RLL Ep.32: Has the Crack-up Boom Finally Arrived?

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Everybody Steve Matthews here. Thanks for joining me today for episode 32 of radio looks licit
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The title of today's episode is has the crack -up boom finally arrived
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All right. So now you may be asking So what's a crack -up boom? That's kind of a weird sounding term Well, we're gonna talk about that here in just a few minutes but before I get into all of that,
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I wanted to introduce what I What I was gonna say here today with a little bit of a story
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Have you ever had a case where maybe you've done something for a while, you know Whether maybe it's something on your job or maybe something around the house or a hobby or something like this
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Something that you've done repeatedly maybe for many years and all of a sudden it dawns on you You have this epiphany that wow,
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I've been doing this wrong all this time well, I had something like that happen to me here recently and It had to do with the way.
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I have my my podcast set up a number of years ago when I first started doing podcasting About a mic boom in a microphone now when they say a mic boom you might be you might be familiar with what
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I'm talking About maybe you've seen these other people use them Maybe if if you're in a band or something like that you use one or maybe you podcast or maybe you've seen people
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On a video or something like this using a mic boom but it's it's a it's like a retractable arm and you can put the microphone on the end of it and and then you can move the arm around and and Position a microphone where where it's comfortable for you to sit and to talk or to stand and to talk and so I bought this a few years ago when
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I started getting into podcasting and got it all set up and it's It's a fairly nice microphone in a mic boom and all that and I like for the most part
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I liked it but there was a Something about that I didn't like and that is it was the way that the the cord kind of hung out the back of the microphone
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You know, the the cord would just kind of dangle there and get in the way of stuff you know, I sit in front of my computer with this, you know, the cord would get on the the computer keyboard or it get hooked on things and it was just it was always kind of annoying always seem like it was kind of In the way and I thought well this just isn't isn't a great setup.
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Well, I was not too long ago I was looking at my my microphone and in the the the mic boom
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And I noticed something I hadn't noticed before and that is it appeared that on the back of the mic arm
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There were these covers and I so I pulled the cover off It's kind of like a plastic cover and lo and behold when
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I look underneath there There's this channel and that channel looks just about the perfect size for a mic cable
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Well, huh? that's interesting and It dawned on me that what that that's exactly what it was
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You know, it was a place where you could instead of having the mic cable just dangle out the back of the microphone you could actually run the mic cord the mic cable up the the top part of the of the mic boom and It would it would get the cord out of the way and you could you know
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You put the cord in there and then you'd snap the plastic cover down on it It would hold the the mic cord in place and I thought well, this is great
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And then I realized myself, you know, how have I had this thing for three years and I didn't know this Take me so long to figure that out and I felt a little bit silly felt kind of dumb a little bit sheepish
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I thought that's that's kind of embarrassing to you know Have something like this for so long and not realize it and I even went
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I thought well Am I crazy about this? I even when I found a how -to video How to set up a mic boom and sure enough there was somebody on there with a mic boom very similar to the one that I Had and that's exactly what this person was doing
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The way she was setting it up She was running the the cable at the top of the the mic boom and snapping to cover down on and I thought well
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On one hand I was I was glad that that I'd learned something in it that I had finally figured it out
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And the other hand I was like I say, I thought a little bit silly that it took me so long to do it Well, I I bring up that story to kind of lead into what
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I was gonna talk about here today and a few days ago So I had a friend of mine that hadn't heard from in a while I get this text from him and he says hey
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Steve you want to come up and watch the presidential debate on Thursday this this was the the second of the two presidential debates that was held on October 22nd between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
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So I said, okay. Sure. Why don't we do that? Yeah, there's a friend I hadn't seen for a while and he and I have very similar views on politics and economics
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So it's always good to see him and talk to him and I always enjoy having a chance to just sit and Just talk about different things and so well, that'd be a be a kind of fun interesting evening
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So I accepted and I went up and I watched the debates last night and I remember on on my way home.
