Transcription
Good afternoon everyone. Today I'm joined with Rick Rule. Folks, the price of gold has had a rough couple of months, but Rick seems pretty happy about it and you can probably guess why.
In this conversation, we get into why Rick remains bullish over the long term despite the recent decline. We also talk about how to think about trading precious metals equities in a volatile market. And Rick breaks down for us why governments will, at some point, almost certainly have to keep spending more and more money. All right everybody, enjoy the show. Rick, it's great to have you back on.
It's a pleasure to be back. Thank you for having me.
So, right now, especially today, who knows by the time this is published what the gold market will look like, but it's been a particularly challenging week for gold bulls, to put it lightly. I know in the past you've spoken about how you get a good gold market only so often. There's going to be numerous drawdowns and you better take advantage of them. So, when you think about what's happening in the precious metals market and you think about it from an investor lens, what's going through your head here?
Well, you and I talked about this a couple interviews ago. Volatility and in fact cyclicality are a normal and natural part of a bull market. The greatest bull market of my career was the one in the decade of the 1970s, 1970 to 1981. In particular, where the gold price went from $35 to $850. In the middle of that decade, the greatest bull market in living memory, the gold price fell by 50% from $200 an ounce to $100 an ounce. A lot of people who were real believers at $200 an ounce, wish they didn't learn to spell gold when gold was at $100 an ounce. And those people who got shaken out missed a market that went from $100 an ounce to $850 an ounce in six short years. You need to consider why you would own gold. And you need to decide whether or not any of those facts have changed.
Do we have a balanced budget? Are we anywhere near a political accord around paying down federal debt? Are we anywhere near a federal accord as to how to service $120 trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities? The answer to all of that is no. Why is gold falling? Well, I would suggest to you that gold is falling as a consequence of higher nominal US interest rates and a hawkish tone from the Fed. What would higher interest rates over time do to the US government? Would they raise or lower the debt service costs in a budget that's already nowhere near balanced? I think people need to ask themselves questions about the value of gold. And they need to look at the price of gold in the context of its value. Those people who forget to do that, I'm afraid they're my normal and natural victims.
Something that I kind of want to get your thoughts on. I don't think I've ever asked you about this before, but I'm seeing more and more headlines pop up about it and I was chatting with a friend of mine who's a well-known, really, really well-read Wall Street short-seller. I won't say his name, but he told me that private credit and private equity is going to be the thing that ends the US's reign as the world's top economy, that this has gotten completely out of hand. He hasn't figured out how to exactly short it or when it will all fall apart, but he suggests that this is going to be a big, big, big problem. And now we're starting to see articles all over the financial media about private credit and private equity, and I would assume that higher interest rates is only going to make that problem worse. I'm curious your thoughts on how big of a problem this actually is.
Not just private credit, public credit, too. Uh I look at some of the bond covenants uh around the below investment grade bonds that are publicly trading on Wall Street, not just the private credit. And the bond covenants basically say, "Well, the borrower will pay you back if and when convenient." That's a problem. Uh yes, private credit is a problem. Private credit was a very good business, uh and I made a lot of money in private credit myself for 30 years. I was a natural resource lender. Uh I basically backed away from natural resource lending four or five years ago because the rates went too low, and the bond covenants became too generous to make any money in private credit. It didn't stop a bunch of tourists to come in from lending in private credit to natural resources, and they're going to get what they got coming to them. They're going to get their asses kicked. But, I wouldn't describe that as the biggest problem. Uh I would describe the net present value of unfunded government liabilities as the biggest problem. That's the biggest debt concern we have. The Congressional Budget Office suggests that the net present value of unfunded entitlement liabilities, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, things like that for our Canadian viewers, that the net present value of that exceeds 120 trillion dollars.
And and and and that's unfunded, then we have the funded portion, which is largely funded by a bunch of private credit and private equity the dog doo-doo.
Well, I you know, I would suggest frankly that private credit as a proportion of the US economy is manageable. The difficulty is that the victims in a collapse are extremely well connected politically. The corollary to that in Canada is your Prime Minister and the government and the government of British Columbia bailing out a bunch of private developers in Vancouver the other day.
