Dave Smith critiques the U.S. government's surveillance and prison policies while analyzing Silicon Valley Bank's collapse, linking former Lehman CFO Joseph Gentile to an imminent systemic failure. He mocks congressional hearings involving Elon Musk and Barry Weiss, recalling past CNN confrontations with Christine Quinn regarding NYPD corruption and Syria. Discussing potential 2025 cabinet picks like Scott Horton, Smith argues for jury nullification against unjust imprisonments and speculates on Western exit strategies from the Ukraine war, concluding that elite cooperation is essential to address constitutional crises and prevent further financial contagion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:14:30
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
Thank you.
What is up?
Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
You know, when we first booked shows in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, I had the thought that the only thing you can think, I go, this is going to be weird.
And it's been a great time.
This whole weekend's been great.
Thank you to Soul Joel's Comedy Club, and thank you guys all for coming out.
This was great.
We had some fun stand-up shows, and now it's time for a live part of the problem podcast.
If you guys have seen the live shows, we talk for a little bit, and then we take questions.
Anyone wants to ask anything, we can talk about it.
This is kind of a cool moment we're living in.
I think it might be...
It's over, Dave.
You can just say.
You can say it.
They all read the news today.
They saw what happened in those banks.
They're happy that they live on farms.
They've locked down their women.
They've locked down their food.
This is the only audience we're going to play for all year that's ready and good to go.
They're like, they really are.
Like, I got enough wheat for a decade.
I welcome it.
Well, we've been predicting...
I'll say this.
I've been predicting both privately and publicly for 15 years that this whole system is about to collapse.
And it's really frustrating when it doesn't.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I'm hoping it doesn't.
But at the same time, you're like, I got to reread Mises again.
I'm sure.
I'm sure this thing is supposed to collapse.
Can the economy Mises faster?
Or at least like, just stop making me look so bad.
But this does feel like a pretty big thing that just happened.
So we just had yesterday the biggest banking failure since 2008.
But don't worry, because everything else about our society is stable.
So we should probably be able to handle this.
So now, okay, this part, there's a few aspects to this that are pretty crazy.
The one that I actually couldn't believe that I was like, this is actually, this has to be like written out of a movie and like not even a creative one.
Like this is one where you're like, whoever's like controlling this simulation is getting boring.
Is that the guy who was in charge?
Wait, hold on.
Let me actually pull this up so I have the exact information here because I don't want to even give, I don't even want to like say the wrong title.
Okay?
So the person who was the hold on.
Had it.
It's coming right back up.
The person who was in charge of, he was the chief administrative officer at SVB.
So the bank that just failed.
Okay?
He, by the way, I mentioned, for those of you who are here at the stand-up show, his name was Joseph Gentile.
I was real happy with that name.
I will tell you.
You're like, man, why can't all the bankers be named Gentile?
Really take some heat off of us, if you know what I mean.
Until we find out that's a very undercover Jew.
Even if he is, you go, he's the smartest of all of us.
That goes, me?
You couldn't possibly.
Until he shows up at a congressional hearing and he goes, well, I thought the bank had enough money.
I looked at it.
I was doing the forecast and I thought it was good.
All right, so prior to joining SVB, this guy was the CFO of Lehman Brothers.
Like, you couldn't, how is it even possible that his legacy might be running the two banks that failed and then triggered the financial collapses of our time?
For those of you guys who don't remember, Lehman Brothers, they did great.
They did a very, they did a very, very good job.
Sound investments.
So, and even, by the way, way before I even knew that this guy was gentiling both of these things.
By the way, I want to make that the new thing.
Like, if someone's like, you owe me five bucks, you'd be like, you gentiled me right after five bucks.
Really working.
Right now, we have a small window, Rob, before the masses get angry.
This is what we got to do.
But so he, so before I even knew this guy was the guy, you go, this does feel like a Lehman Brothers thing.
So as you guys all know, of course, Lehman Brothers fucking tanked.
And then they were like, oh, well, that's okay.
Because we could kind of control this.
But, Rob, press the any key.
You're ruining the shot right now.
There we go.
That logo, by the way, was designed by Louis J. Gomez.
That's who designed that logo.
That's how little money has been poured into this podcast over the years.
Lewis was like, I sketched something on my notebook, doggie.
And that's what we've been running with.
But so they felt like they could control it and it wouldn't spill over.
This just feels like a similar thing.
So I don't know, Rob, what do you think?
I don't know.
You want to interject at all?
Yeah.
What do you think about this?
What I think is first is start making preparations.
And if you're just starting now, you are screwed.
Let me tell you.
No, there's simple things you could do.
Firstly, put on like 15 pounds.
Have a buffer.
You know what I mean?
Just have 15 pounds on you.
That's a good one.
That's simple.
Yeah.
Okay.
Start storing your semen.
You never know when that's going to come in handy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a fucking, my basement is filled with just pantries of semen.
You know, like just, we're going to be okay, family.
Don't worry.
You can use it as protein or glue.
So you just want to make sure you got a good stockpile going into this thing.
I got a leak in my hot water heater.
Don't worry.
I'll patch that thing right up.
I got cases of semen down there.
I got an old batch from 2019.
It's like a fine wine.
Yeah.
All right, you're looking for a 2007?
All right.
This was the primo stuff.
I made your sister with that gunk.
Sorry, it's the start of the show.
I didn't want to go.
Man, I'm starting this direction.
This is really.
I'm thinking this isn't going to be on YouTube again.
Sometimes these live shows, we got like a 50-50 ratio where we're like, all right, I'm probably not going to be able to put that out.
Well, I'll tell you, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I'll look at it like this.
I don't think it's possible that a bank failure of this size is contained and doesn't also become this kind of contagion that affects all the other banks.
So I think this is going to have a ripple effect.
And I think that the big banks are going to get touched by this.
And so then the question is, what are they going to do?
And I think we all kind of know, at least my guess is, well, the whole way, the system works for the big banks.
There's no chance they won't bail out the big banks.
Like, they're not going to let, they may let this bank fail.
They're not going to let Bank of America or JPMorgan Chase or, you know, Wells Fargo or Goldman Sachs fail.
The ones with the Jews.
If he got the Lehman Brother Gentile, he can flush that one right down the toilet.
No one gives a shit.
That's why don't trust non-Jews with your money.
That's the real message of the story here.
Yeah.
You call up your bank tomorrow and you find out if that CFO has a name like Gentile and you pull your money out.
Sir, I see you have a lot of money sitting in savings.
Would you like to talk to our financial advisor?
His name is Mr. Gentile.
You'd be like, hang up right now.
Hang up on that.
So listen, my gut right now tells me what I think is going to happen is I think there's going to be another round of banker bailouts and another, I think they're going to back off the interest rate hikes and we're going back to like quantitative easing style.
I think they're going to pull them back down to try to re-inflate the bubble.
What's that, sir?
How about bail-ins?
Bail-ins?
Wow, hold on.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, okay, so I...
Oh, that wasn't a Jerry Seinfeld joke.
I thought that was...
I swear to God, I literally, it took me like a full minute to be like, this guy's trying to fuck with me, right?
That's his whole thing.
He's going, bailouts.
What about bail-ins?
Hi.
You're in with your own.
Yeah, with your in.
I really did.
They're sending the money in.
Why are they calling it out?
So.
I, look, that is possible, but even if there's a situation like that, because that's what they tried, like, that was the big proposal in 2008, right?
And they had a bunch of them, right?
Like, what was it?
Washington Mutual was the one that JPMorgan absorbed, right?
And there was like a bunch of things like that.
So they can do that.
It's like Highlander.
There can only be one.
Yeah.
But I don't know if that's going to be enough.
You still have a bank of this magnitude going belly up.
And so basically what happened, right?
So what's the story here?
Is that there was this bank, and this is not like your average bank where you can go open a checking account.
This was like a bank where you had to have real money.
They were going to turn you away if you didn't have real money.
So the FDIC.
It's playing hard to get.
That's how you sucker these people in.
Well, it really is.
You're like, I have $200,000.
Can I open a checking account?
And they're like, as if.
Go talk to the Jews.
