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Dec. 12, 2022 - Fresh & Fit
01:25:59
Tom Nash On The RUS/UKR War, Inflation, Stock Market, and Real Estate
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What's up, guys?
Welcome to the Fresh Fit Podcast.
We're with Tom Nash on Money Monday, man.
We got a lot to talk about, man.
Geopolitics, money, recession, inflation.
Let's get into it.
it.
Let's go.
Welcome to Pressure Podcast, guys.
Guys, we're short on time.
So we're not even going to go into the announcements, really.
We got a special guest in the house, Tom Nash.
We've been meaning to have this podcast with y'all for a bit, but you guys know we went to Romania, then we were hanging out with the Tates, we were in London, etc., and me and Tom had been talking the whole time.
So we finally were able to hit him up.
I was like, yo, we need you back on the show, man.
We're long overdue for another show on money, geopolitics, everything else like that.
So, Tom, we know who you are, man.
It's been a while.
Can you please introduce yourself to the audience for anybody that may not know you?
First of all, I love your intro.
That intro is fire.
I get hyped when I watch it.
It's absolutely a banger.
My name is Tom Nash.
I do financial and business content on YouTube.
It's my second time here in this fabulous podcast, and I'm here to talk about economics, the stock market, geopolitics, and anything that has to do with taking care of your money, pretty much.
Damn, that's what it's about, baby.
Helping you guys stop being brokies and poor.
You know what I mean?
No one tunes into this.
You guys want to see the hoes at night, but you guys are not here on the Money Mondays.
Money Mondays count, man.
This is where the real sauce comes.
So we got a couple things to talk about.
So, Tom, we'll go right into what was said yesterday when it comes to a recession and inflation, man.
I'll let you take it away.
So basically there's a big debate right now in the U.S. and basically the idea is can we battle inflation without causing everybody to lose everything?
Essentially can the U.S. get rid of inflation without causing a recession?
The problem is that this is literally impossible and yet yesterday Secretary Janet Yellen It comes out and says, hey, we will be able to battle inflation and not cause a recession because when you hear the rationale, there's not a lot of good explanations out there.
Essentially, the government is now telling you that We will be able to get rid of this inflationary spikes without any sort of pain, which is literally impossible because if you think about it, what is inflation?
We feel it every day.
Inflation is basically when things are more expensive.
Goods and services, everything we consume, food, leisure, sports, whatever, everything is more expensive.
We all feel it, right?
Cars.
Now, there's two ways to stop the prices from going up.
By the way, prices never go down, but you can stop it from going up too fast.
And it's either by flooding the market with a massive amount of supply that can cause the prices to go down in any industry, whether it's real estate, cars, whatever.
Impossible because the supply chains are absolutely screwed post-COVID with the geopolitics right now.
China is in total lockdown still.
I mean, there's no way to really flood the market with goods and services right now at all.
So with the supply chain screwed, the other option, the only other alternative in the market right now Is to slow down demand because inflation happens when you, me and Fresh and all of us are competing for the same amount of goods.
So when there's a lot of people who want to buy the same thing, the price goes up, right?
But if you cause us to have less desire to buy things, basically the prices will come down.
But here's the problem.
We're talking about academics, right?
Well, you just cause people to demand less.
How do you cause people to demand less?
You hurt them in the pocket.
You hurt their businesses.
You hurt their jobs.
You hurt their disposable income.
And to say to the people, to sit out there, it's almost insult to people's intelligence.
It's like, say, hey, we're going to cause a demand destruction.
That's how they call it.
Demand destruction without causing a recession.
It's literally impossible.
It's almost like the opposite within itself.
I mean, the whole idea of fighting inflation is causing pain.
Now, the problem with...
In the house, by the way, as well.
I don't know if you saw him in here, Tom.
Ben Malin, real estate tycoon out of here in Florida.
Yeah, of course.
Ben Malin, man.
Prices can't go down.
Prices can't go down.
That's why you got to get those lawful offers, man, you talked about.
But sorry, Tom, I didn't mean to interrupt.
You got to live under a rock note to hear about this guy.
I know him.
I've been following him for a long time.
Hey, we need you back, man.
Yeah, he was roasting me the whole time, but it's fine, though.
Yeah, he stopped being such an idiot.
Yeah, yeah.
He's spending his money so bad.
Yeah, I'm being wise now.
I'm not being a Jew.
Yeah.
I'm not being black.
I'm not being black.
Forget I said that.
That's why we're on Rumble.
Hey, shout out to all y'all on Rumble.
Sorry, Tom.
I didn't mean to interrupt you there.
Please continue on.
No worries.
As far as inflation and everything else like that.
But I agree with you.
Yes, of course.
They have to find a way to stave it off somehow.
Sorry.
Continue on.
So the only way to do it, if you think about it, is to start slowly self-destroying the economy.
When we break down what the government is trying to do right now, they're trying to cause unemployment.
They're literally talking about it.
Cause more unemployment.
And by causing more unemployment, essentially collapse the economic insanity, the frenzy we have going on right now, hopefully then people will have less money and then hopefully that will stop inflation.
If they were upfront about it and just say, hey, we're going to cause a lot of pain, that would have been fine.
But they send out people like Janet Yellen out there and basically explaining to you how everything is fine.
To me, it seems like very similar to the Titanic when it was sinking and the band was playing to keep people calm.
It's the same thing.
It's identical.
I mean, you can just look around you.
The ship is sinking.
The question is, How can you tell if she's right or I'm right?
Now, she doesn't have good arguments to prove what she's saying, but I can tell you where to look.
And I can give you actual data points where you can actually research and vet what I'm saying.
There's a lot of...
Yeah, so there's a lot of data points you can go in Google right now and they're not super complicated.
For once, we have in the US this thing called the disposable personal income.
Basically, the government knows exactly how much money we have after tax and after we paid for everything.
So for example, if I make 100 bucks this month, I spent 30 for everyday stuff, for living, for housing, for shelter, for food, and then I paid another 40 for tax.
So I spent 70 dollars, I have 30 dollars left, that's my disposable income.
It's my kind of free cash flow for individuals, right?
So the government knows exactly these numbers, how much everybody has, because they run the books for everybody.
Now, there's a very important metric that's called disposable personal income as a percentage, sorry, personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income.
Essentially, how much dollars are people saving as a percentage of their free cash flow?
So, let me give an example.
If I save, go ahead.
No, as you were saying with the analogy you said before, of that $30 they have that's left over, how much are they saving?
Oh, that's a great question.
So let me give you an example.
If I have $30 free cash flow, like my disposable income, and I saved $15, it's 50%, right?
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
That's never going to happen.
Obviously, this is America.
We would have the money problems we have if that was true.
I wish this was true, but in America, it's never going to happen.
So just two years ago, when things were great, we were pumping $5 trillion into the economy.
So when we were pumping money into the system, it was about 14% just two years ago.
14%.
Right now, go check me on this.
It's 2.9%.
Which is not only six and a half times lower, it's actually the lowest that we had since November 2007.
And may I remind you what happened in 2008?
Yeah, yes.
Yeah, it was a bad time in the US. Recession, yep.
It's the big crash, it's the big recession, whatever you want to call it.
So right now we're in the same spot that we had in November 2007.
Essentially what it means is that only 3% Of people's disposable income is going to savings.
It means that people are spending everything.
And it's almost a psychological trap.
Because like, look, you know how in media they always tell you, hey, we cannot be in the recession because look at the job market, right?
They always keep saying, oh, look, the job market is great.
Like it's only 3.7%.
Yeah.
But here's the problem with job market.
And you would really fuck with what I'm saying right now because you run a business.
When people have a business, whether it's a small business, a mom-and-pop shop, or a conglomerate, whatever that may be, they don't like to fire employees.
When things get bad, you don't automatically fire employees.
You try to last as much as you can because you're hoping for better times.
Saying, okay, let's try another month, another six months.
Let's get some money here.
Let's get some money there.
You don't want to fire employees.
You don't want to admit that it's too bad until it's absolutely impossible to hold on anymore.
So you're like a branch of a tree.
You bend and you bend and you bend and you bend.
And the same thing for consumers.
If you have a certain lifestyle that you've accustomed yourself to over the past three years, you want to keep it.
I mean, you don't want to go from driving a Mercedes to driving a Toyota Corolla, right?
Come on.
So you still want to drive the nice car and have nice watch and the nice shoes and you know what I mean?
So people and businesses right now are still spending the same amount of money.
Yeah.
But the problem is that this data point I just showed you shows that this money is coming out of the people's savings.
I mean, people are spending literally every dollar they have right now trying to keep up with what used to be just two years ago.
And that's why this is the beginning of the end.
Because when you start dipping into your savings to maintain a lifestyle, essentially, you're losing business.
If this was a business, you would have said, this is a bad business.
I'm not generating any positive cash flow.
So when that starts to happen, Then this branch I mentioned earlier, the branch that bends and bends and bends.
At some point, people just run out of money because the inflation keeps raising prices.
As you know, everything keeps going up.
It gets more expensive, more expensive.
And at some point, people will run out of money.
And when they run out of money, the panic sets in immediately.
The branch snaps, like the twig snaps immediately.