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I Was just thinking to myself, you know, I thought well it was interesting but It just seems to me something was missing from all of this and the more
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I thought about it Eventually, I got to the point where we're finally dawned on me that at least one of the big pieces of the puzzle that was missing was the fact that nobody not the moderator and Certainly, neither of the two candidates ever talked about the
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Federal Reserve So what's the Federal Reserve you might ask well the Federal Reserve is in short, it's the
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Central Bank of the United States and It's the organization that prints the money that creates the money that's where our dollars come from like if you take a dollar bill out of your wallet and you look at it across the top it says
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Federal Reserve note so the the Federal Reserve is in charge of overseeing the
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Supply of money that the supply of dollars dollar bills in the
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United States It's the Central Bank of the United States That's what central banks do central banks issue currencies
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They issue the national currency now every country in the world with the exception of just a tiny handful has a central bank
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Canada has a central bank Great Britain has a central bank, you know, the Bank of England you've got the
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European Union has a central bank. It's just called the European Central Bank You have the
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Japan as a central bank, it's the the Bank of Japan the BOJ sometimes it's called
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China has a central bank It's the People's Bank of China Australia has a central bank. Yeah, any any country in the world major countries minor countries?
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It doesn't matter. They all have central banks. I can say with a very few exceptions I think you can count on one hand the number of countries that don't have central banks.
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I mean, it's just overwhelming It's a it's a worldwide system Well, anyway, the the central bank it's kind of this 500 pound gorilla in the room the activities of the
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Fed and the Fed is just a shorthand way of talking about the Federal Reserve The Fed the activities of the
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Fed affect the lives of every single person not just in the United States but really in the entire world because The US dollar is the world's reserve currency
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So the activities of the Fed have profound implications for everybody not in not just Americans only but really for everybody
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In the entire world and yet, you know, here's this profoundly important institution and yet neither political candidate
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Seems to want to talk about it. Not Donald Trump and not Joe Biden now
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I remember back in 2016 Donald Trump did talk a little bit about the Federal Reserve And he was chastised by Hillary Clinton.
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You might recall he ran against Hillary Clinton back in 2016 and Donald Trump was going around saying some very accurate things about the
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Federal Reserve and I remember Hillary Clinton came out at one point She said you don't talk about the Federal Reserve.
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Yeah, she was very very kind of snippy about it, too Yeah, and and so you kind of get this sense that the
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Federal Reserve It's this sort of this open secret and it's something that the establishment and whether you're talking about establishment
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Republicans Or whether you're talking about establishment Democrats neither establishment
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And it's really just one establishment But the establishment does not want people talking about or thinking about the
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Fed and as things go untalked about it goes unthought about so they don't want that front and center and So you've got this this tremendous
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You know, there's all this this ink and this time that's been spilt on the on the presidential campaign yet Nobody talks about the
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Fed as far as I am aware I don't think the Fed has ever been mentioned either in either either the two debates that took place or in the competing town halls that they that both candidates had last week that subject just never comes up people don't talk about it and And that's intentional, you know, that's not it's like oops.
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Oh, we didn't we didn't mean to to leave that off. No, that's intentional is the the establishment
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In the establishment really controls, you know, both both parties both Republicans and Democrats.
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They don't want people thinking about this They don't want people talking about it Because well, they have an interest in keeping things secret and of course that interest is
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Because if the Federal Reserve isn't talked about and discussed the Federal Reserve can go about its activities with without anybody questioning it and the reason the establishment likes the
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Federal Reserve to operate in secrecy is because the Federal Reserve Enriches the establishment at the expense of ordinary
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Americans That's been the whole purpose of the Fed since it was founded in 1913
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And I'm not going to get into in today's podcast. I'm not going to get into the technicals on that I hope to have an opportunity to talk about that at some point in the future but just I think just for now just throw out this idea that the purpose of the
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Fed is Really to enrich the already wealthy That's the purpose of the
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Fed and you can see that really here in in 2020 in in spades for example
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Of course, you know, we've had all of the economic difficulties over the last few months because of the government's overreaction to kovat now
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Notice here that I said, you know that the economic problems we have they're not the result of kovat they're the result of the government's overreaction to kovat and shutting everybody down and locking everybody down and closing businesses throwing people out of work and Millions and millions and millions of ordinary
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Americans have either lost their jobs Temporarily sometimes permanently had their hours cut back.
