Inflation

A look at Jason’s Ultimate Investing Equation followed by Daniel and Gerard Adams for The National Inflation Association (NIA) recently featured on Inside Edition and ABC World News Tonight with Charlie Gibson, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, ABC’s Nightline, KTLA News and CNBC. After being ignored by family and friends about the coming stock market decline and recession, he started a YouTube channel called VisionVictory with some very interesting predictions on record:

On March of 2008 in his first video, he accurately predicted that the Dow would fall to 8,000 in the fall of 2008. The S&P would fall to 800 in the fall of 2008. And that global stocks wouldn’t decouple until after the fall of 2008.

In July of 2008, he updated his prediction and told his YouTube viewers that stocks were set to drop on the 3rd week of September and they did, in a big way, from the 3rd week of September to the 3rd week of October stocks fell 33%.

In December of 2008 he made a new prediction, that stocks would make new lows sometime in late February 2009. On the 3rd week of February, guess what? The Dow and S&P made new lows.

in 2008 while Ben Bernanke, Jim Cramer, and college professors around the world were predicting that the U.S. would not enter a recession. Daniel predicted a severe recession that would break all previous records. While Ben Bernanke said a recovery would take place in the summer of 2008, Daniel correctly predicted that the world would acknowledge the recession after the summer of 2008, and they did.

He also correctly forecasted rising unemployment, a collapse of consumer spending and many more well timed predictions.

The VisionVictory Channel is now watched by thousands and has a subscription base of 17,500. The VisionVictory Channel is also part of the National Inflation Association and helped with the documentary, Meltup.

In 2008 while Ben Bernanke, Jim Cramer, and college professors around the world were predicting that the U.S. would not enter a recession. Daniel predicted on the record, a severe recession that would break all previous records. While Ben Bernanke said a recovery would take place in the summer of 2008, Daniel correctly predicted that the world would acknowledge the recession after the summer of 2008, and they did.

He also correctly forecasted rising unemployment, a collapse of consumer spending and many more well timed predictions.

The VisionVictory Channel is now watched by thousands and has a subscription base of 17,500. The VisionVictory Channel is also part of the National Inflation Association and helped with the documentary, Meltup.

Narrator: Welcome to the American Monetary Association’s podcast. Where we explore how monetary policy impacts the real lives of real people, and the action steps necessary to preserve wealth and enhance one’s lifestyle.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the podcast for The American Monetary Association. This is your host, Jason Hartman and this is a service of my private foundation, The Jason Hartman Foundation. Today we have a great interview for you, so I think you’ll enjoy it. And comment on our website or our blog post. We have a lot of resources there for you, and you can find that at AmericanMonetaryAssociation.org or the website for the foundation which is JasonHartmanFoundation.org. Thanks so much for listening and please visit our website and enjoy our extensive blog and other resources there.

Start of Interview with Daniel and Gerard

Jason Hartman: It is my great pleasure to have the NIA on the phone today for an interview with us. And we have Daniel and Gerard. And NIA stands for the National Inflation Association. I have been following their work for a while now. They’ve produced some fantastic videos, and a new documentary entitled Melt Up. And these guys have some really interesting insights into what is going on and really, the scam that is being played. I’ll call it that – that’s not their words, it’s mine. At the highest levels of our financial system and how we can all best deal with it. Welcome guys, it’s great to have you.

Daniel: Hey, it’s our pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Jason Hartman: My pleasure. Gerard, maybe I’ll start with you. And just give a little background as to what NIA is and why you started it.

Daniel: Basically, NIA is the National Inflation Association. It’s an organization that we created basically because we were tired of all the propaganda that was being put out by the mainstream media. We felt that there wasn’t enough places for the people to go and get the facts about the economy, and why they should be preparing for hyperinflation, and we’re basically dedicated to preparing Americans for that hyperinflation and helping them not only survive, but prosper from it.

Jason Hartman: Excellent. Well that is a very noble mission, and I’m right with you there. So Daniel, what are your predictions for the future? Obviously you guys believe there will be a hyperinflationary future. What does that look like? Well, we’re looking at literally a depression in the United States but it’s going to be combined with inflation. Because we have all the statistics looking at baby boomer data, looking at peak spending for consumers. All of this is pointing towards a huge contraction in not only spending but revenues for the government.