People just go straight up from a Mercedes, oh, I don't need a car.
They basically just stop everything right now.
They panic.
They stop everything.
Businesses, they fire immediately everybody because they're like, oh my god.
They do it late.
It's a lagging indicator.
If you go back in history and you check the job market, it never moves like this, up or down.
It's never mellow and just like a straight line, gentle move.
It's always like radical shifts.
What's about to happen based on the data point I just showed you is the job market is actually going to spike It's not going to go from 3.7 to 3.8 to 3.9 to 4 over the course of a year.
It's going to happen very quickly and very violently.
And when this happens, think about it.
It's a very vicious cycle.
If I lose my job, I have less money to spend.
I'm not going to go and buy anything.
Yeah.
So this business will now have to fire more employees because they lost business because of other people lost their jobs.
Those employees have less money to spend.
So they're going to spend less and businesses will fire more people.
It's a very, very vicious cycle.
It's hard to stop.
It's a chain reaction.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a chain reaction.
And if you look at in tech, just in the tech industry, you know, but let's look at San Francisco, right?
People like 10,000 layoffs three months ago.
23,000 layoffs two months ago, 60,000 layoffs this month.
You heard about it, Meta, you heard about Amazon, Morgan Stanley, all the banking industry.
Right now, if you take a look at this, our financial activity is as low as it was pretty much on the beginning of the pandemic.
Everything is slowly slowing down.
The government would like you to just keep your hand in the sand like an ostrich and just ignore it.
Yeah.
But smart people, they know what's going on.
Yeah.
Even in Miami, like yesterday we were at a club.
Yeah.
It's dead.
No one's spending money.
No one's pulling it with Lambo trucks anymore.
Big chains is like, oh shit, there wasn't a club anymore because the crypto money, all that money ran out with PPE money.
So like even here in Miami, we're seeing it live in color.
Yeah.
I didn't even think about that yesterday.
I didn't even think about that.
She was dead.
By the way, there's other metrics I can show you which are even scarier.
But let's keep it gentle, so I'll just show you a few.
You're not going to hear this on CNN or Fox or even on CNBC because it's just, A, they think it's too complicated, they think their audience are stupid, and they don't actually share this information.
But you can Google it, it's free to get.
So, JP Morgan has an index called the PMI, the Producers Manufacturers Index.
It's the composite PMI. And they measure global economic activity.
It's like an obscene amount of 14,000 producers, manufacturers over 40 countries.
It's basically like the top 98% of global manufacturing.
Except just the minor issues that they don't measure.
And this global PMI has been around since 2009.
This is a very elaborate timbre system, but just to tell you, the average is always 50.
It kind of hovers around 50 when things are okay.
When the pandemic hit, we went to 26.
When the pandemic money came in, the 5 trillion, we went to 60.
But except for this anomaly, it was always 50, 52, 53.
We've been going downhill for the past six months, and the downhill is accelerating more and more and more and more.
We are right now, if you carve out the pandemic time, which is an anomaly, we are right now at the lowest of all time we had the PMI, which is 48 or 49.
Based on this data, and they actually measure specific industry, everything in the US, every single industry, excluding healthcare, everything shrunk in the past two quarters, and it's shrinking more and more.
Wow.
I mean, if that isn't by the definition of recession, I don't know what is.
Think about it.
What people buy in recession?
Medicine, healthcare.
I mean, they don't spend on clubs.
Fresh mentioned it earlier, right?
They don't spend on clubs, on booze, on leisure, on travel.
They spend on necessities.
Yeah.
Which actually, that helps us get to the next topic here at hand.
So we talked about inflation.
And me as a real estate guy, when we deal with them trying to deal with inflation, one of the biggest ways that they do so is by raising interest rates.
Right now, I'm actually going to close on two houses this Friday, guys.
And the interest rates I'm going to get are right around the sixes.
But a year ago, goddammit, a year and a half ago, I was buying houses at fucking 3%, you know?
So, yeah, I'm okay.
I'm happy with my 6% or whatever, which I had to buy down, by the way, because when you buy an investment property nowadays, you're going to have to pay 7-something, and then, you know, I paid some extra money to get the points down, bring it down to 6%, you know, because I keep my properties long-term, you know, with the 30-year fixed.
So for me, I want to bring that interest rate down.
But the real estate market has also experienced some new things going on here, and me and you were discussing it right before the show.
Do you want to tell the people about it?
Yep.
So, you know there's this old saying, when God sneezes, everybody gets wet?
Yes.
It's the same.
If the economy goes to the toilet, there's not going to be any safe havens.
The only safe haven would be for patient people who are willing to stay in for years and stay true to their investment strategy and not get panicked.
True.
Short term, it's going to be very painful.
And real estate isn't going to be immune to this.
I mean, everything will take a hit, real estate included.
The first signs of this already are starting to form, and it's kind of alarming, to be honest.
So basically, You obviously know this, but I'll explain to the audience.
There's a way to invest in real estate if you don't have money to buy assets like FED does, like actual property.
You can do either syndications or you can invest in the REIT. REIT is a real estate investment trust.
Essentially, this is a pooled investment.
The simple way to describe it is everybody pulls their money, the REIT invests in real estate, that real estate generates income from rentals, and then that REIT has to distribute like 90% of it.
And when they do, the REIT doesn't pay taxes and you pay directly the tax and you get the benefits of the depreciation, whatever.
It's a huge tax benefit.
And then the REIT collects like a 1.5% management fee and another like 10%, 12%, 13% carried After a certain hurdle, 5%, 6%, whatever.
For some people, that's Chinese.
I know you speak my language to understand this perfectly.
Basically, it's a great way to get into real estate without necessarily dealing with toilets.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Your explanation was far better than mine, by the way.
This was the right way to do it.
You have zero headache on all the benefits.
Zero headache on all the benefits.
All the tax benefits, the depreciation, everything.
Some of the best dividend payouts are what REITs, guys, by far.
So yeah, I'm sorry, continue on, Tom.
Yeah, so that's a great way to explain it.
There's two types of REITs.
There's public REITs, which is the majority of REITs, and there's private REITs.
Not a lot, but there are out there private REITs.
The conditions to get in is mostly to be a credit investor, but for the good reach, like the one I'm going to tell you right now, it's hard to get in.
It's not that easy.
You have to know a guy.
You have to be networking with your banking to be somebody that they want in.
It's not an easy thing to get in.
So anyways, the two biggest REITs, private REITs in the US are one that's called the B-REIT. It's a Blackstone, not Blackrock, Blackstone REIT. And there's another one called Starwood Capital.
So those two REITs, they're the two biggest private REITs.
And here's the crazy part about REIT. Now, every REIT, as a standard, It has this limitation that you cannot withdraw too much money from the REIT at the same time because essentially that will force the managers to liquidate assets and they're going to be pressured to do it quickly.
And you know when you sell something super quick, you sell it for cheap.
So they have a cap and that's normal.
That's absolutely normal.
Every REIT has a cap on withdrawals.
Blackstone REIT had a 2% per month NAV withdrawal limit.
So you cannot withdraw more than 2% of net assets per month and a 5% quarterly.
Okay.
Now, Normally, you never hit this cap in a good REIT. I mean, nobody's withdrawing money out of REIT in good times.
I mean, that's crazy.
Foolish.
Why would you, right?
Just nine months ago, the total amount of money withdrawn from REITs was $380 million per quarter.
That was the fourth quarter of 2021, 380 million withdrawals, okay?
Remember this number.
In the third quarter Of 2022, which means nine months later, the withdrawals are at $3.8 billion.
Wow.
Like 10x.
10 times within nine months.
Wow.
Now, this is verifiable data.
Go.
You can check me this.
And if I'm wrong, call me out on this.
But I'm pretty confident that the data doesn't lie.
The data doesn't feel anything.
It doesn't get butthurt.
It doesn't lie.
The data is the data.
It is what it is.
You guys can go check everything you send.
You can go check it.
Yeah.
Google it.
Check me on this.
Yeah.
Now, it's a huge number, but how does it look with Blackstone and Starwood?
So Blackstone, Google this, just announced that they're selling MGM and Mandalay for $1.3 billion in Vegas.
In Vegas?
Yeah, in Vegas.
Wow.
The reason that they're selling...
Somebody's saying $30 trillion in USA debt.
We'll talk about that in a second.
So the reason that they're selling...
Is because for three months in a row, they've hit the redemption cap.
That's unheard of.
For a REIT, like a Blackstone, it's a $70 billion REIT. They're 7% of the entire existence of Blackstone that owns everything.
It's a $950 billion fund management company.
So a $70 billion REIT, an exclusive REIT, is now hitting redemption caps in October, November, December.
Month after month after month.
That doesn't happen in good times.
The same thing happened with Starwood Capital, which is the second biggest one.
So both these REITs came out and they said, we're limiting withdrawals.
We're not going to give...
Sometimes the REIT can give you like extra.
If there's like 2.7% and they're capped at two, they'll give you some.
But they basically said, no more.
And they're actually selling the Mendeley and the MGM just to pay out people that are about to withdraw and already are waiting for the money.
Wow.
