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Joanna: Hi everyone, and welcome to the first ever episode of the Noosphere podcast. In this podcast, we're gonna be talking about everything under the sun, from economics to politics, to science and tech. We're gonna cover it all. It's basically a chance for LV and I to talk about the things we're interested in, and to put things under a microscopic lens, macroscopic lens.
Joanna: Approach them with curiosity and vigor and try to reassess the things we think we know. Tonight we're gonna be delving into a really important subject matter, something that Louis has been obsessed about almost all his life. It's the topic of sound, money and [00:01:00] the nature of money and why it exists at all.
Louis, do you wanna start it off. And kind of introduce our audience here, um, what sound money is.
LV: Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for the intro, Joanna. So, uh, when we think about money, you know, people tend to think, okay, it's the bill in my wallet.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Right? And there's a point of view I share and many others like me share, which is that that money, that dollar bill in your pocket is actually currency.
It doesn't have the properties of money. And so when people talk about what sound money is, they talk about money that has slightly different properties. So money or sound, money and currencies share the following properties. They are easily divisible.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: They are durable. Mm-hmm. They are portable and they are fungible, which means that, [00:02:00] you know, one is like another.
Awesome and hard money or sound money. The difference from currency is that it is also a store of value, so it preserves its value over time. Now, why is this important in this day and age? Because that paper bill in your pocket as the increase the supply or inflate the supply of those paper bills by printing more of them.
It doesn't store its value over time. Whereas harder or sounder money, like gold, like silver, potentially certain kinds of cryptocurrencies yet to see, you know, they retain their value over time. Mm-hmm. And by value we mean their purchasing power. Can you buy the same thing you could a hundred years ago with the same amount of units of that thing?
Joanna: Absolutely. Great intro there into the topic of money. I love it. The difference, the [00:03:00] differences between currency and sound money representatives, which we have in the form of precious metals.
LV: And you touch on that precious metals term, and I really want to expand on this. Mm-hmm. 'cause sometimes you'll think, well, why not barrels of oil?
Why not bushels of wheat? Well then again, back to those fundamental properties of what makes money, money. You know, oil expires after six months, so it's not durable. Mm-hmm. It's not portable to carry barrels of oil around. Right. Yeah. So there's all Exactly.
Joanna: You can't really trade it. Like, I can't really come up to you and say, Hey, I like your car.
Here's four barrels of oil that I just happened to have in my basement. Mm-hmm. Can we trade?
LV: Exactly. And that's why it's always gonna be a commodity, not money itself.
Joanna: Mm-hmm. That's an interesting point. Like in some ways, um, I. Um, do don't some governments try to treat metals like their [00:04:00] commodities?
LV: It depends.
But there is a global, or at least a national movement in the us Uh mm-hmm. At the state, by state level to make sure that, um, money, okay. Gold and silver are not treated like commodities. Um, and the way you do that is by, of course, uh, making, uh, the exchange of those things or the holding of those things not subject to certain kinds of taxes.
And those are the types of policies that, um, will enable more sound money in the system.
Joanna: Mm-hmm. Okay. Very cool. So, um, I really wanna touch on, um, the subject of, you know, the, the global debt system and how much debt, uh, the US currently has. Um, it's crossed the ceiling multiple times. And what are your thoughts on this [00:05:00] whole situation that the US has gone itself in?
How did, how do we get here? How did it get this bad?
LV: So, uh, it all starts with, um, the end of what was called Bretton Woods, which in many ways. Removed the gold backing of the US dollar wholesale.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: And from then on, it just gave, um, the government more and more license to print money.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: And really this all goes all the way back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, uh, in the US where, um, all of a sudden, um, this private institution could start issuing currency.
