Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Simply
Bitcoin IRL. Today we have a very special
guest, Joe Consorti. He is the macro zoomers,
extremely intelligent, also very young, but definitely wise, wise
beyond his ear. Is that how it says that's not
how it goes? I don't know.
I don't know the saying. Anyways, something close enough.
Joe, how you doing? I don't think you've ever been
on the show before, so happy to have you.
No first time, man. Thank you for having me.
It should be a fun one. Wise beyond his years.
That's the saying. Boom.
Just figured it out. Anyways, I do want to talk about
kind of, I don't want to say big news, 'cause it's just it's it
feels like a cult at this point, where everyone just kind of
like, follows what the Fed is going to do.
But apparently they did not raise rates.
To quote the Reuters article directly says they are more they
they need more confidence on the inflation front before any any
rate cuts start. So what's your take on that?
What's going on in macro land? Yeah.
So this is what was expected. By all accounts, the Fed was
gonna leave rates unchanged to this meeting.
The Fed this entire cycle has forecasted what they're going to
do well in advance so as to not disrupt the market.
If the market has an expectation, the Fed sets it
well in advance and then it doesn't go against that
expectation. It helps the Fed conduct its
monetary policy better. So this was expected, but it was
also expected that they would forecast rate cuts for the March
meeting. And they didn't do that.
They actually walked back all expectations of rate cuts.
There was no wording about rate cuts in the statement that the
Fed released. And Jerome Powell went up during
his press conference and basically took rate cuts
entirely off the table, said that they're not considering any
for March, and said that they wouldn't be considering any
until inflation returned back to its 2% yearly rate.
So you know that kind of that tightened things up a little
bit, tightened up financial conditions marginally, but the
market doesn't seem to believe the Fed and with good reason
because we saw earlier today several of the banks that were
involved in buying parts of Silicon Valley Bank when it
failed had really dismal earnings reports.
They had huge losses. Namely, New York Community Bank
had, I believe, a $249,000,000 loss and it was expected in Q4
to have a $250 million gain, so $500 million in the opposite
direction, not necessarily a good sign.
And it's loan loss provisions, which is basically money that
gets set aside for a rainy day, rose to number.
Off the top of my head, I believe it was something like
$500 billion, which is about 1/6 of the size of loan loss
provisions that Bank of America has.
Bank of America being one of the largest banks in the US, it
makes sense for them to have a lot of cash set aside in case
business and consumer loans go bad.
But for a regional bank to have almost 1/6 of the rainy day cash
pile that Bank of America has, it's not a good sign.
It means that regionals, small and mid sized banks, they're
bracing for impact. They're bracing for a pretty
swift market downturn. That's what that tells me.
And then the market's reaction to that also confirms it. the US
Treasury rates fell by a pretty huge amount today.
The two year yield which is the most popular short term note on
the market fell by 13 basis points or .13%.
The 10 year note which is the one of the more popular long end
notes fell by 12 basis points. So people are basically saying
we think the economy is going to slow down.
We think the Fed's going to cut rates and we're going to buy
bonds because of it. We're going to allocate to bonds
because we think the Fed is going to cut rates and we want
to insulate ourselves from the fallout and benefit from from
when rates fall and the price of our bonds go up.
So there's this market wide de risking impulse.
People are flying to safety, the safety of U.S., government bonds
and relative safety. And basically even though the
Fed has said we don't plan on cutting interest rates, the
market is kind of saying I don't believe you and that's why you
saw the moves that you saw today.
Gotcha. Did you see also there's been
some rumblings to massive corporations in SMP 500 there,
there's been some layoffs, some big percentages too, like 10% of
the workforce, 15% of the workforce.
So what's your take on this? And then I'll kind of add
another question on top of that, right.
As I asked Larry Leopard this question about a week or so ago
at Bitcoin Naples, where's the recession, man?
Did the did the Fed pull off the, the, the soft landing?
Where is this recession? People have been calling for
this recession for over a year. It's never come.
So what's going on there? What's your take on that, Joe?
This cycle's been crazy, man. I mean, you know, if I I would
have, I would have lost so much money had I been, you know,
betting on a recession all throughout last year that that
was a consensus. But we also got to remember like
this cycle is unlike any other because following 2008, this is
the way that I'm reading all of this.
Following 2008, the Fed basically adopted this like
shadow mandate that they wouldn't let another recession
happen. They wouldn't let one happen, at
least not a prolonged recession. After the great financial
Crisis, the Fed said, look on the world stage, the US needs to
remain an attractive place to be all year round.
You know, we we can't have a prolonged recession.
And in doing that, they're basically an insurance policy
for all banks, not just big banks.
But we saw last year on small banks from the brink of failing
small banks too. And so the Fed can't allow a
prolonged recession to happen. And as such, they've created
these emergent, this emergency lending facility with BTFP
that's expiring soon. So the market is getting really
scared. I have a feeling that if BTFP
doesn't stick around, liquidity in financial markets is going to
get really hairy. As for why we haven't had one
yet, cycle after cycle, we know that the solution is the same.
There's. More Did the central bankers
pull it off? This is going against all the
Bitcoin narratives, brother. What did the central bankers
pull it off? What's going on?
Well, they're close to it. So it's like the price inflation
was at 9.1% yearly at its peak it's at like 3.1% now and the
unemployment rate is still at a record low.
So if we can get down to 2% and you know the the labor market
doesn't unwind then the federal of engineer to soft landing,
which is crazy. But in order to do that, the
banks need to survive because we live in a credit based economy
and so credit constantly needs to be extended.
If the banks don't have enough liquidity to extend loans, then
credit decelerates, which means the economy decelerates.
And so BTFP ending means that there's a huge headwind for
banks creating credit if they don't feel comfortable doing it,
If their cash reserves fall below a certain level and credit
decelerates, that means the economy slows.
That means it's harder for businesses to borrow.
That means they start laying off people, right?
And then the Fed loses its soft landing.
So it's really important that the Fed keeps banks alive and it
doesn't let this fear spread anymore.
But we are really close to the coveted notion of a soft
landing. But by the same token, PayPal
laid off 10% of its workforce. UPS laid off how much?
I think 10%. I could be wrong.
