China Just Made Its Biggest Gold Move In 3 Years — We Had To React

Episode Introduction The conversation focused on the dramatic changes unfolding in the world economy and their far-reaching effects on personal wealth and global markets. One concept discussed was the historical Hamiltonian economic model, emphasizing the cycle of protecting domestic industries, building manufacturing strength, and eventually succumbing to the temptations of financialization. A key theme that emerged was the current strategic maneuvering of global superpowers—most notably China—moving away from US debt and aggressively acquiring physical gold, signaling a shift in trust and reserve currency status. The discussion explored how America’s shift away from its manufacturing roots, driven by decades of financialization and globalization, has created vulnerabilities now being exploited on the world stage. Several points were raised, including the “impossible triangle” faced by policymakers, the deliberate weakening of the US dollar, and the implications of central banks’ gold buying for individual investors. Ultimately, the episode challenges listeners to rethink conventional wisdom about currency, assets, and the evolving balance of global power. Sign up for my AI Masterclass: https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=TBS-Livestream&utm_source=you https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=TBS-Livestream&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social tube&utm_medium=social https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=TBS-Livestream&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social Check us out wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1nARKz2vTIOb7gC9dusE4b?si=a8daffd2bf1f48fd Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tom-bilyeus-impact-theory/id1191775648 Do you need my help STARTING a business? Join me here inside ZERO TO FOUNDER: (https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder) Get the exact systems, mindset shifts, and principles that built a $1B brand delivered straight to your inbox every week. Subscribe for free (https://tombilyeu.com) https://tombilyeu.com Check out our Video game - Project Kyzen: (https://projectkyzen.io/) https://projectkyzen.io/ Catch Me Streaming on Twitch - (https://twitch.tv/tombilyeu) Link to IT discord:https://discord.gg/TZKJ2etPbT Tom's Favorite Things List: https://amzn.to/41Ftt7e For Business inquiries: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod Whatnot: Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com http://business.att.com Ethos: Get a free quote athttps://ethos.com/impact Surfshark: Go to https://surfshark.com/TOMBor use code TOMB at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact Netsuite: For the first time ever you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/Theory https://netsuite.ai/Theory. Built for every industry. Ready for every boardroom. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby, and then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University, and the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. There is something going on right now in the world of economics that is going to have a massive impact on the price of gold. And there are people saying that if gold really is going to replace the US dollar and US debt as the global reserve currency, then the price of gold currently is way, way, way too low

• 1:26Speaker 00

  if it's going to be used in the way that Alexander Hamilton meant it. So you're going to, what we're going to walk through is the Alexander Hamilton economic model of how to make a strong country. But it puts you into this three-part trap that we're going to walk through. And America is living through that three-part trap right now. And based on some moves that China is making, you're going to understand how we're going to be forced into this triangle where we need all three things, but we're only going to be able to get two. This is going to have massive consequences for you and your portfolio. So let's pay close attention.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  The biggest buyers of gold on the planet just made their largest purchase in three years. And they did it while everybody else was panic selling. There is another signal here I want you to understand. Signal number two is about understanding why the United States government is making the moves it's making right now. Because once you see that pattern, you will never look at the economy quite the same way again. So let me take you back, a long way back, to 1791. America was a baby country just free from the shackles of its British oppressors.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  I just had to say that for our British viewers. It grew tobacco, you know, cotton, wheat, all that sort of stuff. And it was basically a giant farm. And it imported almost everything it needed from Europe. A man named Alexander Hamilton, yes, the guy from the musical, he wrote a document called the Report on Manufacturers. And his argument was very simple. A nation that cannot make its own stuff is never truly independent. So his solution had two parts. Part one, put taxes, so tariffs, on foreign stuff so they become more expensive.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  What you're going to hear, so this is something that Trump has been pushing. You're going to start to recognize, and Trump actually gave a speech. He didn't use the word Hamiltonian, though Scott Besant did. So I know this is exactly what the thing that they're running is, the strategy. And he's going to walk through this. But basically, you've got Trump trying to put tariffs as a way to protect our industry. And then you're going to need incentives if you want to then grow that industry up. So as he walks through this recitation of what Hamilton said, please know what you're seeing now is going to sound very reminiscent, and it is not by accident. Besant himself has said this is about Hamilton, right?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Part two, use that money to subsidize American factories so domestic manufacturing becomes cheaper. And guess what? It worked. It turned the United States from a backwater farming colony, yeah? Sorry, but it's true, into the most powerful industrial nation on earth.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  This is exactly what is happening in China right now. So China is running this playbook. This is one of those things, man, if this doesn't encourage you to learn more about the founding fathers, the fact that they were on to this strategy so long ago is really pretty breathtaking. But China ran the same strategy. They're still running it right now, and the results have been absolutely astonishing. So you protect yourself from other people so that they can't sell easily into your territory. Then you direct your tax dollars to incentivize different industries to ensure that you can lower the cost of those goods so that you can then export them out to the rest of the world. And then you hollow out the industry in those other places because they can't do it as cheaply as you if they're essentially paying, playing a fair game.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Because this really is viewed as cheating from a global free trade standpoint. People will consider this cheating. But it is precisely what China is doing, and we have accused them of cheating for this very reason. But you end up hollowing out other countries because they can't do it as cheaply as you can because you're applying tax dollars to it. That allows you to become the manufacturing powerhouse. And now other people's industries dwindle. And even if they decide they want to get back into it, like the US is trying to do right now, you now have a much harder road to hoe because you've got to build all this stuff back up. And that is where the US is at. And this is exactly the playbook that made the US so powerful going into World War II

