Embark on an intriguing exploration of the financial world's shadowy corners with Stuart Englert, the formidable mind behind "Rigged," as our guide. Stuart chronicles his metamorphosis from a silver market enthusiast to a fearless journalist unearthing the depths of market manipulation. Together, we traverse pivotal historical milestones such as the Bretton Woods Agreement and the strategic removal of silver from U.S. coinage, unveiling the covert ties among bullion banks and central banks that have shaped the modern financial landscape.
Our conversation sails into the tumultuous seas of fiat currency and the emerging storm of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). As the dollar's supremacy is tested by international contenders, we dissect the geopolitical currents that could redefine the essence of money itself. Stuart's insights illuminate the dark corners of CBDCs—the risks they pose to personal freedom and the potential for a surveillance state. We also entertain the tantalizing notion of whether gold and silver can reclaim their thrones in a world where paper currency's value ebbs away.
The episode culminates with a keen examination of gold and silver's roles in an ever-evolving monetary system. We scrutinize the historical tug-of-war over these precious metals, from the Hunt brothers' infamous silver play to the grassroots movements calling for their recognition as legal tender. We ponder the possibility of a monumental economic reset, where silver's technological and military applications may eclipse its monetary worth. Before parting, I reflect on the indispensable truths laid bare in "Rigged" and express my eagerness for listeners to join us on this revelatory journey through the world of finance, where the predatory nature of bulls and bears makes the wisdom of the wolf ever more valuable.
Embark on an intriguing exploration of the financial world's shadowy corners with Stuart Englert, the formidable mind behind "Rigged," as our guide. Stuart chronicles his metamorphosis from a silver market enthusiast to a fearless journalist unearthing the depths of market manipulation. Together, we traverse pivotal historical milestones such as the Bretton Woods Agreement and the strategic removal of silver from U.S. coinage, unveiling the covert ties among bullion banks and central banks that have shaped the modern financial landscape.
Our conversation sails into the tumultuous seas of fiat currency and the emerging storm of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). As the dollar's supremacy is tested by international contenders, we dissect the geopolitical currents that could redefine the essence of money itself. Stuart's insights illuminate the dark corners of CBDCs—the risks they pose to personal freedom and the potential for a surveillance state. We also entertain the tantalizing notion of whether gold and silver can reclaim their thrones in a world where paper currency's value ebbs away.
The episode culminates with a keen examination of gold and silver's roles in an ever-evolving monetary system. We scrutinize the historical tug-of-war over these precious metals, from the Hunt brothers' infamous silver play to the grassroots movements calling for their recognition as legal tender. We ponder the possibility of a monumental economic reset, where silver's technological and military applications may eclipse its monetary worth. Before parting, I reflect on the indispensable truths laid bare in "Rigged" and express my eagerness for listeners to join us on this revelatory journey through the world of finance, where the predatory nature of bulls and bears makes the wisdom of the wolf ever more valuable.
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Wise Wolf Gold and Crypto Show. I'm Tony Arterburn and I'm recording from deep within the heart of Texas here at the Denison office, and I have a very special guest, a gentleman I've wanted to have on this program since I read his book back in 2020. And I just never was able to put the interview together. That's my fault for not getting in touch sooner, but I kept saying I'm going to have this. This is the Rosetta Stone for those of us that are gold bugs, that look at collusion and the suppression of the gold price. It's just an amazing case. My guest is Stuart Anglert and he's got a book called Rigged. Now, this is Rigged, exposing the largest financial fraud in history. And, stuart, welcome to the Wise Wolf Gold and Crypto Show, sir Well thank you very much, tony.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the invitation and an opportunity to speak to you and your audience about how the prices of metal markets are rigged. Manipulated prices are suppressed.
Speaker 1:No doubt. And this book I mean you pulled no punches. It's a muscular book, right? There's not a lot of, there's no fat on this book. It's not a tome, it's just. It is a well-made case, you know, showing the At least the blueprint for how this is done. And you know you had asked Melissa for some questions just kind of go over what the topics might look like and what direction we would take to show. But I want to first start with your history, what got you to look at this, and then we can go into a little bit of what I what questions I have. As far as timeline, sure absolutely Shoot away.
Speaker 2:What would you like to know?
Speaker 1:Just your history. When did you first come upon this and what's been your journey?
Speaker 2:Sure, well, I guess I'm a silver bug from way back. My mother was a coin collector an amateur coin collector and I guess when I was under 10 years old I bought her a Morgan Silver dollar for a birthday or Christmas present or something, and so she knew the value of silver. She used to save all the 64 quarters dimes, nickels, half dollars, whatever. Actually they weren't nickels, but anyway, you get the point and I kind of learned it from that. I was a journalist for 30 years. I worked on three daily newspapers and a couple national magazines, and then I think it was.
