S2 E12: Vladimir is Bullish on Silver & Bitcoin

Vladimir Lenin once said...

 "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

While there is controversy as to whether it was in fact Lenin who said that, or the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes, who attributed that line to Lenin following an interview he conducted with the Russian leader...the fact is simple, the US Consumer is being CRUSHED, ground up between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Here is what Keynes wrote, quoting Lenin...

"As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery."

We have bubbles all over, especially in Consumer Credit, and specifically Credit Card Debt. In fact, the total of US Credit Card Debt has risen ABOVE the level of Household Savings for the first time since 2008, while the Seriously Delinquent Rate rose to 10.83%, the highest since 2008.

With no savings and "real" wage growth that is less than one percent year-year, the Consumer is being ground up and crushed by the "millstone". The Fed WILL be FORCED to respond in the not-so-distant future, a dynamic that will meld into HUGE Trade and Budget Deficits, MASSIVE Government, Consumer and Household Debt, and the onset of the BRICs Unit to replace the USD as the means of "settling" global trade ... ALL point to a LOWER USD, which means HIGHER Commodity prices, and a STAGFLATION defined macro-economic environment ...

and...bullish breakouts in Silver and Bitcoin, in the wake of the push in Gold prices to new all-time highs.

Indeed, Vladimir would be bullish here, on Silver and BTC! Find out why in Season Two, Episode 12 of "Money, Markets & New Age Investing!" 

Chapters

• 0:00 Analysis of US Economic Strength
• 11:29 Bank Earnings and Consumer Credit Analysis
• 25:39 Inflation Analysis and Investment Opportunities

Transcript

Greg Weldon: 0:00

Hi, greg Weldon, here back at you with Money Markets and New Age Investing. This is Season 2, episode number 12. Oh yeah, man, I mean we're talking almost 30 episodes now in the two seasons we've been doing this, but we have a lot to cover. Today. Us economy is strong. The labor market the latest 254,000 gain in non-farm payrolls was really robust, uh. So you know, now they've re. You know the market has had to do a rethink on what the fed's going to do going forward. Maybe they won't be cutting rates as much as uh had previously been expected because the economy is so strong. Yeah, no, no, no, it's not strong.

Greg Weldon: 0:44

I don't get the people that are saying it's strong. You want to rely on GDP numbers to say the economy's strong. All I got to say is unwanted inventory build. That's all I got to say. It's a positive in GDP and that's what you have an unwanted inventory build. Why? Because domestic final demand stinks. The growth here is poor and in most cases it's below the rate of inflation. So real growth kind of doesn't exist. The consumer is choking right now. The consumer is cocooning right now. The consumer is bloated with new debt borrowed at the highest interest rates you know really since 1981 to borrow money, and back then credit cards weren't really that popular. I'm going to break it down for you in the simplest of terms to show you why you should be concerned about the economy, because the economy is not AI, it's not infotech, it's not chips. It's still driven by the consumer, and the consumer is in trouble.

Greg Weldon: 1:51

Let's start with the data, and I'm going to go through this data really fast, and there's a lot to go through and sometimes I think I give too much numbers, but these are the facts, these are the stats. This is the real deal, not the deal you're getting from Washington these days, and I've never been one that says they fudged the data, but they are now. It's obvious and you're going to see why in just a minute. Let's start with the most recent. I'm going to work backwards through the data that's come out over the last eight or nine trading sessions Manufacturing production down 0.5 year over year. But the point here is it's been down 16 of the last 22 months. Manufacturing production has contracted on a year over year basis. In other words, a steady trend to the downside.

Greg Weldon: 2:43

Let's talk about capacity utilization. How much capacity are companies using to produce what they're producing and, in fact, what we see is that CapU fell to 77.5%. In other words, 77.5% of our capacity to produce goods is being utilized. All right, september of 2022, just two years ago was 81.1. Now it's 77.5. That is a big decline. This is something that doesn't move that much. All right, not only that, it was down from 78 in August. That's 5.5, a half of 1% in a single month. That is massive for this kind of number. And August, at 78%, was actually revised down to 77.8. Like every other number has been revised down. Even the capacity utilization is being revised down.

