Macro

Episode 53: Investing in Gold with Lynette Zang

Ben Lakoff, CFA
August 2, 2021
86
 MIN
Listen to this episode on your favorite platform!

Lynette Zang is Chief Market Analyst at ITM Trading, and they have a fantastic YouTube channel.

In this episode, Lynette goes over the history of Gold as a currency and how we ended up in a Fiat Monetary system. How the financial system is changing, why Government Debt is at all-time highs and a lot of other topics broken down by Lynette Zang. Enjoy!

Listen on Spotify:

Check out https://anchor.fm/investinalts for all the listening options (Spotify, Apple, etc.)

Show Notes

0:00:00   Welcome and context

0:02:27   What is your background?

0:08:00   What have you learned from history?

0:14:05   How can we avoid another crash?

0:24:50   What is the transition period going to look like during the reset?

0:40:41   Why is the global reserve currency also looking for a global reset?

0:46:34   Why would a lot of people try to keep the current monetary system?

0:51:10   Do you see any scenario where this doesn’t end in a reset?

1:01:05   How should an average investor position their portfolio?

1:05:35   What are your thoughts on Bitcoin?

1:17:17   What type of asset could be excluded from a potential confiscation?

1:26:10   Where can people find out more about you?

Show Links

Website

Lynette on Twitter

YouTube

Episode on Gold with Mark Yaxley

Episode with Jim Rogers

Episode Transcript

Ben: [00:00:00] Welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast, exploring alternative investment opportunities available to the everyday investor. Here’s your host Ben Lakoff.

Hello and welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast. Today’s interview is with Lanette Zang. I really, really enjoyed this conversation with Lynette.

She creates a ton of valuable content in the space at night. Really, really enjoyed the conversation. We talk a lot about the changing dynamics of financial markets and really go into a lot of detail about gold. Gold was never really that interesting to me, but it’s becoming far too important to ignore the world is changing.

The financial markets are changing words like great reset. Failing currencies are becoming more prevalent and perhaps this time it’s different, but perhaps not. Gold has been a store of value for 6,000 years. So maybe it’s not that different. Did you know that there have been over 4,800 currencies that have failed since this FIA currency experiment started in the early 19 hundreds, but maybe it’s different this time.

Lynette does her research and shares a lot about the changing world and how to properly position your portfolio. Accordingly spoiler alert. It includes gold and real assets. This episode was recorded in January, sorry, but again, it’s some great evergreen content and I really, really hope that you enjoy this long conversation before you listen.

Don’t forget to like, or subscribe to the podcast or even better leave a review. If you’re watching this on YouTube, hello, please subscribe to the channel and, or give this video a thumbs up. It really, really helps. And I appreciate it. All right, Lynette, Zane, enjoy!

Lynette. Welcome to the show. Excited to have you on.

Lynette: [00:01:55] I’m very happy to be here. Ben, thank you for having me.

Ben: [00:01:58] Absolutely. And I told you, I, I really enjoyed doing the research for this episode.  I started watching one or two videos and before I knew it, I’ve listened to a ton of different podcasts. You have a lot of value. You talk about a lot of really interesting, helpful things.

Kind of encourage my listeners to check out your YouTube video. Just give you a Google. You have a lot of good content out there, thanks for all of that, that you’re producing now.

Lynette: [00:02:24] It’s my pleasure. And it’s frankly, it’s what I’ve been put on this planet to do. So it is my mission.

Ben: [00:02:30] Great. For my listeners that perhaps don’t know your background, can we start off just with a brief background who you are and what.

Lynette: [00:02:39] Well, sure. You know, I’ve been, I am Lynette Zang. I’m the chief market analyst over to ITM trading. I’ve been there since 2002, but in my path, I mean, I definitely know I was growing for this moment in time. I’ve been a banker. I’ve been a stock broker. So I understand the language. And and I had an uncle that was really a major antique dealer back east, my uncle Al.

And he was very instrumental in my education. And there’s a story that I like to tell. We were at my parents and I were at his house one day and he takes us in the back bedroom closet or not the closet, but the back bedroom. And there were two huge floor safes there. And he says to my parents, if anything should ever happen to me, aunt birdie will be well taken care of for the rest of her life because of what’s in these.

So when I turned around to luck, they were stuffed with $20 gold coins, pre 33 gold coins. Now this was 1965, where, when it was illegal to hold more than five ounces of gold yet, you know, I mean, I certainly didn’t understand how much was there as a child, but knowing what I know now, my guess would be at least.

A monster box three monster boxes in each safe. So probably 3000 ounces and he held it legally. And it was in a, because it was legal. It was in a form that he could use in the normal marketplace when it was illegal to hold five ounces of gold. So, you know, that’s all of that goes into where I am today and my ability to really translate financial noise into understandable language.

That is my mission. That’s what I try and do with all of my.

Ben: [00:04:41] Yeah. And that’s there is a lot of noise and actually just on that topic, I love that story. I too have an uncle Al, but he never showed me a room full of gold coins. But a lot of people don’t realize that for a long period of time, it was illegal to actually own physical gold.

And he had adhered to the rules in 1933 coins, but for a lot of other people, it was actually illegal to own them, which is just mind blowing that less than a hundred years ago. This was the case, right.

Lynette: [00:05:12] You know, what’s also really interesting. There, there are a couple things about that, you know, number one, You always have to look to who can write the rules.

And a lot of my strategy I’ve been studying currencies since 1987. And the strategy that I developed before I even went to ITM for myself was based upon historical repeatable patterns. Because I believe that if something has happened the same way, a hundred percent of the time is directly. And particularly if we’re doing the same thing, quite honestly, I mean, I can’t guarantee you anything other than I’ll show up and do the work, but if it’s happened before historically history has a tendency to repeat.

So I think that that’s our best shot. And then the other comment that you made about when it was illegal to hold over five ounces. Yes, that’s true. Unless you held it in the form that he did. So unless you were an insider or understood that you could have, we all could have accumulated and kept our pre 1933 gold coins and thus maintained our purchasing power value.

You know, who knew that? Well, the guys at the top that wrote the rules knew that unfortunately, my uncle Al knew that, but most people did not know that. And here’s something else that you might not be aware of. But I find quite interesting is that in 1965, it became legal again to hold gold certificates.

Now you couldn’t convert them into the physical gold. Yeah. But in 1965, gold was fixed at $35 an ounce. So they knew, right. And they knew at that point there was a run on the U S dollar. Should I back up to move forward a little bit? We kind of jumped into that whole piece in the middle.

Ben: [00:07:24] We can.  I definitely wanted to get into that.

Think of the mark Twain quote all the time is like history doesn’t have to repeat, but it rhymes. Right. Looking back I know you really understand history and how these different currencies. Things have happened throughout history. So perhaps why don’t we back up a little bit and, and talk about that and what you have learned from history and why you think that it might you know, rhyme going forward and where we are,

Lynette: [00:07:53] why it’s repeating itself.

Okay.

Ben: [00:07:57] We’re a bunch of humans driving the system. Right. And we have the same, we’re, we’re very similar.

Lynette: [00:08:02] Fortunately the people at the top are very similar too. I think it’s really important to understand what money is. I mean, we work for it. We use it to barter with, and some of us even try and save it.