That doesn't that that isn't solely resting on interest
rates. Part of that has to do well.
Part of it is these extremely high rates finally seeping into
corporate, corporate borrowing and then having them having to
fire people because they can't afford to run their their
businesses at the scale that they did anymore.
But part of it is also Joe Biden and him being an absolute moron
with these unions. Unions, unions absolutely murder
people. I mean the the the same people
that they protect by ensuring they get these crazy deals are
the same people they screw over six months to a year down the
line when inevitably companies go.
We can't afford this. We got to fire a bunch of
people, and that's what happened.
Like last year. You remember this?
The meme was going around that UPS drivers got a sweetheart
deal. It was $170,000 a year, plus
benefits. People were going nuts that a U
PS: driver could be earning that amount of money and then less
than like three or four months later, it's no surprise.
UPS announces that they're laying off a bunch of people.
And herein lies the great myth of central planning as well.
There's this, and it's, it's, it's all communism, this, it's
this notion that, like, the central planners can allocate
capital more effectively than the people who are doing so for
profit. And so they, you know, unions
get together and they say we demand XY and Z, we demand to be
paid this amount. And then it turns out that the
private company can no longer operate at the scale that it
was. When you're forcing them to pay
something, they fire a bunch of people.
Same deal with minimum wage laws, right?
We are across the United States, particularly up here in the
Northeast, we're making higher and higher minimum wage laws and
then the cost inevitably get passed back down to the the the
end user and then they demand higher minimum wage.
And then as a function of that, companies are just looking to
completely eliminate jobs entirely because it becomes too
expensive for them to to do it. And also we're we're pricing
ourselves out of the labor market and then pricing in the
hordes of migrants that are coming into the country
undocumented for. Which it's so fucking nuts.
OK, hold on, hold on, hold on. It's so much to unpack there,
Joe. OK, so OK, say say this.
Pull this off the engineer, dude.
I mean, doesn't this debunk the whole part of of the Bitcoin big
strong part of the Bitcoin narrative is you know that
central banks like are they they've failed in their their
policy, right? They they failed in the reason.
The reason? The American public was sold on
the idea of a central bank back in 1913 and all that but the.
American The American public wasn't even sold in a secret in
an emergency meeting. Yeah, but OK.
But the the justification was that essentially they were going
to provide, it was going to, it was going to provide stability,
right. And you just keep hearing that
the Wildcat Bank era, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. You keep hearing that, you know
the, the panic and the central banks are going to come in here
and provide the stability, right.
We know that the great, the Great Depression happened under
central bank, the Great Recession happened under a
central bank. But is this the first time that
central banks have pulled off, you know, being able to print
this record amount of money with absolutely no consequences?
Did they get away with it? Because the general consensus on
Bitcoin Twitter was that there was going to be hyperinflation,
that there was going to be a this crazy recession, this crazy
depression. And I I've been like, like you
said, I I would have lost a tremendous amount of money
because I would have been betting for that recession as
well, right. So did they pull this off?
And doesn't this a go? This goes against a lot of the
narratives that bitcoiners have been touting from the rooftops
the last 365 days. Yes, So I'm gonna, if I may, I'm
gonna share my screen. Absolutely.
I'm gonna share a window. This is my Bloomberg Terminal.
Oh, very. Fancy.
Very fancy. Very fancy.
Just soft flex. OK, what are you?
What are you showing us? So there are two things here.
So this one thing I'll say about the, did they pull it off?
They're really close to pulling it off.
And what I mean by that is like obviously cycles, you have
expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction.
But now we're at the point where we're nearing contraction and
it's a, it's a question of how deep the contraction is going to
be. Are we going to have a really
soft contraction? And then you know we're in
positive, positive nominal growth.
We're really close to that because the Fed has managed to,
the Fed has managed to tighten so substantially that now
businesses are the, you know, they're still booming, there's
still this huge excess amount of savings.
The reason I I feel that they're able, they were able to get this
far is because what we experienced on the front end and
that was record monetary and fiscal stimulus in 2020 and
2021. Think of it as like a cushion.
You know you're on a roller coaster and there's an extremely
steep drop off and at the very bottom, the more monetary and
fiscal stimulus the Fed pumped into the economy, which was
totally record-breaking in 2020 and 2021.
It's like building a mountain of pillows at the bottom of the
roller coaster. Whereas normally if the Fed had
tightened this much but not given, you know, pumped money
into the real economy on the front end, you know we'd already
be an extreme recession. But because it it lowered rates
to zero, it put money in the pockets of Americans directly.
Businesses said, OK, excellent rates are at 0.
Let's refinance all of our debt for five to 10 years out in the
future. Let's capture these zero percent
interest rates and individuals rather than going on a spending
frenzy. It seems that by all accounts,
they were austere at an individual level.
They didn't go out, they didn't spend all their money.
And so now the Fed has the benefit of all of this excess
cash in the economy, so that they're now tightening.
We haven't seen recession yet, but every single time they hold
rates too high for too long. But it but it it appears in
different places every single time.
So in 2000, a lot of people's wealth was riding either
directly in or adjacent to the the the.com bubble that burst.
the Fed had to step in 2008. It was extremely toxic lending
that was on the balance sheet of almost every major American
bank. the Fed had to step in 2019, it was a cash shortage in
overnight lending. the Fed had to step in.
We don't know what the hell it's going to be this time but so so
the the one aspect of it is I think that access cash from the
front end really, really helped and we're we're closing in on a
soft landing. I doubt the Fed's ability to to
to to see it all the way through though because one central
entity cannot accurately set the price of money for thousands,
10s of thousands, millions of individual components all across
the economy since since the Fed's inception and ultimately
are detachment from the gold standard.
We haven't been, we haven't been capable of accurately setting
the cost of capital for an entire country.
And I I have a feeling this cycle will resolve in the exact
same way. One other thing that is helping
keep the economy afloat and strong is our debt issuance.
We're issuing an extreme amount of debt at the federal level and
right here this chart I'll finally get to it that I have
pulled up is this is the federal deficit as a percentage of GDP.