Greg Weldon: 3:39

It's not enough that they're revising down the labor market data like crazy. And let's talk about the labor market data, because the 254,000 headline gain in nonfarm payroll employment that was reported the first week of the month blew people away and you had 25 basis points of Fed rate cuts that were priced into the market for this year, got depriced almost instantly. The reaction to me was so overdramatic it's not even funny. You want to say and I'll tell you what how many people I heard on CNBC or I watch Bloomberg, now I don't watch CNBC anymore that said that the number was strong. Strong payroll is going to keep the Fed from cutting rates. It's like, okay, this number was not strong. What are you looking at? I don't even get it. Let alone did everyone forget that they've revised down every single payroll number for the last year by like 600,000 or something. I forget what the exact number was. All right, do we forget that, all of a sudden, 254, that's not like, oh my God, the Fed's not going to do what we thought they were going to do type of number. It's average for a decent year, but it gets way worse because when you start to break down the jobs, man, this is anything but strong. That is the absolute last word I would use.

Greg Weldon: 5:03

When the number of people working two jobs that are both part-time jobs because of scant that's the word they use, the BLS, scant full-time work available. The number of people working two part-time jobs 2.3 million. A record high. When you have a record high and a huge gain in people working two part-time jobs, that's not strength, that's stress. We're mixing up our s words here. Strength, no stress. Yeah, okay, multiple job holders. The total 4.8 million. Excluding four months in in 2023, this would be a record 4.8 million. So you've been at records since the middle of last year. Five months you've been at a record high in the total number of people working multiple jobs. The total number of people working multiple jobs that are women sixth highest ever and, of course, what we can talk about single moms and working multiple jobs, and those are that one is full-time and the other is part-time. The number of people working two full-time jobs is at a record high. That is not strength, it's stress. They're working multiple jobs because they're having trouble paying the bills and because it's scant full-time work available.

Greg Weldon: 6:20

Let's take the $254,000 gain in payroll employment. Total employment is up $2.4 million from a year ago. That's not a bad number. Two million is not bad, but it's down 580,000 since January. It's lost 17% 18% of its gain in just this year. Not only that, 2.4 million isn't what 2.4 million used to be, because the total number of appointments at a new high. We have finally exceeded the pre-pandemic high, even though we were one of the last countries to do so.

Greg Weldon: 6:59

But right now the percentage gain is only 1.55. That's not strong. It was 2.04 a year ago. Not only that, at 1.55, it was unchanged from a month ago. So the 254,000 increase did not change at all the year-over-year change. It kind of matched last year's. That's not strong. The breakdown of this wasn't strong.

Greg Weldon: 7:25

And then let's look at wages. Everyone got so excited. It's strength because it's 254, but it's strength because average hourly earnings rose by over a dollar and went to 4% year over year. And now that's 4% wage growth. That's good, that's strong. That's healthy to consumer. And I had one person, even on Bloomberg major brokerage house person, said the consumer's balance sheet is healthy. Of course that was Bank of America and they're a big consumer credit card lender, so they want the consumer to be healthy. These are going to talk their book we're going to talk more about that in a minute.

Greg Weldon: 8:02

But average hourly wage is up 4%. But weekly hours worked fell. So you're making more per hour, you're working less hours. The average weekly earnings, the growth, fell. It fell. It's 3.4. All right, not 4%, 3.4. And why does that make a difference? Because core CPI is 3.3. Headline CPI is 2.5, 2.4, excuse me. So when you take the 3.4 number, at best it's 1% real wage growth. That's not enough. Not enough to keep consumer spending on discretionary items strong. There's nothing strong about it.

Greg Weldon: 8:46

You want to say the economy's strong. How about housing? Housing's not strong? What data are you looking at when you say the economy's strong when housing is in the toilet.

