Transcription
The federal government has been operated as a criminal enterprise on a financial basis. Period. Way outside the law. It was enough money to fund a separate civilization. Our plan had been to win the proxy war by hybrid war in the Ukraine, get a hold of the Russian resources, and maintain our hegemony against China in a unipolar model. Guess what? We failed.
The current Administration was put into place by the bankers to get the control grid accomplished. Trump can only do what the bankers want him to do. Do you want a global Mafia, or the, or the Federal Reserve, which is still under the powers of [Music] [Applause] [Music] Congress?
Hello everybody, and welcome back to Reinvent Money, a podcast about money and power. Back on the show today, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the George H.W. Bush Administration and founder of the Soly Report, Katherine Oltin Fitz. Welcome back to the show, Katherine.
Hey Paul, it's wonderful to be back. I love you. I love your company. Thanks so much.
Yeah. Last time we actually recorded um at your place in in France—wonderful location—um this time we do it online. Uh, looking forward to catching up with you because just just so much going on, and we cannot possibly discuss all the major events in one podcast. So let's just focus on two things that are near and dear to you. On the one hand, um on the one, I would like to discuss the black budget with you because you've been writing about that for so long that every year um billions disappear from the US budget into it.
It's trillions. It's trillions. That crazy trillions.
Yeah. And so I was wondering if Doge Musk um and his ilk can actually shed some light on on the black budget and whether we can um find out what's going on there, or what do you think?
That's not going to happen. So that's one topic, and the other topic is the CBDC because you are very um skeptical and and um you find CBTC a very dangerous prospect. Then Trump is also against CBTC, so I was wondering how do you uh resonate with that?
He's unbelievably pro-CBDC as long as privately owned and controlled—exactly the stable coins. So yeah, right. Um so let's let's discuss that too, but let's first talk about the black budget. Could you first uh explain to our viewers uh what exactly is the black budget?
So the black budget started in uh at the end of World War I, with the '47 and '49 act in the United States, where a process was set up to to fund a secret infrastructure for highly classified projects by the military and intelligence. And at first uh there was money that was seized at the end of World War II, and that was a portion of the funding, but there were also ongoing activities, including clawing money out of appropriations made to other agencies that was used for black projects. And you had one Congressional committee which would oversee the quote-unquote black budget. And as that money grew and then was made eligible for providing contracts to private corporations—so bringing private companies in to do these highly classified projects and pay for it from essentially issuing treasury bonds and borrowing money—you know, you created a direct linkage on classified projects between the ability to borrow as much as you wanted globally and the stock market is the only way I can describe it, the securities market. And so the black budget grew and grew. And then something happened. Uh, we had a budget deal in 1995. There was a big effort by the central bankers to get the US governmental process on a on a more balanced budget and a financially responsible trajectory with respect to retirement savings. Um, the budget deal exploded, the government shut down, there was a big fight, and as later described to me by the largest head of the largest pension fund in the country, “We’ve given up on the country; we’re moving all the money out starting in the fall.” And that was the fall of the—it was October 1997, the beginning of the 1998 fiscal year, when literally trains of money started to disappear. And by 2001, there was $4 trillion missing. And on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of of DOD, which is one of the agencies where the majority money was going missing, gave a press conference and said there’s 2.3 trillion missing from the Department of Defense. And I was working with a reporter on a story that was going to publish that Friday—cover story going for, you know, grassroots to all the Senate and Congressional desks—um explaining about all the money that was disappearing from the federal government. We called it the missing money. And uh I made the mistake of saying to the reporter, “Nothing will stop this story from going viral,” and then we know what happened the next day. And what happened the next day is several buildings holding all the records of that $4 trillion dollars got blown up, and we were off to the races with great appropriations and the war on terror, and but the money kept going missing, missing, missing. I kept covering it for many years. And so uh a process began. The largest amount that went missing in any year was in 2015—6.5 trillion—and a professor from Michigan State University heard me talking about it and said, uh, “You know what? Can I do to help?” And I had him and his students do a survey of DOD, the two agencies where the majority of money had gone missing, and he came back and found 21 trillion missing. I had it up to 12 trillion, and he he increased it by 9 trillion. And and essentially, you know, what everybody says, “Well, where’s the money going?” And we can engage in conjecture on that, but but clearly part of the problem was that trying to finance the black budget and a whole parallel universe of of sort of weaponry and intelligence and military infrastructure was getting more and more painful. When 9/11 happened, they passed the Patriot Act that made it much easier to get on-budget money into the black budget, but it kept ballooning. And literally the way some of us describe it is it was enough money to fund a separate civilization. You know, essentially people saying, “We can’t operate within this Democratic machinery; we have to fund and build a secret infrastructure outside the government.” So we called it the breakaway civilization. And literally, you know, you funded a very significant infrastructure. And one way of looking at what’s happening now is the breakaway civilization is breaking back in.
And how does it manifest itself? This breakaway civilization—how how can we recognize that? How is it being built?