And what you'll notice is that the last time we ran a budget
surplus, IE at at the national level, at the at the government
level, we ran, we we earned more money than we brought in was
2002. So March 31st, 2002, the month
of March 2002 is the last time that as a country we were
profitable as a nation. And now increasingly all
economic growth has been totally reliant here on an ever widening
deficit. And so and you'll you'll note
here actually the deficit widened out as we approached the
end of every single Fed rate hiking cycle.
Here. the Fed approached peak rates right around here O seven
O 8 and that the deficit widened out.
So as the Fed approached like peak monetary tightness, more
more marginal units of debt or more debt had to be introduced
into the system in order for the same marginal units of
productivity. So basically what I'm saying is
like the economy becomes more reliant on debt as the system
near nears peak monetary tightness.
You can't be as productive as you once were when the cost of
capital is several 100 basis points higher.
You just need to finance it with more and more debt.
Everything's super expensive. And so it that the exact same
thing happened in the lead up to the last recession to the Fed
started hiking rates right around 20/15/2016.
It approached peak rates in late 2018, early 2019 and the fiscal
deficit continue. It continued widening, widening,
widening, widening more debt was needed to prop up the economy
until it it it just couldn't happen anymore.
And then we had this huge recession and then record record
fiscal stimulus, huge wave of debt issuance that brought us
down to a debt to to that deficit.
And if you ignore all of COVID, we're still kind of in that
downward trend if you connect these two lines here.
So the reality is like the US, the United States economy is
only is only, So United States growth is only so strong as a
function of endless debt growth. It's an extremely ugly reality
that we haven't come to terms with.
And that's also why you see the rate of debt issuance
accelerating back in 2002. The last time we ran a a fiscal
surplus, the national debt was like $5 trillion and everybody
was talking, I don't know, I was less than a year old, but
everybody was talking about how we were never going to pay this
down. 5 trillion is completely insane.
Here we are at nearly $35 trillion just over 2 decades
later and nobody cares anymore. Because the unspoken reality is
that in order to be attractive on the world stage, in order to
be the strong rip roaring economy that demands, you know,
to be respected on the world stage, we need to continue this
path of endless fiscal expansion, endless credit
expansion. And so the Fed can stay here for
as long as it wants. But you know, sure is the sun is
going to rise tomorrow morning. The cycle is going to end the
exact same way it always has for the last 50 years.
And that's lower interest rates than where we started.
We already had negative real interest rates at the start of
this hiking cycle. The rate of inflation was like
2%. the Fed funds rate was 0.25%.
So you're realistically interest rates are -1.75% in real terms.
That's exactly what's going to have to happen at the end of
this cycle. I'm absolutely convinced unless
the United States returns to this extreme austerity and we
decide, you know what, we're going to pay down our debt, stop
all debt issuance right now. We're going to cut the
government in half by 50%, reduce federal employees.
We're going to end the needless programs that we have.
We're going to work exclusively for our people.
We're going to return to austerity that would induce a
multi year recession, right? We're this big gargantuan
monster that's totally dependent on this endless debt growth at
the national level. And in order to reverse this, it
would require a multi year recession.
And I said like 15 minutes ago that the Fed doesn't let
recessions happen anymore. It doesn't.
It has this shadow mandate post 2008 that, OK, prolonged
recessions suck. We're never going to do it.
We need to maintain global monetary dominance.
We're never going to allow a long a prolonged recession to
occur. And so it's never going to
happen. Like we could return to
austerity if our leaders cared about that.
If our if our leaders cared about.
Maintaining the purchasing power of our currency if it cared
about the livelihood of our citizens.
But they clearly don't and clearly the the only two ways
out are are monetary and fiscal austerity which would induce
like a multi year probably decade or more long recession,
another Great Depression. Or we just keep going the way
that we're going, which is ever widening fiscal deficits,
accelerating death debt issuance in order to fund those deficits
and asset prices skyrocketing. And then the you know the
government pointing to the stock market and say look at look how
good the economy is while more and more people can't afford to
fund a four O 1K. So it doesn't matter to them
because it's. Really.
It's really like the lower middle classes.
They can't afford to save in assets.
They're living paycheck to paycheck.
They're saving and they're earning in cash.
Yeah, they're getting wrecked. And then everybody that you know
that has the wealth has the means to save in assets, which
tends to be the older generation, the boomer
generation, which happens to be the people that are also in
power. You know, they're like, hey,
I'm, I'm getting wealthier on paper, but look, so let's talk
about the sustainability of this model, which is totally not.
Lynn posted this great graphic kind of showing it.
Like if you zoom in, in terms of the USUS debt versus GDP, like
you, you have those two things and you just see the debt is
like almost like it's gonna be like 200% by like 2050.
It's some crazy number. But the point I'm trying to make
is just the interest payments alone.
That's not sustainable, right? This is not something that, you
know, this is, this could be forever sustained.
Not to mention the, you know, Medicare, like the optic, could
you put, could you pull up the the debt clock?
Like, 'cause when you visualize it, it's just so much more
crazy. So, I mean, like, something's
gotta give, something's gonna break eventually.
Like, clearly this is not a sustainable path.
I think you're pulling something up, Joe.
Do you want me to pull that up? Yeah.
OK all.
Right. Then we'll show the deck clock.
Thanks, Opti. So what are we looking at right
now? So.
This is the government's annual interest expense.
Now, the Fed and the government are supposedly separate
institutions, right? But what do you think's gonna
happen when? OK, let's be real.
The incumbent president, Janet Yellen, of course, sitting
Secretary of the Treasury. When the incumbent
administration, you know, this quarter, their interest expense,
oh, excuse me, this isn't even an updated chart.
It's already over 1 trillion. So $1 trillion in annual
interest expense. This is with U.S.
Treasury rates at roughly like 4/4 and 1/2 percent across the
board. That's what caused this.
We went from half a trillion to $1 trillion in annual interest
expense. In how many years?
Less than four years. OK, so the incumbent
administration, let's see what the incumbent administration has
going for it poll data. And this is polling data.
This isn't my bias it migration right.
On the immigration issue he's he's pulling horribly on price
inflation. He's pull pulling horribly.
What is he pulling really well on?
He's polling really well on asset prices.
That's all he has left. That's all he has left.
What are asset prices supported by?