Because they're capped.
holy crap so there you go to tell me that this is a good sign by Janet Yellen I mean that's I've eaten all of sandwiches in my life but this is not what i'm ready to to eat this is a what do you think the people that that bought you said the mandalay bay and what else Mendeley and MGM, 1.3 billion.
Sorry, 1.27 billion.
So the new owners, I guess they're just going to maintain and collect the rent from the tenants?
Yeah, these are good assets.
These are good assets.
The only reason they're selling is because they need liquidity to pay out people who are withdrawing money.
They would have never sold it.
It's time assets.
They didn't foresee all these people saying, you know what, man?
I just want to pull money out.
So they got to pay their investors.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, and now, as far as like, that's, I guess, on the commercial side with, well, it's a commercial deal, but that's more with the REITs.
What about single-family homes with traditional investing on your take?
Anything different there?
Well, just so you know, that Blackstone REIT, that B-REIT, the $70 billion REIT, they have a significant exposure to housing, to private housing.
So they have a bunch of single family homes, like buy a bunch of like, you know, three, two single family homes.
If I'm not, it was them.
One of these, I forget which company it was, but one of them just bought up a bunch of single family homes and they liquidated stuff.
It's never a bad idea to own property.
Like if you ever play Monopoly, you know, this is never a bad time to own Monopoly.
It's to own housing, right?
But I'm just saying like, you just pointed out the fact that, look, here's the problem.
And I'll play you out a scenario here, right?
Yeah.
You touched on this before and you hit the nail on the head.
Imagine I'm a normal person and I have a mortgage.
I took the mortgage when times were good and I took a massive mortgage because times were good, I was making money.
Mortgage was cheap.
Why not, right?
Yeah, let's do it.
Yeah, let's do it, right?
Why not?
Let's leave above our means, like the American dream, right?
And then now, all of a sudden, Interest rates go up.
You just mentioned six.
It will keep going up.
Double.
It will keep going up.
I was buying houses at three-something.
Yep.
It's at seven.
I have to spend another...
Every time I close on a deal, I got to spend another easily $10,000 to $11,000 to bring the points down to somewhere in the sixes, which is crazy.
And this is not the end.
We're still going up.
So now imagine...
Think about what I said in the beginning of the show.
We're heading into an economic trouble, into recessionary times, which means people will lose their jobs or at least people will not be paid as much.
When the job market is not so hot, even the people who keep their jobs are getting paid less, job security is less.
Now your disposable income will be much lower in 2023 compared to 2022.
And in 2024, probably even lower.
So now you're stuck with this massive mortgage You are not as paid as good as you were, so you're struggling to pay the mortgage.
And now real estate prices are coming down because when interest rates go up, real estate prices come down.
It's just natural progression, right?
That's one good thing for me as a buyer is I've been able to get better deals, you know what I mean?
To catch it on the downside, yeah.
Yeah, and the sellers now aren't like fucking dickheads like they used to be, dude.
They were selling houses 20, 30, $40,000 over asking, not budging.
They'd have a million offers.
Now sellers are coming back to reality.
But sorry, please.
Well, that's the proof of what I'm saying.
Why are they coming back to reality?
Because interest rates keep going up, market gets weaker, and then when market prices go up.
So you'll have a situation in about six months to a year when people are stuck with massive mortgages, they can't repay them properly.
And the price of the real estate that they have in the underlying collateral is not as much as it used to be, sometimes even underwater.
When that happens, if, God forbid, foreclosures happen, which I hope they would not see the scenario again because we saw it in 2008, it was destructive.
I know, but yes, foreclosures, let's do it, baby!
That's the best time to buy, by the way.
Yeah, absolutely.
Obviously, yeah.
So foreclosures start because of what I just described.
Because people are saying, hey, I can't afford this mortgage.
The house isn't worth what I'm paying for as far as the mortgage.
You know, screw it.
So if that happens en masse and banks are forced to foreclose, then they're going to flood the market with real estate properties, with housing properties, which is going to collapse the price even further.
So that's kind of the doomsday scenario of what can happen to real estate.
That's not necessarily going to happen.
It will depend on how high the interest rates will go up.
But if the Fed decides to put the pedal to the metal, the real estate market is going to feel the pain and housing would not be immune to that as well.
I think real estate is one of the few asset classes right now that's not getting completely destroyed by the hurt economy, but it definitely is getting a hit.
Luckily, we haven't got as bad as the stock market and cryptocurrency.
But, you know, when the market is down, it's down.
Everyone's got to feel it.
I mean, the only good thing I would say about real estate is at least you get the tax benefits.
And then on top of that, you're able to always kind of finesse the bad situation.
So, like, people have less money to buy a home.
People's credit are being checked even more.
I mean, I was under the process of getting a loan through a bank.
And they started asking me a bunch of questions that they never asked before, dude.
Damn near a tax office.
I was like, what the fuck?
So I went with another lender to get a house.
And I got a bunch of people calling me right now, right?
Because when you apply for one loan, they run your credit and everyone sees you.
They put you on a list.
I'm getting called by a million people.
So I feel that business is hurting right now because they're trying to get everyone to do a refinance or get a mortgage or whatever.
kind of good but at the same time kind of bad so like the good thing is as a buyer right the sellers don't have as much leverage as they used to however the interest rates are higher so you got you got to pick your poison then when you do get the house the good thing is people don't have the money as much to buy a house or the credit so you always have tenants but if you're someone that's like you know you're trying to do airbnbs or whatever you might get hit a little bit because people aren't taking a vacation so there's always a way to make money in a bad market in real estate depending on what angle or what But yeah, I mean, we're feeling on this side too.
I'd be lying now if I didn't say that.
And don't forget that the real estate is always going to be a lagging indicator.
Think about it this way.
If you're having trouble, the first thing you can get rid of is your car.
Then you're going to buy cheaper produce to eat.
Let's talk about this.
The last thing you're going to default on is your medicine and your housing.
Those two things you will keep buying as much as you can, as long as you can.
So when you see the real estate prices are still hovering kind of in a normal environment, that's kind of normal because that's the last piece in the domino that will fall.
You're right.
Yeah, you mentioned cars, man.
That's also another market that's actually going down.
Because now, back in the day, you can get a car going for pretty much anything.
You have a job, no matter what you're doing, $10 an hour, you can get a car.
They'll approve you.
Now it's so hard because you need half the money down at least.
And if you don't have savings to show you have money in your account, they don't give you the car either.
So it's tough.
And rates are really high too.
And you were saying right now, what we experienced in the 2008 housing market is going on right now in the car market is what you're saying.
Bro.
The same cars you could have got two years ago, like for 3%, and then put maybe like 10% down, it's 30-40% down now on the same car.
So it's like, bro, you have to have money to get these cars and...
Record high repos.
To get approved, bro, they got to trust you because people are...
Actually repos, not paying the cars off.
So it's kind of like now the trust has gone between banks and people and like loans are hard to come by now.
Wow.
The party's over.
Musical chairs is done.
Okay, so Mo, do me a quick favor because we're going to get into a little bit more of a controversial topic on this third one.
Kill the Facebook, kill the Twitch, and kill the Twitter.
We're going to go rumble on YouTube only on this one.
So Tom, this one's a little bit more controversial.
And this is kind of like the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, but it's very important.
And I think it's kind of a silent situation going on that's hurting the economy around the world.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Obviously, the mainstream media is not properly reporting it.
They're saying certain things that, quite frankly, aren't true as far as what's going on in the war.
They're trying to keep morale high with Western countries and like, no, the Russians are losing and all this other bullshit.
I mean, You're over there in Europe, man.
I'll just turn it to you.
Tell us what the hell is really going on and how is this war impacting the markets in general behind the scenes?
Well, look, I'm not a military strategist, but unfortunately, the first thing I can tell you is that somehow it's always the people who do not win the war, who do not care about the war and have nothing to do with this war are paying the most amount of price for this war.
Every day, Ukrainians on the ground that have zero to do with this war or care about it, they're getting the brunt of it, which kind of sucks.
The problem with the American media is that it has got...
And again, I'm not a Putin apologist.
I don't like the guy.
I think he's a horrible person.
I think his policies are atrocious.
And I think there's definitely...
Let's call it this way, harsh criticisms towards Putin and what he's doing.
The invasion is not legal and I don't think he had a justification for it of any sort.
Having said that, what's going on right now is very, very strange.
When I look at Western media, I see this kind of Hollywood movie reporting.
Basically, they're trying to sell me a movie.
About the good guys and how they're beating the bad guys, the happy ending, the ramble, killing 57,000 people in a day.
This is not how war looks.
This is not how war works.
And it's absolutely ridiculous.
There's no good guys and bad guys.
This whole narrative is absolute bullshit.
I don't have super deep inside knowledge, but here's what I can tell you.
And everybody knows this.
Ukraine, as a standalone country, is a country that's dependent, I would say, almost exclusively on the United States.
If the United States decides not to supply Ukraine with weaponry and funding, Ukraine has no way to fight this war.
I think you would agree with me on this.
Everybody with half a brain cell knows this.
So ask yourself this question.
I'm just asking a question.
To challenge the way of thought that the American media is presenting this.
Ask yourself this question.