So, for example, in uh two, three years ago, I sat down and I spent two years with one of the best um researchers I know, and we tried to estimate how many underground bases there were just in the United States alone and in the oceans immediately outside of the United States. We estimated 170. And that, of course, is the platform for all sorts of activities that you want to keep secret, you know, including some of the things you may or may not be doing in space. So so uh and there was a wonderful group—there were two people at the Washington Post, I think 2010, 2012—that did a big study; they made a database of all the secret facilities and all the facilities that had been financed through the Patriot Act or after the Patriot Act. It was called Top Secret America, and you saw this enormous explosion of money going for these activities. And part of the thing to understand, Paul, is this explosion of secret and invisible activities—the money is not often spent productively—and you get an enormous corporate infrastructure which is financially dependent on this money, and then you get huge lobbyist constituents depending on this money, and the next thing you know everybody’s in the defense and the national security business, and everybody’s making money from secrecy. And it was it was very interesting. Um, I’ve had a couple of interactions in the last 20, 30 years with various groups who who inside the machinery decide, okay, we’re going to reduce the trans—you know, we’re going to reduce the secrecy—and they work through the different liabilities—financial liabilities—because you’ve transferred so much powerful technology—ownership of technology—to private companies without reimbursing the taxpayers, or you’ve stolen so much money, they can’t figure out how to let the secrecy down. And it’s one of the things I think that’s driving the administration and and all the US administrations and around the world to just go to a total control model where they say, you know, because their belief is democracy doesn’t work. And so what, you know—and it’s it’s similar in most of the G7 nations, but I use the United States—we have the bankers who traditionally controlled monetary policy and then the people’s Representatives—the legislature—that controlled fiscal policy, you know, taxation with representation, not without. And part of what happened after the deal in 1995 and why they started I think to have what I call a financial coup is they said, “Look, this doesn’t work. We, the bankers, are to take control of fiscal policy.” And what we’ve been watching and part of what Doge is doing is the continual process of stripping away the civil service, so the bankers control through corporate contractors, right? Because—and that’s part of building the control grid.
Yeah, because on the one hand you could argue Doge is, for example, um bringing full transparency when it comes to US aid, and they are trying to make it clear to the American public and the whole world basically how the money is being spent um in in the US uh on a government level. But and they also were going to check out the DOD, right, some of the expenses within DOD, but you don’t think in the end Doge could play a role in trying to uncover all these black budget expenses?
So let me—because we can make some things very simple, and this is something we can make very simple. So when the professor from Michigan State University, Dr. Skidmore, and I published this big study in 2017 saying there’s 21 trillion missing, you know, of undocumented adjustments in the government, of course the question was—I was part of a group of people in the first Bush Administration—got laws passing and have to have audited financial statements. And the reason we know there’s 21 trillion missing is every year they said, “We can’t publish financial statements as required by law, and here are the undocumented adjustments,” right? So they failed to comply with the most basic constitutional and legislative requirements of how we run F—you know, the the federal government has been operated as a criminal enterprise on a financial basis. Period. Way outside the law. So so uh there was a big sort of HBL in Washington whereby everybody—the Treasury, DOD, and HUD—were dancing around about how they were going to, you know, explain why they couldn’t produce audits for 20 years and how they were going to, you know, they keep saying, “Well, next year we’ll do it.” Okay. So so the resolution of that big debate, Paul, was in October 2018. Do you remember when we had Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, and America spent a week uh exploring the teenage sex life of Judge Kavanaugh? Right? You remember that? Okay. During that time, interestingly enough, the Trump Administration, the White House, and Congress—Senate and House—Republican and Democrat all got together and agreed to a little-known policy called Federal Accountable Standards Advisory Board Statement 56. How’s that for a a delicious, electric, entertaining headline? Okay. I call it, for short, FASB 56. What FASB 56 said, as a matter of administrative policy, agreed to everybody during the sex scandal, that the US government didn’t have to obey the Constitution provisions for financial management, didn’t have to obey the laws and regulations, and that a secret group of people by a secret process that would remain secret could take portions of the federal government finances and move them outside the financial statements in the budget process on a secret basis—not just for the 24 agencies but for 150-plus governmental entities. And when you combine it with the National Security classification laws, it also applies to the big banks and defense contractors and other contractors doing doing with the federal government. Now let me explain to you what that means: as a matter of financial disclosure, it means when I look at the US bond market, whether it’s the treasury bond market, the corporate bond market, or most of the large-cap stocks, their financial disclosure is entirely meaningless. I have no idea what it means. Okay. Now the first thing, if you’re serious and you’re Doge and you want to, you know, I think their number one goal is to cut current expenditures and try and help get the model back in economic balance, and we need to talk about the real issues that need to be faced and dealt with, and I think that’s part of what they’re doing—the first thing you would have said is, you know, something, “We’re going to resend FASB 56.” Not a word. Go go over to X. Everybody’s saying, “Why aren’t you doing anything about FASB 56? Why aren’t you saying anything about the 21 trillion?” Mom’s the word. Okay. But remember FASB 56 was done by the first Trump Administration.
Right.