I was going to ask you about that. So so so that's insanity. That's all over Canadian social media right now for those unaware. Mark Carney just announced that a a large investment for a bunch of condo I'm not sure if it was an investment or um a loan but effectively bail out some condo developers in BC. And what I want to ask you about is my sort of read on this and and I believe that this does tie back to gold and everything that's happening in the system is that I think that like there's we we we can sit here and speculate about crony capitalism and how this ultimately probably feeds some liberal insiders but I think that from just a general macro picture it sort of demonstrates how badly the the federal government doesn't want real estate to go down and how important it's become for Canada's economy that they're kind of looking at it and they're saying well these developers are largely funded by the government ran mortgage corporation and they're going to ultimately be on the hook for it anyway so we might as well just kick the can down the road. Is it fair to assume that governments just don't want to see asset prices go down?
I hope that's what it is. It could also be that Mr. Carney would like votes from the West. Or that real estate developers in Vancouver are reliable campaign contributors. Uh Mr. Carney and for that matter Mr. Eby have said that they need to make uh, housing affordable in Canada. Oh what could be better than a thousand foreclosures, uh, and those condos hitting the market so that buyers could afford to buy them? The idea that you want affordable housing, uh, and then you subsidize developers by making an above-market purchase seems extraordinary extraordinarily contradictory. And I found in the big picture thing, very often what I can't understand is because there's nothing to understand. Uh, it would appear that this, uh, uh, is naked politics. Uh, I I And the corollary on this side of the border was, of course, 2008, when the the folks who ran those big banks, uh, when the banks effectively failed and were bailed out by the government, all these morons got retention bonuses.
Yeah.
Had I run the government, never mind not getting bonuses, they would have been in the slammer. Uh, but the truth is that the political class, uh, and that big corporate class, they're cronies, uh, often walk hand in hand to the detriment of you and I.
Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the Air Canada uh, bailout that happened a few years ago, where the Canadian government made these huge loans to Air Canada to keep them running, and one of the covenants or rules, uh, in that lending was that management had to keep their salaries below a certain threshold. Now, if you go up on SEDAR and you look up the management information circular, they kept their salary down at that level. But then, there's another line item for for for bonuses and share-based compensation. And when you actually factored that in, it blew those numbers out of the water. So, there there it it seems like, uh, no matter how it looks, there's always more to it, and it often works out, uh, to the disadvantage of the taxpayer.
One must assume, uh, that government action on either side of the border is seldom in the interest of the citizenry. Uh the citizens' interest would best be served if they were allowed to keep more of their own money. Uh I don't believe, Steve, that you or your listeners need Mr. Carney to invest your money for you. Uh I believe that you're probably a fairly good investor uh in and of your own volition. I also believe that uh you should uh harbor both the risk and the reward. Uh by the way, I I believe that in my country, the guy who runs my country is a fairly rich guy, but he's bankrupted a lot of businesses. I don't want him I don't I don't want him or need him as manager of my money.
Look, my producer, Chris, is going to kill me cuz he says, "Steve, you got to stop talking about politics." But I think that this relates very very well to uh precious metals and the the the macro thesis. And that is what has actually gone on in the Middle East with Trump doing a deal with Iran. A lot of the stuff that I'm reading just on on both mainstream media and social media, for what it's worth, is that this is actually uh a uh embarrassing event for the for the Trump administration. And I'm curious if you think that this is going to have an impact on sort of the US's perception uh from the rest of the world, and if it ultimately may impact the overall use of the US dollar on a global basis in the long run.