And so, you know, we have to go back in history and there’ve been so many different things that have tried over, been tried over the years, but gold particularly evolved as the primary currency metal for a number of reasons. But if we’re looking at that, we get paid for our labor in gold or in, I wish we did in, in money that we use when we were on a gold standard, what you were doing since it takes labor and energy to pull the gold out of the ground is you were being paid valued labor for labor.

So it was a very fair system, but for governments, it was a problem because they wanted a tax incentive. And on a gold standard, you’d be aware of it. And you might not agree with it. And particularly you could go to the bank when you had those bills, those gold certificates and convert those certificates into gold, pull it out of the system and then restrict government’s ability to borrow.

So they wanted a system that worked better for them, and they came up with what’s called a Fiat’s system. And the, the actual translation is by decree. But the bottom line is that this is government money. And government money was when they installed the federal reserve system, which is not a government entity it’s private to manage the monetary system typically, or historically before that all of those central PA banks had a lifetime charter, typically between 15 and 20 years because governments knew they would end up inflating all the value away.

That’s what banks do, they know debt, and they know. So once the central bank was installed, I think it was quite just the timing of everything. And, and you can see some similarities today to what was happening. Then everybody’s heard of the roaring twenties, right? When they started to take us off the gold standard, we went from a dollar being backed by a 20th of an ounce of gold to, in that in the federal reserve charter to a dollar now being back.

By a lot less two and a half times less. So the government, so the central bank was able to print two and a half times the amount of money think about it. It’s the same thing. As the QE. Now they printed a whole bunch of money. They were also kicking off the consumer economy, which today that’s almost 70% of the economy is consumer driven.

But before that it was agriculture, it was manufacturing. And so they wanted the economy to shift into consumerism. So they printed a bunch of money, started giving the average Joe on the street credit, which they were not used to. Now the stock market’s going up. So is the bond markets. So as the real estate market, because of all this extra money sound familiar and in 1927 for the first time ever, the federal reserve was granted limited charter.

First time then in 1928, the big industrialists, the big bankers, those that were involved in the markets. Well, as the population now had more inflated money, they didn’t really understand it. All they knew is they had more money in their pockets. Right. They started getting involved in the markets because they saw the markets going up and up and up and up think of Robin hood and a lot of what’s happening today.

Right. And this always happens before a major crash. So the insiders were selling to the naive public, and that’s exactly what is happening today. And then the credit dried up and you have 1929, right? So you need a big crisis to really finalize the change. But since at that point, People the normal person could go into the bank and convert their dollars into gold and pull gold out of the system.

They don’t like that. That didn’t work well. We know about the bank holidays. We know about what happens on a gold standard. So in 1933, they took the only tool that the citizens had to hold governments, toes to the fire away. That’s why they confiscated the gold from the population and made it illegal to hold more than five ounces of gold.

But at the same time, they did that. Secretary treasury, wooden understanding what they were doing wrote in there, that little caveat so that he and his friends and anybody else and understood the law. Like my uncle Al could continue to accumulate gold. Hold it, use it in the normal market place, thus maintaining their purchasing power.

Ben: [00:13:35] That’s incredible. Isn’t that incredible? It’s just incredible. This poles so many questions that I want to go down and eventually I’ve written down some of them so I can slot them in. But I just creature from Jekyll island was the first opened my eyes to what the fed is and how it was created, all of, kind of the shady dealings.

That’s 15 years cycle made a lot of sense. And, but this time it’s different with this new fed that they’ve created, but I’m drawing all the parallels to 1929. Consumerism drunk on credit inflated, asset prices, speculative bubble, like it’s certainly rhymes with now, but my question would be more that I know Bernanki and Yellin, perhaps they were big historians as well, like understanding what happened in previous crashes and how to potentially avoid them, you know, paper over the cracks.

We just never crashed and it’s up into the right forever. Why would it be this, this time it’s different and perhaps we can avoid this crash or you just it’s inevitable. We’re just kicking it down.

Lynette: [00:14:45] Okay. Right. Because you also have to understand you know, just moving forward a little bit, governments could still convert doll a dollar.

Into, and you were talking about the creature from Jekyll island. So therefore the Bretton woods agreement where the whole world agreed that the dollar would be pegged to gold at $35 an ounce, but all other currencies were pegged to the dollar. So the dollar was supposed to maintain its fiscal responsibility did not during the Vietnam war.

The governments globally understood that we were reneging on our agreement and Bretton woods. And so there was a run on the dollar with countries demanding dollars so much so that by the time Nixon, they say close the gold window, but let’s say by the time Nixon actually defaulted, which is what it was on the Bretton woods agreement.

We had less gold in deep storage than we had prior to the confiscation in 33. So there really was no alternative, but what that really did was hand over full power and full control. Of inflation to these private central bankers. And if you look at productivity, right? How, I mean, how do corporations benefit from all of this inflation?

Does anybody ever ask that question because they need to, and when you stop and think about how inflation has been calculated in the past and how it’s calculated now, it’s based on goods and services, right? So while the government. Was able to use that inflation tax and not go through legislation and make a visible corporations and enabled them.

And this is part of the goals when you read about what their goals were, when they were setting this up, corporations wanted people to be willing to work for less, but if you’re used to getting 10 bucks, you’re not going to take five. However, if you still get that 10 bucks, but it spends like five rocket rolls that she could

Ben: [00:16:58] nominal

Lynette: [00:16:59] nominal confusion.

Yes, it’s called. And that’s what fake PlayStation creates. And for just to kind of make that example a little more whole, if you think about a $20 bill, you know what that $20 bill would buy you 10 years ago, five years ago, a year ago. And what buys you today is far different, but nominally it’s exactly the same.

It’s still a $20 bill. And so in that way, the corporations got people to work for less and less. 1971. The average income was 9,500 bucks and the family of four could live on that with one wage earner. I’m not saying they were super wealthy, but they were comfortable. They were okay. They only required one wage earner, you know, today I think the average wage is something like 53 or 56,000, something like that.

But if you think about the recent stimulus, $1,200 stimulus checks that they sent anyone making less than 75,000 a year. And if you were a couple making 150,000 a year, you got 2,400 bucks. So what does that tell you? That tells you even at a hundred thousand dollars, number one today, to sustain any reasonable standard of living, it requires two wage earners to do it.

And even at a hundred, 150,000 bucks, you are most likely paycheck to paycheck, right? So, so did your wages really go up? No, it’s the value of the currency that went down. And so when you listened to the guys on the hill, whether it’s political or it’s there, or it’s from the central banks talking about the need, you know, they want wage inflation.

They want wage inflation. Well, people have to service the debt. They have to keep shopping. They have to be able to take on more debt. You know, but it’s because officially got my, one of my very favorite websites is the federal reserves, Fred F R E D. Look it up and put in consumer purchasing power of the consumer dollar.

And you will see officially it’s less than 4 cents, which means it’s way worse than that. So the reason what makes, what makes this time in some ways different than 1929 is that was the beginning, but this is the end. And in reality, when the market erupted in 2008, when it became visible, because it was breaking down way before that, but when it became visible to everybody in 2008, That was really when the market died and the central banks overtly said, we are managing this market.

