David Morgan, Founder of the Morgan Report | How to Navigate the Greatest Wealth Transfer in History

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts you should go check out like being boss hosted by Emily Thompson. Now with the holidays just around the corner you're probably thinking what's next for you in the new year what other shows are you going to listen to to level yourself up well on the success story podcast interview a lot of entrepreneurs and I usually dive deep into the creative aspects of building a business so if you are creative a creative business owner or you're thinking about eventually becoming one which at some point everybody kind of has to be because you have to be a little bit creative in how you build a business how you market a business now you sell your product all that does require some creativity but also for people that are hyper focused on the creative niche you may be interested in being boss hosted by Emily Thompson being boss is an exploration of not only what it means but what it takes to be a boss as a creative business owner. If you are into some of the following topics you're going to love this show project management and building systems for creatives freelancers or side hustlers opening a retail store rituals that inspire and evoke creativity and taking time off as a business owner to focus on yourself your creativity and upskilling you need to listen to being boss they cover all these topics and more you can listen to being boss on any of your favorite podcasting platforms or at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. My guest is David Morgan David is a widely recognized analyst in the precious metals industry and consults for hedge funds high net worth investors mining companies depositories and bullion dealers he is the publisher of the Morgan report a world class publication designed to build and secure wealth he is the author of the silver manifesto and a featured speaker at investment conferences worldwide. He has appeared on CNBC Fox Business Yahoo Finance MSNBC and BNN he is also been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal futures magazine the investing rulebook and numerous other publications today we spoke about money finance everything that's happened over the past two years some of the topics we went into the greatest wealth transfer in history is starting to unfold are you going to be on the sidelines are you going to take part in it the greatest depression in history is looming but what does that mean? And can gold make you rich even in one of the worst depressions in history we spoke about gold silver we spoke about crypto we spoke about Bitcoin could money be worthless in six months how close is the price of silver linked to gold how American billionaires got even richer during the pandemic why raising taxes destroys the economy and whether or not he's even optimistic that the American dream is still alive. It's a very heavy episode a lot of lessons to be learned that have come over the past two years but he's been studying this industry for a lifetime so an incredible interview just incredible just incredible. Man who has tried to understand and help people how to best navigate complex investments markets finances and obviously at this point in history coming out of a pandemic that's more critical than ever for all of us so let's jump right into this this is David Morgan widely recognized analyst and publisher of the Morgan report. All right Scott well first thanks for inviting me the origin I've said it many times that the bears repeating I was 11 years old when the corners went from nine percent silver coins to what I call the Johnson slugs and I noticed that and intrigued me that it didn't seem to bother to get the adults around me so kind of held that you know the back of my mind so to speak. I went through the normal teenage years high school all that frustration and my dad was very tough as far as you know career choices and I really wanted to get the financial markets he blew up and said no you don't want to do that so I decided I wanted to fly for a living so I started flying on a 16 went to Cal Poly sounds vispo graduated with a degree in aeronomic engineering but the markets were my passion and I was invested in stock market. And I just kept studying on my own you know market market history money finance investing all that stuff so it was kind of my advocacy and all through you know from 16 years on so I had an aircraft career for a while simultaneously was basically focusing on the banking system and honest money because it was pretty apparent to me that the system was a rig one. In other words once you went off the gold standard you had problems and I was following every newsletter writer at the time that I could find so as a newsletter junkie so I really was immersed in the precious metals from a very early time. I left the aircraft industry and started work for a certified financial planner so how that operation worked I was displeased with it because it's not as objective as I would like it to be you are basically given certain companies to kind of push out to your clients for various reasons only that to the viewers imaginations. Then I went and briefly worked on a selling coins believe it or not for a very brief time again the proprietor was in the larger markup variety pushing more of these semi new me coins which I. Abhor because it really rips the client off so I left there very shortly after finding out what the main thrust of the business was trading for living for a while. I took care of two baby girls and started the website on research primarily in the silver market left out part of the story went back to school got a degree in finance and economics. And during that I'd already been self taught quite a bit in the finance teachers refer to me as a silver expert which is the first time I've ever been referred to as a silver expert and so started basically research site on the web very early on. Back in the early days of the web where all you got was a sea prompt with a carrot or sea prompt and then you had to find a BB see I think it was called a BB some Bolton board there weren't any really websites even at that time but I established one very early on again for research and then I was asked you know what does and I used the silver guru as a as a placeholder for a hot mail email count basically. But you know stuck and now somebody asked me what the silver guru does and I told them the right newsletter which of course I really didn't but I wanted to and that started the business role and so that's how I basically got in and again is a passion it's more about honest money on a systems fair financial freedom throughout the marketplace especially a real free market where the participants determine what the true value of something is on a. Daily minute you know a minute basis an hourly basis weekly basis to monthly basis ticket how you wish but without you know this control mechanism that's been employed for years and years and years so long story hope it helps