Uh I think it will have an impact uh on the perception that the rest of the world holds of the US uh as a bankrupt bully. Uh I'm not supporting the regime in Iran, by the way, but regime change is the business of the Iranian people. Uh if you look at American interference in the Middle East for my lifetime, uh we have a foreign policy track record virtually unblemished by success. We spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, killed a lot of our people, and a whole bunch of their people uh to get rid of the Taliban. And who's there? The Taliban. We interfered mightily in Iraq. Uh and what is it exactly that we accomplished in Iraq? How about Syria? Now, we try Iran. Um it would be more appropriate, I think, for the American economy, uh for the American investor, for the American taxpayer, if the United States focused its efforts inside its own border. Now, the impact of the Iran war on the US dollar is a different question. Uh I suspect that investors will find over the next 10 years that the US dollar is the worst currency in the world with the sole exception of all of the others. The US dollar is strong as we speak for two reasons, because the competition is so inept, and I don't just mean Canada. I mean the euro, the yen, even the renminbi are inept competitors, and the US dollar is the largest and most liquid, and by the way, the most transparent uh treasury and currency market on the planet. Uh the second reason for the near-term strength in the US dollar is fairly simple. They, perhaps without having any alternative, allowed the interest rate on the 10-year and the 30-year to rise. So, nominal interest rates in the US are higher than nominal interest rates in other parts of the world. Uh in other words, you lose less on your savings in the race against inflation in US dollars than you do in other currency terms. That one's fairly simple. Uh from my point of view. Everybody's looking for all kinds of reasons why the gold price fell. Well, it's denominated in US dollars. Uh you have to consider both the numerator and the denominator. And the second the second reason is of course that uh so-called riskless securities, which is to say the US 10-year Treasury, uh offered double the yields that they offered uh 2 and 1/2 years ago. So, of course uh in the near term uh the gold price is weak as a consequence of that. I think it doesn't have very much to do with the Iran war at all. I think what the Iran war will do in a negative sense uh for the US economy is two things. It added to the deficit. Uh we had a $2 trillion projected deficit coming in. We spent half a trillion dollars there. We have to pay for that. The second thing is that the higher energy prices that the world endured for 4 months have the form of a tax. They withdrew liquidity from other parts of the economy. All taxes are bad. Now, in the case of this tax, some of it went to the private sector. Some went to oil producers. But a lot went to state-owned firms. So, it was a sort of a compound negative. And I don't think that we've paid for that yet. I don't think that the economy has reflected the liquidity that was drained out of other sectors and diverted to energy. That's the sort of hangover that you experience over 2 or 3 year time frame. And I don't think also that the impact of the war the fiscal impact of the war on the US budget uh has really attracted a lot of attention given that US budget deficits relative to the size of the economy relative to the margin generated by the US economy and relative to the perceived ability of the US government to increased the government take in the economy. Uh, oddly, uh, as perverse as the actions uh, have been uh, in the last 6 months in a global context, the US is still highly competitive. Not, by the way, to our credit. Uh, saying that we're competitive against other bankrupt countries is damning us by faint praise.
So, for our audience that are gold bulls, which, uh, given that we mostly cover mining stocks these days, um, what's what's the bull case from here? What's going to get get gold and silver moving again? Is they are are are we just waiting for something to break and a big round of money printing?
Take it from a 73-year-old. Somebody asked me the other day, Rick, uh, are you a perma bull? The answer to that is no. Uh, I sold a fair amount of gold in 2010. Uh, not at the top, by the way. I wasn't that smart. I sold it because other asset classes were cheaper. Uh, my greed uh, overwhelmed my fear. Uh, I'm a gold holder out of fear. I'm a gold seller and a buyer of other asset classes at a greed. And 2010 price levels in other assets were low enough and the price level of gold was high enough that I sold some gold. So, I'm not a perma bull on gold. But, in the near term, uh, when people ask me what I do to might sell to when I might sell my gold, I ask them to reflect on gold's role over time, which is to protect investors and savers' purchasing power from the degradation in fiat currency instruments. So, if my fear was reduced, my incentive to hold gold would uh, be reduced. Specifically, if I saw balanced US budget, if I saw a political accord with regards to lowering the debt. If I saw a political accord around 120 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlement liabilities, and if I saw a positive real interest rate, and let me explain the last caveat. Uh the US 10-year Treasury is yielding 4.4 or 4.5 now. In a currency where I think the purchasing power not defined by the CPI, but rather defined by a basket of goods and services that you and I might buy. I believe that the purchasing power of the US dollar is declining by 8 to 10% a year compounded. A real interest rate would pay me a real premium to the degradation in purchasing power that I endure, which is to say a real rate on the US 10-year Treasury. A rate on the US 10-year Treasury that would give me a real rate of return over the deterioration of purchasing power of the dollar would be somewhere between 10 and 12%. So, that final caveat would be that I would have to get a 200 basis point real yield over and above the rate of degradation of the purchasing power of the US dollar in order for me to prefer uh conventional savings assets like the US 10-year Treasury over my gold.
