Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about tariffs
Speaker 2: and how to justify them. I am your host, Mio Wong,
Speaker 2: and today we are talking about tariffs, the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: ruling and how Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify
Speaker 2: the next set of tariffs that he has imposed. Oh boy,
Speaker 2: so all right to recap our last tariffs segment so
Speaker 2: people understand what I'm talking about when I talk about
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court ruling from a few weeks ago. So
Speaker 2: Trump had been claiming the ability to do tariffs under
Speaker 2: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, an act that famously
Speaker 2: never says the word tariff, and the Supreme Court was like, no, actually,
Speaker 2: that the International Economic Powers Act does not give you
Speaker 2: the power to levy tariffs, a thing that it does
Speaker 2: not say that you can do. So Trump got extremely
Speaker 2: mad about this, and he imposed a ten percent tariff
Speaker 2: across the board using a different law, as he said
Speaker 2: he was going to do. Now, this ten percent across
Speaker 2: the board tariff was run through section one twenty two
Speaker 2: of the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four. We're going
Speaker 2: to get into that, okay. So he imposes a ten
Speaker 2: percent tariff using this like different authority from Section one
Speaker 2: twenty two and the next day he goes, I'm going
Speaker 2: to raise the tariff right to fifteen percents and this
Speaker 2: is the terriff rate on the entire world. But then
Speaker 2: he just forgot to do it because he got distracted
Speaker 2: by i think invading Iran. So he has never actually,
Speaker 2: you know, raised the teriff rate to fifteen percent, which
Speaker 2: he said that he had done. So it's now just
Speaker 2: at ten percent on the entire world instead of you know,
Speaker 2: all of the sort of individual country teriffs that had
Speaker 2: been in place before. And that's sort of the focus
Speaker 2: of today's episode is about these tariffs, because these tariffs
Speaker 2: are already being challenged in court, and I think that
Speaker 2: that challenge has a very very good chance of winning
Speaker 2: fairly easily. And the reason that those tariffs have a
Speaker 2: very good chance of being overturned by the courts is
Speaker 2: that unlike the IEPA tariffs that he was using, where
Speaker 2: he was claiming illegally the authority to just do whatever
Speaker 2: he wanted. This is why you would wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning and there's like one hundred percent tariff on China,
Speaker 2: like seven hundred percent tariff of Vietnam. Blah blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. Trump was claiming that that act let him
Speaker 2: do whatever he wanted. It did not. The court found
Speaker 2: that he did not. But that was how he was
Speaker 2: using teriffs, and he was the basis of how he
Speaker 2: was using terris for diplomacy, right. You know, he would
Speaker 2: put a tariff on someone at random, claiming this power,
Speaker 2: and then he would like enter negotiations with them. And
Speaker 2: he can't do that anymore. Now what he's done in
Speaker 2: its place is again imposed this terroriffs using Section one
Speaker 2: twenty two of the Trade Act. Now this authority is very,
Speaker 2: very different than the authority Trump was claiming before. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to read it because it mostly explains itself.
Speaker 2: Do not worry about the international payment problems or balance
Speaker 2: payments deficit that it mentions at the beginning. We're going
Speaker 2: to go over that in a second. What's important for
Speaker 2: our purposes here is that in order to put tariffs
Speaker 2: into effect, quote, whenever fundamental international payment problems require special
Speaker 2: import measures to restrict imports one to deal with large
Speaker 2: and serious United States balance of payments deficits. Two to
Speaker 2: prevent an imminent and significant appreciation of the dollar, in
Speaker 2: foreign exchange markets, or three to cooperate with other countries
Speaker 2: in correcting an international balance of payments disequilibrium. The President
Speaker 2: shall proclaim for a period not exceeding one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty days, unless such a period is extended by an
Speaker 2: Act of Congress, a temporary sarch charge not to exceed
Speaker 2: fifteen percent out of lorum in the form of duties
Speaker 2: in addition to those already opposed if any articles imported
Speaker 2: into the U s Okay, So let's look at the
Speaker 2: limits first, right, Instead of any rate of tariff on
Speaker 2: any country, which is what Trump had been doing, Section
Speaker 2: one twenty two only lets you set an up to
Speaker 2: fifteen percent tariff on every country in the world and
Speaker 2: only lasts for one hundred and fifty days unless Congress
Speaker 2: votes to approve it. This sets up a giant fight
Speaker 2: in Congress that Trump is not going to win. Now.
