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March 11, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:00:16
Situation Update, 3/11/23 - Double whammy BANK FAILURES just happened in America...
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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Situation Update.
This is Mike Adams from March 11th, 2023.
Thank you for joining me.
We've had two back-to-back banking failures now in the last, I don't know, three days or so.
Silvergate Bank, done, over, liquidated.
And then, of course, Silicon Valley Bank, also done, taken over by regulators.
Boom.
It's history.
The FDIC says it's going to start issuing, well, depositors money next week, but of course that's only for insured accounts and insured amounts, which as you know, or you should know, is $250,000.
If you have more than that in your bank account, which of course a lot of companies do, especially startups and tech companies and so on that were served by Silicon Valley Bank, Any amount over $250,000, it's history.
It's gone.
It's going to go into bankruptcy type of procedure.
The attorneys are going to get paid, but not the depositors, probably not very much.
It'll take several years, and they'll get almost nothing out of it.
So the losses are massive.
We're talking tens of billions of dollars.
And everybody's freaking out and asking, what happened?
How did two banks fail back-to-back almost just two days apart?
And is there a risk that more banks are going to fail in the system?
So that's our subject today.
We'll go into more detail about these bank failures.
But first, first, I caught the bunny gobbler.
I caught the bunny gobbler on camera this time.
And before I show you the picture, going to show you the picture.
Now, for those of you listening, if you don't know who the bunny gobbler is, it's one of my dogs that likes to dig up and gobble young bunny rabbits.
She digs them out of their little bunny hole and And then she grabs him and walks around with him a little bit.
And then if I see it and I say, hey, let go of the bunny, then she gobbles it.
Remember that?
She gobbles it.
And then she talks to me with like a Scottish accent.
Remember that?
You're too late!
It's already in me belly!
You know, that's her, the bunny gobbler.
Well...
I caught her on camera.
I'm going to show you the photo.
Prepare yourself.
Here's what happened.
I had finished walking the dogs and goats, and I heard a bunny, a baby bunny, screaming as they do.
It's a sad sound, but it's an alert sound.
It's actually kind of a very loud squeak is what it is.
If you don't live in an area where you have rabbits and dogs, you probably never heard the sounds that rabbits make.
In fact, most people think that rabbits don't make sounds at all.
I assure you they do.
And they're quite loud.
The baby bunny rabbits have a very loud kind of squeaky sound when they're in trouble.
It's a distress signal.
So I heard this, and I knew immediately, oh gosh, the bunny golliver is...
Striking again, so I run over, and sure enough, she's dragging this baby bunny out of the ground, out of a rabbit hole, a rabbit nest, and I scream at her, hey, stop it, and she drops on the ground.
And there's the baby bunny kind of struggling on the ground.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I hope this bunny is okay.
So, you know, I gently scooped up the bunny and put it back in the nest or right at the entrance of the nest.
And then I locked up my dogs and the bunny gobbler so that that baby bunny could have a chance, right?
And then I decided to go back and check on it a few hours later just to see, is it okay?
Is it okay?
Okay.
And, sadly, it was already dead at that point, so it had been mortally wounded by the bunny gobbler, and it had died.
So, at this point, I'm like, okay, dead bunny, you know, hungry dog, um...
At this point, I don't want this dead bunny to just be eaten by the fire ants, which is usually what happens in Texas.
So I picked up the dead bunny and I gave it to my dog.
But she's the one who killed it in the first place, by the way.
And so in doing so, I was able to snap a photo.
And here's the photo.
Let me show you here.
There she is, all guilty.
With the rabbit sideways in her mouth, just like I described before.
Look at her.
She looks totally guilty.
She knows exactly what she did.
She's not even sad about it.
And a few seconds after this, after I snapped this photo, sure enough, she gobbled it down.
She totally gobbled it.
It's in her belly now.
So I know some of you are going to say, oh, you shouldn't have given it to her.
You rewarded her.
You just trained her to find more bunnies.
Well, let me explain.
The real answer to this, believe it or not, the real answer to stopping the bunny gobbler is to have more rabbit-friendly habitat, which means brush...
Patches, briars, areas where the rabbits can go in and out but the dogs can't.
That's actually the answer.
And so the way to do that, it takes many years of course for these brush piles and so on to grow up.
But you can do some things artificially as well.
For example, you can put some 6-inch diameter culvert pipes on the ground where rabbits can get in but dogs can't.
And there are other ways.
It's too much detail to go into, but Number one is don't spray toxic herbicides on your property that kill weeds and thistles and brush and whatever else because that's rabbit habitat.
So again, the answer is just create more rabbit habitat and then the rabbits can have a chance to get away from the dogs or to build their nests in areas where dogs can't reach.
So I do that every day.
And in fact, the reason why...
There are so many rabbits for my dogs to catch, sadly, is because I've created a ranch environment that has a lot of rabbit habitat, or as you say, rabbitat.
And in the rabbitat areas, there's a bunch of bunnies, a lot of rabbits around here.
So I guess this is just a side effect of that, and the bunny gobbler has now been caught on camera.
She can never proclaim innocence again.
Forevermore, the world knows she is the Bunny Gobbler.
Oh, and if you're wondering what breed she is, yeah, she's part Blue Healer, which explains it, you know.
Smart, unapologetic.
That's Blue Healer, Bunny Gobbler.
All right, so let's get to the bank collapse scenarios here because this has a very real contagion risk.
And I'm going to invite some headlines out of CNBC today.