Businesses that are doing well, OK, businesses that are doing
well with interest rates at 4 1/2% and like 800, excuse me,
it's something like $80 billion. My my numbers are way off there.
But a really, really big amount of corporate debt maturing this
year with rates 400 basis points higher than they were four years
ago. Businesses won't be able to
survive at the scale that they are now.
Stock prices will fall. The last thing that the
administration is going for it is gone.
Now the other side of the coin as well is the US government
can't survive with interest rates at 4 1/2 percent, 5
percent, 5 1/2%. The think of the rates on U.S.
Treasuries at the price at which the the US government has to
finance its debt. Now if you basically the
government has been getting a teaser rate credit card at 0%
interest rate, close to 0% interest rates for the last like
decade, Now all of a sudden it's 5% ish.
Interest expenses doubled, tax receipts are set to slow because
like I said, corporate borrowing is going to get more expensive.
Corporations are going to pull back on the amount of business
activity they have. And as a result of that, they're
going to start firing people. And so tax receipts won't be
very strong. So how do you finance this
interest expense, more debt issuance.
And so in order to fund this debt, this interest expense,
they're going to issue more debt.
So it's it's like a spiral. People call it the debt spiral.
That's exactly what it is. So the Fed and the US Treasury
are separate institutions, but they in times of crisis, they're
not so separate. And I believe that Janet Yellen
is going to knock on the office door of Jerome Powell and beg
and plead that, OK, we know inflation is not on its long run
target, but you need to cut interest rates.
You have to. I mean, you see.
That already, bro. You see political callings from?
I saw it this morning. It was was our favorite senator
as bitcoiners. Elizabeth Warren was that wench.
Dude, that wench. She's she's a senator from my
home state, too. I hate her.
Yeah, and. By the way, for anyone living in
Massachusetts, she's up for re election this year.
So if you live in Massachusetts, I don't care if you're a
Democrat or Republican, If you're a bitcoiner in that
state, she does not like you. Vote her out.
Exactly.
So I do want to pull up the the the debt clock, which is just
such a crazy visualization. Opti, could you Scroll down to
the bottom right, please? Yeah.
Exactly. Down there.
Yep. Yep.
Bottom right. Exactly.
There we go. So look.
Check that out. Is that ATI?
Think that's AT Joe? I think that's that's that's US
unfunded liabilities. That's million, billion,
trillion, $212 trillion. Isn't that bigger than the GDP
of the world? No, maybe not the world, but you
got what I'm trying to say, Oh man.
So if we think back to Weimar. And I hate to interrupt, but it
is bigger than the GDP of the entire world.
If we think back to Weimar Germany following the Treaty of
Versailles, which you know, people can debate whether or not
Germany deserve that all day long and post World War One
whatever. But in reality, it was the most
financially repressive contract ever set forth, the most
financially repressive punishment given to one single
country in all of history. And so with the Treaty of
Versailles forced Germany to do was basically become indentured
servants for the world for the better part of of a decade and a
half roughly. And so all throughout the 20s
and very early 30s, Germany kind of delved into absolute chaos
where in order to their currency rapidly became worthless.
Because in order to make payments on these absurd
reparations that they had to make to other countries, their
productivity simply couldn't meet the payments that they were
required to make. And so they started printing
money hand over fist more than what they were actually making,
right. And as a function of that, that
that that began accelerating because they they they owed
these payments. And so very quickly, the
currency became absolutely worthless.
What you're seeing right here with unfunded liabilities is
kind of like several decades of the inevitable finally catching
up with reality, and that is Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid. These are total gargantuan
Goliaths. Look at that liability per
citizen, $631,000. That is way more than someone
will produce over what they consume in their lifetime.
The average U.S. citizen, the budgetary impact of the average
U.S. citizen is less than $100,000.
So over their life, the US citizen, this is net net, right?
So what they're giving to the country versus what they're
taking away is less than 100K. And we're talking almost
$700,000 per citizen. So what is the way out?
Well, we can't end Social Security or Medicare and
Medicaid because nobody will voluntarily forfeit that they
go. I've been working for 50 years.
I got to get my right. No one's going to voluntarily
relinquish their benefits, even though we need to.
So what is the solution? Perpetual debt issuance.
Keep churning the debt out, right.
And so long as people are buying it, we can continue funding it.
And it's this flywheel that keeps going and going and going.
It will never be paid down. More debt will be issued in
order to pay for it. And it's the same thing at the
at the level of direct U.S. Treasury interest expense, at
the level of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and all of this
200 some odd trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.
It'll never get brought down. It'll never be paid off.
The solution is perpetual debt issuance.
And unfortunately, here in this country, the amount of people
that are the, the, the lifetime budgetary impact of each
individual citizen is dipping closer and closer and closer to
0. Why?
Because we have a huge demographic of people who are
not coming here to be net producers, right?
The people who are coming here illegally and undocumented.
And not to get political, but they're not coming here to to to
build a better country and build and maintain what we have.
They're coming here to leverage what we are offering them.
And so the net lifetime budgetary impact is falling as a
result of that, which means that this is even further, it's it's
even way further in the rearview mirror the reality that will
ever pay this off. You need a wildly productive
society in order to pay this off.
It will never happen. And the way it will pay it off
is through increased debt issuance and a dilution of your
wealth. And that's where Bitcoin comes
in. And the beautiful thing about
Bitcoin too, is their whole tool to get out of this pickle is
diluting the dollar. If fewer people hold the dollar,
then they have to dilute it more to reach the same level of
effectiveness. You see what I'm saying, right?
So if you don't use dollars, if you hold the majority of your
wealth in Bitcoin and keep it there, they have less of a pool
to dilute from. So they need to dilute more.
And given that they are accelerating the rate at which
they're diluting your wealth and issuing debt, you buying Bitcoin
means that you are accelerating the demise of the US dollar.
If we don't return to fiscal austerity, which we won't, we
can't. I mean, it's impossible.
It's impossible. So did you?
Of course, I'm sure you're on Bitcoin Twitter.
Do you see that book that Odell was like, in love with?
I forget what the name of the book was, But essentially it's
like a it's a dystopian America. There you go.
Opti knows the mandibles, You know.