Speaker 2: We may never get to that point because the same
Speaker 2: right wing legal group who funded the lawsuit that overturned
Speaker 2: the IEPA stuff is going after Section one twenty two
Speaker 2: and they're going to win now. They're going to win
Speaker 2: because Section one twenty two has literally never been implemented
Speaker 2: before the tariffs specifically never been implemented. There is a
Speaker 2: reason for that, and the reason is that to even
Speaker 2: deploy Section one twenty two tariffs in the first place,
Speaker 2: you need quote fundamental international payment problems. One to deal
Speaker 2: with large and serious United States balance of payments deficits
Speaker 2: to the print dollar depreciation, and cooperation with other countries
Speaker 2: to correct international balance of payments this equilibrium. So those
Speaker 2: are very specific conditions. What does that mean? What does
Speaker 2: it mean for there to be a problem with balance
Speaker 2: of payments? This requires us to understand what the fuck
Speaker 2: balance of payments is. And it is here where I
Speaker 2: am fulfilling my promise from that Executive Disorder episode where
Speaker 2: I said I will explain it in the full episode.
Speaker 2: All right, we're doing it, and oh fucking boy, are
Speaker 2: you in for it, because Jesus Christ, oh my god,
Speaker 2: holy shit, this stuff is annoyingly convoluted. But it is
Speaker 2: also extremely important to how the global economy functions, how
Speaker 2: it's changed. And you know, it's not really relevant for
Speaker 2: the US at all, for reasons we will get into,
Speaker 2: but it is extremely relevant for the economies of a
Speaker 2: bunch of developing countries. So okay, let's start off with
Speaker 2: balance of payments. So what is the balance of payments.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna start off by quoting the Saint Louis
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve Balance of payments quote is a summary of
Speaker 2: all the transactions involving goods, services, and investments between one
Speaker 2: country and all other countries over a given time. Any
Speaker 2: transaction that causes money to flow into a country is
Speaker 2: a credit to balance payment accounts, and any transaction that
Speaker 2: flows out is a debt. So this is a record
Speaker 2: of literally every purchase in capital movement that goes in
Speaker 2: and out of a country. Right, So it's goods services,
Speaker 2: debt payments, and things can either be credits or debts.
Speaker 2: This is the FED explains. You know things that are debts, right,
Speaker 2: things that like make your account go lower is you know,
Speaker 2: debt payments, capital transfer payments like buying imports. If you
Speaker 2: were importing stuff from China, that is a debit. And
Speaker 2: then there are things that are credits to make account
Speaker 2: go up. So it's other countries paying for exports, capital
Speaker 2: transfer receipts, and you know financial acsets and that's other
Speaker 2: countries paying for your exports. So this is tracked in
Speaker 2: like two accounts. There's a capital and finances account. I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna call it the capital account because that's the
Speaker 2: most common name for it, and it's shorter. So there's
Speaker 2: the capital accounts that is all movement of capital in
Speaker 2: and out of the country, and then there's a current account,
Speaker 2: which is like a trade record of all goods and services.
Speaker 2: Technically there's also stuff from like interest from an investment
Speaker 2: goes there, but we don't really care about that for
Speaker 2: our purposes. The current account is the account that's like trade,
Speaker 2: and then there's a capital account, which is the account
Speaker 2: that's all of the capital moving in and out. Now, importantly,
Speaker 2: these two accounts, right, these two accounts compose balance of trade. Right,
Speaker 2: this record has two accounts in it. Those are the
Speaker 2: two accounts. If you line up all the credits and
Speaker 2: debts and then they cancel out and equal zero, the
Speaker 2: value of all goods being imported or exported as services
Speaker 2: and stuff like that too, is the same as the
Speaker 2: amount of capital moving in and out of the country.
Speaker 2: The two accounts will cancel out. And this is what's
Speaker 2: really confusing about balance of payments, because why the fuck
Speaker 2: is that true?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Why are the capital flows and trade balance white? Can't
Speaker 2: you have an imbalance, and the answer is that's how
Speaker 2: the accounting system works. And the reason the accounting system
Speaker 2: works like that is because of what balance of payments
Speaker 2: is now. Weirdly, if you want a more detailed explanation,
Speaker 2: there are a billion detailed explanations that are extremely convoluted
Speaker 2: and annoying. The Reserve Bank of Australia weirdly has like
Speaker 2: a readable one for people who aren't like engrossed and
Speaker 2: financial stuff however, come up, I'm going to try to
Speaker 2: explain it. So balance of payments is the record of
Speaker 2: everything that moves in and out of a country, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's goods, that services, that's money, it's stocked. When
Speaker 2: I say it tracks everything, right, was a record of everything.