• 5:46Speaker 00

  in a way that we are not, say, by the 70s, where we're slowly starting to make everything financialized. We're slowly starting to lose our industrial base, right?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. It only took about a century, which is actually really quick. But here is where it gets really interesting. And really relevant for your money today. There's a pattern that every dominant economy in history has followed, and it goes like this. I'll go on the screen here for you. Step numero uno, you protect your industries, you build factories, you make things, you get rich, right? Check. Step two, you win. You become the dominant economy, and now you think you're so far ahead that you do not need protection anymore. So you switch to free trade, right? Check. Step three, other countries with cheaper labor, fewer regulations, start making things cheaper than you can. Your factories close, your workers lose jobs.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  But it does not feel bad at first because cheap imports mean cheap TVs, cheap clothes, cheap electronics.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  This is where you're at on the timeline right now. So what America ended up doing was financializing everything. So we realize, okay, we come out of World War II, we're the dominant power, we have all the debt. We can bully the world, meaning everybody owed us money. But we hadn't been hit by the bombs and stuff, glorious geography. So we find ourselves in a position where we can hold the Bretton Woods Conference and say, listen, the US dollar is going to become the world's reserve currency. And by being able to bully everybody else, instead of doing something called the bank war, I can't remember. He's talked about this before. I don't remember if it's in this video or somewhere else. But Keynes was putting forward, an economist who was one of the guys there arguing, he ends up losing. But anyway, he puts forward this idea of let's come up with like this global reserve currency

• 7:32Speaker 00

  that's neutral, nobody owns it. But the US has way too much trade surplus, which was a big part of the argument. I don't want to derail us now. Just know that the US had all the reason to want it to be the dollar because it was going to put us in a position where we could bully everybody else. And because we were in such a strong position, we were able to do that. Now, when you do that, you run into a problem where you now become the place that's like, oh, I can trade in all the hard work of having to build all the factories and take all the risk and do all the investment. I can outsource that to the rest of the world. They're buying everything in dollars anyway, so now I can financialize my economy. And what that means is instead of having to build the thing,

• 8:15Speaker 00

  you can just trade on betting on the thing. And it becomes a totally different game. It is, it is a miracle of capital aggregation. It is a phenomenal way for people who understand assets to get wealthy. Like, it is a great thing if you do that on top of having a powerful manufacturing base. But every...