I mean, they’ve been doing it forever, but they came out and started with all of the money printing, quantitative easing. And you mentioned Bernanki not a fan. You mentioned Yellen also not a fan, but understand why she has to come into this back into the system again. And I mean, I’ve got cartoons where it’s like the fed says job and the markets go how high, because they’re being given this money, this free money drug and, and today, I mean, valuations don’t matter.

Fundamentals don’t matter. Those that are in that upper echelon, like the Ilan Musks and the Jeff Bezos’s of the world and, you know, and the apple, you know, all those guys, their wealth has more than doubled. I think Elon Musk’s wealth is something like Ted times. He’s now the second wealthiest man in the world and his company.

Now I’m not saying bear with me on this one. Right. Because I think Elon Musk is certainly quite, quite brilliant, but he’s only had five quarters of profits.

Ben: [00:21:21] So matter at this point, it’s a future grub

Lynette: [00:21:26] future growth that’s because of all of the money that’s floating around, just like the roaring twenties.

Okay. And also in the eighties after the seventies, when we were kicking off, do you remember Greta? Right. And it was, you know, the, the, all the bling and the big shoulder pads and wall street and corporate repairs and all of this. Well, we were kicking off into the next system now, no longer gold back, but pure debt backed.

And so what is happening right now? Because understand too, if you’re based on a debt basis. The goal was never to have that debt paid off. It’s just to be able to roll it over and serve as more and more and more. So inflation gives you more dollars to service that debt that you’ve already taken on.

Anybody that took a mortgage out 20 years ago, and now they’re paying it, you know, when they first took it out when, oh, that’s a lot of money, but you know, 20 years later, it’s no big deal because you’re getting more of those inflated dollars to pay that fixed rate rate debt. However the tool that the central banks had to keep this game going was interest rates.

And since 2009, you’ve had a minimum of 90% or more of the, of the industrialized world whose interest rates are anchored. They’re zero. And of course there’s like 17 trillion in negative debt. That big experiment, which didn’t work.

Ben: [00:23:10] Well, it’s in the early innings. And I think I’ll go on to the great reset because you’ve talked at length about that, but I just wanted to point out on your website, ITM trading.com/strategy.

You’ve got that chart of showing the decreasing purchasing power of the dollar and the devaluation of the dollar. And it’s very drastic. It’s this nominal trap, right? I mean, I have this investment, that’s going up into the right and it’s wonderful. And CPI, which is flawed in so many different ways is, is kind of flat.

But my healthcare is like quadrupled over the past 10 years or whatever. Which has always, that’s a whole nother tangent, but yeah. I mean for me, it’s I start thinking through these things and it’s okay. Loss of purchasing power FEA system is essentially doomed because even though we have the dollar, which is arguably one of the more globally, more secure, stronger currencies as the global reserve currency.

What am I going to switch to Ian? Remind me like none of these things. So I think this is a good transition that like, we have to go somewhere. The IMF has this great reset.  Talk to me about where you think this is going. It’s the death of the fit, but it’s not just going to revert to a gold standard and everybody holding gold coins is going to be rich.

It’s there’s gonna be, well, actually

Lynette: [00:24:32] everybody holds points. We’ll be rich, but we’re not going back to a gold standard.

Ben: [00:24:36] Right? Right. This transition period where we kind of leave the fee system as we know it, but we have to consent, continue to let people get drunk off cheap credit and, and consumerism driving, driving growth up into the right.

Where, where do you see this going? That’s great.

Lynette: [00:24:57] Well, you know, they’re already showing, they’ve already shown their hand. Okay. We’ve got the fed now accounts that have been announced along with the digital dollar. So it gives the fed direct control into your pocketbook and that’s they push a button.

They’re doing it inside of the banking system because the banks have the relationship with the individuals. And then they’re using the big data that they’ve gathered from, you know, the likes of Facebook and Google, et cetera, to help. Monitor and use that perception management so that you move in the direction that they want you to move in.

So there’s no doubt that the goal that they have set up, and if you look at the world economic forum, they actually lay that out as well. I mean, all the guys at the top, they see this utopia where ultimately we, the little people own nothing and we’re happy about it. Mind you. We’re very happy. We don’t have any responsibilities to own anything.

And then just the government or the few at the top own everything. But when you say, you know, the immediate, so that’s, that’s the, the end game is this sharing economy, utopia that they pictured out. But it feels to me very much, like we’ll go back to feudal times where, you know, where all the slaves and the serfs Are we going into a digital economy in a digital currency?

Of course. And it’s this, it’s a surveillance economy. I’m seemed to be. And people in my generation really are a lot more uncomfortable with this loss of privacy that we see. Are you, I’m glad because a lot of people what’s the, so what, so what, well,

Ben: [00:26:51] I just had this conversation with a good friend of mine.

It’s like, okay, the CBDC is this digital dollar it’s coming. They can push negative interest rates. They can give you a stimulus that you can only use at the store so you can invest it. Like I get all of that and I know that it’s going there, but I laid this out to a good friend of mine. Yeah. I don’t think it’s that bad, you know, he’s the nothing to hide.

It’s like, they’re going to like talk about big brother next level. They’ll know everything. There’ll be able to put like everything and then hit his argument. Was there, there’s a lot of benefits. There’s a lot of middlemen that are being cut out. And there’s a lot of say criminal activity. If you don’t have piles of cash, like it’s very difficult to do criminal activity.

Perhaps there’s, there’s lower admin costs. In your mind, death of financial privacy and privacy in general, but like, do you see any benefits from moving to a system like. Efficiency,

Lynette: [00:27:53] you know, honestly, there’s always good parts and bad parts about everything. I mean, how convenient through the coronavirus?

Yeah, they definitely ratcheted up people’s involvement on the internet and where I was not a huge proponent of buying stuff from Amazon, because there’s lots, there’s, that’s, that’s a whole nother video. But. You know, we’re all forced into our homes, into this very narrow range. And it’s very convenient when I want to buy something.

They look, they have all my information. I don’t have to keep typing it in and plugging it in. What am I giving up in order to have that? Because it works right now, just like Amazon, you know, it’s a great example. They killed half of the mom and pop shops out there because they did not have to charge sales taxes.

And that was allowed to go on as they were decimating, the mom and pop, who is the generator of 50% of all of the jobs. So a really important part of the community. Right. And then once that was decimated, well, then now they, now they’re starting that now they’re charging the sales tax. So the government, it’s the same thing with all of this data theft, the government allows it and they, there was a program where looking at how, how big data and and banking would the benefits.

But when I saw, as I saw how they could come together to control everything. So it’s not, yeah, there are benefits. Of course they are. And that’s what they’re pushing. How convenient is it to hold everything you own on your phone?

Ben: [00:29:37] You got your phone with you from the financial system completely because you’ve done something wrong, right?

Lynette: [00:29:43] That, but also think about this. If you hold the title to any equity you own, whether it’s in your house or it’s in the stock market or it’s in anything, then you hold that equity broken down into bite-sized pieces, which is something that they have discussed. Right? So, so, Hey, maybe you’ve got $275,000 worth of equity.

If you go to the bank, you got to take out a big chunk, but you might not want to. So now you’re shopping and you see something that you got to have right now. And then you start to use up all of your equity. You have volunteered your way. So are there benefits? Absolutely. There are benefits. Are they couldn’t cram it down your throat, that they couldn’t sell it to your friend.