So, let me just dive into that just a little bit. Um when you say that the US dollar is losing 8 to 10% of its purchasing power, uh how how are you coming up with that number?
Uh informally, but two ways. I began saving in gold. I mean, I maintain liquidity in US dollars, but I save primarily in gold, and I've done so since the year 2000. And if you do that, you begin to think in gold terms in addition to thinking in dollar terms. If you think in gold terms, real estate is cheap. Energy cheap. The S&P 500 is cheap. Groceries are cheap. Healthcare, even in the United States where it's broken, is cheap. If you think of it in dollar terms, all of those things are expensive. I would ask your viewers to do a thought experiment for themselves. Construct in a very rough fashion, you don't need to spend a lot of time, the basket of goods and services that your family consumes. Maybe once every five or six years a new car car or a high-quality used car. Maybe rents. Maybe mortgages. Maybe gasoline. Maybe groceries. And compare the price levels that existed in 2000 with the price levels that exist in 2026. I would suggest to you that mortgage interest rates in Canada over six years have doubled. I would suggest to you that the price of rental residential real estate is up by 60 or 70%. I would suggest to you that rents in the period 2020 to 2026 have almost doubled. Groceries are a political issue in Canada. Gasoline prices over the last six years have doubled. And we're told that inflation, and I don't know what the official number is in Canada, but we're told in the United States via the so-called CPI, my friend describes as the CPI. Uh we're told that inflation in the United States is proceeding along at about 2.8% compounded. That's ridiculous. Uh by the way, the CPI, when it's inconvenient, doesn't include food or fuel. Uh you know me well enough to know that any index that doesn't include lunches is of no interest to me whatsoever. It also doesn't include taxation. I guess if I didn't have to pay the tax, I wouldn't so much about the index. But the inflation statistics that you and I are fed by our governments are totally farcical. I understand why they do it because they tie the benefits paid in entitlement to inflation. And they can't afford to have entitlements that reflect the real rate of deterioration of the Canadian dollar or the US dollar. They don't have the money to honor their current obligations, never mind their true obligations.
Not to cherry-pick here, but the the price of beef here in Canada has gone through the moon. I mean, you used to be able to buy a a box of eight frozen hamburger patties for 10 bucks. It's now $30. Coffee, and I know that there's problem with problems with coffee crops. You used to be able to buy a tin of decent coffee for 10 bucks. That's now 30 bucks. A lot of the stuff that you use every day is way more expensive.
Steve, if you saved in gold you'd think that beef was cheap if you did gold terms. The The same thing with coffee, the shortage is notwithstanding. It's not that the price of coffee has gone up. It doesn't have as much to do with a crop shortage as it has to do with the deteriorating purchasing power of the Canadian and the US dollar. People denominate their lives in dollars. And I understand that. If you go to the store, you can't make change with gold. But if you save in gold you will see that it isn't price levels that have risen. It's the fact that the purchasing power of the dollar has declined and declined mightily.
So just anecdotally here in Canada, I know a lot of people that have lost their jobs recently. You go to a lot of restaurants now. It's not that long ago that they were all full. They're all mostly empty now. CBC ran a report uh a couple weeks ago that said that I think the number was 90% of restaurants in Canada believe that they will have less revenue or generate less profit this year than they did last year. I'm not sure what it's like there in the States for you, but it it feels to me like the economy is a lot weaker here in Canada than than than what's being reported.