Speaker 2: That means it's recording both sides of a transaction. So
Speaker 2: what does that mean? Okay, imagine a receipt, right, it's
Speaker 2: a receipt for a burger. You have bought one hamburger.
Speaker 2: On the receipt is the thing you bought the burger
Speaker 2: and how much it cost, which is the money you
Speaker 2: pay for it. Balance of payments track both the burger
Speaker 2: and the money you paid for it. Because it tracked
Speaker 2: international trade, right, it's tracking international movement of stuff. And
Speaker 2: because both the burger and the money changed hands across borders, right,
Speaker 2: it tracks both of them. And that is why when
Speaker 2: you put all the credits and debts from both accounts together,
Speaker 2: it adds up to zero, right, because you know, think
Speaker 2: about like the net transfer of funds on that burger. Right,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, there is the burger, and on
Speaker 2: the other hand there is you know, how much money
Speaker 2: you paid for the burger, and those two things are equivalent, right.
Speaker 2: The value of the burger is how much it's worth.
Speaker 2: So okay, that means that in the accounting of it, right,
Speaker 2: the account on the receipt, which shows both of these things,
Speaker 2: is balanced because it's tracking both of them, right. And
Speaker 2: this is the same way it works for an investment.
Speaker 2: You buy shares of a company, So okay, there's the
Speaker 2: money for the shares and the shares themselves, and they're
Speaker 2: both being tracked and they both go into the record
Speaker 2: that balance of payments keeps. So there are some convoluted
Speaker 2: things about this, and this is the reason why you
Speaker 2: need to combine both accounts instead of each account being
Speaker 2: balanced by themselves, because sometimes the record of the burger
Speaker 2: goes in one account and the record of the money
Speaker 2: for that burger goes at a different account. This is convoluted.
Speaker 2: It's because of how income is classified. It's a mess.
Speaker 2: You can go read the Berserve Bank of Australia. But
Speaker 2: that's why you need both accounts together to get the
Speaker 2: balance of payments, right, because both the burger and the
Speaker 2: money for the burger are in the balance of payments somewhere,
Speaker 2: but they might go in different accounts, so you need
Speaker 2: to put them together. And that's how you get the
Speaker 2: balance of payments. And see, that's why it's called the
Speaker 2: balance of payments, right, they balance out. See now you're
Speaker 2: getting it. Now you're getting it. This is why it
Speaker 2: always bounces out to zero because it's the balance of
Speaker 2: both the money and the object.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So sharp eared listeners may be going, wait, hold on.
Speaker 2: So Section one twenty two, which is where the tariffs
Speaker 2: are from, is about a deficit in the balance of payments.
Speaker 2: How can you have a deficit if it always balances
Speaker 2: out to zero? And the answer is, technically speaking, you can't.
Speaker 2: So Okay, what the fuck is going on here? Why
Speaker 2: is Trump using and Trump stifically is claiming that there's
Speaker 2: a balance of payments deficit, and there's a crisis in
Speaker 2: order to impose these tariffs. So what is going on here?
Speaker 2: Why does this law exist? You will find out after
Speaker 2: these ads whoa cliffhanger A. So to explain what is
Speaker 2: going on here, we need to take a detour back
Speaker 2: in time to when this was written. This Act was
Speaker 2: written in nineteen seventy four, but we need to go
Speaker 2: back a little further to nineteen seventy one. Now, in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, Richard Nixon makes probably the most consequential
Speaker 2: in a macro sense, change to like how currency functions
Speaker 2: on a global scale in probably half a millennia when
Speaker 2: he pulled the US off the gold standard. So what
Speaker 2: does this mean. It means that Nixon ended what was
Speaker 2: called dollar convertibility, or the ability to go to the
Speaker 2: government and trade your dollar for a certain amount of gold.
Speaker 2: So this fixes the value of the dollar to the
Speaker 2: value of gold. So the value of your currency is
Speaker 2: sort of relatively constant in that like it's this much gold, right,
Speaker 2: But it means that your macroeconomic policy is constrained by
Speaker 2: your gold supply. So why did Nixon take the US
Speaker 2: off the gold standard? And what does that have to
Speaker 2: do with balance of payments. Surprisingly everything, So okay, what
Speaker 2: I've been describing about balance of payments, I've been describing
Speaker 2: modern balance of payments. If you go back and read
Speaker 2: stuff from the FED from this era, when they talk
Speaker 2: about balance of payments or talking about flows of gold.