Okay. So so so here’s what is Doge is doing. So one of the most important interviews at the beginning of the administration is Secretary of State Rubio gave an interview, and he said, uh, “We’re no longer a unipolar model; it’s now a multipolar world, and we have to adjust to a multipolar world.” Okay. You’re talking about an enormous change because we’re taking the old Bretton Woods system that was adapted for the Petro-dollar and is now adapted to the debt dollar, and you’re saying, okay, the revenues minus expenses don’t work; we’re running at an unacceptable trade and budget deficit. Our plan had been to win the proxy war by hybrid war in the Ukraine, get a hold of the Russian resources, and maintain our hegemony against China in a unipolar model. Guess what? We failed. So Trump’s trying to put a happy face on on—guess what? We lost. Right? There’s no happy face, but he’s he’s trying, and that’s what Rubio is trying to do. Okay. So now that you can’t strip out and get cheap oil and gas and resources and commodities going east-west, what are you talking about? You’re talking about Greenland, Canada, Mexico, the Panama Canal. You’re talking about going north-south, right? But well, you’re trying to get the revenues back in balance, and you’re trying to get the trade of the commodities you want and need to run the global empire back in balance. So you’re asking Europe to pay more. So whether you’re trying to get the revenues up or the expenses down, they’re trying to do both. They’re trying to re-calibrate the model, and any administration would have to do this. And one of their biggest problems is that one of the reasons the expenses have ballooned—you’ve been paying people to go along with what you’re doing. So the American population is basically, “Here, check, sit down, shut up, don’t ask questions.” And whether it’s hiring a lot more people on defense contractors or giving everybody a check not to work, you know, the lack of productivity has gone up, up, up, up, up, and healthcare expenses have ballooned because everybody’s sick. So so your your healthcare’s gone down. Okay. So so you have a whole layer of unproductive spending, but then you have a layer of corruption, and the corruption is absolutely in the old model and the new model is all off the charts. And and the problem is people who have been getting that money, you know, they have the ability to kill people; they have the ability to destroy you; they have the ability to, you know, I mean, their their covert operations capacity is enormous. Okay. But when you look at a group of Mafia who are getting their cash flows cut and their security clearances cancelled, you know, they get very angry and mad. And so you’ve got a war going on, you you know, but but—and and it’s really funny because the the one of the latest Gallup poll um charts—do you ever watch the Gallup poll charts sometimes?
Yeah, but not consistently.
Okay. Well, there’s the latest one says the question is, “Is the country going in the right direction?” And they’re asking the Americans, and the Republicans go from saying 10% saying it’s going in the right direction—Trump wins and immediately rises to 68%. If you look at the Democrats, they’re at 40%, and then they dive to 5%. Yeah. So it’s a huge spread, but if you—I’ve been trying very hard to listen to each group, and each group is embroiled in lots of different issues. On some issues they have good intelligence; on other issues they’re as stupid as a rock. It’s frightening, but neither of them see the control grid being engineered and snapping into place. It’s like they’re both asleep to their real dangers, and it’s frightening because the the um, you know, the the inability to compute and get a good map of what’s going on, let alone what to do about it, is—you know, I’ve never seen it lower in the United States than it is now.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult, of course, to understand what’s going on because the world is getting so complex. At the same time, there’s more tools available right now than ever before to understand what’s going on. But do you believe on balance that America is heading in heading the right way after two months of Trump, or are you—because I know you’ve always been uh skeptical about um him and and quite a few of his team members—you like a few others, for example, like Kennedy—but you’ve always been um highly skeptical about Musk, for example—but do you think America is going the right way or only getting worse from here?
So my my goal, you know, if there’s anything we love at Solariat, it’s freedom. So our tagline is “Actional intelligence for free-inspired life.” We want you to be free, right? That’s what we want. And I believe you can’t be free unless we’re all free. So it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. And and so and I believe in a world where you have free speech and and relatively free flow of capital—that’s where entrepreneurs solve a lot of the problems that plague us, and people figure it out in their daily lives. So so our focus is on sovereignty—individual sovereignty, government sovereignty—and freedom. And I would say that the current Administration was put into place by the bankers to get the control grid accomplished. The last group couldn’t accomplish the control grid; this group is doing a remarkable job of implementing the control grid at high speed um and and marketing it. And um I would say both the Democratic and Republican side do not see the digital concentration camp snapping into place around them, and it’s it’s shocking.
Yeah. It’s like a new tech—y, right?—that’s being uh rolled out in front of our eyes. It’s it’s not technocracy; it’s slavery. I mean, it’s—you know, I think it’ll have a different face and feeling in Europe than in the United States, but in the United States we’re talking about slavery, and and we’re talking about—you know, I I I have said that uh if you look at the you know one of the reasons we can get rid of USA is we don’t need soft power anymore because with drones and robots and invisible weaponry and surveillance systems, you know, we can use hard power very cheaply and economically. And if you look at some of the things that have been happening in the United States with using hard power to basically kill people and take their lands, you know, this is very dangerous.
Yeah, but at the same time you do favor smaller government. So with Trump slashing Department of of Education—like having costs—and also um sending away lots of bureaucrats um it should make the federal government smaller, so that would align them with your view of more um individual freedom. Is that correct?