Speaker 2:I've always been concerned about the national debt and how this could continue to accumulate, and then I started researching money. As you can see behind me, I'm quite a reader. I started researching money and debt and stumbled onto GATA. Are you familiar with GATA, the Gold Antitrust Action Committee? Probably about 15 years ago I started reading their website. I was investing in the Silver ETF at the time. That was around 2006 when it launched, and then I found out it looked like it was a scam to suppress the price and so I dumped that.
Speaker 2:But as I read and I researched, I said you know, this story needs to be told. So I reached out to Chris Powell, who's the secretary-treasurer of GATA, and asked him if he liked to write a book about it, because I was publishing books at the time, you know, and still do. And he said you know, I'm really too busy maintaining the website, doing our daily dispatches. So I said, all right, chris. Well, you know, I just said the book's got to be written. So I spent about three, three and a half months reading GATA's archives and doing my own research and just started putting it together.
Speaker 2:And I said you know what I'm going to write and publish this book myself. I didn't think I could get a mainstream publisher to do it. I didn't want them, you know, massaging my book in any way. But I wrote something that I thought I wanted to keep it concise, to the point. I didn't want to stray too far off the major premise, which is that the gold and silver markets are manipulated and the prices are suppressed, and I tried to hone in on that and write it in a way that the average reader could understand it. If I put in any you know jargon, I tried to explain it as best I could, but I wanted it to be a primer for people that maybe are not in the gold and silver industry or business or even know a lot about the history. So I guess that's about the background of the book.
Speaker 1:Well, I remember, after reading your book I heard you on Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Radio program. That was a great interview. He's a golden silver bug from way way back. I want to talk a little bit about the history of this. You know, in 1944, we had Bretton Woods Agreement. The dollars pegged to gold $35 an ounce. It becomes the world's reserve currency. You know, through my study I'm not a professional journalist like you or a writer, but I do. You know, I'm a paratrooper who likes books. I'm a paratrooper who likes books in history. So I dug into this and it would seem that the world started to take notice that we had broken the Bretton Woods Agreement before Nixon took us off the gold standard and closed the gold window in 71. As you mentioned, you're a silver bug. You know we started taking the silver out of the coinage starting in 1965.
Speaker 1:To me, you look at that lead up there's a lot to unpack there. Is that the timeline when this starts, because you can really go back to? You know where did the gold go with FDR's confiscation in 1933. Or you know the anti-gold hoarding executive order. You know a lot of that gold went to the Bank of International Settlements and so on and so forth, and they, you know, raised the price. Does your journey? Does it start here? This? You know the collusion between the bullion houses, the central banks, the price suppression. Does it begin in the 70s? Once we're untethered from gold, does that really ramp up?
Speaker 2:You know, I think it starts. It starts an ancient history, if you will. I mean, you're right, the contemporary rigging happened in the 60s and 70s. But I mean, as you know, emperors and monarchs have been manipulating currencies since there were currencies. You know, when they were putting tin and copper in silver coins, they were debasing and manipulating the currency so they could fund their armies and expand their empires. But you mentioned a couple of them. I mean, silver was demonetized back in 1873, I guess you're familiar with that. And then, as you mentioned, you know, gold was demonetized. To me that's the ultimate manipulation. When you have constitutional money, that is demonetized, that's the ultimate manipulation. But you're right, more recently it was, you know, around the time that Nixon took the United States off the international gold standard, even though President Roosevelt had outlawed gold ownership, private gold ownership, back in 1933 through executive order, and I think that was completely unconstitutional. But then you had what happened in the 60s.
Speaker 2:There were a couple of things that happened in the 60s. Number one the Western Central Banks got together and formed something called the London Gold Pool and the whole purpose of that pool was to maintain control of the price of gold and they would buy in. You know, these Western Central Banks would buy and sell gold into the market to maintain the pegged price that they wanted and, as you well know, that fell apart in 1968. And this was at the same time, remember, in the 60s, when silver was taken out of the currency. So you know, these things were happening simultaneously. But then, after Nixon took the United States off the international gold standard, they needed a new mechanism to contain prices, metal prices, ok, and that became the futures market. All right, now, silver had been traded on the futures markets, you know, back into the 1800s, and it was how can I say this? It was suspended. That trading was suspended during World War II, like a lot of commodities training, because some of these things were seen as strategic metals, right, but silver futures trading resumed again in 1963, I think it was.
Speaker 2:But gold, that didn't occur until 1974. The futures trading market opened on the COMEX in 1974, december of 1974. And that was the same month that President Gerald Ford made gold ownership legal again. Ok, so those two things occurred simultaneously, but it was the futures market that they knew that they could volume trade these futures enough. So they could, you know, rig, suppress, manipulate, whatever you want to say, the gold price, and that's what we have still today, tony. They're still using the paper derivatives, these financial derivatives that are created, these contracts, and they trade in such large volume that they can push the price pretty much any way they want and, as I said, that's going on today. In addition, 1974 was a critical year because that's the year the CFTC also was created.