Greg Weldon: 8:59

The 30-year mortgage rate, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association weekly data, 30-year mortgage rate over the last two weeks excuse me, over the last four weeks has risen 40 basis points. It was going to take out 6% and now it's all the way back above 6.5%. As a result, the last two-week applications for mortgages the last week fell 17% in a week on top of the 5% gain from the previous week. These are the biggest back-to-back gains we've seen in a week, on top of the five percent gain from the previous week. These are the biggest back-to-back gains we've seen in a decade in mortgage applications, way more than anything during 2020 or 20, excuse me, except for the qe, um, excuse me. Rather, in 2015 was the last time you were at this level, at this kind of decline, and that was as QE was ending after 2014 QE3. So think about that. The refinance index fell 26% for the week. I mean that's amazing. All right when we talk about this dynamic. All right, all of the Fed rate cut optimism is gone. All right, all of the fed rate cut optimism is gone.

Greg Weldon: 10:06

Let's talk about the rest of the housing market because permits housing permits, building, new building permits down 5.7 percent year-over-year. Housing starts down 0.7 year-over-year and it's sticking at a very low level. I mean, you know, below pandemic levels. You know, uh, not below pandemic. We're heading back towards pandemic levels. The uh number of uh, the percent change, percent change year over year in the homes under construction fell 11.7, while completions rose 14.6 but fell six percent for the month. Now what does all that math mumbo jumbo mean? It means this we've just finished building a lot of homes because of the demand in all the homes that were started two years ago. We have no new permits. We have no new starts. We have the number of homes under construction plummeting because we're completing them. This means less construction employment in the very near future.

Greg Weldon: 11:01

How is the economy strong when the housing market is virtually and the mortgage market is virtually tanking again? Why? Because the Fed is restrictive, because they're still so high relative to inflation with their policy rate and now because of a payroll number that shouldn't have elicited this kind of response. It got the kind of response that was the Fed won't cut again potentially this year. It's not 100%. Even odds they'll cut one more time, close to 100%, but not 100%.

Greg Weldon: 11:29

Let's talk about the bank earnings that came out this week. They were rip-roaring. Morgan Stanley skyrocketed, right. But the problem is and I saw some really really stupid comments on Twitter about how strong the banks are because of this number Frankly, it's not really true. These numbers, the revenue numbers and the profitability was good. It was all because of a rip-roaring stock market. Over 100% of Bank of America's earnings growth came from three things trading, interest, income and wealth management.

Greg Weldon: 12:06

All right, and it was funny because the loan loss reserves up Okay. Unrealized losses on investments for banks Fed just came out with a report is over half a trillion dollars. Banks hold $4.4 trillion of treasury and government agency securities. The standing losses right now are over half a trillion dollars. That's unrealized losses. They have enough cash to cover it, but it knocks half of their wipes out, half of their cash on their balance sheet, let alone the loan loss reserves which went up to for credit cards because of delinquency rates and the failure rates and the bankruptcies are up too.

Greg Weldon: 12:46

All right, and what's interesting is Bank of America said well, consumer spending was up 3%. The consumer is strong. 3%, that's the rate of inflation and it's not consumer spending, it's up, it's consumer use of credit cards that Bank of America has and they're spending more because of the inflation, because it costs more for everything. The increase in credit card balances was exactly the same as the inflation rate. I mean, come on, man, that's not strong. Where's the strength there? I mean seriously.

Greg Weldon: 13:16

Well, let's talk about consumer loans. All right, because the bank balance sheets and there's other forms of consumer loans. So some of the numbers I'm going to give you are different. Understand they're different numbers because they represent different things. But it's all about consumer loans. The bank balance sheet, consumer loans, credit card, revolving credit $1.9 trillion is up only three one-hundredths of a percent since June and it's up only 1.4 year over year. You can see the slowdown. The cocooning here is. Here it's disinflation to the max. That's not enough, and I'm not saying it should be higher, but trust me, I mean this is a big problem, but this is the path we've chosen is to reflate through credit. Right now we're disinflating the credit to the point of it being almost deflation. A credit crunch is the last thing the Fed wants to see right now. Trust me on that one.