Um, now the, not, not, well technically the treasury issues currency, but. Some technicalities there. What's since happened is, um, we've gone from a regimen where, uh, governments have had some constraints over how much they could print or how much [00:06:00] currency they could issue to one, where now, you know, anytime is a crisis, they can print more and more money.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: And in the last 30 or so years, we've had a number of crises where every time we seem to have to take out a bigger bazooka of money to like calm the system down, prevent recession, prevent depression. Mm. But each of those times we're actually adding inflation to the system. Mm-hmm. Meaning we're inflating the money supply, which eventually makes its way through the, the system and actually inflates prices.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: But the original sin is inflation of the money supply. And that was all hunky dory when interest rates were low. But naturally, at some point, the inflation genies out of the bottle. And you start to have issues with prices. And of course the Federal Reserve, which has a mandate to keep, uh, inflation low, at least price inflation, um, starts to raise interest rates to counter that.
And now the reason why the US has this huge debt problem that [00:07:00] seems to have no solution or very difficult ones is because the interest rate to calm inflation is so high that. The US also has to pay a ridiculous amount in interest payments to service its currents debt to the point where now the interest payments will eclipse or have already eclipsed the amount the US spends on defense every year, and this is gonna get worse.
Joanna: Wow. That's insane. Do you hear that the, the total, um, interest rate payments that the US has to serve as its, that is larger? Then it, the total spending, the total defense and military spending
that's such an unproductive use of cash and money if you think about it.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, to be honest, I don't really have a problem with government, um, governments. [00:08:00] Taking over the responsibility of managing and creating a currency. You know, I think there is value and there's utility in having an abstraction over money that people trust and could use for exchange and barter and business.
You know, it facilitates the economy. The problem is when we put too much trust in the government and they suddenly wield all the power in surrounding the, the use, the appropriations misappropriations, um, of that trust and the way that they're handling the currency supply. And currency regulations. Right?
So for [00:09:00] example, back in the days, um, when the US was still forming and was a baby, um, people actually traded in gold and silver and precious metals. And so, you know, things were very. Honest and very truthful in some ways. Basically, whatever you pay for, you get, and then, you know, incomes the government and that's when they start to create abstractions.
Like, okay, you know, instead of, instead of trading with gold, why don't you keep your gold and then here's a paper receipt instead. Right. Um, and then people start trading with those paper receipts, uh, start using them. They're basically no currency. And then when the US was formed and they got into [00:10:00] wars, um,
LV: well, you, you make some great points.
Yeah. I'll just clarify a bit. Okay. So, um. So, yeah, the early colonies used to trade in, uh, pieces of eights or Spanish dub blondes and so on. So they have, uh, so there were, you know, the, the Spanish currency, which was gold and silver, um, was, uh, predominant throughout the world, and that's what people saw.
Mm-hmm. And then eventually when, um, the United States was formed and eventually started minting its own coin or money, um. Uh, well, ultimately when we did move to a paper currency, it it was that the US promised that it had X amount in reserve to back those currencies. Like so that $20 bill you held mm-hmm.
Was always supposed to be redeemable for that equivalent amount in gold.
Joanna: Yeah.
LV: And that's why I mentioned earlier the end of Bretton Woods and all those, it was a crisis, you know, um, quite some [00:11:00] time ago where, uh. The US was exposed, or at least there were serious questions as to whether it actually had the gold backing for its, uh, for its Federal Reserve notes.
Um, and that's what a Federal Reserve note is. It's just a note, um, which back then, uh, indicated that, hey, it's an. It's essentially an IOU for a certain amount of gold. Mm-hmm. Uh, but now it's become an IOU for nothing. I mean, it's, it's backed again by the full faith and credit of the US government. Mm-hmm.
I forget if that's the exact term, but you're really backing on the US economy.
Joanna: Yeah.
LV: And, um, and, and that's, that's also something, um, as well.
Joanna: Yeah. And trying to drive my point here. Um. Is that, you know, the US government or governments in general across the world, they all have interest, right? And it's in the interest of the government to support whatever activities, infrastructure, um, defense needs [00:12:00] that, that they have.
And when, when countries go to war, they have to pay for it with something. And what they end up doing is using the trust that the people put into the monetary and financial system, abusing that, and then printing lots of currency in order to finance these endeavors. And that's what we typically see in the way that governments manage their financial, um, their monetary policy.