You know what I'm referring to. I've heard of the book, yes, but
I haven't read it personally, so it's essentially.
The story of a family in the future US where essentially the
US dollar loses world reserve currency status and then you
know all these things that we take for granted now, you know
start to disappear. And then how that affects the
life of of essentially everybody are is, is the US just
repeating, you know, are we just repeating what the Roman Empire
did? Is it, is it, you know,
obviously in a much quicker pace on a much faster pace.
But this seems to be like a pattern throughout human history
where, you know, just they just start printing money and it just
seems like that's where we're at, so.
The reason that coin, you know, obviously you're referring, you
know, coin clipping, right? The reason coins have ridges is
so that people can't clip the coins, and that's what mostly
digital money allows them to do. Not just the CBDC, but money in
your bank account. If everybody had hard physical
cash, there was no such thing as like a Ledger entry on your
phone or or on any kind of database that represented money.
It was all physical, cold hard cash.
Then in order to do this, it would be much, it'd be much
harder, or at the very least it would.
It would slow them down. Now that most money is just a
database entry, it's much easier.
And also this is one of the reasons that that financial
illiteracy is so common. It's because it's deliberate.
If you understood what was happening, if most people
understood what was happening, they would be marching on
Washington and burning down government buildings.
That's what they'd be doing. I mean it's it's no exaggeration
to say that this is just abject, completely abhorrent robbery,
robbing people blind and then you know in high school and
college not only are people, you know, increasingly financially
illiterate, but also the the little financial literacy that
we do have, we're we're simply taught that centrally
manipulated interest rates are extremely important.
They make the world go around. They bring about stability.
But in actuality, no, the Fed, because it can't accurately set
the price of money for hundreds of thousands, millions of
individual constituents, it creates the boom and bust cycle.
It doesn't bring about stability.
So we're just taught that, Oh yeah, banks, they hold their
money. Nobody knows about federal,
nobody knows about fractional reserve banking or or no reserve
banking People, the banks can create money out of thin air and
they do with with no reserves backing them whatsoever.
They think their money sits in the bank and the Fed is
necessary. And every so often we get into a
recession, but I don't really know why.
So then I'll vote for the guy that says he's going to get us
out of the recession. And then, you know, oh, I heard
about the national debt. But, you know, it doesn't really
bother me. I don't really get it.
And then generation after generation, people are being
robbed blind and they don't understand any of this.
So they don't know how to insulate themselves and they
don't care. And they think, well, as long as
I contribute to my 401K, I'll be fine.
No, you won't. The reality is in the 90s a
hundred $100,000 a 120,000 was considered like middle class
175, upper middle class 200,000 like you're you're breaking into
upper middle class upper class territory quarter $1,000,000
salary that's where you are. Quarter million dollar class
today is like middle class particularly in the Northeast,
in the Northeast United States. In a place also in a place like
Los Angeles, a quarter $1,000,000 can afford you a home
that you could buy on $100,000 salary in like the 80s and 90s.
So people are increasingly being priced out of the quality of
life that was afforded to them on a fraction of the salary
several years ago. Wages are of course rising.
Sure, of course it's absolutely happening.
But by the same token, they're not rising as much as the
aggregate price level is in the aggregate price level that gets
reported is woefully inaccurate. It's deliberately meant to
mislead you. At the government level, people
don't even understand the difference between prices and
inflation. The directive of the government
and in the mass media complex is to make you conflate prices with
inflation. So when somebody like Joe Biden
posts on Twitter, inflation has fallen to a four year low.
That's accurate. But then in the follow up
sentence, he says Americans are relieved that a little bit of
price pressure is coming off. It's like wait, wait, no, no,
no. Inflation isn't negative.
Inflation is still positive. Prices aren't lower than they
were three or four years ago. They're higher.
And so it's the elite can continue ravaging and pillaging
your wealth as a function of you being financially illiterate.
And so that's what they bank on. They bank on you buying the
propaganda hook, line and sinker and instead of pointing to them
and saying, hey, I don't think that at the government level
there should be an entity setting interest rates.
I don't think that, you know, this credit based monetary order
that we live in is good. I don't think being a slave to
you, Surrey, for my entire life is good.
So they bank on you being totally financially illiterate
in order to just totally ignore these things.
And rather than actually articulating what the problem
is, the Federal Reserve's hitting the price of money,
generating the boom and bust cycle they want you to point the
finger at, oh, it's the Democrats, it's the Republicans,
it's the this, it's the that. It's a permanent state that
doesn't care about you who seeks to enrich itself.
Its interest lies solely with it, solely within itself.
The the name of the game is to stay alive long enough to
pillage as much as you can before it all goes down.
And that's what's happening. If people were financially
illiterate, this couldn't happen.
But that's what's happening, unfortunately.
And so it's it's it's our job, everybody's job, listening to
this, you and me on this stream, to spread financial literacy and
articulate what the hell is going on as best we can.
And then point people to the only asset they can allocate to
to insulate themselves from this, the only asset that isn't
someone else's liability, and that's Bitcoin.
You can custody it in your head, right?
Gold bars eventually become someone else's liability unless
you own the land that they're buried on, right?
Otherwise it's it's always someone else's liability, even
hard monies. But Bitcoin can be stored in
your head, right? It's the only asset that isn't
someone else's liability. Allocating to it takes away
their ability to steal from you 100%.
And and I think that's why, like it really boiled down to it.
I think that's the actual reason as to why you have politicians
like Elizabeth Warren and and Co, really politicians that have
benefited from the money printer essentially.
You know, they they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars
off a government salary. They got really, really close to
that spigot, right. And I think I truly believe that
that is a big maybe not the entire motivation, maybe some of
the motivation comes from, you know, her donors, a big banks,
etcetera. But I I do believe that.
I do believe that that plays a role or that is a motivation in
in their hostility towards it. But I I also find it funny
because they can't that you know to add to your point, right They
they play on the fact that people are just not educated on
this. They can't openly admit that
they're against Bitcoin for those reasons.
They can't openly admit that they're against Bitcoin because
it's a technology that if you save in it, if you earn it it,
it protects you from Fiat, debasement, AKA theft.