They'll take that shitty money.
Man, I really need an episode for YouTube, Rob.
You're not helping.
You're not helping because whatever.
I don't care.
Go check this one out on Rumble.
All right.
So basically, from my understanding, and you tell me what you think about this, Rob, and just let's just turn the screen off for now, I guess, because it's just getting distracting.
So essentially, a bank has like, okay, so they have assets and liabilities like any company, right?
So you have the money that you owe and then the money owed to you or the thing that you have that's worth money.
And so a bank has, so the deposits that they have is money that they owe, right?
By the way, a lot of people don't even understand how banking works.
Like you think in a way that you own the money, but you don't.
That's not how banking works.
If you give a bank your money, that's not your money.
That's the bank's money.
Like, technically speaking, and what's the movie that I always confuse and say, oh, it's a wonderful life?
I think that's the one, right?
Where they go over it, where they're all like, well, your money's with Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Johnson's money's over with Frank.
And there's Mr. Johnson right there.
Sir, sir, you were in that movie.
How do you feel about it?
Did you feel like it was an accurate representation of what happened?
But so this is, and even in that movie, you're like, this sounds like a scheme.
Like, I don't know what you're doing, but you're all Gentiles, so I guess it's cool.
But so basically, like, we all kind of have this feeling like that your money in your checking account, whatever you got in your fucking checking account right now, you're like, well, that's my money.
But it's actually not.
And in fact, the bank doesn't even have to give it to you.
Like, you could go to a bank and be like, I'd like to withdraw $600, and they could go, no.
They're actually allowed to do that.
Now, technically, they do owe you that money, but they don't have to give it to you on demand.
Like, you're essentially, if you ever read when you open a checking account, like the fucking thing you sign, what you're basically saying is you're lending the bank money.
So they owe you that money, but they don't necessarily have to give it to you immediately.
So that's how it works.
Like, you lend the bank money, and so every time you deposit in there, they have a liability.
Like, they owe you that money.
And then they take that money and they lend it out.
And that is an ass, like, they owe the bank that money.
And so the idea for the bank to make a profit or to be, you know, whatever, in good standing, is that they have to have more money owed to them than they owe to you.
So this bank was fine as of recently.
Like, just as I think of it as of last week, they were fine.
Because basically it was like, whatever the exact numbers were, let's just say for sake of argument, they have a billion dollars that people have put in open bank accounts with, but they have a billion and $10 million that's owed to them.
So they're fine.
They're in good standing.
Except a lot of what was owed to them was in treasuries.
And then the treasuries got marked down because interest rates are going up.
So then it went all of a sudden, it went from like, oh, they have a billion 10 million that's owed to them, and it went, oh, they only have 900 million owes to them.
And then they're insolvent, just like that.
Because something gets marked down.
And also, I guess, because they were all in one industry, which is kind of taking a hit, right, Rob?
House of Cards00:04:45
Yes.
Is that about right?
So they took a hit, and now it's, but it just shows you how much this whole thing is a house of cards.
That like you could be like, oh, this bank's in good shape.
And then like, oh, treasury bills get marked down, and you go, actually, it's completely out of business.
And this is one of the biggest banks in the world.
And so basically, everyone's scared that it will spread because all of the other banks are also, they're all just a house of cards.
This thing could tank at any minute because the whole system basically is, as they talked about in your movie, was that the whole thing is we're in this fractional reserve banking system, which I actually think the fraction at this point is zero.
Is zero technically a fraction?
I don't know.
Well, with the repo market, essentially, yes.
Right.
So basically the way it works is like you go and you give your money to a bank and then they lend out all of that money.
They don't store any of it.
We kind of still have this idea that when you give your money to a bank, it's held somewhere because that's what the term bank implies.
Like you're banking this money.
But really they just take your money and lend it out to someone else.
And then that person takes their money and they put it in the bank.
And then the bank takes that money and lends it out.
They call it a bank.
Should call it a spent.
This guy you're investing, how about you outvest this guy's good?
So my thing is like, the thing about having a house of cards is what it's just, that it doesn't take much to knock it over, like now.
That doesn't mean, you know, in the same way that like and this is kind of how I feel, and maybe this is just me, like justifying my own position of this whole thing is going to collapse.
But it's like if you're building a house of cards and you go, oh look, this house of cards is going to collapse, and then they just keep building up and up and up and up, and I'm like I'm telling you, this thing's a house of cards, it's going to collapse.
And then they and then you realize, like people, if they're good and they know what they're doing, they can build a house of cards very, very high, you know.
But the thing is that it only takes one little gust of wind for the whole thing to collapse.
And I'm not trying to tell anyone to panic, but that's what you're trying to say.
There's plenty of semen in Rob's basement for all of us all right well, be okay.
And the premium unvaccinated stuff this is not that mRNA come.
Okay, not that knockoff stuff that we used to get it, but I do think that this is going to uh, I think this is going to be a big financial event that we're at the beginning of.
What exactly that means, I don't know.
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The Ponzi Scheme00:08:44
All right, let's get back into the show.
Uh, I look at it that.
Oh man, this is a little heavy for.
Uh, late night drinking.
Oh man no, I see it as well.
Throw a few cum jokes in there.
That's usually, in my experience, that was.
That softens the blow.
So to super simplify it, people are sitting on assets that as interest rates go up are going down in value.
So the question to me is how much pyramiding was there off of these assets?
Like how much liquidity is going to start coming out of the market when they have to start marking down the bonds, which firstly, if you're a bank, it makes no sense why in a low interest rate environment you're buying long-term bonds that you know if interest rates come down, you're then going to be taking a loss.
I mean, it's basic finance.
It's literally, I mean, I failed out of finance, and even this I understand.
This is why you failed out.
Why?
Because I actually make sense.
This doesn't make sense.
They're like, shut up, nerd.
We're making money.
There you go.
So no, the real question is, how many assets are banks sitting on that they're keeping as collateral that they've then leveraged up against?
And well, it's not.
The thing is that it does make sense.
Yeah, in a weird way it does make sense, because if you're like okay, if you're playing musical chairs and you're kind of like look, this has to collapse at some point, you're like okay, but if I stop trying to grab a chair right now, I collapse right now.
So it's kind of like this, this perpetual game, where what they're playing is that it's like okay well, we have to find a way to keep injecting.
You know, it's like if you go um, let's say you're talking to Bernie Madoff uh, five years before his whole Ponzi scheme collapses, and you're like dude, you're like luring in these new investors, but what does this do other than pay off your old investors?
Like this is destined to fail.
And it's like well yeah, but if I don't lure in new investors, I fail right now.
So, like I'd rather not fail this second and fail in the future.
So I think that's kind of like the incentive structure for these banks.
And then they also have hanging in the backdrop that, like you know, we'll get bailed out like.
So that, like.
To me that's more or less like the mentality of this whole thing.
But the whole thing that I guess we, what we've, really been saying for years, is that this is what.
As they started raising interest rates up over the last 12 months or so, this is kind of what was destined to happen.
That you know.
You live in this zero interest rate environment for a while and it's like okay, that's nice, but eventually they have to come up.
Whether you decide they come up or just the market decides they come up, and once they do, that's when bubbles start getting popped, because you realize that it's like oh, all these games only worked if you had free money forever.
And so I I do have to interject and say that bank, is it a, is it a come joke?
Tell me if it's a come joke.
To be honest, it was a retard joke.
I was going to call that bank retarded, and you know why.
It's a nice change of pace from the come joke I appreciate it to a more dignified one.
I mean I, I the cash that i'm sitting on I did not buy long-term bonds with, because it would have been really stupid to do and to have a bank and take all that money and buy a lot of long-term bonds is unbelievably stupid.
Well, you would be lending money to the federal government, right and so yes, that would be stupid for you to lend money to the federal government.
But if you owned the federal government, it may not be so stupid for you to lend money to them all.
Right, maybe?
Yeah, I mean because if you're acting like such a gentile right now, get your head out of your ass.
I think these guys were too far down the line to expect a bailout, so I think that that was a losing strategy.
Well, these guys certainly.
What?
Oh, this guy sounds like more of a nerd than us.