Speaker 2:Ok, and the CFTC was designed or charged with regulating the futures markets. Well, as you well know, they let this precious metal manipulation go on. The CFTC is part of the problem because they turned a blind eye to the manipulation by the bullion banks on the futures markets. And a couple of years ago, you remember the silver squeeze movement back in 2021? Absolutely, I remember it well. I remember it well. So you remember then, or you may know, that the CFTC chairman, rostin Benham, admitted at that time that the futures markets were tamped down to control or suppress the silver price. So there was an admission, and that's happened so recently that it's not even in my book, because I published the book in 2000 and the silver squeeze and Benham's admission occurred in 2021, the following year.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I remember that it was that they sold off 1.5 times the annual supply of silver in the paper markets in one day. That's right, and nobody could find any physical silver. But the price went down.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I've been seeing this going on all the way back to 2008. Okay, that's when I woke up to this and that's when I dumped my SLV, because I said they're using SLV to help manipulate these prices on silver. So I dumped it. I said I'm not gonna use this and I'm not gonna help them by owning SLV to manipulate these markets.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what gets it done. I mean nobody really. I mean I'm sure the insiders know, but those of us who study on the outside trying to get to the bottom of it don't really know the true numbers. I think some of the estimates thrown around is that for every 250 ounces that are traded in paper, one ounce exists in the physical real world and we don't know. I mean it could be worse, we don't know. You look at the amount of manipulation that has to go in to make the gold-silver ratio what it is. I mean to me that's a tell right there. Just human history, all throughout history, the gold-silver ratio anywhere from 10 to 20 to one, and now we're like in that 87, 90 to one. During the first quarter of 2020, as you probably recall, is like 121 to one or something, and I bought some silver at that time, by the way.
Speaker 1:Well it was good if you could get it. That's as a dealer. It's funny to watch when the prices really go down and I get a lot of calls and I say I can't get it at that. I mean people aren't selling, so there's this artificial price and you go back to the 70s. Stuart, I mean, I have got so many questions about what happened and you know, nixon takes us off the gold standard in August 1571. If you track the price of gold throughout the decade it's up like 2000%. But what most people because this is not taught in schools, it's very counterintuitive. The gold didn't go up right, gold just was.
Speaker 1:The dollar was reevaluating itself, with a loss of purchasing power against gold as money. And that's when people would ask well, why would they suppress it? Well, because we're the world's reserve currency is the dollar and it needs to have a you know, quote, unquote strong dollar and purchasing power and all that. And the dollar, as I say on my show all the time, the dollar, the Federal Reserve, the central bank, is at war with gold. There was an author, anthony Sutton, in the 1970s wrote a book called the War on Gold. I mean he saw that way out kind of like. You know, this is what you write about and this is the beginning. I know it's all throughout history the debasing of currency, but the sophisticated model that they have really just comes out of that because they have to and it was stable for a long time. Does it look to you like they're losing control of the because of the BRICS nations? I mean, how do you see that playing out?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, the challenge being posed by the BRICS nation is something that the United States dollar has never seen in its history, really, at least since the dollar was the world's reserve currency after World War II and the Bretton Woods Agreement. And we know that Russia and China are accumulating thousands of tons of gold. Okay, so that's an indication that they've lost confidence in the dollar. Okay To me, anytime a country or an individual takes their fiat currencies and purchases precious metals, it's saying that they don't trust the fiat currencies anymore.
Speaker 2:They're looking for something tangible that has a track record, like gold does. And I wanted to follow up on something you said earlier. Every time they demonetized gold, back in 33 and 71, it was so they could debase the currency, because they couldn't maintain the price of gold at that level. So they had to get rid of it, sweep it out the door, so to speak, so they could debase, devalue the fiat currencies. So I wanted to add that a lot of people don't realize that's why gold was demonetized in the first place so they could proliferate, expand this currency supply and the whole debt and derivatives edifice, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I read something the other day there's 52 times more currency on earth than there was in 1980. Right, so the expansion, when all and the oldest living fiat currency now is the US dollar. The oldest living fiat currency, average life spans about 26 years, so it's all about increasing the money supply, as you mentioned, and, of course, even under and they would have had to in order to maintain that gold peg.
Speaker 2:They would. Gold would be hundreds of thousands of dollars an ounce right now, with the volume of debt and derivatives that have been created. I know.
Speaker 1:And this, you know, the just the throwing around the figures, trillion it's. So you know, in our modern time we just kind of throw that around. When I was born, in 79, the debt of the US was right under a trillion. So now we're 34 trillion and climbing, and I mean it took us all of our history to get there. So you have this accelerating debt, this accelerating money supply, the expansion of the money supply, it's wide inflation. It seems to be going off the rails. I mean because the math it just doesn't seem that it's the will to suppress. I don't know that they're gonna have this in the face of all these other countries.