If we control, like if the US controls what's going on with Ukrainian decision-making, because we fund them, we provide the weaponry, we put everything, and you know what?
It's fine, whatever, right?
If we control them, how can we believe when the media here tells us that Ukrainians are refusing to settle with Putin?
I mean, all of a sudden, the Ukrainians are refusing to settle, even though we're asking them to.
Like the US is saying, you need to settle Ukraine.
And Ukraine says, no, no, no.
This is the lie that they're telling you on mainstream media.
I mean, it doesn't work like this.
Go back a few months ago and look at Elon Musk's Twitter feed.
He has a tweet.
Elon Musk tweeted a few months ago and he said, guys, we need to finish this Ukraine mess.
People are dying.
There's massive amount of nuclear risk.
There's little nuclear power plants in war zones.
There's just so many things that can go wrong.
Let's put it this way.
Any mistake by Russia or NATO or the US can lead to World War III, which is an unwinnable war.
So can we stop this insanity?
And then Elon Musk tweets, look, let's find a solution.
Let's...
Russia keep whatever they have right now, the Donbas area, which is the eastern part of Ukraine, which is predominantly Russian.
And let them keep that, let them keep Crimea, and then Ukraine will keep the rest, and they will not join NATO, and then everybody can go fucking home.
Nobody would like the solution.
Putin would hate it because he's going to say it's a win, but it's not going to be a win for him because Putin's goal was always advertised as changing the regime in Ukraine and getting rid of Zelensky and all that stuff and demilitarizing Ukraine.
He's not going to get that.
He's going to be unhappy.
Ukraine is not going to be happy because they're saying, rightfully so, hey, it was our land and they took it.
Why should we give it up?
And they're right 100%.
But it's a compromise.
In the compromise, nobody will be happy, but at least nobody else will have to die.
That's what he said.
And he got so much hate on Twitter.
Ukrainian officials were telling him to fuck off, like horrible shit.
Now, it's the most pragmatic solution I've heard to this problem.
And the one thing I can't understand as a thinking person is how come if we get to call the shots over there, if the US gets to call the shots with what Ukrainian policy is, How come the US isn't telling Ukraine, hey, this is the deal.
It's as good as it's gonna get.
Just take it and let everybody go home.
That's the one thing that there's no logical way to explain this to tell me that it's something that doesn't have to do with the US. And that thing bothers me.
I don't understand why.
Like, why do we need them to keep fighting?
I mean, do people in the US or in Europe care about the Donbas being in Russia or Ukraine?
I just don't understand this part.
That region is heavily populated by ethnic Russians anyways.
Yep.
Most Americans won't even know where Ukraine is on a map, you know what I mean?
But they're over here saying all this, you know, pray for Ukraine, blah, blah, blah.
They can't even point on the map.
I'll say this without getting too geopolitical.
You know, from what I understand, right, because I watch, you know, Coach Red Pill, a.k.a.
Gonzalo Lero, he's over there in Ukraine himself.
We had a discussion with him about this.
They're estimating right now somewhere between 500.
He's saying a battalion a day is getting wiped out in Ukraine, which is about a thousand men.
I wouldn't know if it was that high, but I would say somewhere probably easily 500 to a thousand men are probably dying a day in Ukraine from this war.
And then on top of that...
I got a reliable source who pretty much has a brother in the Canadian military training some of these Ukrainian troops.
They train them up, send them off, and 100 of them will go and only about 20 or 30 of them will return.
So that tells you guys right now the numbers as far as them getting decimated by Russian forces, which...
It's no surprise, guys.
Russia is a world power.
I mean, I don't know why people really think that the mainstream media keeps saying Russia runs over here and Russia's losing the war and blah, blah, blah.
No, they're 100% winning.
It's just that Russia's trying to take Ukraine over intact to a degree.
You know, they're not trying to decimate them and destroy them like, you know, the U.S. did to Iraq.
Like, if they wanted to do that, they could have just done airstrikes in 24 hours and have Ukraine.
But they didn't want to do that.
They want to capture intact.
Right.
Because at the end of the day, just like Tom said, a lot of Ukrainians are actually Russians.
So, you know, so it's Especially on the eastern side.
On the western side of Ukraine, there's not a lot of Russians at all.
But on the Donbass area, where the Donetsk, Lugansk, I bet if you do an actual poll, I told you this offer, if you do an objective poll over there, there's a good chance they might vote to go to Russia anyways without any pressure or direction.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
So they don't get the headache.
And again, I see Putin's reasons for why he invaded and everything else like that.
I'll take my personal thoughts out of it.
But what I would say is that Ukraine is losing the war emphatically.
Everyone knows this.
I mean, even Tom, who doesn't agree with Putin, knows that, you know, everyone knows that they're losing.
But for some weird reason over here in the West and Western media, we don't want to report this.
We want to keep the morale high so we can keep sending money over there.
I get it.
It's a game.
But the problem with this, you know, the problem with this policy is I think people, decision makers in the U.S., they don't understand how to fight this war.
Look, I don't agree with what's going on over there.
I think Putin and Russia had zero justification of invading Ukraine.
Russians will hate me for saying this because they've been fed the narrative of the Russians have been abused in Ukraine.
And Ukrainians will hate me for saying that Donbas is predominantly Russian.
So everybody will hate me for whatever I've been saying about this topic.
Nobody is liking what I'm saying here right now.
Both sides will hate me for this.
But it is what it is.
The problem with the decision-making in the US, they don't understand that this is like, they think that this is a boxing match when you can win by a decision.
You can win by points.
That doesn't work like that.
The only way for the US and NATO to win this war is to beat Putin in a knockout, to get him off the power.
Any other victory by points or by decision, he's not going to go home.
They're not fighting against a normal country where the public opinion can get somebody to change rule or whatever.
The whole system has been built around this man.
Unless you beat him in a knockout, you're going to lose.
They're patient, too.
Look, the winter is definitely playing in their favor.
Russia has zero sensitivity to body count.
That's the one thing people in the West have to understand.
Putin, he cares nothing about body counts.
He will lose as many soldiers as he needs to get what he needs, and he would care absolutely nothing about it.
There's no public opinion or pressure that can, you know, push him to care about all soldiers are dying.
To him, it's just numbers.
So how does this I mean, obviously, it's terrible what's going on over there.
You know, the media doesn't want to report what's really going on.
But how does that affect us economically?
I mean, you know, besides I know, obviously, gas, power, you know, Russia is one of the leading countries when it comes to natural resources.
And Ukraine is the world's leading producer of wheat.
Yes, yes.
Which basically, if you go, the entire Middle East is 90% reliant on Ukrainian wheat, by the way.
So how does that affect the world?
How does this war implicate, you know, deal?
How does that lead to the, I guess, the financial situation worldwide in the United States?
Well, obviously, it's another exacerbating factor of inflation.
When you have tensions, oil prices go up.
When you have a war, oil prices go up.
When you have a war between two countries who are the world's combined biggest producers of food, it's going to be a big problem.
Which makes me wonder why people aren't stopping this.
It's definitely not helping inflation.
It's the crazy part.
If the United States would have leaned on Ukraine to settle with the Russians, assuming the Russians would have accepted this deal, maybe the Russians wouldn't, I don't know.
If the US would have leaned on Ukraine to accept it and the Russians would have accepted this deal, we would have a much easier time to fight inflation.
I'm not even kidding.
I mean, a big part, gas prices, food prices, everything, supply chains would open up, natural gas prices, everything would get cheaper in a day, immediately, just by the war being over.
So that kind of thing, it's not helping anybody right now to keep this war going.
And it's slowly becoming like an attrition war, which is the worst kind you can imagine.
Yep.
I mean, you can see just with the trade that we did with Brittany Griner for Victor Bout, I mean, just to kind of show you how relations are.
An international arms dealer, right, that literally was going to provide weapons to FARC members, right, in an undercover DEA operation that were going to kill U.S. soldiers.
We traded that guy for a pothead WNBA player.
I mean, it's like, what the hell is going on here?
But that goes to show you how, you know, we're not even on the same footing anymore.
I mean, for decades, this isn't new, by the way, guys, where the US and Russia trade spies for each other.
Oh, you caught our guys.
We caught your guys.
All right, let's do it.
We have a guy over there and they just said no.
And we said, okay.
Yeah.
Wild.
We didn't get our Marine back, but we got this woman back.
It's just wild to me, but that goes to show you that trade is a perfect embodiment of U.S. and Russian relations right now.
It used to be, I catch your spy, you catch my spy.
We just exchange them.
It is what it is.
We're going to continue to spy on each other.
It's been that way for damn near 100 years at this point.
I don't think the Biden administration realized how bad of a PR this is going to get.
Yeah, it was an L. They thought they were getting like a brownie point.
Obviously, I'm happy that she's home.
No hate to her.
It sucks to be in the prison cell in the foreign country over some pot.
Yeah.
I'm happy that she's home with the family.
Good for her.
But I mean, the deal, the structure, it's a very, very bad deal for the US, if you ask me.
Almost every decision the Biden administration makes, they think that their voters are stupid.
I mean, didn't they realize that people are going to figure this out?
You know, it's because the thing is, and I'm really glad that social media exists because a lot of people didn't know who Victor Bout was, you know, prior to the situation going.