No, no, not at all. Because if you look at the control structures being put into place and the money being put behind them, you’re going to have significantly less. And it looks to me—it’s too early to tell—but it looks to me like they’re planning on leaving the control pieces of the US government in place to control. Right? So they’re symbolically slashing certain costs, but at the same time um our freedom is being heavily reduced on other fronts, right? And if you look at many of the things there—if you said to me, okay, go into Washington and and dramatically reduce current expenditures in a way that’s good for the country and and and and healthy for the country—I would be reducing many of the same things, although I would be doing it a way where it would stick and not attract court opposition. So you know you’re you’re the administration went in and said, “We want shock and awe,” and they’re purposefully cutting in ways that are illegal and causing great backlash in the courts. And the question is why? Why are they doing it that way? They clearly intend to do it that way; they want to do it that way. It doesn’t have to be done that way; it can be done totally legally, quickly. You know, it’s it’s the difference between—do you want to do neurosurgery with a scalpel or with a hacksaw? And if you’re doing it with a hacksaw, I don’t think you’re planning on the patient to live. So they want the patient to die, and then with what what glowing minds do then resurrect something.
Well, here’s my question because a lot of what they’re doing is focused on plunder. So from my guess—from what I can tell—and the best source of information—Wired Magazine has done a remarkable job of documenting and and describing what Doge is doing with the IT systems—my guess is they’re just taking the data, right? They’re just taking it and moving it into their AI. If you look at Musk’s different companies, including the ones he’s out in the market raising capital for, you know, you were systematically with firing the IG—firing the White House ethics—all office—um you know, a lot of those IGs were at agencies that are doing investigations or regulatory actions against him or his company. Um, if you if you look at, you know, a government special employee such as Musk is not supposed to be fiddling around in things that cause their business values and private interests to go up, you know, from everything I can see they are. But I also think they’re literally just taking data and moving it into private AI, and and that is going to be unbelievable uh good for whatever AI you’re moving in because what AI needs to really build is very high-quality data, and government data and payment data is remarkable in that respect. Now the Doge is making a great effort to persuade you there was terrible corruption in the systems, and there is terrible waste or—and clearly if 21 trillion is missing, you you know, you have all sorts of strategies to get that money missing—but um so I’m not trying to say that the old system was right because there was a massive financial coup going on, but um if you look at what Doge is doing, it looks to me like they are basically stripping data and privatizing it in the just-do-it method.
Yeah, they’re they’re feeding the AI beast with the ultimate goal, I guess, indeed, then to control society.
Well, but if you if you have a server—a government server—that has has data on it which is subject to very serious privacy laws and National Security laws, and you just bring in an external hard drive, slap it on, and then take it out—that’s theft. But it’s criminal, right? It’s criminal theft. And if it’s helping your AI and you’re out raising capital for that company’s, you know, AI—you’ve got an AI—xAI is company—and you’re raising capital at the same time, and the value of your your market value is going up while you’re raising stock—that’s a violation of the of the laws related to government special employees. And if it’s happening, that is a criminal violation.
It’s interesting to see how a lot of alternative media are sort of aligning at the moment with a lot of mainstream media when it comes to the risks and dangers of the policies being implemented at the moment by by Trump and Musk and his in his other tech bros. So you know, it this is what makes it complicated. If you look at what needs to be done in terms of re-engineering the model, it’s hard work; it’s not easy. So if you look at what Trump is trying to do, it’s not easy, and he is trying to do it; he is trying to change the model. Now my concern is the big racketeering. So so they stole—somebody stole the 21 trillion. Now we’re stealing all the data. Okay. And the courts are pushing back, but the big steal is what Howard Lutty, the Secretary of Commerce, described as $500 trillion of land and mineral resources owned by the federal government. So if you think the Federal government has 36,000…
36 trillion of debt. You know that's pretty tiny compared to $500 trillion of land and mineral assets. And unfortunately, my concern is that this group of people is really looking to privatize and steal that, and and and we're looking at a group of people building up to the biggest land grab in history. So they're driving down the economy to the bottom in order to then seize the opportunity to—you got it—buy assets on the cheap.
Well, my question is, are are they systematically now uh, if if you look at some of the things that some, you know, so so tariffs or other things the president is trying to do, he wants to move manufacturing back to the United States. You know, and you need the dollar to come down, and and you need, you know, a variety of reasons for it to be cost-effective to move back. So so I'm not saying he's he's necessarily doing those things to cause a recession, but if you look at a whole bunch of stuff that's going on, it looks to me like we're building up into, you know, a real potential reset down.
So, for example, if you look at all the growth in GDP for quite a while now, um, it's come from deficit financing, right, in the United States. So um, you know, I I I don't know, it looks to me, if you look at what the shock and awe strategy is, is—and I don't know the answer—the shock and awe strategy is designed to dismantle um a portion of the government and the economy in a way that you could get a very significant recession.
I mean, here here's the biggest question on the economy, and it comes down to the fight over the HHS uh appointees. So HHS is the Health and Human Service. If you look at the 2025 federal budget, the military, the on-budget, you know, not the black budget, but the on-budget uh military uh budget is $857 billion. The Medicare and Medicare, the health care budget is $1.8 trillion. So it's more than double the the cost of running a global Military. Okay, and that that has ballooned. If we went back to 2010 disability levels, Paul, we would save $500 trillion a year on the budget.