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Empire in history ends up doing it instead of doing the manufacturing base, because it's just the easier path. And because these things take time to play out, like he's saying, at first, this feels really good. Everything is getting cheaper. People don't just feel wealthier. They are wealthier in purchasing power. And ultimately, purchasing power is the thing that matters. And so, welcome to this moment in US history. All right.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Step four, your economy shifts from making things to trading paper, stocks, bonds, fake gold, mortgage-backed securities, right? The country looks really rich on paper, but it's lost the ability to produce. Check.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  One thing I want to talk about, he mentions gold, but we got to really go into gold. This is a huge part of this story. What is happening right now with gold in China, it needs to perk your ears up. I'm not going to tell you what you need to do about it. I will simply tell you how I'm thinking through it. Not financial advice, yada, yada. Like, you guys really have to think through this problem for yourself for no other reason than I don't know I'm right. But here's how I'm thinking through this in my own life. Okay, what is China doing? China is closing the ability to trade paper gold. And instead, what they're doing is they are hoarding physical gold. Okay, why would you want to do that? One, as trust breaks down the world over, you don't know how many pieces of paper are trading against one bar of gold.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Now, in high-trust times, when everything is going great, it really doesn't matter. You can let people speculate on it. And if you don't know this, the following statement is true. Gold works the way that reserves work in a bank. So if you lend the bank money, they can then lend that money out. And they, they actually, as of right now, they don't have to have minimum reserves. Most of them still do, but it's very, very small. Call it, I think it's like 9% is the average or something. Call it 10%, we'll be nice and generous. But 90% actually isn't in the bank. And so, a whole bunch of people have an IOU in the form of a, you know, a dollar that says, in my account, I have the claim on this many dollars or, you know, digital numbers in a spreadsheet. I can go get this many dollars.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Now, the normal course of business, when everybody's relaxed, the, the amount that people take out at any one time is pretty minimal. And so, having 9% or 10% actual stock is no big deal. But you get a bank run when everybody comes for their money, because you have 10 times more claims than you have actual money in the bank. Gold is the same when it comes to paper trading. So you can trade some ungodly number against the actual physical bars of gold that you have. So China's like, nah, world trust is breaking down. We also want to get off the dollar. So we need something to back our currency that's sound money, which for thousands of years now has been gold. Okay, so they don't want to trade on gold. They want the physical gold, so they're bringing it in.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Now, why do they not want people trading the paper? Because the trading of the paper obscures, like, what the real power, let's say, the real desirability of owning an actual bar of gold is. And so, if you have people trading it, it obfuscates the truth of what the gold is, much like all the speculation on oil prices, which moves on the news and not the actual reality. The actual reality is that the demand for long-tail oil is actually getting lower. And so, looking at the, like, landed delivery bets that people have is going to be far more enlightening. So when you have people betting on the paper price,

• 12:11Speaker 00

  China's prognostication is that's obscuring the real value of owning hard gold in the world that's about to be true. So we don't care if the price of gold is going down right now. That's people betting against the fiction. That fiction's about to go away, because what's really about to happen is hard money, physical, tangible, I can bite this fucking bar of gold, is going to be the only thing that matters. And so, they want to get as much gold into China as they can, shut down the paper trades, they can find out what the real cost of gold is, the real value of holding that bar of gold in your hands is. And the reason they want to do that is they think the, that America is completely financialized, we have become completely debt-dependent, that we're getting out over our skis, that the interest on our debt is becoming unbearable.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  And so, they know that they and the rest of the world are going to start moving away from that. And that is true. Foreign debt holders is becoming less and less and less in terms of the central banks. Central banks are shedding US debt like crazy. So there is this, like, hard move on behalf of China and other central banks to move to gold. Gold is now the most-held reserve currency by central banks, not the US dollar, which is what it has been historically. You have to understand that, okay? Now, you may disagree with me. Maybe you understand it, but you think, nah, no big deal. I'm looking at that going, oh, oh, this is maybe not a thing that happens over the next year or two years or whatever, but this is a steady move. In fact, I'm almost certain I pulled the graph.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  There is a graph of China's US debt going down, and its gold purchases are almost a vertical line. You look at this graph and look at China's debt. So up through, what, like, 2010? They're just taking on as much US debt as they can. Now, that wasn't like China used to be dumb and now they're smart. That was China going, this is where we're at in the world. Right now, the US dollar is the system. And so, we're going to play the game. But on a long enough timeline, we're going to get stronger and stronger as we build out our manufacturing base, as we become what they were back in World War I, World War II. We're going to become that. And now, as they become that, they realize we now have strength and power. We've got the rest of the world essentially by the manufacturing balls.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  You can't make things unless you come to China. So we know we're going to keep getting money. And so, now, we're going to start attacking the dollar. And literally, Xi Jinping started saying, we need to start being dismissive of the West. And I quote, again, read books about Xi if you think I'm out of my mind. And so, Xi starts saying, we need to be dismissive of the West. You can literally see it. This is them being dismissive of the West. So like, yeah, we don't give a fuck about these guys anymore. We're going to start dumping their debt. We're going to do it slowly enough that we don't crater our own holdings. But if you're not looking at your screen to see how catastrophically low their debt is getting, it is crazy. And then, starting in, I don't know, like, 22, 23, something like that, their gold purchases just start going vertical.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  And so, this is the move of somebody who's like, okay, I want to get out from the dollar system. I want to create a separate system. I'm going to use gold to do it. And... We're hitting pause for a moment. There's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag. That's why everything they make runs 50% to 80% less. And it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers, a couple of their tees, which I wear obsessively. First thing I noticed was the quality. Soft, well-made, built to hold up. They make down jackets and wool outerwear now, too.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  So upgrade your stuff to things you'll actually wear. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Impact Theory. It's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about what it means to actually be visible in today's day and age. When you build something public, whether it's a business or an audience, anything on social media, you become a target. This is something that legitimately keeps me up at night, because our data isn't just on the obvious broker sites. It's on old news portals, public forums, obscure directories,