They couldn’t sell it to, you know, the younger generations that have grown up on this, the millennials and younger, I mean my seven year old grandson is much better at computers than I am. I’m good with spreadsheets and PowerPoints of research, but you know, on the day-to-day functioning, I’m not, that’s not my, you know, that’s not my thing, but you know, I know that this is inevitable and I know that they’re taking us into a completely, if they can, if here’s where you hear my hesitation, I cannot even tell you how pissed off I would be.

If the guys that got us into this mess remained in power to get us into even more mess on the other side. Those guys are disgusting. And by the way they do, this is not me. This was just from lots of research. My nickname is data gal, but they choose people that, that are sociopaths. And I’m not saying that to be nasty.

I’m saying that because they can’t care about how their actions impact lots of people. They can’t care about that. They just have to do whatever it is that they have to do. So, yeah, there are benefits, but you know, I got to tell you. I used to think. And my strategy and gold is money. Goal. Gold’s most important function.

It performs lots, but its most important function is to hold its value intact over time, forget the spot market. That’s a wall street construct to keep you away from goals. But when they do this reset of the currency, they do it against gold. I mean that’s even looked down in Venezuela. I mean, this is not something that only happened in ancient times.

This happens today and a rising gold price is an indication of a failing currency, which is why they have had to suppress the price of gold. Really. I mean, they’ve been doing it forever. You know, fixed at 20 bucks fixed at 35, you know, big whack.

Ben: [00:32:42] So previously these resets have been done against gold, but I think at this time I find myself saying this time it’s different so much these days, which is crazy.

Yeah. But so many of these currencies.

Lynette: [00:32:55] Yeah, sure. Well, let me just ask you this question. Okay. Because they’ve tried for 6,000 years to figure out a good alternative, right. So tell me what other real asset that there is that they could revalue the currency against.

Ben: [00:33:17] Right. I I’ve just thought about this a little bit.

And my thing is that all of these Fiat currencies have. You know diverted so much from, from this. So in my mind, I almost see this playing out as a debt cancellation debt, like a Jubilee amongst different nations, where they just like cut and cut and reset to some equilibrium that may or may not have some tie to gold, but it’s just like, we’re all.

So, so messed up at this point and we have so much debt. Let’s just, let’s just go around and start doing this Jubilee. And that will be the reset.

Lynette: [00:34:01] Well, that’s a lovely thought that is not historically valid on any planet, but how about if you were owed all that money? You go, oh yeah. Look, you went out. You had a great party.

This is awesome. Yeah, no worries. All right. You don’t know me anymore money and by the way, Christine Lagarde has repeatedly said no debt, Jubilee, no debt Jubilee. She just said it recently, but

Ben: [00:34:28] there’s these new experiments, like MMT that, this is just bonkers, it’s not even debt.

It’s a dollar creation event and you can just keep printing it into infinity. Right? I mean, how good is that for the price of gold, right?

Lynette: [00:34:45] Well, the price of gold in terms of Fiat money, which to me is frankly really irrelevant. It’s the functionality. And if you stop and think about it, when something is easily abundant and cheap and easy, how much value does that have?

Ben: [00:35:05] Yeah, but a currency is the bubble that never pops, right? I mean, until it, it flows bubble,

Lynette: [00:35:13] there are 48, more than 4,800 examples of currencies that have indeed popped that no longer exist just since this experiment began in the early nineties. Oh, wow. 4,800. So don’t tell me there’s no currency that ever pops is they all pop here’s one thing I learned from my uncle, we started out with my uncle I’m coming back to him because what he taught me, which was so valuable.

And I didn’t even of course, I didn’t know it at the time I was a kid, but the way real assets work are, they always go from undervaluation to fair valuation, to overvaluation to fair valuation, to undervaluation and it never ending figure eight. Right. And when you want to buy is somewhere in here, but those real assets cannot evaporate.

They cannot evaporate. The reason why gold is so critically important for everybody. And the reason why it’s maintained its value over time is because it is the only asset and all even say the only money instrument, the only one that has the broadest base of buyer, I don’t care what investment you’re making.

What do you want? You got somebody over there. That’s only interested in what you have, guess what you’re going to get for it, the least amount, but you got 10 people over there that want what you have now. You got a bidding war. Right. Gold is used in manufacturing. It’s used in food. It’s used in the financial system.

It’s used in electronics for all these computers, for all this digitization it’s used in medicine. It is used across every single aspect of the global economy. Nobody ever talks about that. It’s ridiculous. You can go to gold.org, you can look it up and you can see for yourself all the different places that it’s used.

So if an economy is on the decline, maybe they’re using less. So it just goes within a range. Up until we went off the gold standard, it went inside of range based upon the economy. And we could talk about how a normal economy would flow in a real free market. We’re not in a free market. Definitely not.

We’re in a central bank managed markets. And all central banks know our debt and interest and what MMT will do and what the UBI universal basic income that will be here soon. I’m sure. I can’t tell you exactly when

Ben: [00:38:10] now is that crucial building block of that, right? Oh my gosh. Right into your phone. Okay,

Lynette: [00:38:17] exactly.

Right. When, when all of that happens and people go out and start spending, that’s going to bring the hyperinflation. So there is frankly not one teeny doubt in my mind. And I mean, I have been doing this on some levels since I was 10 years old, I have been groomed. By the universe. If you want to say that for this moment in time, this time is not different.

This is the end of the big grand experiment, which is why you have the IMF calling for a reset, the world economic forum, calling for a reset, the bank for international settlements. You know, everybody, even the fed admitted, they’re resetting the system, the head of the ISD, a which is the, which is the regulatory self, self regulatory body that creates all these derivatives and manages them and even determines whether or not there’s a default.

Ben: [00:39:27] That’s a whole nother conversation there. That’s for sure. There’s a lot of cracks in the system that were, we shined a light on them with this COVID crisis that’s going on. But I keep going back to like, I read Stephanie Kelton’s the deficit myth and it’s, it’s just as amazing to me that people can think like this.

I’m trying to keep an open mind about it. And all of these currency failures that you said, I think 48 of them since the start of this

Lynette: [00:39:57] hunch,

Ben: [00:39:57] just a few more. I missed a physios. Okay. So 4800 4800 currency failures. But the argument there would be, these are not global reserve currency that the U S is the global reserve currency used in all of this trade, this whole Euro dollar market, all of this.

It’s different for us, right? The U S we, we won’t be pushing for this global reset. We like being the global reserve currency. We like in exporting all of this inflation. Is that not correct?

Lynette: [00:40:31] That is so not correct. That is correct way off, way off. And first of all, the IMF has an internal currency called the SDR.

It stands for special drawing rights. It’s just a name, just like the dollar is just a name. It’s just the name. It was created in 1969 to take over as the world’s reserve currency back then. But Kissinger, Henry Kissinger went to Saudi Arabia and created the petrodollar to support a standing on there.

But we actually went to the IMF and said, please take it back. Take it back, right? So that’s number one. Number two, there have been lots and lots of world reserve currencies. The British pound was a world reserve currency before the U S dollar took it over. So even world reserve currencies have a lifespan and we are well past our lifespan well past so, but, but what makes this different?

And I think it’s really interesting during the depression, what we were going through in the U S even though we weren’t as incestuously interlinked as we are today through the global, through the global banking system, et cetera, the whole world went into a depression during that time too. So what, what is really different?