Here, we'll get to those in a second, but the big picture is that, well, first Silvergate Bank collapsed, and then Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.
Both banks face essentially a similar problem.
They had a large amount of deposits from their customers.
I don't know how many billion exactly, hundreds of billions between the two of them.
So they had a large amount of deposits, and instead of just holding on to those deposits, which you would think...
Banks should hold on to some significant amount, but then they don't earn interest on them if they're just holding on to them, right?
So these banks, as all banks do, because we live in a fractional reserve banking system ecosystem, they purchase investment instruments in order to earn money on the investments, hoping that they wouldn't face a scenario where most people wanted their money out at the same time.
So what actually happened to these two banks was a classic bank run.
You know, classic bank run.
Like in the old film, It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart, you know, the Christmas film, where he's explaining that, you know, you can't take your money out of here because, you know, your money was loaned to, you know, Martha down the street for her farm and her business, whatever.
So classic bank run.
Well, these two banks had taken their customer deposits and they had purchased long-term investment vehicles such as mortgage-backed securities.
Oh, yeah.
This is like the big short part, too, in a sense.
And also government bonds.
So mortgage-backed securities are basically, let's call them real estate bonds.
Although they're not officially called that, but that's essentially what they are.
And then government bonds.
So bonds, of course, long-term investment instruments, some of these had a 10-year maturity, others had even longer maturity.
Bonds go down in value when interest rates go up, right?
Inverse relationship.
So interest rates have been rising steadily over the last couple of years because the Fed, well, they say they're trying to tame inflation.
I mean, of course, it's all insane.
They print money and they print money and they print money.
And then they say, oh my gosh, inflation is out of control.
Let's clobber the economy.
So let's raise interest rates.
Hey, if they want to stop inflation, stop printing money.
That's the problem.
It's not the interest rates.
It's the money printing.
But, of course, they will never stop printing money because that's their scam.
That's how they maintain power.
That's how the federal government has endless power to pay off people and bribe and pay the CDC billions of dollars to pay off comedians to make fun of anti-vaxxers, right?
That's all...
Money printing.
Oh, and also to build more weapons or send $110 billion to Ukraine.
That's not actually taxpayer money.
That was printed money.
Of course, the taxpayers will be asked to repay it at some point, yes, but that's all printed money.
The government's running a deficit.
The taxpayers are not paying for the day-to-day operating costs of the federal government.
It's just printing money like mad.
So of course inflation is getting worse.
Of course it is.
And the Fed says, well, we're going to get that under control.
We're going to raise interest rates, and that'll bring inflation down.
But what it's actually doing is it's making all long-term bond investments increasingly worthless.
Yeah, because again, because bonds go down when interest rates go up or the value of bonds goes down because bonds have a fixed payout at a fixed rate.
And I think Silvergate Bank had a bunch of bonds that were at, what, 1.5% or something, which is horrible compared to today's rates.
And if you have a portfolio of 1.5% bonds maturing in, let's say, 10 years, and you try to sell them to somebody today, oh, there's going to be a discount.
Because who's going to want a 1.5% interest-bearing bond right now, today, when, let's say, mortgage interest rates are at 7%?
Nobody's going to want a 1.5% bond, so they're going to have to sell it at a discount.
And what is that discount?
It could be 30% off, could be 40% off, could be 50% off if you're in a hurry to sell them.
Which is exactly what happened to these banks.
Well, Silvergate first, and then Silicon Valley Bank with the mortgage-backed securities.
So in essence, what happened is that customers who had money in these banks became afraid that the banks were going to become insolvent.
And they all wanted their money out at the same time, and there was a huge spike in demand for outflows.
And I don't know the exact numbers, but we'll get to it.
Oh, here it is.
Let's see.
Customers withdrew $42 billion of deposits by the end of Thursday.
That was from Silvergate.
Wow.
Because a bunch of VC leaders, venture capital, tech industry people, usually in California, they told all of their clients to take the money out of Silvergate at first.
And then all these clients say, what?
We're supposed to take our money out?
And they call out the bank, give us all our money back!
And the bank's like, okay, but then we can only do this for so long until we're out of money.
And then the system collapses.
And that's exactly what happened.
So it's also funny, by the way, because there are always naysayers out there who say, banks aren't going to collapse.
Why don't you use the word collapse?
It's a scary word.
Don't use the word collapse.
And then in the last week, two banks collapsed.
It's like kaboom.
Gone.
Just 100% gone.
Two banks collapsed in one week in America when we're told that the banking system is totally fine and totally healthy.
So here it is.
From CNBC, the headline is, here's how the second biggest bank collapse in U.S. history happened in just 48 hours.
Yeah, the second biggest bank collapse in history happened.
That's a pretty notable collapse, folks.
This isn't some little corner town, rural bank, like tiddlywinks bank collapse.
No, this is the second biggest bank collapse in history.
So the story starts like this.
Oh, they're talking about Silicon Valley Bank in this story.
Here it is.
On Wednesday, Silicon Valley Bank was a well-capitalized institution seeking to raise some funds.
Within 48 hours, a panic induced by the very venture capital community that SVB had served and nurtured ended the bank's 40-year run.
Regulators shuttered Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second largest banking failure ever.
The company's downward spiral began late Wednesday when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet.
What followed was the rapid collapse of a...
See?
See the word collapse, folks?
That's CNBC. Again, what followed was the, quote, rapid collapse of a highly respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.
Even now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, because they're referring to Silver Bank also, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB's demise.