So when Kennedy went through his confirmation hearing and he said we have a chronic epidemic, we have an epidemic of chronic illness among the children, you know, he uses the number I think 54% of kids have have chronic illnesses. The pediatrician I most trust says it's up in the 70s because most kids can't afford to get properly tested. So America is being poisoned. I don't know if you've been to America recently, but literally America is being poisoned, and it's not one thing, it's many things. And what Kennedy has been fighting for is to get into HHS and really turn it around, step one being bringing transparency to what is causing Health to decline. Right now, we spend almost double what the next industrialized country spends on health care—$135,000 per person—and everybody's just walking around poisoned. So so if you're going to turn the budget around, you need a plan. And if you look at what just happened with the number two, the person going into CDC, the Kennedy's nomination got thrown out and killed, and the White House had to withdraw it. And if you look at who they're putting in, it says full-on control grid. You know, mRNA technology is going to poison another round of people; it's bad.
And what's Trump's role in all this? Is he like uh just a a useful idiot, or is he also one of the Masters behind this strategy? So he's doing it. I mean, if you if you look at his announcement for the Stargate initiative several days into the administration, it was $500 billion for data centers, you know, ostensibly private investment, but if you look at where it's really coming from, it's coming from government and mRNA technology for everybody, even though we've proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that mRNA technology is poison and kills. So um, you know, now what I try and explain to people is the fundamentals of how the US government works. Are you ready?
Yep.
Okay. So every week the New York Fed and the primary dealers, of which Howard Luton's firm was one of them—24 primary dealers—go out in the market and they borrow money and they put it in the New York Fed. The New York Fed is the depository for the US government. So Treasury, the agency, say they have their bank accounts in the New York Fed, or the New York Fed member banks as agents, and those member banks of course own and control the New York Fed. So so so they put the money in Treasury, and Treasury spends the money. And the last month, I think it was February, our total deficit was bigger than 100% of our revenues.
Wow.
Okay. Right. So so we're really dependent on the Fed borrowing and putting that money in. Now we could talk about the fact that we don't need a debt-based currency, but let's leave that for another day. Um, you know, so there's a bit of a ruse here, but the minute the New York Fed stops doing that, everything stops. Okay. Day-to-day, week-to-week, the federal government is 100% dependent on the New York Fed. Now, at the beginning of the administration, a reporter from Politico asked the chairman of the Fed, J. Powell, if Trump wants you to resign, will you, and he said no. And he said, well, can Trump fire you, and he said no. Trump can only do what the bankers want him to do.
Yeah.
So he can go for 24 hours without the bankers. Yeah. So he has the bankers and his uh Tech oligarchy basically uh setting the agenda and defining what's going to happen in the US. I don't know, did you just just see um Elon Musk's dad did an interview? Quite wild. I don't know if you saw it.
No.
There. I know they they they they don't see each other, but what did he say? So so we're going to use a clip of this, and we're just about to record our first-quarter wrap-up. We're going to use—we have great clips on everything—the big story we're going to do is Trump, the first 70 days, and you know, we got tons of clips and stories and everything, but uh, so Musk's father gives an interview and says uh, he's talking about how close the family is to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu uh two years ago in the Biden administration had explained publicly that Elon Musk was the real president.
True fact.
Yeah. Yeah. He's already being called the co-president, right? And but it's it leads to all sorts of um of of anger and fighting also within Trump's crowd. So sooner or later some people will—
You look like I'm giving you a headache.
Yeah. No, it's more like it's such a mess, and not, you know, something—it's not a mess. In other words, what we need to do is distill the complexity down and see the basic simple phenomena of what's happening, because it all comes down to revenues, expenses, and assets. You need your revenues to go up, and you need your expenses to go down. And part of it is, we, the United States, the dollar system, have been running the greatest misallocation of capital in the history of Western civilization. And you know that because you have a very wonderful and successful gold company, and you were right at the heart of trying to help people find real solutions to deal with that massive misallocation of capital.
Right. Exactly.
Okay. So let me give you one other example. Health care was pretty ugly. This is the worst. There is an Australian Think Tank created by the Australian government in 2001 after 9/11 to track the top technologies that drive geopolitical and economic power, and they tracked 64 of the leading technologies. At the end of the financial—I think 2008—the US was the leader in 60 of 64. They just published their 2024 report, and I think it was the end of 2023, the US was the leader in seven; China was the leader in 54 and is moving up fast. Okay. Now that's because if you look at where we're allocating our capital, we're not allocating our capital to maintain our leadership in science and technology. You know, so if you if you look at the expenses you have in the United States and the dollar system, you have way too much going to corruption; you have way too much to, you know, to go to subsidizing the centralization of the economy; you have way too much money spending on control; you have way too much money poisoning people and then paying for them to be sick. You know, and and and we either as a society have to change the way we allocate capital, or basically we're all going to be governed by the Chinese.
Yeah, but I I guess that's also where um people like Musk and Peter Thiel would agree with you that the US needs to invest more into technology and science and AI and robots. And so I guess they they would like to achieve that goal by slashing unnecessary expenses and by focusing on technology.