Greg Weldon: 14:16

Let's talk about the consumer credit numbers from the Fed, which includes stuff like finance agencies and what do you call them Savings, not savings and loans, credit unions, stuff like that? Right, total consumer credit above $5 trillion? All right, it's up a trillion from a year ago. Okay, in August of 2010, it was $2.5 trillion. So that means in 14 years, you've doubled consumer credit, doubled 2010,. After the crisis, after QE, tarp, talf all the money they printed, consumer credit jumped in August of 2010 to $2.5 trillion 2.52. That was a record high at the time. All right, in 14 years it's more than doubled 5.097. But let's go all the way back to August of 1971, when they took the dollar off the gold standard. At that point, consumer credit was 400 billion. Check that 0.4 trillion. So the so the first two and a half trillion was created in 41 years it took to create it and from that point forward, 14 years to create the next two and a half trillion.

Greg Weldon: 15:31

All right, let's look at the total credit card numbers, right, 1.357 now,1.357 trillion. All right, it is up over the last 52 weeks by over $50 billion. It's been up by over $50 billion on a rolling 12-month basis for 138 consecutive weeks. That's almost three years. Think about that 138 weeks. The constant change year over year has been 50 billion, 50 billion, 50 billion. 50 billion Adds up every time 138 weeks. All right, the only other times that it's been above 50 billion was five weeks in 2004 and 16 weeks in 2008 into 2009, right before the crisis A total of 21 weeks in history, but the last 138 weeks it's been above 50 billion.

Greg Weldon: 16:27

Let's look at the interest rates people have paid. All right, I'm going to go back May of 2014,. I'm going back 10 years In May. Average interest on credit cards that were actually charged accrued interest, because there's all kinds of different measures of this that were actually charged accrued interest because there's all kinds of different measures of this 16.82, and these numbers come from the Fed 2014, and these are May numbers. We're going back from May. It's quarterly data that's reported in the middle of the quarter 16.82. May of 2017, 12 points. 11,. Excuse me, may of 2014 was 11.82. May of 2017, 12.7. May of 2019, 15.1. May of 2020,.

Greg Weldon: 17:16

In the pandemic it actually fell to 14.5. So four years ago it was 14.5. 2022, 15.1%. May of 2023, 20.8%. It rose 550 basis points when the Fed raised rates 450 basis points. So credit card rates went up by more, so banks had to expand their margins, let alone keep base with the Fed Since then, since May of a year ago 23.4. It was 20.8 last year, it's 23.4 now. Okay, that's up from 11.8, 10 years ago. It is more than doubled in 10 years as the consumer credit has doubled. The interest rate to borrow has doubled. Banks are cleaning up.

Greg Weldon: 18:03

Here's another one for you A credit card, capital One. You want to talk about bottom-feeding parasites? Capital One credit cards Offer you, if you have a lower credit score, $500 credit and it's a 23% rate. I know someone who got this offer. So you get the offer for $500 of credit. You don't have credit. You want to build your credit. It seems like a good deal. You do it. You say, look, 23%, that's a lot, but I'll borrow and pay it off every month and it'll improve my credit. The problem is it's $25 a month fee, which over a 12-month period means $300 in fees, which is a 60% interest rate to hold the card. That should be illegal. I'm sorry, that is bottom-feeding, parasitic to the max. Capital one here's the kicker.

Greg Weldon: 18:56

You want to say the consumer balance sheet is healthy. You want to say the consumer is strong? I throw this one at you. Total credit card debt 1.35 trillion. Personal savings 1.05. Credit card debt is 300 billion more than savings. There's only one other time that's been the case 2007 and 2008, right before the crash. So no wonder, with the high rates and the huge amounts of credit and all of this, that the delinquency rates are skyrocketing.

Greg Weldon: 19:31

Fed data seriously delinquent above 90 days 10.93% of credit card holders are in delinquency by over 90 days 10.93 versus 8.0 a year ago. It's almost 11 versus 8 a year ago. That's a massive increase. I mean it's over 50% increase. All right, let's take the 10.93 and look back at 2008. All right, we went from 8 to 10.93. That's the fastest acceleration on record. All right.