Like, I knew who he was because I used to work in federal law enforcement, so I knew, you know, I had known about his case way before, right?
He was kind of like a case study person.
But the common American, especially nowadays in the social media age where people are young, you got to remember, this guy was committing these crimes in the 90s before social media and all these things were, so...
I saw that he got revitalized with everything going on.
I was like, okay, now y'all really see.
I did a whole fetit on it just to explain how bad this dude really was.
It just goes to show where we are in a state right now as far as us trading damn near a guy that supplies weapons to terrorist organizations, including the Taliban, starting wars in Africa, South America, whatever it may be, and trading them for a pothead WNBA player.
It's very foolish, but Okay, so I guess the word definitely causes supply chain issues.
I'm trying to think here.
Was there anything else we were going to hit on this?
Oh, gas, supply chain issues.
Okay, um...
There was one other thing I was going to say.
Would you say this war is a distraction, Tom?
To keep our eyes off what's really going on?
It wouldn't be the first time that politicians have used military conflict to distract people from the economy.
I mean, Putin, it has been this playbook for years.
I mean, before every re-election, Putin creates a war, a crisis.
That would not be the first time.
That's not an American thing.
Every politician does that.
I don't think that...
Look, there's going to be a lot of conspiracy theories who will tell you that we pushed them into this because of...
I think it's such an elaborate...
I just think it's just a clusterfuck of horrible policy decisions of incompetent people.
That's what I was going to ask.
More than anything planned.
So we got the one Ukraine.
Obviously, that messes with the supply chain, right?
Russia, huge producer of natural resources.
Somebody's asking the Russia pipeline, who sabotaged it?
Follow the money.
Follow the money.
All the money.
Who had the interest to sabotage it?
Russia?
So that creates supply chain issues.
China, let's talk about that.
You said China's going through a lockdown right now.
They had a real estate crisis as well.
How's that going to affect things?
Well, China actually right now is shifting its policy.
Check this out.
So China was going deep into the zero COVID policy.
How should I explain it?
It's almost like President Xi had decided that this zero COVID policy is going to be his legacy, that this is going to be his claim to fame in the history of China.
And he would not accept the fact that this was a horrible policy decision and he would just keep doubling down and doubling down and doubling down.
Now, what ended up happening is that the entire world is pretty much, at this point, COVID is a yesteryear thing.
But in China, it's still a huge deal.
They're locking people up in their homes.
They're literally shutting down entrance to apartment buildings with chains so people can get out.
They can't buy food.
They literally are starving to death in their own apartments.
So what happened in China a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if you heard this, but there was an apartment building that caught fire and 10 people died because they couldn't get out because the building was chained because of COVID restrictions.
And it started a whole bunch of riots.
Riots have started erupting all over China.
It became kind of a national thing.
And then the crazy part is that the Chinese authorities have still not budged on this topic until, get this...
Riots have started at Foxconn.
I don't know if you heard about Foxconn.
That's the facility that produces the iPhone for Apple in China.
And the riots have started in their facility and Foxconn went to China saying, hey, we're going to lose Apple if you guys don't figure this out.
I mean, just so you know.
And then the Chinese government said, okay, okay, we're lifting a lot of these restrictions.
So it took Foxconn to basically ask them to do it because of loss of Apple.
But guess what?
Apple are not idiots.
Tim Cook is no idiot.
There's a certain savviness to being one of the largest companies in the world.
You're not going to just take China on the award of anything.
That's why Apple has been secretly diversifying out of China for a while.
They've been moving the production facilities to Vietnam, to India, to other facilities.
Apple still came out.
Google this.
Apple came out, I think, two weeks ago and they said, hey, we're going to phase out China altogether.
We're slowly starting to move production from China to other countries.
The reason obviously being because think about it this way, if you have the cheapest factories, the cheapest manpower, whatever that may be, but this craziness keeps going on every single day, Yeah.
Bureaucrats doing crazy shit, like making Jack Ma disappear.
The biggest IPO in history, Ant, was just shut down by the Chinese government for no reason.
Basically, zero COVID policy with absolutely no sense.
This insanity, as a CEO of a company, you're going to be like, I'm not going to produce in this country.
It's just too much craziness.
Apple is not the only one.
Labor is cut by the volatility.
Your profits are cut.
Of course.
Labor is like, oh yeah, it's cheap.
We could do this.
It diminishes.
It's too volatile.
Oh, yeah.
Would you put your factory in a war zone?
Hell no.
It's the same thing.
It's the same logic.
Look, Warren Buffett, who was one of the largest investors, still is, one of the largest investors in the Chinese Tesla.
It's a company called BYD. Massive, massive Chinese company.
A very good company.
Mm-hmm.
He's been slowly selling his holdings over the past three quarters.
He's been consistently selling and selling and selling his positions.
Charlie Munger, his partner, sold a whole bunch of his Alibaba holdings.
I mean, people, they can't sell like people like, oh, but they haven't sold out completely.
Of course, they're not going to dump everything and lose.
They're going to slowly try to walk back this mistake without you noticing.
But China, as the challenger of the US, is a myth.
That train is not going to come into the station.
China has too many problems.
I've talked about it last time.
The demographic issues.
I mean, the working force is older.
It's getting older.
They have a massive real estate Ponzi scheme problem.
No energy of their own.
Massive issues geopolitically.
China is dealing with so much craziness right now.
Ask yourself this question.
When Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan and basically, I can't do the movement, but basically flipped the middle finger to China.
What did China do except talk?
Yeah.
What?
Twitter was going crazy like, we're going to go to war!
Yeah, we're going to go to war!
Oh, surprise.
They didn't go to war.
They can't afford it.
They can't afford it.
They literally have bigger problems right now than Taiwan.
Yeah, and she went right in the middle of that whole real estate thing.
Do you foresee China?
I'm not a fan of Nancy Pelosi, but I can't believe she's the only one with a pair of balls to do that.
Would you foresee that China is going to lose its position as one of the world's, you know, leading, I guess, creators of products, right?
Because, I mean, they have cheap labor.
Everything is fucking made in China.
Do you foresee this volatility is going to, you know, create more jobs in other places like India?
Definitely.
Yeah, India is one hell of a candidate to inherit this.
That's why Apple is moving to Vietnam in India.
India is an English-speaking country.
Everybody speaks English for the most part.
Labor is cheap.
They're easy to train.
The government is accommodating.
It's stable.
There's no mess going on in India.
The banking system is organized.
There's a due process.
There's a legal system.
In fact, if I was the US over the next 50 years, I would be more terrified from India, not from China, if I have to actually think about it.
India is a sleeping giant that people don't really know.
I mean, they have their own problems, but they're definitely better positioned than China.
Yeah.
But a lot of companies outsource their work to India as well.
Yeah.
I mean, dude, if you think about it, oh yeah, because you come from the tech industry.
I mean, whenever I call and I have a problem, some Indian do, hello.
Hello.
You have a problem?
I can help you.
I can help you.
I mean, you come from...
My name is Tom.
Did you guys outsource a lot of your stuff to Indian people for work?
Yeah, like a lot of behind the scenes stuff, they would like outsource to India.
Um...
Philippines as well.
But I will say with China, I just find it's funny because they're gonna have problems with money, of course.
So instead of eating dogs, they can eat themselves.
Save our dogs.
I think personally, China has a technology that they're not telling us about that's in their pocket.
I don't know.
I'll tell you guys, everyone knows this, but China is by far the number one stealer of US technology.
Oh, that's institutional.
The government has been encouraging and allowing this and facilitating it for decades.
Yeah, China and Russia are the two biggest counter-espionage, counter-intelligence threats to the United States, but China is by far the biggest thief of American trade secrets and American...
IP, know-how, production, everything.
Yeah, 100%.
I would wager, don't be surprised if you see Gundams flying around, shoot people.
You never know, bro.
You never know.
India, bro.
You never know.
This is 2022.
I would not be surprised by anything at this point.
We've seen everything.
Wild.
Real quick.
If you would have told me two years ago, three years ago, Russia is going to invade to Ukraine, I would have told you crazy, bro.
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Alright.
Yo, that was fucking funny.
So, check this out.
W Addery.
All jokes aside, so I recorded an ad read right before the show, and I gave it to Bo, but he didn't edit it, and that ad read was very difficult, so I was like, going through, I was like, what the fuck?
So, whatever.
It is what it is.
I thought this was intentional.
I thought it was funny.
Yo, we should have heard the blueprint.
I was like, this is edgy.
This is some edgy stuff.
Yeah, I should have heard the fucking...
Yeah, I'm glad we turned it off, because I was like, what the fuck?
It was frustrating me.
Make it sound like me.
Yeah, bro, that shit was stupid.
But anyway, okay, going back to what we were saying, so...
So China might lose this position as one of the world leading producers as far as like, you know, hard goods go and India might take over, which I'm kind of already seeing that with the technology stuff.
By the way, China, like people talk about China is the second largest GDP in the world after the US divided by the amount of people in China.
There's a thing called GBT per capita, kind of basically GDP per person.
China is like number 80.
Yeah.
They're somewhere in between Botswana and Montenegro.