Oh, and look at his face.
He is okay, there's this guy's gonna rain.
Man, this shit right now.
I want to hear it.
Something to do with is not a great start.
Like I ran a Measus Institute article.
Okay, That's already pretty good.
No, so I think I'm actually going to have to outner both of you, and I apologize.
Oh, shit.
By the way, I feel like, remember that dude who was hitting on the chicks at the beginning of Goodwill Hunting, and then his friend came in.
You're like, yo, my friend's wicked smart, and he's about to fuck all you guys up.
Go ahead.
Tell him, Rob, they wasted their money on college.
Well, yeah, before I, I just want to be on the record and say I don't even like apples, but anyways.
All right.
You guys both don't quite have it right.
They had clientele all-in-one industry, which is a little bit stupid because if everyone in the industry is not doing well, you've got more of a risk factor for a run on your bank.
So everyone in the industry, tech industry is not doing well.
People are drawing down funds and they realize, oh, we have to raise some capital.
So what do they do?
They start selling their bonds.
Now, if they're selling their bonds at a loss, then they have to actually write down the bonds, and it becomes clear that they're selling them at a loss.
So what do they do?
They go, oh, shit, we better start selling some stock.
And then investors panicked, and they're like, why would we be in the one bank that has to go sell stock?
Let's just go one up the runk of banks.
And so that's what happened.
And then there was a run on the bank and they collapsed.
Yeah.
And I think that's essentially right.
Now, to me, I think the bigger issue here is that you realize that, and this is kind of why I'm referencing the movie and all this shit, is that you just realize that you're like, this is the way the system works, is that it works so long as there's no run on the banks.
Even the slightest inkling of a run on the banks takes down the whole thing.
And that's kind of the essence of a Ponzi scheme.
This is the essence of why Bernie Madoff.
Bernie Madoff's whole thing worked great.
It worked great until it didn't.
Because as soon as someone goes, look, if you're doing a thing where you're just, basically what Bernie Madoff was doing was he was taking investments from people and not investing.
So there was no investments.
He would print out sheets of what your holdings were.
And it was all just nonsense.
It was $1,700 underwear.
So you've got to rescue that thing, though.
He was doing, like, listen, he was killing it.
All right.
I'm not like trying.
But so he's not investing.
And then he would go, like, so let's say I take whatever.
I take like $100,000 in from you, and I go, the market rate is you'll get like 7% interest.
I go, I'll give you 20% interest.
Okay?
Like, if I'm just putting numbers on a piece of paper, that's very easy to show.
And even if you want to, like, take out interest dividend or something like that, I can pay it to you because I have all of your capital.
I'm not giving you back, you know what I mean?
So, and then everyone looks at that, goes, wow, this guy's killing it.
So I get new investors and new investors.
And then the new investors are paying out anything that the old investors might take.
And that's great.
Like, that really works until some people go, I want my capital out.
And then you're like, that's a problem.
That's like a really, really big problem.
And so as soon as that starts happening, it's done.
And that's basically, to me, the same thing with fractional reserve banking.
It works really well as long as everyone's not taking their money out.
But we all know this is just a factual thing.
With any of the gigantic banks, like whether it's Chase or Bank of America or whoever, if like everyone here who banks at Chase was like, we all want to take our money out, they don't have nearly enough.
Like nowhere even.
All the people in this room, I think they'd be okay.
Look.
They could probably cover you Gentiles, but they're not going to be able to cover the larger population, if that makes sense.
And so this thing just constantly, like, this is basically where like the whole like, like Rothbard actually argued it should be illegal to have fractional reserve banking because it's fraud, essentially.
You're basically tricking everyone into thinking they have the money sitting there.
Whether or not that's true, I think it should be legal if they tell you that's what they're doing.
But if you actually, to me, if you actually had a free market in banking, I just don't think anyone would put their money in a bank that was doing that.
I think it would take care of itself, and it would be like, why the hell would we have this system?
Anyway, things are going to get fun.
My stockpiles are going to be worth money, so I've been prepared.
All right, so, you know, whatever.
Trump in Solitary00:14:30
Let's keep this party going.
You know, everything's going to be just fine.
You're not going to die.
And the January 6th wasn't a riot.
All right, it kind of was a riot, but it definitely wasn't an insurrection.
Did you guys see there's new video emerged of America's shaman who, Rob, you made a good point about him being a shaman?
Well, I just, I want more coverage of his shamanic temple.
Like, I just feel like he's got students that are just wandering in Arizona without their shamanic leader.
And if you thought that this guy was violent, you just wait until they realize that that guy's never coming back to them.
Yeah, he's got, like, does he have a flock?
What's happening?
Like, Rob was saying, we were grabbing lunch the other day, and Rob was like, you know, they just call this guy a shaman, but like, is anyone checking?
Like, did he go to shaman school?
Or, like, what?
Like, is there, like, a real shaman out there who's like, that guy's not even a shaman.
So, why are we?
Okay, so new footage emerged of this guy to really show you how vicious, how vicious he was.
By the way, I tweeted about this, but have you seen any pictures of him without the hat on?
It makes me really insecure.
Because with the hat on, he looks like Brad Pitt.
And without it, he looks like a guy who should be in jail.
You just look at him, you're like, yeah, yeah, you don't belong in society.
You shouldn't get insecure over pictures of the shaman without his hat on.
You should get insecure about pictures of you without your hat on.
That should fuck with you.
Hey!
That's why I keep him around.
Abuse him a little bit.
All right, here we go.
I'm not even kidding.
You can look it up right now on your phone.
Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home.
Donald Trump has asked everybody to go.
I think, hey, I think they've done that.
I stole from Cotton Daisy.
Let me take a picture of you.
Yeah, here you go.
Oh, shit, my bad.
I got 820 behind the doors about the sport.
I'll take this feet fucking time.
I don't know.
All right, there's a lot.
One other thing that I think is pretty funny is, so he's telling everyone that Donald Trump has just tweeted that he'd like everyone to go home.
And it's funny to just see the crowd reaction, even in all their MAGA hats, where like a bunch of them are like, I'm not a big Trump guy.
Like, I just thought this was like a cool, this is like a cool party to be at.
You're like, I'm not going to do what Trump tells me to do.
Like, whatever.
But so this is, I don't know, there's a lot.
Right.
So, okay, look, obviously, the guy who they made the face of the insurrection, so far now, we've seen this video of him.
Like, cops are escorting him around.
He's being completely peaceful.
Here we've got a video of him actually getting in front of the crowd and saying, listen, we should all go home and not do this.
And the moral of the story is like, if you're being the reasonable one who's not being violent, don't wear a Viking hat with horns because it's really easy to paint you as a crazy person, even when he's doing pretty much everything right.
I mean, now, okay, yes.
If you're bald, I'd suggest maybe a cap.
You know what I mean?
Like, maybe just a modest cap.
Throw it on backward.
Try to look cool.
You know what I mean?
Like, whatever you got to do.
But the Viking horn shaman look makes it very easy to misconstrue your intentions.
You know what?
I think the powers at Be actually are afraid of shaman.
They thought that this guy might have real power.
And so when he showed up as a shaman, they were actually concerned with him.
They go, this guy will curse all of us.
Look what he did to that guy, Gentile.
Yeah.
They're like, he might actually undo Nancy Pelosi's vampire powers.
Imagine that.
Imagine it turns out that they're all just evil sorcerers and they were like, there's a shaman in our midst.
A shaman will take us all out.
But anyway, it is pretty goddamn nutty that this guy was made to be the face of the insurrection and now you see him here.
It's not even just like a little different than they told you.
Turns out, he's like the best guy there.
Like, I'm not even saying there aren't some bad people there or some people who are like, okay, they're causing a problem or they're breaking windows or maybe even pushing cops or something like that.
But he is the guy who's like, hey, man, everyone, let's be cool.
And he's been in solitary confinement.
How long was he in there for?
Like, a crazy long time.
Well, he has a poor concept of time, so.
Yeah, if you ask him, it's been a minute here.
Huh?
How many moons?
I would say many.
I would say at a minimum, many.
Many moons.
So I don't know.
