Let's just assume everything continues on the way it is. So it's gold, precious metals, Bitcoin. What about the stock market though? If we have an inflationary environment, real estate, stock market, asset, investing thrives, right? You're listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else. To thrive in today's trying times, you need the Financial Survival Network now more than ever. Go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com and get your free newsletter and gift, Financial Survival Network now more than ever. I'd welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Today we've got a guest I haven't had on it in a while, did a couple conferences together. We kind of both discovered Bitcoin together. Name is Jerry Robinson, follow themoney.com. Questions, comments, kl@carrylutz.com. Jerry, it's great to have you back. How's everything? It's going great. Great to be here, Carrie. I sure do appreciate being back on, and it's good to see you're just still kicking. You've been doing this for so long. Some of the folks who are new to your show should know you've been at this for a long, long time. I appreciate you. Hey, thank you for that. It's been 14 years, if you could believe it, over 9,000 episodes, and I'm still going just as strong as I was. New people always listening, and it's pretty wild. They've got to tell you, still doing it. Good for you, brother. We got started around the same time, about 2010, is when we started Fall Money.com. And yeah, we kind of got started at the same time. Pretty interesting. That's right. We did. We did. Yeah, it's amazing. I can't even believe it, but here we are. We're still giving the message out there, still letting people know that this is real, and it's getting more real all the time. So, new administration, the more things change, the more they stay the same, the hand just rearranges the players in the game, right? The king is dead, long live the king. Well, we do have a new administration. You can tell from the markets that there are certain sectors that really like this outcome. There's other sectors that are not so happy, and that's the way it always is. Had we had a different outcome, had we had a Harris victory, we would just be basically seeing a lot of inverse action. So, basically, it doesn't really matter who is in office when you look at the longer term. I have a great chart that I recently saw in the wake of this election that just shows that anybody who tries to play politics with their investments usually gets, it can work. And I'm not talking about strategic sector allocation. I'm not saying, OK, we have somebody who's pro energy, so I'm going to have a little more energy in my portfolio. I'm not talking about that. People who actually freak out and just get out of the market because so and so won, which we've seen many times throughout the many different times. And when you look at that, you'll see, well, that usually is a losing strategy. So, the way I look at this in this environment here is not to really freak out about anything, but just to basically be have prudent allocation, stay invested in the right things and don't let anybody shake you out. Don't let anybody spook you into thinking that this time it's different or whatever. And that would, again, either way, whoever wins, you always have those voices that are trying to erode your confidence in your long-term investment strategy. And I don't think a politician is really going to change the long-term investment strategy that we've laid out, and that all the leopard never changes as spots. The leopard never changes as spots. Very true. So what do you do about it? Things are crazier than ever. People are crazier than ever. Markets are more volatile than ever in many respects. I mean, hey, when we and I got together, Bitcoin was around 12 or 20 bucks a piece. Now it's almost 75,000. I mean, that is pretty amazing, isn't it? Bitcoin is stunning. All of the skeptics, it's stunning. All of its opponents. We were talking about this off the air, how you and I learned about Bitcoin very early from someone who knew a lot about Bitcoin very early. And so you and I were blessed in that regard to know about it so early in. It's crazy today because when you and I were talking about Bitcoin, say back in 2013 or whatever, the idea that there would be a proposed Bitcoin strategic reserve or the idea that we would want to make America the Bitcoin or crypto capital of the world. I mean, this is absurd. It was just very early at the time. And so I can't think of an asset class that has gained as much institutional adoption so incredibly fast as the digital asset space. And it's really kind of made for this time. That was really kind of always the use case for Bitcoin was the fact that it served as this currency without a government in a world where governments had become reckless with their currencies. And so therefore, I think many people are tuning in. We're seeing pension funds and endowments and countries and corporations. Was he at the spot? Yeah. Right. Who isn't? And now with these, when you remember, the whole point of Bitcoin is the finite nature. I mean, this white paper, which we just celebrated, I guess the 16th anniversary or 15th anniversary, whatever it was, that again, it's incredible that the Federal Reserve would even notice an asset like this. It's only been around for 15 years or so that they would even come on their radar or that a president would even come up in a presidential campaign, some asset that's just that new, just absurd that it would have that much