So um, I think technology is important; however, uh I would say it's, you know, it's not number one, and here's why. One of the things I love about some of the people Trump has brought in is they think and function entrepreneurially. And we do—if you look at the old model, if you look at, you know, corruption 1.0 or dollar model 1.0, you know, it got very sluggish, very slow-moving, very, you know—so we need something much more responsive to the future, much more hopeful, much more building wealth. And a lot of them talk a very good game on these topics. It breaks down when you get into the reality of where their money's really going and what's really happening, because what we're seeing is the solution is, okay, we're here now, so we get to control.
So so I'll never forget when I was I was having a meeting with the cabinet secretary I was working for when I was in the Bush administration, and uh we wanted to propose a new housing platform, and we brought in two guys who were the top guys in the housing industry who'd led this commission on how we should reinvigorate housing in America, and they had proposed lots of decentralization, and the secretary wanted a lot of centralization. And of course, because that's how you get political contributions, you centralize control, and then everybody's got to come into you and give you political contributions, and there you go. And so one of them said, said, well, Mr. Secretary, I thought you Republicans, you believed in decentralization and local whatever. And the secretary had this little assistant from who'd come in from the Heritage Foundation, which is one of the conservative think tanks, and he was very kind of chipper, and he said, yeah, yeah, but we're here now.
Yeah, right. It's always the same thing, right? I mean, Project Heritage was also—the Heritage Foundation was also um I think authoring this Project 2025, right? In the—is that something that's being rolled out as well? Is it sort of overlaps with with what you just said? I've not read it, but but my understanding is a lot of the things they're doing was envisioned by that, and of course, the leader of that has come into a very important position.
So let me just mention what's number one. If technology is not number one, what is number one? If you're going to run a global system, you have to have a culture that can run a global system. You have to have a culture—you know, I used to—have an ally would say—a culture is the integration of the Divine and everyday life. And I went back to him and I said, John Edward Hurley, you forgot to mention culture can be the integration of the Demonic in everyday life. But if you're going to run a global dollar system, you know, monetary financial markets, trade, you know, or you're going to be a critical power in the multipolar world, you have to have a culture that is up to the task.
Yeah. And and what—in 1998 I had a choice of either walking out of the establishment purposely or or going back in, and I decided to walk out. And part of that decision was to then litigate with the Department of Justice for another uh 12, 13 years, or well, the litigate anyway, litigate for eight years and then fight with the IRS for four years anyway. But um and I decided to walk out because I said it was it would—it was better to look for real solutions in the wilderness than to be part of something that was going to fail. And I was sure the unipolar model that they were often running was going to fail.
Yeah. And and I wouldn't have said it to you this way in 1998, but I'll say it to you this way now: they didn't have the culture that was necessary to succeed at doing that. They couldn't—it's what Lavrov said: the Americans are not agreement-capable. It's because they don't have a culture. Now, if you look at the people who designed the strategy that failed—the neocons—they're the ones who are ransacking the government right now. So so the country lost, but you know, they still think they're going to win because they're going to get the plunder.
What kind of culture do you need then? I think, you know, I remember when I was a little girl sort of growing up in a family that really believed in the great game of civilization. You know, we would talk about what it was like to build a cathedral, to design and build a cathedral that would take longer than your lifetime to build and to envision that and be happy to do that. You know, having those kind of long-term lead times and having a culture where people could cooperate, you know, on the enormous things that we needed to do. And and so I was brought up in two different families, but both families were very involved in—and and they would compete—they were very—particularly my father's family—they were very competitive about, well, who's done the most for civilization this year, you know, and who—so my father came back from the war—they moved the hospital he was an intern with over to the China-Burma theater during the war—and when he came back he was commissioned to redesign the emergency rooms for the entire country. You know, and and so uh, you know, he spent years doing that and being really proud of how many, you know—and they would literally compete, he and his brothers—how many lives did you save? How many lives did we save? You know, that was their metric, not how much money did you make in the stock market or the crypto market. It's like, how many lives did you save this year? So my uncle got him back—he got the first transplant center set up in South Carolina. My grandfather had started a clinic in Jackson, Tennessee, which then became the hospital, and then they decided they weren't good enough; he and his partner closed it down, went up to the Mayo Clinic, when they came back they brought antibiotics to Tennessee. They had a cousin in the legislature, and they got antibiotics authorized by the legislature. Got it back in, you know—and again it was like, your grandfather saved thousands of lives with antibiotics, what have you done today?
Yeah. But in a way, the US can learn then also from Chinese culture to have a long-term focus and to think more about the community than just yourself. Or of course, there's a lot to complain about Chinese culture and and the centralized control they have, but they do have a long-term focus that they are able to—right, if you look at their planning, it's unbelievable. You know, the planning, the plans they publish, they work at it. I mean, it's a very interesting topic because I I studied Chinese, you know, I lived in Hong Kong for a few years, studied Chinese, and I I have a lot of thoughts about what makes Chinese culture unattractive, but also what makes it great and and attractive in many ways. But if you want to if you want to think about this issue, watch the—you know, because there's quite a uh a growing movie industry in China—watch Wandering Earth one and two, and watch the comparisons. Wandering Earth 2 is particularly good. So so you have uh the the the human race believes that the sun is going to fail, and they come up with a project, centuries-long project, to move the Earth out of the solar system to a new Sun.