Speaker 1:I read an article yesterday about the BRICS Plus. I mean they're adding Saudi Arabia. You know they've got the United Arab Emirates. I mean just bringing in so many other and of course, russia is now heading up the presidency of the BRICS. I'm pretty sure there's just so much happening right now to reset commodity prices, the money velocity for the dollar. I mean like less than 45% of all global transactions go on in dollars now, after the blowback from the sanctions on Russia a couple of years ago, it's really accelerating, stuart, and it's great that I have you on because we're witnessing history and it's moving quickly. Something I tell my audience like this isn't like theory, like this isn't like something's gonna affect you two years from now. Like this is like right now, something that's happening because you're seeing in real time, like how a currency starts to die, like, at least, how we have grown up with the currency, how it's been a part of our lives for many decades, like that normalcy bias here is really dangerous.
Speaker 2:There's a seismic shift going on and you know there's tremors all over the place. I don't know when the fault line, where the fault line is gonna break here, but you know the BRICS countries. Like I said, it's the biggest challenge ever posed to the United States dollar and the currency and the monetary world order, if you will, and I don't see it stopping, and I think that's why the war drums are beating too, tony that's. You know who is going to determine the new monetary system? Is it going to be the BRICS? Who's going to set up the table at the next Bretton Woods? You know these are all the outstanding questions. You know, after World War II, the Western powers knew they were gonna win right. So they got together at Bretton Woods and said, okay, the dollar's gonna be top dog. Well, what's gonna be top dog next time around for the new currency? You know who's gonna operate the CBDCs. Are they gonna be backed by what? Are they gonna be backed by Anything? Are they gonna be fiat? Are they? Do China and Russia and the Eastern realm, do they want gold as an asset to somehow back up their CBDCs are? You know, there are so many unanswered questions at this time that I have and I can only speculate and I don't think it's been determined yet.
Speaker 2:I think it's being written as we speak, and if we go to a global war, that to me is how the outcome I mean, we're ready in a trade war with all these sanctions. Think about it. It's not a hot war at this point. I mean, there are rumblings of a major hot war too. We've got Ukraine and you've got what's going on over in the Red Sea now in Israel. But there's trade wars, there's currency wars. You know James Rickards wrote about all this. He probably read him as well. So there's war. The question is, will it turn to a global hot war? And who will reign supreme then? And what kind of monetary system is the world looking at? I mean, they're pushing ahead hard with these CBDCs. They're trying to get them in place because they know the existing monetary system, financial system, is imploding.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that's what I've been observing. It's like a hurry up offense. You know, one of the first things Biden did of course Jared Kushner worked for Trump was working on the CBDC prior to his exit, and now you get the Biden administration. One of the first things they did was sign an executive order yes, yes For all the branches out on the executive branch to do an exploratory rollout of what it would look like for their branches and their offices using central bank digital currency. So the IMF, the BIS, all drawing up all these plans. I think the IMF has the unicoin. The CBDC is on the horizon and, of course, there's all sorts of reasons for that. It's to be able to control expansion and contraction of the money supply in real time, but more of to control you, it's to control all movement To control everything.
Speaker 1:Everything, everything. It's the end of history as you know it, if that's able, if there's no parallel systems and everybody gets caught in that. But yeah, never let a good crisis go to waste. As I say the dollar's not going to zero, it's going to digital.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, yes, yes. And one thing that the head of the international monetary fund said last year that I thought about and I can't remember her name, but she said that. She said that CBDCs would be backed by assets okay, but she didn't say what kind of assets and she also suggested that unbacked cryptocurrencies are a speculative investment. So what does that tell you about cryptocurrencies and the fact that they've just recently launched these ETFs of Bitcoin? Right To me, that's not good for Bitcoin, because they did the same thing with gold and silver. They're going to be able to use these financial derivatives to dictate the price.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm so glad you brought this. It's one of the again the pitfalls of this. And Larry Fink from BlackRock comes out and says Bitcoin is a store of value, and I'm thinking, well, I don't want Larry Fink's endorsement, I don't need it. I've been into Bitcoin space since 2016 and I'm not a big player, but I had Bitcoin ATM, so I understand it somewhat. I'm not as enthusiastic about Bitcoin as I am for physical precious metals, but nonetheless I like the decentralized network. It's outside of the system and there's no government there.
Speaker 2:But it's no longer with these ETFs, it's no longer decentralized. It's no longer peer to peer, the government is got control of it. Now with these, ETFs.
Speaker 1:That angle, yes, that angle. There is something that I should have thought of. I knew my thing. I kept getting stuck on the fact that, even with the ETF, there's manipulation. Of course, there's only 21 million Bitcoin that can ever be. So I started thinking how would they? How would that play out?
Speaker 2:But it seems to be making sense they can do the same thing with the gold. They lever it up. That's what they do. It's paper contracts. That's what's gonna determine the price. That's what's-.
Speaker 1:That's the poison pill.
Speaker 2:That's. You know what is it. Bit, bittoe or whatever it is is the equivalent of GLD. If you understand how precious metals are manipulated, okay, you will understand what they're doing now to Bitcoin to manipulate and control it. It's the same game and yet a lot of the crypto people aren't awake to this yet. But some people are applauding it, thinking this is going to take it mainstream. But it's no longer decentralized. It's no longer peer to peer. The government's gonna regulate these things. They'll be able to lever them up with these derivative contracts.