• 16:54Speaker 00

  places you would never think to look. That's where Incogni's Exposure Scanner comes in. It hunts down your personal information across the wider web, not just the 420-plus broker sites. Incogni already removes your data from automatically. They can't harm you if they can't find you. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan. Try it risk-free for 30 days. That's incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I, dot com slash impact and use code IMPACT. Let's talk about how much you're paying to stay safe online. Count it up.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  A VPN, a password manager, something to block ads and trackers? The service can scrub your data off of broker lists? A tool to flag scam emails? That's five. Five subscriptions, apps, logins. And most people still have gaps. That's the problem Surfshark solves. It's not a VPN. It's an all-in-one security suite. One tool that protects your connection, your personal info, and your devices all at the same time. Go to surfshark.com/tomb or use code TOMB for four extra months of Surfshark, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  That's S-U-R-F-S-H-A-R-K dot com slash TOMB. Surfshark dot com slash TOMB. Use code TOMB for four extra months of Surfshark.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  All of this happening nested inside of this Hamiltonian thing that we're talking about here. So remember, right now, we're walking through what are the things that empires do? And we're getting to the point now where it's like, oh, you did all the hard things in the beginning. You were disciplined with money. You built your manufacturing base. You block the world from coming in and taking advantage of you. You end up, whoever ends up winning, for a long time, it was the US. You hollow out everybody else's manufacturing base. They turn to you. But then times get so good and you guys get to start getting so rich that you end up financializing everything. And then you have, the other places have opportunities now to beat you at your own game, which is exactly what China did, starting really aggressively in the 90s.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Precisely because we broke in 71 our tie to gold. So we stopped being disciplined with money at all. And the financialization takes off, starting in 71. China starts hollowing us out from a manufacturing base in the 90s into the 2000s. And now you're left in a world where the upper part of the K, rich as hell, right? Just money hand over fist. Because if you understand assets, that number's going up, up, up, up, up, up, up, as you financialize everything. And then real wages are going down, down, down, down, down, because you're globalizing and you're spreading wages around the world. You're arbitraging and finding the cheapest labor ever. And it, empires cannot help themselves from running this thing. Okay, so you need to put those two things together.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  China understands this play. China's getting out from under US debt. China's already humiliated us, humbled us in terms of manufacturing prowess. And now they're buying gold, gold, gold. Okay, the gold part of this story is going to make more sense as we go. So let's go back to our man.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Because this isn't theory. Let me show you how it played out with the British Empire. Sorry to my Great Britain viewers. Britain used something called the Corn Laws. Trade restrictions that protected British farmers and manufacturers. And it worked really well for them. They became the most powerful economy on the planet. And then in the mid 1800s, they said, we're so far ahead, let us open up to free trade. They repealed those Corn Laws. Tariffs, basically. So what happened? Over the next several decades, Britain's share of global manufacturing collapsed. Other countries, you Americans, Germany, which is where I'm from. They started out producing them. And by 1931, Britain's industrial base has basically disappeared.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  So the entire cycle from peak to decline took 85 years. Now here's the part that should make you sit up straight. The United States started its own version of its decline in 1971. When Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Once the dollar was no longer backed by anything physical, no gold, no hard assets, something changed. The economy shifted from making things to financializing things. What does that mean? It means Wall Street figured out how to take real things, mortgages, car loans, student debt, bundle them and sell them as financial products. They call it securitization. The economy started looking richer and richer on paper, but underneath it, the ability to actually produce was rotting away. And this is what hit regular people.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Since the year 2000, the cost of things made overseas, your television, your phone, you know, your kids' toys, dropped dramatically. But the cost of things that cannot be imported, things that have to be made or done right in America, went through the roof, right? Hospital services are up to 80%. College tuition is up 200%. Childcare is up 150%. So yeah, your TV got cheaper. But the things that actually determine whether you have a decent life, healthcare, education, taking care of your kids.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  I'm not going to derail us for a long time, but understand he's glossing over or is unaware of a complexity of something that happened there. So a big part of that reason is the very thing that Drew is always trying to articulate about whatever you're going to call America's economic system, is the government metals in the system. So 47% of our budget goes to social services. And yet, people feel like they don't have social services. And the reason that that's true is things like healthcare, which we do so stupidly, because we have the government basically saying, yes, like, we're going to take care of this. We're going to pay for this for you. And so costs just go through the roof