Greg Weldon: 20:06

When you take 2008, when it rose and it was a precursor to the crisis, the third quarter of 2008 was 9.4 delinquency. Fourth quarter of 2008 got to 10.2. By the first quarter of 2009, it was 11.4. It's almost to the level that it was during when the crisis started. All right, and was already into full swing by first quarter of 2009. And if you remember that, because March of 2009 was the St Paddy's monetary massacre when they introduced QE, tarp and TALF, you're right there, man. You're at crisis levels Newly delinquent 9.05 versus 7.2 a year ago, versus 1.4 in the third quarter of 2021, when you had forbearance and everything, the delinquency rate was 1.39. Now it's 9.05. Consider this the third quarter of 2007 was 9.29, pretty much where it is now by the third quarter of 2009, it was 13.8.

Greg Weldon: 21:09

The consumer balance sheet is not healthy. The consumer is not strong. It's bull. It's absolute bull. Let's take retail sales. Just came out Really. Hey, everyone was all excited. Retail sales stronger than expected for the month. Right, strong is not the word 1.7 year-over-year increase. Even the CPI the lowest of the inflation rates at 2.4, you're still negative on a real basis. All of the increase in dollar terms is because of price increases. They don't measure that in the CPI, in the retail sales data. Rather, all right, the retail sales have been negative. Deflation in retail sales on a real basis 26 of the last 29 months and every single month in 2024. Let's talk about this number because there's something fishy going on here, just like there has been in the labor market number Seasonal adjustments On an unadjusted basis.

Greg Weldon: 22:14

Okay, last year the decline was 36.8. This year, on an unadjusted basis, the decline was 56 billion. So you went from 37 billion last year to 56 billion this year, yet somehow, miraculously, sales rose. Let's talk about eating and drinking establishments. Why? Because it's the ultimate in discretionary spending. You have more money, you feel healthy, wealthy and wise. You're going to go out and eat and drink, right. If you're not, you're going to stay home. That's why McDonald's is at a record high and MGM and some of the luxury item prices are breaking down. All right, eating and drinking establishments, unadjusted.

Greg Weldon: 22:58

Last year fell by 1.58 in September you know, it's kind of end of summer, back to school, it normally falls. It's the seasonal adjustment that needs to be made for the data right. Last year, unadjusted fell 1.58. The adjusted number was up 1.63. So the adjustment was exactly 3.1 billion. This year the adjustment was 7.5 billion. Last year's seasonal adjustment was $3 billion. This year it's $7.5. What makes this September different than last year Other than, you know, hurricanes? No, that's right, that was October, because I heard someone say that Unadjusted. This year the decline is $7 billion versus last year. $1.5 billion, $7 billion, and yet the adjusted number is up $0.5 billion, $550 million. They fudge these numbers with the seasonal adjustment.

Greg Weldon: 23:53

Retail sales deflation let's talk about without the price adjustments, because the price adjustments makes every number. I'm going to give you deeper in negative territory Discretionary items. The only one that's up is clothing and it had been way down, so it's a bounce back and it's all based on like two months of strength, all right. So, to whatever extent you know people, people bought clothes and they haven't bought clothes in a while. Now they bought some clothes again, all right, but every other, every other discretionary category is down, outside of online shopping, where the year-over-year rate of change has cut in half from 18 months ago 7.1 still healthy down from 8.1 a month ago, not as healthy.

Greg Weldon: 24:35

But every other discretionary sector sporting goods, books and music down three and a half percent year-over-year. Furniture down 2.3 percent year-over-year. Appliances down 4.6% year over year. Vehicle sales down just under 1% year over year. What's up? Personal care, health care items and food that's not strong. How's that strong? We're buying food and toothpaste, but we're not buying sporting goods. We're not buying books or music. We're not buying furniture. We're not buying electronics. We're not buying appliances. We're not buying books or music. We're not buying furniture. We're not buying electronics, we're not buying appliances. We're not buying cars. But the consumer's strong Inflation is kind of the problem, though, because I said here on this program, I like saying that I just think it's cool.