LV: Exactly expansionary policies, uh, whether it's for a greater welfare state or a, uh mm-hmm. Greater military are usually, um, prime reasons why, uh, governments want to have less guardrails on how much currency they can issue. Um, and, and that's naturally a symptom of a monetary system that's not backed by sound money.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You basically give government the permission to do these [00:13:00] things and. Naturally, governments around the world, bloat, do they do bloat? It's, it's a natural process that happens over time.
Joanna: Humans tend to wanna span beyond their means like way, way, way beyond their means.
LV: So maybe we should crystallize this point on individual
Joanna: level as well as like on the level of entire assistance.
LV: Absolutely. Just picture a credit card, you know, you're spending too much on the credit card now. Your interest payments are too high. There's no way you can pay off that credit card. It's eating into your personal budget to pay the interest fees. Mm-hmm. That's just exactly what's going on. To put it, uh, to put it down simply.
Joanna: Absolutely. That's such a good point to make. Um, I was gonna say this other thing, but we can,
I can take us
LV: in another direction if you want.
Joanna: Um, wait one second. Okay. Just something about, um.
Okay, so we were talking about monitoring.[00:14:00]
Jesus.
LV: We can come back to it.
Joanna: It was a good point.
LV: Okay.
Joanna: It was about, okay, we were talking about money and spending. Um, oh yeah. Okay. So. Okay. And that's unfortunately one of the things that, um, this, this pleases me or, or bothers me on an individual level when I think about my participation in the system that we live in, which is that, you know, governments have the power to create a financial system.
That doesn't, doesn't reflect, um, the actual value of an economy. Meaning, you know, when you expend a money supply in pure [00:15:00] economics, that expansion is supposed to reflect, um, its equivalent amount in goods and services. But in this case it doesn't. And so we're just printing a lot of money thinking that there's old going to be a lot of value, um, in the market that we interact with.
But in fact, the money supply is representative of nothing. It's representative of bloat and deceit, and that's something that bothers me
LV: maybe, but you could argue actually that. Uh, while these systems are not sustainable in the long run, they do spur innovation. They do spur certain risk taking behaviors that are good for the economy.
Um, so while not sustainable, they could actually lead to good things because, uh, when you have, let's say low interest rates throughout a system, well, that allows entrepreneurs to take out loans at cheap interest rates, uh, innovate more. [00:16:00] It allows, um, new investments and infrastructure products that otherwise wouldn't have happen.
It allows r and d led by government programs that otherwise wouldn't happen. So there, there you could argue there are benefits. Um, while, you know, it might not be sustainable in the long run, maybe some of the great things we enjoy in our lives today would not have been possible without a looser monetary policy.
So I would say, um, there's a bit of nuance there. We should account for.
Joanna: All inflationary things and all good things, um, that are built on a house of cards eventually comes crumbling down. And so what I, what I like to think about is look at, look at all the bubbles we've created. You know, they're gonna.
Burst one day so
LV: they will burst. Yes. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Joanna: Yeah. So that, I mean, in some ways, like inflationary money supplies create bubbles, like the crypto bubble, [00:17:00] the.com burst bubble and the software.
LV: True. But, but then we wouldn't, would we have Amazon without the.com bubble, or do we have eBay without the.com bubble?
Mm-hmm. Well, you could argue it would be harder for them to go public, harder for them to fund a business that was losing money for a decade. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I mean, thi this is just a very interesting point, is a sound money systems system, uh, encourages responsibility, productive investments that yield something of value.
Mm-hmm. But they also do create, um, lower risk environments, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, so that's just one thing I want to give credit to. I mean, we not, might not have studied this enough to know. But maybe some of the things we love today are a, um,
Joanna: product,
LV: a product of this looser monetary system. Anyways, I'm not advocating for looser monetary system.
I'm just saying, Hey, I could see the other side. Yeah. Right. And we should acknowledge our arguments. That's true. We're
Joanna: not, are not [00:18:00] advocating for a looser monetary, monetary system. In fact, we're here today to talk about the importance of sound money because. It is the policies of this looser system that's kind of affecting the economies we live in today.
Um, and enhance the, the just overall like life enjoyment, I don't know what you call it.
LV: Quality of life.