I'm not sure.
I need to see the list.
Montenegro.
Yeah.
So this is what we'll do.
I'll hit the chats because I see some really good questions here.
We'll hit those.
Then we'll hit the last topic.
All right.
Cool.
We got here.
Question for us.
What's the best way to sell your car, finance, minimize your loss?
Honestly, bro, I'll go to CarMax, see what they offer me.
I'll offer it.
But if you finance a car, you're probably underwater, you're probably at a deficit, just pay the loss and get out as soon as possible because now with the car market, how it's going, if you keep your car, it's going to bury you to the ground.
So I would just say get out while you still can.
So if you take a small loss, just take the L. Take the L. Dude, I'm about...
Okay, for example, if I sell the Rolls Royce right now, I'll probably lose like 30k.
Keeping a thousand with you.
Wow.
Yeah, so the car mark is down.
So guys, just take a loss.
Get out where you can because it's not getting any better.
It's going to get actually worse.
So just take a loss now while you still can.
Can you get Cheyenne Reynolds on after hours for another W? Yeah, we can get her on when she's safe.
She's cool.
She's cool.
On the next after hours, can guys do the women role play as men to pick up a girl up again?
Okay.
If needed.
Inflation is affecting every commodity.
These 304 is now asking for $500 dates.
Yo, it's going to be tough, bro.
That's refreshing.
David goes, sorry, off-topic.
Myron, what is the name of the course you took for creating your online workout business?
I got with Brandon Carter.
Go check him out.
Get on one of the links at the top from our interviews with him and you'll be able to get in there.
304 currently working in pest control.
I'm tired of my current field.
Would joining the Navy get an IT rate be a good move?
Could potentially.
Jamie Ortiz.
Jamie Ortiz.
Repent and obey Jesus.
Can y'all have Alex Stein on the show?
The right-wing IRL comedian troll.
The dude who trolled city council meetings while COVID was happening would be amazing.
I don't know who that is.
Okay.
Over two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck as inflation continues to rise.
Yes, it is.
Yep.
Fresh dog.
100K salary is the new 50K. We got to aim high, fellas.
Yep.
Josh, next dollar.
Thank you.
Kyochi Borgi.
Thank you.
And then anybody with a brain got to know Russia not losing this war.
Yeah, bro.
I mean...
Come on, man.
Shout out to Vladimir Wooten.
Okay, we got a poon supporter in here.
Joshua Christie goes, do you think Wooten is doing the right thing by pushing back against NATO? Thoughts?
I mean, he's got to do what's right by Russia.
You know what I mean?
To them, NATO's the enemy.
Paul, thank you.
Don't be fooled.
Victor Wout and Vladimir Wooten are on a yacht right now with 10 out of 10s and getting lit as fuck.
Probably.
What advice would you give the average guy in America to prepare for the unexpected?
Uh...
Tom, what's your thoughts on that?
Well, usually in the time of recession, there's a few things you can do.
Number one, you can, first of all, focus on industries that are traditionally more protective, defensive during the recession.
We mentioned this earlier, people, like shit people need every day, healthcare, Stuff like that.
Telecom does better.
Not retail stuff, not leisure, not technological speculative stocks, startups.
Basically focus on defensive classic Dow Jones stocks.
Real estate, if you're a long-term investor and you're patient, is always a good thing if you're not over leveraged.
Cash is not a bad idea to be at.
In the recession, because guess what?
When the recession hits, it's probably one of the best buying opportunities.
It's like a candy store.
You can have your pick.
Real estate will be cheaper.
Stocks will be cheaper.
So you don't want to absolutely liquidate everything and just go 100% cash, but having a nice little powder on the side is always a good thing in recession.
And obviously taking care of your own finances.
I can't stress this enough.
Look, you have to make sure that before you talk about stocks and real estate investments and cars, you have to take care of your own shit, which means you have to make sure you have some money saved up for a rainy day.
You never know what's going to happen tomorrow.
You have to make sure that we talked about in the last show, You are accountable to yourself, which means you run the budget, you make sure that you're accountable to your budget, and if you slip up, you try and figure out why you slipped up.
You try and understand how you can maximize your income by improving your skills, by doing side hustles, whatever that may be.
You have the internet.
It's so much easier to make money right now.
And you reduce or postpone your expenses as much as you can.
For example, If you're buying a subscription for something, you can pay $100 per year or $15 per month.
Think about it.
Maybe you decrease it by spending upfront money but less overall.
And basically cut out everything you don't absolutely need.
You mentioned this earlier when you talked about your sponsor.
Unnecessary shit you're paying for.
Five to six to ten different things you're paying for, you don't even know.
You have to get rid of all this shit.
Unless you have to have it, you don't need it.
I mean, you don't need like Amazon and Apple TV and Hulu and Netflix and Disney Plus.
You don't need all that shit.
Pick one or two.
You don't, like, you have to slim down, cut down, because bad times are coming.
And most importantly is just preparing mentally.
I think a lot of people are, when the bad times hit, they get caught off guard.
You know, if you've been in law enforcement, you know what I'm talking about.
Like, when you're in a bad situation and you're not mentally prepared, you freeze up.
You don't know what to do.
You're not ready.
Like, you have to mentally prepare, okay, it's going to get bad.
Don't freak out.
This is what you do.
This is my plan.
If I lose my job, this is my six months fund, and then I'm gonna find a new job.
This is my backup plan.
This is my side hustle.
This is how I can go to my parents.
I can go here.
I can reduce my payment on my car, on my residence, et cetera, et cetera.
You have to have a plan in place and be ready for what's coming.
You can't just sit and hope and pray.
It doesn't come, because if it doesn't, good.
You've been prepared and nothing happened.
Whoop-de-doo, great.
But if it does, The ones that are prepared mentally, emotionally, financially will do much better than people who just, you know, stuck their finger up their ass and hoping that shit is not going to happen.
And I'll tell you guys this too, like having cash does definitely help.
So as you guys know, I told you I have two deals.
I'm closing this Friday.
One of the deals, however, guys, I was going to do cash because one of the banks was pissing me off, asking me all these stupid questions.
And I told them, listen, guys, I can do this deal cash.
I will fucking walk.
And then they came back with better terms.
And then I was able to get another lender that pretty much matched those terms and got that loan done quickly.
So it's amazing what banks and lenders will do when they know that you don't need them and how fast they'll move to go ahead and get your stuff prioritized.
And I was able to go ahead and get like a clear to close damn near in like a week and a half, which is fucking unheard of.
Of course, they had all my other documents from another deal, but I moved that deal over to another lender.
So now I'm doing both deals with two lenders.
Both deals with one lender versus like splitting the two where one lender had one deal, the other one did.
I just moved it over because I was like, you guys are pissing me off.
But when you have the cash, you're able to do things like that because you're like, listen, I don't fucking need you guys.
And when you do that, the bank starts to respect your time a lot more and then they're going to go ahead and move heavens and mountains to make the deal happen because they get paid when they give you a loan.
So that's another thing too, as far as like...
And by the way, don't forget one thing.
When things get bad, we are old enough to remember.
Go back to 2008.
I can go back to 2000.
You guys are probably younger than me.
So at 2000, I can still have a clear vision of what happened.
When these things happen, Real estate and economy and stock market, S&P can drop 50-60%.
It's insane!
Real estate can drop 50-60%.
All of this can happen.
But guess what?
If you go to history, there's multiple studies that show that people who have stayed invested during a recession, during a crash, and have doubled down during a crash, They have made an obscene amount of money as long as they were not scared and freaked out and just sold out because they panicked.
The worst thing you can do in bad times is try to time the market.
Try to time the market by getting out before the crash, getting in after the crash is impossible.
The only thing you can do is just stay the course, know that you're doing this for the next 15 years of your life or whatever that may be, 20 years, 25 years, and just stay at it absolutely religiously.
History shows that if you do that, people who invested in the S&P 500, not anything exotic, not real estate, not stocks, S&P 500, and they started investing in 2000, and they invested the same amount every single month, put in $100, $100, $100, did nothing.
Over the course of the last 22 years, they've done 350%.
Just that.
Before you even invest your money, look at personal finance.
Because if you can't manage the money you got from your job correctly, how are you going to manage money for an investment?
Personal finance is so important because, guys, if you don't have it right now, what's happening with the recession that's coming, you're going to need it 100%.
So if you can't manage your own money, how are you going to manage people's money for assets?
It makes no sense.
100%.
100%.
Okay, so where are we at here?
Okay, so we got here...
Message deleted.
Okay, from Paul.
Cool, thank you.
After two decades, the military industry complex needed some type of proxy war to keep selling their arms.
Very true.
Someone is thinking.
Best story time.
What going on with Walmart charging for site merch?
It's mysterious, and Walmart employees claim they don't know about it.
It was $3.
I got my money back.
People, check your receipts.
I mean, I don't know about that.
Stay hard, stay fresh.
Fantastic.
Thoughts on oil and water for both China slash India?
Oil and water for India.
I think he's talking about the energy independence problem.
China doesn't have their own energy and they're dependent on other countries, mainly Russia, to provide it.
And that dependence basically creates a A huge problem for China.
I don't know if you heard about it.
