Jason Hartman discusses the US dollar during the pandemic. He talks about whether or not the dollar will decline as a result of COVID-19 or if it will maintain its status as the global currency. Then he looks at record low interest rates and home prices jumping in May. Later on the show he brings on Brent Johnson to discuss the term currency and its connection to gold. Johnson gives his insight in gold and the role it plays with the US dollar and other global currencies.
Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 0:54
Welcome to episode number 1492. And greetings from from across the fruited plain and around the world. Well, I guess I’m not across the fruited plain but I’m in Florida. So there you go. That’s where I am. But hey, it sounds good. It’s a famous song. That’s fun. I hope you know the reference. I hope you know the reference. Anyway, we’ve got part two of Brent Johnson today. I know a lot of you enjoyed yesterday’s episode, part one. He’s fantastic, has some brilliant insights for us. And we’ll get to that in a moment. But first, the prominent economist Stephen Roche is out with a new prediction. He says in Market Watch. The decline of the US dollar could happen at warp speed. In the era of Coronavirus. Now I want to say thank you to our listener Kurt mo who provided this article to us and also our client Have you met Kurt at our meet the Masters event last year? Oh, by the way, got a couple of big announcements for me at the masters. Thanks for letting me remind myself. First off, we have a big speaker announcement. And we have done a slight change on the date because our team needed a little more time to coordinate everything. But in exchange for our slight change on the date, hey, well, if it’s in a virtual event, you can change this stuff really easily. So we’re just going to push it back a couple of weeks, the new dates for meet the Masters 2020 our 22nd anniversary meet the Masters conference, and our first virtual version. You can call this the sofa summit. Okay, so you can kick back on your sofa and watch and learn and have some popcorn. Anyway, it’s July 31, Friday evening and then Saturday and Sunday, August 1 and second. And our keynote speaker who will be kicking off the event is none other than Harry dent. I’ve been wanting Harry dent karmis New York Times bestselling author of many, many great books. Harry dent, he’s been on the show many times, he will be kicking off our conference for us. And I have really wanted him to come and speak at one of our events. And we’ve been talking to him about that for a few years now. And it’s always difficult when there’s travel and jet planes involved. But hey, when it’s a virtual conference, we got Harry dent. So congratulations, everybody. You’re going to be able to ask him questions and really take a deep dive into some of his analyses. We’re going to look at charts and graphs and see what what is coming next for the economy and the real estate market and the entire world. So Harry dent speaking Meet the masters of income property. Of course, we’ve also got George gammon, we’ve got our whole team, we’re going to be doing a software demonstration you’ll really like, and it’s going to be super exciting. So save the date, the new date, July 31, Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday, August 1 and second virtual conference sofa summit. Okay. That’s what you can think of it as kick back, relax, learn and profit. Back to Stephen Roche. Before we get to Brent Johnson, our guest today, part two of Brent Johnson. So he thinks the dollar is going to decline at warp speed. And it is truly amazing to me, it’s probably amazing to you, too, that such ostensibly smart people with so much education. I mean, Steven Roach is a senior fellow at Yale University. He worked for Morgan Stanley Asia as chairman
Jason Hartman 5:01
mean, but you read this article in Market Watch, and he just seems very myopic. Now, Steven, if I’m wrong, you’re certainly invited to come on the show. We’d love to have you. You can debate with me and tell me how wrong I am. But once again, I don’t think I’m wrong. And by the way, since he says the dollar will decline at warp speed, I was a big time Star Trek nerd when I was kid. I was Mr. Spock a couple times for Halloween, as I remember as a kid. And I always thought until just a week ago, when I actually looked it up and read about it. I always thought warp speed was the speed of light. 186,000 miles per second. Actually, it’s like 186,283 miles per second or something like that. But hey, when you’re going over seven times around Planet Earth in less than a second What’s the difference? It’s kind of like a stimulus package. A trillion here a trillion mer. Ha, what’s the difference? It’s just another trillion. No big deal. warp speed. I thought it was the speed of light. So when Captain Kirk says, Scotty we need Well, that’s Scotty talking not Captain Kirk. Scotty give her all she’s got caffeine. I’m giving her she’s got it by lithium crystals are about to blow. It’s bait. It’s all we can do. And anyway, clearly, I am terrible and impersonations. So forgive me, because I suck at that. Okay. Anyway. So I was thought warpaint would just be eight times the speed of light. Well, guess what? I read all