Speaker 1:I see. That's why it's an ETF and it's not about owning Bitcoin. It's not about actual or physical. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, and there's a limit on the number of Bitcoin. There's a limit on the amount of physical gold too, but what have they done to it? Are you following me?
Speaker 1:I follow you. Yes, there's a lot of logic in that. Yeah, I don't trust the banksters, right when they start blessing something. I go wait a minute, you know-.
Speaker 2:Are the regulators, and that's the whole thing. The bankers are in bed, if you will, with the regulators. There's a revolving door there. I mean, Gary Gensler was former chairman of the CFTC. Now he's at the SEC and he's rubber stamped these Bitcoin ETFs. I mean, nothing changes, it's just you know it's the same game over and over and over and over. We see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is something. This would be your wheelhouse. I mean you. Automatically they started announcing ETFs. You automatically think, well, that's how they're gonna get it, that's how they suppress the price.
Speaker 2:I sold my SLV, the ETF, back in 2006, because I saw what they were doing to control the silver price. I don't own any crypto because I've always been skeptical of something like this happened, but when it happened I just said, oh my God, here we go again. Same thing.
Speaker 1:Do you think that a Bitcoin ETF would be able to suppress the price indefinitely, or do you think that it's just a short-term measure, or is?
Speaker 2:it I mean, the government is involved. As long as the banks and the government are involved, it's not decentralized. Okay, it's not peer-to-peer anymore, and they will lever this stuff up and they will dictate the price. I mean, they could take it to a $100 million per Bitcoin, but what would be the purpose of that? I've always thought these cryptos were created to take investment money away from gold and silver. Hmm.
Speaker 1:That would be. I've known in this, been in the space enough to know that. You know there's been a movement for a long time with cryptography and the cypherpunks and all that to to create something that you know a libertarian based, anarcho capitalist, based away from the system. So there's that element.
Speaker 2:And I I support that. You see, I support that. But anytime the government and the banks get involved, it's lost.
Speaker 1:Oh, you, and I agree on that. I mean, I wasn't when this happened. I was trying to figure out. I was like where's the pot? Is there any positive in this? Because you know, I'm not cheerleading in an ETF. I don't. I don't think that you need the blessing of a system that's actually dying, like the dying fiat debt driven system, where, you know, when you were a kid, the stock market was based on profit and now it's not even based on profit anymore. It's ESG, it's environmental, social governance.
Speaker 2:How much how close to your algorithms.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, they're not even the companies are. They're. They're in the red every year and somehow still functioning and zombies in a way. So this we live in a I mean a system that you people I always warn them on my program like you're watching something implode and I would. You know, I look at things like Bitcoin and I look at the you know, the precious metals movements in the states, the individual states. I love to see that gold and silver is legal tender, decentralizing. So while you're seeing, on one side, stuart, you see all this centralization coming down from the BIS, the IMF, the West, the Federal Reserve, the Fed coin, all that stuff pushing for CBDCs and centralization, and on the other hand, you see these grassroots movements in states, in the United States, of people you know looking to have their own reserve banks, gold and silver legal tender. So we're in a fight Like this is a. This is a fight for a lot.
Speaker 2:But I love to see what's happening at the state and local level. You know, because it's getting back to the Constitution. Okay, what? What does the Constitution say? That the states can only make gold and silver legal tender for payment of debts. I mean, how far away have we gotten from the premise of the Constitution there? And it's because even the states got addicted to this federal largesse, this funny money that they create out of thin air and to base. But some lawmakers at the state level are waking up and they're seeing the right on the wall. That's why Texas has a gold and silver depository right. That's why. That's why a lot of states more, what is it? 43 states now have taken the sales tax off of gold and silver. Some states have actually said it's legal tender again in their states. You know, it's amazing. Yes.
Speaker 1:There is, there is positive on, but you know this is happening so fast and I don't think we're going to be prepared totally for how quick these things were in the modern era. I mean, you got to see the collapse of the Soviet Union. I mean breaks into 16 pieces basically overnight and on Christmas Day in 1990. That was, I mean, unexpected, swift and, you know, massive historical shift happened very quickly. I think that we're in that same kind of era where, hopefully, because I'm a veteran of three foreign wars, I want out of every war, I don't want any part of any foreign war unless it's defending our shores. And what we have here is our home, which is almost never Because we don't even, we don't even force our own border. So I don't, I'm not for foreign wars. But you see that, you know James Rickards writes about his currency wars, trade wars, and then you have actual war. It's usually the sequence of events. So we're in a very volatile time. It's been what, coming up on, it's 80 years since Bretton Woods, since the Bretton Woods Agreement, and that's the end of the last, you know, great cycle of history, is called the fourth warning. So we're set, we're poised to hurt for massive change and it seems like this game that they've been running since you know I've been in the modern era, from my understanding would be sometime in the 1970s, just really hammering the price of gold. I want to ask you kind of you mentioned that you were a silver bug and I'm sure you know a lot more about this than I do, but I've often wondered.