Speaker 2: In this period, every dollar that leaves the country represents
Speaker 2: an amount of gold, and the more of it that
Speaker 2: leaves the country, the more pressure that puts on the
Speaker 2: US gold reserves, because you know, there's less and less
Speaker 2: of it. This is what they're talking about when they
Speaker 2: talk about balance of payments. Right now. What's interesting here,
Speaker 2: and this is something that's important for our modern purposes,
Speaker 2: is that the problem that the US was facing in
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties that causes Nixon to do this
Speaker 2: when they're talking about having balance of payments deficits, which
Speaker 2: they are in this period, right. And this is why
Speaker 2: this law is written, is because this is a period
Speaker 2: where this stuff is talked about. The problem isn't a
Speaker 2: trade deficit, right, and this is very important. Trade deficits
Speaker 2: and balance of payments deficits not the same thing at all.
Speaker 2: In fact, in this whole period when the US is
Speaker 2: running these massive balanced payments deficits to become a problem.
Speaker 2: They have a trade surplus, right, they have a trade surplus,
Speaker 2: So like, okay, how are they like losing gold then, right, like,
Speaker 2: how are dollars flowing out of the country. Well, it
Speaker 2: turns out that what's actually making this a balance of
Speaker 2: account deficit, where like dollars are leaving the economy, which
Speaker 2: means golds leaving the US's vaults, is that the US
Speaker 2: is spending too much of this military. It's always speaking
Speaker 2: military spending. It is always fucking military spending. Holy shit,
Speaker 2: it's the reason everything is broken. It it's literally just
Speaker 2: always military spending. We're spending too much gold on the
Speaker 2: damn military.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So the deficit, and we we're talking about a bounced
Speaker 2: payments deficit. The actual deficit is that in order to
Speaker 2: pay for wars and to do military bases, they are
Speaker 2: spending money in other countries. And this is technically like
Speaker 2: part of the bounce of payments, right, because it's money
Speaker 2: leaving the country. And you know, like technically speaking the
Speaker 2: balance of payments as we've been talking about it, right,
Speaker 2: like the account is balanced, but we keep spending dollars
Speaker 2: in order to obtain military bases, and then also in
Speaker 2: order to bomb Korea and Vietnam, and the dollars have
Speaker 2: to come from somewhere. Now, again, the dollar at this
Speaker 2: point is goal. It represents a fixed amount of gold
Speaker 2: that the US has, and those dollars are coming from
Speaker 2: the US government, so that that's what the actual quote
Speaker 2: unquote deficit is in this case. Right, you will see
Speaker 2: this described as like, oh my god, they're paying for
Speaker 2: stuff from the current account from the Capitol count. No. No, no,
Speaker 2: technically yes, but what's actually happening here is that the US. Right,
Speaker 2: it's gold leaving the country because the US is having
Speaker 2: to buy shit for a military basis, right, and it's
Speaker 2: not getting enough gold back from trade to replenish the
Speaker 2: amount of gold that the US is spending on these
Speaker 2: military bases. Now, in theory, this is fine because it's
Speaker 2: technically speaking, you're spending dollars, and as long as no
Speaker 2: one tries to actually convert those dollars into gold, you'll
Speaker 2: be okay. Enter one Charles de Gaulle, President of France,
Speaker 2: who begins to unmass convert American dollars into gold in
Speaker 2: order to end the dollar's reign as the world deserve
Speaker 2: currency because it was pissed off at the US running
Speaker 2: the world. This is not like Charlos the gall Anti imperialists.
Speaker 2: De Gaull does not want like the end of imperialism.
Speaker 2: Degaull wants there to be equal footing or more equal
Speaker 2: footing between the different imperialist powers.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He just wants France to be like a major world power,
Speaker 2: imperialist power as well.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The power of the US gets from being the world
Speaker 2: reserve currency is extremely important. So what is the reserve currency?
Speaker 2: The reserve currency is the currency that, like all global
Speaker 2: trade is done in. And because it's the currency that
Speaker 2: all global trade is done in, all of the world's
Speaker 2: central banks have to hold like a bunch of that currency, right,
Speaker 2: And that's why it's called the reserve currency. But I
Speaker 2: say all of the world's central banks have to hold it,
Speaker 2: except for the United States, which does not have to
Speaker 2: hold dollars because it's our fucking currency. And if we
Speaker 2: want more, we can just print more. Right. So this
Speaker 2: is time they called like seniorage privilege. But like that,
Speaker 2: the power of this right is enormous and the dollar
Speaker 2: status of the reserve currency is actually really important to
Speaker 2: us in terms of explaining these sort of balance of
Speaker 2: payments deficits and crises. So, okay, here's a Saint Louis
Speaker 2: fed on why countries have to hold wood reserve currencies.