Not from those 48 hundreds, because what always happens is more money printing and more money printing and more money printing. And as you do that, the money has less and less and less and less value. Venezuela had the best global stock market, 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16,

Ben: [00:42:25] 17, yeah. In their own currency,

Lynette: [00:42:28] but middle terms.

And then they wound lopped off zeros from the end of their currency. And the problem with all of these things that they’re doing is that they’re what they’re not doing. What they are doing is changing accounting procedures. What they’re not doing is changing behavior. So even talking about derivatives, because I think that the next derivative implosion will be the final death now, which is why.

You know, they rushed in with extreme liquidity because Bernanki yelling all of these, these federal reserve historians. The reason why all those did work was because credit evaporated in the system. So if we just keep things liquid, keep printing more money. We can avert this, but the reality is how far below zero.

Can you go with interest rates and even going a little bit below zero, the big experiment in Switzerland, in Europe and in Japan, right in Sweden. Sweden’s the one that kicked it off. Okay. Number one, every single country that has attempted to raise the interest rates since 2009 have failed, failed fast.

And it did not stimulate shopping. It did stimulate Fiat money asset prices. So if you want to be properly diversified, you need something that’s real. That is completely outside of the system, really outside of the system, not just decentralized. Right, right. But something that is non-visible on any flipping level, real wealth that is easily portable.

And it’s interesting because

Ben: [00:44:34] a truckload of gold is kind of tough to try to port around though. Right.

Lynette: [00:44:39] A truckload of gold is tough to port around, but I’ll tell you what I’d love that problem. That’s number one. And number two. You can hold many, many millions of dollars in a little small collectible gold package.

Okay. So actually it is easy to carry wealth globally. In a small movable package. And what does it say on the outside of that? It’s a $1 gold coin or it’s a $20 gold coin. So you go through customs and they look at it. You think they know that it’s worth $8 million or $15 million or currently, or whatever.

No, but you’re instantly liquid wherever you go.

Ben: [00:45:24] I definitely want to go into that, but before we go there, and in the way that I’m thinking about this race interest rates are stuck low forever. We can’t raise them. The nominal value of my investments will continue to go up into the right inflation will start to take up.

But my counter here in this aligns with the way I think, but the counter is the amount of pension funds and the amount of assets held into this system and that they have to, they have to continue this on.  Don’t fight the fed don’t fight money flows. Like there’s going to be a lot of people.

Oh yeah. And a lot of power trying to keep this system going as long as it does. How do you, how do you think through that? Because holding your, your funds, your, your wealth outside of the system is, is almost like a contrarian play against fighting those bigger forces. Right?

Lynette: [00:46:17] Oh, well well actually yes and no.

And, and the no part is look at what the central bankers are doing for themselves. And they’ve been accumulating more gold since 2008 and recently more gold than they ever have historically, because they know what they’re doing to the current. And I would also say you’re making the assumption that they want this to go on forever.

And what they’re trying to tell you with all this talk about reset. And it was honestly, it was Christine Lagarde, who was the head of the IMF back in 2009. I listened to an interview with her. I mean, I knew the system died 2008, but I listened to an interview with her, which I don’t know if the link still works, but she had to have mentioned the need for a financial reset or reset of this, a reset of that.

She probably used that word easy 26, 27 times, maybe even 56 or 50. Like it seemed like every other word out of her mouth was reset. And when I heard this. Yep. That’s where we are because the system died. They couldn’t revive it. So you’re making the assumption that they want to keep the game that they want to keep going is their power and their ability to control and manipulate you by taking us digital, where they’ve already removed all the purchasing power.

What it really does is it enables them to start attacking principal. Cause that’s what negative rates are. And frankly, I used to have that argument. I shouldn’t say this maybe, but I used to have that argument with Eric all the time when they first went to negative rates and I went, oh crap, that’s attacking the principal.

Cause they already got all the purchasing power and he’d go, no, that’s not aligned. Well now he knows it. But that’s what it does. If you got a hundred bucks and they read their white papers, read their, read their special reports on how they can do this. If they want you to spend, all they have to do is make a visible, you’re watching your account go down.

You know, you’re not spending money. So what are you going to do? You’re going to go out and you’re going to buy anything that you think could hold whatever you can get your hands on, but also what you think will hold more value.

Ben: [00:48:34] It’s what happens in these hyper inflationary countries, right? As soon as you get your paycheck, you rush out to the store to buy whatever, whatever you can, food and these things obviously first, but then anything else, because you know that a hundred dollars that you were paid is going to be worth 95 tomorrow and 90, the day after

Lynette: [00:48:55] two hours.

Yeah. So the assumption is that they want this to keep going on, but the reality is, is they know that it cannot, they know that they’re out of tools because you can’t go really below zero. It doesn’t work well, this is digital currency.

Ben: [00:49:15] You can go pretty deep under zero, right. Right.

Lynette: [00:49:18] But it doesn’t really work.

They’ve tested it. They can go, they can Rob you up. It can make you bend, but that does not create a healthy economy. Right. That’s really what I mean by it. It doesn’t work. Yeah. They could do it and they’re going to do it. And they’re going to bail. Everybody’s money in. That’s legal. They changed lots of other laws in the Dodd-Frank that they put in place in 2000, a den for consumer protections, those laws.

So many of them weren’t even written or they were lobbied against, and now they’re all gone anyway. But the bail-in laws, their ability to take your deposits in the bank. No, no that that’s still there. That’s still there.

Ben: [00:50:00] Do, do you see any scenario that this doesn’t end in a reset and a massive change to the financial system?

As we know it? Wow.

Lynette: [00:50:11] It’s already

Ben: [00:50:12] happening. I

Lynette: [00:50:14] mean, like, this is not something that is off in the future. I mean, it was, you know, 10 years ago when I was talking about it, maybe I sounded like I was crazy, you know? But I think what’s crazy is denying your own personal experience. That’s crazy. Look, does this world look the same as it did here?

Ben: [00:50:37] No, certainly not.

Lynette: [00:50:41] Are you setting? That is my point. They’ve they have pushed through a lot of habit changes and, you know, look, if I can’t prove that I don’t say it. So I can’t say that this was planned, but what I can say, because I’ve read enough papers from the Wu Han lab on which this was supposedly leaked from. Maybe, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but they knew about the Superbowl, but, and by the way, And it wasn’t just China.

It was it was scientists from all around the world, including the us, that supported research in developing this bug even further, but they never looked for a cure. We’re an antidote at the same time that they were making it more powerful. They showed me beautiful graphics, not just me. Anybody can go in and get them on how it would transmit from animals to human and that they, and you read their documents.

It was, it was when, not if it was when this would happen. And quite honestly, the level of convenient timing for this to happen is ridiculous because we, because here’s the other thing, I mean, I’m, can’t deny it. The big interest rate benchmark that was created in the, in the eighties, the eyeballs interbank offer rate.

Also also you hear more people talk about ly bore, which is the London interbank offered rate, but all the eyeballs, it came out shocker in 2008, nine, and seven, and all in that vicinity that that rate was being manipulated. What a shot. And so since 2012, They have, and by them, I mean the global central bankers, but specifically in England and in the U S and in Switzerland and in Sweden, a few more countries, Japan have had to come up with new benchmarks.