Speaker 1:In the same time, in the 1970s, you have this price increase of silver as well. You know silver was. You know that famous Merle Haggard song? I wish a buck was still silver, right, but people started to take notice. You in the 70s, who didn't have any more silver in our coinage.
Speaker 1:I look at the price there. You see the, the hunt family, the hunt brothers. They start buying and cornering the silver market. I said cornering is buying up the physical supply, which apparently isn't that hard to do, which is really. I mean, when you talk about the inshore lock homes, the dog that didn't bark like hey, why isn't it a whale buying all the physical silver right now? That's probably a tell, because you could easily do it and do what they did. But they were, in my opinion, and like the Gore Vidal says, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. But you get to the end of the 70s, 1980, silver is $52.50 an ounce in 1980 because of the hunts driving it up. Then all of a sudden it tanks because they bankrupted the hunts. I say they is it. This is you talk about rigged? That was a top down. Shut those guys up. Cftc again.
Speaker 2:It was the CFTC. The hunt brothers were beating the bankers at their own damn game and they didn't like it, and so they called in the regulators hey, you got to do something here. We're going to lose our shirts, we're going to lose our game. So you got to shut it down. And I agree with you. I think whales are reluctant now to get in and fight that fight and be targeted and find and banned from trading. But I think so much better that the silver squeeze at the grassroots level. Why not a million minnows rather than a big whale buying up all the silver?
Speaker 1:Well, I like that better.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I like that better. I mean not just for business but I think, just constitutionally, for liberty's sake and people's being able to reset their own wealth.
Speaker 2:If the powers to be want to take us to a CBDC and control everything, you know, our lives, why can't we go, as the grassroots, go, back to silver and just exchange silver?
Speaker 1:I like that idea, I love it.
Speaker 2:It's always been the average man's money. That's why they demonetized it back in 1873 and called it was called the crime of 1873. Are you familiar with that area?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, because at that time, if you, if you were a silver miner, okay, you had silver. All you had to do was take it to the US Mint and min as many coins. They'd min as many coins as you wanted. Think about that. That's how it should be, and it was, and it was legal tender until they demonetized, because the banks wanted to control this gold supply. They couldn't control the silver supply.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you had the Morgan Silver Dollar comes out 1878, correct, that's the first run of the Morgan. And then the next year the United States officially goes on the gold standard that you know set by the Great Britain, so 1879. And that's that leads into William McKinley's Cross of Gold speech and Free Silver and all, even the allegory of the Wizard of Oz. It's a really interesting history, I mean so much of our politics.
Speaker 2:Driven by that, I'm writing a new book on debt, you know, at Tendency Lee, title shackles and chains, and I've been researching the history of debt and money and I tell you what it is intriguing. It is very intriguing. And you just see all all these, all these conspiracies to control the currency, you know, monetize, demonetize, you know debase it's. It's been going on forever, forever, and it's always pitting the, you know, the monarchs, the elites, the emperors against the common man, always, always trying to consolidate power, control money.
Speaker 1:You know it's like that famous quote from Mayor Ross trial. You know who said that. I care not who sits on the British stone. Thrown the person who. I control the British money supply. It's really just tracked back to the who controls the money supply. It's the golden rule that I don't agree with. But he who has the gold makes the rules.
Speaker 1:It's funny that in a time when you know of CBDC and unlimited currency creation and quantitative easing and all these fancy terms, central banks around the world except ours are buying gold at a record clip. Right, I mean just breaking all the records I even read. You know, there's a lot of analysis showing the Chinese might actually have more gold than us at this time. They started buying heavily at the beginning of the century. They bought off the books. I mean, why would you buy off the books unless you wanted to gain an advantage by being a little stealthy? But the United States can't buy gold. I mean, what do you think, stuart? Is there any chance that this system would want to re-monetize? I don't see that. You know another gold standard. It would be the smart thing to do.
Speaker 2:Whoever re-monetizes the monetary metals first, I think, is going to be ahead of the game because they can call the shots.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, so whoever finally makes that leap?
Speaker 2:Whoever makes the move first to me is setting the pace, setting the tone. They're out of the shoots first. They win the game, you know.
Speaker 1:I don't see any path for the United States doing that without a major conflict of some kind. It would have to be external and internal pressures simultaneously.
Speaker 2:We've created a bureaucracy. We're so dependent on this easy money, easy credit. We forgot how to produce, we forgot what sound money is. You know, most people, anyway, so many people, are benefiting off the status quo, the existing system. But that's destroying us. It's destroying, it's hollowing us out, our economy, our souls.