So they have to like you know find these like roundabout ways
like oh, terror is a money laundering ML like except you
know this whole laundry list of of of excuses, everything under
the they're just trying to throw things at the wall seeing what
sticks. So yeah, I mean it is very
interesting. Now, this is a question I've
asked Jeff Booth when he came on the show, which is Joe, doesn't
it concern you? I mean you're you're, you know,
you're, you're young and you're very knowledgeable, but let's
just say the VAT, to be frank, right?
The majority of my generation and your generation, they're
very distracted with the bread and circuses.
They're still buying into the Fiat politics, the divide and
conquer strategy of these politicians versus when it's a
Republican in office, you know the Democrats are like all your
economic woes are because the Republican is in office.
When the Democrats are in office, the Republicans do the
exact same thing. It's divide and conquer.
It's extremely effective. Doesn't it concern you that our
generations are still kind of asleep at the wheel, so to
speak? They don't really care.
They they know. I know.
They know something is up. I know they're feeling the pain.
I know they understand that they're poorer than their
parents. I know that they feel that
there's some type of injustice, but they don't understand that
it's not necessarily the political system.
Or it's not necessarily the economic system that's broken.
It's the money that's broken. We still have a tremendous
amount of work to do as bitcoiners, because, you know, I
hang out with my normie friends and they're a dude, they're in
the Fiat matrix, you know, completely.
They're completely in the They're by just find a way to
contribute. An extra $1000 a month in my
401K? I'll be good for retirement.
Exactly. 100% I mean, I don't know.
And I'm like 401K. Fuck that.
Oh my shit. Send Bitcoin, right.
So like, yeah, man, like, does that worry you at all?
Like we have a lot of work to do.
And then there's been a like a my my girlfriend, my girlfriend
at the time, who's not my wife, she she had like a really like
astute observation. And I told, you know, she's
like, Nico, I understand bitcoin's the best money there
ever. There is, There ever is.
I get it. It's best.
The incentives are there. She's like, but don't you think
that? People.
Are just too stupid. And I was like, holy shit, she
might be on to something, so I want to get your take on that,
Yeah. So the first thing I'll say is
that like I have a huge folder on my Twitter account.
I love the the folders feature and I think I have too many, too
many folders like bookmark folders.
And I keep a lot of statistics, a lot of them.
I love pouring over numbers and trying to to to get a sense of
what's going on in the world. And one thing that stuck out to
me is that this is the most conservative generation of young
men, not young women. Young men in the United States
are the most conservative they have been since 1986.
That is extremely that is extremely hopeful for me at the
very least. Because what it tells me is that
despite the mass media complex being more propagandized towards
this, you know, global communistic order than it ever
has been, right, more people are waking up and and becoming
dissidents. And that's what we need.
We need more people to be skeptical of the system around
us. And that's all that that
statistic tells me. It's that despite the mass media
complex being overly, you know on one side of the spectrum,
which is the government must take care of you.
You need to, you need to be beholden to the lowest common
denominator for your entire life.
You need to let anybody into the country that wants to be here.
National values are bad. Having a stable currency is bad.
Living a life, having a big family is bad.
More people are becoming dissidents and pushing back on
that. And that gives me hope, because
the reason people become people get into Bitcoin is because they
are inherently skeptical. They ask questions.
And over the last several decades, the amount of people
asking questions has been reduced.
People don't like thinking. That's the reality of this, of
the situation. People like being told things
they don't like, seeking out experiences they like things
happening to them instead of them being the impetus for it.
And it's not just a trend that that's being observed in this
data in in my friend group as well.
I live in Massachusetts, OK. I live in you know the the, the,
the most, you know uppity liberal area in the country
barring Los Angeles County and I, I live just north of Boston,
right. So all these big schools are are
right there. And barring the elite that work
or work in or go to those schools or live in the inner
city, a great deal of people are beginning to be very, very
skeptical of the powers that be. And that's extremely important.
And the reason it's so encouraging too is because this
is at a time where the propaganda has never been more
potent. It's never been more potent.
Social media evolved from Myspace where you had to
actively seek out your friends. There was no timeline.
And then it went to Facebook, where it introduced the timeline
that was revolutionary. You could scroll and scroll and
scroll. You still have to search for
your friends, but you could scroll.
And then came Instagram, where now there was a big picture.
And so it did more of the work for you.
And then it introduced an algorithm which meant you could
scroll forever. And then TikTok came around and
now the entire screen is taken up by whatever image you're
looking at. You don't have to do any work
whatsoever. The algorithm is so good, you
could stare at it and scroll for days at a time when that is the
most popular social media platform.
We have more young men primarily saying, you know, I I kind of
want to break these shackles. I'm a little bit skeptical about
why, you know, the value of my money is diminishing.
I'm a I'm a little bit skeptical about why things work a certain
way, why they work the way that they do.
I'm I'm a little bit skeptical as to why even when the
president is a Republican, even when they're a Democrat, these
problems aren't changing. Right.
When, you know, maybe when we have a Republican president,
yeah, the debt goes up, but it goes up a little bit slower,
right? Yeah.
Maybe migration you know it. You know it's maybe migration
slows down a little bit but we're still allowing 1 1/2 two
million three million, 4 million in a year.
More young men are skeptical of the way that we've just
subconsciously lived life and allowed to allowed it to happen
to us over the last several decades and and for that reason
I'm extremely optimistic you know and I'll the last thing
that I'll the last thing that I'll say is like if it was
totally hopeless like you and I wouldn't be having this
conversation right now right you you and I would be would be
scoffing at the idea that the people that lead us wanted
anything other than the best for us.
And I have a feeling a a generation of young men growing
up jaded towards authority figures it gives me, it gives me
a great deal of hope that. Wow.
OK, OK, interesting. And and and this is something
that you see in your friend group.
This is something that where where do you see this maybe
maybe it's because I live in the the, you know one of the most
Fiat cities in the world Miami. But where are you seeing this
Joe, where are you seeing this? I mean I do see the rise of of
of of the red, of the red pill or what I would call the red
pill movement on the Internet. So you know you see the figures
like Andrew Tay, Jordan Peterson and you kind of see like the the
rise of of really what I would call personal responsibility
becoming popular again, right. Definitely see a lot of young
disaffected males. And then they you know they they
they kind of are attracted to what the traditional masculine
role and what the traditional what what what, what what being
a man is about. I I do see that becoming popular
in Internet culture is is that what you're referring to?