I can't comment on the Toronto economy. I'm not familiar with it. Uh The But what about the US economy? Do you think that that that the
The US economy is in a gross sense surprisingly strong. I would have expected it to be weaker. That isn't to say that there aren't cracks appearing. I live in a little tiny town in Northwest Washington. But it's a town that's supported by a couple industries. There's a big refinery here and there's a pretty good size shipyard here. And the truth is that this local economy, I'm not trying to say that there aren't people that are hurting. Those people who don't have skills. But the local economy is booming. An entry entry-level job at McDonald's uh pays $18 an hour to train, 18 US dollars an hour. And this isn't a function of minimum wage laws. An entry-level job bagging groceries at Safeway pays $20 an hour. Um And I'm I realize it's wrong to extrapolate a little tiny village in Northwest Washington for the entire American economy. But I think a bigger difficulty in the US and maybe it is in Canada, too. Is the fact that compensation is increasingly market-related. Which is to say that people who have people who don't have non-contestable skills, people who used to have manufacturing and assembly jobs as an example have to compete in a world market. They have to compete against people in India and China and Vietnam who will do at least as good a job as they do, but for substantially less money. Uh economic compensation uh is increasingly becoming priced to the utility generated. What that means is that people who are symbolic workers, myself as an example, the people who get paid for knowledge in a non-contestable fashion uh are making unbelievable amounts of money. Uh when I think about the money I make allegedly in retirement, um I'm astonished at how how well I get compensated for what I do. Similarly, investors, again, people like myself, who have access to credit uh and have the knowledge of how to use it, uh if you can borrow money at a discount to the rate the real rate of inflation uh and invest it at the real rate of inflation, uh the spreads between what you borrow money for and what you can invest that same money at are astonishing. The benefits in society are accruing to those who generate utility that society is willing to pay for and those who have access to credit and the knowledge of how to use it. The rest of the society is facing a reckoning and I think that's beginning to show up in places like restaurants.
So, I got to touch on mining stocks here. Yesterday I interviewed Kerry Knoll, which I was pretty excited about because Kerry's um got a a history of getting behind uh uh various companies that have actually gotten to production and he kind of walked me through his process and it reminded me a little bit of yourself because what he said he likes to do is buy into commodities when everybody has left the party and these assets are forgotten about and then he's got his checklist for what he thinks can ultimately turn into a mine and then he digs in raises the money and gets to work and he's been successful doing that for numerous years. So what I want to ask you is what commodities should we be looking at right now if something is particularly hated is it is it possible for lithium to be hated enough for it to make sense for Rick Rule?
Yeah, but it's not close to there yet. There's a lot of hope left in lithium and I hate hope. I like hope to be stomped out of a market before I play. And lithium in my mind still has potentially a sort of Damocles hanging over it which is to say direct lithium extraction technology. Because I don't understand it. I don't know how to play it. And because I don't know how to play something that's an extraordinarily large factor, I stay out of that market. The truth is that there's 20 or 30 markets that I understand that I can play in lithium is what I don't understand so I don't play in it. I'm not going to go long or short where I don't feel I have a definable competitive intellectual advantage relative to the rest of the market. Given that I think that the next decade will be kind at least in nominal terms to a wide variety of resources. I look at I look at the market on an opportunity by opportunity basis. I'm particularly delighted to see the gold stock sector sell off because I'd like to own more. If I looked at where my own interest would be served in the near term higher gold equity prices or lower gold equity prices. I'd like to see higher gold equity prices if I'd like to sell. But I don't want to sell. At least at least at any prices that resemble the prices that I would be receiving now. So, it's in my interest to see lower gold prices and lower gold equity prices because I'm a structural buyer, not a structural seller. And really, uh I mean, I I do I need to say I do need I do expect this summer expect is the wrong word. Uh I suspect this summer that the gold price will get weaker yet as a consequence of uh higher nominal US interest rates and