• 23:03Speaker 00

  because you don't end up getting the competition, because there's no demand to drive the price down. So the thing that he just went over, there is, there is a far more complex reason that I will say is because of America's, the way that we lean socialist is stupid. The government just guarantees too many things. It's fucking dumb. And so we end up breaking the competitiveness of the marketplace. And so anyway, oh God, I'm not going to fractal. Period. All right, back to our man.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  It's when a country stops making things and starts trading paper. And now, and this is the crucial part, the US government has essentially announced, we're going back to Hamilton, you know, the chap with the musical. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, published a piece in the Wall Street Journal laying out five principles for what he called a new American statecraft. One, economic security starts with national capacity, which means we need to rebuild the factories. Two, openness must be matched by reciprocity. So if you put tariffs on our goods, we put tariffs on yours. And three, the US dictates the rules of the next economy. Four, financial leadership, the dollar, treasuries, stable coins are the new weapons.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  And five, it must serve the American people, not just Wall Street. And you might not agree with this politics. It doesn't really matter. It's going to impact your money. So the United States is officially reversing 50 years of globalization. And that changes everything about how you should be invested. And it brings us to what I call the impossible triangle. It's what ties everything together and it's what most people miss. The US government wants three things right now. I put them on the screen here for you. Number one, rebuild American factories. Re-industrialize, bring manufacturing higher, create jobs. Number two, protect Main Street, so keep prices from going through the roof. You know, because inflation crushes the lowest income people. Number three, keep the dollar strong. But there is a problem. You can only pick two.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Think about it. If you slap tariffs on imports to rebuild factories, prices go up. Hurts Main Street. You keep the dollar strong, American exports become more expensive. It makes it harder to rebuild factories. You weaken the dollar to help the factories, imports get more expensive, hurts mainstream. It hurts Main Street. So no matter how you arrange it, one of those three things has to give.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  This is where the gold story and what China's doing becomes incredibly important. Imagine that graph if you were looking at it. China dumping our debt, buying physical gold like crazy as acknowledgement of the truth that we're in that triangle. And China knows exactly which one of those three we're going to give up on. Felix is about to say the answer, so I'll let him give the punchline. But when he gives this punchline, think of that graph.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  It's going to be the dollar. Why? Because the dollar doesn't vote. So they're weakening the dollar deliberately. Who benefits from a weaker dollar the most? Well, gold. Because gold is the one major asset that is nobody's liability. It is not controlled by any government. Can't be printed, it can't be frozen, it can't be sanctioned.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  All right, those are just lies. So first of all, we've sanctioned, I doubt he means them as lies, but they can and have been sanctioned. Part of the reason that China is trying to get the people in their country to also buy gold, which by the way, the, think of the S and P 500. So the S and P 500 in the US is like a massive repository for people that are like, I want to be in the stock market. I don't want to have to think about what it is. So I'm just going to invest in the S and P 500 and I will trust the people that do the S and P 500 to know who to kick out and who to bring in. So it's usually the single largest place where people are invested. China has a very comparable thing.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  For the first time ever, or certainly in a very, very, very, very, very long time, gold, their gold ETF essentially is, has more household wealth in it, meaning individual retail investors are investing into the gold ETF than the people are the broad spectrum Chinese stock market. So there's a huge shift in China in terms of where they're putting their money. China wants people to start buying physical gold. They're building out a much bigger facility to house the gold. And so the reason, I think, part of why they're doing that is they know that gold comes through a choke point.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  And anytime they can turn it off. I think it was Roosevelt, though, forgive me if I'm misquoting that. But there was, Ryan's going to look this up for us. God bless him. So there was a president back in the 30s, I believe, that said, hey, everybody, you can't own gold anymore. You got to sell it to the government. Don't worry, we'll buy it for you at a fair price. They made it illegal to have gold, bought it off everybody, and then changed the price. So they basically, not basically, they devalued the dollar compared to gold. Now, most people don't understand, so they didn't notice. And it will take time to work its way through the system before people actually really feel the inflation. But that, China knows it has that option.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  So I'm very surprised Felix, who by the way is great, you should definitely subscribe to his channel. I've seen a ton of his content. But that one's just incorrect. It can be sanctioned and has been sanctioned before. People will grab it when they think that the time is right. So this is one of those self custody things. Again, go read about the Rothschilds. Literally, in times of trouble, they actually buried things in their backyards, wild but true. I don't advise you to do that now, because people understand how that game works. But yeah, if you don't physically control gold, don't think that the government can't take it from you. They can. But anyway, this is all part of that move, this triangle. China knows that of the three, we're going to devalue the dollar because it's the one people don't understand.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  It was FDR. He issued the executive order 6102 in 1933, setting a fixed price of 20.67 per ounce and making private gold hoarding illegal.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so our man's Roosevelt, who gets way too much positive press from the DSA. I'll just say that.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Because of this move specifically?