Is that what you see as as as kind of like the the pendulum
metaphorically swinging back, is that really what you're
referring to? And and the other question is
like, fine, you take the red pill, but red pills fucking
sucks. You really got to take the
orange pill. Like maybe the red pill is a
step towards the orange pill, but is that what you're
referring to? Just like kind of like the that
rise in Internet culture, the rise of of of of more, you know,
traditional masculinity. No.
So not necessarily people like, you know watching those two guys
and then those are just. Two guys like that I can name
off the top of my head, but you you get the general idea.
No. I got.
I got the. General idea?
No. But I mean, I I mean a rise in
people who are rejecting this entirely, who are deleting
social media outright. I'll tell you, I went to, I went
to the University of Vermont. OK, so like the hippiest hippie
place on the planet, apart from Colorado, like this is the
highest concentration of hippies per capita you're going to find.
And even there, I had a great deal of people message me after,
after I graduated, after I left. Yeah, it it did smell really
bad. Most of the people smelled
terrible. Who?
Who messaged me on Instagram after I left.
I've been saying what I say on Twitter on Instagram too.
Not 'cause I'm trying to build a following on Instagram, but
that's 'cause that's where people from high school follow
me, the normie friends from Massachusetts, that's where
people from college follow me. People who have met in other
business ventures follow me and the amount of people who I'm
posting the most dissident anti, anti establishment stuff you
could ever imagine. I live in Massachusetts and the
amount of people that have messaged me anonymously and said
I wholeheartedly agree with you it it's astonishing and and I
can't say that that trend has been there in years prior.
I can't say it it it has been there it hasn't been there
because frankly I've only been doing this stuff for a very
short period of time. But in a in a far left,
extremely communist area of the country where the the the most
abjects the the highest concentration of extremely
abjects totally abhorrent degeneracy occurs to see people
messaging me and and saying anonymously that I agree with
you. But I I fear of losing my job
and that's one of the the better.
The best things about working in Bitcoin too is that in order for
all of this to work, in order for this to click for the amount
of people that's necessary to to get these people out of
Washington DC, get these people away from the money print, do
away with the money printer entirely.
We need more people comfortable standing up and saying these
things. The amount of people who have
messaged me and said that I I wish I could say what you're
saying, but I fear for my job. That's why I love working in
Bitcoin as well, because even if you're you're more liberal,
you're more conservative, whatever.
We all have a united goal of doing away with the global
central bank in Cabal, right? And so that means some of the
some of the pleasantries that have been enabled by the global
central bank in cabal, like political correctness and other
things that could get you fired in a place like Massachusetts.
I can't. I don't work in Massachusetts.
I work, you know, I work with business partners all around the
country. And so that's one of the
beautiful things about working in Bitcoin.
But I'm not seeing this in that like, oh, yeah, Andrew Tate's
getting popular. Oh, yeah, Jordan Peterson's
getting popular. People want to take on personal
responsibility. But more like people are totally
rejecting the notion that I need to adopt my worldview from
somebody else. And they're deleting these apps
entirely. They're deleting YouTube.
They're deleting Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all of it.
They haven't even downloaded TikTok.
And they're they're just existing in the world and and
and that is the most, I think that's the most radicalizing
thing of all. Because when you delete these
apps, when you, when you take a look away from your blue light
screen that you've been staring into for 16 to 18 hours a day,
you realize just how much of your worldview is constructed by
what you consume instead of like your your actual experience in
the world. And then when you realize
reality is so far removed from what's being spoon fed to you,
that's when you start to become, you know, extremely dissident,
extremely skeptical of the forces at play.
And that's more So what I'm talking about, right.
Not the not the rise of like influencers and things like
that, but more people rejecting it entirely and and getting
behind the message that I try to push on on Twitter and
increasingly on Instagram as well.
Interesting, interesting. Yeah, very interesting, man.
Very interesting. So, yeah, I mean you you have a
more optimistic kind of outlook on this from my perspective
maybe because my it's my job to cover the news every single day.
I, you know, I see it a little bit, a little from a little bit
more darker perspective, but I also believe that we are, we're
definitely winning. I definitely believe that the
like like you were saying earlier that the Overton window
is slowly shifting. You know that Javier Malay
speech at, you know, at the container conference, also known
as the, you know, World Economic Forum conference or whatever.
You know, where he's talking about how, you know, governments
no longer need to control the means of production.
They can just print money. It's essentially it, you know,
it's essentially the same thing. Can't believe they let him make
that type of speech. The fact that he got elected in
Argentina, of course, El Salvador, I know all those
things are over the target just based on the legacy corporate
media's response to all those events, right.
They're just, they're they're losing their shit, Forgive my
language, but they really are they they just don't know how to
address it. So I yeah, I I agree.
I definitely think that there is this, this massive shift in the
world. I think too.
Living in one of the perceived like worst areas of the country
to see the the majority of people that I interact with on a
daily basis, whether it's out in church, of course in church the
demographics going to be skewed from what what they normally
are. But in church, in the gym, in my
daily life, the people I interact with and the fact that
mostly Massachusetts people follow me on Instagram, I'm
schizoposting on Instagram daily and I've only gotten like 100
unfollows. So it's it's extremely
encouraging. The lion's share of people that
I'm interacting with agree with me, they just haven't known
there's an alternative. They live their whole life
thinking and understanding these things.
Well, Elizabeth Warren's going to be our senator because she's
always been our senator and blah, blah, blah.
It doesn't have to be this way. And so I I think all it takes is
a few people having being extremely loud in their beliefs
so that other people feel comfortable and understand that
there's enough view. I think if I was living, I would
exactly do. But it's just encouraging living
in a place like Massachusetts and interacting with the people
that I do and the lion's share of people that I, I, I, I speak
to on a daily basis think almost the exact same way that I do and
and that and. That's, you know, that's
extremely encouraging that you say that 'cause I live in a red
state and I don't see, you know, it's it's Florida's pretty dope.