about it just a week ago, because I got curious. And now we live in an era where you can you can learn everything and anything pretty easily. Actually, warp speed is like the Richter scale when they have an earthquake. And by the way, if You own investment properties or any properties in California. You know, the big one is coming, folks, it’s and the longer it takes, when there’s no small quakes releasing the pressure from the fault, the worse the big one will be ask any seismologists even me in amateur seismologists, and they’ll tell you the same thing. So that’s another reason not to be investing in California. It’s on a fault mine San Andreas Fault. Where were we? So the Richter scale, you know, if an earthquake registers five on the Richter scale, and then another one registers six, that’s not just a proportionate increase? It’s a monumental increase. It’s an exponential increase, more proper wording, so that’s true of warp speed. Anyway, I don’t know if prominent economist from Yale Stephen Roche knows that about warp speed, but I think his analysis is just way off. But you know what, I actually He’s right. Because if the dollar weakens, that almost always means inflation and you know, on this channel with our group of investors, we absolutely love inflation, because we get inflation induced that destruction, and we get levered returns to infinity and beyond, as Buzz Lightyear would say. So he says that, you know, he understands in this article that the dollar, its strength or weakness is relative to the other currencies. And since all currencies are fiat currencies, he talks about, quote, in a COVID era, everything unfolds at warp speed. Unquote. Roche told marketwatch. On Monday, he pointed to the contraction of the US economy from an employment rate that was hovering around a 50 year low at the start of 2020. That now shows 49 million People are unemployed. I agree, absolutely terrible. Then he goes on to talk about the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, as it grew to more than 7.2 trillion from just 4 trillion a year earlier. And, you know, he talks about all this stuff. He says he’s calling for $1 to decline 35% against its major rivals, meaning the other currencies. He says, quote, this massive shift to fiscal stimulus is going to blow out the national savings rates, and the current account deficit, current account deficit just refers to the trade deficit. You can’t say that if you’re an economist because it wouldn’t sound obtuse and sophisticated enough. So let’s call it the current account deficit instead of the trade deficit, like normal people. And so he’s talking all about this stuff in an op ed bloomberg news on June 14, and the article goes on to talk about last week. US current account deficit, a measure of the nation’s debt to other countries slipped 0.1% in the first quarter, falling to $104.2 billion, blah, blah, blah was revised, you know, doesn’t matter. Then he goes on to say. He said the racial upheaval sparked by the death of George Floyd, the pandemic, the intensity of the presidential election have combined to elicit powerful responses from readers that he hasn’t gotten since his days writing financial commentary at Morgan Stanley, you know, I don’t get it. When you read this article, it seems that Mr. Roche, prominent economist, Yale scholar seems to not understand that the rest of the world has unemployment problems, and the rest of the world has done stimulus packages and guess what else the rest of The world doesn’t have the reserve currency of the world. And the rest of the world doesn’t have the largest military, the human race has ever known to keep the reserve currency status that it enjoys now, and he doesn’t seem to understand that the US is in an enviable position. fair or unfair, I don’t think it’s fair. I’m just saying it is it is what it is. Because I no practical person that is going to allow it to do all kinds of things that many people would find pause, they be alarmed, right. But he never mentions that in the article, right. Nothing is mentioned about how the rest of the world is a mess, too. So like the old saying goes, the US is the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry. I mean, it’s just, I don’t know. It just shocks me that educated people can be so unaware. There’s just so myopic How does he just ignore I mean, Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller, he just like ignores very material facts that would affect his analysis. It’s absolutely, it’s absolutely absurd the way he just ignores things. One example in one of his irrational exuberance books that I read years ago, he talks about real estate, compares it with stocks. And he just completely ignores all of the other dimensions of real estate. He completely ignores that people mostly leverage their real estate. So their returns are magnified, amplified dramatically. He goes and he says these dumb dumb things, like, okay and Jim Cramer, same thing, Jim Cramer, totally guilty of the same thing. I think I played a clip of him doing this completely silly analysis on a show many years ago, where he says, Well, you know, the s&p Or the Dow Jones will do seven or 8% on average over the course of a couple of decades. But real estate only does 6%.