influence upon political campaigns and upon the central banks. It's incredible. But the primary benefit or maybe the primary feature of the Bitcoin white paper, aside from the fact that it was this currency without a government where you couldn't haul in the CEO of Bitcoin before Congress and make him confess to this or this, there's just no CEO. But also the finite nature. And this is what we're getting ready to see. And what we're seeing now is the fact that you only have 21 million Bitcoin. This story has been going on since the beginning. But as the spot Bitcoin ETFs are hoovering up these available Bitcoin that are being mined as sovereign entities are buying Bitcoin as endowments and corporations are putting them in their treasuries, it's just we don't have any assets like this. Yes, is gold finite? Well, to a certain extent, Kerry, there is only so much gold, but we don't really know how much gold there is really we don't because again, we could always find more when it comes to silver. It's the same thing we know approximately how much there is. But at the same time, you could always find more. We don't have any assets to look at to say there is no more. And in a world where you have infinite, you know, paper money being created and just no cap on it at all, this is becoming increasingly attractive to people who are waking up. So I think Bitcoin and gold are both going to thrive incredibly underneath a Trump administration. If you go back to the first Trump administration, Kerry, you remember, gold was a star underneath the first Trump administration, you know, so much spending that was going on and gold was just going up, up, up. I think we're going to see something similar. The Wall Street Journal put out a piece. Many people called it a hit piece. If you were pro Trump, others thought it was just an accurate portrayal, but economists were looking at the spending proposed by Trump and said, look, this is going to break the country. I mean, this is absolutely incredible how much money is being proposed to spend. Now, we don't know if he's going to keep all those promises. But if he does, then that's going to be really good for gold that I would say even better for Bitcoin because of the finite nature of Bitcoin. So I think Bitcoin and gold, two major winners for the next four years, I think it's just kind of a given. Another way of saying that it's going to be bad for the dollar, bad for entry rates, and bad for inflation. But yeah, yeah, true. So what if we trashed the income tax, went to a consumption tax and tariffs and Elon Musk does or the federal budget, what he's done for automobile production, which was cut the costs by orders of the magnitude. What would happen then? Well, I'm certainly no tax expert or tax policy expert, but I do have some opinions. However, informed or uninformed, but I've always liked your fear. That's right. I've always liked the idea of a consumption tax. I think that it quite frankly makes a lot more sense. You're actually incentivizing production and you're disincentivizing consumption. But of course, that's a dangerous thing to do for an economy that's entirely built upon consumption to discourage consumption. So in other words, it's kind of a double-edged sword, but I've always liked the idea of a consumption tax that could happen. I think we're certainly going to see lower taxes. I think people who are concerned about estate taxes can now relax a little bit. There was the concern about that sunset provision. I think people who are concerned about their tax brackets going up don't need to worry about that now. I think we know the taxes are going to be low, but at the same time, even though you and I may like that, I mean, everybody likes lower taxes. We just remember that, well, how are they paying for all the things that are going to be doing? You had mentioned the the Musk efficiency or getting rid of the waste and government efficiency program. Well, even he admits that if they implement something like that, it could cause some real serious dislocations in the economy for a period of time. So that's necessary, right? Yeah, no, undoubtedly. It's like a cold or like a flu. I mean, you kind of get rid of it. You got to cleanse the system and I'm okay with that idea. I mean, I think we do need to experience it. We definitely need to cleansing in terms of our, but again, I think it's easier said than done, because again, once again, the key part to keep in mind carry is that no one has told us what they're going to cut. Now, we hear things like, we're going to shut down this department of this, of education or whatever. Now, that's all this stuff is easier said than done. It works fine on the campaign trail, but actually implementing these things about it. You shut down the department of redundancy department. No, sure. Why not? You know, why not? They're already done. I could need most of a federal budget by about a third with one section of chat GPT. I did say, what are the top 100 agencies to get rid of? And it put out agency after agency after agency that I never even heard of the federal monument and research commission. I don't know what they're researching monuments for, but crazy agencies here that just shows the government's completely out of control. And the only way to bring something under control is you either got to cut it or you got to sedate it or you got to do something, kill it. Well, one of the largest areas carry that we could really save money is the war machine. Oh, yeah. The Department of Defense, the Pentagon, which still can't pass an