Do you want to play more of this?
Or did we kind of?
I think that's the gist of it.
It's just the fact that...
Firstly, we still don't know how he got into the building because they haven't played that footage.
But the fact that he's clearly peacefully walking amongst the building and then at the end is saying, okay, guys, this thing's over.
We have to go home.
Doesn't seem like this is a person that showed up with the intent to be violent or overthrow the government as much as, listen, he got succored by Donald Trump.
It's a guy with mental illness who got succored by Donald Trump.
And the left, who's usually very into mental illness and being nice to people, are throwing this guy into solitary confinement to rot.
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point, man.
Like, a really, really good point.
Like, look, and this is what's so fucked up about what Trump did, okay?
And no matter what you think about Donald Trump, and I'm sure some of you here were in that building that day.
But this is like what pisses me off so much.
And I don't know if anyone remembers the speech that Donald Trump gave on January 7th.
Because he came out the next day, and that was actually the first time he bent the knee.
And what I mean by that, he was still a bitch about it.
Like, he was still like, no, I won.
But for the first time, if you're up in time.
I won, but we got to let these people ride in jail.
The people that came out to support me, I can't get their back.
So I'll admit, I fucked up.
Well, I wish he wouldn't even say that.
But so up until January 6th, Trump's posture, which was kind of crazy about it, and in some ways kind of great, was that he was like, I didn't lose, and I'm not leaving.
And we will win.
You know, it was always like, well, we're going to do this.
We're going to get through the courts.
We're going to do this.
We're going to win.
And it was up until January 6th.
And then all this shit happened.
And then he tweeted asking him to leave.
And then January 7th, he gave a speech.
Or it was like, you know, whatever, I don't know, speech, press conference.
There weren't reporters, but he was behind a podium, still president.
And he goes, he said for the first time, like, he was like, now's a time for healing.
There will be a new, you know, he was like, we fought for, you know, we fought in every avenue that we could, but there will be a new administration coming in next month.
So it was the first time he admitted, like, Biden's going to be president.
Like, that was his kind of first.
Now, he still said, we think we really won, but he at least admitted, I'm not going to be here.
Up until then, he was like, it's four more years of Trump.
I don't care what they say, you know?
And so there was this thing where he kind of, like, so he admitted, and then in the presentation.
I'm calling on all shamans.
Whoever has a poll with yoga women.
So in this speech where he finally admits that he's not going to be the president, Joe Biden will be the president, he also says that everyone who entered the building should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Which is just, however you feel about any of it, that is so fucked up.
Because a day before, you told them that they stole the election from you, right?
Now, okay, it is true that Donald Trump should not be prosecuted for incitement to violence, because there's free speech in this country, and it's not incitement to violence unless you actually tell someone to commit violence.
You can't just say, like, if I go to you guys.
Like the voices in that guy's head.
They're telling people.
No, but if I go to you guys today, I go, the government, like all these politicians are a bunch of criminals, and then one of you guys go and do something violent to someone in the government.
You can't like prosecute me yet for doing, you know what I'm saying?
Because it's like, I didn't actually tell you to do that.
I was just telling you what I think about them.
So he could tell you this election's stolen, and if you go do something violent, fine.
So it's not on him, legally speaking.
But he's the president of the United States.
He's got this huge rally there, and he's telling everybody that those people just stole the election from you, and they're about to go certify an election that was robbed from the American people.
Now, if that's true, if that was true, it would be totally justified to go storm that building and not let them do that.
So he told you something that would justify you going and do that.
And then he works you up, you go do that, and then the next day goes, throw the book at them.
And like, to Rob's point, this guy, who is clearly not great, you know, like not super well, as a history of mental illness, he takes those words, goes in there, by the way, isn't violent to anybody, doesn't do anything, doesn't hurt anyone, seems to be encouraging other people to be peaceful, is marched around by cops and all that.
He goes in there and he's in solitary confinement for hundreds of days.
And no one on the left will go, hey, he's a victim of Donald Trump kind of like encouraging a kind of crazy person to go do this.
They'll go, no, he's an insurrectionist and he should rot in solitary confinement.
Do you know what it is to put like a mentally ill person in solitary confinement?
It's the most vicious, sadistic form of torture.
Like there's nothing worse, dude, you could be in a prison, and there's been like interesting like fucking like studies on this.
You could be in a prison where you're worried about getting stabbed every day.
And it's still a punishment to put you in solitary confinement.
Because that's how fucked up it is to take a human and remove them from any other human contact.
Like you'd actually rather, even though it may seem like you may not, you'd rather be in a situation where you were worried about getting stabbed than just be in a hole all day long.
Because that's like that shit will drive you crazy.
And they did this to an already mentally ill person for what?
Getting worked up by this guy.
And then Trump goes, yeah, do it to him.
And he had the power, like if he had any, if he had one ounce of integrity to pardon this dude.
He could have done that.
And you know why he didn't?
Because he didn't want to get impeached the second time.
Because he didn't want to like mess up his own.
He was worried that it would hurt him.
So like that's kind of my whole thing where like no matter how much like there is something where Trump is like positioned as like the anti-establishment guy, you know, and I hate the establishment.
But like fuck Donald Trump, man.
Like I'd never support that guy a day in my life.
Fuck him, dude.
That's not a leader, dude, that you'd sell your own people at.
And I don't even like him or his people.
But stand by your fucking people.
I like some of his people.
Not the shaman so much, but.
But he doesn't deserve that.
Like, and just one more thing, and I just ran on this, but like, it's just so easy that you see it, right?
Like, how evil the fucking regime is.
Like, they have all the technology in the world and everything to go.
They could put him on house arrest and force an ankle bracelet on him.
You know what I mean?
They could just be like, that's your punishment.
You can't leave your house.
If they really thought he was like a threat to anything, which no one actually thinks this guy's a threat.
But no, they insisted that he go be in solitary confinement because they had to send a message and spin a narrative that like there was an insurrection and that's how bad Trump is.
They almost overthrew the United States of America because this guy was really close to overthrowing the most powerful government in the history of the world.
It was just moments away from doing that.
So they just spun this whole bullshit because that, so in the same way that Trump's fucked up, the other side is every bit as fucked up because they just took the opportunity where they could have been a decent human being and gone, look how messed up this is that Trump's like manipulating this mentally ill person and we're going to come in and save him.
They went, oh, no, no, no, no.
It's even more politically advantageous to us if we say, this guy was a real threat.
And that's why we need to lock him up in solitary confinement because we almost lost the whole government.
And they just like, so that's like, it's like both these two sides are competing over who could be more pure evil than the other one.
Both of them should burn in hell for eternity.
And I want to know, while the guy's in jail, who's caring for his cardboard box?
By the way, there you go.
I'm like, all these people are evil.
They did the right thing by that box.
They got it a good home.
Competing Evil Narratives00:15:00
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Do you want Matt Taibbi or the Don Lemon response?
This is my favorite.
No, Do you know what we're talking about?
The Republican women, the women of the Republican Party, which I have always been solid on, I do not believe Republicans should have women.
But evidently, for some reason, they do.
And these, a group of female Republicans released a response video to Don Lemon.
I'm not about to let Don Lemon or anyone tell me I'm not in my prime.
I'm in my prime because I don't need Google to tell me.
I think I'm in my prime because I've never felt better.
I'm a wife, I'm a mom, and I'm a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I'm the first woman to represent my district in Congress.
I'm a domestic violence survivor.
I'm a mother.
I'm a grandmother.
This is actually my second career.
There's nothing liberals fear more than strong conservative women.
We have incredible women from all over the country who represent every walk of life and every background you can imagine.
And to say that we are not in our prime is just stupid.
This is the time for us to shine.
Republican women of all ages, we're just getting started.
Our prime time is now.
It's like you ask yourself, what would it take for me to root for Don Lemon?
And then you're like, here's the answer.
This is what it would take.
I feel like that would have made sense if it was a preview for like a baking show.
Like, I'm a fat lady and I know how to bake.
Like, I don't know why.
Listen, I'm not just something about that one who is like, you know, I'm a domestic survivor.
Yeah.