But at the same point in time, we also will have the same projections for a huge increase in spending. So at the same time they’re decreasing their revenue and taxes as well as the local stores are decreasing their revenues and contracting and closing stores, we’re going to be matching everything that closes, everything that you look at would be vanishing in a depression-like situation. They’re going to be replacing it with more debt, with more printing of money. Because they don’t have a choice. They have an aging baby boomer generation that is yes, they’re going to be spending less in their older years but the way our entitlement system is built, we are going to be spending even more on entitlements.

For example, during the 90s we had roughly 500 thousand people a year enrolling on social security. And basically from this day forward it’s going to be roughly from one and a half million to two million a year. So as you can see the situation, the storm we’re going into is not only a depression here in the United States, but it is a highly inflationary situation where the government has forced inflationary policies.

Jason Hartman: I would agree with you. The thing is that if we parse up what you just said, it’s kind of interesting because a lot of the stuff you said would really make one think potentially that we have a deflationary future. Think about it: if we have a contraction in the economy, if we have store closings, all of that adds up to just sort of a smaller economy with less demand, less capacity utilization. And that would indicate deflation on one hand. Why do you say we’ll have inflation though? I mean, certainly money printing is inflationary.

Daniel: Well the biggest difference is that this will be the first global downturn in world history where there is not one single currency that is connected to a precious metal – not connected to gold, not connected silver, not connected to any commodity. So when you look at economics 101, yeah it spells deflation. But you have to remember that all the books in history have a currency that is backed by gold. So when you look at the great depression, we still had a currency that was backed by gold. So trying to compare the great depression in the 30s and the great depression from 2010-the early 20s, it’s really comparing apples to watermelons. Because this time you have to look at the currency situation. It dramatically changes everything.

Jason Hartman: That’s a very, very good point. Every currency in the world is now a fiat currency. And so there, we really get to this sort of race to the bottom phenomenon where all of them will potentially become worth their intrinsic value paper in ink. But maybe the US is the better of the lousy currencies. We’re certainly seeing that right now with what’s going on in Europe where the Euro, once thought to be the sort of star of the show just a couple years ago is now looking like a real disaster, huh?

Daniel: Yeah, exactly and it’s very deceiving because people will follow the dollar index. What is it is it’s illusions priced against other illusions. And that’s why the National Inflation Association, part of their 2010 predictions list was really to have people start focusing on the Dao price in gold. And as you can see the Dao, and most things relative to gold are actually seeing a contraction in their price relative to gold. So if you look at the Dao Jones, it was roughly over 40 ounces of gold in 2000. Today it’s just hovering right around, just over seven and a half, just under eight and a half. Kind of bouncing around there. So that if you look at the Dao Jones, you’re not really gaining any value. All you’re doing is you’re seeing the result of inflation, and of course this is what the documentary Melt Up shows with overwhelming evidence.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, and by the way you guys did a fantastic job on Melt Up. I’ve really got to say I’m impressed. You had over a half a million views of that, right?

Daniel: Yeah in just three weeks.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic Gerard. That’s really good work. We look at this sixty plus trillion dollar time bomb of entitlement liability hanging over our heads. This has never happened before in world history, we have aging baby boomers, we have Gen X, my generation, that is much smaller coming behind them, and then Gen Y coming up after that. And yet at the same time we have a reasonable size chorus of people out there saying that the future is deflationary. I don’t agree with them, but I’d just like you to address what they say. And here’s what I hear them say. I hear them say things like, “there is so much deleveraging going on, and so much more deleveraging to come.” They quote numbers like 46 trillion dollars in potential defaults coming up on various forms of debt. And they say things like “the government can’t print enough money to create inflation.”

Well that to me on its face is a completely stupid statement. Because the fact is that there is no limit to the amount of money that can be created out of thin air. But what do you say to the deflationists out there? They are out there. And they say that everybody’s talking about inflation, but they say the future is deflationary. And the first part of this downturn really was deflationary in many categories, wasn’t it?