but that's kind of it I got. I know I had an aircraft career which is very exciting and lots of stories and we'll go there but I'm glad I got to experience what I did to get to where I needed to get to and I will say one thing for the engineering nerd community without my strong engineering background I don't think my economic thinking would be as clear as it is and I say that with a bit of pride I don't want a proud man but focusing on fact is very very important in any endeavor in the spec especially in the economic sphere where there's so much nonsense that's accepted as dogma by the community when it's completely proven to be false. What does that mean let somebody who's not involved in financial markets they're investing just as a casual side you know a hobby what not what is honest money mean well it is it could be used as a as a metaphor honest money is the idea that there's ownership value of money and that it is intrinsic and has value of itself now you can make the argument that you know gold is just a rock that's been refined it's shiny but doesn't really hold intrinsic value. I don't go there we have 5,000 years of history that people when they're free to decide for themselves have always coveted gold silver really copper as well as monetary assets or at least units of trade and I don't think anyone can argue that the physicality of a round disk of a certain mass is a way that you can exchange or barter for other goods and services. So the market's really determined what honest money is dishonest money is something that's either derivative of that which is a piece of paper or certificate or digital form that represents that but in actuality isn't it. And then a full fiat system is basically nothing more than the power of force where a government can force a certain legal tender law that you must accept the following basically intrinsically worthless unit of account for daily transaction and usually for tax payment so that's kind of a brief look at honest money. And if we even if we teed up like moving away from a gold standard is recent that's Nixon and 71 if I'm not mistaken that was when we moved off the gold standard and so that people who are older they recognize the difference and they recognize there was a gold standard one point but younger individuals is just always been pure fiat. So what what has been the result of of moving off the gold standard what have you what you know we speak about fiat and legally imposed money system it's the only money system many people know. So what has been the result what has been the implication of that and how do we how do we actually I'll let you go off that first and then I have a couple of. Well the result is very predictable if you look at monetary history even at a cursory level basically when you have nothing that's the policeman on the currency in other words when you have a gold standard or. Better yet a primary by metallic or trim italic standard. You're limited in the amount that you can produce them you know how much more can you get per year out of the out of the ground and gold is roughly one and a half percent a year so. The money supply does expand but in a true honest money system or gold standard gold silver standard what you have is the ability to expand the economy but at let's say a more modest rate but it doesn't mean because the rate is determined by the money supply but that doesn't mean you can expand as rapid lose we have somewhat arguably that you wouldn't be able to expand because it be more prudent on the loam side. There wouldn't be a lot of you know well it's just funny money anyway here take this amount and see if you can make that project happen or not there be a little more you know substance to the loan situations. Having said all that we are in a situation now where the latter is taking hold and we're printing ourselves in the oblivion and that's the point. The point is that every time you go on a full fiat system you start to see the money is worth less and it's not that noticeable and a decade later it's worth less and it's somewhat noticeable in a decade after that it's worth a lot less than 1971 and then it turns to be worthless or moving toward worthless. So you got from worth less to worth less to worthless and that's a history that cannot be denied. Fiat full fiat systems have a 100% failure rate does that mean the US dollars going to absolute zero and it's almost 100% guaranteed it won't. But it will get close enough to be enough fear in a marketplace that there will be either a new monetary system enacted which I believe will be the case. Or they'll give up on the currency will be a currency replacement there's lots of options so the dollar will never go to with the why my republic or Zimbabwe did in my view. In all inflation and in deflation and that's an important point to remember that you know let's say you got a million dollars in the bank and right now today as we're doing the interview Scott you know you can get so many automobiles one big million dollar house or whatever. But as a thought experiment let's say over the next month to accelerate our thinking it drops in half every week so week goes by it's only buys a half a million in goods the week after that only buys. 250,000 in goods a week after that it's 125,000 and a week after that you're looking at you know 75,000 or. 50,000 in that range and all of a sudden you know you realize that i've got to spend this stuff as fast as i can so when it goes to zero you're in a deflationary mode i mean you're going to look for something that actually has value with this currency doesn't what does. And in those instances several times in times past it's been the primary precious metals the banks know all this they're not ignorant about it they're not ever going to say it in a public. For them and if they do mention it at all which Allen Greenspan has done a few times when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve it's a very subtle mention and it's really not nearly as straightforward as what i'm talking about but they will allude to the fact that paper currencies fail that you could be paid your social security check but what you can't guarantee is what it will purchase. Well that's that's what's that's what's screwing over younger generations now because now everything's going up in price so if you look at the major city so i'm originally from Toronto i'm i'm Canadian i'm from Toronto and you can't buy it attached home for less than two million dollars and there's other. There's other issues that are stopping that but i mean the the average i think i think to live in Toronto you have to make about 200 K to be considered middle class $200,000 a year to be considered middle class and the salaries are not just the people are not just handing out $200,000 salaries and that carries over into everything so now you see now we're starting to see defects in major urban areas for sure maybe maybe less so in like smaller in smaller cities where. Life seems more affordable but it obviously impacts everybody so what's so what's the fix for this like you know we try and we print money right we print money to. You know to to help the economy when covid happens to keep up with you know foreign entities that are also printing money and to and to maintain that pace so what's the alternative to this well let me speak at that we can. Reass the question i just listen to. Mr. Ackerman Rick Ackerman from that's i think so today area i met him through a mutual friend a long time ago the guy that I introduced me was a. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode playbook now what is playbook playbook is an app that gets to know your unique financial situation and helps you get the most out of every dollar you save the best part you don't have to do any crazy budgeting or change a single thing about your lifestyle so if you're just making money but you're not sure what to do with it playbook is the app for you for the average user playbook helps boost their net worth by over $1.3 million. Playbook tells you which tax advantage accounts that you need how much money to put into each one of them and automates all these investment processes for you it's rarely find a finance app that thinks about your finances as a whole this includes your taxes your savings and your life goals it was super simple to set up i just set up all my accounts and then i set my preferences as to where i want to put my money and then it's on autopilot so i can be investing in my Roth IRA. and my travel fund or my new car fund or my wedding fund or my kids education fund all in one spot and on top of that because it can forecast where i'm going to be in 10 20 30 years i know exactly how much money i'm going to have when i do want to retire or when i'm going to actually hit those milestones in my life financially because i set up these automatic contributions so if you want to get on the road to financial freedom go to hello playbook dot com slash Scott you can immediately predict. when you can finally stop working you don't even have to sign up for the service yet you get a free playbook impact is going to predict your net worth if you follow the guidelines that they set up for you so remember to hello playbook dot com slash Scott that's your special link for a free assessment and basically road map for your future net worth sign up for playbook today so you can enjoy financial freedom and beyond. i have almost every book ever written by Mr. Myers he wrote he's long deceased live is spoken by the way at one time was Canadian movies spoken and wrote several books and he wrote probably the preeminent newsletter member i told you I was a newsletter junky back to my 20. Yeah, he wrote Myers finance and energy and from my perspective it stood out there a few writers that really stood out he was one of them. And what he talked about was, and this is from Rick's interview that was just very recent, but all debts are paid, which means that you loan the money and you lose because you made a bad loan. So your million dollar loan on that house that the mortgage holder could not pay. In that case, you get the house back, so that's not a really good example. So you make a million dollar loan based on a signature saying, it's God, I trust you, I'll pay you back. You can't. So the person or entity that loan that million dollars just paid for it. It's God. It evaporates into monetary heaven as Jim Dines used to say, or on another loan of a million dollars, someone takes Linda and Linda pays back the loan. But the money that's involved is, as we know, from finance or accounting, double entry bookkeeping. One asset is a liability of somebody else, but the money exists. So when the money is produced, or the currency is produced by the loan, in a free market, if you make a bad loan, you have to pay the price. So you lose. Hey, I saved up $10,000, I'm going to loan it to the government, I'm going to buy this bond, and then the government says those bonds are in dollar. Now, I'm not talking about the US, although it could be, but I'm not. I'm going to use bonds of the Civil War, for example. You put up the cash, and I'll who paid? Well, the cash buyer of the bond paid for the bond, and it was worthless. So that money is gone for that person, but that money did go to the person that issued the bond, and what did they do? They bought munitions with it or whatever. So anyway, I'll probably be laboring the point. The idea is that there could be, as I said earlier, a lot of deflation when these housing prices come down, because the market usually meets the conditions at hand, which means if the average person in Toronto is making, I'll make up a number 80,000 a year, and 200,000 required to buy a house, well, the housing prices will probably come down, or salaries go up. I don't think the salaries will go up this time, as Rick pointed out in his interview, back in the late 70s and 80s, it's called cost push inflation. I think that's the term, that's what I remember. But wages kept increasing. I remember when I started my aircraft job, my first check, I got, I was a little uptight, because it was greater than the contract I'd signed. And so I was, you know, 22, kind of scared in a big corporation, I asked one of the people that had been there, I said, I don't get it. This is actually, oh, don't worry about that. That's cola. What's cola? Is that something you drink? That's a cost of living adjustment. Every so often, there'll be a cost of living adjustment. Your wages will go up based on the inflation rate. So I just happened to be in that sweet spot where the cola contract demanded that we got an increase. Well, that's not happening this time. So you're not going to see the wages go, you might in a few cases here and there, but you're not going to see it enacted like it was when I was young. I really, really doubt that. So you've got static wages or lower wages with an increasing cost of things that are needed like food and energy. So you've got a real squeeze in what's called stagflation, really everything that you need costs more and wages are static or going down. So it really puts the hurt on the middle class, pretty much eliminates the middle class over time. I mean, look, I don't know what you make. I'm interested. I'm interested in you as a person, not as, you know, I want to be happy, healthy and wide and free yet. You know, your income level isn't as important to me. It is you that the type of person you are, and whether or not you're being treated in a manner by society that's cognizant with the ability that you have, and it's not. You already stated, and I want to put words in your mascot and you can retract anything I'm saying, but, you know, we're in an unjust system that is skewed to a few at the expense of the many. Well, I don't think that's inaccurate. I don't think that's an inaccurate thing to say. I think that if we just look at, like what people experience and the debts that they have, and the, like you just, I like the way you put it, is your compensation in line with your cognizant or your contribution to society? Is it in line in the same manner that it was 50 years ago? And it's not. It's just not. Like, you just can't make any argument for the fact, now maybe we can say we can argue about opportunity and, you know, we can look at different ways to make money, but then, but I wouldn't say that's fair because then that means you're doing more, you're leveraging certain vehicles that weren't around, that's fine, but that's not the first job with just a high school education being able to buy a detached single-family home. That's you just hustling and figuring out other ways to make money because you just want to push yourself to the next level and you can't expect everyone to do that. It's not reasonable to expect everyone to have to do that. People have different priorities, not everybody wants to work 80-hour weeks, 100-hour weeks just to buy a home and get that, you know, white picket fence life. I don't think that's fair. I agree in that. Just jump in a little bit more. I mean, you remember I was 11 when we went off, you know, circulating silver. I mean, my dad, when I was, you know, two in our family, me and my sister, he worked, my mother never did. He made about 5,000 a year when I was like a three, four, five-year-old kid. On 5,000, consider it silver dollars, which would be about 4,000 ounces a year, was able to buy a house in the Bay Area in Timberon, actually, which is one of the most exclusive areas in the Bay Area right now, if you don't know that, I'm just throwing it out there, sort of like a Beverly Hills in Southern California. So my house in Timberon had, I think, only one car at the time. We had two cars later as I grew up. But here's the deal. I'm just making the comparison to where you sit right now, Scott, with probably roughly equal ability, drive, ambition, honesty, and everything else as my father. And there you sit with a whole different system, whereas my dad, again, was able to provide very well for our family, for his entire, you know, life, or my entire, let's say, childhood to adulthood, when I left it, you know, 18 to go to college. That's a dream that we will see again for a very, very long time. I mean, it was probably my generation. So 20 years later, where I had a very good lifestyle, it was pretty equal to my father's, that there's one huge difference. My wife worked at a professional job. So I had a job that was required a college degree, and my wife had a job that required a high skill set and a dental hygienist. And we lived about the same lifestyle. However, I'll repeat, it took two incomes to do that. Yeah, and now, and now we're at the point where it's not just two incomes, because now two incomes, for most people, $80,000 is a great salary. That's a good salary, you know, out of university, $80,000, that's a decent salary. You have two of those now, 160K. That means in Toronto, use that case study, you can't buy a home yet, unless you get, unless you get a handout. Right. Anyway, it's, so another point you bring up, but I thought it was interesting. The greatest depression in history is looming, but you still say that gold can make you rich. Those are two, that's a, that's a two opposite of this. So walk me through what, what's, what's happening? I didn't say gold can make you rich. I have it, times that silver could make you rich, gold can preserve your wealth. So gold actually does better in the deflation, and I'm not going to argue it, if you want to argue it, do some research. The best book on gold's ability to maintain purchasing power or value is written by Professor Roy S. Justin, called the golden constant. He shows in that book that gold does best in deflation. So I'm going to say, and it's certain times it could get overvalued and make you quote unquote rich. Most of the time it's done. Once it's actually done during this inflationary fiasco, we've been in for the last two decades. Gold started in 2000 to 52. It's currently around 1800. It's had a compounded annual growth rate of 10%. And the real inflation rate by Shadowseth.com by friend John Williams is about 9%. So gold has preserved your wealth. If you put your $252 into gold in 2000, and now it's worth 1800 in fiat in U.S. terms, you have maintained your wealth. You have not gone down. You have maintained or maybe increased slightly. So that's gold's function. It's performed quite well, and I may be guilty of this, I don't mean to be, but looking back and being honest with myself, trying to be, I might have given off the idea of these explosive moves, and I have said silver, especially, does spike high and spike low. And gold did the same thing at the end of the inflationary scare. I mean, we really thought, or at least overstudied people like me, thought in 1979 to early 1980, the currency was going to fail. I admit it. That's what I thought. We saw inflation going to 13% officially. We saw prices being marked up almost daily. We know that inflation could cause a currency crisis. Looks like we were in one. And actually, I would argue we were. And then they had a very strong, fed chairman named Paul Volker that came in and said, I'll fix it. I'll put interest rates around 20%. And for my overstudy view and knowledge of monetary history, that's mafia money. That's kind of money you get on a street loan. When you're down, down and out, and you've got a borrow money to pay your uncle because you're going to break your legs if you don't, you'll accept a 20% interest rate. But the US government, we're done. Well, I was completely wrong. We weren't done. It was the beginning of the greatest bond market move in ever. And as you know, as bond prices, as interest rates go down, bond prices go up. So people that bought the 30-year back then enjoyed whatever the exact amount was 17 and a half percent interest. And the bonds kept getting higher and higher and higher priced. But now we're at the point where whenever something doesn't cost much, it really doesn't have much value. So a zero interest bond isn't really that valuable if you think about it philosophically. I'm not thinking about it in numbers terms. I'm thinking about it from a philosophical or, let's say, an Austrian perspective, where if it doesn't cost anything, how much value does it have? If it yields nothing, I mean, if you bought, you know, I went to the grocery store and bought the grocery bag and brought it home, it yields you nothing and you have valuable resources. Right? It's not the worst logic, it's not the worst logic. No, but I think that realistically, what I was trying to pull out of that, I didn't mean to say that you were hyperbolic in your discussions about gold yet. No, no, no, I'm not trying to be consistent. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode. It's an exciting new investment platform, I can't wait to tell you all about it, called Masterwork. They're a $1 billion FinTech unicorn, democratizing one of the largest and oldest asset classes around high-end art. Billionaires have been scooping up van Goghs and moneys for decades. While the rest of us have to watch from the sideline, but now anyone can invest in multimillion dollar paintings thanks to a recently changed law. So why should you consider investing in art? Well, for starters, contemporary art pieces outperform the S&P returns by 174% from 1995 to 2020. Plus, the Wall Street Journal reported that the art market is one of the hottest markets on earth right now. Masterworks has masterpieces from artists like Picasso and Warhol. Now you can invest in multimillion dollar paintings like stock. In fact, early investors got a 32% annualized return from a Banksy painting in 2020. Now you can get it on the action with over 250,000 members demand is exploding. So to secure your spot in the front of the line, just head to masterworks.io slash success. I'll see you there and make sure to see important disclaimers at masterworks.io slash disclaimer. You know, I try not to over exaggerate the amount of what I consider to be required exposure to the metals and that's about 10%, maybe 20. And that's where you have the point seem to be the most upset with me are the ones that never heard that statement, although I try to make it almost every interview. But if there is a recession or even if you just want to set it and forget it, so to speak, gold will be a decent store of value for that. Now let's talk about so do you think do you think there's going to be a recession in the next six months, 12 months, five years, 10 years or rather a depression, right? I guess I guess almost processing depression, I think we're in one already. I mean, remember what a depression is. First of all, the expression has to do with the mood of the culture or society. They're depressed. They don't feel good there. And so what is it? You can define it in several ways, but one is high unemployment. Another one is uncertainty of the future. Another one is supply, I'll say break down, but supply chain questions. Another one is lack of goods, in other words, economic activity deteriorates. So as a corny example, I've used many times if you go into a modern supermarket in North America, as I've been in Mexico, Mexico is very well stocked too. But if you go to the pickle aisle, when I was 12-year-old kid, when my mom went grocery shopping, it was pretty modest in those days, you had Del Monte and Hunts Pickles, that was it. Now there's 40 brands, right? Or 25. They've got the crickly pickle that's the same size as a hamburger bun with a twist alive. It's ridiculous. So you're going to see a lot of that go away, a lot of it, and you're going to get down to basics. So that's another factor or another data point that you can use to prove that we're getting toward a depression. Hard to find jobs, as I said, high unemployment, people that give up, people that will rather just take the government doll and do nothing rather than look for a job to get discouraged, to give up, they say, you know, they are depressed. So a lot of those factors are apparent throughout our culture, both not only in North America, but it's pretty pervasive around the world. And the food supplies decreasing, the meat supplies decreasing, the job supplies decreasing, and you have an over abundance of things that no longer work in society, such as office space. So commercial real estate really hasn't hit the hammer yet, meaning that the prices of most commercial real estate on the downside is far from over. And residential is going up in certain areas, primarily in the U.S., because I can speak with some authority in rural properties, not so much in the large cities, although I don't have a lot of data there, I could look it up. So Scott, we are heading in a trend. And I think more important than what I want to say just came to mind, because I look at this pretty carefully, and one of the best books from my experience was The Collapse of Complex Societies, and this is where I have a real, real, real problem with the WEF. And that is, they'll take everything down and build it back better. The one conclusion after studying the kind of empires, the Mesopotamian, the Persian, the Mayan, the Roman, all of the great empires, Byzantine, did not matter if it was war, agriculture, monetary, weather, didn't matter. There were lots of reasons why they collapsed. The point is, once they started down, they did not come back. So you take the whole world down. You wipe out the middle class. You wipe out the purchasing power, and you're going to build it back better. Good luck with that. Let me know how it goes. So you're not optimistic. You're not optimistic that there's any recourse. You don't see us moving in the right direction. And I know that what are the standard ways that people try and fix, right? If there's a huge deficit, they'll tax more, and they'll try and get more money, they'll try and reinvest it. But I don't think that we've seen much positive from entities that do tax more, or even if you look at the United States right now, and I'm not a finance specialist, I'm not a tax agency. But I just look at the states that are doing well versus the states that aren't. So it doesn't seem like taxing. You just thought, I think you put me in the right place under the statement I just made. And I won't take it back. That's what I truly think. However, you said, well, it's pretty bleak, and it is. But I'm also, you know, the other side of the coin, so to speak, is that we've got to hit bottom before we can build back. And the build back won't be from the ruling class, although that's what they want. And it'll be our own human ingenuity, our own communities that we build back are probably dispersed. I mean, I wouldn't rule out the idea that the United States of America turns into a less federalist zone run by the district of criminals in the Washington district, and turns back to states rights. And some of these states may say the heck with your, you know, phony money, we don't want it. To our own, you know, statehood, which is how it's designed, by the way. So there could be a breakup within the US. I'm not forecasting. I'm just throwing that as an idea. But the idea being that I think it has a lot to do. And this is a bit woohoo, Scott, with a resurgence of value and the value being spiritual. And what I mean by that is there's been a push that we've been programmed by, especially in North America, but worldwide, everybody wants that white picket fence in the house as a metaphor for the good life. And you've been conditioned to believe what the good life is. And it primarily revolves around materialism. You know, how many cars do you have and what kind of car is it? You know, I don't need a watch. I need a watch that has this, you know, this brand on it. And all the stuff that we've been programmed that, you know, more stuff makes us happier. And that isn't true. And I had to learn that myself, like a lot of people that become successful, especially if it's fairly early, you know, you get the stuff and more stuff and that's not making me happy. I've got more stuff. So I digress to come back because we need to get into what's valuable and what is valuable. Honesty, integrity, friends, community, building relationships, your word is your bond. You know, real food, not phony package, fake meat, BS, I'm sorry, I'm a conifer, I apologize. My daughter is a vegetarian, so people bear that in mind and probably don't love anything on the planet more than my daughter's. So there you have it. We need to get bottom before we come back, hitting bottom in some cases isn't that bad a thing. Yeah, it's a rough ride. It hurts. It's painful. And out of that, you get the, let's say grit that's required to come back and really value what you want, because we've been told what we want, which is more stuff and it doesn't work. Now that stuff's been taken away and some people are crying about it because they are addicted to stuff. Some people have bought into the lie really in a big way. And others have us realize that, you know, humanity is a lot more than the stuff that you have. It's what you have inside. And we're learning that lesson again and again and again and it falls on your generation. If you read the book, the fourth turning, to be the hero generation and say, I'm not going to look at what I don't have, I'm going to look at what I do have and what I do have is youth. I have a lot of energy. I have great cognitive skills and we're going to figure this thing out. And your generation is the one that's going to build it back. It's not going to be the big elite megalomaniacs that talk like they own us and they think they do, but no one really owns you in the ultimate scheme of things. So got this philosophical, but I wanted to get that out because I do believe we're going to go down hard, but I think we're going to come back better, but better. I was actually, I was going to say it's, it's, it's funny that you, that you went down this path and I was thinking about asking this question, but I'll ask you, do you think the American dream is still alive? I don't know how to answer that. So I'll just move around in a bit. I think the American dream is changing as I just outlined. I think we're a lot of the young people you generation are questioning well, you know, if I get the white pick offense in the house and I think it's good to have a house. I mean, I really do think that is part of the American dream, and I don't think that's left. And I think a lot of people, as you mentioned early on in this conversation, that hey, look, I'm young and ambitious, I'm doing everything right, and I can't afford a house. And, you know, so I, I think that part still exists, but I also think there's a lot of question marks. I mean, not most of my daughters are millennials. And what I've observed in red and seem to fit is that a lot of them are more interested in experience rather than ownership. Like for example, let's just say this is corny, but it makes the point. In my neighborhood, we could have one lawn mower for like 10 houses, right? So we just share. We pull our money and you know, I'm going to save money and we pass it around on the weekend or whatever. No one thinks like that in my era, it's always, you have to have your own lawn mower. You wouldn't think it community terms or an experience. So millennials, much rather in many cases, have the experience of whitewater rafting rather than owning a raft, okay? Or walking through the grand canyon rather than having to condo whether I'm making this kind of stupid. But you get the point that the experience is more valuable to them than having another possession. And I think that's very important. And of course, it's an individual choice, but I think that's shift. So I'm trying to answer the question, does the American dream still exist? Yes, but it's changing to today's conditions and people are re-valueing what's valuable. I rather have this $2,000 vacation where I experience jumping out of an airplane, river rafting down the grand canyon, walking through the Zion Park and having food prepared by the greatest chef in Arizona, then having that thing that I just bought that I'm not going to pay any attention to six months from now. No, I appreciate it. And it was not meant to be an easy question. We're just going down that path. So I thought I'd drop it anyway. I want to pull, we didn't even go into what you're known for, silver, guru, silver. We didn't speak about silver at all. So I want to get some insight out of you on that because that really is, that's your core theme. That's like everything. That's your persona. So we can talk about that a little bit. And then I'll do something like rapid fire, just career questions to pull out some stuff from your career. So let's just talk about silver briefly. So we're talking about precious metals. We're talking about, you know, maybe looking to gold is some portion of your portfolio just as a safe bet when economies are not so certain. No one talks about silver. I don't know anything about silver at all. So what is, what is the, the plate for silver? Why would be silver versus gold? What is the correlation between silver and gold if any? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now this time of year is all about change. Whether your teams, your systems, or your Q4 to Q1 shifts, a CRM platform is a critical tool, keeping your business connected throughout all of that change. And HubSpot, it's constantly working to make its platform more connected than ever before to help you with that change with brand new features. Get into details about what makes your customers tick with custom behavioral events. Track site behavior and understand your customers buying habits all within the HubSpot platform. This is built in intent data right into HubSpot. And if you're looking to find more ways to keep your data clean and have a centralized system, the all new operations hub enterprise gives you the ability to curate data sets for all users, meaning even faster and more consistent reporting. Learn more about how a HubSpot CRM platform can connect your business at HubSpot.com. Well, there's an 85% correlation, which means that they're highly correlated. So when gold goes up, silver goes up, gold goes down, silver goes down, and we could say the reverse. Nothing's 100% correlated. So that's a very high correlation. So the argument, well, silver only does good during these times and gold is, today it's rather irrelevant because currently there's that high correlation. So if there's a depression and gold goes up, silver most likely will also, or there's a hyperinflation, silver will go up, gold most likely will smell. There is, you know, I was studied, as I said early on, and pretty much a gold bug and pretty gold centric. And then when the hubbrothers situation took place, it really raised my curiosity, why silver, why not gold? And they did have gold. They had gold stocks and that's in gold, but they really were interested in silver market. And so I started looking at it and realized the importance of honest money and silver plays a role in that. So you know, one of my earliest things that I wrote for the public was the 10 rules of silver investing. And of course, looking at the rather do me side, but realistic of empires in the collapse of such, of the first rule of buying silver, 10 rules of silver investing was one, no it wants to be a profit of doom. But in the unlikely event of a total financial collapse, silver will be the money of last resort, not gold. Because gold will be too high unit value for everyday purchases, whereas silver could be used in daily transactions. So that's the paraphrased rule number one. So silver really has been money more often under more transactions than gold ever has. You want to verify that, go buy a bag of Canadian silver coins, you know, 70 percent. So I know Canada changed the percentage of silver in the coins over the years. The US didn't, but regardless, there are, you know, silver coins still available for investment purposes or monetary value purposes in Canada in the US. And in other nations, because at one time, we're basically on the silver standard, more so than a gold standard, believe it or not. So I think that sums it up. I could go on and on. I mean, you could find by their lectures, silver's got two components. One is industrial, one is monetary. They're both increasing rapidly these last couple of years. I think that trend will continue. And I think that silver is the better speculation, but I think gold is required. It's kind of an anchor sort of like buying the Dow Jones and you might buy the NASDAQ index. But if you're especially older, you'd have a higher percentage in the Dow than you would in the NASDAQ because of volatility, but I think having them both is better than having just one or the other. Amazing. Okay. That's useful. And that sort of, you actually just, very succinctly made it very clear exactly why people would even look to silver because I don't think that's something that is actually talked about quite often. So I appreciate that. Okay. So I want to ask some rapid fire before we pivot. What I wanted to get out of you was, I wanted to just understand what, where is David Morgan going next? What's next in your career with your brand, with the work you're doing? What excites you? And then secondly, where do people find you reach out to you, social and website? Well, what excites me is the fact that I've been able to help a few people, maybe more than I know. I don't want to be getistical, but I have won't get up people. And now I do the investment circuit and there have been people that came up and thanked me. And that's always very rewarding. And that's an intangible. Didn't pay me any silver or fiat that just came up and a human, a human said, hey, I want to thank you. That, see, that has real value to me. That's hard to heart connection looking in the eye and saying, hey, thanks, you helped my life. That's very meaningful. I'm going to continue on as long as I'm breathing until this thing gets to what I consider the end, which means, you know, the WEF fails miserably and we, the people have more control of our lives. So I'm looking at that. Not too far away. I think it's imminent. I wouldn't say imminent. I'll retract it. I think it's within a couple, three years. So I plan, my goal, really, personal is at the top of the mirror, as the metals do better and better on a paper price basis. I probably will try to sell the website and the business, kind of do a dud casey. I'll still do interviews once a month or something and write occasionally, but, you know, I'm older. I'm looking out a few years and like, yeah, I want to retire. You know, I want to just, you know, cash it in, read more, walk more, talk less, relax a little bit. So that's a long, age, well, there wasn't a follow up question. It was. No, just where do people reach you? So your social and your website, yeah, the best place is the main website, which is Val Morgan report.com, get our free newsletter. If you're interested in the paid service, the premium service, go to the subscribe button. If you're interested in books, pull down the book tab and I took consultations off their Scott. I just was doing too much and the consultations as much as I enjoyed talking to people just got to be more of a distraction for me, you know, I get in a group writing and then I have to give up that zone that I'm in and take a call or me a call. So now I eliminated that and like when I'm in the zone, I can just keep writing. Amazing. Okay. So a couple, a couple of questions to close out. What was the biggest challenge you've had in your career? How did you overcome? The challenge of my career was having to speak truth to power in my aircraft career. I basically ended my own career speaking truth to a very top level group of engineers and test pilots and even high ranking military people. And they all knew I was speaking the truth and I was kind of made the scapegoat and I had to make a decision within a matter of seconds. Do I speak truth to power and lose my job? Or do I hold it in and become a subservient yes man for the rest of my career? Very tough decision still could get emotional thinking about it. So that was number one, what was the other question? No, so how did you, so how did you overcome that like, how did you, how did you think through? I had to make that instant decision and decided I'd rather be true to myself than true to some ideology. So I'd rather walk as a free man, metaphorically speaking with my own integrity intact knowing that my career job, everything that I put all this effort into and had, you know, climb the ladders so to speak could and most likely would be thrown out the window and it was. And wasn't easy, but you know, looking back, it pushed me to where I am now, where I could do what I've always been passionate about, which is the markets. And I had a, you know, that kind of clean slate like we talked about early in this conversation where you are perhaps a lot of your generation is like, you know, there aren't a lot of prospects. What can I do on my own that entrepreneurial spirit, you know, I'm going to digress here for a minute and then we're going maybe too long on time, but, you know, early on, you know, the American dream wasn't go get educated and get a good job working for somebody. It was what do you want to do and what do you want to do to contribute to society? What business do you want to start? Well, you don't want to start a business, well, it works, but that's fine. That's your choice. I fully support that. But you got to teach these younger people, or in my opinion, strong one, you know, you can be anything. You know, now let's, if you're four foot eight, you're not going to be an NBA star. I get that. But you get the idea, there's too much limitation and you're in a cog in the wheel. We need to turn that upside down. Like you are a smart individual that can make something happen. What do you want to make happen world? You know, and there's a lot of people that do that and sometimes it's real simple stuff. It's like making a really good breakfast. I mean, there's a gal, I think her name was Mandy and I ran into her very else. You have going business at rocks, but I met her when she was making those things out