It's pretty free like you don't, you know, you don't really see
that stuff. But the fact that you're, you
know in the belly of the beast, so to speak, in terms of, you
know, I guess perception, so to speak and then that's what
you're seeing I think is extremely that's extremely,
that's that's great news. And and I just want to specify,
we say this every single day on our show, but you know I don't
think this is about left or right.
And and I don't think of this about Democrat or Republican.
I had Nolan essentially does the programming for the Bitcoin
conference on the show, I think it was about a week ago or so
and he was talking about essentially the future of
politics is really even about it's really going to be about
the so-called decentralizing forces versus the centralizing
forces, right. And essentially that's really
what's in front of us, that's the battle ahead and it's really
not a Democrat or a left wing versus right wing issue.
It's really about you know are you for mass centralization or
you are you for decentralization Really.
So yeah. I mean it's very, very exciting
dude. And I mean look you're you're a
young guy you're you're the zoomer generation you're the the
the way that was described to me was the first generation that's
Internet native, right. I was I was in middle school
when I had my first experience with dial up right where versus
you were born and the Internet was a thing right.
What what excites you, man about the, you know, the next 1015
years? I I think that this is such a
we've reached an inflection point when things are just going
to accelerate on a technological level, you know, just things are
just going to get crazy. You know, we're we're just, you
know, the hockey stick. We're like at the very, very
beginning of the curve of the hockey stick and it's about to
just blast off. So yeah, I mean what are you
excited about the next 5-10 years?
What's What's on your mind? So obviously the acceleration of
Bitcoin development and Bitcoin adoption, like I said, in order
to fund interest payments in order to keep businesses in the
United States afloat, debt issuance has to accelerate.
It has to, and it has been, but as a function of that as well,
the interest expense onset debt will also accelerate as debt
issuance widens relative to productivity here in the United
States, that deficit is going to widen out, which again feeds
back into that perpetual cycle. We need more debt in order to
keep it all afloat. As that accelerates, the reality
at the individual level will also come to the fore at an
accelerating rate too. And in the reality at the
individual level is you got to insulate yourself from all of
this. You got to insulate your family
from this but but also barring barring things like Bitcoin and
more people every single year at an accelerating rate, jumping
onto the ship per southeast is the the the cultural impact of
that as well when the monetary leaders no longer have their
reigns on the country. What does that mean?
And I have a feeling that a a massive restoration in natural
national pride rather is on the way.
I have AI have a huge feeling that a lot of the mass
demoralization campaign that's been levied against Americans
for the last that that's been around since I was in school,
that's going to be done away with very swiftly as people
begin to again you know what with dissident money, dissident
money kind of makes you a dissident right.
And so I I have a feeling a lot of these anti American anti
human policies will be driven out of the halls of power at the
state and federal level. And I'm very excited for that
and I think that as a function of that renewed national pride
and that that renewed sense of of of wonder and discovery.
I think our birth rates are going to are going to get fixed.
I think more optimism will will come to the lives of young
people as they recognize there is an alternative to the US
dollar. You do have a future as long as
you play your cards right. So I think more young people
will will will have families or birth rate will be fixed
naturally from within. And I think that, you know, as
we approach this inflection point where governments, you
know, spending it is kind of reaching comical levels of of
acceleration, you got to understand on the other side of
all that there's a big reset button.
There's a big reset button that's going to have to be
pressed. And in the lead up to to all of
that, Bitcoin is the acid that you can hold and sort of ride
all the way up to the top because we know there's only one
solution to all of this. So I'm excited for the cultural
paradigm shift that's going to come in the wake of people
feeling or a nude sense of hope because of what Bitcoin brings
to the table for them. It's going to be really
exciting. Joe, Consorti for president
2035. You guys heard it here and dude,
that was that was that was great, man.
That was really good. So what is if you know, if you
have a message for the audience, anyone who's listening right
now, what would be your final message to everybody?
Get on the mission. Get your family and friends on
the mission. Explain to them clearly the
problem. Runaway government spending,
runaway government debt issuance.
Explain to them that this is a site, This is a cycle that has
been happening time after time. It's not a left or right issue.
It is an issue with one building on Eccles St. in Washington DC
and you could take the power away from them to take away your
livelihood by allocating to an asset that they can't
confiscate. And that is Bitcoin.
You're not only taking your money and storing it with you
and with only you, but you're also removing their ability to
effectively ruin the lives of others.
So as this election comes and goes, as the next election comes
and goes, as wars rage on and perhaps get worse, understand
that at an individual level you can not only improve your
prosperity, but improve the prosperity of the world around
you sooner rather than later by allocating the Bitcoin.
So get on the mission, get your friends and family on the
mission, give them the materials that they need to to learn about
this, and let's make a a big bright orange future for
everyone one. 100 percent, 100% right.
Completely agree. Get on the mission, take agency,
take action. You know, help the people around
you. Really convince people that's
not left first, right? It's really orange versus green.
Joe Consorti, thank you so much for coming on simply Bitcoin,
why don't you tell everybody where they can find you on the
interwebs? You do have a YouTube channel
with Nick Bhatia, which I'm a big fan of.
So why don't you plug all that? For sure, yeah, you could find
everything that I do on Twitter or XI hate that new name at Joe
Consorti, just at first name, last name as it appears on the
screen. And then you could search the
Bitcoin layer on Google. I write a sub stack and you have
a YouTube channel over there with Nick Bhatia, professor at
USC, author of Layered Money and also I recently started a new
line of work with Thea. They are a simple multi sig self
custody solution. I encourage all of you to take a
look at download for free on the App Store.
A lot of people are put off by multi sig because they think I
don't have enough Bitcoin for it or it might be too expensive.
I don't want to work with, I don't want to have to work with
somebody. Thea is a solution for you.
You could do it all on your own, all in the App Store.
Simple, easy. Two or three multi sig, self
custody. So that's that.
Awesome man. Well, thank you so much for
coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
I'm going to wrap it up real quick, guys.
That was another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL.
We'll be back with the live show tomorrow, 12:15 PM Eastern
Standard Time, for another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live.
I want to thank our guests once again.
Joe Consorti, thank you for coming on.
I'll see you guys on the next one.
Peace out, everybody.