And I'm this, I'm a mom and a grandmom, and I'm still in my prime.
Like, I'm not saying you should, but don't you just kind of want to kick her in the shin really hard and then just go, Arya?
Are you in your prime right now?
Are you?
And this is them celebrating.
By the way, first off, they're, yes, awful.
And second off, by the way, this is why Republicans just lose and why they never deserve to win.
Like, that was your retort.
It's like, well, how about this?
There's nothing you fear more than strong conservative women.
Happy women's month.
Like, aren't you just playing the game that you're saying you're against?
Like, oh, we're offended as a group.
Like, older women should be thought of as in their prime.
Don Lemon didn't even know what the fuck he was saying when he said that.
But you guys are being dumber than him somehow.
This is just goddamn the cringiest shit I've ever seen in my life.
All right, we had one more video, which was Matt Taibbi was drinking.
Oh, yeah.
Speaking of dumb, these are, this is the level of what people in your go ahead.
No, no, you can introduce me.
No, I got it out.
Okay.
They're real dumb.
Enjoy.
In your discussion, in your answer, you also said that you were invited by a friend, Barry Weiss?
My friend Barry Weiss.
So this friend works for Twitter, or what is her...
She's a journalist.
I think you have to pause to just go, you didn't even do a little bit of homework.
I mean, talk about just not even being in the know.
Like, you don't even read a newspaper on a daily basis, that you're completely out of the loop.
Like, you don't have a staffer.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Who, like, prepared you for this question.
I don't falter because she's old and not in her prime.
That was excellent.
That was fucking excellent.
She literally started that thing.
She's just asking him a question, and she goes, okay, so you work with Elon Musk.
And is he a delivery boy?
What does he do in this operation?
I mean, again, it's not as if, first off, if it was just in a conversation, and she just, you're a sitting member of Congress talking about this topic.
Let's just say she was out to lunch with someone.
They go, what do you think about the Twitter files?
And she's like, is there a Barry Weiss?
Like, what does she do?
You'd be like, you really don't know?
Like, Barry Weiss?
She worked for the New York Times.
You know what I mean?
Like, that mom and pop organization.
But this is her question in an official congressional hearing.
Like, no one on your team was like, oh, yeah, she's one of the four journalists who broke the Twitter files.
And she's just going, and so what does she do?
She's your fluffer?
And like, you guys are all out there.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Sir, I didn't ask you a question.
I'm now asking Mr. Schellenberger a question.
Yes, ma'am.
Barry Weiss is a journalist.
I'm sorry, sir?
She's a journalist.
She's a journalist.
So you work in concert with her?
Yeah.
Do you know when she first was contacted by Mr. Musk?
I don't know.
You don't know?
So you're in this as a threesome?
There was many more people involved than that.
There was many more people involved with it.
Dude, that, all right, first off, she is such an idiot, and he is such a legend for that answer.
He goes, I wouldn't call her threesome, but like his smile was like, but if what you're asking, yeah, I banged her.
That's what you're asking.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, we did.
We did.
Threesome.
There were at least five of us on her at one point.
Anyway, that's, guys, so as you're worried about this gigantic banking collapse, don't worry.
We got people like that running the show.
We'll get to the bottom of it.
So who is this Barry Weiss?
All right, let's take some questions.
What do you say?
Just a logistical question in terms of...
So you get the first question.
I guess so.
This is an honor.
All right.
How do you want to do it?
So I'm not putting my ass since everyone's face walking down like the...
Oh, yeah, no, that's not going to work.
Okay, this guy kind of seems to want your ass.
So maybe anyone maybe walk to the end of the row or something?
Well, I mean, let people raise hands, and then you could just ignore the people right in the middle.
All right, so sorry, that's all.
If you're in the middle, you might have to come out to an end or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, I guess we didn't really think this through.
That's okay.
Row by row, I'm just going to say.
No, we can't pass the mic.
We give one of you psychopaths the mic, we may never get that back.
That's when you'll be like, I got fucking 20 minutes.
I'm part of the problem right now.
And then Rob has to crowdsurf his way over here to take it.
I got to be careful here.
All right, who we got?
I won't hold it.
All right, first of all, Preserve the Union.
Thanks for my sister, Abby Lincoln.
No, I'm just kidding.
All right, guys, that was pretty good, actually, but whatever.
Okay.
So, Dave, you had a pretty epic moment way back in the day on the corporate press with Christine Quinn.
Yes.
Smoking.
Getting her to admit to the NYPD was just following orders.
Aside from that, what is your kind of greatest moment in your corporate press appearances, in your opinion?
Oh, okay.
Man, I got a few.
All right, so if people don't know about this moment, I was on an Essie Cup show back in the CNN days, and Christine Quinn, who was like a New York City councilwoman, and she was the, I believe she lost to Bill de Blasio in the primaries.
Like, she was came in second, pretty close, I think, to him.
Yeah.
Yeah, she was, well, she was almost the mayor of New York City, though.
It was pretty close.
And we were going, the story was about a big scandal in the NYPD where basically a bunch of New York City cops were, they were, they were running like a gun ring where they would basically like sell concealed carry permits, which were very hard to get in New York City.
And so they would sell them to people who were bribing them.
And so I was just going off on how corrupt and evil these cops were, you know, and like how horrible the whole thing is.
Like that they would, you know, someone, if you were caught with a gun, gun possession charges in New York City get you like 15 years in jail.
Like they'll put someone in jail for 15 years unless you bribed them and then they'd pay you, you know, then they'd give you a gun permit and then you could just have it.
And so I was going off on this and she was, I forget exactly how it started, but at a certain point she was like, look, don't blame the good men and women in law enforcement.
And I was like, good?
Like, they're the people who will put that guy in jail for 15 years for the crime of owning a gun, even if it was just to protect himself.
So we got in this whole thing.
And then she goes, look, if you have a problem, you change the policy.
You don't blame the men and women who are enforcing the rules.
And so then I go, and maybe this is because I'm Jewish or whatever.
So like I just know what this means.
But I assume anyone who is almost mayor should know what I'm saying.
I go, oh, so your defense is they were just following orders.
Which is the fucking Nazi defense at the Nuremberg trials that they go, hey, you can't blame us.
We were just following orders when we burned those children alive.
And so I said, you know, everyone kind of knows, I think, what just following orders evokes, but she didn't.
And so I go, oh, so your defense is that they were just, I said, so your defense is they were just following orders, not a great moral defense.
And she goes, and I'm not exaggerating, go watch the tape.
She goes, it's a perfect moral defense.
And I just went, oh man, did you just say that into a camera?
Like, that's the most pro-Nazi shit I've ever heard in my life.
And yeah, she just didn't get it.
And then she literally left that segment feeling like she won.
And she wasn't there.
She was remote.
And I was there with Andy and SE Cup.
And then I remember after the cameras went off turning to them.
And I go, did I just get her to agree to the Nuremberg defense?
And they were like, that wasn't good.
That wasn't a good moment for her.
So that was good.
That was up there with my.
Okay.
So I have a couple others.
I might be forgetting one.
So, okay.
There were two other moments on the SE Cup show where one was, but I went off on the whole thing about Syria.
And I had like a viral clip about that.
And I just broke down all the wars.
It was like 60 seconds, but I just broke down how evil every war was.
And I was so angry, but I held it together enough because SE Cup was like trying to champion regime change war in Syria at the time.
And it was right when, was it McMasters had announced that the plan was regime change in Syria.
And I was like, you know, and she was like, well, I think this is really great if we overthrow Assad.
And I was like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
Like, you're all insane.
Are you out of your mind?
Like, we just had a regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya, in fucking, you know, we attempted one in fucking Syria.
Now we're attempting, we did one in Yemen.
Every fucking time, just hundreds of thousands of people die.
Like, what are you doing?
And I flipped out about that.
That was cool.
There was a different one on SE Cup's show where there was like a terrorist attack in New York.
And it was like one of those ones where a guy hit someone with their truck and then ran out and tried to shoot someone and they killed him.
And it turned out he was like an ISIS-affiliated guy.
And they were all like, this is kind of proof that we got to do something more to fight ISIS.