So here's a guy, Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor.
Quote, this was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs.
This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.
It's the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve's actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate-hiking campaign in four decades, and it goes on.
So they're saying, you saw the quote there from that VC guy, he's like, basically the venture capital community caused this because they panicked.
If they had just not panicked, everything would have been fine.
Now, you understand what that really says, that claim?
That all your money is safe as long as a bunch of people don't ask for it.
That's what they're saying.
Your money is safe as long as you don't need it.
If you don't take it out, it'll be fine.
But if too many people want it, it's over.
It's a collapse.
That's exactly what happened.
Now, why did fear and panic spread so quickly across the tech community or the VC community?
Silicon Valley, why?
Could it be because everybody's lost their minds after the collapse of FTX? That's right.
Crypto collapse.
Crypto collapse has taught these people.
By the way, Silver Bank was largely involved in crypto.
It was the largest crypto-friendly bank in America, even offering a crypto-slash-dollar exchange for many years.
But the people in the crypto space have come to learn that you can lose everything overnight instantly, and that the minute you hear a whisper, a whiff, that something's going bad in the crypto space, what do you do?
Oh, you immediately take all your crypto funds out, right?
That's the only way to not get clobbered.
That's what they've all learned.
And a lot of them got burned bad by the collapse of FTX, and then what, three arrows capital?
Remember that?
Three AC? Yep, a crypto venture capital scheme that collapsed.
Well, that memory is fresh on everybody's minds, huh?
They don't want to get caught in another collapse.
So the FTX collapse trained everybody to act quickly on any rumor of instability in any financial institution.
So when word began to spread that Silver Bank or Silicon Valley Bank, both of them, were on shaky ground, everybody immediately wanted all their money out.
And again, $42 billion in withdrawals in one day for one of those banks last week.
That's what happened.
Reminds me of that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, you know, Larry David.
There's a really great episode, I don't know the title of it, it seems like it was around season 4 or 5, where he says, oh, I heard a rumor from a reliable source, like he tells one person, there's going to be a terrorist attack in L.A., and you should get out of town this weekend.
And then that person, of course, tells other people, and those people tell other people.
And it ends up that everybody's freaked out and then left town for the weekend to avoid the so-called terrorist attack rumor.
And obviously it screwed up everybody's plans.
And then when the terrorist attack didn't happen, they all got mad at Larry David.
And he ended up saying, what, would you have been happier if you were killed in a nuclear bomb or something, right?
So that was a Larry David episode there, but it made an important point, is that Fear can spread quite quickly, especially in an environment where it is Recently justified, let's say.
In other words, we've seen a lot of financial institution failures recently, haven't we?
In the crypto space.
And we've seen housing go down.
So anybody that owns mortgage-backed securities and sees rising interest rates and collapsing home values should probably be waking up and saying, wait a second, this isn't just a rumor.
Things are going bad.
Or if some people, if they're old enough, I know a lot of the younger investors weren't adults in 2008, so they don't even remember the subprime housing collapse, but probably most of you listening, you remember that.
We covered it extensively here.
Wiped out.
It was Bear Stearns and, you know, Bank of America was in trouble.
Massive multi-trillion dollar bailouts.
The whole system was grinding to a halt.
It was a catastrophe.
Again, because of CDOs.
Remember that?
Collateralized debt obligations.
Oh, CDOs.
And then there were synthetic CDOs.
It's a CDO of a CDO. It's a synthetic CDO. Yeah, go back and watch the movie The Big Short, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.
In fact, I think I'll watch it again probably this weekend.
It's so good.
We have to watch The Big Short.
But understand that that panic...
Was based on reality.
Housing prices collapsed.
It was a massive bubble.
And of course, the bubble had to break.
So anybody old enough to remember that, they were probably in a hurry to get their money out of Silvergate.
Oh, I called them Silverbank earlier.
but Silvergate and also Silicon Valley Bank.
So another way to say this is that, yes, the panic or the fear of collapse caused people to withdraw the money, which accelerated the collapse.
But the fear was not unfounded either because we're living in an environment where collapse happens and the public's faith in banking institutions has also collapsed.
And that is why this can spread.
That's why contagion is a very real thing.
And that's why I believe this will spread because there are, of course, other financial institutions that had exposure to SVB or to Silvergate here.
And there are other crypto companies, by the way, and startups and so on.
And by the way, there are, quote, rumors that Binance is in trouble.
So perhaps be careful about Binance.
Make sure you own your crypto keys.
Remember, if you don't own your keys, you don't own your crypto.
Not your keys, not your crypto.
So make sure if you have crypto, keep it in your offline cold storage wallet with control of your keys.
Otherwise, you could just lose it instantly with no FDIC bailout money if it's crypto, right?
At least these folks with Silicon Valley Bank, they're going to get an FDIC bailout up to $250K, which isn't much money these days for a VC startup or any kind of a business.
You can't run on just $250K these days.
I mean, are you kidding me?
We can't even meet payroll with that.
It takes a lot more cash to operate.
So a lot of businesses have a whole lot more.
So there's a lot of exposure out there.
The upshot of this is that this will spread because the same kind of fear and potential panic also exists outside Silicon Valley.
The same kind of fear.
And anytime there's a rumor like, oh, I saw this earlier, Wells Fargo has had trouble crediting deposits, or Bank of America, people tried to log in and their account balances were all jacked up and they were missing money, right?
Things like that.
Even though those things might be simple computer glitches that are in the process of being resolved, from the perception of the customer...