Speaker 1:All debt-driven, all fake, yes, and it props up a fake system. It starts with the fake money. It goes to fake politicians, fake news, banking institutions Everything's fake. And then it falls apart Because, even when I mentioned earlier, you have zombie corporations. It's like 80 or something like that's still propped up from the 2008 downturn and recession. So, no, it's not healthy and you're right. Whoever does make the first move, it would seem that that would crown them monetary king. I don't know if there's going to be. Maybe it's a series of currencies that bring down the dollar, a series of regional currencies or commodities or systems, but we're watching. It's happening fast.
Speaker 2:We can only imagine where this thing's going to go. You know, and I don't think it's going to turn out like any of us can predict at this point. And I think you know, even if CBDCs are launched and precious metals are banned, so to speak, I think you'll turn into it'll be a black market, you know. I think not everybody's going to want to buy into the CBDCs once they figure out what it's all about.
Speaker 2:I mean desperate people do desperate things and I think that's why they're trying to make the average person desperate. I mean, 60% of the populations live in paycheck to paycheck, so you know they're desperate and they may, they may beg for CBDCs. You know, maybe that's the intent.
Speaker 1:That's the. I think that's their preference. You have to ask for it and they want you to add. This is all. This is the solution. If you just ask for it, we'll give it to you. Do you see a world with CBDC? Do you ever see a world where there is gold and silver or not? I mean, it could be made illegal. It could be a 1933 style thing. I can't make any guarantees, I don't know. I mean, I think that's a different. There was a different reason why they did that back then. But who knows? Because they may say well, we can't have anything competing with the central bank digital currency, because we're all in this together kind of thing, everybody's got to use the same currency. I don't know what arguments they could make, but do you see, are you worried about that? Do you have any on your radar?
Speaker 2:I don't foresee a confiscation? I just don't. I think most precious metal owners wouldn't voluntarily turn over their precious metals and back when the last confiscation was in 1933, people were much more trusting of the government than they are today. People are very skeptical of the government nowadays Notifying any institution because they saw what happened with COVID. That turned a large segment of the population into skeptics, and I think that's a good thing. I don't think we should trust our government, but I can't see federal agents going door-to-door, pillaging jewelry boxes and prying open home safes to get gold, at least as long as the American population is armed, because I think it would trigger a civil war. And I think that's the reason the anti-gun people want to take guns, because they know that the people can stand up for their rights.
Speaker 1:I agree 100% on that. It's the last. It's kind of a mutually assured destruction, defending your homestead and your property against unlawful seizure of that over reach of the tyrannical government. That's what it's for. That's why we have a second amendment.
Speaker 2:I keep asking myself, tony, how did they demonetize gold and silver when the US Constitution continues to say no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender and payment of debts? How far have we swayed, gone away from the Constitution right there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, show me in the Constitution where you can have a Federal Reserve Bank.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Show it to me, and then you can't.
Speaker 2:These huge bureaucracies, including the money bureaucracy of the Federal Reserve, and it's because the politicians bought into it so they could grow, expand. In many ways it was good. It helped the United States to fiat currency, but it's run its course now and we ended up with where we're headed, which is default bankruptcy. I don't know what you want to call it. That's why they have to segue to something else. See me these days.
Speaker 1:Well, we got just a little bit of time left. I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but you study this, you've been looking at it for years. I mean it seems to be. It is rigged, as your book spells out, and I agree with that. Just history and research it points to that. It's pretty obvious at this point. Does that come apart? And are we looking at a price reset here? You know there's the W-E-F, the World Economic Forum. The great reset, you know, is something here from these, these banks for types, but I think there's a reset in the price of all things. You know. I think that's a, you know, a revaluation of all currencies. Just crystal ball, if you had one, what do you think that looks like? And I'm not really a price guy, but I want to know, like in that world where you see a revaluation, where do you think gold and silver might be?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not a prognosticator and I hate making predictions because I'm usually wrong. But I think you know, and I suggested in my book, there has to be a reset. You know there's no other way and what we have to do is get to true price discovery. And how do you do that? In that event, silver should probably be worth more than gold because it has many more industrial uses. It's more of our everyday lives. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now without silver in our electronic devices.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, and then they're talking to you know they want to go to green, green. Well, silver is critical for a green infrastructure right Beyond solar panels. Plus and this has come to light of late, and you, you know, haven't been in the military know this silver has many military applications. Were you aware of this? Absolutely yeah, it's like 40 pounds of silver in a Tomahawk missile?
Speaker 2:Yes, in these laser guided missiles in Apache helicopters, and that may be another reason why they're trying to hold down the price, right? Well, that's interesting, yeah, you have JP Morgan Was it a strategic medal, even though they've apparently the government apparently sold off the strategic silver stockpiles.
Speaker 1:When you really dig into what where silver comes from now it's like a byproduct of them mining other things like copper and gold, yeah, and you really dig down further, you find out that most of the silver ended up in landfills because it wasn't profitable to take it out of the old equipment and things that were thrown it out, all the old photography.