Okay. Sounds a bit like Musk is trying, but then of course much bigger.
But yeah, it's called the Wandering Earth, and and so the Chinese end up taking the lead to make this happen because the Americans can't maintain a long-term project. They can't they can't get out of, you know, short-term political mode and into taking responsibility to build civilization. And it's really—there's one great line where the Chinese leader, who's amazing, wonderful, wonderful guy, said, you know, typical Mandarin, typical Chinese Mandarin, he says uh, in the face of crisis there is only responsibility.
Yeah. I said, wow, tell that to the Americans.
But I guess that's also the point that guys like Peter Thiel and and Musk make, that they they believe that democracy is not going to work because in—it's only leads to a loss of freedom and also a slowing down of of the economy. And if you have more of a technocracy in place uh, they you should be able to achieve better outcomes for the economy.
For what? If you look at trying to do things with with that kind of digital control, it's not only environmentally very damaging and energy wasteful, it it's so anti-innovation. I mean, I could talk about this forever; it's a lose-lose-lose-lose. It's total yayaya, although the guys who end up controlling can make a fortune. So if you want to centralize ownership and control of everything, bravo. Um, you know, but there are ways of getting from here to there. If we need to evolve our culture um and our civilization, there are ways of getting from here to there that don't require technocracy. I like your I like your road better than than their road, to be honest, but I but I hope we can achieve it because that's that's, you know, if—
Okay, but let me get back back to you in Holland, Gold. Okay. Why do I live in the Netherlands half the year?
Because you like it over there?
So I always say, you know, because I love Switzerland and I love the Swiss. I always say the Dutch are the Swiss in a good mood. If you look at the Swiss, if you look at the Dutch history and culture, what they've achieved and how they've achieved it and what their culture is compared to the Americans, you know, there's—there's a reason to get things done. Half the people at Salar are Dutch.
Yeah. We know how to get things done. We we like business, we like trade, we like freedom. Of course, we we invented the capitalist model basically.
Right.
But you you you have a way of maintaining your state of amusement all the time. You're focused on productive action. Productive action. I've just been—I just finished reading a book by a guy I'm going to mispronounce his name, named Mo Gawdat. Do you know who he is? G-W-D-A-T?
G, was it G? I I'm sorry, I should I should learn how to pronounce his name. He's he was the chief business officer at Google, and as soon as he came to understand AI, immediately quit and completely changed his life, but he's got a new book I was reading, and it it says, you know, your thoughts should either be joyful or productive. And if you you find yourself in negative thinking—and one of the things I do because I make such—I spend so much time every week trying to understand current events and how they fit into the long-term trend of what it means to you and me—that, you know, it can get very negative.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. So if you find yourself in a negative loop, say to yourself, it's got to be productive or joyful. And and when when I'm looking at really ugly things—like some of the people—I mean, if you look around the planet, there's a lot of genocide going on; it's very ugly. And and sometimes I can't get to joyful; it's just too ugly, but I can say, uh, there's no point in not being productive. I can get to productive, then from there, if I get something done, I can get to—
That's very smart.
Live at F, we also wanted to talk a little bit about—I mean, we already talked for for 50 minutes or so—but let's um let's also talk a little bit about um CBDCs and and stablecoins, because you already mentioned earlier that the debt-based dollar system um is of course changing, but it's still being maintained; it's still the hegemonic currency, but it seems like uh they need the stablecoins as a as a next way to maintain the the dollar dominance and and the status quo.
Right. And it's very clever. So if you look at what they're—remember in Iraq when they would send pallets of cash and to get everybody off the dinar, they just hand out cash all over Iraq, or whatever they were doing. I mean, it was billions and billions of dollars of pallets of cash just going to Iraq. So so the stablecoins are going to be the digital equivalent of the pallets of cash in Iraq, right? What you you are going to try and do is get every person around the world who you can reach through a mobile phone to get on the dollar. You you're going to try to massively build the market share of the dollar. And if you can engage Google Pay, Apple Pay, Visa, Mastercard, all these people, you can literally afford to give away way massive amounts of dollars just to get them on the dollar, right? So you can you can go to extraordinary lengths to build out the market share, and that's what they want to use stablecoins for. And as they do it, you know, they can use stablecoins to do what they used to use the hedge funds for, which is to balloon their balance sheet, and they buy more and more treasuries, and that keeps the treasury market going. So yeah, I—W—R—I saw this week Tether was like the seventh-largest buyer of of treasuries in that particular week. So it's like the biggest stablecoin; it's already one of the biggest buyers of of treasuries at the moment. Well, if you're pumping out money, it's a way to balloon that doesn't go into the regular indices, you know, it's kind of—you're building a parallel track. If you look at the Genius Act, which is the act going through Congress to create the regulatory structure for stablecoins in the US, it's all going to run by the big Banks. I mean, if you look at the New York Fed and and the banks that own and control the New York Fed and the banks that are going to control the stablecoin market, it's like, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. They're just—they—here's the here's the important thing to understand, Paul: if the guys at the New York Fed do a CBDC, they are subject to congressional oversight and the rules and regulations and laws that oversee them and require them to do certain things and provide disclosure. If those same Banks do a CBDC, I.E., programmable money through stablecoins, they are free of Congress.