They might think, oh my gosh, this is it.
You know, this is the event.
I got to take all my money out, right?
And that can start to spread.
And the minute there's a bank run that begins, then it's over because everybody knows only the first out the door are able to exit the fire.
You got to be among the first out the door or you don't make it out.
So I'm anticipating that this will spread to other banks outside of Silicon Valley, and their, well, the financial system is in real trouble.
It's incredibly fragile, and rising interest rates.
Remember, Powell just said last week that rates are going to continue to rise.
He just announced that.
What does that mean?
Frankly, it means more banks will fail.
More banks will fail.
So we're entering an era, a new era of bank failures, and then the question becomes, does the FDIC have enough money to cover all these failures?
And the answer, of course, is no.
The FDIC doesn't even have enough money to cover 1% of the banks failing, much less a contagion of bank failures.
They don't have that money at all.
And you may recall the video from the FDIC board members released, I think, last November.
Almost everybody's seen it, where they were on camera saying that, yeah, the system is going to crater on a Friday and there's going to be bank bail-ins.
You've heard that term, bank bail-ins.
Well, that just means banks freeze operations and seize your accounts.
So it's a freeze and seize operation.
All of a sudden, your money is their money, or your deposits are their money, and you are a creditor of the bank.
Yeah, they owe you, technically, legally, on paper, but they're not going to give you any of your money.
That day is coming.
It'll probably happen on a Friday.
Some people thought it was going to happen last night.
But I think it'll take more time for that day to come on a larger basis.
But it's coming.
That day is coming.
And when that day comes...
People are going to wake up and find out they've got nothing in the bank.
You know, okay, here's your deposit.
You can look at the number on your screen.
You're allowed to look at it.
You just can't get any out.
You can't transfer.
You can't write checks.
You can't wire transfer.
Nothing is done.
You can't use your ATM. It's all frozen.
Again, freeze and seize.
Or seize and freeze.
That's the way it's going to happen.
And the FDIC, they already know that's going to happen.
They've already admitted it.
The Federal Reserve knows this is going to happen.
The day is coming.
And when that day comes, whatever you have in the bank, it's history.
And of course, they'll probably push some kind of a monetary reset during this and try to drive everybody into CBDCs, you know, central bank digital currencies.
Give us your fingerprint and your eye scan or whatever.
You know, saliva test, DNA from your saliva.
And then you'll be able to access your money through their Mark of the Beast control grid system that'll be tied to your vaccination status and your social credit score.
You know, something like that.
Oh, hey, this just reminds me.
Did you know that for years you have not been able to share naturalnews.com links on Twitter or Facebook?
And then suddenly yesterday that was reversed, like suddenly out of the blue, you could start sharing naturalnews.com stories again on Twitter and Facebook.
Now, I'm not surprised that this ban was lifted on Twitter, because Twitter is under Elon Musk now, even though my account is still banned.
I'm expecting at some point it will be unbanned.
But Facebook is the strange one.
Why would Facebook reverse the ban on naturalnews.com story links?
Because they wouldn't even let you share the link in a private message before.
But now, apparently, it's been lifted, although they could reinstate it at any time.
But you should try it.
Go on Twitter.
Try to share a naturalnews.com link and see if it works.
Because all day Friday, it was working.
But I have a theory.
I think they're doing this because of the pressure from the GOP House hearings.
So because the Republicans won the midterms, at least they won the House, they took the House.
And now these hearings have started.
And there has been some damning testimony that's been coming out of the House just showing government collusion with big tech.
including Twitter, especially Twitter, Massive collusion to silence the truth about everything.
Elections, vaccines, masks, lockdowns, financial systems, you know, the Wuhan lab, gain of function, all that stuff.
It was all silenced illegally, unconstitutionally at the request of the federal government.
And I get the feeling that Facebook and Twitter are now trying to sort of maybe erase the evidence of the crimes that they committed against America.
And I'm wondering if they're also reinstating other sites that had previously been banned.
So just keep your eyes open, folks.
If you see other sites that you can suddenly share and you weren't able to for the longest time, then that would confirm my theory that they're panicked and trying to uncensor All the people they said, or some of the people they censored, let's say.
They're in a massive uncensorship panic now.
Trying to say, what?
We didn't do anything wrong.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about, Mr.
D? Right?
We didn't do nothing wrong.
Yeah.
Give me a break.
So what should we do in preparation?
Back to the financial topic here.
In preparation for the bank failures that are going to cascade through the system.
What should we do?
I'm going to talk about a little bit here about a certain crypto in a second.
But of course, gold and silver is a critical part of the answer for many people.
So let me give credit to our sponsor in that space.
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Now, obviously, make your own financial decisions.
Talk to your financial advisors.
Find out if it's right for you.
I'm not your financial advisor.
But I do believe that gold and silver will be the things that outlast the collapse of the banking system.
I'm a big believer in gold and silver in your hands.
Not in a safe deposit box in the bank, but in your hands or, you know, freaking buried in your yard.
Someplace where you can find it, but it's not easy for people to steal.
Gold and silver.
Metalswithmike.com.
Amazing prices.
And also as a tip, be sure if you consider any gold and silver retailer, make sure you check their website for prices first.
Some of the operations out there that are pretty heavily promoted, by the way, are running a bait and switch operation.
And they're selling wildly overpriced numismatic coins that are very unlikely to hold their value in the same way as straight up bullion, gold and silver bullion coins.