Speaker 2:How much went into this? You know photography, you know processing and was washed down the sink, so to speak. You know.
Speaker 1:That's that you mentioned that. I mean gold, obviously in monetary metal, has some other uses in medicine and electronics, but it's silver that really is the industrial monetary metal. Yes, that surpasses golden usage, medicine included. So that is interesting that you think that it might, it has a possibility, it should be, or at least it should be, an application. Yeah, application.
Speaker 2:And also, I mean, I understand it comes out of the ground. Gold or silver is one to eight or 10 or something, now you know. But what is the price at One to 80, one to 90?
Speaker 1:It's like one to 90 or something like that. It's stupid. And then I talk about that all the time. I'm like when did that change? I mean even like I think, yeah, they used to estimate that it's like the high end, like geologically, it was 17 to one. Right, that's the high end. You know, being very generous.
Speaker 2:But now we Silver discoveries have been found, apparently, or mined out, and it's harder to extract it. You know, from these other oars I was actually in a silver mine up in Idaho, went down 3000 feet below the ground and saw these guys working in there with. You know, whatever their jackhammers is, you know you talking about hard, dirty, dangerous, sweaty work and they're doing this for $22, $23 an ounce. What I don't know how the miners stay in business at these prices. I do not know.
Speaker 1:A lot of them don't. It's hard to find a good company to. Even I buy a little bit of mining stocks not my primary thing, but you look around, it's not a lot out there and some of the bigger ones I'm consolidating more.
Speaker 2:But you are correct in that assessment in the sense that this is just gonna become more and more rare silver because of the way it's being just it's been debased and used up and thrown out and then not mined, we got a real problem with that, and not only you know, if you're talking about solar panels, there's all kinds of other minerals and metals that go into those. It's not just silver. So you know, mining metals, overall, all commodities, I think should be much higher priced than they are. And what are we pricing? You know the fangs. You know, right. I always make fun of that. Yeah, I mean, it's just shows you how assets are misdirected in this illusion of an economy we have.
Speaker 1:Well, I like that term. It definitely is an illusion. Well, Stuart, we got just a couple of minutes left. I so appreciate you being here. I wanna have you back. When do you think your new book will be out?
Speaker 2:Oh, it may be. While I've been working. Actually, I've got two books. I'm working on a financial memoir and one on, you know, the history of debt, but it could be a couple of years. I've been working on the memoir now for six or seven years and the debt book I've been working on two years and I'm probably only half finished. So it's a slog because you have to do so much research, you know so much reading and I can only do it piecemeal. You know, and I have to. When I do it, I have to immerse myself in it, as you well know if you're doing anything right. But you know it's gonna happen and I'm looking forward to it. I've already got a cover for my memoir, but a few things have to happen before I can publish it, and some of what has to happen is what we're talking. We've been talking about here in this conversation. You always need a conclusion, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to find one now because things change so quickly. It's like I wrote the book and you know, and then, oh wait about this, I gotta put this in it. That's kind of. I'm working on a book too. So it's like-.
Speaker 2:Even with Rigged, it's an unfolding story. You know, I just wrote it in 2020, but yet we've had so much occur that part of it's outdated. None of the historical information or documentation is outdated. That's still very relevant, but I'm just saying you know even what is his name Rostin Benham's comment. You know the tamp down comment that should be in my book, right? Because to me that's indicative or an illustration of how the prices are suppressed.
Speaker 1:That's truly fascinating. Stuart, Do you have any place where you want people to find you if they wanna contact you or get a copy of Rigged?
Speaker 2:I'm just about out of personal copies. I used to sign them. I think I got five or six left and I used to tell people. If they want one they can contact me at sranglercomcastnet if they wanna sign copy. But it's probably easier to go on to Barnes, noble or Amazon, and I've got the book there in both ebook and paperback and you can read this thing in an hour or two, you know, because it's you know, as you know, it's very thin, but it's packed with information and documentation that makes the point that needed to be made.
Speaker 1:Well, again, just love having you here. I've wanted to have you on for a while. I'm sorry it took me so long to finally reach out and shout out to Melissa for making it happen. I wanna have you back though, especially for whether it's two years from now on your books. I definitely wanna do that, but it may be in the interim between that, if anything major comes out. You know, as far as this Rigged system and the reevaluation and the reset of prices, I definitely wanna talk to you again, but-.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. Let's see what developments happen in the next year. You know there's a lot of people, including myself, thinking this ought to be a gangbuster year for a lot of changes, and I'm watching it with reluctant anticipation.
Speaker 1:Well, the book is Rigged. Ladies and gentlemen, go and get a copy. It is, I think, one of the most important stories, if not the most important story of our time, because it tracks back to our fake fiat currency system. I'm gonna put this up very soon and I'm really looking forward to the feedback we're gonna get. Thanks again, stuart.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for the invitation, Tony, and send me a link when you get posted, okay.
Speaker 1:Absolutely well, and I tell my audience, in a world of bulls and bears, be the wolf. See you next time.