Jason Hartman 13:13
You know, is if everybody pays cash for the real estate, gets no tax benefits, gets no rental income from it. I mean, just, you know, these people really seriously should be, they should be fine. They should be fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC, the scoundrels encouragement commission should find these people for massive omissions in their analysis, because they have to know better, they have to know better. Hmm, okay. In other news before we get to Brent, our guests here. Sales of new homes spike in May due to low interest rates volume rises to the highest level since February, as states ease lockdowns sales of new homes jumped 16.6% in May as low mortgage rates and a shortage of inventory in the existing home market. So they’re talking about new home sales and existing homes having a shortage of inventory. enticed Americans release from stay at home orders to buy from builders. People are flocking toward the new homes purchases of new single family houses rose to 676,000 at a seasonally adjusted and annualized pace, the highest level since February, the month before the pandemic struck the US according to a government report on Tuesday incident interesting it doesn’t even tell you which government agency I mean this is all of this stuff should have to be cited footnoted It’s just the world we live in hashtag fake news. Okay, I’m not saying that’s fake. I’m just making a general comment about the media. The median price was $317,900. a gain of 1.7% from a year earlier. Now remember, that’s the median price. It’s not. It is what it is, right? There’s all kinds of ways to peel back that onion. Okay, about 27% of homes sold in May, we’re not yet started. So they sold them even though they hadn’t even broken ground. Okay, new home starts 36% of them were under construction, and 37% were completed. So that’s according to the data that records a home as sold when it goes under contract. That’s probably the NAR pending home sales index, okay, that we’ve talked about before. So it’s pretty interesting what’s going on out there. There’s definitely a shortage of inventory. We’re feeling it and you’re feeling If you are going to Jason hartman.com slash properties and looking for properties, but the good news is we do have some more inventory coming in. I just recorded a segment that we will release next week on Atlanta and southwest Florida, you’re going to love it. We’ve got some really good product, they’re good prices. And we’ve got a lot of good product in some other markets as well. Well, I don’t want to say a lot because it’s not a lot, but we’ve got enough. Okay, so as long as too many of you don’t pick up your phone and call one 800 Hartman right now. And as long as not too many of you go to Jason Hartman calm right now. We’ll have enough inventory to satisfy everybody. And also by popular demand, many many of you have asked, bring back the asset defense, asset protection, tax savings and estate planning webinar. That had to be one of our most popular webinars. You guys loved it. Okay, it’s back. You ready? Here’s the link, you can go, you can, you can listen to that. And we’ve got that going on this week, we’ve got some different times. So just go to the website and register to Jason hartman.com slash asset, Jason hartman.com slash asset. And go ahead and register for that webinar, a lot of you actually signed up with the attorney with the law firm. And by the way, if you do go ahead and sign up with him on the webinar, it’s usually about a four business day lag time before he reaches out to make your appointment with you to do your consultation and stuff like that. But anyway, a lot of you asked for that and wanted to learn more about it. Maybe take another listen to it. Or if you didn’t have a chance to listen when we were running it before. A lot of you asked about that one. So it’s back Jason hartman.com slash asset and check that out at your convenience. And without further ado, let’s get to part two of Brent. Johnson and dive more into the dollar milkshake theory and the economy in general a fascinating discussion.
Jason Hartman 18:13
So now bring us into gold, most people would consider the Doug Casey Peter Schiff crowd, they’re on one side gold bugs. And on the other side, there’s the people that sort of believe in the dollar hegemony, right? These two aren’t like these opposing forces necessarily that most people make up or they tell us about
Brent Johnson 18:36
Yeah, this is kind of a big frustration of mine is that I’m a huge believer of gold. I’m a huge proponent of gold. And I know many, many people in the gold world and they’re good friends of mine. And I think people in the gold world are among the most generous, well intentioned, hardworking, all that kind of stuff. And I firmly believe that gold is going to go much higher in the years ahead, I think it’s going to at least $5,000, potentially higher than that. I just don’t necessarily think it’s going to happen tomorrow. A couple years ago, when I started talking about the dollar getting stronger, a lot of my friends in the gold world just they didn’t like it. And they would send me messages or text messages, or they’d call me and say, Well, how can you say this? You know that the dollar is a horrible currency and, and I get it, it is it’s just better than all the others. But they didn’t like it that I said, the golden dollar could rise together. Because if you go to any gold conference, or you listen to any gold presentation, one of the fundamental arguments for owning gold is the debasement of the dollar. And I’m like, yeah, that’s fine. Maybe the gold will rise versus the Dollar, but the dollar can rise versus everything else, so they can rise together versus everything else. There’s no reason you have to have all of your money in gold. If you had 50% of your money in gold, that would be a lot, in my opinion,
Jason Hartman 19:45
would be an awful lot.
Brent Johnson 19:46
Yeah, that would be an awful lot. But then the other 50% you got to do something else with so you know, I would have it in US dollar assets. And I don’t know I don’t really know why it’s so contentious, but it really is. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 19:57
it’s it seems like an overly simplistic argument I think it will it is obviously failed, because it does seem like since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window you know, everybody thought the dollar was kind of over right and you know, gold did have its times were definitely soared in there. But long term, the US government and the US Federal Reserve have really been able to kind of defy that gravity. I don’t want to say defy gravity in general, but defy that gravity that jerk, you know, the gold bugs have put
Brent Johnson 20:32
out there, right. And again, I think the gold bugs are gonna be right, this is all gonna end really, really badly.
Jason Hartman 20:38
Yeah, I thought it might be 100 years away.
Brent Johnson 20:40
And I think it’s gonna end badly for other fiat currencies before it ends badly for the US dollar. I think that there’s going to be a progression of the falling of the dominoes so to speak. And I think the US dollar is likely the last Domino to fall. Your gold is going to be the last man standing as all the other fiat currencies fall. Right and
Jason Hartman 20:57
I wouldn’t disagree with you about that. I just think it’s Gonna take a long time. And it’s always the compared to what question. Everybody loves to throw stones at the dollar. The US government is spending the Federal Reserve, but compared to what Japan, we’re approaching what 100% of GDP in our debt, but Japan’s got 230%. So this is the way the whole game works all around the world. It’s not unique to the US. But the US has better than anybody else. So what Brent, what does the future hold for us? And I mean, we have a lot of real estate investors that follow us, and I love income property, because you can get these great 30 year fixed rate, ultra cheap, arguably negative interest rate mortgages, and then if inflation comes, it’s going to debase that debt even further, you’re probably getting free money now. So and I call that inflation and do step destruction by the way, I created a name for it. But what does the future hold? Where are we going next? It’s a little hard to tell without a pandemic wrench into it, didn’t it?
Brent Johnson 21:59
It really did work. First of all, I don’t have a crystal ball, I could very well be wrong.
Jason Hartman 22:02
But you can do magic tricks.
Brent Johnson 22:04
I can do magic tricks, a few of them with you. But I really kind of think the next call it three to four years, two to two to four years, I think on a relative basis to the rest of the world, the US is going to do pretty well, that doesn’t mean things are good. It just means the better than everywhere else. And what I think is going to happen is that as as capital flows into the US, the dollar will get stronger and US dollar asset prices, I think we’ll be able to fund our Treasury, I think US stocks will rise. I think real estate in certain places will do. Okay, commercial real estate, I’m kind of worried if Oh, I would be worried about.
Jason Hartman 22:37
Yeah,
Brent Johnson 22:38
you know, so I think it kind of depends on where you’re located and where you’re, if you have a very good job with very secure income. And you think that that income is secure for the you know, for the future. And you can borrow a 30 year mortgage at two or 3%, whatever, whatever the percent is, and lock that in. I think that’s a pretty good deal right? And and you get your cash flow from the properties are coming in and paying your mortgage and I don’t have a problem with it at all. I don’t know that we’re going to have a run in real estate the way we have for the last 20 years. I think that’s 30 years. I think that’s probably unlikely. I agree with the cyclical
Jason Hartman 23:15
markets where people are speculating they’re really lost. And interestingly, the vast majority of those markets so we were talking just for a brief second off air before we started about you’re from San Francisco, you’re in Tahoe right now. And how people are potentially Well, we’re seeing it already, but I don’t think it’s potential anymore. I think it’s reality now. People are leaving big cities, and the cities are the overpriced real estate markets. Those high density areas are what we call the cyclical markets. And they’re they’re leaving them in favor of these boring linear suburban markets that just kind of chug along and you buy housing there for yield, not for appreciation or capital gains.
Brent Johnson 23:58
Yeah, no, no, I think, you know, the nice thing about real estate is that you don’t see it priced everyday when you when you own stocks or bonds and center brokerage account, as much as you may try to divorce yourself from in the long term. You can, you can still see the price every day and you see it go up and down. And whether you admit it or not, it affects you. You know, when you when you buy real estate, there’s really you don’t see the price of it every day. Yeah, maybe you know, it went up a little bit maybe you know, it went down a little bit, but until you sell it, you really don’t know or until the guy next door sells it You really don’t know. And in the meantime, you’re just collecting your income. And so I think it’s a way to do some kind of disciplined investing and keep your emotions out of it and it’s a good way to generate income. I like it. I just think you just need to be careful and make sure you know what you’re getting into.
Jason Hartman 24:42
Yeah, good stuff. You talk a lot about geopolitical issues and you know, we touched on a few things but did you want to bring up anything more there? I mean, there’s an awful lot going on in the world when you get past the Coronavirus snares.
Brent Johnson 24:57
So the thing I think people are really need to understand. And this kind of goes back to my dollar argument. And going back to the two separate dollar markets, there’s the US domestic dollar market and there’s the eurodollar market. So because money is loaned into existence, you need monetary velocity to be taking place or you need credit expansion to be taking place. It’s a the monetary system is a system that is designed to grow. If it starts to go in reverse the whole thing cracks and it crashes. And that is why whenever we get into a recession or negative trending markets, the Fed or the central bank has to come in and plug that hole. That’s what they’re there for. They’re there to go and issue new dollar collateral to re collateralize the system as QE or or you know, what bailouts that we had in 2008. The problem is that that big market outside the United States exists as well and the Fed does not have any jurisdiction over it and has no authority over it and really doesn’t have the ability to re collateralize that system when it crashes. That’s what’s happening. The market has gotten so big, but now it’s contracting, new dollar loans aren’t being made. So the whole, the system is starting to crack. But the only person or the only institution in the world that can issue new dollar collateral is the Fed. So what would what they’ve had to do is open swap lines, which is basically a way to give a foreign central bank dollars so that that central bank can then re collateralize the system with dollars. But the problem is extremely big, it’s in the trillions. I personally don’t think that the Fed has the political capital to bail out the rest of the world. While things are not necessarily great at home, in other words, I find it hard to believe that we’re gonna be able to justify giving Brazil 500 billion if people in Bakersfield are unemployed, or giving giving Norway or France a swap line if we’re trying to save Boeing. Boeing is a kind of a significant industry or significant company and industry, with national with national security implications. I’d states of course the biggest competitors in France. If we’re bailing out the ECB, which bails out France, which bails out Airbus? How can we justify that when when Boeing is in trouble, so I, politically, I don’t think it’s as easy for the Fed to bail out the rest of the world, as it is in theory. But I do think these swap lines will be used as a weapon, or they will be used as a carrot and a stick, so to speak to further our geopolitical goals. In other words, Brazil you want to swap line Fine, then you have to toe the line, you have to vote with us on this UN resolution or trade with this certain country, whatever it is, and I think those quote unquote loyal for lack of a better word to the United States will get dollar liquidity and swap lines and those that don’t want. And I think that I think it’s gonna become a big geopolitical issue as we move forward over the next couple of years. What about military tensions? You know, North Korea just blew up their Liaison Office, they’re just crazy. I ran be you know, maybe some that’s been a district attracted by the pandemic, but there’s definitely some tension in the world think that’s gonna continue to bubble up. We’ve got these populist movements all over the world, you know, populist movements tend to play into nationalist movements and the nationalistic movements can tend to cause frictions between different nations. I think we’ve seen this thing between China and India in the last couple days. You know, we’ve got the problems in in the Middle East, as we always do. Syria still happening. I unfortunately think this will likely end in some kind of a military. It won’t be solved without some kind of a military conflict, unfortunately, I hope, I hope that doesn’t happen. I can see it happening. Yeah, I can do
Jason Hartman 28:37
a election. It’s amazing how distracted we’ve been from the fact that usually we’d have a hot presidential campaign going on right now. It’s, it’s been sort of not much at all. What are your thoughts?
Brent Johnson 28:51
So my thoughts are that Trump will win, but I’m not as convinced of it, as I was, say a year ago. I think it’s going to be an absolutely crazy five for six months leading up to it, what I am extremely certain about is whichever side wins the other side won’t accept it. So if Trump gets reelected, the democrats will argue that wasn’t fair or dah, dah, dah and vice versa. If If Biden wins, the republicans will say it was rigged or you know, they were everything was geared against Trump or whatever vote
Jason Hartman 29:23
by mail fraud,
Brent Johnson 29:24
right, one of those things, and so I unfortunately don’t see this election bringing us together. And interestingly, I honestly, I don’t know if it makes much difference who wins to be honest. I think if Trump wins, it would likely be a little bit better for the dollar. But I don’t think it really matters. I think the dice is largely cast. And now it’s just a matter of who’s playing the roles. I think this is going to play out the tension with China. I think that’s not going away. Whoever wins. I think if Trump has done anything well over the last couple years, I’d say he’s he’s raised the awareness that maybe China’s not our best ally. Yeah. to a level that Even if, you know the republicans don’t maintain power that I don’t think the democrats are going to turn around and go soft on China, I think for a number of reasons that that that cats kind of out of the bag. And so mmt is coming for, you know, multi trillion dollar stimulus plans are coming infrastructure bills are coming, the universal basic income, it’s probably coming. You know, we and COVID has been a big part of this, you know, if you’ve locked down entire economies, you’re gonna have some social ramifications of that. And one of the ways to appease the social ramifications is give them some money. You know, I don’t pay to pretty pretty picture, unfortunately. Yeah, the other thing and it’s not an economics thing as much, but just a lot more intervention in our lives a lot more tracking by tech companies, contact tracing, phone location, data mining, all sorts of stuff like that. I mean, if you want to turn a society or an entire planet into an Orwellian fantasy, boy, you know, nothing’s better than a pandemic to have a reason. To do all that right it’s pretty amazing you know, I was talking to a good friend of mine has done a lot of work on this as well and he is quite honestly much more up to speed on the the pandemic and the science behind all of the, you know, the biology and stuff. But the one thing that we both agreed to was that regardless there’s the theory that it’s the most deadly thing in the world and then there’s a theory that it’s all a scam. Right? It’s the flu that they’re using this to you know, exert control. Regardless it to me, it doesn’t matter which one of those it is because regardless the speed with which, and the ease with which they were able to get everybody to just go home and stay there. Yeah, was what was pretty impressive. Yeah. You know, and so if you just step back and analyze the situation, it was pretty incredible. And I I find that to be pretty scary, to be honest. No question about it. People just sort of accepted
Jason Hartman 31:51
that but I don’t think they’ll be able to get away with adding again, to the same or, you know, maybe they didn’t get away with it. Maybe it really was needed. That’s an argument that will probably never be settled. But
Brent Johnson 32:03
But who knows.
Jason Hartman 32:04
But you know, it’s also amazing Brent and I know we got to wrap up, but how delicate the economy really is how, how major corporations, I mean, I’m not talking about a restaurant owner, okay has 16 days that they can survive without income. Right, right. I’m talking about Boeing. I’m talking about no other giant companies didn’t need a bailout immediately. I mean, that’s just so ridiculous to me, that they spent all those years in the gravy making tons of money. And we didn’t know they weren’t required literally by law, by some corporate governance principle as public companies to have a rainy day fund. They had no contingency plans whatsoever. It’s like, give us a bailout. You know, we have we bought all our stock back and all the execs got rich for years. But now we need to bail out it doesn’t that blow your mind? It’s ridiculous. It’s pretty incredible. Not only that, but a lot The politics and this is not just the US, it’s going on in Europe, Europe, you know, a lot of the policies and programs that were put in place for the banking system to have to do certain things and not invest in risky things. Those are now being loosened in order to combat that growth. Right. So it’s, it’s just, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. It really is. All right, well wrap it up with any closing thoughts as to where we’re going or whatever you want.
Brent Johnson 33:25
Yeah, you know, I think between now and the election, you know, we’ve had this amazing rally in the equity market. I continue to believe that over in the years ahead, the equity markets going to go a lot higher, but I think we’re going to have another soft spot between now and the election. I think the Fed will largely try to dampen that, but we’ll see if they’ll be able to do it. I think what I would say and you’ve done a good job of explaining as well as it’s a relative world. You might not like the US dollar, but you know, figure out a better currency than the dollar. Yeah. Is it good to hold gold? Yeah, it’s great to hold gold. I don’t think you should have 100% of your portfolio in gold. It’s never a bad idea to just have some cash on the sidelines. Have the rainy day. Right. So if you’ve got cash, you don’t have to get in a big hurry to spend it. I think the predominant force right now is deflation. Inflation is going to come, you know, but but I just don’t think we’re there yet. So having some cash sitting around isn’t a bad idea. Anyway, I guess just be flexible, be open minded and try to try to survive the next couple years.
Jason Hartman 34:20
Right. You want to give out a website or Twitter handle?
Brent Johnson 34:22
Yeah, sure. So I have a website basically this as my contact information on it, but it’s Santiago, capital calm, feel free to call me or email me. I’m pretty active on Twitter. It’s, it’s at Santiago au fund. You can find me there and do a number of podcasts and stuff and enjoy talking to you and always happy to come back and do it again.
Jason Hartman 34:41
Excellent. Brent Johnson. Thanks for joining us.
Brent Johnson 34:44
Absolutely.
Jason Hartman 34:50
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