So anyway, be sure to consider gold and silver as one of your off-grid, outside-the-banking system options.
I also think, and you've heard me mention this, so I won't belabor the point, but I also think that ammunition and firearms and power tools and diesel fuel and land and all these kinds of practical things are going to hold value.
In fact, we've already seen it.
Look at the pricing of high-end battle rifles, how that's gone up over the last few years.
I was talking about how I bought a SCAR-17S a few years ago for just under $3,000, and then now it's over $4,000.
And that's a really nice rifle, by the way, the SCAR-17S. Yeah, if you get a chance.
If you want a.308, A semi-automatic battle rifle?
That's a nice choice right there, for sure.
But in addition to all of these things, you hear a lot of people talking about crypto, and I understand it can be a polarizing topic.
Some people are pro-Bitcoin.
Some people are anti-Bitcoin.
And I'm not even going to talk about Bitcoin, but rather...
The utility of, I think, the far more important coin, which I've mentioned before, and it's called Monero.
M-O-N-E-R-O. And the symbol for it is X-M-R. And by the way, I don't own much of this.
I might have, again, a couple dollars sitting around in one of my online wallets somewhere that...
I haven't opened in forever, so it probably hasn't even synced the blockchain forever.
But the reason Monero is, and I've said this for over a year, Monero is the best crypto in existence, as far as I'm concerned, because it is a zero-knowledge cryptocurrency where every transaction is...
Almost certainly private, as long as you're using your own downloaded blockchain locally.
Is it monero.com or.org?
Let me bring up the website.
Okay, yeah, I'm bringing it up.
It's monero.com.
And it says, what, Monero is the gold standard in private digital payments.
Monero's universal privacy protections are enjoyed by experts and novices alike.
Use its technology to enjoy freedom like never before.
Okay, so there's the slogan and, you know, the marketing slogan.
They have a wallet.
It's called Cake Wallet that you can download to mobile devices.
And I'm pretty sure it can hold, what, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and something else.
And the reason Monero, again, is I think Monero is the best standard coin because it's a zero-knowledge coin.
The transactions are truly private.
Unlike with Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a public open blockchain, and anything that you do with Bitcoin can be traced through the public blockchain.
And they can track, you know, who you got money from and where you sent money, what you bought with it, you know, hopefully not illegal drugs or something.
Whatever people buy with Bitcoin.
Not that everything is illegal, obviously.
You can buy lots of perfectly legit stuff with Bitcoin, too.
But Monero is truly private.
And I think it has the best architecture.
And I don't know anybody from the Monero company, you know, and I wish I did.
I'd like to interview somebody from Monero.
Actually, that'd be kind of cool.
Maybe we should reach out.
But I'm just saying they're not a sponsor.
I don't have any interests.
You know, I don't own anything in Monero except maybe a couple dollars here and there.
I'm just saying it's the best coin.
And again, if you value privacy, this is the coin that has the best privacy.
It's the hardest for governments to track, which is why governments are trying to outlaw it.
This is why I think the Treasury, you know, specifically names Monero.
They put out a reward, I think, like, what was it?
Half a million dollars for anybody who could hack the Monero blockchain system, I think that was.
Was that the Treasury or...
It might have been the Federal Reserve or the Treasury.
Anyway, they put out a big reward.
And I don't think anybody's claimed that reward.
I don't think anybody's been able to hack it.
You know, because, well, encryption, when properly implemented, is very, very secure.
Now, what kinds of things can you buy with Monero?
Well, the only thing I've ever bought with Monero, by the way, which is one of the best things to buy with it, is VPN. Virtual private network to allow you to operate online with different IP addresses from different areas, you know, to protect your privacy.
So if you go out and buy a VPN with your credit card, which a lot of people do, you know, number one, some of these VPN companies are just CIA front companies, obviously.
And then secondly, you give them your credit card details, and they know your name, they have your identity, and then they just attach your identity to your log file of everything you're doing, everywhere you're browsing, everything you're downloading, or whatever you're doing online.
It's all in this log file attached to your credit card and your name, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of VPN, right?
Because you might need to do something online that, I mean, perfectly legal, even perfectly ethical, but you don't want the authorities, let's say, getting flagged about that.
Let me give you an example.
As a journalist, as a writer, sometimes I write stories that are talking about terrorism or subjects that Where I need to look up in a search engine something like a query like the following, like building a backyard nuclear weapon, let's say, because I need to write about it.
I need to find out how easy or difficult would it be for a terrorist to build a backyard nuclear weapon, right?
But you don't want to go on to, obviously, Google for sure, nor even DuckDuckGo or any other, any major, you don't want to go to any search engine and type that in.
How to build a backyard nuclear weapon, right?
Because that's going to flag you with the authorities immediately.
You might get a visit by the FBI, like, why are you searching for how to build a backyard nuclear weapon?
You know, my answer is, I'm writing a story about nuclear terrorism, but why not just use a VPN and do that search in a privacy-protective way that can't be traced back to you, you see?
So there's a totally legitimate, legal, ethical, moral reason to use a VPN to conduct searches for information that you might be using to write a book, a story.
An article, news item.
You might be producing a video or a movie.
You might be in Hollywood and you want to have a set that's kind of, maybe you're doing a movie about nuclear terrorism and you want it to look semi-legit or something.
So you might be looking at pictures of nuclear bombs and what do they look like on the inside, right?
Again, going to raise a ton of red flags.
So I would use XMR, which is Monero, to buy the VPN service, and then I would use that VPN service on a totally different computer, by the way, In order to conduct these searches.