And I went off on a whole thing about how dumb that if you, you know, we have to fight him over there so we don't fight him over here.
And I was like, and then the more we fight him over there, we have more of them over here.
Like maybe you're all retarded.
And then the other one I had, okay, so this was another one that I loved was on Kennedy's show back in the day with Megan McCain.
So I was on a panel with Megan McCain.
And after this panel, Megan McCain requested that I never be on the same panel with her again.
So she said, I don't exactly remember the details.
I don't know.
Maybe the video is out there somewhere online.
But I said, she was talking about the wars, whatever it was, and I referred to the wars as I referred to them as immoral.
I go, every one of these wars is immoral.
They're not justified.
Like, we've never been attacked.
And we're like, the only just war.
And I said something about the just war theory.
Like, I was like, look, it's legitimate to fight a war if you are defending yourself.
But we're fighting aggressive wars where we're going all over the planet, blah, blah, blah.
And these wars are immoral.
Immoral Wars00:11:51
And then she said, and it went to someone else, and then it came back to her.
And she goes, you know, as somebody whose father served in the military and who has brothers and other family members in the military, it is so offensive that you would refer to these wars as illegal.
And then I went, what I said was that the wars are immoral.
They are also illegal.
And I go, they're illegal under the Constitution, which insists that Congress declare the wars, and they're illegal under international law, which says you can't just violate sovereign countries.
And I go, and then, so, and, and, man, she looked so furious.
And yeah, then she never wanted to talk to me again.
She was actually cool with me like the first time I met her, and then she unfollowed me on Twitter that day.
But I'll live.
But she probably doesn't hate me as much as she hates the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
So there you go.
She also unfollowed you because she needed more room on her phone to order seamless.
But moving on.
She's fat.
You guys get it?
She's fat, is what Rob was saying.
Wait, don't insist someone else ask a question.
Yeah.
So it's January 2025 and you're president.
Minus Scott Horton being with foreign policy.
Who else would you want on your cabinet?
One other person.
I only get a cabinet of two people.
That's how little our bush is.
Scott Horn, I'll get my mom there.
She makes a mean macaroni salad, I guess.
I don't know, man.
I would have like Scott Horton would be like my top advisor, probably, but I'd have like Colonel Douglas McGregor as the defense secretary.
I'd have maybe like Jim Grant would be the Treasury Secretary.
Ron Paul is going to be the head of the Federal Reserve.
And let me give you, like, I don't know what else.
Who's going to.
Michael Miles is the press secretary, obviously.
I kind of thought that went without saying.
But I'll let, like, man, I would put together a badass fucking cabinet, dude.
I'd fucking really have fucking Bob Murphy running some shit.
I don't know.
All right, let's go to the next minute.
There's enough people.
So in today's hyper-partisan world of left versus right, and you can never seem to get out of that ideology, depending on who you talk to, how do you get more people towards the quote-unquote middle, or at least not necessarily towards the LP, because I know you're heavily involved, but parties and ideologies and things like that.
How do you get people to sort of step away from their left or right paradigms?
Well, you know, it's like it's a weird thing, because like it's not like I'm even trying to get people out of the left, right, and back into the middle, because like the middle right now is the worst place to be, in a sense.
You know what I mean?
Like if the left is like some communist and the right is like some fascist and the middle is Hillary Clinton, like I'd almost rather you be on the left or the right than bring back.
So it's almost like the role of like people who believe in liberty is almost like in a sense to like explain that like this, like that was almost supposed to be the middle.
Like what we are, even though it's viewed as kind of extremist now, was that was supposed to be the middle compromise.
Was always just like, okay, well people ought to be free.
It's like you can live your life how you want to live it and they can live their life how they want to live it, but you ought to like agree that like you don't violently enforce one or the other on that group.
And so it's this is this kind of weird thing where you almost like the ultimate compromise position was supposed to be liberty.
But now the compromise position is supposed to be like, I don't know, we have to spend our grandchildren into debt and like imprison people for weed and fucking give Ukraine $100 billion or something, which is like an insane middle.
So I don't even want to like necessarily bring people to the middle.
I want to bring them to hate the middle and then recognize that like the best way forward is this kind of like, you know, peaceful compromise.
But I think like the best thing is always like you have to find a way to talk to people where you don't like, you know, you don't rob them of their identity.
You can't like talk to someone and be like, here's, okay, here's what you have to accept, that everything you believe in is fucking wrong.
Because that just doesn't work.
So what you have to almost like talk to people, you almost have to give them like the presumption of the best version of themselves.
And go like, okay, here's why what you thought you were believing in was right.
You know?
So if somebody's like a lefty, then you have to like convince them that if you actually care about the working class, then the most important thing you could do is be against the income tax.
You know?
Like, because you care, because you're right to care about the working class.
You know what I'm saying?
And then if you're like someone on the right wing, you're like, okay, well, you hate all of this, like, whatever.
Fucking, you hate Drag Queen's story hour.
It's like, okay, so you don't want the government funding that.
You know, like you kind of like have to like find what would be the best way to sell it to them where they could still believe that they were kind of right the whole time.
At least to me, that's like the best you can hope to do.
And then it's like, I don't even care.
Like, I want people to join the Libertarian Party.
I think that would be great if they did.
I'm a member, and I think everyone should be.
And I want people to be libertarians.
But I'd also settle for you just being a little bit better.
You know?
Like, if you were like a left-winger who's just like realized, oh, yeah, we shouldn't be funding Ukraine.
Okay.
Like, that'd be great.
Or if you were a right-winger who was like, okay, at least we shouldn't support the Federal Reserve.
Like, okay, that's better than before.
You know?
Like, I'll take that.
So we all got to like fucking not make the perfect the enemy of the good and recognize that like, oh, you know, if you can just nudge people in the right direction, that's also better than not nudging them.
Like this guy says, drop acid, not nukes.
You know, this legendary sign right here.
And by the way, if you guys have had a drink, there was acid in your drink.
So please enjoy.
You already did.
You've already done this.
Welcome, Ari Shafir, everybody.
So after this week's events, what mythical creature protects your Jew gold, and where do I get one?
I mean, if I told you, I'd have to kill you.
So I can't just.
What do we got there, Robs?
Whoa.
Sorry.
Two questions, neither of which are related.
First, dealing with the financial system, banking in particular.
You know, mentioned Silicon Valley Bank collapsing.
But there's also another more subtle issue of risk, which is subprime auto loans.
What are your thoughts about that?
And then the second question is, we don't hear much talk these days about a constitutional line item veto as a way to mitigate spending.
So I'd like your thoughts on that.
Okay.
Can I just say he did a great job of going one question to the second question?
I really wanted to edit him, and he's just fucking breathed.
So subprime.
Listen, I don't know if I have a good answer for either one of these.
So subprime auto loans, so meaning like people who have like shit credit, who get like what?
Like what are the auto?
Black people, Dave.
No.
Brah, bra, brah.
We call them Gentiles.
Now, what so is this a thing that was like a high-interest auto loan?
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so even before COVID, there was, you know, Bloomberg Odlots would talk about on one occasion about basically giving auto loans to people who can't afford them.
But then it got worse after COVID.
People are moving out of the cities.
People who previously did not have cars now are in the suburbs need cars.
And hey, we'll take your money.
So what's the total exposure of that?
Like, how big is that?
It doesn't seem like he has a great handle on it, Dave.
Well, I'm just saying, I mean, the thing about the subprime mortgage industry, right, is that the reason why that was, like, I'm not saying there's not an issue with that, and maybe some people are going to get their cars repossessed or something.
But with the subprime mortgages, the thing is that they were so widespread, and then they were securitized.
So they were chopped up, and then they were sold off and packaged with other bonds and put in people's retirement accounts.
So when that went down, it brought down entire sectors in the economy.
I highly doubt that, you know what I mean?
like the auto loans are going to do the same thing, but I do think, you know, there's a lot of people, listen, man, whether it's credit card debt or like anything, there's so many just like working class Americans who are in debt that they can't really pay back.
And this whole system just kind of perpetuates itself where it's like the banks are like, just fucking loan them the money because if they make the monthly payments, we make a little bit of a profit for now.
It's kind of like Rob was talking about before, where they make these profits immediately and long term they're doomed, but no one seems to be thinking ahead for that.
So I don't know about that.
And then your second question was, what was that about?
A constitutional line item veto amendment.
You know, I just have so little faith in any constitutional process actually being like enforced.
You know, I mean, like, I'd love anything like that to happen.
But if we actually could in any way enforce any like constitutional process, then it's like, oh, okay, let's just enforce the fucking, yeah, like the 10th Amendment.
Okay, problem solved, right?
The First Amendment would be pretty nice.
The Second Amendment, you know, I mean, like, all of them.
If you go through all of the amendments, I could go through how egregiously they're violated.
So I think it's going to take something more than that, whatever it is.
My personal thing is I think there has to be some type of like mass awakening.
That's like what I lean toward.
And I know some people kind of mock that idea.
I know there's some kind of like right-wingers, more like even some of them who used to be libertarians, who kind of go like, yeah, well, the reason you can't count on waking up the people, you got to count on the elites kind of like, you know, getting together.
And they'll, if we get the right elites together, then they'll, you know, force this change.
And I'm like, I think that sounds more far-fetched than just a mass awakening.
So I don't know.
But to be honest, I'd be fine with either.
I'd be fine with like a competent group of elites just being like, we're going to bring some order to this system.
I don't think the fact that there's this really very nice document that was written down in the 1780s, you know, like I don't think the fact that that was written down on paper is going to change much of anything.
There's just so many blatantly unconstitutional things that our government does.
Elites Bringing Order00:07:14
And we're really, we're not governed by words on paper.
We're governed by precedent.
So we're governed by what the last guy did and whether he got away with it or not.
And that's it.
If he got away with it, then it's legal now.
In the same sense that you might be like, you know, if you're driving on a highway and the speed limit is 65 miles per hour, but they don't pull you over unless you're going 75, then the speed limit's 75.
Doesn't really matter what the sign says.
What matters is when does a guy with a gun force your car to stop on the side of the road?
You know what I mean?
Like that's what, that's really what law enforcement, like, and the rest is all just kind of an idea we have in our head.
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This guy has two hands up and seems to be making a goldfish sign.
Far right in the far right corner of the room.
Hey, Dave.
So Silicon Valley Bank, despite the perverse incentives of a low interest rate economy, in my opinion, did a very conservative thing of saying, I'm going to take low interest rates, risk-free securities, and get return for my creditors and depositors, which ultimately, I think, is a very conservative and good thing to do as a bank.
However, with all that being said, poor monetary policy is what is killing SVB and all of these, I'm going to predict, more banks down the line, arbitrarily deciding the price of credit and money.
Now, with all that being said.
Well, I mean, just to understand the question, so are you saying that the interest rate hikes over the last year, that's what's killing them?
1,000%, because they're taking a guaranteed risk-free security with all the credit of the United States government and saying, I'm going to do something conservative and get a return for all my creditors and depositors.
Now, with all that being said, even a risk-free security, a bond from the government, still has risk.
Bad monetary policy.
Now, that's a long-winded way of saying, when are you going to get Guy Swan back on to talk Bitcoin?
Because Bitcoin is the only non-counterparty risk asset.
Well, look, I'd like to...
Can you hop in on this one, Davey Smith?
Yeah, jump in.
Sure.
All right.
So first is, yeah, you're right.
If we had high interest rates, then anyone who has savings could get a return on their money.
If you're a bank, though, you're playing the game and you're cheating the system.
You're looking at it and you're going, I need something safe and I need something with return, so I'm just going to put all my money into these long-term bonds.
And if it goes to shit, someone's going to help me out.
So you're basically looking for a bailout or you're doing something incredibly stupid because you're in a low interest rate environment and you can't possibly park yourself for long-term returns from the government because it's going to go belly up.
That's obvious.
Does that make sense so far?
Well, if you're a bank, you can't possibly buy a long-term bond from the government because if interest rates go up, you're fucked.
All right, so this is, man, this is getting heavy for a live podcast.
All right, so I say this.
If you're blaming the high interest rates, look, what interest rates are is the price of money, right?
So like that's that's that what they're supposed to be is a price just like anything else.
Like if you were saying what's the price of steel and there was one beam of steel in the country, it would be incredibly expensive.
And if we could snap our fingers and create steel beams, they'd be incredibly cheap, right?
So if you're saying what's the price of money, like what it should be, you'd tend to look toward like how much savings do we have as a country and how much debt do we have as a country.
Do you think America has too much savings or do you think we have too much debt?
If you think it might skew toward debt because we have 30 trillion just at a federal level, not to mention a local and state level, not to mention all the fucking debt every person in this fucking room has.
You know, I mean, the number is like in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.
And then count like Social Security and Medicaid and state pensions and everything.
And then how much savings we have is like nothing.
The interest rates should be so much higher than they currently are.
So I don't want to hear this about how unfair it is that the rates have come up from like whatever the fuck, zero to 2% or whatever over the last few years.
I think it's like the people who are really taking advantage of the system and fucking it over are the people who trade on the low interest rates, if you ask me.
As far as like Bitcoin and all that other shit, I love Guy Swan.
He's the best.
He makes a very compelling case.
I do have to say that like I think there's a little bit, like I love Bitcoin.
I love a separation of money and the state is the ultimate goal.
I think Bitcoin is probably the best tool to do that.
That being said, I think the maximalists sometimes oversell their hand where they're always like, Bitcoin solves this.
And you're like, look, those Bitcoin guys, like, they had trouble getting money to the fucking truckers in the trucker protest in Canada.
There's a lot of problems that we still need to solve.
And I don't think any one of us should be like, this solves this when it hasn't exactly solved it yet.
That being said, I own Bitcoin.
I'm probably going to buy more of it in the next five hours.
So, you know, nothing against it.
Jury and Cost00:06:40
Yo, Dave.
What's up, Dave?
You and Robbie killed it tonight.
Well, thank you very much.
And I have to say I agree.
Awesome comedy.
Yo, I own a gun shop right down the road called JW Firearms.
I will give you and Robbie any AR-15 at cost.
At cost, because I want you guys to arm yourself.
That went shoot real quick.
You know, I thought we were going to get some free ARs and then I've never heard the term at cost bum out my mood more than that.
I will give you any AR-15.
You go, this guy is the greatest guy ever.
At cost plus tip.
All right.
No, I feel like you guys need to arm yourself.
You guys never talk about firearms.
I feel like you guys kind of need somebody to come on the show to talk about guns because we here in Pennsylvania, we love our guns.
Am I right, guys?
All right.
Dave, I love this guy who, hey, I'll give this to you guys at cost as long as you'll give me a free plug on the show and then have me on for a full episode and also pay me for the items.
I'll give you a sandwich.
Listen.
I'll give Robbie a sandwich and you $2,000.
All right.
Listen, I don't want anyone to know what guns I do or do not have, but let's talk.
There you go.
Wow.
That chick was the least Gentile in this whole group right there.
She went, and if perhaps I could provide a ticket stub, and then I went, that was a good.
All right, Rob, how much time we got left on this?
Let's take two more.
Two more questions.
Let's do it.
Hey, Dave, what are your thoughts on jury nullification?
Can we use it to keep people out of cages for unjust laws?
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't even, so the, I mean, I think factually, yes, you can.
You know, I don't really think there's any argument against that.
I think, look, I understand completely when people get summoned for jury duty, if they want to get out of it because there's a lot of shit going on in their life.
I get that.
And I think I talked about this recently on one of the live podcasts where I got, look, I get, I'm somebody, I got like a busy career.
I got two little kids.
I got a lot of shit going on.
I get where you'd go.
Let me get out of this because it's such a pain in the ass.
But man, if you can do it, it is such a great thing to do.
There's probably, short of like how you raise your own kids and how you treat the people in your life, there's probably nothing you could do that makes more of an impact than actually serving on a fucking jury.
And if that person is in any way being charged with something that they don't deserve to be thrown in a cage for, fucking just make sure you're the lone person on that jury who's like, we're not, we're not convicting them.
And there's so many, like, there's so many crimes, man.
People go to jail.
It's not just like, like, drug possession or gun possession or, you know, I don't know, like, prostitution or being a John or something like that.
I mean, there's people go to jail for like unpaid fines and shit.
Like, things that, like, you know, like, the most basic question to me, which I know, like, this is what, like, what I, the first time I was ever on Joe Rogan's podcast, the thing I said to him, when he asked me at one point, he goes, why are you a libertarian?
And I was like, well, the essence of why I'm a libertarian is like, you just ask yourself the basic question.
Like, who should be thrown in a cage?
You know, like, that's kind of like what this all comes down to.
It's like, who should be thrown in a cage?
You know we do that?
We take human beings, like, who, their life is, they're a human just like you are.
They're existing in a life just like you.
And we throw them in fucking chains and put them in a cage.
Like, who should we do that to?
And I'd say, yeah, a murderer, for sure.
A fucking rapist, for sure.
Someone who's like a violent, you know, like someone stabs someone or just beat the shit out of someone.
Someone who makes a sound with a microphone like that, perhaps.
And I'll give you like, you know, like property crime, you know, okay, someone who burns your house down or someone who fucking like steals your shit, fine.
But like, beyond that, you're going to say, I'm not even saying there shouldn't be any punishment, but like beyond that, like, you're saying someone who, what, had a substance that you're not allowed to have?
It's just so fucking insane to me.
And so, like, that to me is almost the essence of the difference between like a socialist and a libertarian.
It's like, I wouldn't say anyone who like starts a factory and wants to fucking share it amongst the workers should be thrown in jail.
But you're saying that someone who like starts a factory themselves should be thrown in jail.
So if you can actually go sit on a fucking jury and take someone who either, you know, so many of these fucking people, that guy, the shaman, who we were talking about, you know, the whole thing with him now, this is how so much of the criminal justice system works, is he took a deal.
But why did he take a deal?
Because he was looking at 25 years in prison.
You know, they're looking at these crazy sentences.
Imagine you were like looking at 25 years in prison and someone goes, well, if you take a deal, we'll give you three.
But if you go to trial, you're rolling the dice for 25.
And by the way, the entire country has been poisoned to think you are an insurrectionist.
You want to roll the dice?
Like, I don't know.
You're like, you're playing Russian roulette with your life.
So there's so many things like that and so many things where people are like in these trials where they're just like, you know, looking at like crazy long sentences.
So 100% is one of the best things you can do if you can go on a jury.
And if you think there's like some trumped up charges against that guy, just be like, I don't care.
I'm voting no.
And the thing that people don't know is that the judge will give you these instructions.
Like they'll say to you, if you believe this person has violated this law, you have to vote guilty.
But you don't.
You know?
Like, they could, if someone was like caught with like an ounce of cocaine, and depending on what state you're in, you know what the jail time for an ounce of cocaine is?
Yeah, I mean, it'll be insane.
Like, you wouldn't believe it.
With an ounce of cocaine.
Rob does that in an afternoon.
And they will put you in jail.
But I'm not exaggerating.
It might be 15 years or something like that for an ounce of cocaine, depending on what state you're in.
Like 15 years, your life is ruined for that.
And the judge will be, like, if you believe this guy was caught, like, if you believe he did have this ounce of cocaine, you have to vote guilty.
But the truth is, you do not.
You do not.
You can sit there and go, not guilty.
And in your mind, because you don't believe someone should go to jail for that.
You just say, not guilty.
Not anyone gives you any pressure.
You go, not guilty.
Distraction from Collapse00:06:10
How long do you guys want to stay here for?
Because I'm not guilty till the end.
And eventually, he's not guilty.
And that's like, if you could do that, you just saved someone's life.
You know?
So, like, I, yeah, absolutely.
I highly, I think that's a heroic thing to do, if you can.
So.
So you're closing us out.
Okay, so Michael.
So make it good and then punch Rob in the dead.
So I'm a professional software engineer, and everybody in the software industry is.
Did someone boo him for that?
No, I. Most of the people in the industry are communists, right?
I mean, like, so boo, yeah.
So what happened with this Silicon Valley bank was I had a bunch of software engineers from the Silicon Valley Valley area do like analysis of what actually happened.
And it could have been a Mississian, like, you know, yeah, a case study on Missesian economics.
Why are you guys being so mean to him all the time?
Let him get his question.
You know, and I think we have a huge opportunity.
At the same time, you know, we have this thing going on in Ukraine and what, you know, what Putin is saying about the nukes, and now we have these strategic, what are they, tactical nukes that are not as bad, and they're more likely to be used at the same time.
You know what I mean?
So pretty bad, yeah.
Yeah, but like, if you use a small nuke, then somebody's going to use the bigger nuke and then they're going to go back.
You know what I mean?
So what's the play here?
You know, my question is, what's the play?
Like, I think, I feel like we have so much to play, and I think all of us aren't telling the same story, and it's kind of like, you know, we're not getting anywhere.
Well, there's, look, there's a lot of shit going on, right?
So I'd say that I think the, you know, the financial shit, like, hitting the fan, makes me more worried about the shit in Ukraine, because I think that the way that politicians tend to kind of like distract from, oh, this economy we built is going to collapse, is often like, oh, let's start another war.
Now, would they be so stupid as to actually escalate with Russia?
I don't know.
I'll tell you, I've been like one of the biggest alarmists on this over the last couple years because I think the policy in Ukraine is so crazy.
Like, it's so fucking crazy.
It's not just stupid like all the other wars we've fought.
It's like stupid and like, holy shit, you've lost your mind.
Because you're like really playing around with like, this isn't just like a war.
It's not like a proxy war with Russia.
Like, Vietnam was a proxy war with Russia.
But if you look on a map and you look at where like Vietnam is and where America is and where Russia is, okay, it's closer to Russia, but there's a whole China in between.
You know what I mean?
And like if you look at them fighting like Nicaragua or something, okay, it's closer to America.
There's just a lot of shit in between.
Wherever it is, this is on Russia's border.
Like this is on their doorstep.
Like if you, let's say you were fighting a proxy war with America.
Like okay, Russia and America kind of fought a proxy war to some degree in Syria.
Okay?
But was anyone in America really like, oh my god, you know, but imagine it was in Mexico City.
We'd be like, whoa, what the fuck?
You know, like, that's a different type of threat to us.
That's what we're doing to them.
However you feel about the conflict.
That's just the reality.
So that's crazy.
I gotta say, I was really encouraged by the fact that the New York Times ran that piece the other day on the Nord Stream pipeline bombing, where they go, oh, it turns out it wasn't Russia.
And you're like, shocker.
And did you see who they said did it?
Pro-Ukrainians.
Which, by the way, is technically true.
Because what government is the most pro-Ukrainian?
It's like, yeah, it's us.
But it seemed like it was pretty clear that they were trying to plant the seeds for an excuse for why we could maybe back off support of Ukraine.
That's the thing, man.
There's no, Ukraine cannot win that war.
Short of like NATO really fucking, you know, like declaring that we're fighting all of NATO versus Russia.
And so, you know, Russia is like a wave of just, I don't know, it's like some video game where it's like, it'd be like a wave of 100,000 of them and you're like, oh, I'm doing great because I just took out like half of them.
And then they're like, here's another wave.
I'm like, here's another wave.
All Russia has is people.
Drunk, drunk people.
And they will just keep flooding you with these fucking bands.
So Russia wins eventually.
And the question is, how does like, what's the West's exit strategy?
And at least seeing that piece in the New York Times made me go like, okay, maybe they're starting to figure out what their exit strategy could be.
Oh, Zelensky's a traitor, fucking some shit like that.
So hopefully that at least happens.
You know, look, never underestimate these people's ability to just like back off of a policy.
Look at the COVID shit.
They literally go from one day being like, you're an insane Nazi grandma killer if you want to do what we're doing right now.
Like literally just having this event would have been like, you're an insane.
And then the next day they're like, no, that's cool.
And then they go, put the war in Ukraine.
You know, like, they just move on to the next thing.
So maybe they could just move on to the next thing.