Okay. Not a big problem. Right. They came up with those benchmarks with here are the problems with it. Number one, they have to create a market for it. And that has been failing miserably, miserably. They have not been able to get adoption of it. And in 2012, the FCA, which is the British watchdog, said that by the end of 2021, that benchmark was going away.

So the actually most current number 640 trillion notional value of contracts are written against libel, or I bores, right. All those contracts. Have to be converted to in the U S they came up with a Sofer, right? So a new benchmark, well, they couldn’t do it. They tested it in Europe. And then recently, and it was a little teeny weedy test.

So they saw what didn’t work there. And they made sure that if, if any entity lost money on this transition, they would make them whole, but the big banks didn’t really want to make them all. And then in mid-October they ran an $80 trillion test, dead flipping silent. No results. And I’ve been looking, I’ve been looking every day.

I have seen no results, but magically just the other day. Okay. A couple of these eyeballs are going to go away on the, on December 31st and 2021. But for the lie wars for the U S dollar ones. Oh, those are going to go away until 2023. What does that tell you?

Ben: [00:54:45] Failing Walla.

Lynette: [00:54:48] Yeah, that big test was a big fat failure and there, and you’re looking at 640 trillion in notional.

And in, if you were to go into the, I S D A’s some of their materials and I just did this the other day. So it’s really fresh in my mind, they show. So what happened. Everybody is probably aware that it’s a derivative failure that caused the crisis in 2008. Prior to that, it was 98 long-term capital management.

So that was the big, first, big speculative derivative failure that only almost brought down the entire global financial system, then 2008. Okay. Now you would think that if they really wanted the system to continue, that they might modify what and how they’re doing this so that you didn’t get those failures, but rather than that, 98 to 2008, no oversight of the OTC market.

Right? So that’s kind of like out there in opaque, right? So now we have this fail. The market is bigger today than it wasn’t 2008, but in 2013, let us not change behavior. Let’s not do that because Hey, we’re making too much money. We’re having too much fun. The public is eating our losses. We get to just enjoy our gains.

So we’ll just create an accounting tool called netting. And compression to make it appear like we’ve changed behavior and to really hide what’s out there. So the example that they use in their documents takes 438 or $428 trillion in notional value of derivatives and washes it and washes it. And does all this funny stuff.

Bam. Now the banks only have to hold a reserve on you’re ready for this one 10. Okay. Now what happened to those 418 trillion?

Ben: [00:57:08] Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here.

Lynette: [00:57:11] So if now one might assume. And please, I’m sure you’re going to correct me if I’m wrong. And I appreciate that. But one might assume that if they’re using this as an example in their documents, that this is probably a pretty standard amount of reduction, plus you can see it in the OCC office of, of currency, comptroller of the currency.

They do a quarterly report of derivatives in the FDI C in short banks should make you feel real comfy. Okay. So, right. So if that is the norm, then the $640 trillion worth of global reported derivatives. W w how big is that? How many quadrillion? I did the calculation for the U S and I think it works out to something like 12.9 quadrillion.

Ben: [00:58:15] These numbers don’t even make sense at this point, right. Even a trillion dollars. I can’t even I can’t even wrap my head around their check antic. All of these things remind me of a few Jim Ross, Rogers sayings. The biggest lesson from history is that we don’t learn from history. The biggest lesson to learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.

And then the other one is that the Chinese were wages. That crisis and opportunity are the same thing. I totally get that. The system seems to be treading down this path that is totally irreversible and will in my mind, it’s like pitchforks and torches every time, but it gets a little doomsday.

But for the average investor, how do you think through this? There’s a lot of people out there that, you know it’s like when the music’s on you dancing and everything seems to be fine. I still, my nominal value is going up and everything’s great, but like, maybe

Lynette: [00:59:12] they’re making new highs every day,

Ben: [00:59:14] almost just crazy.

All these Tesla, Robin hood millionaires, that money is simple to find. Right.  How should these people like talk, talk to these people. Like, how should they start thinking about positioning their portfolio, obviously gold in any form, even if you buy an an ETF is probably better than zero gold.

It’s not the same. It still can be compensated, but oh, Nope. Well, how, how should the average investor think about positioning themselves to hedge?

Lynette: [00:59:45] Okay, well, first of all, let us make a differentiation between the ETF and real gold, because if you buy an ETF, it is designed to represent and the movement of the spot price of gold, which is easy peasy to move.

It’s 150 bucks controls like probably about a million or so dollars worth of physical gold. And all you have are shares of a trust. You can never, ever, ever take physical possession of it unless you’re an administrator, JP Morgan, and most of us are not. So all you have are shares of a trust designed to mimic what wall street wants you to mimic.

And I think you’ve all noticed that when the markets implode gold spot gold drops with it, however you might, yeah. Also recalled what happened in March, April in the physical market while, while, and this happened in 2008 as well. So we we’ve been taught to think about diversification, but we’ve been taught to think that diversification is, well, you have some stocks or you have some bonds.

Yes. Some growth, you have, you know, growth stocks and then you have these kinds of stocks and that, and that’s diversified, but it’s not, it’s all in intangible assets that are easily controlled and manipulated. And when we have 38 trading halts in March alone, right. So you can lose all access to them.

They can evaporate, they can lop off numbers. They can do anything with that. If you want to be properly diversified, you need to have physical gold outside of the system, pegged to its true fundamental value. So that if all of these stocks and bonds and ETFs and derivatives and options and all this other garbage, that your intangible stuff that you’re holding over a year, this then goes up.

You might recall in March and April that they were paying like $80 premiums to the spot market in the physical market because the physical market, there is a finite amount in the intangible market. There is an infinite amount. Right. So, and there is a formula. I mean, right now I haven’t recalculated it in a while, so you’ll forgive me, but you can also look and get close enough, close enough.

If you go on the debt clock they have down in the right-hand corner where they basically talk about the true value. And I was on there maybe a week or so ago, and it was at something like 35 bucks an hour or 35,000 bucks an ounce. So if you’re at 1867 or wherever it happens to be at the moment and its true fundamental value is at 35,000 it’s out bargain, but it can also offset your losses that you’re going to incur by any wealth that you hold in the city.

Because I will also point out that the last time I checked my math a trillion times zero was still zero. And that’s all you can convert those stocks and bonds into.

Ben: [01:03:16] Yeah. Physical gold obviously outside of the system, and I’ve done a whole nother interview with mark Huxley about physical gold ownership, owning it in different jurisdictions and all of these sorts of things.

But  I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about something like Bitcoin. Wait I know that Bitcoin is not tangible. It has been a store of value for, you know, 10, 12 years. So very, I see your face as a store of value comment, but there’s a narrative right now.

This is being recorded. We’re getting a December that. Millennials view this as the new gold and that Bitcoin is outpacing gold as a potential store of value. You have public companies like micro strategy, buying hundreds of millions of dollars of gold Druckenmiller a number of big name macro players saying, Hey, this Bitcoin thing, it’s displays characteristics to gold, shorter time, a history of being in existence, but it has the benefit.

Like we talked about portability earlier. I can just memorize 12 words in my head. I can walk freely amongst borders, declare nothing, strip me down, beat me. And then as soon as I get to internet connection, I type in those 12 words and I can access this Bitcoin, assuming there’s some sort of market I can sell it for whatever new currency of cigarettes or whatever we sweat to to, well, you never know.