the allegedly hawkish stance in the near term of the US Treasury. I think too that lower gold prices will lure people who don't have the same belief in the gold price as I to sell their gold stocks. Uh and and they'll sell them with the same range of competence as they bought them, which is to say none. Uh people who don't understand why they bought something won't understand why they sell something either. And they will both buy and sell in indiscriminate fashion, kicking, if you will, proverbial proverbially the babies out with the bathwater. The decline in share price that you've seen in very high quality names, the Franco-Nevada, the Wheaton Precious, uh the Agnico Eagles, uh I think is of real use to the generalist investor who doesn't have a sufficient gold stock position. These are high-quality companies that don't require an awful lot of study to own. The price weakness that we'll see this summer, I think, is a gift from God to generalist investors who aren't in the place. The companies that were rightly touted uh 6 months ago as takeover targets are takeover targets today, too. It's just that you can buy them 40% cheaper than you could 6 months ago. It It's odd that in financial markets, the participants seem to want to overpay. Uh It's as though, Steve, a bunch of investors were in a supermarket and the market announced that in 5 minutes there was going to be a sale. Then everybody ran out of the store. If we bought financial instruments the same way the same way we buy physical goods, most of us would be better investors. Um So, for me, I'm attracted to the gold stocks. I think they're going lower. And so, I'm really going to keep some of my liquidity looking for the potential. I'm not saying it's going to occur, but looking for the potential of a psychotic break. Uh a real down move. You will recall last October, you may recall, last October I sold 25% of my juniors. Uh I did that during a period of a parabolic up move. Uh I've learned in 50 years of investing that when you see parabolic up moves, you sell. And when you see parabolic down moves, you buy. Uh fast forward a little bit. Uh last January we saw the parabolic up move in physical silver and I sold. We're seeing a gradual down move in metals prices, a more rapid down move in the prices of the metals equities. And I'm not saying this is going to occur, but it wouldn't surprise me if you look at the weakness in overall equities, the tech sell-off as an example, the Korean sell-off. Uh with the gradual decline in metal prices and metals equity prices, it wouldn't surprise me to see a parabolic down move. Uh I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I'm certainly going to keep some powder dry for it.
Were you surprised by anything? Was there anything that you kind of learned? Uh, I know you've been doing this for a long time and you've seen various cycles, but over this recent run where we saw gold rip all the way up to I think it's high as 5,500-ish. Uh, and and back down and we saw, you know, some M&A happened. Uh, uh, especially with the the the larger names. We saw some money move down the risk curve, but was there anything you learned or anything that surprised you during this sort of last kind of bull cycle that sort sort of uh, that that little chunk there?
I think it it behaved the way they often do. So, I I would say no. It's important to recognize, Steve, that you and I live uh, in the gold ecosphere, the mining ecosphere. And so, we think what happens in our small ghetto is really important. Uh, the truth is that precious metals and precious metals-related assets comprise less than 1/2 of 1% of total savings investment assets in the United States and less than 1% worldwide. So, we need to understand that our little tiny ghetto uh, gets impacted in outsized fashion uh, by the broader markets. And we need to learn to take that into account. If you have a little little little tiny inflow of generalist capital which is what we had uh, at the end of last year in the mining equity markets, they go crazy. By the way, uh, that math is worth keeping in context for the next 10 years. Uh, when uh, I said, and this is according to J.P. Morgan Chase, that only 1/2 of 1% of total savings and investment assets in the United States is denominated in precious metals and precious metals-related to the four-decade mean, again according to JP Morgan Chase, is 2%. If we saw a reversion to mean, not an overshoot, just a reversion to the four-decade mean, and by the way, the last 40 years have not been kind to gold stocks on balance. If we saw a reversion to mean, demand for this stuff would increase increase fourfold. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what that might do to the price.
So, Rick, you've been generous with your time. I know you've got the Battle Bank AGM coming up. Uh but let me just ask you this last question about Battle Bank. How's Battle Bank going? And uh if anybody's looking to use Battle Bank for their banking, how do they sign up?