Joanna: Quality of life that. People are experiencing. Um,
LV: but you know, you know, let me touch on this, Joanna, there's mm-hmm. A grave injustice when you don't have a sound money system, right? Mm-hmm. Because naturally what tends to happen is you have asset inflation.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Right? And assets are typically held by the land of elite or the aristocrats of the societies we're in, uh, or those who just had [00:19:00] preexisting assets, whether it's homes. Uh, farmland, whether it's, uh, other forms of real estate, whether it's, um, gold and silver itself, whether it's, uh, machinery, you know, so these assets accrue value over time because you have inflation.
Right. And the laborers, the working poor, the working middle class, are the ones who really do suffer in these cases. Mm-hmm. Because. Their, the value of their labor depreciates over time relative to the other assets that are increasing in value. So, um, you could argue that, you know, the, the, that the non-working poor benefit from these systems.
'cause oftentimes in these systems welfare programs expand. Uh, because it's politically expedient to do so, and, um, the, the printing press allows 'em to expand the welfare system, so the non-working poor benefit. But again, the middle class gets squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. Um, by such policies in the long term, and [00:20:00] maybe this is why we always harken back to the old days of like, Hey, when things were more balanced, when CEO pay was, uh, closer relative to the average worker pay, like maybe all these things are related.
I'm not arguing it is, but we can see that point of view as well.
Joanna: Absolutely. I agree. Yeah.
LV: So, but, but that is some of the injustice people feel. Right? And, and this could heal the system. It could heal these injustices to return to more of a sound money system. Um mm-hmm. Now, there is something that's really interesting I talk about, which is, are we gonna return to a sound money system or not?
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: What is in the cards now? Um, I want to set the stage here that, um, the US has. Really benefited from being the reserve currency provider for the world. The US dollar, uh, is underpinned by this transfer system called Swift for settling all kinds of contracts and trade, whether it's oil or so on. And, [00:21:00] uh, being cut off from Swift.
Uh, for example, uh, it could mean that you're cut off from the global financial system and. Therefore it allows the US to throw its weight around. In many ways, the aircraft carriers, the US has out there help protect its monetary supremacy.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: So what happens when that's challenged, like it is today by China, Russia, Brazil, India.
Mm-hmm. You know, uh, potentially Saudi, a bunch of other countries. Uh, the so-called bricks, um, bricks would be Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, to be specific. But there's a lot of. Participants kind of coming around the edges, like
Joanna: more and more joining. Yes,
LV: exactly. Turkey, Saudi kind of considering it, it seems.
So all of a sudden you have a real challenge to the US dollar hegemony, and these bricks countries are proposing commodity backed currencies, potentially either backed by oil, either backed by gold, either settling in, uh, currency exchanges or [00:22:00] swaps, uh, between themselves or in renmin B or other, um, currencies.
So this is a potential challenge and the number of, uh, payments done via SWIFT have declined in the last few years drastically, especially since, uh, the US quote unquote weaponized its currency, uh, when, um, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: So, um, what are we faced with? Well, we're actually faced with a US that has a sovereign debt crisis on its hands.
There's potentially a risk of default in the years to come because of the size of the interest. And as you're experiencing that on the other end, there's the bricks countries which are ready to sort of pou on the soft journey. You're over and take over with a alternative to the US dollar.
Joanna: Hold on. Um, before we go any further, this is a great, just brilliant topic.
[00:23:00] But let's, let's kind of explain what default thing on your debt means and, and what the repercussions are.
LV: Of course. Uh, well, it's happened a few times in history, uh, to other countries. Um, Argentina is a, a good example where it has to default restructure, default restructure. It's had persistent inflation for a very long time.
In fact, I think that's why. Argentinians were sick of it and elected Javi, MLA to hopefully cut the size of government and cut the inflation overall so they're not through that cycle. And yeah, when that happens, it's very similar to how you deal with a debtor. You know, you have, um, you have. Uh, to restructure your debt, you have to find ways to, um, to, to go insolvent the equivalent of a chapter 11 or a chapter seven.