Yeah. But if they would—because of the big fear people have, of course, is with CBDCs you have centralized control, and and and people are afraid that at some point it could lead to governments censoring their expenses or programming their money—when we use stablecoins it's a little bit more dispersed, right? A little bit more decentralized.
So totally centrally controlled but privately, with no obligations to the citizen or the Congress or anybody else. So where basically completely out of control. Yeah, they they they are not subject to FOIA; they are not subject to reporting; they are not subject to disclosure. Get ready for, you know—
Do you want a global Mafia or the or the Federal Reserve, which is still under the powers of Congress? Which do you want?
I would I would then choose uh the Federal—
Yeah. With a B in my heart, I hate to say it. This is the first thing I've ever seen anybody do that made the Fed look good.
Yeah. That takes something.
Yeah. If you come if you come into C, we have a panel called Video Shorties, and one of the first playlists is Financial Transaction Freedom, and the first three videos are the ones I always show people to help them understand what's going on, but one of them is the president of the Minneapolis Fed saying, you know, Americans would be crazy to let this happen; CBDCs are terrible, but you know, we'll lose taxation; you know, they'll just take the taxes out of our bank account; you don't want this. So
The F, you know, the FED is slow-walking this whole thing because they know, and they know they can't really do this unless they get out from under Congress. Right? So if you could, if you would choose between CBDC and and and stablecoins everywhere in the US and across the world, even you would also choose CBDC? Nope, you're not going to go any—I wouldn't. You can't make me. So you know the, the, and and this is really funny because this has happened to me when I was litigating with the Department of Justice. I was told it was hopeless; I had no chance; I was going on to, you know, I was going to die; I was going to live in poverty; I was gonna, you know, and um uh and I studied for two and a half years spiritual warfare at a wonderful church. I mean, I really got an immersive course in spiritual warfare, and and what you learn in spiritual warfare, there's a concept of just standing, and when it's absolutely hopeless and there's no way, you just stand on God's word. And what happens to you? I swear I wouldn't have believed it, and I wouldn't have tried it if I had any other choice, but is suddenly a door opens that wasn't there. It's it's kind of like the universe says, okay, well, we couldn't trick her on that one, so open, you know, yeah, you know, yes. So you can't you can't get into that. The technocrats love to do that, you know. Do you want to cut off your right foot? You want to cut off your left foot? It's like, no, I'm not. I, you know, good as five, stand your ground, and um and be strong.
Any any more advice, Katherine, you have for our dear viewers? I hate to be totally obsequious, but you know something you absolutely, if you come to Sal, we have a great old piece, but still timely: what percent of my assets should I hold in precious metals? And we divide precious metals into a core position and an investment position. Right now, you know, everybody 100% should have a core position, well, with some rare exceptions. Um, but right now, I've never seen gold look more attractive as an investment position as well. So I, you know, I appreciate you; I appreciate Holland Gold. Um, but precious metals, for a variety of political and economic reasons, I think is going to do very well. And if somebody's not familiar with precious metals, they need to start learning. I tell everybody, never touch precious metals until you've gotten yourself a really good education on what it is and how it works, you know, and how, given what you need, where you want to own it, how you want to own it, what you want to own. So it's a big topic, but uh, you know, the time has come, and uh, there are a lot of good people who've been building businesses to help you with this, and this is a, you know, I mean what I'm saying is good for Holland Gold, but but Holland Gold could be very good for you. So get get that education; start thinking about precious metals.
Well, thanks so much for for the recommendation, Katherine, and uh, people can definitely um also educate themselves on many different topics, from investing to health to spiritual awareness, going to Sal, of course. So could you um give the website where people can find—Sure. So we'd love to have you as a subscriber; we have a lot of free introductory content if you want to just first get to know us. It's at sal.com, s o l ai.com, and um you'll you'll find everything there. Yeah, and you also regularly organize meetups for people that are—We just, I wish you could have come. We had the most wonder—a lot of people brought their kids, so we had some—not not too young—we had a lot of, you know, college kids and that age, but uh, it was, and we had people from Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Belgium, uh, England, Ireland, and the great one: we had somebody come from Sardinia, sat down, turned, and introduced himself to the person next to him, and they were also from Sardinia, and they never met before. They were like, what what a freaking coincidence! Yeah, or Providence. Yeah. Well, we have to, you know, the the if you want to have a successful life right now, you have to find like-minded people; you have to find people who want to be free, who really work at being free and enjoy helping and collaborating with other people who want to be free. Yeah, yeah, totally agree, Katherine. Um, thanks so much for all your insights and all the work you do, and um perhaps next time we can do it again in in your office and in France. Keep up good work, and and keep in touch. Thank you, Paul. Have a wonderful day. You too. Thanks.