Speaker 2: Quote governments and or es central banks keep you know,
Speaker 2: like reserve currency on hand for several reasons, including exchange management,
Speaker 2: insurance against sudden loss of ability to pay for imports
Speaker 2: caused by a halt capital inflows such as foreign direct
Speaker 2: investment to the domestic market, foreign purchases of domestic stocks
Speaker 2: or balls, or domestic borrowing from the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Insurance for other economic contingencies such as wars or natural disasters. Now,
Speaker 2: the second one is what's of concern to us, right,
Speaker 2: it's insurance against sudden loss of ability to pay for imports.
Speaker 2: And that's what's commonly known as a balance of payments
Speaker 2: crisis in the current day, when you run out of
Speaker 2: dollars to pay for your imports or to pay for
Speaker 2: your foreign debt, which is a real issue too, right,
Speaker 2: Usually your money goes to the foreign debt and then
Speaker 2: you're out of currency and then you can't you know,
Speaker 2: like import more shit. This is a bounce of payments crisis,
Speaker 2: and they're actually pretty common, decently common in a bunch
Speaker 2: of developing countries, and they are almost always completely catastrophic.
Speaker 2: It's one of the foremost causes of modern revolutions because
Speaker 2: when you have one of these bounds of payments crises,
Speaker 2: you can't afford to fucking import things because you don't
Speaker 2: have enough dollars. You can't import oil or you know,
Speaker 2: fertilizer or food because you don't have enough dollars to
Speaker 2: do it, and your government has gone through all of
Speaker 2: the dollar reserves. As I talked about in the ED,
Speaker 2: Sri Lanka is probably the most recent example. The country,
Speaker 2: you know, just ran out of dollars to purchase shit with,
Speaker 2: and the ensuing unbelievably hideous shit that everyone had to
Speaker 2: suffer through cause people to burn down the president's fucking mansion.
Speaker 2: You will know, and I said this is before you
Speaker 2: will know if the US has a bounce of payments crisis,
Speaker 2: because you will see the smoke and flames outside of
Speaker 2: your window, and it's such. It's like Sri Lanka, right,
Speaker 2: like the revolution in Sudan. Like the reason that there's
Speaker 2: a civil war in Sudan now so some extent is
Speaker 2: because of one of these crises that set off a revolution,
Speaker 2: even though you know what usually happens in these cases, right,
Speaker 2: is that a country has one of these crises and
Speaker 2: then someone, usually the International Monetary Fund, will give them
Speaker 2: a loan, and so they will give them dollars in
Speaker 2: exchange for you know, like turning the entire economy of
Speaker 2: that country into a debt servicing machine, which means, you know,
Speaker 2: like taking food out of the mouths of babies to
Speaker 2: pay that debt back. And this also often causes revolutions, right, like, so,
Speaker 2: like Sudan had a balance of payments crisis and in
Speaker 2: like twenty eighteen, late twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, and they
Speaker 2: eventually got an im A bailout deal, but like the
Speaker 2: price of bread increased by two hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 2: and people drove over al basher out of power. However,
Speaker 2: come you will note that I have been saying that
Speaker 2: these crises are caused because countries are run out of dollars.
Speaker 2: But we can't run out of dollars because those are
Speaker 2: United States dollars. We can just fucking print them. We
Speaker 2: literally cannot have this kind of bounce of payments crisis
Speaker 2: because it's all our own money, and we can just
Speaker 2: print shit in our own money. Jesus Christ, this is
Speaker 2: so silly, losing my mind, Like it's not possible, you
Speaker 2: can't do it. Oh my god. Now, however, why is
Speaker 2: the law like this, right, Like, why why is there
Speaker 2: a law written talking about the US as if it
Speaker 2: could have a bouts of payments deficit? Again, Like, right
Speaker 2: up until nineteen seventy one, when Nixon took the US
Speaker 2: off the gold standard, it actually was possible to, you know,
Speaker 2: make the US run out of dollars because you could
Speaker 2: run out of gold. And this is what like the
Speaker 2: goal was trying to do, you know, by like making
Speaker 2: the US convert all his dollars into gold. But Nixon
Speaker 2: just said, fuck it. The dollars of floating currency now,
Speaker 2: and since its value isn't pegged to a certain amount
Speaker 2: of anything else, right, And that's the way it's been
Speaker 2: ever since, we can't have these crises.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The countries that have these crises in modern day are
Speaker 2: ones that peg their currency to like a specific amount
Speaker 2: of dollars, right, And they tend to run out of
Speaker 2: the reserves trying to like stabilize the value of their
Speaker 2: currency by offering conversions of their currency into the dollar
Speaker 2: at the official rate by like letting people go convert
Speaker 2: their currency into dollars. But again, we can't have that
Speaker 2: because it's dollars. We owe shit in dollars. And also,
Speaker 2: in order to have like a full on balance payments
Speaker 2: crisis where you can't pay for things right, it requires
Speaker 2: no one to be like willing to lend you money.