Jason Hartman: What you’re looking at is the perceived value of a currency. And so right now when things are kind of normal, the system is still you could say relatively intact, although it’s being held together with simply nothing but printing more money. It is the perceived value of the currency. And that is the biggest difference between the deflationists and the inflationists. Because if you listen basically to our arguments, we’re reviewing and looking at the same facts.

We’re looking at the same statistics and we pretty much agree all the way up until basically what is going to be the short term result? Even if you talked to some of the biggest deflationists. Even Harry Dent out there and Prechter, they will tell you that yes they believe in deflation. Of course they’re huge on deflation, but they’ll also say well, in about ten years though we will experience huge hyperinflation. So the timing is really different. I think both camps do inevitably believe that it is going to be a dollar situation.

So really that is what separates us. But just getting back to the currency, if you keep interest rates low and keep the quantitative easing, you’re going to experience the results of hyperinflation because you are already doing it. If you raise interest rates like everybody says it’s just going to be so easy to do, let’s be real, what would happen to the US economy if interest rates went up 5%? We can barely sell homes by giving people eight thousand dollar tax credits and having interest rates for the banks at 0%. If you raise interest rates, this economy will freeze up. And as it freezes up, just like the world is turning its back on Greece, they will look at the US dollar as no longer a stable currency because the US dollar is still backed by the US economy and the perception that we can grow ourselves out of this.

Once they see it freeze up because we raised the interest rates 2%, 3%, 5%, the world will know that the United States is either going to have to print to devalue their currency to pay off their debts or they’re going to have to default. Either way it equals people running from the US currency. And investor demand for treasuries will collapse. It’s already contracting. Some of our biggest treasury buyers are already contracting in their holdings. So we’re already seeing the world look at the dollar not like they have ever in the last 30 years.

Jason Hartman: Right, and those treasury auctions directly relate to mortgage rates, and that is why I agree that we must. It is absolutely impossible that we will not see higher mortgage interest rates in the future. We must see higher rates. There’s no other way.

Daniel: There’s no doubt that we might see more mortgage faults in the future and more forced liquidations on Wall St, but that’s not going to change the fact that the dollar would not be looked at as a safe haven and that people need to position themselves into gold and silver, which are the only things that will provide protection from both a deteriorating economy and massive inflation.

Jason Hartman: Very good point. So what’s odd is I’ve had Harry Dent and Bob Prechter on my show before, and oddly enough Bob Prechter is a very interesting guy, and so is Harry Dent of course. He still kind of believed in the metals it seems like, even though he’s a deflationist and he’s got that big report he wrote on coping with deflation. It’s sort of contradictory if you ask me. And then Harry Dent said something that I just don’t understand at all. He talks about the fact that young people are deflationary. When they enter the economy, and he’s referring to Gen Y, 80 million Gen Y-ers entering the economy and creating more innovation and that being deflationary. Well I guess it is from a technology standpoint, but food and energy and commodities are what we all really live on, not iPhones although they’re super cool. Right? I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Daniel: Yeah, well what he’s basically reviewing is the fact that young people pay less in taxes and they make less money. People peak in income around 50 years old. They’re peaking and spending around 46-48 because they’ve got these teenagers in the house eating everything, they’ve got to buy car insurance, they’re paying for school. So I think that’s what he’s probably looking at.

But see we look at that and we put the math together and go wow, we’re probably going to have less income and more entitlement spending. More spending. The spending doesn’t contract. It doesn’t matter. If you look at republican, democrat, it doesn’t matter who’s in the house, who’s in the senate, who’s in the white house. We know one thing about this government, they spend. And if they don’t have the money, they have no hesitation to borrow it. So we know the result of borrowing and the result of printing is economics 101 which is hyperinflationary.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, no question about it. What do you consider hyperinflationary? Is there a percentage number? Does that mean 20%, 50% per year? Does it mean Zimbabwe ten zillion percent per year? What does that mean?

Daniel: Basically when you’re looking at hyperinflation by definition, we are already in a situation where we are hyperinflating our currency. When you look at the M3, how it shot up over the last two years. People talk about oh, the M3 is down.

Jason Hartman: They stopped reporting it.

Daniel: Well, it’s down from the moon but it’s still really highest. The Federal Reserve has so many bad assets, has increased its books in the trillions. Look at the US. It took 40 presidents to hit a trillion dollars of national debt. We just did a trillion in the last 7 months.

Jason Hartman: That’s amazing.

Daniel: So if you want to talk about hyperinflation, by definition we are already hyperinflating our currency – we are just waiting for the results. As far as what kind of percentage are we going to see in prices, that’s hard to say for sure. In terms of dollars I think you’re going to see double and certainly need items in the triple digits of price increases.

Gerard: We already believe the doorway of US inflation is already rounded to be 5-6%. There’s no doubt that we’re in a hyperinflationary period. It’s just that we’re waiting for the results of that to be price inflation.

Jason Hartman: So what has to happen for this hyperinflation to occur? By the academic definition that Daniel was talking about, which is just really money creation, we are already there. But people haven’t really noticed it yet. And I kind of like to say that we have inflation already in everything that really matters and everything that’s optional, we have deflation. But is it just a matter of that money trickling down from Wall St and the banks, are they just sort of hoarding that money and it hasn’t hit the streets yet, if you will? What has to happen for people to really notice this in their daily life?

Daniel: Well the average American is already noticing because they’re paying at the pump, food prices, this is a statistic that’s a month old now but they’re up 27% year to year. When you combine food and energy, that’s roughly 17% year to year. So the average person is already feeling this.

Gerard: If I could interrupt you one second there, even food stamp usage right now is at an all-time high over 40 million. People are definitely seeing it.

Jason Hartman: 40 million people on food stamps?

Gerard: Yeah, it’s at an all-time high. I think it just topped 40 million. I think it’s 40.2 million.

Jason Hartman: You know, the nanny state is here isn’t it? We are living in a socialist country. It’s just like everywhere you look the government is shoving out money it doesn’t have to buy votes. It’s just amazing to me. Incredible.

Daniel: I was at the grocery store today and I was with my wife, and I don’t know if anybody else has noticed but I sure did. When you look at the Dryers Ice cream, they are smaller than they were last year but they’re the same price.

Jason Hartman: Very good point. Another form of inflation: just shrink the size, keep the price the same.

Daniel: Absolutely. That’s a big thing and you see it going on with Frito-Lay. Here in Southern California there’s no more 24 packs of soda now, it’s 20 packs of soda but it’s still the same price. So there’s a lot of shadow inflation out there as well.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s a very good point. A lot of people don’t really notice that packages are shrinking all over. I was out at dinner last night and I ordered a drink. And I commented to the person I was with, I said hey, this martini glass is actually smaller than it used to be. And I remember thinking before that this restaurant has very big, generous glasses. And the glasses are getting smaller, so you’re absolutely right. No question about it.

Talk a little bit more if you would about the Dao gold ratio. Because I think that is a very significant measuring stick. Gold is a very reliable measuring stick, and the old joke is 2000 years ago you could have purchased a toga and a pair of sandals with one ounce of gold, and today you can buy a man’s suit and a pair of shoes. And it’s pretty darn consistent. When you talk about the Dao gold ratio, Peter Schiff about two years ago had a very interesting interview, very telling on CNBC with Mark Hanes and he said that there has been no real appreciation in the value of the Dao since 1929. The returns have been dividends, that’s it.

Then he had this guy from B of A on, and you’re probably familiar with his video. It’s floating around. And he’s trying to argue that the power of a processor has increased and all of the hedonic scams that they use to measure inflation and lie to us about it. But what else do people need to know about the Dao gold ratio? Talk to us a little bit more about that, because I think that is a very, very interesting metric that everybody should be looking at.

Gerard: During gold’s last bull market, we saw gold rise from 35 dollars to over 850 dollars for over 2000 percent gain. And from gold’s low in 2001 of I think it was about 255 dollars per ounce, we saw the same percentage game in that bull market descended to over 6000 dollars per ounce back in 2001. The other way to look at it is with the Dao Jones and gold ratio, which in 1980 had bottomed at one meaning that the price of gold matched the Dao Jones. If we saw gold and Dao Jones meet at medium current levels, we could see it rise to over 5000 dollars per ounce today.

Jason Hartman: That’s incredible. We’re in this huge mess of entitlement liability and I’ve identified six ways that the government might get itself out of this mess, and I’d just like to run them by you guys and see what you think, if I may.

The first one is that they could just default on the promises. This of course is way too harsh, it’s politically unpopular, I don’t think this is going to happen but it may to a small extent where they just say hey, we can’t pay the Medicare, we can’t pay the social security, etc. Again, harsh, unpopular, unlikely. Number two, raise taxes. Of course, they can’t raise taxes enough to pay for this liability. It’s so under water, it’s just not possible. But I think it will be a blend of all six of these things.

Number three is have a yard sale. Sell off assets to raise money, a few years ago we thought about selling the ports of Dubai. That was a big political football. The BLM sells off land, now I guess we’re considering selling military equipment to Muammar Gaddafi, our former enemy. Foreign countries own toll roads and so forth in the US. Number four, the American Military or the economic hit man. I had John Perkins on the show, I’m sure you know who he is – really interesting guy. Just steal from other countries, steal their assets, their commodities. Number five would be good news and that would be innovation especially in the area of technology, energy, biotech, nanotech, that would be good news.

But number six and most likely, and I think this is what you guys really agree with, is just simply inflate their way out of the debt. Huge inflation. They’ll keep the promises in nominal dollars, while in real dollars everybody just gets poorer and poorer, and our debtor countries, China namely, will get paid back in more and more worthless dollars. Any thoughts on those six ways out of the mess?

Daniel: Looking at the list you just provided, certainly of course I agree with you. It’s going to be default by devaluation. The government has no problem doing this. If you look at… everyone runs around talking about our standard of living, how well it is compared to 20 years ago. But because of the results of all the money creation, all the borrowing, the borrowing from the future, the borrow prosperity. Here you have, it now takes two people to raise a family. It takes a credit card. It takes a [0:20:07.5] credit.

I just talked to a couple a few days ago and they told me how they were debt free now because they had lumped every credit card and loan they have into their house. So people don’t even understand the concept of really being debt free anymore. Because they’re just so used to this life style. 20 years ago it took a grocery clerk to raise a family of three or four and now it takes two people working full time jobs. So the standard of living has deteriorated. When you look at seniors, they’re absolutely being ripped off because as bad as it seems when you look at the debt for social security and the obligation for social security, it will be even worse if we just calculated inflation the same way we did 25-30 years ago.

According to John Williams from shadow stats, right now we’re underpaying our senior citizens 43% because of all the different gimmicks that you’ll see in Melt Up that we do with inflation. How we calculate the CPI, which is how we give them their standard of living increase. So if you watch the movie Melt Up, or for those of you who have already seen it, you’ll know that we’re no longer measuring the cost of living, we’re measuring the cost of survival.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s a great point and you are so right about that. Because with substitution and weighting and hedonics, and then just out and out stripping things out of the index, it’s completely bogus and the government has a huge incentive for misleading the public. Number one, to buy votes and make them think they’re having a better life than they really are, but number two is all of the entitlements are indexed to the CPI which is controlled by the government. So there’s a huge motivation to mislead when it comes to this, no question about it. What do you think people should do? Really, what is the strategy of NIA and namely, what sectors do you think will see this hyperinflation? And this is in a good way for the investor? Obviously you guys like precious metals I think, right?

Daniel: Absolutely.

Jason Hartman: Are there any other areas where you see big opportunity for investment?

Gerard: Just so you know, we’ve released a review on our website. A gold and silver bullion review for those people who do want to invest into the gold or silver. Many websites out there actually sell the bullion right online. We’ve reviewed many of them and you can visit our website for those reviews. But we’ve made the best investment of the next decade to be silver. We believe silver actually has more upside than gold. In history it’s always outperformed gold and it’s actually a lot cheaper than gold right now.

We get a lot of questions and Emails from our members that say it’s hard for them when gold’s a

thousand two hundred dollars an ounce, but you can actually invest into silver and it’s below 20 dollars an ounce right now. And we feel there’s a lot of upside potential there.

But other than silver and gold, we do believe that agriculture as we’ve seen food inflation, we believe agriculture is going to continue to rise and we’re very bullish in agriculture as well as oil. We’re getting ready to release our next suggestion which will be an oil play. It’s our first oil play, and we do believe oil has a lot of upside. Especially to take advantage of the recent BP oil spill. Again, if you sign up to our newsletter, we consistently put out different suggestions and different companies.

Not only do we suggest to invest into the bullion itself, but we also suggest to play the minors and there are companies out there that are actually producing the gold and producing the silver and farming. And these are the companies that we believe actually even have more upside based on the market. So again, sign up to the newsletter and you can go to the website and see many of the stock suggestions that we’ve had. Almost all of our stock suggestions have been up since we released our website, so definitely check it out.

Jason Hartman: Excellent. And I have to say that as far as the metals go, and I’m not as much of a metals bug as you guys are, but as far as they go I think you’re absolutely right that silver is the play. Because traditionally that silver/gold ratio I think has been about 17 to 1 and it’s currently 68-1. So, if that tradition holds or even comes anywhere near where it used to be, silver has a big upside. I absolutely agree with you there.

Gerard: The American silver eagles that have been sold is also at an all-time high right now.

Jason Hartman: In terms of the number being sold you mean?

Gerard: Yes, but there’s not a lot of supply out there compared to the demand. So there’s definitely a lot of different characteristics out there that point to silver being a huge investment opportunity right now.

Jason Hartman: And it’s truly an industrial metal whereas gold really isn’t anymore. So I do want to run a couple things by you in terms of the metals. I’m a metals investor and I agree with you that it’s not bad. I just kind of look at metals as the way to preserve your wealth. I don’t really call them as much as an investment as many other people do, and I’ll tell you why. And I just like to run this by you: they don’t offer any financing, or income or tax benefits. And if you’re a little paranoid like I am, they’re subject to confiscation potentially and also subject to manipulation by central banks. And I think they’re being largely manipulated now.

I know that you had a video on silver manipulation and you were right about your prediction there. That was just about a month ago I believe, which I found interesting. And I agree that manipulation can never go on forever, but the question is can it go on longer than any of us can wait? And there’s that old joke about, referring to the stock market, the markets are irrational. Well yeah, you may be right but the market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent. So I certainly think you probably agree that central banks are manipulating the prices of the metals, right?

Daniel: Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. It’s to our advantage. You don’t want to buy something that’s being manipulated up, you want to buy something that’s being manipulated down. So when you buy silver for 18 bucks, send a thank you card over to JP Morgan because they’re the reason why you can buy it for 18 dollars and not pay north of a 100-200 dollars for the price of silver. And as far as the metals not offering a dividend, specifically looking at what we believe, like Gerard said, it was the investment of the decade.

Silver, if you’re a technology investor or a commodity investor, silver is where you want to be because, let’s say that you think cell phones are going to do really well or you think China and Asia are going to industrialize. Well, that’s what the play is with silver. Silver is in all these different components that we use every day. It’s in computers, it’s in cellphones, it’s a catalyst for medicine, it’s in the windows for skyscrapers, so if you believe Asia is going to continue to industrialize, we are using so much silver.

Really the supply and the demand is the most bullish factor for silver. If you look at 50 years ago, above ground available silver was ten billion ounces. We have shrunk that within 50 years down to less than a billion ounces of above ground available silver.

Jason Hartman: That’s amazing. It really is.

Gerard: Yeah and we’ve already started to see that there silver tighten up, and we definitely believe that there could be a major squeeze in the near future. And that’s why we tried to expose it in Melt Up and we hope that many people out there see Melt Up and can help spread the word, and the more that we expose it I think the closer we’ll become to seeing that squeeze.

Jason Hartman: I agree with you. This is just such a big scam, and so few people are really aware of what is going on with the ultimate weapon against them, and that is the value of their currency. So in what form would you buy silver? Silver eagles? Is that your favorite?

Daniel: Personally I don’t think it matters. I personally just buy silver bullion or silver mining stocks. But one thing I can tell you what not to do, is don’t get into the collector value. Don’t start paying 200 dollars an ounce for a silver coin because it was on some ship. You want to buy the metal.