Greg Weldon: 25:19

On this program. We talked about inflation. We called inflation all the way. Go back and listen I don't have to blow my own horn because it's all there on the record that inflation would be high. Then it would come down. It would be energy, it would be base effect, it would bottom. It might even get below three and then bottom and go back up. Hello, it's exactly what's happened and hello, it's rising again.

Greg Weldon: 25:39

The core rate rose this this past week. We saw the inflation numbers and maybe there's the end of last week. Uh, core rate 3.3, up from 3.2, I mean, versus a 4.75 expected fed funds rate of the low end of the you know, fed funds uh thing, uh range I mean now you're starting to talk about. Maybe that's why they wouldn't cut. The headline rate, though, was uh two, was uh 2.4, so 2.4 versus 4.75 feds, very restrictive still, okay, um, but what's interesting about this is that that this was all gasoline, all right, it was all energy. Gas was down 15 in price year over year. Food 2.3 year over year, up from 2.1 had been below one.

Greg Weldon: 26:26

Foods come back, and I'm going to talk more about food in a minute. When you talk about where is the inflation, it's in services, service inflation is sticky, near 5%. I mean more than double the Fed's target range. Service inflation X energy 4.7. All right, shelter 4.9. Rent 5.1. Transportation services 8.5. And that's up from 7.9 a month ago. Medical care 3.6, up from 3.2. Medical care 3.6. That's way above the Fed's target rate. Everyone needs medical care. All right, let's talk a little bit about food, because food five out of six grocery categories is how they do it. Five out of six were up. The one that wasn't up was unchanged. None of them were down and we've had five out of six down the last couple of months. This is a major shift in food prices and it is critical to the whole dynamic.

Greg Weldon: 27:22

Protein it doesn't matter whether you're a carnivore or a vegetarian, you got, or a pescatarian, you got screwed here. Okay, protein meaning meat, poultry, fish and eggs. That's the category that they give you all right, this the bls gives us cpi to the bureau of labor statistics. Uh, meat, poultry, fish and eggs is one of the categories. A 0.8 for the month, that's 10% annualized, and up 3.9 year over year. It's double the Fed's target rate. To get protein. Can't live without protein. You're a veggie? Okay, fruits and vegetables a 0.9 for the month. That's 10% annualized. I mean it's huge. Then we start talking about new highs in cattle, in ground beef, in milk, in eggs, in chicken, in cocoa, in coffee, in OJ. Even sugar is breaking out.

Greg Weldon: 28:12

Now we start to get to the strategy, because dollar down means commodities up and all of this where the Fed is going to acquiesce to save the consumer. Because you have stagflation and energy is down big because a year ago crude oil was $81. Now it's hovering around $76, so it's still a negative base effect. Gasoline prices were down 5%. The wholesale price reached $1.81, down 15% year over year. But guess what? Not all energy is negative and a lot of it's actually now coming back, particularly natural gas up 0.5% for the month, 6% annualized, up 2% year over year. It's at the Fed's target, electricity 3.7, almost double the Fed's target. So inflation's not dead, the consumer's not healthy. And that leaves us with what Stagflation?

Greg Weldon: 28:57

Throw in the fact our trade deficit for goods is over $100 billion outside of four months in the pandemic. That's a record trade deficit. Our budget deficit another $1.9 trillion this year. The interest on the debt is $1 trillion, over a trillion, and they spent almost twice as much as they took it in revenue. It's insanity. Twin Tower deficit is bad for the dollar.

Greg Weldon: 29:23

You also have the BRICS right. These countries, like Brazil, like South Africa, like India, for example right, india has 800 billion in official FX reserves, most of them dollars, most of them held in bonds. They want to participate in the BRICS. They got to liquidate dollars, take those dollars, sell bonds, take the dollar proceeds and buy gold to back their part of the currency in the BRICS unit. So this is why the dollar has been strong, even though it probably shouldn't be. Why? Because the Fed is not cutting rates.