Speaker 2: And it's like, okay, like who is not going to
Speaker 2: lend the United States of America money? Like are you
Speaker 2: kidding me? This is this is the figgas crisis of
Speaker 2: all time. This bill, however, was passed again in like
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, and it was only three years after
Speaker 2: the US was off the gold standard, and so people
Speaker 2: were like, Okay, we're gonna do this thing in case
Speaker 2: we ever go back to a situation where this stuff
Speaker 2: is possible. But right now, like we literally structurally cannot
Speaker 2: have a balance of payments crisis, like we can't have one.
Speaker 2: You can't have a balance of payment's deficits. If this
Speaker 2: is not the same as a trade deficit. Trump is
Speaker 2: trying to argue that's, oh, we have a trade deficit.
Speaker 2: Our current account, which is like the trade account is
Speaker 2: like four percent below balance. But then if you look
Speaker 2: at the capitol account and you put them together at balances,
Speaker 2: because that's just how it works, Oh, that means we're
Speaker 2: in trouble and nonsense, absolutely bullshit. He's also claiming that
Speaker 2: there's like fundamental international payment problems, which I know there aren't,
Speaker 2: because fundamental international payment problems means you can't pay for
Speaker 2: your imports or like your debt, and if we weren't
Speaker 2: able to do that, you would all know. So, ah,
Speaker 2: they're going to lose this lawsuit because this is the
Speaker 2: fakest crisis that has ever existed. And now you know
Speaker 2: how fake it is, and also what balance of payments
Speaker 2: is you know? Okay, I'm going to close on a
Speaker 2: story about this, which is that there is a scenario
Speaker 2: in which this knowledge has actually saved countries before, and specifically,
Speaker 2: like the country that this safe was Cuba. There's like
Speaker 2: the Cuban Revolution, right and immediately after the Cuban Revolution,
Speaker 2: the government it's not like clear of their communists. Yet
Speaker 2: there's this very very short window where it's like not
Speaker 2: quite entirely clear what the fuck is going to be
Speaker 2: going on with this new like Cuban government and the
Speaker 2: government sends chay Guevara to the US to negotiate with
Speaker 2: a bunch of American banks, right, and chay Guevara actually
Speaker 2: understands this stuff, right, he knows a balance of payments is,
Speaker 2: he knows he's able to like talk to all of
Speaker 2: the sort of Manhattan bankers who are talking about this
Speaker 2: stuff on their terms, right, and like they literally literally
Speaker 2: the line they say about it was like, yeah, he
Speaker 2: talks like a banker, right, he understands balance of payments,
Speaker 2: He understands all of this stuff and what he's able
Speaker 2: to do. And this is critically like why the nation
Speaker 2: of Cuba, like like why the Cuban Revolution succeeded was
Speaker 2: that he was able to get the US to give
Speaker 2: him all of his gold, like because he was able
Speaker 2: to convince these bankers because he understood what they were
Speaker 2: talking about out in their language, and the Uziplo convinces
Speaker 2: the US governments to get him all this fucking gold
Speaker 2: because he understood how the shit works. And that's why,
Speaker 2: like Cuba was like functional as a country after that,
Speaker 2: because they had managed to get all of their gold reserves,
Speaker 2: which previously had been being held in the US. So
Speaker 2: you know, you never know when you too might be
Speaker 2: at the head of a better revolution, or you might
Speaker 2: be the one person in the new revolutionary coalition who
Speaker 2: understands what balance of payments is, and you too can
Speaker 2: get your gold out of the United States before the
Speaker 2: government realizes that your communists and like would have like
Speaker 2: locked it down and frozen it and taken the gold.
Speaker 2: So this has been It Could Happen Here, the podcast
Speaker 2: that helps you take your country's gold reserves like che guevara,
Speaker 2: Oh Boy.
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