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They've had businesses that they built for years shut down by various state governors
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And it's put people in a very very difficult position. This created a lot of hardship the reaction or the overreaction of so many of these governors but at the same time there was an article that I saw last week that said that America's billionaires that their net worth had increased by 25 % in just about the last six months or so that is the period corresponding to all of the the kovat shutdowns and What's going on there is is the fact that you've had you might remember back in the spring
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In fact, they've been a couple of stimulus packages that were passed You know to help prop up the stock market and prop up these various industries and what -have -you
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Well, all of that money you're a pretty good chunk of it the vast majority of it has has flowed to Or people who are already extraordinarily wealthy
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So the very very very rich and I'm not talking about even just the top 1 % I'm talking about here Maybe like the the top point 1 % of of 1 % of the people have profited enormously whereas the vast majority of ordinary
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Americans Have have suffered because of the the reaction of the government so you've got a very tiny minority of people who have
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Benefited by the actions of the government and the in the money printing of the Fed and everybody else has been hurt by this and of Course the establishment of both parties don't want people thinking about this.
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I don't want people thinking about that so It's it's a it's a cover -up and it's not an accident
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You know, the the political establishment does not want people talking about or thinking about these things. Well, anyway
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So that was one kind of getting back to my my point there, you know, it dawned on me how the how the fact that that the
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Fed has been completely absent from anything any of the the discussion of our political leaders during the presidential campaign
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Well, I was I was kind of heartened today to see Ron Paul's Liberty Report Ron Paul.
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You might be aware He's the the former congressman from Texas and he's been retired for a number of years now and for several years
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He has had a five -day a week YouTube Video that he produces it's called the
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Ron Paul Liberty Report Typically about 20 to 30 minutes in length every day and and he and the co -hosts will talk about different subjects
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And every Friday they always talk about the Federal Reserve So today it was interesting the the title of his video was called fast approaching a crack -up boom of the
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Feds making So again getting back to that question. Well, what on earth is a crack -up boom?
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well, I'll give you just a quick definition of it there was a an economist a very well -known economist of the
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Austrian school by the name of Ludwig von Mises who coined that term crack -up boom and the crack -up boom
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What what what it was? It's it was a an artificially created boom
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That was created by central banks printing lots and lots of money that ultimately ended up with people losing faith in the currency and the collapse of that currency
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So it was it's sort of an artificial economic boom that ends up with the the currency becoming worthless and called it a crack -up boom
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And there have been some famous examples of that in the past hundred years or so if you've studied economics much at all you might have heard of the the great inflation in Weimar Germany in the early 1920s and that was where the the the
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German currency Went to went to zero Because of all the money printing by the the central bank in Germany and It's it's a very famous case
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It's been studied and talked about a lot, but it's not the only example either There was a an example of this in the
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African nation of Zimbabwe Several years ago. And in fact, I a number of years ago.
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I actually bought a Zimbabwe Bank note news. It's an actual real bank note is issued by the
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Bank of Zimbabwe. It's a hundred trillion dollar note They had devalued the currency so much that they were printing note
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They were printing bank notes in the in the value of a hundred trillion dollars If you can imagine that and I think
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I bought it on Amazon for the princely sum of about a dollar 74 or something like that and it's kind of nice it it came
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It wasn't just a bare bank note, but it also came in sort of like a laminate cover So it protects and it doesn't get all folded up in that or ruined or damaged
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I mean you wouldn't want to damage something. There's a hundred trillion dollar note, right? I mean you got to take care of it You know, of course you couldn't buy a piece of chewing gum with it, but it's very it's very impressive when you look at it
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I mean, you know golly hundred trillion dollars Wow Well, you know the reason that their currency that it took a hundred trillion dollars to actually buy something
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When it was printed and it wasn't that long ago that it was printed it was printed I think back in 2008 So it's fairly recent but the reason that the
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Zimbabwe dollar was was became worth so less is because The central bankers and probably printed so much of it and and this is what happens when central banks run wild they print so much money that the
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The currency that they issue ultimately becomes worthless, you know, and that's that's what that's the end of of what?