And when I say a totally different computer, that's because you don't even want cookies coming across from your main computer system.
So yeah, you need a totally separate computer with a totally separate VPN that you bought with a completely private cryptocurrency so that you can make your movie without being visited by the FBI. Because you're not a terrorist.
You're just searching for terrorist-related things to make your movie.
By the way, have you seen the headlines every once in a while?
These are so funny.
In the news, you see a headline like, you know, ex-wife arrested for hiring an undercover FBI agent to murder her husband for $500, right?
I always laugh at this for two reasons.
Number one, that's a discounted hit rate right there.
$500?
And who thinks that you can hire a hitman for $500, by the way?
That is so funny.
You know that these are some awful people, just to begin with, that they would resort to hiring, like, you know, discounthitsareus.com or whatever.
Like, you're going to find a $500 hitman to take out your ex-husband.
Give me a break.
That is hilarious.
And then secondly, the second part about that that's funny to me is that they probably searched this on Google.
Again, a lot of people still use Google.
It's crazy.
And by all of you still using Gmail, you know who you are.
You got to stop that.
They're scanning all your mail.
They're reading your mail.
Okay.
And they're geolocating you all through your Android phone and through your car, Android and everything else.
Stop using Gmail.
It's crazy.
Too many people use it.
But apparently the ex-wife here was like online searching, like how to kill your husband secretly and quietly, right, on Google.
*laughs* And of course, that flags things.
And it especially flags things retroactively when the husband ends up Dying from a gunshot, right?
Or something like that.
And then the FBI looks at the search queries.
I mean, the FBI issues subpoena requests to Google all day, every day.
Facebook, YouTube, the whole thing.
They get it all day, every day.
They can get the whole search history of everything you've ever searched for, including whatever health conditions you've been searching for.
What do I do about itchy butt syndrome, right?
That's all in there, folks.
It's all in there.
Google knows about your itchy butt syndrome and the fact that you tried to kill your ex-husband for $500.
Google knows all that.
And some people don't even realize that.
It's crazy.
So my point is, you know, I always advocate ethical, moral, legal actions.
And even under that umbrella, you have the right to privacy.
And that's where Monero comes in.
So again, I don't buy or sell or do anything illegal.
But I still use Monero to buy VPN services to protect privacy.
So there you go.
If I were to try to stockpile any kind of crypto, and I'm not saying that you should.
Because, hey, if John Perez is right, you know, he thinks Bitcoin is going to go to $4,000.
And maybe it will.
Maybe Bitcoin will go to zero.
Who knows?
In crypto, you can lose everything.
But if you were considering going into crypto, I would consider Monero because of the privacy factor.
I would.
That's just something to consider.
You know, it has the advantage of portability.
It can be used instantly, globally.
You can take it with you, especially if you remember your passwords.
Things like that.
The downside is, in a total collapse, all crypto goes to zero because, well, there's no power grid.
That's the downside.
And gold and silver really shine in that environment.
On the other hand, you can't stuff, you know, a million dollars of silver in your pocket and just leave town with it.
Well, you could have a million dollars worth of crypto, at least until crypto collapses, if that happens.
Who knows?
Some people think that crypto is going to go sky high when the banking system collapses.
Gerald Salenti, for example, he recommends that people buy gold and silver and Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is on his list.
He may very well be right.
You know, as the banking system begins to collapse, I could see a scenario where a lot of people flee the banking system and go into Bitcoin and hope that that's going to be a place to hold money.
I mean, we saw that in, well, Venezuela.
Bye bye.
Thank you.
We've seen it in a lot of places where economic collapse was survived by people who put some of their money into Bitcoin first and then that allowed them a backup supply of some kind of currency system where they could travel or they could get out of the country and then they could access those funds from somewhere else.
So, you know, look, it's totally plausible.
That crypto could go much higher during a traditional banking collapse.
That's totally plausible.
I have no idea if it's going to go sky high or if it's going to collapse or both, you know, first one and then the other.
I don't know.
That's why I believe in gold and silver because I don't have to read the future because it's an element and it's physical and it exists and it doesn't vanish, right?
But crypto has a place for mobility, so it is something to consider.
But back to the banking system collapse and, again, kind of things that we can do, don't forget to take out some cash.
Just have some cash around.
If there's a banking failure, cash will get you by for a few days while you figure out other plans.
In addition to cash, obviously, we talked about silver, we talked about ammunition, barter items.
Garden seeds are another great choice for barter.
Especially if it's springtime, as it is now in the Northern Hemisphere, everybody wants to grow food, especially during a collapse.
So garden seeds will be currency.
I believe they will.
I think people will buy and sell and trade garden seeds.
I do.
You probably saw my interview recently with the founder of Arc Seed Kits.
Her name is Alex.
You can find that on my channel on brighttown.com or other platforms where we post.
But if you want to go there, it's arcseedkits.com.
I'm pretty sure the discount code Ranger gets you some discount or free shipping off of some products, but not the super special that they typically have.
I don't know.
Try Ranger.
See if it works.
Just try it.
I can't keep track of all the specials and discounts and everything.
It's hard enough.
I'm just glad everybody standardizes on the discount code Ranger.
I'm negotiating with another company right now, too, to try to get you a discount code on something very cool.
It's another one of these deals where I don't earn anything.
My company doesn't earn anything.
It's not a paid sponsorship.
But it's just a company that comes in that has something really awesome.
