{ "episodeId": "SLP395", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "john_tamny": { "name": "John Tamny", "role": "guest", "tag": "JOHN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.55, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today we're chatting about inflation and optimism. This show is supported by Swan Bitcoin, and Swan Bitcoin is organizing a massive Bitcoin conference in November. It's called Pacific Bitcoin. There is an incredible lineup of speakers. We've got people like Lynn Alden and Jeff Booth and Pierre Rochard and Alex Gladstein And Mark Moss and a range of other people, there will be a range of events. This one is optimized for fun with sports, games, music, photo opportunities, and high fives. This will all be one part of a broader LA Bitcoin Week, so come and join us at the inaugural Pacific Bitcoin Conference in LA on November tenth and eleventh twenty twenty-two. The website for that is p a c bitcoin dot com and use the code livera to get a discount on your ticket. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Are you a builder in the Bitcoin or Lightning space? Voltage can help you with Now, this might be useful for you whether you are building a business built on Bitcoin and Lightning or whether you are a merchant who wants to accept payment over the Lightning network. With Voltage, you can easily set up your Bitcoin node, your Lightning node, and your BTC-Pay server node. It, they make it really easy for you. If you go to the website, you'll be able to spin it up in just a few minutes, and you can use Voltage's services to scale your nodes instantly by the thousands, and you can get quality liquidity easily and much more. So they are turning what was once a into a very simple process. Go to Voltage dot cloud and you can see for yourself. So for today's episode three hundred and ninety-five, my guest is John Tamny. He is working at Freedom Works and he's also editor at Real Clear Markets. Now he joins me to chat about his alternative take on inflation, and we have a bit of a debate on Austrian theory and fractional reserve banking, but we also talk about why we should be optimistic about things going forward. I'm sure you'll enjoy this discussion with John. John, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "01:58", "start": 118.18, "text": "Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate Share it, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:01", "start": 121.36, "text": "So, John, I've been following some of your work for a while. I know you are editor over at Real Clear Market, and you're also working with FreedomWorks. And I saw some of your articles recently, I thought it'd be great to have a chat with you. So, let's just get a little bit of your views on where we are right now in the world, and, you know, from an economic perspective, as you look out around the world, how are you seeing it?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "02:25", "start": 145.08, "text": "I, I tend toward optimism. there's, is just people, and people grow, and why do they grow? They grow because they wanna get things, and I don't think that's going to stop anytime right now. certainly I was devastated by what happened in twenty twenty. I thought That the taking of freedom as a way of mitigating the spread of a virus struck me as a very backwards way of, of approaching it, but, broadly I'm an optimist, I have a book coming out in the fall that makes a case that one of the reasons for my optimism Is I think this crash in the cryptocurrency space signals its establishment as the future, in that there, we're now seeing a real market Push aside what maybe isn't the future, and it's setting the stage for some really good, stable, useful currencies, useful mediums of exchange that will transform how we transact and vastly improve money in general." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:29", "start": 209.13, "text": "Yeah, and I think as part of all of this I think the conversation now is very much about inflation, and so we should chat a little bit about that, and I think it's important to understand different definitions, how people talk about inflation as well, as well as some of the narratives. So perhaps we could start with just to set the table, let's say, how would you define inflation? What's the useful way to think of inflation?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "03:53", "start": 233.25, "text": "I think the only way to define inflation is as a departure from a standard of value for a currency, a devaluation. That is historically what inflation was. Germany had a hyperinflation in the earlier part, the twenties, nineteen twenties, because they departed from a standard for the mark nowadays, how-- in the 1970s in the US, we departed a traditional standard for the dollar. That was the inflation. People say, \"Oh, higher prices are inflation.\" To blame, say, higher prices cause inflation is like saying that wet sidewalks cause rain, it reverses causation. Higher prices can be a consequence of inflation. And so you see right now, most economists define inflation inexplicably as too much economic growth. Well, actually, when an economy's growing, that's the surest sign of falling prices. Is that deflation? No, when prices are falling, we have more dollars for other things. Prices are naturally stable unless you devalue the currency, and so inflation is a currency devaluation. You'd be hard pressed to find an economist who understands this truth at this point." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:09", "start": 309.22, "text": "And it's quite a confusing thing because, especially for somebody who is maybe not so savvy, they are just looking at the news and they see the news say, and just recently, \"Oh, CPI was...\" Nine point one percent. Does that mean inflation was nine point one percent?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "05:25", "start": 324.53, "text": "And it doesn't. It, it can't thank you. It's a great question. It can't be stressed enough that there's an ocean of difference between rising prices and inflation. let's say we discover that, Honey Crisp apples are in fact, a cancer cure, that if you eat one a day, you'll never get cancer or heart disease. You think demand for them would surge on the way to higher prices? My guess is yes. Inflation? No. If we're spending more on Honey Crisp apples, logically we have fewer dollars for other goods and services. And so a rising price by definition signals a falling price elsewhere. We have rising prices for certain goods right now, but we have falling prices for broadband, for computers, for all sorts of other things. Inflation is a devaluation of the currency. And so I've been one of the few, people probably think I'm nuts for arguing that in fact we don't have inflation right now. if you look at the dollar, the dollar is stronger versus gold, it's stronger versus foreign currencies, that doesn't mean as much. over the last two years, this would be the first inflation in history that didn't include a currency devaluation, which should have people wondering, are they mistaking higher prices for inflation? I say they are." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:44", "start": 404.04, "text": "That's a really interesting way to put things, and I think it's also important to put things into context of what are the so-called authorities saying, because they've been saying for years, \"Oh, it's transitory.\" And how do you disentangle the different components of these statements?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "07:03", "start": 422.72, "text": "Well, high prices by definition are transitory. This isn't me defending the Fed. the Fed's got all sorts of confusion inherent in its existence, and it's a, it's a-- obviously it's a discussion In and of itself, but the best cure for high prices is high prices. So they are transitory by definition. High prices are a summons to production, they're a summons also to investment for new ways of producing goods so that you can produce more of them at lower prices. economic growth is all about making cheap what's formerly expensive. When the twenty-first century began, a flat screen TV was out of reach for the vast majority of people, twenty-five thousand dollars. Today, you can get them for next to nothing. computers, IBM created the first mainframe computer in the 1960s, cost w-well over a million dollars, very few capabilities. Now we have supercomputers that fit in our pockets. High prices Signal lower prices along the way. And so the Fed was right in saying, \"Well, if it's high prices, yeah, they're transitory. Inflation is something else. It is a devaluation of the currency.\" And, and I, I, I think it's very unfortunate that we've taken our eye off the ball and not choosing to understand this, because you have commentators around the world, particularly in the US, saying, \"Well, there's really nothing we can do about inflation.\" Oh, I don't know, Germany in the nineteen twenties ended its inflation within a week. It just took the mark out of circulation and issued a stable currency. Very simple." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:33", "start": 513.16, "text": "And so when we're talking then about bona fide inflation, actual money supply inflation or debasement, I think the other important component is to understand there are different metrics of inflation, there are different ways of counting the money supply. So do you want to outline from your perspective what are the important money supply metrics to- Think about or observe." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "08:54", "start": 534.13, "text": "It may surprise you, you may want to end this discussion right here, but I strongly believe that once you're talking about money supply, you're confused. And that's not a ta- that's not a comment on you. Most people think of inflation in terms of money supply. to me, that's a wholly mistaken way of looking at it. The reality is that the most circulated currencies in the world are the most stable, the strongest, well, by definition Money flows signal the flows of goods and services. It's the weak currencies that aren't heavily supplied because who would use, if I say I wanna buy your microphone, I'll pay you either US dollars or Argentine pesos, what are you gonna take? But you know what you're gonna take, yeah, you, you want the dollars. The dollar is the world's currency. And so I think the focus on money supply is, is wholly backwards. I, I argue in my upcoming book that this focus on money supply has people- People misunderstanding inflation yet again. Inflation, you only have a problem of excess money after the inflation. I know that sounds weird. People say, \"Well, no, they, they print money, it causes...\" Too much money causes inflation. No, it doesn't. Good money is everywhere. It's when you devalue the currency when it's in excess, because it's not as useful as money. And so to me, excess money supply is what happens after you've devalued, as in the inflation happened and then there's too much money. Very different, but that's what I argue." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:24", "start": 624.36, "text": "So in that context, then, are you also arguing then counter to what many people believe that, as an example, they might say, \"Oh, look, the Fed is raising rates, just wait until the Fed does a U-turn or that it pivots.\" I suppose you are also very much against that way of thinking." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "10:45", "start": 645.46, "text": "I think the Fed raising rates is utterly irrelevant. And so we're hearing people now say, \"Oh, well, you know, the dollar is strong because the...\" The Fed is raising rates. Oh, please. The Fed raised rates throughout the 1970s, the dollar was in free fall. They're saying the dollar is crushing the euro because the Fed is raising rates more than the ECB is. Oh, really? Well, then explain to me Japan. Japan has had- Much lower rates across the yield curve for decades, and much of that time the yen crushed the dollar. Inflation is a policy choice. It's-- the Fed has-- and, and again, it's gonna reveal me as someone who thinks like no one else, probably for the worse, but the Fed has never had-- the dollar's exchange rate has never, ever been part of the Fed's portfolio, ever. The dollar's exchange rate is constitutionally a con-- the Congress' prerogative, but it's something the President has basically had power over. And so if you look throughout history in the US the Fed was formed in 1913, but the first devaluation of the dollar happened in 1933. FDR did it. He devalued the dollar from one twentieth of an ounce of gold to one thirty-fifth. Fed Chairman Eugene Meyer begged him not to do it. In fact, he resigned over FDR's decision that he was powerless to reverse. In 1971, President Nixon chose to sever the dollar's link to gold. That was the inflation. Fed Chairman Arthur Burns begged him not to do it. He said it was a disastrous choice. He was powerless to stop Nixon. Inflation is a policy choice, it's not something that central banks do, do to us. devaluation is as old as money is. And money well predates central banks, so this focus on the Fed right now, I find wholly a non sequitur and, wholly, divorced from what actually causes inflation." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:45", "start": 764.52, "text": "So if we're taking that paradigm, do you sort of agree or disagree with that basic, let's say, Austrian economic argument that when banks issue loans, they are creating new money, and that when loans are being paid back, that money is being destroyed? And so that influence in terms of- The inflation in the, in the economy that influences inflation in the economy. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with that paradigm, or do you just think that's not the relevant factor?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "13:15", "start": 795.07, "text": "I'm agreeing with Ludwig von Mises, whose book, The Theory of Money and Credit, I thought Brilliant. If you came to my office or anywhere I am, I've always got numerous books by Austrians around. I strongly believe, and the president of the Mises Institute knows this because I've told him, I think the neo-Austrians, modern Austrians, have wholly perverted Mises' views. the idea that lending causes inflation is absurd. Lending, as Mises said in The Theory of Money and Credit, people borrow money for what it can be exchanged for So the more production there is around the world, the more credit there is naturally. so to pretend that people just go to borrow money That's being devalued as the Austrians presume that, that banks can just create money out of thin air. It's beneath a great ideology, a great school of thinking. why would-- if that were true, if, if banks are just in the process of devaluing money, multiplying it as the Austrians say, why would Apple have over a hundred billion dollars of cash? Why would Google? And if they did- Wouldn't investors be selling their stock down just in raging fashion to get out of a company that is seeing its, its cash holdings eviscerated by, what the Austrians claim the banks do? the reality is banks aren't relevant in the modern economy. The Fed isn't terribly relevant. The Fed projects its influence through a banking system that shrinks by the day as a source of credit, yet the Austrians spend all this time on the banks and the Fed as though they're the, these nefarious characters inflating away money. Oh my gosh, let's be serious. The dollar's the world's currency. If the Fed and banks were as powerful, a fraction as powerful as the Austrians think, the modern ones, the simple truth is that the dollar wouldn't be anywhere around the world, yet in fact it liquifies just about every global transaction" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:19", "start": 919.25, "text": "So I'm curious your comment around the cash balances of, let's say, Apple and so on. Now, I don't know the exact number, but let's say they've got, you know, a hundred billion on their balance sheet or whatever. Couldn't we argue that the reason they're holding that is because they-- well, it could be a few reasons. One, it could be they may not see investment-grade or, let's say, business-worthy applications of that money, or maybe they're holding it in reserve to be able to buy things or to acquire other companies. When the opportunity comes." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "15:51", "start": 950.66, "text": "Well, it could be both those things, but you certainly wouldn't have-- Now, let's be clear, the app-- the Apple doesn't have a hundred billion dollars just sitting there. The, the Apple has in fact a hundred billion worth of dollar denominated securities. They have interest bearing assets that pay out dollars, which is the same thing, however Now would they do that? Would they have all these holdings, these cash-like holdings, if the Fed and, and banks were just multiplying away the value of it? Well, I think not, and for obvious reasons. But no, there's no doubt you're right that they see opportunity for this money, otherwise they'd be paying it back in dividends. But that should tell you something. It should tell you that, in fact, what the Austrians presume. And again, I am a big f- Everywhere you look, you'll find books by the Austrians, by me, and I am very friendly. I've spoken at Mises Institute, I go on their, on their podcast, all that, but I always disagree with them about the Fed. If the Fed could do what they presume it could do The US economy wouldn't be worth talking about, and you certainly wouldn't be talking to me right now, because I'd be working in the fields or something, because there would be no chance to grow economically in a country in which the central bank were routinely just wrecking the currency that we use, that is, oh, by the way, the world's currency. So the world's economy would be in desperate straits. if, if the Fed were as powerful as the Austrians assume, and so I just, I, I don't get this, and I keep trying to convince the powers that be there that they're on the wrong track, and maybe someday I'll succeed. Hopefully my next book helps." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:30", "start": 1050.04, "text": "Well, okay. I think, I think it's an interesting disagreement to have. Let's, chat. So, I think the multiplication point. So, as you were saying, this idea that banks can multiply or create when they loan, they are lending new money into existence. Couldn't we say that's up to a certain point, and that they can only issue-- they, they will actually in practice be limited by, say, capital requirements, examples Basel, these Basel requirements and things like that, and that's only up to a point that they are able to, and part of that is actually credit worthy customers to be able to make loans to. So wouldn't that be sort of part of the argument here is that they can only issue new money and create new money to a certain point, and that's just the point that we're at?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "18:14", "start": 1094.15, "text": "But they can't issue and create new money. I mean, ask any banker and they'll tell you, \"Gosh, if only we could just expand our balance sheet in the way that conspiracy theorists claim we can expand it.\" if they could, why, why are they routinely being bailed out if they've got this power to just create money out of thin air? I would add, why if they're so capable of just creating money like this? Why is it that their market share of total lending in the US declines with each passing day if they've got this remarkable power? And the problem is, is the assumption is rooted in this falsehood that let me, okay, here's a hundred dollars, here it is, let's pretend I'm a bank. Let's forget about any well run bank doesn't require any kind of capital requirements. A well run bank would logically have none, and a poorly run bank, you can't have high enough capital requirements. Here's a hundred dollars According, and, and so you, you take this hundred and hand it to someone next to you, next door. You lend it to them, no capital requirements. According to the Austrian theory, we've multiplied, we've created three hundred out of thin air. Oh, please, no. See, I gave you-- I loaned you a hundred dollars. I've got nothing now. Implicit in the Austrian theory is that four people sitting at a table, passing around a hundred dollar bill, have suddenly multiplied it into a multiple of a hundred. Well, no they haven't. There's still only one hundred out there. If they-- if banks could multiply in the way the Austrians assume, once again, the dollar would very quickly become worthless. And no one would wanna borrow it because why would you wanna borrow something that has been multiplied out of value? As Mises was clear about, we borrow money for what it can be exchanged for. But if the dollar is just being wrecked, no one's going to borrow it because they're gonna borrow something that they still owe, but that they can't exchange for anything. So they're gonna take on debt for what? You only take in money because you can get things in return for it. And it, it just-- it saddens me that the Austrians have fallen for this myth that banks-- that banks one of the most antiquated indus-industries in the US and one that shrinks by the day as a source of credit has this power that it so clearly doesn't have." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:29", "start": 1228.62, "text": "So here's how I'm seeing it, and you tell me how you're seeing it differently. So the way I'm seeing it is, it's not that when a bank gives out a loan that they get to just invent new money. The issue is more that both parties are acting like they have access to that money. So, and the effect would be seen by looking at the, let's say If you put a box around the commercial banking system and you see there are more paper claims than there are actual, you know, let's say ounces of gold in the example, but you know, you get what I'm saying, like there are more paper claims than there are actual physical cash and coins and, you know, notes and things. And so I think the way I'm seeing it is that there are certain levels to which they can go to because of, say, capital requirements, because of creditworthiness and things like this, and that's kind of what takes them to a level that they can't sort of go beyond. But the inflation or the creation of new money, as I see it, is because, as an example, in, in that example, let's say your, you know, John Tamny bank is lending out to Stephan Livera, and you're giving me this money in a loan that I can then, I theoretically believe that I have the ability to go around and spend that money, it's my money in my account because I've got, you know, a hundred dollars. I" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "21:40", "start": 1299.6, "text": "transferred it to you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:41", "start": 1300.74, "text": "Right, but I transferred" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "21:42", "start": 1302.06, "text": "it to you and you have that money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:44", "start": 1303.97, "text": "Right, but I think the, the issue is more that, let me put it this way. So I think the, the typical argument as it goes is more like, let's say you've got these depositors on one side, and then you've got peop-- as in, like the warehousing function, and then you've got the other people on" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:05", "start": 1324.7, "text": "So the, the theory goes that the modern fractional reserve banking system is merging those systems. And so the issue then is that because the person on the other side who, who lent that money into the bank still believes he has access to it, because if, as an example, he's put money into normal bank account and is able to get interest on that, and he's still got access to that, then it's kind of like both parties believe they've got access to the money. So as an example, if it's John Tamny Bank, a depositor into your bank has put in- A hundred dollars, and at the same time, he believes he's got access to that money, but actually, you've also lent me a hundred dollars, and I've got-- I believe I've got access to that money because I'm running around out in the economy being, being able to spend my hundred dollars." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "22:46", "start": 1366.05, "text": "Yeah. He does have access to it if he can. I'll explain it to you this way. Are, are you familiar with NetJets? You know, the private-- Yes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:54", "start": 1373.95, "text": "Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it, yeah." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "22:55", "start": 1374.95, "text": "So you buy a fractional share of a jet in And what they offer is anytime you need one, you've got one. Do you think they have enough jets at any one time for all their fractional owners?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:09", "start": 1388.94, "text": "Of course not, of course not." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "23:10", "start": 1390.22, "text": "Of course not, precisely. And so if it ever comes to that point that so many of their owners, there's a run on net jets They can go into the market and access jets from other, well, so what do banks do? If there's ever a run on them, they have assets to go, to go get. the money to fulfill the needs of their depositors. What Austrians seem to want, and they claim they're so free market, is they want banks to be warehouses. Well, if banks were warehouses, yes You could do that, but you'd pay the banks for the right to warehouse your money there, as in, there would be, instead of getting an, an interest, you would pay them, okay, hold my hundred dollars, and I'll pay you a dollar a year. A big difference. In putting your money with a bank, by definition, you are-- banks exist to direct the money of-- I mean, Mises was so clear about this in the theory of money and credit, the, the, the function of banking is to direct savings to those who don't have near-term needs for it, to those who do. And so of course, the money's being loaned out. But if banks could just multiply it, just by virtue of being banks, again, why do they keep going out of business? Why do they keep ne- needing to be bailed out? It doesn't work that way. But by definition, the money is being loaned out, but see- If I'm, if you're depositing a hundred dollars with me, at least for the time you're, by virtue of me paying you interest on it, you are giving me title to that money. If you want it back, you won't no longer get that interest. And so there's nothing un-un-toured, untoured about this, and, and again, if it, if it were a powerful thing, if banks, for being banks, had some kind of magical power, why is it that they continue to lose market share? They're just not important in the world we live in." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:05", "start": 1504.9, "text": "Yeah, so I guess my answer then to, you know, why are they going out of business and things, well, in, in some cases it could be that, you know, they've made bad loans to people who aren't able to pay back. and I guess the answer on the other point would be, in the hundred dollar depositor who's getting interest, that's coming back to me is that you, you don't see the effect if you only look at one bank. You only, you see the effect if you are looking That individual who's come in and deposited, you know, a hundred dollars, and he, he thinks he's getting interest on that, whatever, point five percent a year or whatever, fifty cents a year, but nevertheless the bank is turning around and lending out money in such a way, but here's the thing, they can't just do it forever. There, there's capital limits, there's, you know, credit worthiness aspects, and I think let's" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "25:51", "start": 1551.27, "text": "assume they have no capital limits Take capital limits out of it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:55", "start": 1555.4, "text": "So there, there's no reserve requirement limit." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "25:59", "start": 1559.18, "text": "Reserve requirements, whatever it is, what difference would it make? So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:03", "start": 1562.67, "text": "there's no-- there's a difference between reserve requirements and capital requirements, though, right?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "26:07", "start": 1566.96, "text": "If, if banks could then- Imagine the money multiplier then if it were real, but it's not, it's a myth. Very quickly, if, if, if I deposit a hundred dollars with Stephan Livera Bank, you then lend it out, and then, and then someone else lends it out and lends it out, according to Austrian theory, a hundred dollars very quickly becomes thousands and thousands of dollars Think about that. Who then would borrow dollars? And who then would keep their holdings in dollars if the money, if the multiplier were real? Because what the theory says is that the dollar is very quickly multiplied out of existence So Austrians can't have it both ways. They can't say that markets are smart and then make an argument like this, which pre-presumes that not only that our market's stupid, but they're staggeringly stupid, that everyone who holds dollars, which, oh by the way, is the richest people and businesses in the world, they don't know anything, but a bunch of academics at the Mises Institute, oh, they know, they uniquely know, oh, you know those dollars, banks are, are basically, multiplying them out of, out of any worth. Oh, please. Beneath the Austrian school. And, and, and it staggers me that they've, they've fallen for this argument." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:20", "start": 1639.7, "text": "Yeah. So I guess, I, I mean, for me, from my perspective, it comes down to, yeah, so capital requirements are being dist- are distinct from reserve requirements. So yes, there are no reserve requirements, but there are limits on how much they can do because they have to, there's this concept of risk-weighted assets, and they have to hold a certain, except-- We're not gonna get into the technical details of that, but the point is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:44", "start": 1664.13, "text": "At a multiple bank level, it's not seen at a single bank level, and I think that's probably the key difference." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "27:50", "start": 1669.68, "text": "Let's assume no reserve or capital requirements. Do you think suddenly there'd be a run on JP Morgan? I mean, please! A well-run bank doesn't require these things, and, and the reason for that is basic, as any banker will tell you. If you're a well-run bank, your access to capital is endless. And, and there, there's this myth to this day, and, and Austrians believe it, that the, oh, hey, the Fed exists to prop up the banks. Oh, please! Any well-run bank would never go to the Fed for a loan. And why wouldn't a well-run bank do that? Because it's an admission to the marketplace that you're bankrupt, that you tried every Every other creditor out there, and they shut their doors to you, so you had to go to the Fed. Any well-run bank has myriad people lined up willing to lend against good assets And so this notion that, that we need capital or reserve requirements is laughable. A well-run bank doesn't need them, but to be clear, a poorly run bank, you can't have capital and reserve requirements high enough because you know they're gonna be making dumb loans. But I, I just don't understand why Austrians claim this free market mantle, but then they don't trust the market for money at all. They just think that it's bankers and, and conspiracy, Rock, Rockefellers and the Fed doing all these things. The Fed people love it because it gives them totally unwarranted prestige and power The Fed isn't just a bunch of zero-nobody economists, and banks, once again, are by definition, by defi- by the fact that they offer such low little, so little interest, they are the least dynamic players in the financial economy. If they were actually taking any real risk, they'd actually pay a high interest rate. They're making the most basic vanilla loans as possible, yet Austrians would have you believe that they're actually good at what they do. No, they're not." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:41", "start": 1781.09, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. If you're looking for Bitcoin hardware, CoinKite dot com is the place to go. You can get your Bitcoin hardware signing devices, such as your Coldcard, or you can get OpenDime's there. They've also got the BlockClock, which is an excellent accessory to have in your room. You might have seen it in the background of Jack Dorsey's videos or even the Thai ex prime minister. So if you wanna get your BlockClock, they've got a mini version and now a micro version, so you can go and get that over at CoinK Get a discount by using the code LIVERA. So this is the place to go in terms of Bitcoin security and also Bitcoin accessories. That's coinkite dot com. Are you involved or interested in Bitcoin mining? Brains dot com, that's b r a i i n s dot com, are doing a range of things. You can go and use their software, Brains OS Plus. This is firmware that you can install on your ASIC machine. Now, depending on which model you have, when you are using this, you can improve your efficiency by up to twenty percent. You can get more s Or electricity dollar, and it gives you some configuration options that you can use on your Bitcoin mining machine. Also, Brains have the Insights dashboard, so this is at insights.brains.com. You can use this to analyze the Bitcoin mining space, and they've also got a profitability calculator, so there's all kinds of numbers you can run here in terms of calculating your profitability. So that website is brains.com, that's b r a i i n s dot com. And finally, with the events at exchanges and lending platforms over the last few weeks, it has been An important reminder to us all about taking control of our Bitcoin keys. Now, when you leave your coins on a custodian, you might have your withdrawals blocked, or you might have your Bitcoin caught in someone else's insolvency. You might be caught up for years. This is where Unchained Capital can help you. Unchained offers concierge onboarding. This is a personalized service to guide you through setting up cold storage and withdrawing from an exchange to keys you control. It's about taking away single points of failure. So Unchained Capital will ship the required hardware to you, they'll walk you They'll help you withdraw and cover questions through that process. So if you've been putting it off, this is the time. It's very simple, you can get it done sooner rather than later. So go to unchained dot com slash concierge, use the code livera for a discount. And now back to the show with John. Okay, so anyway, I think, I think we've, we've kind of gotten to our sort of main disagreements on that aspect. Let's chat a little bit about this idea of achieving a standard of value. So this is something you've written about in, some of your, articles, and you've mentioned it, just earlier as well. What does achieving a standard of value look like for you?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "32:15", "start": 1935.41, "text": "What it looks like is a currency that is trusted as a measure of value throughout time. Historically, gold was used for it, and gold has been-- its purpose has been wildly perverted over the years, seemingly by all the different economic religions. But markets happen upon gold because it has unique stock flow characteristics that if someone comes into the market with many, many tons, metric tons of gold to sell, their sale of it isn't going to move gold's price, and the reason it won't is there's so much stock out there And so historically money was tied to gold, not because it's shiny, not because central banks and countries had it in vaults, but because gold was flat, it was a constant, and that was good because the only purpose of money per Adam Smith is to exchange consumable goods. Money flows signal the flow of real goods and services, and so you want, you wanted money defined in terms of something constant so that people could save and exchange and not worry about fluctuations in the currency. And so would gold be the right commodity now? I don't know. It's going to be interesting. I think crypto is going to solve this for us, but at least we can say that since the world, since the US de-linked from gold in the early 1970s Market players have been searching for a replacement, and they've found money issued subsequently insufficiently stable, and we know this based on currency markets There's ten trillion worth of currency trading every day. Before nineteen seventy one, there weren't markets for currencies at all, and why weren't there? Because currencies had a stable value, which is what they should. The only purpose of money is to help us move goods around, so you want a measure that's kind of, that kind of holds its value. And so markets have been searching for this ever since. my guess is eventually we're going to find it again because that's what the markets clearly want. Will it be gold? I don't know. I don't have an allegiance to gold, I have an allegiance to st-stability. But that- That's what money should be. It should be this very quiet measure, it should be a foot ruler. That's historically what it was." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:25", "start": 2064.53, "text": "I see. So this is probably another area where we might disagree, because I think this might be one of those areas where I think the chase for-- and I don't know, I guess it depends on what you mean when you say stability, because I think this is another area where, and I think even Mises talks about this idea that we can't chase stability, that there's always going to be some level of speculation, and that, you know, We can't really expect that there ever will be such a thing as a stable store of value. So I guess let me just take a minute and just explain, I guess, from a Bitcoiner perspective, like how, here's how many Bitcoiners are viewing this. So we're seeing it like the world doesn't have a, a good store of value for the long term, because if you kept your money in, you know, US dollars, even in the US dollar, you've lost a lot of value over time, and that's arguably the best of a bad bunch or the least bad or whatever you We're seeing it like, this is a period of volatility, but it's also a period where people are learning and adopting what is a harder money. And so this is part of the thesis, this idea that there are certain qualities and characteristics that we believe that Bitcoin has that set it apart and make it more marketable, more saleable, and over time, we anticipate that more and more people will recognize that idea because, let's say, they see it stores their value across time and space better than their alternatives. And I believe that even with this recent- Bitcoin price drop. So as we speak today, the price is something like twenty-one thousand per Bitcoin. Yes, it's off the high of sixty-nine thousand last year, but anybody who's been saving in Bitcoin and using it as their longer-term savings has obviously done quite well. They've been doing very high percentage returns, well above what they would have in terms of purchasing power if they were in the S&P or in gold or in the US dollar. So it, it sort of presents this interesting conundrum then, is a standard-- So I guess my question to you, John, is Do you believe a standard of value is possible? Like, is that even-- is monetary stability even possible?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "36:24", "start": 2183.56, "text": "Well, I think it is, and I think the markets verified this. Isn't it interesting that we have Coinbase today, we have all these exchanges for cryptocurrencies, but we have all these exchanges for currency, government-issued currency? If Adam Smith or David Ricardo or John Stuart Mill were around today, they'd say, \"What? Wait, you're trading currencies? Why would you trade currencies?\" Currencies are supposed to be quiet. They are measures that enable the movement of real wealth. And so what verifies reasonable stability is the fact that there weren't currency exchanges before 1971. What was the point? The dollar had a definition as one thirty-fifth of an ounce of gold. And global currencies, even the Russian ruble, were tied vaguely to the dollar. Most of them were tied explicitly, but anyway, was it perfect? Was it a foot ruler perfect? Okay, probably not. But boy, the markets thought it was pretty darn perfect because there weren't exchanges to basically hedge the movements of the dollar. Bitcoin isn't a store of value, it's a speculation. I'm sorry, this isn't-- I think Bitcoin and, and these currencies are going to eventually push out government money, thumbs up. But, okay, Stefan, I'm remodeling my bathroom, I'll pay you one Bitcoin now, for-- to do it, one Bitcoin in six months, and one bit-- one Bitcoin in a year. When you're finished, my guess is you'll say, \"Okay, which one? The one that was-- went for sixty-eight thousand last November, the one that's, I think, at around twenty thousand right now, or the one that was what, at twenty-five hundred in twenty seventeen?\" One of us is potentially going to lose and lose big in this transaction That's not money. That's not to say that Bitcoin doesn't eventually achieve stability, but there's this myth, and I think it's one promoted by monetarists and Austrians, and that what makes money good is scarcity There's only twenty-one million of the Bitcoin. No, I think what makes a currency good is stability as a measure of value. We don't worry about how many foot rulers there are, we just know that it's twelve inches. Good money keeps expanding in its usage and its circulation precisely because both sides know they don't have to worry about the money moving around. And I don't think Bitcoin as of yet has provided anything remotely resembling that. Will it? Let's hope it does. It, people will use it more." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:51", "start": 2330.62, "text": "So I cer- I certainly take your point that, it's not very stable and it is definitely, the vast, vast majority of Bitcoin users aren't denominating their services in Bitcoin. Though, though, though, there are a few exceptions I could name, but let's not go into those 'cause they're so, so small as a percentage, but generally speaking, today, nowadays, if we were doing that kind of transaction, we would probably price it in US dollars and just convert at the time of transfer How it would be done today, but certainly I recognize your point, I take your point, it's, quite volatile. But I think maybe this comes back to our disagreement about whether it's even possible to have a stable store of value. But I, I-- but for what it's worth, I do believe over time with further adoption, it will reach, that point once, once it's sort of closer to, let's say, terminal valuation or at least some kind of, something approximating the markets that Bitcoin is chasing after, right? So in one sense, Eleven or twelve trillion, or is it going after the market for broad money, that kind of thing? So I think those are probably the main points probably of our disagreement there." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "39:57", "start": 2396.71, "text": "Yeah, no, I mean, but, but let's assume that what you say is true, and I hope it's true. n- no one would love a stable- Private crypto, what do you wanna call it, currency more than I would, that just holds its value. But look at the people, and you've alluded to it, look at the people who are buying Bitcoin. They, they're not buying money, they're speculating on scarcity that's going to give them a big return in the future. You have Michael Saylor thinking Bitcoin are going to one million. Well, if it does, okay, great, hey, good for you, you've made a lot of money. If so, but please don't insult me by saying, \"Well, that makes it money.\" No, that makes it a speculation for the reasons you've, you've acknowledged the simple truth that a Bitcoin going to the moon isn't going to be useful as money. So if people think that scarcity on its own is a way to store value, hey, good, man, there's lots of people do it with art, they do it with all sorts of things. But money, does good is flat. Now, if the view is that gold isn't the answer to money that's stable, hey, that's fine with me. I'm dying for the markets to come up with something even more stable than gold as a trusted measure in the market. But let's be clear, at least for now, that this wasn't sunspots or government decree or, its shininess that caused gold to be used as money around the world. The reason it was used was because the markets happened upon it, and markets happened upon it because- Because as a commodity, it's the most stable commodity in the world. Gold doesn't move per se, what moves is the currencies in which it's priced And so it's, to this day, it tells the truth. The dollar has been a lot weaker in the twenty-first century, and gold has revealed that. You can't say that for Bitcoin, you really can't, at least not yet. It, it doesn't tell the truth in the way that gold does." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:51", "start": 2510.85, "text": "So I think even there, maybe we disagree as well, because I think it's probably also fair to say we saw a lot of inflation, and I, by that I mean the money supply kind, in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, and that was precisely when we saw Bitcoin make this big move up. And so I think even there, maybe it's still early to say on whether, you know, in terms of the definition of generally accepted money, early to say whether Bitcoin, is, is that. Obviously it Priced, it's not the unit of account for the world, though it is growing, I think more and more people are adopting it as their savings, and I think what we are perhaps longer term, looking out, and I don't, I don't know when, but I think longer term, it looks to me more like people are going to go to run to the US dollar compared to, or at least, sorry, I think in the short to medium term, I think people are running to the US dollar because it's the least bad of the fiat monies, and you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:47", "start": 2567.26, "text": "Bitcoin isn't the only decentralized answer, because unfortunately gold gets captured and it becomes custodied into vaults, and those vaults, and with the combination of things like legal tender laws, capital gains tax laws, it stops people actually transacting with gold. Whereas I believe in a Bitcoin context, we may see, as an example, with countries like El Salvador, Central African Republic, that have, one has a legal tender law, the other is pushing towards a legal tender law, other countries that have no capital gains tax laws, we may see See it happen earlier in some of those countries, but I, I'm also curious to get your view on that aspect of it as well. Like, what's your view then on the US dollar compared to other fiat currencies out, out, out there in the world today?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "43:30", "start": 2610.03, "text": "I, I suppose in a way my view is irrelevant, the markets view the dollar as the best of them Look, if you look at it in the twenty-first century when it began, a dollar bought one two hundred eightieth of an ounce of gold roughly, today it buys one eighteen hundredth. clearly the dollar's been devalued a lot in the twenty-first century. Is it money supply related? I, I again, I think this focus on money supply is so pointless. could the Argentinian Central Bank increase supply of pesos? Oh, please, not a chance. There's no interest in that. When Argentinians import think goods from around the world, do you think they pay pesos? No, they pay dollars. And so it's the most trusted, least inflated currencies that are circulated the most, by definition. To say the opposite is to say that producers actively take that which is being destroyed, and, and, and they don't. Legal tender laws, I think a focus on them kind of misses the point. Yeah, think about it. In Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, three quote enemy countries, the US, the dollar is the currency of choice. Any business done in those three countries is denominated in dollars. do central banks provide these? No, no, dol-money finds. Money supply is a natural market phenomenon. There's this myth that the Fed pumps up the money supply. Oh, please If it can, why doesn't it pump it up in East St Louis and West Baltimore and Compton, California? They could sure use the money there, but see they couldn't, 'cause money naturally flows to where it's going to be, where there's production. And so the fact that the dollar is around the world is a sign not that it's perfect, but that it's viewed as better than the other currencies. The next most circulated is the euro, the Swiss franc is somewhere in there, which is another cur-currency that kind of discredits the money supply theory, what there's nine million Swiss, yet the, the franc is the fifth most circulated currency in the world. what does that tell you? It tells you that money supply is a consequence of its trust. the, the, the franc is a global currency because producers on both sides of a transaction view it as a useful way to move goods back and forth. People should, in my mind, focus more on the quality of, of, of the currency in terms of holding its value, not its supply." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:50", "start": 2750.15, "text": "Gotcha. And so, I guess bringing it back to the questions around the economy and people talking about high CPI prints and things like this, in your view, are you anticipating that to continue on longer, or are you anticipating more like a, a return to some kind of normalcy sooner than later?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "46:09", "start": 2769.13, "text": "I think a return to normalcy, I don't know if you read Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, but even if you didn't, you're probably familiar with the pin factory example that he uses. And it's early in the book, he observes a pin factory in which one person working alone could maybe, maybe produce one pin per day, but several specialized workers in this factory working together doing a specific job could produce tens of thousands per day And so think of that in terms of prices, around the world right now. we had in twenty twenty this massive taking of freedom around the world. Unemployment in the US is twenty five percent It staggers the mind to think what people were doing to survive in poorer parts of the world, but the point of all this is that the world was remarkably integrated economically Bangladesh was the world's sewing machine, all this integration, only for it to be eviscerated by governments. Isn't any surprise that prices are higher today when you broke up trillions of commercial relationships or interrupted them that were developed over decades? And so people say, \"Well, demand's outpacing supply or supply's outpacing demand.\" There's no such thing. Demand is a consequence of Supply. What we're witnessing right now is that you can't shut down a global economy and then turn it back on like this. Of course, prices are higher today because it's much more expensive to produce in an economy that's not integrated in the way that it was in 2020. And so the miracle was the prices that prevailed in March of 2020. What we're experiencing now is, I would argue, another miracle, that prices are actually still this low after what they did. And so my guess is that over time, as private commerce always does, it's going to bail out idiot governments that chose economic contraction as their virus mitigation strategy And so that's why I've made the argument all along that this isn't inflation, higher prices born of command and control aren't inflation. And so gradually the, the supply chains will be reconnected in a way, I know that they're not actual chains, and you'll see prices get back to where they were, but it takes some time. And so to me, I think the end result is going to be that people acknowledge that this was not inflation, this was global producers desperately trying to get back to work Where they were before their, their, connections with each other were broken up by foolish politicians." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:45", "start": 2924.94, "text": "So I'm curious as well then, I'm, I'm probably a little more towards the optimism side than the, pessimism side, but for the sake of an interesting discussion, there are alternative views out there, and I think one interesting view that I've seen is, Peter Zeihan, and he's written this article, this book, and he's out there doing these interviews and talking about this idea that there are these big factors going against the world And that most, for most of us, we've lived the best lives that we, you know, up until now, and actually it's gonna be not that great going forward. And so he's got two main arguments, and I'm, I'm curious what your views are. So I think one of them is around demographics. So basically he's saying, \"Look, there's a lot of these countries that are aging, very aging populations, right? Like Japan is probably the extreme end, but there are other countries who are just, you know, demographically, they don't have like that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:38", "start": 2978.12, "text": "And its relative importance, and therefore it won't be the world policeman anymore, and it won't keep the seas safe for people to ship things, and therefore because of this, there may be hard times to come. So I'm curious, John, do you have any thoughts on that? Any responses to those kinds of ideas?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "49:55", "start": 2995.35, "text": "Utter nonsense, utter, utter, utter nonsense. what was the, the discovery of coal back-- I don't know when coal was discovered, but the, the view was that this discovery was the equivalent of giving every able-bodied worker 20 able bodied assistants, as in the productivity surge from coal's discovery transformed it. Well, think about where we are today. We're on the verge of robots and other forms of artificial intelligence. More and more saving us from the labor we used to do. Future productivity is going to stagger us. The ability, Jeff Bezos could start Amazon today from a retirement community, because Simply because he could bring on coders and basically work beside them around the world, watching them as they work from all points around the world. This notion of demographics is rooted in this idea that human- Our human capacity to produce is static. In fact, it's anything but that, and it's anything but that because we keep developing new technologies that are the equivalent of the creation of millions of new hands and trillions of new hands doing for us what we used to do for ourselves. And so in fact, Zion gets it backwards, what we're headed toward That dem- that birth rates are slowing is a natural consequence of the fact that automation and productivity is going to do so much for us that we used to do. And, and because of that, if you look at countries, it's the countries with the highest birth rates that are the poorest. The richest ones have very low birth rates, but the productivity of their citizens is about to skyrocket because once again, the technological advances will be, will mean the addition of literally trillions of new hands into the economy that quite literally just work all days, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, seven days a week, never take a vacation because they're automated. And in being automated, they're going to free up the humans to do things that we never thought possible. And so, no, I, I'm staggered that people still believe there's a limit to human ingenuity. In fact, it grows and grows all the time" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:15", "start": 3134.53, "text": "Yeah, and I, I'm, I'm inclined to agree more with you as well, I think, but, I think for the sake of a discussion, I think it's, it's an interesting counterpoint to, the optimist's case, let's say. so if we are optimists, what are some of the, I guess, time frames that we're thinking? Because obviously we've been through, you know, now over two years worth of hysteria basically, and it's only now that it seems that the world is mostly opening up," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:44", "start": 3164.11, "text": "What's your view on that if you had to speculate a bit about how long until, things normalize?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "52:52", "start": 3172.46, "text": "It's such a good question, and it's, it's, I still think in time, future historians and future centuries will look back on this and say, \"This was when the world panicked in a really tragic way.\" Imagine taking away freedom as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of what politicians did. And you know- You know, you ask a good question. China, to this day, people in Shanghai face the threat of lockdowns. It's terrifying. That is the bad news, and it is really horrifying news. I remain optimistic, and I remain optimistic because even amid this, I think what we're going to see is that, and, and we saw it, could they have locked down this way in the, in the year two thousand? Not a chance. And why couldn't they have? Technology wasn't near advanced enough to enable people in the US and around the world to work around these hideous government decrees. And so what it tells me, and I will never excuse the lockdowns, I think they were a tragic mistake on too many levels to count, but what I think is going to happen is notice what technology did. It enabled a lot of the world, not all of it, a lot of the world to work around government decrees. And that's a beautiful statement about where capitalism is taking us. it will increasingly be the case that we can work around politicians, and because of that Add even more to future growth, add exponentially more. If politicians can't control what we do, boy, the future is even brighter than perhaps you and I think." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:33", "start": 3273.3, "text": "Yeah, that's great, that's really great to think about, and I'm curious as well your thoughts around the, let's say, the narrative that exists, right? Because rewind the clock to twenty, early twenty twenty, a lot of people were panicking and it was seen like, \"Oh, this is what the world must do.\" Of course, those principled libertarians were saying, \"No, this is wrong. We shouldn Both ethically wrong and in practice a bad idea as well, even if we excused the ethical component of this. I'm curious your view on will the record be corrected in the future? Like, will, will that view be seen as correct or do you believe that sometimes propaganda wars can be fought and it can be seen like that it was so-called necessary?" }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "55:14", "start": 3313.67, "text": "Well, I've got to do this. This was the book I wrote about it when politicians panicked. But, that's why-- that's one of the main, major reasons I wrote the book. And, and, and in fact, you, you can find it on YouTube. I gave a speech to the Amicus Institute seminar in Colorado Springs saying that we've got to win this argument, that what a tragedy it would be if history books say that a virus shut down the global economy. No, in fact, panicky politicians did. The virus had been spreading for months, and people were adjusting. In the US, the red states, you know, the mouth breather states full of people who don't believe in science and all that, precisely because they weren't locking down right away, joined in the hysteria. The people within those states were buying masks, for good or bad, they were getting hand sanitizer, all the things, they're doing it on their own. Markets work. The people are the market. And so there was real fear out there of a virus. The virus is real, I'm not denying that it's real. What I will deny to my grave is that you need to wreck people's lives, you need to destroy the economy to fight The spread of a virus. In fact, free people are most important when a virus is spreading 'cause they teach you how to avoid getting it or how to get it and get your immunity. they also teach you, when you're free, you learn how to open your business, you learn how to operate it, best practices with a virus spreading. It's also got to be remembered that economic growth itself is the biggest enemy that death and disease have ever known, because economic growth produces the resources for scientists and doctors to come up with ways to turn today's killers into Into tomorrow's afterthoughts. Let's never forget that in the 19th century, pneumonia was the biggest killer in the US alongside tuberculosis. Now it isn't. Why is it-- Why are they not? Because of economic growth. Rich people directed their wealth towards scientists and doctors, and they came up with cures for that which used to kill us. And so we must win this argument, a, because freedom is a virtue on its own, but b, because what a, what a tragedy if the result of this is that people- Pathogens, which are a part of life and always have been, are going to lead to the shutdown, the taking of our freedom every time. We can't not let that happen. The truth is on our side, and, and the one other thing I'll add, I hate to be long-winded, but I worry I have been, is that I keep tellin', I've told Tom Woods at at Mises, I've, because I've done a lot of interviews w-uh, book at Mises. I said, if we're going to make this a statistical argument, well, it only killed people in nursing homes, which is for the most part true, you know, obviously there are exceptions. We're going to win the argument but lose the long term debate. The only long term debate is that freedom is its own virtue. Anything else implies that politicians have the right to take our freedom if something really threatens us. In fact, they don't. And the more threatening something is, the more reason there's no reason to take away freedom, because if something could kill you, do you need to be forced to take precautions? I know I don't. And so we must make this argument about freedom, and we must make it over and over again, because we can't let this happen again. It was a tragedy in the US But it was really awful what it meant for the rest of the world, the hundreds of millions rushing towards starvation around the world as rich countries took a break from reality. This can never happen again." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:32", "start": 3511.85, "text": "Well said. I think that, that is an important message, this idea of, freedom being its own virtue. And, definitely, I think, w-with our disagreements about fractional reserve banking, to the side, I think we definitely are on the same page about, the hysteria and what has to be done about it, and this idea of pushing for freedom and capitalism and genuine bona fide free markets as opposed to the sad version of it that we had to endure for a couple of years. but nevertheless, I think that's probably a good spot to finish Just make sure you find John online. Let me, just find his links so you can find him on Twitter at John Tamny and find him, he's an editor at RealClearMarkets dot com and he's also, over at FreedomWorks. So I'll put all the links in the show notes. And John, thank you for joining me." }, { "speaker": "john_tamny", "time": "59:17", "start": 3556.51, "text": "Hey, Stephane, thank you so much for having me on. Great show. I really appreciate the opportunity." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:22", "start": 3561.75, "text": "So I hope you found the discussion an interesting one, whether you agree or disagree on the fractional reserve banking question and the role that central banks are playing. I think John has an interesting perspective, and I enjoy reading some of his articles. Go and find the show notes at stephanelivera dot com slash three nine five, and I'll see you in the Citadel." } ] }