audit after years and years and years. I'd say take the knife to the Pentagon. But again, that's unlikely in a Trump administration. And that's why that's what causes some people to be concerned is that, you know, the idea of cutting the waste of the Pentagon. I mean, I've talked to people who are, you know, relatively high up in the military over the years. And they've told me horror stories of the waste. We've all heard the stories of the waste. The general is lining their pockets. Oh, it's incredible waste. And so, you know, to me, that's where I would start. I wouldn't start with education. I wouldn't start with, you know, poor people's food or anything. I would start with, you know, the military. I mean, I think this is the most obvious thing. And I may have, I haven't really followed the Trump campaign very much through this whole process. So I can't really say that they've brought it up or not brought it up. But I don't recall hearing them saying we're going to slash the military or we're going to slash the waste in the military. So I have a feeling that I have a feeling that this is going to be billionaires deciding who should get money. And usually they think that other billionaires should get money. So surprise. And so, yeah, I'm a little concerned as to who's going to lose and who's going to win, you know, but so we know probably who's going to lose. And that's going to be the American public one where the other, even at our intentions really are good, which I believe they are. It's still, this is the turning the aircraft carrier around. Right. Right. The only beneficial thing is basically Trump figured out he found all the people in Washington that he couldn't trust. Right. And he's going in there with an agenda. And, you know, the day that he goes into office, a thousand executive orders will be filed. I guarantee you, there's no question about that. So, but, you know, let's just assume everything continues on the way it is. So it's gold, precious metals, Bitcoin. What about the stock market though? If we have an inflationary environment, real estate, stock market, asset investing thrives, right? Sure. Yeah. And when you go back and you look at, say, Trump and at his administration, the first four years, he's the first guy since the president's has Grover Cleveland, I guess, that has actually had to come into office, even then come back. And so this will be an interesting novel, that sort of a novel thing for our generation anyway, to see somebody come back. He actually has experience. He's been out for four years. He's had a lot of time to think about things that could be good. We'll see. There's a lot of angst around his presidency, not just here in the country, but everywhere. There's a lot of unpredictability. In some ways, that's good. In some ways, that may not be good. But as far as the market goes, the way I see it is that when you go back and you look at the first four years of Trump, you see that technology, and I want to say I'm used to have this memorized, but I remember it was technology was the best performer, which was surprising. And then the second one was consumer discretionary, these two sectors of the S&P 500, which kind of makes sense in that when you think about the time frame, when you look at Biden, what the top sector has been under Biden, it's actually energy, which again is somewhat surprising as well, because you would kind of think those would be reversed. But it all makes sense when you consider the historical backdrop for both of their terms. But when we look forward for Trump, I think that technology is going to continue to be a big, big winner. Innovation is simply bipartisan, and that's fortunate for us, because we want to see continued innovation. I think innovation will continue regardless of what happens. Even if we, some people have said, "Hey, we're going to enter a depression." Well, even in times of great depression, innovation continues. And so innovation, I think, is just going to continue. We're going to see lots of incredible things move forward. And quite frankly, it's incredible what is done. I'm going to just read you a little something about Grover Cleveland's second term. He was a big anti-corruption populist guy. He was against tariffs his first term. Cleveland's second presidency began with optimism, but quickly confronted the severe economic realities of the time. While he returned with a clear vision for reform and stability, the economic foundation was faltering. Shortly after he took office, the United States faced one of its most significant economic crises, the panic of 1893, which would shape his entire second term. History doesn't rhyme, but it sure does echo, doesn't it, Jerry? That certainly could happen. The economy we're facing now is it's very precarious. As you and I both know, we've been saying for years, this is not a good situation that we're in. One of the concerns that I have now that the presidency is over is I've been saying this now for a couple of months, and I'm getting this sense that it's going to happen, and I'm really hoping it's not. But in the wake of this election, now that everything's there, the honeymoon is going to now go on for a bit of time. But I'm thinking sometime in the next month to maybe after his first 100 days, who knows, maybe we're going to see the credit rating agencies come out and downgrade us. Once again, the United States, there is absolutely no path forward that is saying there is no path forward that any credit rating agency could look at America and say, this is all going to be