Jason Hartman: Right, the bullion.

Gerard: And the first quarter of 2010, the US Mint sold over nine million American silver eagles, just so you know.

Jason Hartman: Incredible. So there hasn’t been much talk about this, but I have read and heard a

little bit about it. And that is the possibility that the COMEX exchange is a Ponzi scheme. And I tell you, if that is true, boy we are in for a very rude awakening. A lot of people think they’re investing in the metals because they own it in a fund and an ATF, but that’s really to me just another fiat currency. They’re getting a piece of paper for their dollars, and they think it’s a piece of metal yet they’re not taking delivery of it. So I like your system which I think boils down to physical delivery and mining stocks. So if you’re into metal, you hold the metal. Have you heard anything about that in terms of the COMEX?

Gerard: Yes we have, and that’s the main reason why we’ve said I think there will come a time where people will call and ask for the physical silver and we could see a COMEX default. We definitely suggest like you said, to buy it yourself, hold onto it yourself, many of those companies that sell it are on our website. And we definitely believe in a lot of the minors. Right now there’s a lot of silver minors out there that we are researching and that we’ve also suggested that are on our website that are significantly undervalued fundamentally.

And we definitely think there’s a huge opportunity there. And again, once that COMEX default happens and people call for their actual physical silver, we can see one of the biggest short squeezes that the world has ever seen.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, I tell ya, if everybody asked and that run on the bank, if you will, on the COMEX ever occurs and people want to take delivery, I don’t think they have all the metal there. I think that is a very strong possibility that that is true. But again, there’s no way for me to personally know. What do you think about the other metals? What do you think about copper, palladium, platinum… do you guys have any thoughts about that or are you just kind of all-around silver?

Daniel: Well, I personally would sound like a broken record because I don’t buy the other metals as much because every argument you can make for platinum or copper, that same argument is there for silver. Only times a hundred. It’s just like the same argument you can make for gold. It’s all there in silver. But it’s not vice versa. I cannot make all the arguments that I can make for silver, for gold. I certainly can’t make all the arguments I can make for silver for copper and platinum. So when it comes to the smaller investor, I believe silver is without a doubt their best opportunity.

Jason Hartman: Okay good. What would you like people to know and do? Just kind of summing this whole thing up. Definitely people have got to see the documentary you’ve created, Melt Up, which is great – I can highly recommend that myself. What else should people know? You know what I want to know? When. That’s the million dollar question everybody wants to know.

Gerard: Everybody really needs to start paying attention and educating themselves, and that’s the reason why we’ve created NIA is to help educate people. People need to get educated, people need to start spreading the word to their friends and family, people need to start watching documentaries like Melt Up and they really need to start looking at the facts and not following the mainstream media. So, the first thing is basically I think people should go to inflation.us, they should sign up, they should sign up to many other publications out there and start following people that we also believe in like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers, and obviously we’ve had an exclusive interview recently with Gerald Celente ,which was great.

Jason Hartman: Had him on the show too, he’s great.

Gerard: Yeah, he’s great and we suggest checking out the Trans Institute. And we definitely think that people need to start getting out of the US dollar and positioning themselves into gold and silver and things that will preserve their purchasing power. But most importantly, we want people to start getting educated.

Jason Hartman: Very good advice. Well, thank you so much gentlemen for joining us today. I really appreciate it, and I want to just tell you to keep up the good work. Give out the website if you would.

Daniel: www.inflation.us

Jason Hartman: Inflation.us, everybody go check that out. Daniel and Gerard thank you for joining me today.

Daniel: Thank you for having us on.

Narrator: The American Monetary Association is a nonprofit venture funded by the Jason Hartman Foundation, which is dedicated to educating people about the practical effects of monetary policy and government actions on inflation, deflation, and personal freedom. Our goal is to help people prosper in the midst of uncertain economic times. This show is produced by the Jason Hartman Foundation, all rights reserved. For publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com or email media@HartmanMedia.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate professional if you require individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of The Jason Hartman Foundation exclusively.

The American Monetary Association Show

Transcribed by Ralph