professor of numismatics at Cambridge. Okay. I think he's passed away. All right,
I think we're on. So, welcome everybody. This is Pastor Stephen Anderson from
Faithful Word Baptist Church and I'm here with Brother Bill Sweeney and he is
actually a coin expert. It's what he does for a living and he's actually just a
really interesting guy to talk to. Whenever I go preach up at Sure
Foundation Baptist Church up in Vancouver, Washington, I always end up talking to
Brother Bill a lot or even just at other church events because he gets around a
lot. He's at our missions conference right now and so we're always meeting up
at events and talking because he's just extremely well-read. He's really into
history, economics and so you know in some ways he's like the world's most
interesting man. That's a high bar to live up to fast, right? So we're
just going to talk about coins. We should probably end it now so there's no
disappointments. So we're talking about coins and you know this is a subject
that's it's really interesting because when you think about history you know
there are like written records and things but some of the things that last
the longest are coins. Like I know when I was studying like Philip of Macedon
there were just so few like primary sources from his lifetime whereas like
you know there are coins though. Coins are a primary source because they
do have they do have writing on them in a lot of cases yeah and or the names
and images of the rulers. Yeah so they end up being like a tangible form of
history they have names they have pictures they have you know little tidbits
of information but one of the things I wanted to talk about was like some of
the coins that are mentioned in the Bible and I think kind of the big one
that everybody thinks about is what the King James Bible will translate as the
penny mm-hmm and it's actually in the original Greek Tosinarion and so a lot
of times it'll be like a Denarius or something yeah but but what I found was
really interesting is when you and I talked about this is just why penny is
such a great translation oh yeah or that can you kind of explain like how do we
get the the Denarius I think the modern versions they're kind of taking it back
to like Denarius or whatever yeah so they just they're basically they're
failing to translate because most people don't know what a Denarius is yeah a lot
of people have watched maybe the History Channel and they've heard that term
perhaps but that probably not the majority of Bible readers I would say or
like even if they've heard it they can't get to the penny so yeah so the penny is
obviously an English unit this is why it's being translated that way and it
comes from the Germanic root finning for finnig yeah and so that's it's
etymological root but it's it's it's abbreviated 1d in the English
predesimal system okay because it's it's based on the Denarius by way of the
denier which was sort of a legacy coin so at the the Roman Empire collapses
their monetary system has been debased the East and the West kind of separate
along multiple different lines since you have Byzantium they go on to like a
new miss they go into like mostly a bronze coinage and later a gold coinage
is the main standard in the Eastern Empire in the Eastern Empire on the West
they basically have they have the gold trimus for a few centuries then once
Charlemagne centralizes they go back to silver there's a lot of different
reasons for that but the French denier is based on the Roman Denarius and by
that time it's much thinner it's lighter its commerce has greatly decreased in
Western Europe there's a lot of reasons for that obviously they no longer
have a centralized system to have trade networks but also the rise of Islam this
is the Pyrene thesis that trade collapsed in the West because they're
cut off from the East by this like blocker called Islam mm-hmm and so the
Western Europe is kind of isolated in terms of commerce they know what they
don't have the sea lanes around Africa into the New World yet this is very
early in the Middle Ages that hasn't opened up yet so they're kind of isolated
they're stuck with a pretty limited amount of silver they make these little
tiny silver pennies or deniers the penny okay or the denier they're both kind of
a continuation of the denarii yeah so basically so what we're reading about in
the Bible in the New Testament the you know the penny a measure of wheat for a
penny in Revelation three measures of barley for a penny see thou hurt not the
hole in the wine or like when Jesus tells the parable about the day laborers
and they agree for a penny a day so that exact coin the Roman denarius you know
evolves into just like the just like the Roman language of Latin evolves into
French you know the Roman coin the denarius evolves into the French denier
which is gonna be ultimately the penny when it goes into English yeah and keep
in mind there's not a total institutional break when you go into
the Dark Ages a lot of the Roman nobility incorporated with the Frankish