Yeah, probably unlikely, but you know what I mean? I’d be curious of your thoughts specifically in what scenarios would you see that something like Bitcoin would outperform something like gold in this end of fee yet? Sort of scenario.

Lynette: [01:05:05] Well, you, you really said a lot of mouthfuls of stuff and it was really a good, a good segue.

So let me first say that because I’ve been watching Bitcoin since it came out and I believe it was April of 2009, right after the quantitative easing. And I will also say that I read the 1996 NSA white paper on how to introduce a digital currency. A lot of similarities there, I will say. And I also read the 1998 white paper on the smart contracts.

So I’ve been following this for a really long time, but I will also say that I am not a computer person, so I don’t really understand all the mechanisms underneath it. And I like things really simple now. Do you think it was a coincidence that it came out in 2009?

Ben: [01:06:04] It’s a creature of the, this massive financial recession.

That’s for sure.

Lynette: [01:06:10] Getting us used to the digital currencies. Right? So now what you’re seeing is you’re seeing a massive wall street adoption and another trading tool. I would a hundred percent argue with you on a store of value. It has not been tested through any level of liquidity. So I know that that’s the direction that we’re going in.

It will end, and it may be. It is a good way to move freely like that. Although I would probably feel a whole lot more comfortable myself with a physical coin or jewelry in my possession, but I can see the benefits of it. And I like how you kept likening it to gold, because that’s what they’ve done from the very beginning.

All the images that you see of Bitcoin, they’re gold. Why? So they say that because there’s a limited amount of them and, you know, forgive me on this. I mean, I’m still learning, we’re all students, right. But can’t they fork and haven’t hasn’t Bitcoin forked. And by the way, if you go onto the Bitcoin website, doesn’t it say that whoever is conducting a transaction or is holding Bitcoin is anybody can see.

Ben: [01:07:36] Well, those are the characteristics of the blockchain, which a lot of people forget that it’s public, it’s transparent and it’s permanent. Instead of trusting fidelity to say how much GLD I have in my account, I’m decentralizing this to every single node on the network. That’s keeping track of it.

By definition, it’s pseudonym eminence. You can see the wallet address and how much Bitcoin for anybody. But associating that with Ben Lakoff or Lynette is somewhat more difficult to do, but that they are getting there.

Lynette: [01:08:08] But not impossible. And so do you see central banks saying, you know, we’ve had a great run.

Here you go. You manage the currency. I don’t really see that. So, you know, I think for a speculation and it’s not gold, you can hack it. I mean, there have been lots of cases of hacking and we saw China shut down the distribution centers for you to access your Bitcoin. So I, you know, I think governments can do that.

Just like governments can confiscate gold. I mean, you know, there’s, there’s lots there. So what I would say about Bitcoin and I get this question a lot, because I’m not really an advocate. If somebody feels comfortable enough with it to hold a little bit of it and then, you know, rocker roll hoochie, COO, but I would still have my real proven wealth outside of the system, because I always liked to ask myself this very key question.

What if I’m right. And what if I’m wrong? And if I can do something that it really doesn’t matter whether I’m right or wrong, that’s where I want to be. Right. So I’ll take gold one step further because my uncle Al’s show showed me that confiscation is a real key and they did it in India. When they de monetized 85% of their currency in 2016, they confiscated gold.

Excuse me. From their citizens. So personally, I take my lessons from uncle Al and I only, this is not always been true, but once we got to a certain point in the trend, I was no longer comfortable holding bullying coins because of the confiscation threat. So personally, I only hold collectible coins and you made mention as well about holding it in different jurisdictions and off shore and all this, you know, we’re going through a currency life cycle reset.

And so I personally think that you need it close enough so that when you need it, you can get. And I had done a dual interview with Jim holder, who also was really keen on holding his gold off shore. During that interview. He admitted that one time he needed some gold. And so we went to bring it back, what a pain in the neck it was to do that.

So I do think that it should be, you should hold it in a diversified manner. And I would also say that there, depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish there are different kinds of gold and silver. Silver is more day to day barter durability. For me, a lot of people think that silver is, you know, more undervalued than gold and it may be, but you’re really talking about more of a trade.

And historically, during hyperinflationary events gold as the primary currency metal and the metal against which governments and central banks reset the Fiat. That’s going to get, keep you in a much better position. It always says outperformed through resets. And then finally, I would also talk about opportunity because right now you have all of these assets and instruments and income producing assets that are way severely overvalued.

Everybody agrees with that, right?

Ben: [01:11:56] I mean, I’ve heard this yet.

Lynette: [01:11:59] Right. And you have gold and silver that’s severely undervalued. Well, I like to hold most of my wealth in an undervalued asset. That’s in a longterm positive trend and the least amount of my wealth. It is overvalued asset. That’s in a longterm negative trend.

And so as this trend evolves, what’s going to happen. And especially during, during, as the reset speeds up that what’s going to happen is these overvalued assets are going to go back near their fundamental value, which is substantially lower than where they are. And gold will express somewhere near its fundamental value.

Then you can capture some games in terms of whatever that currency is. It doesn’t matter, and you can convert it into those income producing assets when they are dirt cheap. And if you ask me how you’re going to know when to convert. You know, as a technician, what we’re going to see, which we S we saw with gold, we see with everything, it works the same.

So it doesn’t matter. What I’ll be looking for is this cup formation on the bottom and the cup formation. It’s kinda, it looks like the bottom of a cup. I mean, it’s not perfectly smooth, obviously it’s jagged, but it kind of goes like this. And that tells you that big, smart money is very quietly accumulating.

And what you’ll also hear is how awful gold is and why would you want it? And nobody wants it. It’s an old Relic, except that it’s still used across every single aspect of the global economy. So what kind of old Relic is it really? Why are they using it? And they have never, ever, ever been able to duplicate certain qualities of both golden silver in the lab.

But boy, they duplicate Fiat money in the labs all the time as witnessed by the rise of all of these cryptos. But I don’t think that central bankers will allow that competition. So I’m really waiting and I’m not a speculator, I’m a strategist. So I’m really waiting until that judgment comes in and we see who’s in charge and then I will be able to take my goals and I won’t take all of it for sure.

I used to think I would do a lot more, but I’ll take that portion and I will, as I need to convert into income producing assets, start to comfort my gold, and it’s also a way to pay off fixed rate debt. That’s the government’s strategy. So. You know, I mean, I just think you should do what the smartest guys in the room on any given topic are doing for themselves and they’re buying gold.

Yeah.

Ben: [01:14:54] Well gradually and then suddenly, right. And these things work until they don’t the Titanic floated until it’s sink, but the whole buy inexpensive assets and sell the expensive ones certainly is a lot harder to do than say that’s for sure. I’m trying to be aware of time.

We’ve already gone over a few minutes. I could talk to you for hours on this stuff, right? You don’t know how long your fair skin hands. Interesting.  I’m pretty sure they’re going to get a lot of value of this, but I’m curious the last kind of question about gold, you know, I I’m convinced I need to have it, but one aspect of this 1930s with your uncle Al, was that he had this coin that was excluded from this you know, so legally he had had gold and it was fine.