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Ludwig van Mises called a crack -up boom You know the the central bank just runs wild print so much money that the people lose confidence in the currency and it becomes worthless and So Ron Paul and in Daniel and excuse me his co -host
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Chris Rossini today We're talking about this this crack -up boom and they made the very point that I made
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I always feel good You know if I can anticipate something at Ron Paul's gonna talk about it. Well, you know, I mean Ron Paul, you know
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He's he's at the very top. I mean Ron Paul is a real hero to just about anybody who who loves
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Liberty and Constitutional government and freedom these sorts of things Ron Paul in my opinion is the greatest
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American statesman statesman of my lifetime certainly And I was I was heartened today to see that that he and his co -host
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Chris Rossini We're talking about the very thing that I was thinking about, you know They brought up the point in this video from today and this is
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October 24th, or excuse me, October 23rd They brought up the point that hey, you know These presidential candidates neither one of them talked about the
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Federal Reserve even though it's this really big deal So I'm gonna play for you a clip here It's about a three minute clip and you're here
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Ron Paul and Chris Rossini talk some and then we're going to come back it when This is over and we're going to talk some about that. So so here's here's
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Ron Paul and Chris Rossini Germany, but Everybody knows there's something fishy going on right now with our monetary system
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Because the Republicans and the Democrats are getting along pretty well when it comes to spending money
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They're not there. They disagree a little bit on how fast and how much and where it's going to go but the interest in restraining
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Spending is not even entertained and obviously if anybody watched the debates last night
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I don't think there was any interest in in that subject You didn't have you didn't have the interviewer the host asking question.
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What are you going to do about the deficit? Do you think the deficit matters? How about debt? What is happening?
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Now that's that's that's old -fashioned now because The world and our people the
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Congress our universities Everybody is conditioned to actually believing that we can contain it and they have reason to take that position
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Because they've been doing fairly well, you know getting away with it
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But there's more and more people joining us Chris and in being concerned about it because common sense tells us this can't last it's something like a crack -up boom is
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Destined to happen. We want to talk about that and a little bit about the characteristics of that and I know you have studied this
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Subject so let me hear from you. That's right. Dr. Paul It was
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Ludwig von Mises who coined the term crack -up boom and he pointed out that inflation
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Counterfeiting of money it contains the seeds of its own demise Meaning once you go down that road the end of the road is already baked in if you don't stop and He called it a crack -up.
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Boom, and I'd like to quote him. He wrote Finally the masses wake up They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly
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Hmm and he says a breakdown occurs when they wake up the crack -up boom appears and Everybody is anxious to swap his money against real goods no matter whether he needs them or not
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No matter how much money he has to pay for them. So this is the road that we're on. Dr.
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Paul, and it doesn't end Well, yeah for the theory to work that there won't be a So there you have it.
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There's a little discussion of of the the crack -up boom and Chris Rossini was nice enough
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He read from a he's actually quoting Ludwig von Mises he would that quote that that he read it's out of Ludwig von
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Mises book It's called called human action Von Mises was was quite a prolific author.
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He wrote wrote a lot. He was an economist as I had mentioned and His his most famous work,
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I guess if you want to sound like a scholar you would call it his magnum opus Or if you just want to put it in plain
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English, you'd say his his greatest work was a is a book
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It's called human action and it's where he really lays out in a lot of detail his his ideas about economics
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Ludwig von Mises was a big believer in in capitalism in in private property in Laissez -faire economics and as Christians, of course, we would have a lot that we would agree with him on now
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Von Mises was not a Christian but very a great deal of what he had to say was
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Is really consonant with with what the Bible teaches and I I think he's certainly somebody that Who is
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Christians, you know, we can read his work and profit a lot from it Even if he himself was not a believer.