and Germanic nobility that was taking over and there was some some like
remembrance of all these customs so so when we talk about the English penny or
the French denier the Roman denarius when we think about the purchasing power
obviously like an unskilled day laborer is you know he he works all day a 12
hour day and he agrees in the New Testament to earn the penny right so it's
like how much silver is this that we're talking about so at the time that Jesus
is talking the Roman Empire is pretty close to the zenith of its power okay
and so the denarius hasn't been debased yet later on by the time of like
caracalla who extends citizenship to all the free males it's been heavily debased
by them and then you have like diocletian reforms and they try and get
it back on par but at the time of Jesus it's about three to four grams okay so
three or four grams of silver yeah if you can maybe picture like a like a
modern nickel okay okay so that's the that's the amount of money that you
know a day laborer is working for you know in that story and it's three or
four grams of silver so then like if we fast forward to like 1611 when the King
James Bible is being translated like so they're translating this as penny what
did the penny mean to like a person in England in 1611 is it also like a three
or four grams the English the English silver penny was was introduced maybe I
might get this wrong I'm doing this off the cuff 800 900 1,000 AD yeah like as
an official issue and by by King James this time the silver penny is like maybe
it's like this little fleck maybe the size of your your pinky nail so it had
gotten smaller it had gotten smaller yeah so but it was still silver at the
time of King James and so linguistically like even in the context of the time it
made sense to just translate it as you would naturally denier denarius penny
gotcha okay but it but it already at the time that the King James Bible came out
they would have had to realize hey our penny isn't as valuable as the penny
back then hey back then is more silver it's big yeah well I mean it's hard to
say because until the the silver mines in the New World were really cooking I
mean silver was still pretty scarce and it was more valuable yeah and Jacobi in
England it was still pretty pretty scarce struck coinage was still pretty
scarce yeah so and then we were talking about this before we went on the air
we were talking about how you know the 30 pieces of silver that Judas betrayed
Jesus for so a lot of times what people will do in order to figure out like the
dollar value of that they would basically just figure out okay how much
silver was that because you said that the 30 piece of silver was probably each
piece of silver is probably about did you say 14 grams yes yeah in our
conversation before the show most people assume that if it's related to the old
shekel of the temple yeah that most people think that that is roughly
equivalent to the shekel of Tyre mm-hmm that's a coin we have lots of examples
of mm-hmm that was a big trade coin you know Tyre in sight on all big cities oh
yeah so they're sort of the monetary standard in that region mm-hmm that's
about a 14 gram shekel there was shekel kind of like the British pound right
there's no longer a literal pound of silver yeah term shekel it can drift
through the centuries right different weights but what they think in most
cases when it's like the Jewish legal version it's about 14 grams yeah so so
I guess the so the fallacy that that some people could fall prey to would be
to say like okay well if it's if it's 14 grams of silver and there's 30 of them
420 grams of silver and then they could kind of just google you know today's
silver price and figure in fact let's just do that just for grins and just say
like you know we could probably just ask AI it's uh 48.07 yeah so so we could
even just have AI do the calculation but but the fallacy here is they would say
like well if it was that much silver how much is that silver worth today okay
that's how much Judas betrayed Jesus for yeah the problem with that logic is that
like you said silver is much more abundant like you said there's been a
lot more silver discovered right and so the scarcity is what made it worth more
back then right it's not even if there there has been more discoveries there's
also more people though it's really not as important the relative scarcity is
the fact that it's no longer a monetary metal it's not part of the monetary
system most of the credit in our society is abstract and like silver the yacht
currency over is an industrial metal now mm-hmm and so it's just it's just not
it's apples to oranges yes so basically you know I typed this in and it says
you know November 6 2025 it's a dollar fifty five a gram so that you know you
come out with like 651 bucks yeah and to me like that sounds like a
ridiculously small amount of money to betray Jesus for 650 bucks yeah but it's
not accurate because again it's also ridiculous as the price of a man like
right we're by a slave the labor for the rest of his life is worth six hundred