of her garage, right? And I love that kind of spirit that people follow their passion and start at a low level and become successful and even more important people have a passion and start at a low level and it doesn't succeed and they give up, they don't give up. They pull themselves off, dust themselves off and do another one. I mean, that one doesn't succeed. It's not about being a millionaire that's so important. Although, you know, it's nice. It's what you learn on the journey to becoming a millionaire that's most valuable. Good. Very good. Very good. I appreciate that. If you could pick one person in your life that was the most influential or taught you something, who was that person and what did they teach you? Well, that's a tough one. I would say Harry Brown. He's a one brown with an A, ran for president of the United States twice on the Libertarian ticket. What he taught me is that being a gentleman is not a weakness. That being calm and not raising your voice is actually a strength. Being a very good listener is more important than being a great talker and giving the ability for the person to make up their own mind by presenting the argument in a way that's not argumentative so that the people can determine for themselves that their logic is invalid and come to conclusion with a general conversational tone that enlightens people. I would say Harry Brown, in my opinion, was an enlightened being. He would discount that, but having the honor of spending some of his latter years, personally with him, I would say that's probably the most influential human being that I have had the honor of knowing and, you know, on an egotistical or non-egotistical manner, I would like to consider the fact that, or consider the idea that I could be as valuable to someone in my lifetime as he was to me. Where would you, or rather what would be a source, could be a book or a podcast, anything that has impacted you that you'd recommend people go read or listen to? That's really tough. Is there anything, anything that, anything that is on that shelf behind you? There's so many that I listen to. I mean, I look at philosophy, I look at monetary issues, of course. I look at the mainstream news, I look at the left quite a bit because I wonder now how they think or are reacting or what's the fallacy. A lot of them are big-hearted people that have a very emotional tie to doing the right thing. They just don't understand, in my study view, how the economy really works or how a sound economy works. So, would I recommend, Scott, I just don't know, I'm going to say it in a general way. I think the most important thing that I've learned and would recommend is the old adage from the Oracle Delphi to my own self-betrue. And so, I would pursue something that has more to do with not yourself in a selfish way, but in a knowledge way where you can examine your true self. And I know that's overused in a new age movement. I'm not a new ageer. But the idea of what is the most valuable part of your life? And I'll sum it up this way, even though I can't give a strong, you should watch this YouTube or you should read this book. But the idea of to that own self-betrue is the meaning of life. Well, we all want to know that. I think that's a question everybody ponders. And I was given the answer some time ago and a Mins group that I attended at the time. And I really liked the answer and the more I thought about it, the more it resonated with me. And the answer is what's the meaning of life? And the answer is it's the meaning you give it. So, if you're spending your time on a video game or watching TV or doing something that may seem fun or whatever, and it's an individual thing, believe me, everybody's path is different. But what meaning do you give it? If you're meaning in life is to change the system from a elite banking cabal to the people having the power of money, which is basically summation of my purpose, the reason I get up every day, the reason I feel so alive and passionate. But that's me. That's me. They're people that are just as passionate about making surfboards and contribute greatly to the surfing industry. So, I'm not trying to make any one better than the other, but the meaning of life is the meaning you give it. Whatever you do, if it's Tiddlywink's championship, but you're passionate about it, I applaud you. I don't like the idea that we're an address rehearsal. Then I'm going to do it next week, next month, next year. Sooner to get this degree, I'll get the good job. I wasn't the good job. We have to get another degree to do it. All that stuff that's down to in your way. The best way to do it to start, do it, do it wrong, and learn from your mistakes and keep moving on. And when you get knocked down, dust off, get up and do it again. I think Perseverance is one of the keys to a strong, motivated, and industrious life. And it's balanced. Too much money? Yeah. Not enough. And so, you want to balance. And I'm just talking money, but it's your total self. You're being the right foods, the right amount of exercise. Don't overdo anything. So, let me be succinct. Moderation and all things. Be true to yourself. The meaning of life is what you put into it. You usually do get out what you give. Giving is more important than receiving. The best things in life truly are free. And the value of friendship and family cannot be overvalued. They are priceless. Well, that was the best answer to what book have you read lately. I think I've ever gotten that was, that was, that was very good. So, you kind of, you kind of just got all the other questions that I was going to ask you and you nailed them all at once. But I'll, I'll go through them quickly as well. I'll go through them. So, if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would that thing be? Never give up. Never give up. Okay. And then last question. What does success mean to you? Being content yourself. I think it's having that inner peace that you don't need to worry what anyone else thinks, whether you're successful or not, because you're your innermost self. You know. You've done it. You're there. And that doesn't mean you can rest. But it just means you can be at ease. And that, let's say that vibration, if you want to call it that, it can be pervasive. I mean, the idea, and this isn't proven by empirical evidence, I never was a rounder. But it's been said that someone of the ability or I didn't even know the right adjective to use of a mother tracer, you know, short little thing that she was could walk into a room and everyone could feel her presence. That's vibration. That's spiritual maturity. That's the, I wouldn't say, pinnacle of humanity. But it certainly does resonate with almost anyone. It has any idea of who she was and what she did, what she accomplished in her selflessness that she possessed. Put her at a level that very few have experienced. And I would say that would be an idea to consider. Amazing. David, thank you very much. That's all I got. That was incredible. I really, really appreciate the time. That was really good.