I'll interview them and then they will give us a discount code for our audience in exchange for, essentially in exchange for the interview.
So they're not paying for the interview.
I'm not earning anything.
It's not an affiliate deal.
But I'm negotiating a discount on your behalf And then giving this company publicity in exchange for them giving us a discount.
So I'm talking to that company right now about something really cool, emergency medicine, life-saving type stuff that...
Well, just stay tuned.
I'll bring you news about that in the weeks ahead.
But I'm frequently doing that.
There are quite a few companies that we talk about where...
We negotiated discounts on your behalf that otherwise would not have been offered.
All right, in terms of practical preparedness, another thing that you can do, of course, is make sure that you don't have over $250K in any one bank account or any one bank, because according to FDIC rules, I think, at least this is my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you have, let's say, two accounts in the same bank, And those two accounts exceed $250K in total.
You're only covered for $250K. That's my understanding.
So you may have to go out and open accounts with other banks, which is a good idea anyway.
In fact, I strongly recommend that you have accounts at four or five banks.
And I strongly recommend that you consider...
Having a couple of those be some local banks that don't have national exposure.
Get away from the J.P. Morgans, the Chase, the Wells Fargo, the Bank of America.
Have some local smaller banks and have an account history with them already in place where you've conducted some activity.
You've opened an account.
You've made a deposit.
You've written a couple checks.
You've used the ATM. You know, you have options because we may face a situation where these national banks, let's say like Wells Fargo in particular, A lot of shenanigans at Wells Fargo.
I can see a situation where they face some real problems where perhaps local banks do not.
And in that scenario, you would want to be able to quickly transfer from Wells Fargo, let's say, to your local bank.
And I don't know if you know this, but a lot of banks, when you first set up an online transfer, they do a thing where you have to prove that you own this other account and Where you're trying to transfer money to, like if you're trying to transfer out to another bank.
And so you've seen this where they make two small deposits, like, oh, 47 cents and 18 cents.
And then you have to go find those deposits and enter them back in at Wells Fargo or JP Morgan or wherever you're banking.
And then that's how they confirm that you own that other account.
And after that, they will let you transfer.
Well, that process can take several business days.
You don't want to be trying to do that process in the middle of a banking collapse when you're trying to hurry up and get your money out of one of these big national banks.
So you want these transfer mechanisms all set up in advance.
So you can move your assets in and out of, again, four or five different banks, all in your name.
You don't have to be super secret stealthy about it.
It's all in your name.
It's all legit.
You know, all the banks have your social security number, if you have one.
You just need to be able to move from one to the other quickly in case things start to crater.
And then, of course, you're going to have probably a head start on this because you listen to people like myself and others in alternative media.
Maybe you read the headlines that I post at censored.news or you check out other alt-media websites or other videos on brighttown.com or Rumble or wherever.
If you want the fastest breaking news, by the way, go to brighteon.social and check out the news feed.
It's amazing.
That's the fastest breaking news on the most important subjects, brighteon.social.
But you'll have a heads up before the masses.
You will likely have time to react where a lot of people will be left behind.
And so in order to use that to your advantage, you need these things set up in advance where you can move money, You can take cash out, you can issue a wire, or you can buy crypto if that's what you want to do, or sell crypto.
Even crypto exchanges, platforms, they will, let's say if you do an ACH transfer to a crypto platform, they won't let you use that crypto for often seven business days.
So that's a long time to wait.
Well, if you wire transfer, then the funds are available usually later that same day.
So have you set up a wire transfer capability from your bank to a crypto platform if you wanted to buy crypto?
Or have you set up a wire transfer to transfer money to buy gold?
A lot of people buy gold with wire transfers.
It's not unusual for somebody to wire transfer like $100,000 and buy gold or silver.
Because they're not even really, they're not buying it.
They're just exchanging dollars for metal.
You know, the value is all still there.
But a lot of banks will flag that.
You know, they'll block the wire and they'll call you.
Are you sure, sir?
Sir?
You want to transfer to this gold company?
Are you sure, sir?
Sir?
Ma'am, are you certain, ma'am, you want to transfer to the gold company?
Why gold?
Your deposits are safe with us.
They're totally safe.
They'll call you and pester you like that.
Are you sure?
So you need to have that in place where you've done a few wire transfers.
Maybe don't start that large if you even have that much extra money.
Just do something small.
Start at $1,000.
And just make sure the process works.
That's all I'm saying.
Make sure it works so that when the day comes that you need to maneuver, then you already have the ability to do so.
And you don't have to scramble and try to set up like, oh my gosh, I've never done this before.
How does it work?
And you're trying to call the bank's customer support line, you know, emergency warrant transfer.
And you know what's going to happen.
You're going to be on hold and say, due to increased customer demand, hold times may be longer than usual.
Estimated hold time is 12.5 hours, you know?
Something like that.
You don't want to be stuck in that queue.
Forget it.
Or it's like their automated AI voice recognition system is like, thank you for calling JP Morgan Bank.
How can we help you?
Just speak in normal English.
And then you say...
Get my money out, you freaking thieves!
Sorry, we didn't understand your request.
You know, you don't want to be in that line.
Like, cursing at the AI system.
That's how you get a human operator, by the way.
You tell the AI system to go F itself, basically.
You know, seriously, you use profanity and then it'll transfer you to a human.
Did you know that?
That's the super secret password.
You actually have to use profanity to get a human on the phone.
Because they figure you're mad.
I can just see you on the phone.