fine. There's no scenario. So because there's no scenario where things can get better without drastic changes, well, just like you said, we may see some drastic changes, but that could create and royal the markets, royal the economy. And then again, people would then say, well, where's my 50 cent bread? Where's my dollar gallon gasoline? I was promised to lower inflation. So in other words, the expectations of the people also kind of play a part in this. And right now, and that's my concern about the whole Trump campaign, quite frankly, is that I think there's been unrealistic expectations about what to expect from this economy. The idea that you don't like $6 milk, well, that's kind of tough. I mean, yeah, get used to it. I mean, if you don't like $3 gas, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, you got you got some of the lowest tax rates that we ever had. And with Trump gets in, of course, which he is, they're going to go down. So this this is a recipe for some sort of disaster. And while I think Trump is going to goose the markets, I mean, look at what happened to find, look at just look at day one of what happened with the Trump victory. And you get a pretty good glimpse of what's ahead. Bitcoin hit a new all time high when people were saying, when's Bitcoin going to hit a new all time high? We're just waiting for it. When did it when did it happen? But they the Trump won the election pro that's well is just a pro crypto. And so there you go. So now you see very likely to have a we just did a show called the Bitcoin bull market fall money podcast people can listen to. And it's all about the pro crypto policies of the president. That absolutely is going to be huge. We're going to see, I think, quite frankly, we're going to see a massive bubble in crypto that's going to be completely unsustainable. It's going to be a dessert of lots of scale, lots of scammers coming out. Two hundred two thousand Bitcoin. It's going to triple to quadruple. And which is a great opportunity. So you buy a little bit now. I don't have a lot, but what I have has gone up 50%. I just was buying a little bit every single Sunday. And finally, I hit my target number and I just stopped and I did that over the course of like couple years. And now I just stopped and I'm just watching it because it hit my target number. Another thing in Grover Cleveland's second term, there was unrest in Hawaii. So he sent an investigator over to look at Hawaii. And guess what he found out, our investigator, you're going to love this because we forget about history, especially our own. He found that the there had been a coup of the ruling queen, the queen of the Hawaiian, the Polynesian tribes there that was backed improperly by the United States. I mean, the stuff never gets old, Jerry. It does. And it reminds me of Stephen Kinzer, who we've had on the on the on my podcast a few times. I don't know if you've had Stephen Kinzer on before. No, he wrote a great book. He wrote a great, great book. I think it's called Overthrow, where he goes through and he just talks about all of these different episodes, including Hawaii in the late 18th or the late 19th century in Iran. And you know, all of these different things. What a great book and what a great, what a great guy who's really exposed a lot of that. You know, when we think, we think about what else a Trump administration might be. Well, we might see again, look at day one, you see financials were one of the biggest beneficiaries. Why is that? Well, again, financial corporations like BlackRock and JP Morgan, they're always looking for somebody to loosen the regulations. And that's what Trump is going to bring. I mean, here's a week and pretty much know for the next few years, your taxes are not going to go up very likely. If they do, it's going to be very strange. You're also going to see financial regulation, you know, get dumbed down. And so there's going to be a lot of scams, there's going to be a lot of people getting fleeced by big banks, or everyone, all kinds of that kind of stuff. We're going to see, I think we're going to see some of the biggest bubbles we've seen in tech and in AI, because again, when the, when, you know, what, what do they say when the, when the wolf's away, the chicken's play or whatever. And so, you know, the idea is the cats away, the mice, the cats away, the mice play as what it is. But you know, you know, this idea that, you know, the cops kind of off the beat for the next four years. And so all of those industry were paying off anyway, yes, you know, off a few hundred bucks a week and a fifth of the scotch and a box of cigars for Christmas. He's now totally off the beat. Yes. And there are two industries that I personally don't invest in. I just I just have a moral situation, whereas I don't want to invest in them, but they, they include, you know, the military industrial complex, which I think is going to do great under Trump, just as it did last time. So I think that's going to do great. Because again, we're not going to touch them. We're going to, we're going to find other places to cut. And then also the private prison complex, which again, I, I despise. But nonetheless, we've already seen those kinds of stocks really accelerate. The other thing that I think we'll see do well or in, you know, the industrials, we've already saw the Dow hit record. In fact, the Dow was the best performing index, I think, on the on election day or in the wake of, even more than the NASDAQ, even more than the S&P. And a lot of that had to do with companies like new core or