of like the tips market is back right so this year the 10 year yield

has climbed from I think 172% it's like February 27th right before uh a rap or a rap Iran

more started um and now it's at about 1.86% so that direction is kind of killing sentiments on oil

I mean on gold it's you know sniffing out that inflation we've got rate cuts almost priced out

entirely this year but doesn't hold usually do good the more inflation signals we have well

not necessarily the gold does well when rate cuts are coming and we've priced out almost you know

all of them for this year and there's and we're almost about to price out the December one

and gold does not like that and so it's back to kind of originally what

it started from from what it started from and then you know with silver it carries the same rate

sensitivity plus industrial demand gets crushed under stagnationary conditions and so silver's

sniffing that out too because longer this war lasts the higher energy prices remain uh for

longer that is going to be a real drag on the economy so the the question with with silver is

the funding forgetting about the war but looking fundamentally beyond the war aren't the

fundamentals still there can supply no new discovery endless data center cap ex you know I mean

shouldn't the laws of supply and demand kick in with that they could but I think this is just a

reactionary to the market I mean I you know we have copper pulling back too right so I think

who said you know if we have elevated oil prices for a long time is that going to be a drag

globally on the global economy um but I the fundamentals for all of these products are still

there 100 percent it's just being massed right now and if you know if you really like copper and

silver this is not a bad you know and you missed it it's not you know bad time to get your maybe

start getting your feet wet a little bit yeah because I think a lot of people that are trying to

doom it and then every time it goes down for a day like like a half a percent relative to like

200 percent that it went up over the last you know two years they go crazy but if you look before

the war gold was holding the 5,000 marker and silver was also holding they just have this benchmark

because for a couple days when I when I was in January February it just went nuts to you know

past as a benchmark that it wasn't ready for 5,500 gold and silver would well over 100 but then

it was generally holding where it should so I would imagine the war is more of an aberration

than a paradigm shift with that where do you see us in about a year from now what big

shoe do you think is going to drop what big economic or financial um shoe do you think is going

is going to fall from from all this declaration well uh you know I I think actually currently and

I think it's going to get worse is private credit markets we're already seeing private credit

crumble we've had you know uh few companies richest recently that uh have had problems

and I am worried even though everybody says it's under control I've heard that before um I'm

worried that there's going to be kind of a contagion um going on in that so I am worried about

a credit event a credit event and I guess that's just a function of the people at some point people

are tapped out and the cards are tapped out they just don't have the money to support the current

prices and then this is before the big employment crisis really crystallizes when you have this many

young people that can find the job at a college this many people of all ages that once they're

laid off the duration of unemployment appears to be growing so that's got to take its toll on credit

wouldn't that also at some point start putting pressure on housing of closures of course it'll

put pressure on everything is that gross and then you have people also talking about AI right and

how that's going to displace so many jobs now whether that comes to fruition or not I've heard

that before you know I we heard that the internet was going to do that and it didn't just created

other jobs which I'm a believer in that but if you believe the hype that you know yeah I kind of

put us all out of work then that you should definitely be worried about that as well no and it's

actually it's not that AI is doing the jobs because it actually is not in my view it's more

in pursuit of the cat-backs their the companies are bankrupt and now they're letting

them go it's nothing to do it's not in the way that they predicted right exactly I saw that

and that is now letting a bunch of people go because it's spending too much money

of these companies it's sort of like they're basically you know convincing us if I go up to you

and I say get rid of all your wealth all your weapons because we're going to create something

that's so much so you first get rid of everything under the hope of doing this and it's

it's bad it is it is it is bad I don't I don't even know what we do with this um but I I agree I

still think the fundamentals of of gold and and silver certain toppers is going to be especially

after this reset is pretty low um when do you think the housing market's going to crack it's got

a crack well I think we are you know I think in some cities you're starting to see that a little bit

right it's just this country is so big it really depends on where you're living right so you know

I think it might take a while and it will probably be very uneven across the country uh because of

the k-shaped economy also I mean I hate to keep going back to that but it is what it is um and so

you'll probably have you know wealthy cities doing very well um unless you vote in a communist like

New York did but you know um so you're going to have cities that that are going to do really well

and a lot of this country won't be doing well because I just don't understand we were going crazy

with 550,000 more sellers than buyers now it's up to 600,000 so don't tell me that's a supply issue

at least in the national aggregate it's more there's a stalemate now with with the rates that

you know the sellers want to hold on to that nostalgia of the z estimate and buyers can't afford it

but at some point that's got to move to the buyers because the money ain't there they got to sell it

600,000 more sellers I just don't understand how long people who need to sell could hold on

yeah I mean we just will have to find out and we have mortgage rates going back up again just as

they were coming back down right we're at 6.22% now we were just below 6% well that's Powell's fault

because he could just set it at zero and then mortgages will be free you know and I mean like look

I just we have no leadership and I think Tracy like it's incumbent upon us to give a vision of what

free market capitalism actually does and doesn't look like and how it benefits people because if we

don't do that you know people like Mamdani and Bernie Sanders will tap into this and rightfully

diagnose certain symptoms without who where they came from without regard to where they came from

but they will diagnose the symptoms and I mean this is not working for people and I just look at the

malgamation of priorities from this administration and it's like I just I feel like a

different view than what we were told going into into this we just can't have nice things where

could people find your how often are you on the air where could people find that so I'm on the air

I have a macro show Monday through Thursday at 8 to 8 30 in the morning and then I have I'm on

Twitter obviously at shy girl and then renegade resources dot pro is my sub stack anything energy

commodity related to which is the big discussion now with the war you're going to want to tune into

that Tracy thanks so much and definitely keep us updated thank you all righty folks so again

that was Tracy shoe card um you know always smart analysis there check out our sub stack really really

quality stuff make sure you like and subscribe on YouTube I I don't know what's going on with iTunes

why it doesn't load it didn't load yesterday's show until today so again if you ever don't see it

and I don't announce ahead of time that I'm going to be absent I'm likely not absent so then check

YouTube um that was kind of ridiculous and I do apologize for that let me know your comments

questions concerns Daniel Harwoods at startmail.com until next week have a godly terrific family

oriented weekend see you back here same time same place Monday