You bleeping, bleeping money, thieves, warmongers, depopulation globalists.
You bleep.
Go bleep yourself, bleepers.
And then they're like, transferring you to customer service, you know?
And then a human comes on.
How can we help you?
And you're like, oh, I'm fine.
I just want to talk to a real person.
Thank you.
And then the customer service person on the other end.
Well, we thought you were angry because we saw your search history.
You were searching for how to build nuclear bombs in your backyard.
What's up with that?
See?
You got busted because you didn't use a VPN. That's what happened.
I know.
It's a lot to remember.
To navigate our world today, it's a lot, right?
I get it.
I feel sorry for the oblivious masses who have no clue what's going on.
They just have no clue.
They don't know that they're being tracked all the time.
They don't know how to handle money and finance and privacy, crypto, gold, ammunition.
They don't know how to clean a rifle or even just take the slide off a pistol.
They're just clueless.
They're hopeless.
I feel sorry for them.
I really do.
That's why I've spent so much time trying to bring people up to speed on basics.
Mostly what I cover are basic survival or navigation skills for our increasingly crazy world.
But I feel sorry for people that don't know the stuff that you and I know.
They are lost.
They will be penniless when this is done.
When the banks collapse, those are the people that are going to lose everything.
And they're going to freaking panic.
Yeah, they will be the panicked zombies at that point.
I feel sorry for them.
I really do.
Because it doesn't take much to be ready, you know, to get prepared.
You just need to stay informed, take some steps, you know, be reasonable.
Think about things and think in advance and understand that you're living in a giant Truman show where everything is propaganda and lies and the establishment is trying to mass murder everybody for human depopulation.
Once you understand that, everything makes sense.
Then you realize what you have to do to protect yourself from that.
It's pretty straightforward.
So for those oblivious masses out there that still think that the government cares about you, right?
Right?
Or that Big Pharma loves you and wants to protect your health.
These people are so gullible and hopeless.
You know, the low-hanging fruit of human extermination.
People who will line up and say, give me more jobs, you know?
Really?
And they'll keep their money in the bank until the very last minute when the bank collapses.
Yeah, not much you can do for those people.
We try, but it's like talking to a brick wall, you know?
You waste your time and you annoy the wall.
So that's a wrap for today's podcast.
Thank you for listening.
Just take time this weekend.
Take the steps that I mentioned here.
Get everything squared away.
Get your multiple bank accounts set up.
Get all your transfers set up in advance.
Check out crypto or gold or combination or both or whatever you want to do.
Get it squared away while you can here because I have a feeling the day is coming very quickly.
Where we're going to have to maneuver rapidly.
We're going to have to, you know, duck and dodge.
And we're going to have to do the matrix bullet dodge maneuver when the banking system starts to crater.
And we better be able to move quickly when that day comes.
Yeah.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, too.
This is cool.
Not a sponsor, but a company I found out there that gives you 50% off their raw hemp oil if you buy with crypto.
It's a great deal.
That company, again, not a sponsor.
They don't even know who I am.
They haven't given me anything for free, nothing.
But they're called Endoca, E-N-D-O-C-A, Endoca.
And they have a raw hemp oil which has very high CBD-A in it, which is kind of hard to find.
And if you go to Endoca.com, and this is not necessarily easy to find.
That's why I'm sharing it with you.
If you buy the raw hemp oil and in the shopping cart, you got to look closely on the lower right-hand side.
There's a thing there that says, hey, save 50% by purchasing with crypto.
So seriously, you buy with Bitcoin and they take 50% off.
I did it and it worked and I got the product.
So I'm telling you, sometimes crypto can save you a fortune.
So just learn how to use it.
Learn how to use it.
And again, 50% off.
Man, that's kind of a big deal.
I wish I could buy gas for 50% off with crypto.
Wouldn't that be cool?
You roll into the gas station.
Here's the Bitcoin pump.
50% off.
Wow!
Freaking awesome!
Let me get some more containers and load up here.
Or if you could go to the grocery store and get 50% off by buying groceries with Bitcoin, would you do that?
I would.
Heck yeah!
Are you kidding me?
Of course.
All right.
Have a great weekend.
Thank you for listening.
And of course, I'll be back with you Monday morning with another update and just get ready for a crazy financial week ahead.
You know, the markets are all in turmoil right now.
Two bank failures last week.
Could be more this coming week.
Just get ready for it, folks.
Oh, and don't forget our gold and silver sponsor, metalswithmike.com.
They're off on the weekend, obviously, but you can go to their website and check it out, and you can contact those folks Monday, and if it's right for you, if it's appropriate, you can get yourself some gold and silver physical stuff in your hands just in case.
This is actually a really good time to look at silver.
Prices are still suppressed.
Supply is actually good.
The premiums are way down.
And Russia hasn't done the launching of the new offensive yet.
So this is kind of a really nice window for gold and silver purchases right now as a consumer.
Oh, and there's a lot of oversupply right now in retailers.
So they're trying to get rid of gold and silver.
There's a lot of deals.
Prices are good and so on.
So Probably the last good opportunity to buy gold and silver this year, is my guess.
So anyway, have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you on Monday.
Take care.
A global reset is coming, and that's why I've recorded a new nine-hour audiobook.
It's called The Global Reset Survival Guide.
You can download it for free by subscribing to the naturalnews.com email newsletter, which is also free.
I'll describe how the monetary system fails.
I also cover emergency medicine and first aid and what to buy to help you avoid infections.
So download this guide.
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