Uh go to battlebank.com. Uh we are almost through servicing the waitlist, which is to say approaching the waitlist and asking them what they'd like to do. So, we will be um much more able to handle broad public inquiries. We've grown slowly because you get one chance to make a good first impression. The bank has been open now for about 10 weeks. I'm delighted to say we have about $110 million in deposits, plus another sort of $65 million in precious metals on deposit. So, the bank is doing very well. Uh we are breaking in our systems. As I say, we didn't we didn't grow new accounts uh really rapidly. Well, we did Actually, we did grow new accounts really rapidly, but we didn't press our advantage in that because you have one chance to make a good first impression. Uh then I frankly I think $110 million in deposit assets after 9 or 10 weeks is fairly admirable. Uh but I think the real growth begins to come now that we've shaken in our systems.
And and and the big advantage with Battle Bank versus a lot of the other banks is that you can save your money in gold? Is that correct?
I think there's three advantages. The first is unlike most American and Canadian banks, we pay you interest on your checking accounts. In the United States, there's $3 trillion on deposits with banks that pay no interest. How dumb is that? You know, this is really truly insane. Most big Canadian and American banks have 15 or 16 save different savings products. Uh they confuse the hell out of me and I'm a banker. We have one. A a high-yield money market account that allows you to write checks against it. We don't confuse you. We pay you interest. So, if you're interested in interest, think about BattleBank. The second advantage is that most banks in North America, including Canadian banks, allow you to save in one currency, either the Canadian dollar or the US dollar. Or some forward-thinking institutions allow you to save in both. At BattleBank, we allow you to save in 21 currencies. The currency is your choice. Uh at most banks in North America, uh for whatever reason, these guys don't believe bullion's good good collateral. Uh at BattleBank, we think it's great collateral. So, you can access the capital that you have in your stack, your bullion, uh without having to sell it and pay the capital gains tax. Um I'm delighted that my competitors don't think that gold and silver are good collateral. I've been lending against it privately for 20 years. The other advantage to lending for a bank, lending to gold and silver, is that people who store their wealth in gold and silver tend to be fairly prudent people. Prudent people borrow what they can afford to pay back. I've never experienced even the beginnings of a credit problem in 20 years of lending privately against physical gold and silver. And I can't say that about very many asset classes. Uh imagine how a private credit guy feels right now where his collateral is an office tower uh in downtown San Francisco where uh only 50% of the building is occupied and property taxes are going up at a 10% compound rate. Uh and then he tells me that gold is bad collateral?
All right. Well, Rick, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. You've always been really good to us and generous with your time. I'm looking forward to seeing you at your conference uh which is uh just a couple weeks away now.
July 6th to 10th. Yep, July 6th to 10th. I'm delighted to say by the way, Steve, that the conference physically is sold out uh to the extent that you wanted to come see us live in Boca Raton. That's gone. But your listeners can still subscribe to the to the live stream. They can participate in the conference from the comfort and convenience of their own home via live stream. Uh and I need to say that unlike any other conference on the planet if people did choose to visit us by live stream and they felt for any reason that they didn't get their money's worth we'll give them their money back. Uh no other conference in the world that I know of has enough confidence in their content that they give an unconditional money-back guarantee. But we do.
And for anybody who wants to sign up for the online portion, there's going to be a link in the comments section at we've been given a special discount for our audience if you go through that link. Uh Rick, thanks so much for taking the time to do this. It's always great when we get to catch up.
Thank you. I look forward to seeing you in Boca. I guarantee you that we'll make it worth your time.
The 2026er Rules Symposium on Natural Resource Investing is happening July 6th to 10th at the Boca Raton with top names in mining and natural resources, market-moving discussions, and real insight for serious resource investors. If you're interested in joining online, click the link in the description. All right, everybody. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed this conversation, do me a favor. Smash that like button, subscribe, and ring that notification bell. And folks, if you want more mining content, check out our website over at thedeepdive.ca. And one last thing, if you have ideas that you think we ought to cover, let us know in the comment section. We read all of the feedback, and we consider all your ideas. All right, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow.