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Jan. 24, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:15
Executive Order Deep Dive with Guest Phillip Patrick: Unpacking the Truth!

Analyst Phillip Patrick, from the Birch Gold Group, joins us to discuss President Trump's flurry of executive orders.

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Time Text
Near All-Time Gold Highs 00:05:48
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Today, we have our special guest that's been with us many weeks now.
It's the economist from Birch Gold, and that is Philip Patrick.
Philip, welcome to the program again.
Thank you for having me, Dr. Paul, as always.
Very good.
And I'll bet you any money since I'm sort of in charge, we'll probably be talking about gold, as we usually do.
At least we'll be mentioning gold.
I'm going to start off by mentioning gold because gold right now is right near its all-time highs.
And, you know, when it gets up there, it is getting close to $3,000.
I was talking to my son the other day.
I said, boy, this is hard to believe.
He says, I don't know why.
He was coming back.
He said, I don't know why you should be surprised.
You've been telling us about this for years, but it still does surprise me and astounds me, even though it was unexpected when you print a lot of money, that happens.
So we are close to an all-time high.
I've been witnessing and falling price of gold when it was 35 all the way up to now where it's nearly 3,000.
So this is, but the question over the years, and even now, people will come up, when's the best time to buy gold?
Well, when it's low, when it's lowest.
But I'm just making fun because nobody knows.
I remember early in the 70s, gold was really moving percentage-wise, going from 35 up to 800.
And I had a good friend that was in the gold business, and he was a libertarian.
So I had to buy some gold I didn't want to use for some type of an auction or something in three months or so.
So I called him.
I says, should I buy it now or wait until this three months when we need the gold?
And his answer stuck with me.
He says, if you have the money and you have the project, he says, just buy the gold.
And yes, you won't be perfect.
But he did not believe he at that time, I consider him the real expert, that he wasn't going to say, well, I think it would be good if you waited one month, two months, or three months of this sort of thing.
And that's really Austrian economic thinking because there are so too many factors to take your computer and say, I know what something's going to happen and how high it's going to go and when it's going to happen.
So anyway, I think that's the way it is today.
And that's why people call, do you think we should buy now?
And my answer is pretty vague.
I think people should have gold, you know, to protect.
And if you have the money and you don't have any other information and why you want to change that, you just go and buy it.
So if there's any indecision, that is best.
And it's worked out pretty well for me.
Sometimes I have to be very patient, though.
There was a period of time in the latter part of the last century, gold didn't do well, you know, for almost like a 20-year period.
But long term, I always looked and said, if the government spends too much money and they print too much money, gold will go up because they're devaluing the dollar.
And that rule has held true for me.
And I think it should be true today.
But, you know, the one thing that we do with this program, and of course, with Philip, is we partner with Birch Gold because they offer one of the alternatives on how you buy gold.
And they will give out information.
So you can get some free information from Birch Gold if you want to find out more about how you can take Money from your stocks and shifted over to a gold IRA.
The current regular IRA, you can't put gold bullion in there, which is by government regulation.
But if you have a special IRA, an individual retirement account, you can put gold in there.
So that is what Birch Gold talks about.
So if you would like to get some free information from Birch Gold, what you do is you look at the number on the screen, you text Ron 989898, and they will then, your request, send you some information on how you can consider, you know, taking some of your regular money and savings and stocks and all and put it into a gold IRA.
So that's once again, I want to give out that time.
And that is gold, you did text Ron at 989898, and it'll connect you to Birch Gold that will send you information.
And there is no charge for that information.
Now we're going to talk about our program today a little bit more.
And I'm sure we'll talk and mention gold again.
And our guests, as I said on our introduction, Philip Patrick is here.
He's the economist from Birch Gold, and he's been on our program quite a few times.
So we'll start off with Philip.
First, Philip, welcome to the program again.
Thank you so much, Dr. Paul.
It's an honor to be on.
Great.
And, you know, big thing in this last week, a lot of stuff.
And if anybody can say, I know exactly what he did, and I know exactly what the consequence will be, it wouldn't be a very Austrian answer because you, yes, you can figure like I think there's a pretty safe rule.
If you spend too much money in the government and they print a lot, it's going to devalue the currency.
But I can't say what's going to happen next week, and we don't know.
Oil Prices and Deficit Concerns 00:13:47
There are a lot of executive orders, but a lot of them I think are great.
A lot of ones I have questions mark, but it is historic what happened.
So we're going to talk to Philip a little bit about this and see if he give us a feel of what he thinks is going to happen.
Was there one executive order, Philip, that stands out that you thought, wow, you know, I didn't know he was really going to do it.
And that's going to have a lot of economic alternatives to it.
It will cause some economic things to happen.
Is there one economic order and presidential order that you think is more important?
Yeah, I think so.
I think with regards to the economy, there were three central pillars.
Probably the most important in my mind is trade reform, right?
He talked about protecting and revitalizing America's manufacturing capacity, which means, of course, modifying international trade agreements, but it also means tariffs, which are going to be central to his economic policy.
At the end of the day, we have a deficit problem.
They have to start finding revenue from other sources.
Energy policy, important as well.
He plans to reinstate fossil fuel drilling, exit the Paris Climate Accord, and end the electric vehicle mandate.
The idea being to achieve energy independence and stimulate ultimately economic growth.
Thirdly, I think immigration control is important as well.
He declared a national emergency at the border and enhanced border security.
So I think these three, from an economic standpoint, probably the main pillars in isolation, I think all interesting policies, all good policies, but we still have big problems.
And it's still going to be a very tough task for President Trump, I think.
You know, there's been a tremendous emphasis on Trump and his campaign since then dealing with the price of oil.
Just yesterday, I think he made a statement and he was talking about Saudi Arabia and he was sort of hitting at them and said, look, why don't you get the price of oil down?
That's going to stimulate the economy.
And of course, that's what Trump wants to do.
He wants to deregulate, drill, drill, drill, baby, you know, this sort of thing.
And this will help the economy.
It'll give a boost to the economy if it's energy cheap, especially if we get to produces here in the United States.
And there are some truths in what he says on that.
But I have a little bit of qualms about this because I think he's dealing with the price of oil.
If he can get somebody to do such and such, the price of oil can correct the fault of the devaluation of the dollar.
And it might, you know, in a short term and to a degree, you know, if you improve the production of oil and get the prices down, that could have an effect.
But I don't think it's really touching on the problem of why are the prices high.
And I think it comes closer if you do overemphasize this than sort of manipulating and price fixing or rigging or changing it rather than saying, yes, let the market produce, get rid of the regulations.
Yes, let people drill and this sort of thing, but let the market decide.
But if it's the whole purpose of getting it down and stimulate the economy and not talk too much about the deficits that we're building up.
I mean, I agree vehemently.
And I think, look, what's key for Trump is to try and grow the economy.
And as you say, it's the money printing, it's the debt that we're amassing, which is the big problem.
And in order to stop that, we've got to hold deficit spending.
Now, austerity, raising taxes, tightening the belt buckle, that's not going to fix the deficit problem.
It is way beyond that.
Growth is the only way out.
So I think Trump wants lower oil prices to stimulate growth in the economy.
The other reason, and this I thought was smart, was using lower oil prices as a tool to end the Ukraine war, right?
Russia have quite a high cost of production when it comes to oil.
Their economy is very reliant on oil and gas prices.
So by incentivizing Saudi Arabia to drive the price down, they essentially can starve out the Russian war machine.
It's very similar tactic to ones we used that led to the collapse of the USSR.
So that was part of the reason there.
But I do agree with you.
None of this is addressing the problem.
And what I would say is in isolation, these policies all make a lot of sense.
However, where I don't see them fixing a problem is when it comes to deficit spending, right?
Trump's first thing is to cut taxes, which initially will increase the deficit.
He's talking about tariffs as a revenue generator.
He's talking about Doge as a revenue generator.
My concern is there isn't enough money there to bridge the gap when it comes to the deficit.
My big concern then being, as long as we continue to run deficits, if the bond markets start looking elsewhere for opportunities, it doesn't matter how much Trump grows the economy, we're going to run out of time.
So stopping the spending, addressing the debt is the primary concern for sure.
Sounds good to me.
You know, there were some other executive orders that I think will contribute to the goals of most conservatives or anybody who believes in the free market, the libertarians, and most Republicans are going along with it.
But the radical left gets hysterical about it, and that is the things, the executive orders that attack the subject of this overregulation, the social regulation, this wokeism that has gone on that violates civil liberties and it doesn't protect civil liberties.
So I think it's a big deal about his canceling out this DEI.
ESG is bound to go.
The attitude has quickly changed.
And here we find out a lot of people, you know, agree with this because they were fed up with it, but they felt helpless.
And now Trump moves in and does this.
So I think this is fantastic.
And I think it will affect prices, but it doesn't solve what you just described.
Why is the government spending so much money?
And why are we in so many wars and all these other things?
But in the meantime, if you get rid of some of these regulations, especially the ones dealing with social affairs, I think there's a lot of help there.
But the fallacy would be they say, ah, we know how to attack inflation and not concentrate.
So then all of a sudden they're talking about a $500 billion project for AI and who's going to pay for that too.
So I think these executive orders that improve the conditioning hiring and emphasizing the quality of work over they productive or not instead of what kind of a social program they believe in and what kind of affirmative action programs you have.
So I see this as a pretty good sign that the economy will be helped by this, but it won't be the answer.
I mean, I couldn't agree more.
He described, I thought, very aptly his deregulation program as a revolution of common sense.
And I thought it was very well put.
And he's right, right?
It's a pro-business agenda, not a pro-bureaucracy agenda.
And I think it's very important.
It was very telling, actually, watching him speak at Davos.
European bank CEOs were very excited about deregulation in the United States and sort of stressed the fact that red tape in Europe made it very difficult to do business.
And that's, you know, this concept of, if you will, creative destruction, breaking down a system that was clearly broken is the only way we can get out of it.
Deregulation is a central part.
Increasing revenue is going to be a central part.
And of course, curbing spending, becoming more efficient will be a central part.
And if we can pull all of these things off, we have a chance to get through the problem.
But even then, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a tough job, right?
Like I said, running close to $2 trillion deficits on an annual basis.
That has to be the priority.
A year from now, Trump will be sitting on $40 trillion worth of debt.
Look, for the last 80 years, we've been sending checks out to the world that largely haven't been cashed.
My concern is they come to cash these checks all at once.
We're going to have a problem.
And we're starting to see the early signs of it.
Borrowing costs are increasing, right?
Look at what's happening to Treasury yields.
The Fed last tail end of last year cut interest rates by 100 basis points.
Yields on treasuries increased by 90 basis points.
It's because the demand for U.S. debt on a global scale is starting to wane because they're starting to view us as a bad investment.
And that's what we have to stop as a priority.
Because if we can't stop that, Trump has no chance to grow the economy in time before the problem erupts.
You know, this subject of interest rates, I consider very important.
And most people believe in a free market understand how important, you know, free market interest rates are.
Because once the government gets in there, you know, just look at what they did in 2008 when it was a bad recession.
They had QE and they took real interest rates even below zero at times.
And all of a sudden they wonder, wonder where the inflation has come?
Why are the prices going up?
But they are talking a lot.
I wanted to get your opinion about what you think we should anticipate, which is very difficult.
The $500 billion that the Trump administration has proposed, they don't say exactly where they're going to get the money, but I can't believe it wouldn't involve government one way or the other.
$500 billion, because even if you say, well, it's coming from the marketplace, the market has to borrow it.
And, you know, if that's pushing interest rates up, the Fed gets involved and just don't do it to some of the things you just mentioned.
But there is some optimism about this.
If they just pass this and let people know what's going to happen, it's going to create 100,000 new jobs immediately.
You know, I think that's a little bit over optimistic about it will happen.
But that to me is something that it remains to be seen.
And again, it's saying it's a technical thing of regulation.
Yeah, I think it should be deregulated at all.
But the one thing you might comment on is, you know, this week, there was a bit of a squabble between Trump and Musk.
And I think if that doesn't go away or if that builds, you know, Musk had, you know, what Trump is pushing now, this $500 billion is not what his plan is.
So you have people once control of the government and the Federal Reserve to a degree.
And then there's somebody else that is as rich as most countries of the world.
So what do you think could happen under those circumstances?
It's an interesting one.
And the Musk-Trump relationship, I think, will be an interesting one to watch.
These are two very large egos.
And at some point, it appears that they will clash.
And it's starting already, right?
As you mentioned, this project Stargate, Trump has been very excited, half a billion dollar AI infrastructure initiative.
But Musk really hasn't had anything good to say to it.
He said they don't actually have the money, referring to SoftBank suggesting they only had 10 billion secured.
And he said, I have that on good authority.
So he appears to be pursuing a personal vendetta.
I think he sees Project Stargate as a pork barrel project.
And he said he's essentially not standing at the trough.
To me, it's pretty clear his ego won't allow him to simply participate in anything.
He has to be in charge.
And if he's not in the spotlight, then they can't be a spotlight.
So I think we're going to continue to see some tensions there.
And there will be only one winner long term in that relationship.
And of course, that'll be President Trump.
So it's an interesting one.
Well, I want to mention one more, at least one more executive order.
And it's in motion right now.
Stagflationary Climate Discussion 00:07:26
I think a large majority of Americans are agreeing with this.
I think the cultural Marxists who thought they were going to run the world, they're not too happy.
And I'm talking about border security.
I mean, Trump lived up to his promises.
He put that in motion.
And it has to be done cautiously because, you know, no matter how conservative and libertarian you are, you don't want to give up on still thinking about civil liberties and not a lot of innocent people being drawn into that.
But right now, the innocent people have been drawn in by these record sums of money of just opening up borders and allowing the very questionable immigrants to come in and invade our country.
So I think most people are going to be very happy with this to see that there's something done about it.
And it's going to be very helpful.
That'll be another thing that can be of an economic benefit, but maybe indirectly more so than people have talked about, is we are spending a lot of money and we're taking it from the people who are working here to help the illegals coming in.
And many of them have controversial backgrounds.
So if we, there's expenses there that I am sure can be cut back.
So maybe indirectly that'll be the additional thing if we handle the security thing, border security, and can decrease spending, which is a dream at times, because most of the time when you decrease it one place, somebody says, ah, we have more money.
But theoretically, this could be a benefit even to helping out in the management of our monetary system by cutting back on all the spending.
Good luck.
Good luck is the right way to say it, but I agree.
And look, cutting spending is the priority, and we need to find ways to do it.
And immigration is clearly one way to do it.
To be clear, I am a big fan of legal immigration.
I think it is tough to argue for illegal immigration.
So tightening up the borders, I think, like I said, a central part of the policy.
Stricter immigration policies might also reduce labor market competition and essentially increase wages for American workers as well.
So there's an economic benefit potentially on the horizon too.
If we do it too aggressively, it can lead to labor shortages short term.
So it's a balancing act, but certainly, I think, an important part of policy.
And certainly when we're talking about, you know, criminals and other things, obviously that's not full immigration, but there are certain people we shouldn't have in this country.
So, like I said, across the board, policies are encouraging.
We just have to see how they're implemented and what things will shake out.
Look, there's a lot of changes on the horizon, and I think we'll see a lot of volatility.
Things like tariffs, they're designed to address trade imbalances, but they create volatility.
They lead to retaliation.
So I think it's going to be an interesting year, a volatile year, but I'm encouraged because I think heading down the path that we have been for the last four years, we would be at the point of no return.
So what's encouraging is at least we're hearing the problems from this administration.
They're making it a priority to address them.
The big question will come: do we have the time and the ability to do so?
I want to spend a brief time on this.
Next item I have.
And that is, what are we experiencing?
Is the economy basically inflationary?
People now are talking more about deflationary.
They'll dig up a money supply figure and say, see, there's a shortage of money.
There's not enough money.
But the argument goes on.
But I lean toward something that we witnessed in the 70s, and that is stagflation.
People forget about that.
You can have a very, very weak economy and tremendous inflation.
Matter of fact, that's the way you see some of the economies end, you know, whether it's Venezuela or other countries.
You know, prices go up, but the economy doesn't get better.
This fallacy that when we have a recession, all we have to do is print more money and stimulate the economy and we get rid of the recession.
Yeah, it works to a degree, but eventually, you know, they have to deal with the bigger picture.
So do talk about or think about whether or not we are in a period that we might describe as stagflation or how would you describe it?
I mean, it certainly feels that way to me.
Stunted economic growth coupled with inflation.
I think GDP numbers have been masked by inflation for the last four years, or inflation rather has been masked by GDP numbers for the last four years.
So I think the positive numbers have been misleading.
On top of that, since the 70s, the Fed changed the way they calculate inflation.
As Social Security grew, it behooved them to find ways to work down that headline inflation number, which is why as consumers, our reality of inflation really doesn't match our experience as consumers.
So I think largely we are in a stagflationary climate already.
I think it's going to be a very tough job to grow the economy from where we are.
I think, like I said, President Trump's plans are good.
I think they give us a shot to do it, but we need to grow the economy at a faster rate than we're growing debt.
That's going to be the hard thing to achieve.
So yes, I think a stagflationary climate is likely.
And as we all remember, it's a tough climate to get through, right?
When, you know, your assets are marginally increasing in value, but everything else is getting much more expensive.
Purchasing power reduces and it can be painful.
As you know better than most, Dr. Paul, you know, gold ran, I think it was almost 800% during the stagflationary climate from the early 70s through the early 80s.
It is an asset that performs.
Just as a comment to something you mentioned at the beginning as well, gold historically is a steady grower.
It increases at a steady rate over time.
For the 20th century, for the 1900s, I wouldn't characterize it as an aggressive grower relative to something like the S ⁇ P, the markets, right?
This century, from January 1st, year 2000 till today, that's turned on its head.
Gold has outperformed most other asset classes.
And what's really interesting is not just growth, right?
But it coincides with a massive increase in the money supply.
Obviously, we've escalated that significantly over the last four, eight and 12 years, respectively.
But it really started at the turn of the century.
So as you know well, there is a positive or a direct correlation between growth in the money supply and growth in the value of gold.
Put that into the context of the recent climate, and I think it tells us where prices are heading longer term.
Right.
Money Supply Growth Correlates with Gold 00:01:03
Why don't we finish off with you once again reminding our viewers if they're interested in getting more information from Birch Gold, what they might do?
How can they get that, as I mentioned earlier?
Of course, it's very simple.
So just a text Ron, R-O-N, of course, to 989898.
That's Ron to 989898.
That will get them access to a free information kit on how and why to invest in precious metals today.
It'll also give them access to a guide on why and how to invest in gold under a Trump administration and why it's so important today.
So free information, text Ron to 989898 and get reading.
Very, very good, Philip.
And I want to thank you once again for coming on the program.
And I'm sure we'll see you at a later date as well.
But also, I want to thank our viewers for tuning in for this program.
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