The only problem is that once the US does that, if it does, there are potentially ways it could save itself, then, then the world loses faith in its system. Right? So it [00:24:00] stops being the global reserve currency, and then it stops being as powerful as it is, so it has repercussions.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: So the US defaulting is.
Definitely a bigger deal than Argentina defaulting. And it's not even close.
Joanna: Oh, not even close. Like if the US ever defaults on it's debt, the entire power structure of the world, um, changes and we enter something completely new.
LV: And this is why it's such an interesting dynamic, is that mm-hmm. Ironically, you know, countries like China and so on may not have it in their best interest of the US to false on its debt.
It's geopolitically maybe favorable, but. For their economy. It, it could be
Joanna: disastrous. Disastrous. 'cause essentially what it is, is that anyone holding us currency will no longer be able to claim it for anything overnight. Um, if the US currency defaults on itself, I mean yeah, then essentially every US dollar becomes, um, [00:25:00] valueless.
And so if you have, if you have savings, um, and it's all just like. The US dollar, then that would essentially go down to zero and you'd have nothing at all.
LV: Well, it, it, I don't think it would actually go down to zero. It would probably lose value. Mm-hmm. But you could argue in the restructuring process, they could retain some value.
We don't know how much, um,
Joanna: yeah. That, I mean, so many countries have defaulted and we, we see the effects of it. The, the next day of like, Greece, Zimbabwe.
LV: Well, you know, that's really interesting because, uh, I like that you brought the Zimbabwe example because you know, there's a technical default where you say, I can't pay.
Mm-hmm. But again, the US doesn't have anything backing its currencies. It could keep printing, printing, printing money, so it could not have a technical default, but it could have a de jour or, I don't know, defacto, I don't know [00:26:00] exactly the term, but another kind of default, which is. You know, we're just going to devalue our currency into oblivion.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: And that allows us to pay the interest, right? Mm-hmm. But of course, we're destroying our economy with persistent inflation and potentially hyperinflation thereafter. Mm-hmm. And this hearkens back to a very important example in history, which is the Weymar Republic, which is, you know mm-hmm. Uh, around where Germany is today.
And, um. So after World War I, the y more Republic had to pay, uh, heavy reparations for the war mm-hmm. To the other European countries. And, uh, one of the ways it did that again, was by printing a lot of money to stimulate its economy, to pay the reparations and so on and so forth. And it had a boom era in the twenties, and then the thirties came around and when the thirties came around, people started noticing mm-hmm.
The prices of bread started increasing dramatically. And then soon you have to bring a wagon of cash. Of Y mar notes, um, or, or marks at the time to actually [00:27:00] buy some bread you could buy. And then that's exactly when people remember like, hey, like gold has value or relative to paper money, you could buy potentially a hotel with a few pieces of gold.
Um, everything got repriced, uh, at that point. And the Y mar notes, um, were definitely valueless. Mm-hmm. Because they just printed and printed more to pay themselves out of the debt crisis. They were.
Joanna: Seems like the key takeaway lesson here is that, um, throughout economic crises and, uh, uncertainty in the markets, one thing for certain is that gold and silver holds its value.
And having safe heaven assets is a really good hedge against, any kind of inflation, currency or banking crises and that ties in really nicely with, um, the whole idea of brics being a strong contender with real economic influence in the global financial market. [00:28:00] Countries that are now taking part in developing bricks, they're really.
Putting in a lot of effort into, um, hoarding and storing as much commodities, precious metals as they can get their hands on. And to be honest, in the world today, it's becoming increasingly harder to do so because, um, so many exchanges and central banks around the world are, are becoming depleted in terms of the number of.
Um, bullion that they have in storage. And the thing with bullion, precious metals, it's not something that is abundant in resource. You know, it has a really high, um, stock to flow ratio, which means that. It's incredibly hard to resupply the current [00:29:00] stock that's in here in the world. And so I think for gold it's somewhere around 60 years to mine.
Um, the total supply of avail available gold that we have to, and, um, the trend is that people are starting to. Um, choose not to have their assets in paper contracts, but rather have it delivered, um, in physical, a physical, uh, metals instead.
