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Welcome to "This is Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness" your source for insightful discussions with economist and author, Dr. Murray Sabrin. Join us as we challenge convention, expand minds, and pursue truth.
Murray Sabrin (00:01.86)
Welcome to Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness. I'm Murray Sabrin, B A, A, Ph D. There's No BS in My Background, never has been and never will be. On this podcast, we explore the ideas, the people, and the principles that shape healthier lives, greater prosperity, and human flourishing. In each episode, we'll challenge conventional wisdom on healthcare, economics, politics, and personal freedom so you can thrive in th
Thrive and think independently, make better decisions, and pursue your happiness. Thanks for joining us today. And today we have a very special guest. Let me introduce him. Mr. Doug Casey is best known as a speculator, economic commentator, and author of seven books. Two of his books made it to the New York Times bestseller list. His second book was on the list for 29 weeks and number one on the New York Times bestseller list. He is currently completing a series of six novels with co author John Hunt.
Reforming the reputations of politically incorrect occupations. Doug over the years has been a guest on hundreds and hundreds of radio and TV shows from the 1980s up until the present. His website, internationalman.com, sponsors a variety of publications and has a daily audience in excess of 150,000. His YouTube channel with co-host Matt Smith is Doug Casey's Take.
Doug has visited over a hundred and fifty countries and lived in ten. He lives mainly in Uruguay, where he can't get in trouble for his very radical views on economics and politics. So Doug, welcome to Health, Wealth and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Doug Casey (01:43.264)
Well, thanks, Murray. And that was a pretty accurate recantation of the facts. Although it's a series of seven novels. We're hopefully gonna re release number four, which is called Terrorist, shortly. I've got a lot of views on terrorism as a method of warfare that'll be explained in the novel.
Murray Sabrin (02:02.054)
To Great. let's begin by something that most Americans would be very fascinated to know about. why do you live in in Uruguay? What made you decide to move to Uruguay for part of the year?
Doug Casey (02:17.166)
why Uruguay? Well, it's because I went to Argentina and Uruguay is next door. living in Buenos Aires, all good Porteños, which is what you call a resident of Buenos Aires, spend their summers across the mighty plate river in Uruguay, in Punta del Este.
So I joined the crowd and liked Uruguay, because it's Punta del Este is a beach resort, although I don't live in the beach resort itself. I have an Estancia outside of town. And it's a peaceful, backward, quiet little welfare state. And it suits me fine. Only four million people. it's like it's like
It's like what would I compare it to? It's like Atlantic City backed up by the k plains of Kansas. In Uruguay in Uruguay all they do is they they make cows, corn, and wood and soybeans. And other than that, Punta del Este, which is the kind of the jet set capital of South America. So anyway, that's why Uruguay.
Murray Sabrin (03:42.438)
Terrific, terrific. Let's start from the beginning. when did you become of of an investment analyst and what made your decision to become one?
Doug Casey (03:49.676)
Well, I didn't make a decision, actually. I kind of just grooved into it. it all started actually, it started before that, but I started taking it seriously when I read Harry Brown's book, his first book, You Can Profit from Becoming Devaluation. And that introduced me to gold as a speculation and later gold stocks.
I took it seriously and when did I I know what it was. After I read Harry's book, some years after that, I said, damn, that was a good book. I'll bet I can write I could have written that book. And what do you know? Ten years after Harry wrote his, I wrote mine called Crisis Investing, and it became a huge bestseller. And the next step, logically, was to start a newsletter to keep people up to date.
So I've been doing this more or less for how many years have I been doing this for? About forty five years, which is too long to be in any one occupation, but it's clean work, there's no heavy lift lifting, so I stuck one.
Murray Sabrin (05:00.518)
Y terrific. I my wife and I saw Harry Brown at Carnegie Hall, believe it or not, in Manhattan. I guess right after his seventy-four book was published. I I forgot the name of the title, but he gave a compelling argument why we're going to have a financial crisis. We were in a financial crisis at the time with the oil shock and the price of gold starting to move up. So Harry was a very, very insightful guy about the economy. And I heard him also speak.
at the Foundation for Economic Education, when it was located in New York State. And he was just one of the most articulate spokesperson for the liberty ideas that Ron Paul has been promoting and others of over the years. Anyway, let's get to the let's get
Doug Casey (05:45.07)
He was a fantastic guy and I didn't know this, but we happened to have been in the same audience at Carnegie Hall when Harry gave that presentation.
Murray Sabrin (05:56.401)
See that? Everything comes around. Everything comes around. Anyway, let's get back to let's get back to the economy, because you've written and spoken about the economy for so many years. How's the economy look to you right now? there's some people say that we're there's no trouble on the horizon. Some people say that the economy is starting to get soft. What what's your take on the economy?
Doug Casey (06:17.858)
Well, i it depends on your time frame. now as an amateur historian, I read a lot of history, the longest running trend in human history is the ascent of man. It's been going on for about ten thousand years since the end of the last ice age. And it's been accelerating.
Things are be getting better and better and better at an accelerating rate. So that's the good news. So I'm not a pessimist at all based on that. I think the future is not only going to be good, but it's going to be not only better than you can imag better than you imagine, but it can be it's gonna be better than you can imagine. That's how good things are gonna be. So that's the good news. The bad news is that there's a lot of incredible stupidity going on in the world.
Actions have consequences and we're looking something at something I call the Greater Depression. We're looking it right in the face. It's gonna be much worse, much longer lasting, and much different than the unpleasantness of nineteen twenty nine to nineteen forty six. So that's where I am.
Murray Sabrin (07:33.348)
Okay, let's get to some of the specifics that are happening in the US economy. The AI revolution. Do you see this? Because there are so many different points of view about AI, the data centers and the build out of the data centers. How do you see AI fitting into your thesis about about what is going to unfold in the US economy?
Doug Casey (07:52.32)
Well, I think AI is one of these really big things. The other big things are space exploration, which is blossoming thanks to Elon and and Bezos, among others, and robotics, which is going to be really big, and nanotechnology, which is on the runway and is gonna totally transform the nature of existence.
And along the way, and important to these other things, is artificial intelligence. That's the good news. But the bad news is that we're in a bubble with AI. I think not just billions, not just tens of billions, but hundreds of billions of dollars are being, in my opinion, misallocated to building data centers and pursuing AI.
So it's a much bigger bubble than the internet bubble or the computer bubble or anything before it. And most of most of these data centers aren't going to be making breakthroughs in science or technology or medicine. They're basically capturing people's data to control them and sell things to them. And I think it's I think it's gonna blow up.
And most of these data centers are are going to be abandoned as ancient artifacts in a few years slow.
Murray Sabrin (09:27.718)
So when do you think the trip how will the tripwire unfold? Because we saw the the bubble of you referred to the Greater Depression that you see happening. In nineteen twenty-nine, the stock market went wild the last two years, three years of the nineteen twenties. The stock market is at an all-time high. Stocks, some of the high tech stocks are going up twenty, thirty percent in one day, which is two, three years worth of gains in the past. So are these are these
elements of a bubble that you see unfolding right now?
Doug Casey (09:59.586)
Absolutely. look, being despite my Pollyanna ish view for the future, I haven't gotten involved in these tech stocks because they've always impressed me as way too far away from like Graham Dodd kind of parameters. it's bubblish.
Look, I remember when the first stock crossed the trillion dollar mark. It was only a few years ago. And which one? Who crossed the trillion dollar mark first? Yeah, I guess it was Apple. And now there's a bunch of trillion dollar stocks. In fact, three IPOs that are coming out in a matter of weeks. SpaceX, Open Anthropic and OpenAI. They're all trillion dollar. th this is
Murray Sabrin (10:36.006)
I think it was Apple.
Murray Sabrin (10:49.445)
Anthropic.
Doug Casey (10:56.726)
It's it i it i it's a bubble, so I don't want any part of it. But I I'm used to volatile stocks because my specialty has always been mining stocks, resource stocks, and they are notoriously volatile. In fact, they're much w once a bull market and those things gets underway, it it puts anything in high tech to shame in terms of returns on capital and that. So
Yeah, we're we're in a super bubble. A lot of capital's being misallocated, is gonna be wasted, a lot of people are gonna go bankrupt. Hope I'm not w among them. So yeah, absolutely.
Murray Sabrin (11:38.161)
So we have a new Fed chairman that just took the helm of the Fed the the other day, Kevin Walsh. And Trump said at his swearing in that he should be independent, even though Fed Trump wants lower interest rates. So do you see the Fed feeding this bubble or are they going to s try to stop the bubble with higher interest rates, which is exactly what happened in the late nineteen twenties?
Doug Casey (12:02.69)
Well, let me hasten to say that the Fed should be abolished. It should be disbanded. It shouldn't exist. It serves no useful purpose to the economy. it's just useful to financial types who it makes makes richer. So that's point number one. Point number two, as far as Walsh is concerned, I guess he can make some adjustments around the edges by juggling interest rates. But
The Fed has no choice basically but to buy the deficits of the US government. And they're running two trillion plus in deficits. The Chinese aren't gonna buy it, they're selling. Japanese aren't gonna buy those deficits, they're selling. So the Fed is gonna wind up buying most of those deficits. And the way they buy it is they print money up, which is deposit deposited for the interest of the US government in commercial banks.
And spent from there and then further expanded through the fractional reserve system by the banks. Anyway, bottom line, Walsh isn't in control of this. He's gotta buy the deficits. The money supply is gonna keep expanding unless we have a a deflationary credit collapse. And it's gonna end badly. Probably on Walsh's time in office. But I could have said that any time in the last twenty years and I could have been right.
Murray Sabrin (13:31.184)
Yeah, d do you have any time frame for when you think this AI bubble will will burst and the stock market will readjust based upon the fantastic run up we've had since two thousand eight, two thousand nine at the bottom of the housing crisis.
Doug Casey (13:47.011)
this is a crystal ball gazing type of question. I'd say
Murray Sabrin (13:49.582)
Yeah. Well that's why we're that's why you're here, Doug. We want your crystal ball to let everybody know.
Doug Casey (13:56.972)
I'd say any time in between tomorrow morning and maybe maybe two years from now. But I think we're pretty much at the edge of the precipice. We've been on the edge of the precipice for years actually. But it's it's marvelous what printing more money can do. It keeps the ball rolling, kicks the can down the road.
Murray Sabrin (14:17.894)
Okay, let me let me just shift gears. We talk about printing money. Uruguay is right next to Argentina. Argentina has had notorious money printing for decades. Their currencies have collapsed numerous times. how's the new president of Argentina doing, Malay?
Doug Casey (14:33.266)
I was a huge fan of Malay, and of course I still am, because he's a vast improvement over any other political figure in the world today. Okay, that's the good news. He's a declared anarcho-capitalist, and he said, or still says numerous times, what he wants to do is disband the Argentine government, fire all of its employees, get rid of its agencies.
Cut taxes to zero. This is the whole anarcho-capitalist thing. So I love it. That's the good news. But as always, that's bad news. And he's mostly, despite the fact he's already fired 60,000 government employees, he hasn't disbanded any agencies, hasn't been able to seriously he's done a lot of good things. We can go into the details, but he's mostly
talking the talk, but he's unable or unwilling to walk the walk. And I could tell you details of why that's true. But a number of details that are actually shameful. But listen, he's such a gigantic improvement over the actual criminals that were running Argentina before that, that I shouldn't be complaining or bad mouthing his faults.
Murray Sabrin (15:57.105)
Wha what about any other s South American companies? Are the are they on a path of more free market reforms or are they still hanging on to the statism that many of their governments functioned under?
Doug Casey (16:10.914)
Well, next door to Argentina, sharing a very long border, is Chile, which is, I think, the most conservative, sociologically conservative country in South America. And after having been transformed from a backward mining province into the most advanced country in South America under Pinochet.
was seen as the devil by most leftists in the world. then it went. It's been right wing, left wing. Now they got a rightist president who's kind of friendly to the free market. So Chile's better. Uruguay is just a quiet little welfare state where nothing much changes too much.
I guess the most radical change in South in in Latin America has been in El Salvador, which I've been there once or maybe I've been there twice, and it impressed me as a dangerous shithole both times. But under the new president, Bukele, he put sixty thousand young men in one, maybe there's more than one, gigantic
prisons where they're just kind of locked up and it seems like they're gonna stay there forever without any trials or anything. But they all had tattoos and their gang members and he's abolished the central bank. They used the dollar and Bitcoin officially in El Salvador. And I'm told that crime has plummeted like ninety-five percent so that it was a good move.
Not very libertarian, anti-freedom, locking up all these people without trial. But I guess pretty is as pretty does, and El Salvador is a lot better since he's been elected. We could talk of all these all these Latin American countries, because I've I've been to 155 countries, like I said, including everything in Latin America. And you know, have impressions and opinions about all of them.
Murray Sabrin (18:31.27)
We'll have to do that another time because we I want to get you your your thoughts on commodities because since you've been involved in commodity research and commodity trading and commodity investments. So what's your take on where commodities are going? We have industrial commodities, we have agricultural commodities and a whole host of other sectors. So where do you see the strength in commodities? given that the some people are talking about
how food prices will go up because of the Straits Home Moose being shut down at for the time being and fertili fertilizer prices are going through the roof.
Doug Casey (19:09.834)
Yeah, well, I'm a huge bull on commodities, because relative to everything else in the world, commodities are at a historic low relative to everything else. So that's a good reason to be inclined towards commodities right now. As far as food in particular is concerned, the grains, soybeans, wheat, corn, and rice.
Murray Sabrin (19:21.414)
Hmm.
Doug Casey (19:37.17)
are also in real terms at historic lows. And we all know the story about the Straits of Formula. I don't think that's a problem that's going to go away anytime soon for a lot of reasons. So apparently at the moment there are about 1800 ships trapped in the Persian Gulf. And they're being released with their cargoes very slowly at this point.
because the Iranians are charging two tolls to let them go and the Americans have their own counter embargo and the war is not over by any means. So all the fertilizer
the urea, the natural gas, the sulfur, the rest of it. the amount of it has dropped considerably and the prices of what gets out is much higher. A lot of people won't be able to afford it. So is are we gonna have a worldwide famine, I guess is the question.
Yeah, well I I think it's possible. I thought it was possible for years, because if you drive across the US and you look at the mile after mile of unicrops, genetically identical corn plants and wheat plants and so forth, you gotta say to yourself, there's gotta be some opportunistic fungus or bacteria or insect that's gonna break the code.
And attack all these things at once at some point. And if it happens in the US, it could happen everywhere because everything has been homogenized in the world, including crops. So yeah, I'm kind of pessimistic about what could happen in the future. So yeah, I'm low on commodities, including gold, I've gotta say, although it's I'm not as
Murray Sabrin (21:39.386)
Let's let's let let's hold off that on goal because I want to talk about that in a minute. But for the average investor, if they think the authesis is right, what would be the most effective, efficient, relatively safe way to invest in commodities?
Doug Casey (21:56.648)
Well, I'm not a fan of ETFs, apparently there are more ETFs tra I this is unbelievable, and I I'd like to verify it, but I'm reliably informed that there are more ETFs than there are publicly traded stocks in the US, which is hard to believe, but I guess it's true. But having said that, I would say that buying
Murray Sabrin (21:59.163)
Okay.
Doug Casey (22:24.63)
the ETF corn, C O R N, I don't think it can possibly go wrong at this point. because corn is one crop that needs a lot of fertilizers. And it's cheap right now. And I think it's going gonna go higher for a lot of reasons. And you can get a an ETF in wheat and soybeans too. And there are good arguments for all of them.
Murray Sabrin (22:50.798)
Okay. with every guest who makes a recommendation suggestion, please do your own due diligence to see if this is suitable for your portfolio, because there are no guarantees in life as we all know, especially in the investment world. So do your research and make your decision as to what you think would be best fit for your portfolio. So what about the industrial metals? copper, iron, all these palladium, I guess platinum, they're
Where where do you see them going?
Doug Casey (23:22.754)
Well, and silver, we gotta add that in there too. Silver is seems to have broken up to a new equilibrium level. It's been in deficit, production over consumption for the last six years. It's a high-tech metal. High tech world, it's the most reflective of light, the most conductive of heat, the most conductive of electricity of all metals.
Murray Sabrin (23:25.006)
Yeah, sure.
Doug Casey (23:51.758)
It's in supply deficit. and it's 75% of the I'm talking about silver more than the others right now. 75% of silver is only a byproduct of other metals, mainly co copper, lead, and zinc. So I kind of like silver, but the thing is, silver's already had a run-up, a big run-up, and copper,
Murray Sabrin (24:06.246)
Mm.
Doug Casey (24:20.952)
trouble with copper is that it takes
Not just millions, not just scores of millions, but hundreds of millions or billions to put a copper deposit into production today. We're talking about big time investment, long-term investment, politically sensitive investment. So it's well known that there's gonna be a copper squeeze, especially as the world is electrified more and more. Everything from electric cars to the bubble and data centers and
electricity is the way things are gonna fly. So copper should go up, although in many ways it should be replaced by fiber optics, which are better and cheaper and copper for a lot of applications. Copper's at six fifty. So I I don't care much about iron. There's lots and lots of iron in the world. So what's the what's the metal that I would play most?
Gold has basically had its run. I mean, look, I was a bull on gold for years, forever, forever. because it was cheap relative to everything else. Cheap relative to what you pay for a meal or clothes or a house or a car. But now, since it's reached the forty five hundred dollar level, more or less, it's been as high as fifty-four hundred, it's
Not cheap relative to anything else. It's caught up. I think it could actually go higher because I think gold is going to be reinstituted as the world's money between governments and in day-to-day commerce, believe it or not. so it's not the same investment that it used to be. But so I I I mainly am interested in the gold and silver stocks and
Murray Sabrin (26:20.75)
Okay. So g
Doug Casey (26:22.37)
Because they're cheap. They're cheap. The metals the metals themselves are not cheap anymore. But the stocks are really, really cheap. It's it it's anomalous almost. Although the stocks have gone a lot a lot too.
Murray Sabrin (26:36.464)
So w what do you recommend or what do you suggest that people look at for their portfolios to put some gold and silver mining stocks if they think that's appropriate for them?
Doug Casey (26:46.912)
Well, look, if you talk to your c garden variety investment advisor, anybody that works for a broker big brokerage firm, they'll steer you away from gold mining or silver mining or commodity stocks because they're so volatile. And they've been trained to think of gold as
archaeology, basically. A dead duck. They don't believe in it philosophically or economically. And everybody knows that mining stocks rape Mother Earth. And even if you build a mine, you're just a target for governments to tax you 'cause you can't move the mine and NGOs to harass you and look to shake you down and native tribes and God knows what. Mining is a horrible business. So there are perfectly good reasons why.
Murray Sabrin (27:15.59)
Mm.
Murray Sabrin (27:40.55)
Mm.
Doug Casey (27:43.766)
Conventional investment advisors shouldn't recommend it, but it's so cheap and so volatile that when these mining stocks get the bit in their teeth and run, because they're such a teeny weeny portion of the market, the whole group can go ten to one. A lot of individual stocks will go a hundred to one. I personally owned a couple stocks that went a thousand to one. I'm not talking over a lifetime, I'm talking over a cycle.
five years or something like that. I think it could happen again, even though a lot of these crappy little mining stocks, and I s I I look at the small ones, not the big ones, the New Monts and Agneco Eagles. They're fine. They're cheap. They're fine to own. But I look at the juniors and the explorers. And a lot of them have already gone ten to one. But they're still cheap. We're talking they're not even they're not
They're not small caps, they're not even microcaps, they're not even nano caps, they're pico caps. We're talking we're talking pi we're talking market caps of five to ten, maybe fifteen million dollars, so that legitimate investment people can't even buy because they're so small. But they're fine for individual speculators that know what they're doing. But but most of them are crap. they're constantly raising money just to keep the lights on in the office.
Murray Sabrin (28:45.36)
Ha ha ha.
Murray Sabrin (28:57.658)
Hm. Yeah.
Doug Casey (29:09.496)
So it's a specialist game. So I I look, it's where you should be, but you shouldn't be there if you don't if you don't know it about the area, mining and this type of thing. So people should be in it, but they shouldn't be in it at the same time, if you know what I mean.
Murray Sabrin (29:21.798)
Thank you.
Murray Sabrin (29:27.11)
we only have a few minutes left, Doug. I want to get people the opportunity to visit your website. w what's the best website and what information can they get from your website and what subryption services do you offer for investors?
Doug Casey (29:43.276)
Well, internationalman dot com, that's after my first book, The International Man. it's daily, great articles by I've gotta say, by myself, David Stockman, and a bunch of other well known and it's free. Great articles. So everybody should subscribe to international man dot com. Got a podcast with Matt Smith. And also should go to crisisinvesting dot com.
But there's a lot more stuff, some free, some paid. But those are the websites to go to.
Murray Sabrin (30:19.686)
Fantastic, fantastic. So when people go there, they'll get some free reports on your over overall view of the economy as we discussed today. And will there be any more specific details about sectors that you mentioned?
Doug Casey (30:34.722)
Yeah, there will be. I mean, right now because it's the cheapest place to be, I'm very interested in mining stocks, but also in energy stocks in general and oil oil and gas stocks in particular. here's a little fact for you. In nineteen eighty energy oil stocks were thirty percent of the S P. Today, when oil and gas are more important than ever
They're only four percent of the S P. So the answer to the question is they're really ultra cheap, not as cheap as the mining stocks, but that's the other thing we look at. And I I could throw in uranium stocks too, because I'm of the opinion that nuclear is by far the safest and cheapest and cleanest form of mass power generation. And all of the so-called green renewables,
Murray Sabrin (31:05.006)
Hm.
Doug Casey (31:32.21)
basically they're they're fine for special applications, but not for running an industrial society. So that's my argument for for nuclear
Petrochemicals.
Murray Sabrin (31:45.574)
Terrific. Terrific. I want to thank Doug for coming on today and giving us his insight into the financial markets, the commodity markets, and and his overall view of the economy. And visit internationalman.com. You can get a lot of free information. And if there are any newsletters that they requires a subscription, I urge you to take a look at it to help you make better decisions so you can improve your net worth, improve your
well being as well. And hopefully we'll have Doug back in the not too distant future to give us an update as to what's happening not only in the United States, but down south of the border in South America. So again, Doug, thanks again. It's great to be with you. just for everyone to know, I reviewed Doug's book back in the early eighties. it was a wonderful, wonderful read with a lot of insight about the economy and why we were headed for a
difficult times in the early nineteen eighties. And so we come full circle with Doug and hope to see you soon, Doug. So thanks again for coming on.
Doug Casey (32:52.652)
Thanks, Maria. I appreciate it and look forward to being here with you again.
Murray Sabrin (32:57.282)
Okay, thanks for listening to Health, Wealth and the Pursuit of Happiness. Until next time, keep questioning conventional wisdom, keep pursuing truth, and keep striving for a healthier, freer, and more prosperous life. And visit mafiusa.com so you can see how you can participate in the most important movement, I guess, since the d since the revolution. Make Americans financially independent. We got our political independence in seventeen seventy-six, actually a few years later when we
won the American Revolution, but now it's time to exert our financial independence. So until next time, see you next week.