Thinking through that now, potentially government compensation is not out of the picture. You mentioned something about collectibles. Like where would you place your bets of what would be excluded and where do you monitor this  to try to keep your finger on the pulse? If this certain type of asset is excluded from this potential compensation, I want to own that.

Lynette: [01:16:11] Absolutely. Well, that is it. Isn’t where, what I is, where I do. I never tell anybody to do something that I’m not doing myself. And that is, you know, an ITM trading. We cover the full gambit of every kind of available gold and silver that there is. We’ve been around since 95. We have a lot of good relationships with wholesalers.

So we, I could do anything I wanted. There’s no restrictions there, but I go to the collectible gold coins that are minted prior. Mostly there they’re always a little, you know, Exception to every rule, but, but by a very wide margin I do the pre 33 collectible collectible coins, which we do at ITM. And where you monitor them is there’s PC GS, there’s NGC.

But if you’re working with us, this is a lifetime relationship. We don’t really like to just throw you in some gold or silver and go good luck. We like to educate. That’s what our channel is all about. And we’ve got more things coming on board too, to really be prepared for what we’re already walking through.

Hmm. So we help you see where it is. I mean, you can always see where your portfolio is in terms of fiance, but it really, and we walk you through this whole strategy. So anybody, all of the consultants there not only have they been trained on my initial strategy, but we come together every week with a lot.

There’s just lots and lots of knowledge at ITM trading. We really are like a family. And so we are always looking at how can we make things better? How can we make them more understandable? How can we make them clearer? So we actually help you do that. And if you’re working with us, if you choose, because you can just buy whatever you feel like, but we recommend walking through the reset with a plan and we call that our wealth shield.

And it looks at your ability to sustain your current standard of living. Protect the wealth that you’ve already accumulate position yourself for those growth opportunities. And then for me, but again, it depends on what your goals are for me. Legacy building is really important because I can’t even tell you how much I adore my family.

You know, my children, my grandchildren, and those that are not even close, born yet and looking right. What the powers that be have in mind for us. And I’m really hopeful that we can all come together and say, stop, no, you can’t get away with it, but maybe we can, maybe we can’t. So I’m going to use my goals way.

They have used it for 6,000 years to make sure that I maintain my wealth and my ability to purchase and my ability to buy my way or my family’s way out of circumstances that might not be real pleasant or wonderful. Especially with what they have. So if we go into the sharing economy with the few at the top, that own everything, because they’re going to want you to volunteer.

Everything’s going to be set up as it’s voluntary. Look at TSA, right? The day before the busiest travel day of the year, they installed it. You didn’t have to walk through it, but if you wanted to go on the plane, you were gone a walk through it. So you volunteered. That’s the way they want everything. They want you to volunteer and I’m not volunteering.

And gold tells you I’m not volunteering. I can always convert my gold into Bitcoin, into central bank, digital dollars, or I can always convert it. But the same cannot be said the other way. And Bitcoin, or any of these digital cryptocurrencies have not been yet. They haven’t been, so I want that test to come in place and it almost did in March, but they just did this tsunami of new dollars.

And now you’ve got the wealthy getting wealthier and you’ve got those on the other end of the spectrum, really, really struggling. And those mom and pops that create half the jobs in this country. So many of them are gone decimated. So yeah. Got gold, got silver physical in your possession. I use a rule of thumb that I use makes it easy.

If you can hold it inside of an IRA, I don’t want it.

And let me just throw one other little piece out. The person that can afford $8 million on one ounce of gold is likely to be like treasury secretary wooden, somebody that writes the rules or. Be somebody that has the ability to influence those there. Right? The rules, because since the spot market is so cheaply and easily manipulated, let’s say it’s at 3000 bucks when they decide to do a confiscation and most gold is held inside of IRAs.

People even own it. So spots at 3000, they go, we’re going to pay you 5,000 bucks for it. And most people believing wall street. I don’t know why, but believing wall street would go well. Wow. It’s only worth 3000 and they’re willing to pay me five. Okay. No complaint. I’ve had people tell me, well, back in 33, they paid you $20 and 67 cents for your goals.

And then right after they got it, boom, they revalued it up. Right. So but somebody that’s paid $8 million for coin. You think they’re going to turn it in for 5,000? It’s the smallest part of the gold market. And it has special values outside of the gold market, but regardless, and this is so important for people to understand, regardless of its form at its base, both gold and silver are monetary metals.

So even if you have aunt Bessie, Sterling silver, right 92 and a half percent pure, if those candlesticks are bent and broken, doesn’t matter, it’s still 92 and a half percent pure. You got to have in order to have a properly diversified portfolio. So it doesn’t matter whether you’re right or whether you’re wrong.

You need to have gold and silver outside of the markets. And it needs to be at a big enough level that it can protect all of the wealth that you choose to hold in cryptocurrencies in the stock market and the bond market in the derivatives market. You know, it, it needs to, that’s your foundation. That’s your wealth foundation.

It’s held value for you.

Ben: [01:23:33] I love it really, really good stuff. I mean, it goes right back to that Jim Rogers way G right. Crisis and opportunity this this reset is a crisis for, or a lot of things, but it also presents great opportunities for those that prepare accordingly. Really appreciate what you’re doing coming on and talking about these things and really helping people think through the potential.

And your whole, if what if I’m right? What if I’m wrong? It’s, it’s a good thought process process to go through with all of these investments, especially, but I want to be aware of your time Lynette. This has been this has been an honor and a fantastic conversation. I’ll link a lot of these things in the show notes that we’ve talked about, certainly your YouTube channel and your website.

But where can my listeners find out more about you or ITM? Where would you like to.

Lynette: [01:24:22] Well, you know, really our YouTube channel is where we do all the education, but then I write blogs every week as well. So they can go to ITM trading.com. And if they just put my name in the search bar, I’m pretty sure I’ll come up.

And actually, this has been a lot of fun for me as well. And I, I love the fact that, you know, you’re, you were actually contrarian to my perspective, and I love that opportunity to address that because we need to have these conversations.

Ben: [01:24:56] Yeah. And I’m happy to come onto your YouTube channel and debate gold versus Bitcoin.

Anytime. I didn’t want to go all the way there, but you know,

Lynette: [01:25:04] well, we could, I mean, it’s a conversation that really needs to happen, but, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to look at what if I’m right and what if I’m wrong? And if you can cover all of those bases, then it doesn’t really matter and you can sleep at night and you don’t have to worry about anything.

Really.

Ben: [01:25:24] Definitely, definitely Lynette. Truly a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on.

Lynette: [01:25:30] My pleasure too. Thank you so much, Ben. I hope to see you again.

Ben: [01:25:35] There you have it. Thank you for listening. Really appreciate your support. Show notes, transcript links, and more can be found on our [email protected].

If you’d be so kind, please share this with anyone you think might be interested or get some value from this conversation. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out. I’m always happy to hear them. Lastly, if you’re on YouTube, please like the video or subscribe to the channel. If you’re listening to the audio version of this, please subscribe to the podcast and or leave a review.

This really helps more people find the podcast. And I really appreciate it. Thanks again and hope you have a fantastic day. Happy investing.

Ben Lakoff is an entrepreneur and finance professional. He has developed strong global finance experience through 10 years of international assignments in the US, Brazil, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Czech Republic and through the award of his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification.