The world is awash in debt. The US leads the world economies (we're number one!!!) in amount of debt (31.5 trillion thank you very much). Who is owed this money? What will happen when we can't pay the debt? There are many questions when it comes global debt and the effect on the global economy.

News and Links

US Debt Clock

US Budget Surplus / Deficit History

Who Owns US Governmental Debt?

Who Owns Australian Debt?

January 18 2023 Weekly Close (USD)

BTC - 20,880.80

ETH - 1,552.48

ADA - 0.350368

Bitcoin Block at time of recording:

772467

CLAIM=edaf81d21ae4370702916ea321c973137ad0c3e7=CLAIM

Hey sat stackers, it's January the 18th. This is episode 91 of generational wealth of cryptocurrency

I'm your host McIntosh today's episode is about debt

Of course no one on this podcast is a financial advisor and all information presented on this

podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way,

let's jump on in. All right, we're going to start with our market update for the week.

I do want to apologize up at the front here that of course I'm two days late putting this out. I

did get tied up with some personal things, a project that is, I wouldn't say it's gone awry,

but it's kind of taken over. And I had a few days off, I had a partial day off from work and then

we had a holiday on Monday and the weather was pretty decent and I just ended up working for

however many days straight. And I really wasn't able to do the podcast until tonight. So it is

Tuesday night. Of course I'll be releasing this as soon as I get it out. So it'll probably be out

actually even before the 18th for the early birds. But anyways, that's the story. Let's talk about the

weekly close on January the 15th. By golly, we got some traction, ladies and gentlemen.

Bitcoin closed at $20,880.80. Ethereum at $1,552.48. So $1,552.48. And then ADA closed at

right at $0.35. All three of course up. I think ETH had the biggest gain, although it might be,

it might be ADA. ADA is up over 10% for the week. Trying to do this math. I should have figured this

out beforehand. Both of them did really well. Of course all three of them did well. I saw a statistic

earlier today that Bitcoin is up 30 something, 33% from its all time low or not its all time low

from the low of a few months ago. So maybe we are, maybe that was the bottom. Maybe that was

the absolute best time to buy. Of course I've always preached a DCA strategy. Excuse me.

The arrow gray is hot and tasty. But of course I've always preached a DCA policy. You shouldn't be

trying to time a buy in. What I said is what I was going to do was DCA and if we got to lower levels

that we so far have not reached, I was going to kind of go all in. If we hit $14,000 for example,

or $12,000, or even God forbid $10,000, I was going to push everything I could in. Of course

so far at least that has not happened. Now right now we are sitting at 21,234 as I record.

So we have gone up a bit since that weekly close on Sunday night. Funny thing, some people thought

that posted or whatever that Monday night was the weekly close because the US markets were closed on

Monday for Martin Luther King Day. I don't know. Bitcoin of course operates around the clock. So

I've been doing Sunday nights and I'll stick to being Sunday nights for the weekly close.

I don't really care about the US stock market specifically other than in general if that makes

sense. For right now of course Bitcoin and these other crypto assets are somewhat in lock with the

stock market. The S&P for example happens to be sitting right at $4,000 which of course for it is

a very critical level. It dropped down today a few points. It kind of held. It was like 10 points or

so. Went down to $39.90 but if it breaks definitively below that then we're going to start another cycle

of going down. I'm not sure at this point what Bitcoin is going to do. Of course as I always am,

I don't predict. This is a level of resistance that we're at. I think I've even talked about

this level before. If it breaks, well I will tell you what I think. I think it will sit

and we will follow the markets. There's more data coming out this week from the Federal Reserve.

The markets love to watch those things and if the major indices on the US stock market start going

down, Bitcoin is going to follow. There's been very few cases otherwise. I could see it going

back down and revisiting $17,000. In fact from a historical perspective, from a TA, technical

analyst position, it would be best if it actually came down and revisited that line, that descending

wedge pattern and then bounced off of it. When it went, it went. It blew right through it and

kept right on going. A lot of shorts actually got liquidated people who were shorting the market

thinking it was going to go down and that pushed it even faster. We know it's not going to go up

forever. It may pause, it may go down $1,000 and keep going back up, but in an ideal world from an

analyst position, it would be best if it came back down and revisited that line, that it went

through and then that line had become support instead of the resistance that it very clearly had

been. I'm not sure if that's going to happen. We'll see. All right. Tonight we're going to

talk about debt. This comes up because of one of the – I'll go ahead and actually read his

question. So Kyrin from the Mariborals podcast had boosted earlier. Kyron, a few weeks ago,

back on 1228, which actually was a couple of weeks ago, he said,

I'd love to hear an episode diving into debt. Macintosh, I'm confused to who all this money is

owed. If we took a snapshot of everyone and every entity's asset right now and tried to sort it all

out, it would be difficult. How much of the USA's 31.6 trillion is owed to Australia and how much of

their 0.9 trillion is owed to us? How much is imaginary money that is simply owed back and

forth? What countries or types of people would essentially become slaves until repaying if there

were no more fiat ability to manipulate the money? So we're going to dive into that a little bit.

I don't know if I can answer all of this without going a couple of hours and probably being beyond

a little bit of my real knowledge, but we can discuss this. I'm actually going to discuss

in detail. The best statistics, for good or for bad, are about the US. That's not me being a USA

homie. I'm not. I live here. I was born here. I'm a citizen of the United States. I certainly don't

deny that, but this is just finance. This is just money, and I don't play for the home team

when it comes to finance, if that makes sense. Because I think, to be honest, the USA is probably

leading the charge into, I would call it oblivion. Maybe that's not the right word, but it's the word

I'll use. There are a number of countries who have a large amount of debt. We do have the most debt,

but we do not have the highest debt to GDP ratio. GDP is gross domestic product. It's basically the

sum of everything that you create and whatever in a country in a year. One of the ratios that they

look at is your debt to GDP, and in terms of a percentage, we do not lead in that category.

That is actually a very important category, at least when it comes to these overall analysis,

because what we should see, to be honest, is the ones that have the highest debt to GDP,

and they would be the ones to either default or debase their currency.

I've discussed that in the past. I don't have that chart up in front of me, but I do not believe

that the US is the number one leader there. We do have an advantage, to be honest, because of the

current use of the US dollar as a global reserve currency. That gives us an advantage, no doubt.

Now, one of the things that's always baffled me is why we have that advantage. Why did the US dollar

become the global reserve currency? It was because of agreements that were made after World War II,

and I guess people feel like the only way I can figure it out, and despite popular opinion,

I was not around then to witness this firsthand, but people feel like the US won the war.

When we became involved, some might argue far too late, but whatever. Because we got involved and

helped win the war, then we got this winner's thing of being the reserve. First of all,

if it hadn't have been – and this is going to sound – you may be offended when I say this,

but it was because of Russia on Germany's eastern front, for example, that they had a large part in

that. That's just the truth. Of course, Great Britain became engaged very early on. If it had

not been for them, I think Nazi Germany would have had a much larger impact than it did. Now,

you may disagree. That's just my view, but we do know the outcome of that was that the US dollar

became the global reserve currency. It still is. There are rumblings of countries moving to other

currencies, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't think we have a God-given right to have the

US dollar as a global reserve. I actually think, to be honest, that a Bitcoin would make a great

global reserve because nobody controls it. See, if Great Britain controlled the global reserve,

or Russia, or China, or Japan, or any one of these major countries, they have an advantage.

Why should they have an advantage? You know who doesn't have an advantage?

Who creates a level playing field? Bitcoin. It does. So anyways, that's not really the point

of this discussion. When listening to this podcast, if you can, you might want to go to

the USdebtClock.org. There'll be a link in the show notes, but this is a great tool. Now,

this is very US-centric, but they do have world debt clocks and state debt clocks

for here in the United States, but world debt clocks that contain some of this data for other

countries. Unfortunately, it's not as in-depth. For example, for Chiron at Mere Mortals,

what we have – where is Australia? Here we go. There's Australia. First of all, Chiron,

I got bad news. You're not at $900 billion. According to this, you're at $1.179 trillion.

$1.179 trillion. So your national debt, $1.179 trillion. Your GDP, $1.788 trillion. And so that

puts your external debt to GDP ratio. All right. So we'll start with that. The US for comparison

is $31.495 trillion. You might as well round that up to $31.5 trillion. And our GDP is $25 trillion,

almost $26 trillion. So you can see in our case, our GDP is less than our debt. So in other words,

if you took all the output of the United States in 2023 and applied it towards the national debt,

which of course would not be possible, but theoretical, it would lower our debt to $7

trillion, roughly. But that's not even possible. Now, Australia, on the other hand, they're still

slightly above with their GDP versus their national debt. And I'm sure if we looked at these

countries enough, oh, well, I'll scroll all the way to the bottom. We've got Turkey, who has a

very low national debt. Well, they're a small country, to be honest, but a low national debt of

$417 billion. And their GDP is $884 billion. So their GDP is actually almost twice as much.

So there's all kinds of interesting analysis here. I'm going to go back to the main page.

And we're going to talk about some of these figures, because this will give you an idea,

certainly in the United States case. I actually believe that Japan is kind of the canary in the

coal mine, because they have one of the highest debts to GDP ratios. They also have an aging

population that will not be able to support the people who are growing older. So they have been

practicing what amounts to modern monetary theory, which I've talked about before.

It's a version of Keynesianism since roughly the early 1990s, if I'm not mistaken.