LV: That's a very salient point. Yeah. There's uh, some unique properties with gold.
Mm-hmm. So very little less so that make it money, you know. Um, and, uh, you mentioned the stock to flow ratio. Uh, you know, even in the gold rush we had very little inflation when, and there was much more gold in the system. It's very [00:30:00] predictable how much gold is mined every year. And one thing about gold that's a little unique compared to silver and other metals.
Mm-hmm. Silver still is great, but gold is unique in that it doesn't really find itself susceptible to supply and demand shocks, um, because of industry, because it's not that much of an industrial me metal. It's more of a monetary metal.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Um, whereas silver and copper and. Other metals, um, they have industrial uses.
Mm-hmm. Right. Silver's the best conductor. Copper's a great conductor. Um, silver is very much used in photovoltaic cells, which has a huge impact on the solar energy economy. So there are competing use cases for silver, not as much for gold. Um, but you know, some people would argue that that's a bold case for silver can be made.
Mm-hmm. For that reason. Mm-hmm. Uh, one thing I want to pick up on is your statement about central banks. Now it seems that there's central banks in the west that are depleting their [00:31:00] gold reserves. Mm-hmm. But that's not very much the case in the east or in China, uh, or Russia. Uh, their central banks arguably have been s stocking upon monetary and industrial gold, um, that more than ever in the last four or five years.
Joanna: Yeah. And that's, um, that's a really just a cautionary sign. I feel like into just the global trends with how, um, money is being viewed, right?
Mm-hmm.
And, um, financial systems are being viewed, uh, viewed. People are like, people are looking like they're becoming increasingly competitive, especially in the east.
And I, I don't, I really don't think that it, it's some, it's an easy fight. For the US to back out of, you know, it's gonna take a cons, concerted effort, um, for the US [00:32:00] to begin. It's re it's stabilization journey. Absolutely. What you
LV: think. Yeah. It might take some time. Yeah. But it's possible. We'll see. Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And, and you think that one of the ways the US could revert, you know, kind of put itself on a better spot? Is for it to adopt a settle money system, right?
LV: Maybe not directly. Um, not directly, but there's been some argument, hey, potentially you could start issuing treasury bonds that are goal backed.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Um, I think this is proposed by Judy Shelton who might be advising the current administration. I'm not sure, but there is some opportunity there. There's a small window. Um, but we'll see, uh, whether it's possible to fix it, it might have to be more incremental.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Do you want, I think it would be helpful to.
Um, inform the audience on exactly how they could hedge their bets on a personal level, like what is bullion? Let's start with that. What [00:33:00] is bullion? It's a term we've been using.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
Bullion is rare. Metal. So in physical form.
LV: Exactly. So investment grade in many ways. So you could just mm-hmm. Imagine like a, a coin, a bar of gold. Uh,
Joanna: it's minted metal. Exactly. So yeah, pure metal. It's been mine, it's processed. The purity is discern, and then you, you mint them into bars, into coins that are in proper denominations, you know, not infractions.
And it's easily verified and traded.
LV: Yeah. Um, and you could, uh, this fractional is available on the al also I would add it's a bit different than let say trading gold and silver, um, shares like SLV or whatnot. 'cause there's an argument to be made that you should hold your physical Verne gold. Um, because there is much Oh yeah.
I mean there's much less [00:34:00] in the system,
Joanna: the. The amount of gold and silver mm-hmm. That is being held in the form of paper contracts severely outweighs the actual number of physical gold and silver that's available in the world. And if everyone decides to say, Hey, we want physical delivery for our paper contracts, then it's essentially gonna be a run on
LV: the bank.
Joanna: The bank, the bull
LV: banks. The bull banks
Joanna: and bullying exchanges across the world.
LV: It would be,
Joanna: yeah,
LV: the ratio's kind of crazy. Mm-hmm. It might be something like, you know, a hundred plus to 300 plus, uh, uh, ounces of either of those medals, I forget which one respectively, but, um, for every ounce that's a crazy amount.
Physically, whole held. Yeah. Yeah.