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So anyway, yeah, Chris Rossini was talking there about about the crack -up boom
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You know and what that is is Again, it's a it's a case where a central bank print so much money it kind of creates an artificial economic boom but that economic boom ultimately ends up in a collapse of the currency because people realize they say
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Oh, wait a minute the central bank. Not only have they been inflating and devaluing the value of our currency but they're going to continue to do it and then people become very
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Panicked and they want to get rid of their their dollars They want to get rid of the money issued by the central bank and they're they're changing in for anything anything get their hands on They're going to buy stuff
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They don't need just to get rid of the money and then they can can have some some actual, you know, quote real stuff
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Yeah, and maybe they can sell it or barter it but at least they're getting rid of the the rapidly depreciating currency
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And and of course, you know Ron Paul made the point there in that segment to that, you know during the debate
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There were no questions about budget deficits There was no there were no questions about debt because you know, that's just considered
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That's kind of silly old -fashioned stuff and we don't need to worry about that anymore because we have a central bank
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That's gonna keep you know, it's got everything under control and it's gonna cover us Well, you know if that were the case
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I mean if all that you needed to do to have a prosperous economy is print money
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Well, none of us would ever have to work, you know, there's that old saying there's no such thing as a free lunch
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Well, you know, the problem is the central bankers and the politicians and really people in academics and people in the media
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They're constantly trying to convince people that yes There really is such a thing as a free lunch and you don't have to do anything and you can just you know
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Stay home and get locked down and you don't need to work and the government will just print money and and everything will be great
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Well, yeah, everything isn't going to be great. There are going to be really serious consequences of that now
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You know, we talked about a crack -up boom as being a result where the currency goes to zero Now I think a lot of people might have a hard time believing, you know, can the dollar really go to zero?
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Well, yes, it can in fact The What are called fiat currencies and in the dollar is a fiat currency
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The track record of fiat currencies is 100 % They all ultimately end up going to zero
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So we can expect the US dollar also to go to zero now. I don't know when that's going to happen Now is it going to happen tomorrow?
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Probably not but is it going to happen maybe sometime in the next few years? Well, I think there's a good chance that that could happen
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I think there's a very good chance that that we're going to be around when when that takes place and it's going to shock people
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It really it's going to shock and it's going to stun people and yet we have a political establishment
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You know, we've had an entire political campaign where nobody's talked about deficits Nobody's talked about debts and nobody's talked about all the money printing by the
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Federal Reserve So, you know, this is something that's going to have very severe consequences there already is but all that money printing is going to continue to have consequences and And one of the reasons is of course the
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Federal Reserve is not going to stop printing they've already printed a an enormous amount of money here in 2020 and It's going to probably be even a larger quantity next year and it's not going to matter who's president
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You know whether Donald Trump is president or whether Joe Biden is president The Federal Reserve is going to print a huge amount of money
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And this is something that we have to be ready for as as Christians You know We have to be ready for the fact that our dollars are going to be worth less
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Worth a good deal less and probably not in the too far distant future So this is something we have to keep in mind as we make plans going forward well, anyway,
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I could go on and on about that sort of thing I'm gonna put a link to that video with Ron Paul from Talking about the crack of who
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I'm gonna put a link of that in the description of the video I think it's well worth your time. If you've never seen Ron Paul, I'd really encourage you to follow his work
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I think he does some of the very finest work on economics and politics that that's out there and He's a hero of mine.
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And as I said, I think he's a hero for a lot of people in Anybody who loves
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Liberty I think is going to be an admirer of Ron Paul Well, that's about all that I had for today just a couple things as quick to wrap up before I go
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I'm gonna post this podcast. I'm gonna post it both on The thorn crown ministry website.
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I'm also gonna put it out there on my blog I wanted to let you know too I added something a feature to my blog fairly recently where if you you want to if you
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If you get something out of this podcast if you enjoy the work that I do on on the looks lucid blog you've got an opportunity there to To make a contribution to support that work.
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You can make a one -time contribution or recurring contribution In any amount would be greatly appreciated.
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I always very much appreciate anybody who who does donate and it does is
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I mean it helps me to keep free, you know, the the things the the writing the podcasting that type of thing that I do so so again if you are so moved and you'd like to tip me through the through the the blog
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I'd appreciate that. So that's all here for today I hope to to follow up with you again here sometime in a not -too -distant future with another podcast