A few months ago, China had to go on rolling blackouts on its industry complex because there was just not enough power.
China has big energy problems because they don't have their own.
China's on the mirrors, man.
China is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
That's a good description.
I mean, no country that has no energy independence can be a dominant global power.
That's one of the preconditions to being one.
Not a problem with India, I believe.
I don't think India lacks energy independence.
By the way, the funny part is that Germany used to be energy independent.
They voluntarily gave that up, which is kind of hysterically funny.
Speaking of which, Tom, what are your thoughts on, because we've had discussions on reserve currency and the U.S. dollar being the world's reserve currency.
What are your thoughts on Russia, China, I believe, India, and I don't remember, it was one or two countries getting together to create some kind of global reserve currency.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's the whole BRICS currency, B-R-I-C-S. They're talking about this kind of creating this counter world reserve currency.
I'm not even going to get into the whole euro debacle and how euro played out for Europe versus the dollar.
You can see what people are buying.
When things are bad, what are people buying in the world?
Why did the dollar spike when everything went to shit?
That's a good question.
Now, look, I'm also not going to get into the fact that we still have petrodollars and because of our relationship with the Saudis, it's literally impossible for them to get off the petrodollars, which pretty much ensures our position as the world reserve currency.
Not even going to talk about that.
Assuming we don't have these two issues.
Assuming it's a fair play for everyone.
Okay, let's say that there's no petrodollars and now you can choose your country and you can choose where to hold your foreign reserve currencies, right?
Which currency would you choose?
A currency run by China, a country with no due process, no legal system, no banking system, absolute chaos.
God knows what's going on in China.
Like that, fake GDP numbers, fake real estate market.
You can choose Russia, the second option, which is China.
There's BRICS. BRICS has the R is Russia.
Which is always a great place to put your money, a country that goes to war over a sovereign country.
You can choose Russia, a totalitarian country, or you can choose the other options.
You have Brazil or India.
And I mean, okay, cool.
Brazil has a lot of potential.
India has a lot of potential.
These two countries probably have more potential in their pinky than China and Russia have altogether combined right now.
But this is a potential.
This is like saying, okay, this 15-year-old kid can be an NBA player in six or seven years.
Cool.
It's a 15-year-old kid.
That's nowhere near to be there.
You would not put your money in Brazil or India right now.
They're not there yet.
Yeah.
A one-world currency?
Yeah.
That's scary, man.
And the other thing, too, is that, yeah, you're right, Tom.
It's like everything was going on crazy with the war.
Everything, the Great British Pound went down.
The euro went down.
I mean, I remember a couple of days where the U.S. dollar was pretty much neck and neck with the euro, which is unheard of.
It's always been, you know, the U.S. dollar was somewhere between 50 to 70 cents on the euro.
So we were right there.
Remember this word, tina?
There is no alternative.
There you go.
And I agree with you.
I mean, as long as we continue to have that relationship with the Saudis, I mean, yeah.
The Saudis need us more than we need their oil, if you think about it.
We are responsible for their whole...
The entire oil industry in Saudi Arabia is based on US technology, US personnel, US money.
It's so intertwined.
It's not something you can easily replace.
And also, we are the ones paying and helping them transform their economy because they're trying to shift from oil to an actual economy because they have to at some point.
We're the ones who are paying for this.
We're the ones who are helping them.
We're creating it.
Not to mention the fact that military-wise, we're the ones who provide military support, technology.
Defense alliances.
I mean, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US is so insane.
It's even unthinkable.
But they'll do this sort of things every once in a while where they flirt with the Chinese just to get our attention.
And then people who, you know, there's a lot of gold pumpers and stuff like that will jump on it and say, oh, this is the end of the dollar.
Come on, give me a break.
People have been announcing the death of the dollar for the past 50 years.
Yeah.
I got three words.
New world order.
Yeah, it's...
Yeah, that relationship...
If that happens, you should not be worried about the world reserve currency.
You should be worried about different things.
Other problems.
Yeah, you have other problems.
Yeah, you got other problems.
I mean, dude, they fucking...
People forget that the Saudi Arabian government killed somebody in fucking Turkey, in their fucking embassy.
Jamal...
Khashoggi.
Yeah, Khashoggi.
Like, they literally...
He walked in there to get his passport renewed.
They fucking killed his ass.
Why?
Because he was speaking bad about the Saudi Arabian government.
Oh, wow.
Yo, if you speak bad about the Saudi Arabian government, they will fucking come after you.
They will fucking murk your ass.
It's horrible.
Like, Bin Laden did that shit.
They took his citizenship away, right?
And just fucking renounced him.
And then, you know, with the Jamal guy, they killed him in a Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey.
And they had like secret recordings and you can hear them like, they killed his ass, they choked his ass and then they fucking cut him up and everything.
It was wild.
I guess they were hungry.
And the Saudi Arabian government has still yet to face any type of like negative consequences for that shit.
But hey!
Well, I followed the money.
Yeah, exactly.
Damn.
Hey, US government, shut up.
Don't worry about it.
This dude was talking shit about the royal family.
Follow the money, bro.
All right.
DL Saint, I really want to know podcast.
Shout out to you, DL Saint.
He goes, China and India, that may be the next shooting war.
As for Russia, I'm an old soldier.
We trained hard to beat Russia.
I still can't believe they couldn't take Ukraine in 72 hours or less.
Russia's not as tough as we thought.
SMHL Russia.
I don't know, man.
They want to capture Ukraine intact, bro.
Yeah, they're holding back, bro.
They're holding back, bro.
They're not going full force.
I've heard from many reputable sources.
They're not even using first or second line technology.
They're using old shit because they know that NATO's involved and they don't want their technology being discovered.
So, I mean, it is what it is.
Keep leaning from the front, gentlemen.
Shout out to the crazy people who are off their meds.
Thank you very much, DL Saint.
And then last one here, Lopez Ezekiel.
Me and my wife got a house given to us, 100% paid off.
What's a good first move to use it as an investment?
It needs a big bit of fixing.
I'm thinking of a home equity loan to get it fixed up.
What's next?
Fix it up and do a cash out refinance.
Boom.
There you go, my friend.
I mean, rates are a little high right now, and cash out refi is one of the most riskiest ones.
They're going to give you a high interest rate on that shit, but that's a quick way to get some money and tax-free.
Top, what else?
Did you want to hit Peter Zemil?
We can do it in the next chapter.
Let's leave something for the audience.
I can do it quickly.
So we wanted to share some...
Yeah, we wanted to share with you guys a very interesting story.
So there's a guy who I think we can learn a lot about from as investors, especially people who are new to the market and are kind of figuring it out.
His name is Peter Thiel.
He was the founder of PayPal, the founder of a company called Palantir, and he was an early investor in Facebook, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Asana, a whole bunch of other companies.
This dude grew a $2,000 portfolio to a $7 billion portfolio in 20 years.
And the crazy part about it is he did it in a way that about 5 billion out of the 7 is absolutely tax exempt.
And I think there's a lesson here to be learned because anybody here in the chat can do the same thing.
I'm not saying like grow from 2000 to 7 billion.
I mean, create revenue from the stock market or investments, whether it's whatever investments may be, REITs, whatever.
Absolutely pay no tax on your investments and do it for years and years and years and protect all depreciation.
So here's the crazy part.
So the way he did it, and this is something that everybody here can do.
He used his Roth IRA, which is a pension plan.
There's a Roth IRA or 401ks.
Essentially what you can do, you can put about $20,000 to $27,000 or $30,000, depending on how old you are, Every year into an account that is tax-free.
This account you can buy stocks in or investments in, and this account will never get taxed.
Let's say you buy a stock, every year you put in $30,000.
And then you do it for years and years and years.
And every dollar that appreciates, for example, you invest in the stock and the stock goes 100x, whatever, right?
Everything that happens inside that account will never ever get taxed.
As long as you just don't withdraw it until you go to retirement age.
And then you pull it out when you retire and it's all, boom, tax-free.
And if you are thinking about investing, if you are thinking about putting the money to work for you, creating some actual parachute for you, because I know a lot of your audience are younger and they're not really thinking about pensions, but trust me, the best time to start thinking about your pension is when you're in your 20s, not when you're in your 30s, definitely not when you're in your 30s or 50s.
Compound interest actually works in your favor the most.
Yeah, exactly.
So if you're in your 20s and you set up an IRA or 401k, and you max it out every year, I think one is capped at $7,000, the other one is capped at like $25,000, and you max it out every year as much as you can, and you invest through that just in the S&P 500, by the time, if you just do that, by the time that you retire, you will be a millionaire.
That's just statistics speaking.
Don't pick stocks.
Don't invest in anything exotic.
Just get a Roth IRA 401k, buy the index, the S&P 500, and just keep maxing it out every year, $30,000, $30,000.
By the time you retire, you're not going to be a millionaire.
You're going to have an insane amount of money.
It's all going to be 0% tax, absolutely legal, no loopholes, no complaints, no nothing.
That's how Peter Thiel did it, and you can do the same thing.
Took $2,000 and made it what?
A couple...
Seven billion.
But look, he invested...
Look, let's be honest.
The way he did it, like he gave half a million to Mark Zuckerberg when he had like six employees and nobody heard about him.
He gave money to LinkedIn.
He invested early in a lot of companies that have blown up.
But his philosophy, I can also share with you.
Basically, the philosophy is very simple.
It's like...
If you hear hype, this is what it says.
If you hear hype about a company, stay away.
If everybody's talking about a company, about a stock, stay the fuck away.
FTX. That's a good one.
Although it was never publicly traded, it was a private company.
You couldn't invest directly in FTX. But I mean, stay away from hype.
If your family tells you about a stock, if your friends, if influencers on YouTube, whatever, stay away.
Find the stocks that nobody's talking about.
Find the stocks that nobody's talking about.
You can even go for the ones with high risk as long as there's a high potential as well, but only if you understand the risk, if you're willing to lose the money, if you don't need the money to pay rent or to pay food or to pay for your kids tuition, if you can afford to lose the money and you are patient and you are a long-term investor and you're going to do this for the 20-year period that it requires to do that,
If you pick 10 companies based on this methodology of actually analyzing company, looking at the management, looking at the business model, not just the charts and stuff like that, and you stay for the long term and you've done the process, then there's a good chance that six or seven out of those 10 companies will be successful.
And if they are successful over the course of 20 years, their upside is going to be absolutely phenomenal.
Nobody thought that Facebook is going to be one of the largest companies in the world when he gave them half a million.
That's the whole idea.
It's like patient, long-term, and contrarian investing.
Don't do the hype.
Don't do the Jim Cramer stuff.
Do the ones that you found that nobody has ever heard about.
For example, I'm looking at a stock right now.
I'm not going to say which because I don't want to give advice here.
But there's a company that makes smart light bulbs.
Super not sexy stuff, right?
Okay.
But it's absolutely insane, the potential.
Smart houses.
So they need smart labels, bro.
Stuff like that.
Nobody's talking about this stock, this company, anywhere.
No, that's what's happening.
Getting in early without people knowing is really half the game.
I mean, I troll a little bit.
I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to invest in Chewy because there's going to be more single women than ever before.
But I mean, there's a little bit of truth to it, man.
Bro, do I see these girls on this pod?
I'm just like, bro, these women are going to need fucking...
I mean, a smart light bulb is kind of a good idea because it's like, women don't change their light bulbs.
They don't change their smoke detectors.
They don't know how to do their shit.
So that's a good investment shot.
They have a man do it.
Yeah.
All right.
So, Tom, anything else you want to let...
I know we held you way beyond what we...
This was fun.
Every time I come on, I stay longer than I have to because it's just too much fun.
Yeah, I feel bad.
I mean, is there anything else you want to hit or did you want to...
You got to dip out.
It's up to you, man.
I just want to say one thing.
I'm launching a new product and I've talked to you about it off-air.
Me and my partner, Pete, we are launching a new platform for research for investors in the stock market.
If you are interested in the stock market, check it out.
It's called StockMVP.
You can find it at stock-mvp.com.
It basically will allow you to look at stocks like you have never before.
We created this platform because we couldn't find anything like this on the internet.
Essentially, you could look at stocks, you could look at financials, you could look at how much the CEO, the CFO, and the insiders are dumping shares or buying shares.
You could look at how much institutionals like the Black Rocks and the Black Stones are buying up or selling.
You can see how much short interest is in the company, how much people are betting against it.
You can see, you can run models, discounted cash flow valuation models on the company, see what the fair value of the stock is.
You can do a whole bunch of stuff with this platform, essentially set up your own profile to kind of tell you what's the price-to-earnings ratio, what's the free cash flow ratio, how much debt, how much cash, and basically within 30 seconds to have like an idea about the stock.
We have a stock screener.
When you can say, I just want to see companies with very low price to earnings ratio, a lot of cash, no debt, blah, blah, blah.
Show me all these stocks.
So we have a screener.
And yeah, this is a full picture on a potential stock that you might be looking at.
You can go in informed.
You know what I mean?
You can kind of go in informed.
We have a code.
I didn't tell you this, but we've created a code.
The code is FRESH25. Bam.
FRESH25. 25% off if you're watching this for the next 24 hours.
And we have basically a refund policy.
If you don't like it for any reason, no questions asked, give your money back.
Try it out, no risk.
Speaking of the stock market, man, do you want to tell the people anything?
Because the stock market has been tumbling, man, for the past damn years.
I just tweeted about this.
I said, the stock market is like an ex-wife.
It's absolutely volatile, angry, unexpected, and it will happily take your money.
Yeah, I mean, with the volatility, you know, there's no better time to, you know, be able to know what the hell you're really, you know, potentially getting investing into, right?
Unless you're like me, trolling, getting chewy just for the LOLs.
But no, Tom, where can people find you, man?
Oh, actually, shit, wait, we hit these super chats real quick.
Someone had a good question here, and then we'll close this, wrap this thing up.
Mo, can you pull it up?
Do-Wop goes, is the Robinhood IRA a good one to invest money into?
Can you repeat the question?
He said the Robinhood IRA. Robinhood IRA? Look, I'm not going to talk about specific IRAs, which I think is what he's asking.
In general, let me just answer this super general, because we don't want to give financial advice here.
In general, an IRA or 401k, they're very, very similar.
They all work almost identically.
It's a closed account.
You put your money there.
You buy investments from that account.
You never take it out until you retire.
And when you retire, you take it out tax-free.
And there's a cap on how much you can use, how much you can contribute every year.
And if you have a good job, they'll match your contributions, by the way, which is pretty cool.
All of them, they work the same.
I don't think I've ever talked about differences.
They're all identical.
They're regulated.
They're highly supervised.
There's no, like...
It's just convenience.
It's whatever you add.
There's no difference.
It's like using Vanguard to invest in S&P 500 versus another brokerage account.
Exactly.
They're all the same.
They're all the same.
You know what I mean?
It really comes down to what you're more comfortable with.
They're extremely regulated.
They're well protected.
Essentially, the government wants you to invest.
Why the government gives you this benefit?
They give you $30,000 per year to invest in this tax because they want you to have retirement money.
Because when you retire, they don't want you to basically be broke.
It's like, oh my God, what I'm doing.
Crime and, you know, cost of dealing with people with no retirement money.
They want you to be rich.
Yeah, but typically, Robin Hood is an L, though.
But news just came in.
Sam Bank Freeman, the guy from SPF and FTX got arrested.
Oh, he got arrested in the Bahamas?
Yeah, he got arrested.
Yeah, someone was there spamming it in the chat.
From FTX got arrested.
I mean, I'm not...
Is anyone here surprised?
Fox Business, CNN. Next thing you know...
Well, I will say this.
Coffezilla did a number of videos on him and...
Yo, Coffezilla did...
He's the only one...
Look, Coffezilla did the DOJ's job for them because he's the only one out of the entire set of mainstream media who interviewed him.
He got the least amount of time The least amount of cooperation.
He had to literally fool the guy to get into an interview from the back door.
He's the only guy who got Sam Bankman free to admit on the live interview that he commingled funds.
He said it.
From one company to another.
That's criminal.
Look, David Sachs.
I don't know if you heard about David Sachs.
Google him later.
David Sachs was talking about PayPal.
He was the one with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk in PayPal in the old days.
David Sachs was saying, hey, we were in trouble in PayPal.
We were thinking about bankruptcy.
And our lawyers told us, if you dare touch customers' deposits to save yourself from bankruptcy, you're all going to prison.
And CoffeeZilla, a YouTuber, he's the only one who got sent bankruptcy to admit that that's exactly what he did.
He used people's deposits and he took it from one company and literally gave it to another company, which is absolutely insane to think about.
This is like...
Mind-blowingly unthinkable for a company to do something like that.
Imagine your bank showing you a balance sheet on your computer when you go to the app, but the money isn't really there.
They just gave it to hedge funds to bet.
Wow.
That's the power of YouTube, man.
Yeah, CoffeeZilla, huge W. Huge W for CoffeeZilla.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, with that said, man, Tom, it's great having you on the show, man.
It's always, you know, we'll bring you back.
It's always good to have these periodic talks and talk about geopolitics, money, how it affects, you know, the world and the economies.
But yeah, man, guys, here's Tom Nash.
Check him out on YouTube, man.
Go check out his app as well.
All his links are going to be below.
Subscribe to his YouTube channel.
I watch his content.
I like it.
It's good stuff, man.
And yo, Tom...
You reached out to me after my video about the reserve currency.
I know you actually watch my stuff.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Any last words, man, before we close out?
Yeah, I love what you guys are doing.
Keep killing it.
Everybody in my community, in my Discord, were pumped when they said I'm coming on again.
Everybody...
I'm mainly, like, my audience is 97% male, mainly North American, like 30 to 50.
That's the age group, and they all freaking love you and...
No, we love what you guys are doing.
The message is very powerful and I think more important than ever in this day and age.
So keep up the good work.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Tom, man.
Guys, we'll be back on After Hours with some lovely ladies.
Chris is going to show up because Chris is a bum very soon and we'll get going.
But no, Tom, thank you for coming on the show.
We'll catch you, man.
Thanks, Tom.
Peace.
Peace.
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