domestic steel. So I think, you know, I think these steel companies, there's a lot of industrial companies are going to do well. I think there's going to see a lot. What's going to fail? What's not going to do well? Well, the first one that comes to mind is clean energy. Yeah, clean energy got hammered whenever we saw the election results. Yes, clean energy is a space that I've long hoped to see succeed. And it is succeeding, but you know, with all kinds of red tape. And it ends a mess. It's a total mess. And then the other one that that, at first, when I when I first saw the election results, I thought, I thought about cannabis, and I thought, you know, that's been a tough market, the very tough markets, that's to say the least. And but I, but I also was thinking about it yesterday. And I recalled somebody actually brought this my attention that RFK Jr, who Trump has been saying, Hey, I'm an 11 loose on her health care system, has been very pro cannabis. So and and Trump has also hinted that way. So many people right now, you see cannabis stocks, they've been hammered. I'm I'm wondering if that's overdone. And the fear there might be a little too extreme, because I'm of the opinion that we've almost got this cannabis thing to a bipartisan solution, where we might actually see just a federal tax upon it. And then they just say medical is fine. I can see why recreational might be a problem. You know, I live in Arkansas, and they have medical cannabis here. And I like the way they do it here, Carrie, when I go to other states like Oklahoma, it's like billboards everywhere. You know, it's pretty crass. And you know, when your kids are seeing it, you're like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I really want this. But when Arkansas, everything's low profile, there's no billboards that I recall seeing. It's very low profile. The signs are small. So I think there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. And I think eventually we'll get to a place where the federal government's going to bless medical cannabis and just have a federal tax and just leave it at that. And then let states decide on the recreational side. I think that's probably what's going to happen. And I don't think we're too far off from that. So I think there's some opportunity in the cannabis space. Yeah, that's that is the best way of Florida. Just turned down the proposition for recreational. And I think that was the right move. I personally, you don't want to become a tourist state for this stuff. You know, it's, it's, there's probably any, right, you go to Nevada, you can go to, you know, where Colorado became early, the, you know, the kind of the tourist state. Well, these, these states are ready for that. Let them handle it. You know, in your local state, I think medical is, is a fine solution for people who need it. It's better than opioids. You know, the problem with the recreational is that once they legalize it, people just do it out the open. And yeah, cities that are just a cloud of marijuana smoke less Seattle, like Denver, like New York City, it hasn't exactly been implemented. The legalization that's de facto legalized. And any scheme should have severe penalties for people doing it out in the open. All right, it should be in the privacy of your own home or indoors, not outdoors, and any public intoxication. We need to up with the. We already have a lot of like, you know, attitudes for every, all right, you can't read in public intoxicated. That is bad. Agreed. Yeah. I feel the same way. So I really like the medical cannabis laws that we see here. Like I said, I said in Arkansas, they've kind of fumbled it quite a bit here. They took them forever to roll it out. But the way they've done it so far, I've been pretty impressed with it, especially as I go to other states and see how they've handled it. I think the longer term solution for this is a medical cannabis solution that's blessed by the federal government, pay us our pay us our federal taxes. They're the tribute record yet to pay us a tribute recreational. You want to do that. That's up to the states. They can decide if they want to do that. But medical should be the federal government should just leave it alone and move on and and de-schedule this thing or reschedule it. You know, it's time to rethink the whole drug thing. Addiction, both for alcohol and for drugs, make it a public health issue, not a criminal justice thing. Everybody who's homeless, who's a drug addict or an alcoholic eventually winds up in jail. They will since they have to steal to support their habit, steal to buy their alcohol. And eventually they wind up being treated in jail. And that is the worst therapeutic environment for somebody who's really mentally ill and needs help, not confinement where they might need confinement, but not inhumane punitive confinement. They need rehabilitative confinement. Yes. Absolutely. They need to be restored and rehabilitated, not treated like a, you know, a murderer or something along those lines. All right, Jerry, so he's great catching up with you. Been too long. We'll catch up with you again soon. Follow the money.com. That's the website. Questions, comments for Jerry, myself, K L at carrylets.com. You'll find a link to the show notes in the show notes in this interview on financial survival network.com to Jerry's site. Jerry, we'll talk to you again soon. Be well. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Carry Lots's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com. Financial Survival Network, now more than ever.