And so their debt has mounted dramatically. And as interest rates go up, they are really starting

to do some things in terms of their central bank, their planning or whatever you want to call it,

like our Federal Reserve. They're not normal. And they're trying very desperately at this point

to keep things in balance. And ultimately, that will not be possible. And they will fall.

And they will either default or they will debase their currency. And then we'll see what happens.

Right? I do believe that can lead to a chain reaction. And I heard an interesting thing

today. They were talking about macroeconomics. I know you all listen to podcasts about macroeconomics,

right? Besides this one. And they were discussing how we often think that things are going to happen

quicker than they do. And I have that problem myself in terms of even looking at crypto charts

and that kind of thing. If you guys remember, I had an episode here and I thought we were on

the edge of a cliff and things were about to crash like really soon in terms of crypto specifically.

And that really hasn't happened. The miners have not capitulated. We've had some go bankrupt

or go into bankruptcy, but massive numbers of miner ASICs have not been shut off. In fact,

if I'm not mistaken, basically on a weekly basis, we're hitting new all-time highs for

excesses of mining power. So the mining power is going up as more and more units come online.

That doesn't mean over the long term that what I was seeing doesn't happen. It's just

I miscalculated. Maybe I was wrong. I may be completely wrong.

Anyways, back to what we were talking about here. US national debt, 31.5 trillion. Now,

let's talk this. I love this breakdown. First of all, there's a figure here showing,

ah, there it is, US population. Now, I believe this is the number of people who live inside

the United States, whether they're citizens or non-citizens. It's 334 million. So keep that

number in mind. We've got a national debt of $31.5 trillion. The debt per citizen,

which is simply the national debt divided by the number of US citizens, is $94,211.

dollars. What does that mean? If every citizen in the United States, and I cannot find

a, on this website certainly, a definition for a citizen.

I said population was basically everybody who lived in the United States.

I'm not sure if citizens or people who are US citizens naturalized or born,

ah, I'm not sure if naturalized is born here. I think it's naturalized or born here.

If it does not include people who are here temporarily, or people who are not here as

aliens. I'm not sure, I don't even know what the term is these days, but people who basically

say come from South America to try and find themselves a better life. I don't, you know,

and they're not included in a normal census count and this kind of thing.

I don't know if that's included in this number. I don't think it is, but I do want to clarify

that I do not know that. That number is $94,211. That is far more than the average salary of

someone in the United States. So according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly

income as of the second quarter of 2022 was $1,041. So if you work that out, it's $54,132.

So roughly $54,000 is the average salary for somebody in the United States if they're employed.

Okay. So that's almost double that per citizen debt per taxpayer on the other hand.

So this is people who actually pay taxes is almost a quarter of a million dollars, $246,867.

When you look at numbers like this, this is why I say this is not payable. How can you pay this off?

Seriously, if the average taxpayer is paying a quarter of a million dollars in debt,

that's just not possible. So that's one way of looking at this. All right. But how are we

actually doing on our spending versus savings? Now, if you remember, back to our Austrian versus

Keynesian economics series, the Austrians are like, you should have savings, you should not overspend,

save for a rainy day, you'll use it later, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The Keynesians on the other hand are like, no, debt's not a bad thing, et cetera, and so on.

The Keynesians must be ecstatic because of all our debt, right?

Okay, for 2023, I guess, our spending for the year is what I'm looking at here.

The total amount of dollars appropriated and spent by the US Congress

and approved by the president, $6 trillion, roughly. I'm rounding that off a little bit.

It's a little bit higher than that, but it's a little bit higher than that.

I'm rounding that off a little bit. It's a little bit higher than that, but it's close enough.

The official deficit, $1.4, I'm actually rounding that a little up, it's $1.397 trillion

for a single year. Now, below that, that actually isn't the actual spending and deficit,

and they have different ways of figuring that out. The actual spending is $6.172 trillion

versus $6.005, and the actual deficit is $1.564 trillion instead of $1.397, so it's even worse.

You see that the debt is continuing to grow. If you look at a history of the US federal budget

over time, there's a chart, there's a page, I'll put it in the show notes, and it actually says

over 119 years since 1901, up through 2019, which is when this was done, the federal budget is 89

times on the red, so that's actually 75% of the time, and only 30 times on the black are in surplus.

That's 25% of the time. Now, that doesn't take into account how much the red versus the black is

and how that balances, but what we do know is that right now we're sitting on $31 billion,

excuse me, $31 trillion of debt, so clearly there was more red than black,

if you want to look at it that way. Let's move on. I don't want to get too bogged down into this.

Right now, we are sitting at a US federal debit to GDP ratio of 121.5%. This is the US national debt.

It is the debt of the federal government, basically, divided by the gross domestic product.

Like I was saying, we cannot take the output of the United States, $25 trillion, and pay off the

debt in one year. Obviously, it's more than that. Not that you could, but just to give you an idea.

Japan's, I believe, is over 200%, but we are approaching some very high levels ourselves.

According to this website I'm looking at, it's 225.8%, so obviously they are extremely high.

I also want to say, and I'm really out on a limb here in trying to remember this, but I believe

that there's been like 55 times or so in modern history, essentially, whatever that means, that

countries have gone over, I think it's 125% or so in debt to GDP, and out of those 54 of them have

ended in default or debasement of the currency. Japan is the lone holdout on that. Don't quote me

on that because I don't have those figures right in front of me, but it's an astoundingly high

number, and there's a lot of countries that are entering that kind of 100 plus percent territory

where they're flirting with that, where they just can't pay it back.

They can't pay it back. All right? So that is something to keep in mind. What are some

of the largest budget items? What are we spending our money on? Medicare, Medicaid,

a single payer healthcare system that's for people who are 65 and older here in the United States.

It's funded by payroll taxes, essentially, so you pay into it during your working lifetime,

and then you receive it when you're 65. Social Security is the second. Medicare was 1.5 trillion

if I didn't say it. Social Security was 1.2, and of course, Social Security is kind of our

retirement program. I'm not even going to get started on that because I don't have anything

good to say about Social Security here in the United States. The third item is defense and war,

$775 billion per year. That basically goes to the DOD that they then allocate out to different bases,

operations, salaries, of course, of the soldiers and airmen and sailors and all this kind of stuff.

All right. So the interest on the debt right now this year, if I'm reading this correctly,

is already half a trillion dollars, or maybe that, no, that is for the year in total.

So we're another half trillion dollars in debt for this year, so we'll just keep racking it up.

All right. And there's a lot of data here. I would highly encourage you to take a look at this website.

So there's data about our personal debt. It is actually extremely high, and

trying to get this to come up. I actually saw student loan debt in here. As an example,

a lot of people are going on about paying off student loan debt and this kind of thing.

Right now, student loan debt is $1.775 trillion. So we'll just take that on as a new debt. It's

okay. Per student, it's $39,605. And so, yes, and that's on average, but that's an extremely high

amount. This is not a show about education. It's not a show about higher education. I'm not going

to get into this, but I will say I have three children who are in college or have gone through

college, and none of them had debt. It is possible. I believe that college is probably overrated.

I also think that college's tuition is extremely high in relation to the rest of society. I think

if you charted an average income versus tuition over the years, you would find that the tuition

has gotten to be much higher as a ratio versus income. That's all I'm going to say about that.

But it is debt. All right. So I'm going to talk about one other item here. Our total

U.S. federal tax revenues is $4.6 trillion. That means there's a revenue per citizen of $13,788.

Your income tax revenue is $2.6 trillion. So that's collected from the citizens. We mail off every

April our income tax. Payroll tax, so what comes out of your paycheck, is $1.5 trillion. And then

a corporate tax revenue is $434 billion, so roughly half a billion, a little less than that.

And then something called tariff tax. A tariff is like a customs tax. So it's an import tax. 73.

I always have to think about these numbers because they're so large. 73 billion.

And then you add all that up and it becomes the U.S. federal tax revenue. But that tax revenue,

$4.6 trillion, obviously far less than our spending, $6.172 trillion or whatever.

So that's where you get your deficit. All right. Now, let's directly talk about what

Kyrin was asking because he has some really good questions. I want to try and answer these

as best I can. I actually want to start from the end. What countries or types of people would

essentially become slaves until repaying if there was no more fiat ability to manipulate the money?

I want to actually attack this a little bit differently. We see this actually, in my opinion,

in countries that the IMF has large amounts of debt payments. In my opinion, those countries are

economic slaves. I saw a figure from one of the African countries. I think it's Nigeria,

but I may be wrong on that. 90% of the country's revenue would have to be used to pay their debt,

most of it to the IMF. And that is just ridiculous. And let me tell you, I think I've discussed this

before, but the IMF slants everything to their advantage, I promise you. So in my mind, in my

opinion, when the IMF becomes involved, it is a form of slavery. It is a form of outright slavery.

And if I were one of these countries that wasn't corrupted, and the problem is a lot of these

countries are corrupt politicians at their head, and I will say that they were put in place many

times by foreign governments, United States and France primarily, in order to be their little

puppets. And so that country is good with that. And then the IMF comes on, and they throw a little

money to the dictator in charge. And so they're happy, but then the IMF is – the country is

eternally enslaved to the IMF. So that system has to end. That makes no long-term sense for anybody

except the IMF and the people who benefit from that system. So I would argue – and in fact,

El Salvador is one of these countries – they are in debt, I should say, to the IMF. They still owe

the IMF money. But rather than continuing to go deeper in debt because of the inflation of the

United States, they have chosen to take a path that includes Bitcoin. Now, how that will work

remains to be seen. The jury, as we say, is still out on that. However, they are trying something

new. And we're seeing African countries do the same thing. Now, Central African Republic, for

example, is one country that I don't think they made Bitcoin legal tender, but it certainly

received – actually, I have seen reports saying it was legal tender. So I'm not super clear

whether it's legal tender or not. But they are certainly saying, hey, this is a great thing,

and we can deal in this. So these countries are starting to come out from this economic slavery

that's been going on. And I'm using that word very specifically. And I'm not going to back

down on that. When you enforce debt on a country to the tune of it being 90% revenues, what you are

is a loan shark, IMF. And those countries technically can't default on that debt.

So yeah, that's economic slavery to me. But anyways, I hope that kind of answered that end

part of that question. I don't know – well, directly, I don't know exactly how they do that.

Maybe they can default. I would certainly do that if I were them. But I would do it with – there

has to be a way to do it so that the people in the country are not crushed. That's the problem.

You've got people who are living a marginal existence, who are living very much in poverty

and maybe even on the edge of starvation, and you don't want those people to be hurt, obviously.

The way out for them is to actually deal in something that's not trying to push them down.

Maybe if I were one of these countries and I were in leadership and I were an honest person

and I were trying to do what's best for my country, I might say, you know what, IMF?

You can shove it. I'm not paying your debt. I'm taking care of what we need to take care of

inside of our country because we can't handle that. And we're not going to restructure this

and extend it out 10, 20, 30 years or whatever and continue to enslave our people.

So you can either renegotiate this with much lower or nonexistent interest rates and get

your money back over time, or you just don't get any. Well, you've got legal obligations and blah,

blah, blah. Yes, but when you can pay the IMF their money or you can impoverish millions of people,

in my mind, it's more important that those people are taken care of and not the IMF banksters who

are sitting off in Zurich or wherever they're at and having a good old time. That's just my

thoughts on that. I don't honestly know the real answer. We will, I believe, see that actually

being played out. How much of the US is $31.6 trillion is owed to Australia and how much of

is... I don't know. There's so much money floating around that it's very difficult to track

all of that. I am personally more concerned with... Well, I'll wrap this up. Let me actually wrap

that up in the end. Let's continue on with your question. How much is imaginary money that's

simply owed back and forth? Actually, probably a lot of it. Other countries owe us money,

we owe them money. They own our bonds. I guess you could say that's not imaginary,

but it's just a piece of paper. It's just a digital representation, probably even at this point,

that the United States owes you something. Now, we've never defaulted on bonds.

That's a common saying. As far as I know, it's true. That's why it's such a big deal,

but it still is just a piece of paper. It's not dollars in their bank account.

So, a lot of this debt, so-called... Well, a lot of this debt is in the form of those securities

and things. Yeah, good luck sorting it all out. You really can't. But here's how I want to wrap

this up. I've probably already gone long enough. Oh my goodness. I do not know... I sit down and

go, hey, this is going to take 15 minutes. I am 48 minutes into this. All right. There's

a lot of details to this, Kyrin, just like you were alluding to. We owe money to them,

they owe money to us, they own bonds by us, we own bonds by them, all this kind of stuff.

Here's the thing to me. As an Austrian, I look at this and go, when was the last time we ran a

budget surplus? It was years ago. When's the last time we ran a regular budget surplus? It's been a

long, long time ago. We ran it for a few years back in the 90s, I want to say, in the early 2000s,

and then like 2015 or so for a couple of years. But it's not like it's... The national debt

continues to go up. That has to stop because very quickly, our interest payments are going

to become the largest part of our economy. And that's of no use. It's paying debt back.

And as these interest rates crank up, in fact, that's going to be more and more difficult to

handle. So here's what I would say. Here's the solution. And we may be too far gone. In fact,

I believe we are. But if I were a country that didn't have 120 some odd percent debt to GDP,

maybe I'm only at 50% or something like that, here's what I would say. Hey, we have to stop

printing money. We have to stop selling securities, bonds, whatever it is they sell,

in order to create more debt so that we can fund more things. So we have to stop that. So

everything's on the table. These are the biggest things. These are the other items up for budget.

Up for budget. The answer is not to go raise more taxes on people. That will not work.

Tax rates across the world are already very high. And you look around at deteriorating economies,

deteriorating cities, deteriorating healthcare. The solution is not to raise more taxes because

they can't save. They can't do the things that they need to do to prosper.

I would argue, now I will just tell you what I think, and I also know this is not going to

happen, unfortunately. But I would argue that rather than raising taxes, I would actually argue

that in our case, the IRS should be abolished. I think we should institute what's called a flat

tax, a consumption tax. So rather than taxing me on what I earn, tax me on what I spend.

If I make $100,000 and I spend $40,000 of that dollars, then I owe the government $4,000 if it's

10% because that will incentivize people to save instead of earn or a spend. It will also,

if somebody's a big spender, if you got a lot of money and you're buying a yacht or whatever,

those people are going to pay too. See, right now, if I make a billion dollars a year, the reality is

I do all kinds of legal shenanigans so that I can minimize those payments.

But on the other hand, if I make a billion dollars a year, I might want a yacht or I might

want a jet or whatever. And if I'm having to pay 10% on top of that, well, then I pay it.

I can't get around that with any legality. If I want to go buy a bottle of pop or coke or

whatever they call it in your part of the world, well, 10% more.

That's what the government should run on. And if the government can't run on that,

which it probably cannot in its current condition, then it needs to start ratcheting back.

I have to live in a budget. I cannot go year after year, decade after decade,

running these budget deficits. I can't do that because you can't even declare bankruptcy more

than once within like a seven or 10 year period, whatever it is. Not that you should, but you

legally cannot. So you very quickly end up in a position where you just literally cannot go any

deeper in debt. Because if you go bankrupt, people want to extend your credit and then you won't be

able to spend more than you make. It's kind of a self-enforcing thing. So I'm going to look at all

the items of government and I'm going to say, if we just took 10% off of everything or 20% off of

everything, would that fix the problem? I don't know. I don't. But we have to do that. We have to

get to the point where we are spending less than we are making. We have to get to the point where

the deficit, $31.5 trillion, gets lower every year and not by a couple of hundred thousand dollars

or a couple of hundred billion dollars. Because if we do that, then it will never get done.

It has to be significant chunks of money. We have to look at the military.

Sorry, we don't need 130-odd bases or whatever it is all around the world. We do not. We can close

half of those without a problem. Boom, done. We can minimize downsides. We can maybe make smarter

choices and maybe institute some things so that when people are developing technology,

it doesn't just become a cash cow in terms of, I'm creating this, I don't know, whatever the new

stealth bomber is that they're working on. How many billions of dollars is that going to be?

Is it really actually that expensive to develop a plane like that? Well, if you're a government

contractor, it is. And it's because of the way that system is set up. Maybe I'm out of my league

there. I don't know. But again, I go back to the very simple statement. I cannot operate on a

deficit budget year after year after year. Why can my government do that? Because I know that

the end result of that will either be default, going bankrupt, or devaluation of the currency.

And that impacts me directly. I frankly would rather the country go bankrupt. It's a terrible

thing to say. But if you've got people with their life savings in cash in a bank, not earning any

money, and there's a lot of people like that, oh, we're going to devalue the dollar. So now tomorrow,

there's going to be twice as many dollars in circulation essentially as there is today.

And that means yours is worth 50 cents on the dollar. Well, now their life's wealth has just

gotten cut in half. I would rather we go bankrupt and deal with that and get rid of all this crap

and go onto a solid plan. I also don't think that our two-party system will allow that. I'm

not even going to get into that tonight, but you've got the Democrats and the Republicans fussing and

fighting with each other. Everybody's got their pet project and our country needs to go on a diet.

So Karen, I hope that helped. I hope I didn't make things more confusing.

I hope I answered everything in there. I think I did in general.

Our federal debt is owed to whoever it is that buys the bonds. I think bonds and securities,

but just US Treasury, financial instruments, how about that? That is literally who our debt is owed

to, that $31 trillion from what I understand. I think most of this has been correct. I think

the vast majority of it has been correct, to be honest. All right. Let's thank some listeners.

Oh, by the way, before I jump into that, good news. I did get my umbral set up. So I'm running

my umbral node. I think I already told you I had it up, but what I did last night is I turned on

in the value block, what we call the value block, my new node. So now when you stream or you both

boost, it goes straight to me, to my node, not through Satoshi Stream. We're going to test this.

I sure hope it works. And I've certainly tested with a boost. I've tested some streaming. It

seems to be working fine. So I am open for business. If you have any problems with that,

please reach out to me on Twitter at McintoshFinTech or on Mastodon at macintosh at podcast

index dot social. And let me know because the sooner I know, the better off things will be.

And I have high hopes for this. All right. So we've had a few boosts. We've had some streaming

going on. Appreciate that since our last episode. Of course, I'm always grateful for our supporters

of the generation wealth with cryptocurrency podcast. We are a value for value podcast.

We don't have any advertisers or sponsors. I am actually going to talk about that directly.

Well, hold on just a second. I am jumping the gun. This one may have got popped in last week. I'm

not clear. I'm not sure if I did. I apologize. Actually part of what the new system will do is

make sure this is a lot easier. So that's awesome. Let's see here. I'm pretty sure I did

maybe even both of those actually. So let's boom on down here. Here we go.

I'm going to turn this into the mere mortals podcast. Sorry guys. Kieron from mere mortals

sent 3300. He actually asked a question. I'll throw this out. I didn't actually intend to

kind of both of these intersect, but we'll go ahead and talk about this. McIntosh, maybe you

can help me with something I've been struggling with for my shows. Of course, we've discussed

that they have a note. They have several shows that they do. You should check them all out.

They're great stuff. I am at the same level of conviction regarding advertising on my show.

How do you feel about participating in it being on the other side, i.e. as an advertiser for your

show? You do this through Fountain. Yes, I do. We'll talk about that in just a second. Do you

view this as different than through Facebook, Instagram, whatever? Is this hypocritical? Would

love to hear your thoughts. These are my thoughts. They are my thoughts alone. And honestly, when it

comes to advertising versus value for value and all that, I give people a lot of leeway. I can tell

you about me. And the reason that I'm the way I am, especially about this show, is because I

consider myself to be a journalist, whether I am or not, but I'm doing reporting. I'm talking about

companies and actions and activities. I do not want any hint of favoritism or anything like that

because of a show sponsor. And the funny thing is, I think Kyrin actually spoke about this in

another boost to another podcast. A lot of shows right now are kind of doing mea culpa where they're

saying, oh, I'm sorry that, I don't know, FTX advertised on my show. I don't have to worry

about that. And as soon as I had some hint that something was going on with FTX, we were talking

about it on this show. And that's why I do that. Now, do I pay Fountain to promote my podcast?

Absolutely. I have two streams essentially going on there, the current episode and my

dilemma speed security and decentralization episode. So that gets promoted in their stream.

And I have no problem with that myself. I do not feel the least bit hypocritical about that.

I will talk about Fountain. And if Fountain has a problem, then I will talk about that because

they're not paying me anything. I'm paying them to do that service, to put that in front of people

for what amounts to, frankly, a pretty low cost. I'll be honest, Kyrin, maybe there's something

you guys should check out if you haven't already. It costs less than a penny per listen for me to

promote those podcasts. Do I have any problem talking about Fountain or any other? No. I have

somewhat of a special attachment with Fountain, not because of that, but because I help them with

their beta. And I've talked about that. Again, I receive no compensation for that, but I do help,

I feel like it's helped them improve. But I've gone out of my way. You can go to newpodcastapps.com.

There's 20 odd podcast apps out there that are podcasting 2.0 compatible. And I would suggest

that you check them all out. Maybe you don't like Fountain for whatever reason. It works for me,

and they are continuing to improve. But for example, and I kind of made a joke about this

when I boosted the other day, but one of the things that Fountain doesn't have is the live tag.

I wish, and I'm asking them for it, but I wish that when the podcasting 2.0 podcast comes on

every Friday, when it comes on, they go live, it shows up on certain apps. And if I say one of them,

I'll get it wrong. But then you can click and play that stream as it's coming in live. Fountain,

you cannot do that yet. Now, the reality is nine times out of 10, I can't even do that,

so it's really not a problem for me, but I would love to see that. And I've pointed that out to

them. They are working on it. So moving on to the other things with Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads,

Twitter feed, whatever. To me, it's like Fountain. They're just advertising outlets for me trying to

get out my product, which is this podcast. They have no problem accepting that money from me.

And as far as I know, I've actually considered as well right now, the reality is I'm not making

enough money. I'm not making any money really to speak of, to be able to do that. But I want to

grow this podcast because I believe in what I'm saying and I want other people to hear that.

This isn't me being, what's the word, prideful. I just want people to know, hey, Fiat is crumbling.

Bitcoin might be a way that you can get through that without losing your shirt.

And I can explain why I believe that. So that's why I want to get that message out.

If they choose not to do that, I know Facebook, I think, for example, for a long time,

they didn't run crypto ads. Well, that's their decision. But I don't look at it. I don't think

it's hypocritical. We can talk about it some more if you want. I don't want to go too much

longer on this, but I know this is something that you guys are thinking about yourself.

I would encourage you. You guys have a great message. And I think if you want to get your

message out, whatever the platform is that the people are listening or viewing or whatever,

advertise. It's not the same as you taking advertisements. And the reality is,

Karen, if somebody wants to take advertisements, I know that obviously a lot of this has been

going on recently. And I feel bad for these people. I do believe, well, I think there's

a lot of things going on. Actually, maybe that's a subject for another show. I will say this,

if I were to ever take ads, and I'm not, but if that's the way I had gone, I would be extremely

careful about who I took ads from, because that is their reputation, whether they realize that or

not. When that company messes up, if you were sitting there supporting them,

that's part of your reputation. I hope that makes sense. We can chat about it some more.

That might be something, maybe you could even come on the show and we can talk about it sometime.

I really, one of my goals this year is to get more people on this show. Maybe we can talk about that.

I don't know. And now I can put you in the split. Couldn't do that before. That was one of the

reasons I upgraded, if you want to call it that. I'm going to put you in the split. I'm going to

upgraded, if you want to call it that. Moving on. So again, Kyrin, as always,

I really appreciate you guys' support. It means the world to me. Let's see here.

Sorry, didn't read that quite right. 029 Susan Oh. Susan Oh, probably. 029 Susan Oh.

029 Susan Oh. Listened to the It's a Dilemma, Security, Speed, and Decentralization podcast.

That's the one I was actually talking about. Boosted 100 Sats. And another one here,

HaitiMan33. I hope I said that right. 99 Sats. Thank you very much. That was the It's a Dilemma.

And let me check Helipad real quick in case something has come in in the last few hours. By

the way, the current Bitcoin price, 21,324, bumped up a little bit. And I have my Bitcoin note up

and running on my umbrella as well. Let's get that block number 772,467 at the time of recording.

Come on, Helipad. And yes, three hours ago, I got in a boost from Bakke BOKI. Listened to the XRP

Stellar and ISO 20022 standard episode from last week. Boosted 100 Sats. I really appreciate that,

Bakke. So there you go. All right. So we've already talked a bit about Value for Value. Of course,

we don't take advertisers. We don't take supporters. Sponsorships, I should say.

I look to my listeners to support this podcast. People like you. If you're enjoying the content,

if you're learning from it, I would hope that you would be up for streaming some Sats from a

podcast in 2.0 app or boosting. Fountain, of course, is a great place to start. There are a

lot of them and you can go to newpodcastapps.com. I have three or four on my phone and I do rotate

through them some. I'll be honest. Like I said, at this point, Fountain is my main driver.

Besides that, you can support the other, you can support the podcast a couple of other ways with

time and with talent. I'm building things out. This umbral node, this lightning node was the first

step. Like I said, I would love to have a chat room down the road. We're working on, we, not we,

they, the podcasting 2.0 team, if you want to call it that, Dave and Adam are working on,

and there's other people involved. I shouldn't just limit it to them, but they are working on

comments and commenting and kind of how that will tie in across all the apps. And part of that,

of course, is chat. So I'm kind of waiting until that shakes out before I implement. I may do a

matrix, a chat room thing or whatever, but we'll be doing that shortly. And there's all kinds of

things we can do. Um, I did mention, um, I'd like to get my website updated, for example,

and I simply don't have time. It's too low on my list of things that need to be done

for me to get around to doing it right now. I have a WordPress site that I put up there

and it's there and there it is. So a number of ways that you can do that.

Anyways, thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. And of course I always

would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at McintoshFinTech. By the way, of course this week,

I did not do any news this week. We're just going to skip it. I apologize. I don't have time.

I'm already over an hour and that's called being flexible. There was, there was a little bit of

news. Um, I did want to talk about El Salvador, but, uh, I've, we got to move on. Y'all won't

listen to me for two hours. Uh, Twitter, uh, shut off all the client apps besides their official one.

And I'm kind of done with Twitter. I'm going to keep posting on there, but I would encourage

anyone to move over to Mastodon, um, to a Mastodon server. That's actually something else

I would like to do here on the Generational Wealth, uh, podcast is set up our own Mastodon

instance. Uh, even if it's just for my own tie-in. So I'm not a, what did I say? Podcastindex.social,

which I love those guys, but I'm, I'm not deeply involved in that. Certainly not on a coding level.

I help out where I can. Fun stuff. Lots of stuff evolving. I love in a lot of respects,

the way that the internet is going, because I believe a decentralized internet is far more

powerful than this centralized siloed corporate, if not government controlled stuff that we have

going on. This is not the original intent of the internet. It, it, it was not. And I frankly

remember it before it got to be this way. I'm just saying I was, it was there to an extent.

So I, I'm excited about things like Mastodon and, uh, Twitter. I look, I have no beef with Elon,

whatever. I don't care. I just don't care anymore. I don't have the cycles. I got too much I want to

do. I'm not going to waste my time. Why on earth? It doesn't even make sense, but what I don't care.

I don't care. I'm just see you later for now. I will continue to post there, but I will actively

be moving to Mastodon and at some point I will simply stop posting on Twitter and people may

say, well, oh, well, didn't miss anything. And that's fine. You can reach me at Macintosh

Fintech on Twitter, Macintosh at podcastindex.social and Mastodon. Of course, my email is macintosh

at jimwellscrypto.com. There it is. I will talk to y'all next week and I will be back on Sunday.

Again, I apologize about that. Hope you have a great week.