Joanna: And so I, I just. Unless you're a trader, I don't see any utility. [00:35:00] Okay. Well there, there's some utility. I think people are very wary about storing physical gold in their homes just because security is an issue. Um, yeah, so, right. Yeah. There's trade offs, there's trade offs, but to me, I think it's just, you know.
Yeah,
LV: absolutely. So there are lots of dealers out there. There's lots of ways to, to buy, um, physical and silver. There's ways to invest it in it, um, with vaulting services. But just generally, I think our recommendation for people of our generations
Joanna: mm-hmm.
LV: Is to look into this, not just looking at crypto, but to look into something that has a history of thousands of years.
Time and time again after, after fiat or these currencies lose their value, um, they're the unspoken champions and they come back into the fold, whether it's gold [00:36:00] or silver or a combination of both. Uh, they become important again and they become the way people I. Um, trade.
Joanna: Absolutely. If you look at countries that have gone through stuff, right, like Greece for example, and you hear a lot of stories about how farmers, you know, just civilians working their whole life, saving up.
They've got all this, what, what, what's the Greek currency used to be?
LV: Lira. Yeah, the Lyra. Yeah. I think
Joanna: got a bunch of Ros
LV: Well, but, but they were under the EU system by then. So they were trading in Euro, euros. Oh yeah, of course Ros before that. Yeah. But
Joanna: how is it possible that they,
LV: the Euro system was in place, I think around 2001.
2002. Mm-hmm. And, uh, Greece had its debt crisis, um, in [00:37:00] 2008, nine ish.
Joanna: How could it have debt crisis? Specific was in Euros.
LV: It totally could because the euro is just a currency that Greece, Greece, as a government has, its, has debt denominated that currency?
Joanna: No. No, no, no. I think Greece was in their own currency.
No,
LV: no, no. They were off the lyra. I, I know this, you, you can take that to the bank part on the punt.
Joanna: Maybe cut this off, because I don't know if it's useful anymore.
LV: Or keep it in. Yeah.
Joanna: Okay. Um, well, I'm just trying to make the case that if, if they would've just thought to kind of diversify their savings mm-hmm.
And store part of it in, in gold, some in silver, then no matter what your country gets into. [00:38:00] You can be sure that you're protected. You have your assets, you know, you could take your assets, go to a different country and start all over. Um, you wouldn't be left unprotected, broke. Panelists in, um, striving
LV: caveat, that's not an investment advice, but yes.
Yeah. Talk to your financial advisor. Please see, yeah. Yes. Uh, great. So, um, let's recap. Mm-hmm. So I would, I want to drive a few things home. There's a difference between currency, which is the dollar be in your pocket and money
Joanna: Yes. Which
LV: we now refer to as sound money. We used to just be money.
Joanna: Mm-hmm.
LV: Uh, gold and silver are money because of the various properties they have.
Joanna: Money is just like the store of human energy. You know, the abstraction of it. Yeah, yeah. Money was a [00:39:00] tool created in order for humans to relate better, um, to their productive efforts, to their energy, and have and intermediary in the way that they're exchanging things between two people in the way that they.
Live and behave in the world and that, that's how money was created. The concept of it. Well, no, actually, that's not how money was created, but that's how the rudimentary form of money was created. Money was created ultimately when they found the most efficient way to do that, to do that encapsulation of, um, energy storage.
Right. And that's when they found, um, gold and silver, that's when money was created. [00:40:00] So just think about that. Okay.
LV: Good one.
Joanna: Yeah.
LV: Awesome. Uh, and anything else to sign off with? Well, oh yeah, well, the US and Death crisis, we went through that.
Joanna: Mm-hmm. I feel like I should have started the podcast with that.
LV: It's okay. That's because
Joanna: it's such a, it's such a good point.
LV: It is what it is. We don't make edits. Okay. Alright. This is good.
Joanna: Okay.
Yeah, this is good.
LV: Alright. Thank you for listening.
Joanna: Thank you so much everyone for tuning in and listening to this podcast. We really hope that you gleaned something off from our conversation today.
Please join us, um, in our.
LV: Next episode.
Joanna: In our next episode.
Alright.