Greg Weldon: 29:53

Other countries are German inflation just fell to 1.6. Italian inflation is 0.7 year over year. So the differential between the US two-year interest rate and the German two-year interest rate just moved by 50 basis points. It had been 135 basis points, just went up to almost 2%. You've got that kind of movement that's going to move money into dollars. This has lifted the dollar. The Bank of Canada is going to cut rates again. Inflation just fell below their target. New Zealand is going to cut just cut. Bank of England inflation just fell below their target. They're going to cut again. The Europeans just cut rates and the Fed's standing still and the market's not pricing as much rate cuts as they had been. This is holding the dollar up, which intensifies kind of the stag part of the stagflation. But at the end of the day the Fed will be forced to acquiesce to higher inflation to protect the consumer, to protect growth.

Greg Weldon: 30:46

We have too much debt. It's a debt. Deflation is the bigger risk than an inflation. We need that growth and we don't have it. You can't keep paying down the debt. You see it in the delinquency rates already. This is bad man. You need the growth and central banks will choose to reflate every single time because they think they have a beat on inflation, as Powell just has kind of proven to himself at any rate.

Greg Weldon: 31:10

So what do we do? We look for the dollar to turn down. It's reached $103.50-ish. That was our upside target for a countertrend rally. You get below $99.50,. The dollar's going to $90 or much lower. This is a big picture. It goes all the way back to the 70s. The or much lower. This is a big picture. It goes all the way back to the 70s. The purchasing power of the dollar right now, relative to 1971, we went up the gold standard relative to an ounce of gold is 3.9 cents. Your dollar in 1971 would buy you what 3.9 cents would buy you today? That's going to continue. That's a secular, multi-decade trend. That's going to continue.

Greg Weldon: 31:43

Commodities the place to be. We've talked about uranium. Uranium's coming back. You see all these companies. We talked about the need for nuclear energy. It's more efficient and cleaner than solar or wind. It will be big and it is the NLR, the nuclear, the world nuclear energy ETF, is our top pick. The URA also in the mix.

Greg Weldon: 32:02

We want to be buying commodities Right now. We're involved in the mix. We want to be buying commodities Right now. We're involved in the ags, like we just said, with cocoa and coffee and sugar and cotton. Even so, that's the and OJ. By the way, you know you have the lowest orange crop in Florida since 1933. All right. Even worse is grapefruit All right. So you're going to be paying higher prices for that. Oj is at record highs, got almost to $6 in the wholesale market. The DBA is the ETF for that.

Greg Weldon: 32:33

We're also looking, of course, at the base metals Interesting stuff. I won't talk too much about that, but really, you know we've been all over the precious metals. You know we've been all over gold and silver and especially the mining shares there. I wrote out to my clients on Thursday night. Silver is about to explode, make a big move. I did a interview with Peter Grandich, the former Wall Street whiz kid, on Thursday, also talking up silver. Friday silver was up $2. It's at a new high. It's not a question if it's going to 40, it's a question of how quickly it's going to 40. And we're going to see that too. In terms of my portfolio playbook that we send out to our clients, we have been heavily allocated to the silver and gold mining shares and to the nuclear sector, and that has really paid off as opposed to you know. Hey, look at this. Gold is breaking out against the XLK, which is the Infotech ETF.

Greg Weldon: 33:27

And I would throw in one last thought Bitcoin. Bitcoin broke out this week. We got long just above 66,000. That was our key upside pivot. If it gets above 70,800, basis the spot futures contract, that's a major breakout in Bitcoin and a measured move would put Bitcoin at 95,000. That could happen soon. Silver at $40, if not $47 in the next three to six to 12 months and Bitcoin to 95,000 in the medium term as well. Those are the things you can bank on. If you want some of my research, email me at sales at weldononlinecom. Follow me on Twitter at Weldon Live. Follow the podcast at money underscore podcast and follow me on YouTube Gregory underscore Weldon. Thanks for listening. We'll be back at you with episode 13 next month.