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Because of this and other shit. So, listen, I haven't done a deep enough dive on this for me to take a really hard stance. But the number of people, credible economists, that have said, if he hadn't done the New Deal, we would have gotten out of the Great Depression years earlier. So, anyway, I haven't done a deep dive on it, so I would just say it's a thing people say without me being able to back it up.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yellow Knight brought a good comment up in the chat where he says that this gold buying from China is not as directed about US economy, but it's more directed toward what happened with Russia. Because that was when we sanctioned Russia and we banned them from the SWIFT network. So, we stole all their money. You can't have excess money. You can't trade. You can't stock market like we iced them out. And they also had treasuries. They were also invested, not as much as the other countries. So, that then let China know, wait a second, at any moment, America could flip that switch, so we need to get out from under there.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  It is. It's an amazingly good point. It is a thousand percent true. But I think it would be a mismatch of China to think that they did this from a position of, oh, God, we're now scared. Versus, bitch, we're gonna make the yuan the global reserve currency. And the only way that we're gonna be able to do that is to back it by gold. So, my read on the situation is both you are correct. That is a hundred percent a part of the story. But I don't think it's the motivating factor. It may have triggered some of the why right now's. But I think that probably even goes more towards China just finally in a very strong position.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Gold gets cheaper when the dollar goes down. And in the same time, China's doing something very significant. Four of China's largest banks announced they're closing retail trading services for precious metals. So, they're shutting down paper gold trading. You can still buy the real stuff. So, China does not want its citizens trading gold on an app like it's a stock. They want people buying the real, physical thing. So, they're moving back from the paper crazy world to the physical stuff. Why would they do that? Because paper gold and physical gold are very different things. Paper gold is some sort of promise, right? The banks make money out of it. Nobody else seems to. Physical gold is the thing itself. And when the trust and the system breaks, it always does eventually. Promises are not worth a lot.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And look at the US. Look at the amount of gold, physical gold leaving the US. Starting in late 2025, it hit the highest level recorded in history. Gold is physically moving out. Other financial vaults, other paper systems, and into the hands of governments who plan to hold it for decades. So, what does it mean for you? What it means, dollar-denominated assets, your savings accounts, your bonds, even your stock portfolio, face a headwind here. Not because of a recession, not because of a crash, but because of the deliberate policy of the United States to weaken the dollar. This is my opinion. So, here's the key insight. Let's bring it all together and put it on the screen. Central banks are not buying gold because they think it will go up next month.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  They're buying it because they know from centuries of history, of when empires restructure the economies, and that's what's happening right now, the currency must take a hit. Every single central bank that is loading up on gold right now is essentially making a bet that the dollar will be worth less in 10 years than it is today.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Okay, so, bringing it all together, the idea that I want you guys to take on board, decide what you're going to do for yourself. But you have the US government stating explicitly, Scott Beson said these words, that this is a Hamiltonian-style return to how we're going to grow our economy again. To do that, what you're going to do is unwind some of the things that we've done that got us here. So, you're going to go back to being a manufacturing powerhouse, instead of relying purely on financialization and cheap imports to get things done. To do that, you're gonna have to tariff. So, you've got to stop people from bringing things in. China's gonna be the most important one, so you're gonna tariff the life out of China.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Guess what? That's exactly what's happening. So, Trump has been telling you exactly what we're going to do for a very long time. He just wasn't using the word about Hamilton. So, now Beson is saying, cool, we're gonna do that. We're gonna tariff you. We're gonna stop them from coming in. Then, we're going to have to start allocating resources to industries that we want to see return. Because part of this is gonna be not only making it viable here within the country, but making sure that those builders, that they can export to other countries. So, much of the global economy is outside of the US. We don't want to put ourselves in an isolationist position. We want to be able to sell to the rest of the world. And so, now, we're gonna be directing dollars at a given industry and try to get out of this.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Now, the crazy part is, this is where I start worrying, if we're gonna try to out-China China, we're gonna be in for a bad time. This is one of the things, Drew, this is more aimed at you. I'm very interested to talk to Steve Keen about this, who's very like, yo, China's killing the game. And so, I think he does not share my absolute fear of the authoritarian element of China. So, for me, trying to out-China China is to miss the point. When you had Alexander Hamilton building this thing and saying, this is how this works, this was a guy that was part of the people putting in all the checks and balances to make sure that we could both do that and not succumb to the human propensity

• 34:32Speaker 00

  to try to pathologize power, gain control, and then take everything over, which is exactly what we've seen play out in China. So, to me, saying that we're gonna play the game like China would be a mistake. Seeing how China has added to their repertoire what Alexander Hamilton did, and now we have to do this in a distinctly American way, where we're not giving up our republic, where we're not turning into authoritarian rule, where we're not succumbing to, well, it's more efficient to just have one person that tells everybody, this is what the fuck you're gonna do. We do not want to find ourselves in that position. But we do need to understand, America's gonna start unwinding this. And the way that they're gonna get to that is by weakening the dollar. And do with that information what you will.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  No one is gonna know what the timing is, because all of this comes down to, how does the world react? Ultimately, economies are about psychology. It's all fake. It's all fake. And I know people are gonna fucking have a seizure on that, but it's all fake. And that's why you can manipulate the price of gold with paper, because it's all fucking fake. So, all of this is gonna come down to the psychology of people and how they respond. So, no one's gonna be able to get you the timing right. But the direction of travel is, by our own admission, we are going to do everything that we can to re-industrialize. So, we're going to do what we have to do to bring manufacturing back. We've just walked through what that's going to look like. It's going to require that we weaken the dollar. We've seen the US weaken the dollar in huge leaps before with FDR,

• 35:54Speaker 00

  when he pulled everybody's gold and then repriced it, which is the same as just inflating the dollar massively. And then, okay, now you can buy gold again. So, we know that that kind of thing does and will happen. We see China is saying, okay, we're gonna get out of US debt. We're gonna get into physical gold, either because they're looking at that and saying, okay, you guys are weakening the dollar, or because they saw us freeze assets in Russia, so we don't want to play that game, or most likely both. But I think the other thing that you have to take into account is, they know how to play the game well. That this has been part of the strategy from the beginning. They said, when you're weak, you be quiet. You keep your head down. They did exactly that. As you get strong, you start asserting yourself. And then, when you get more powerful, you be dismissive. We've seen all that.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  And you can literally see that, from where I'm sitting, in the trend of them getting rid of their dollar debt, which they just, if I'm not mistaken, in the last like 36 hours, have sold an ungodly, hundreds of billions of dollars in US debt. And so, when you look at just the math, the data of what they're selling versus what they're buying, this is somebody who doesn't believe that the smart way to make money in the future is off the dollar. This is somebody who believes that the right reserve asset to hold, the thing that's gonna be most valuable in the future, is actual physical gold. And that you've got to get the people buying that gold away from paper speculation and into holding the physical thing.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  And that means the very bet that they're placing is that holding the physical gold is going to be the most valuable thing in the future. When does that actually hold true? That holds true in a low-trust society. I think we can all agree, the world is fracturing apart. There's a ton of fighting, so that for sure. And when the dollar is losing value over time and not gaining steam. And when you look at what the US is trying to do, the odds are they're going to be forced to lower the value of the dollar. And so, you put all that together, and that is incredibly meaningful to all of us as investors. So, again, the way that I'm thinking about it is, increased paranoia. I have started rebalancing my portfolio. I'm not pulling out of stocks by any means.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  And again, you should assume that I'm dumb and that I don't know how to translate this into money. So, you should be running, making these decisions for yourself, man. I'm paranoid enough in my own life. I want to make sure you guys are equally. And so, when I look at this, I'm like, okay, I'm rebalancing my portfolio. I, because stocks have been performing so well, my portfolio over time has just gotten more aggressive. And so, now, I would say for where I think we're going, that the amount that I have just in stocks is probably too much. And so, I'm starting to take some of my big wins off the table, and they've been gigantic. And so, you just start rebalancing off of that. I'm doing some. I haven't started doing physical gold, because I'm fucking so paranoid about where can I actually house it.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  I don't have evidence for the following statement, but it, I don't have evidence for it. So, do with my emotion what you will. But the fact that we're not doing a public audit of the gold, we're just doing, in Fort Knox, we're just doing a trust me, bro, from Beson, I fucking hate that. So, I'm not convinced that we actually have the gold. I'm not convinced that the US government, given its history, is the right person to hold my gold. So, now, I've got to figure some solution out, but that becomes more enticing. I haven't made a full decision, but I am starting to look at that. So, it's just like, okay, I'm not gonna get a return on gold, but it might be able to protect me as we continue to devalue the dollar. Again, you need to really think about this for yourself.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  But if you want to know why I'm beating this drum to death, why I think this one is big, why I'm spending the time talking about this, this one is a foundational pillar. If everything that I just laid out is true, you have the direction of travel of what's going to happen with literal money and the economy. Now, I don't know if this is one year, five years, 10 years, 20 years. I don't know. But this really does feel like the direction of travel. So, unless something stops it, and by the way, we're at war, so we're gonna want to see the dollar get weaker and weaker and weaker. The debt, weaker and weaker and weaker. So, we have all kinds of reasons to want the dollar to get weak. Trump has been talking forever about lowering the interest rates. So, anyway. This one feels important. This one means something. I would really look at this. By all means, throw out my conclusions. I would not throw out my analysis.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  You need to figure out, if you think I'm wrong with any of those steps, pinpoint it. Dissect it from first principles and then by all means do your thing. Again, the, the final conclusions that I reach, that's so high risk, what you do with your money. You're going to want to make up your own mind there. But the analysis is cause and effect. So walk through that. If you think it's right, great, make your own conclusions. If you think it's wrong, try to isolate the part that you think is wrong. Insert the thing that you think is right. One, I'd love to hear it. But just make sure that you have a cause and effect chain because times are a-changing. And if you're just pushing forward as if everything is forever going to be the same. Boy, do I worry that you will get caught off guard on something that you could just be,

• 40:59Speaker 00

  you could be a little more diversified, be a little bit more strategic on your downside protections. No need to sell everything and buy a bunch of gold. That is not what I'm going to do. Certainly not what I think any smart person would do. But anyway, this one's consequential. Pay attention. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient-dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements, and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2, and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.com/impact to claim this offer.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  The people who seem to get more done than everyone else, they're not working longer hours or running on more caffeine. They've just stopped wasting time on the stuff that doesn't move work forward. Switching apps, re-explaining context, hunting for files? Those aren't small inefficiencies. They're hours wasted every week. Superhuman Go gives you those hours back. From the makers of Grammarly, Go is an AI chat that sits inside every tab and tool you already use, always available and ready to help you with what you're working on. Ask it to draft something, summarize a long thread, pull up a file or prep you for a meeting. Go handles it without you ever leaving the page you're on. This is what it looks like when AI actually fits into your work instead of adding to it.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  It's like having a teammate whose only job is to help you be better at yours. Go keeps up so you can move forward. With Go working with you, you can show off what you do best. See what Superhuman Go can do at superhuman.com. That's superhuman.com.