dollars that doesn't really compute yeah because because that's where the 30
pieces of silver even comes from you go back to Leviticus and you know human
beings are being you know sold as slaves or indentured servants or people are
dedicating themselves to the temple or something and you have these different
prices 20 piece of silver 30 piece silver 40 50 whatever and these would
be ridiculously low quantities and so this is the fallacy of you know a
preacher today just be like hey I'm gonna preach a sermon about this figure
about how much silver how much to work so I thought of a different way instead
of this $650 figure I thought about it this way like okay if we know that the
denarius is like and you could stop me if I get any of this wrong since you're
the expert denarius is around three and a half grams yeah okay and then the the
shekel of tire is 14 so it's basically approximately like four denarii to a
piece of silver so then it's like 120 you could you could do the math it's 120
denarii that he's doing it for and then if we think about okay an unskilled day
laborer worked for 12 hours and they agreed to earn one penny okay so then we
could say okay what would an unskilled laborer in America in 2025 just no
skill just he shows up at the day labor place or whatever or even better yet
maybe he's even like undocumented and he's in the Home Depot parking lot and
we pick him up for 12 hours of unskilled labor you know I think he's probably
gonna get about 150 bucks you might be a little dated on like what down that
like I'm feeling I'm feeling salty today let's pay them all 200 yeah so
basically if we say 200 bucks and then and then you know we spent 120 of those
is what Judas is basically selling Jesus for so then we go 200 times 120 now
Judas scary is getting 24 grand yeah that makes a lot more sense it makes a
lot more sense if you sell them for 24 grand then 650 bucks because you're not
gonna kidnap someone and drag them across hundreds of miles of deserts to
make $600 yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't make any sense but you do it for 24
grand we wouldn't do it at all because we're moral people oh hey a pastor
Shelly's here he wants to jump in let's get him in here we need a chair for him
though sit here under my footstool all right let's let's slide over if you can
put his arm in my water please so we're talking we're talking money here so I
heard that you were discussing the Judas amount and whatever I think we can solve
the problem it's a $7,000 actually it turns out these $7,000 people they're
not getting the full night should be getting more like 24 you know oh yeah if
they really want to be Jesus they're like a cheap or they're not getting paid
the full amount yes they scored higher there's morning higher they should be
getting 24 so they got out negotiated so I mean so we talked about the penny I
find that really interesting because I you know I think it's really interesting
the translation choice of the King James translators going with the penny they're
kind of using English words things that people know things that people understand
a silver coin similar deal so that's it is it is absolutely the natural
translation choice because like I said even in up to 1971 when they
decimalized and instead of having 240 pence for the pound now you have a
hundred like a normal country yeah it all the way up until 1971 it was
abbreviated 1d for denarius instead of 1p so interesting it is so let's talk
about the the US dollar I find this really interesting like because I know
that there's a connection between the US dollar Spanish peso pieces of eight you
know you read about like when you're reading treasure island peso just means
weight yeah so can you can you break that all down the pieces of eight and
all that like like take us through the Spanish currency to the to the US dollar
because we're kind of getting away from Britain when we get the dollar am I
right like it's not because we're not doing the pound absolutely yes
absolutely explain that yeah absolutely okay so I guess there's multiple ways to
approach it first of all let's talk about why it wasn't the pound okay
beyond just patriotic prejudice of like hey we're gonna throw the tea in the
harbor and we're not gonna be like British anymore
mm-hmm there for a long period of time basically there have been economic
oppression against the colonies they didn't want them to develop
manufacturing they wanted them to be an agricultural resource export to then
make the finished goods in England export them back to us you know at a
higher price and so there was always a net drain on real money on species gold
and silver from the colonies back to England no one could really hold on to
their money here so there really was hardly any British coin in circulation
in the colonies the illicit trade in a lot of cases that they were able to do
was with the Spanish Empire whether that's through pirates or smugglers or
at times maybe when they're at peace with Spain that it's allowed perhaps and
so you've been and of course Spain has all the silver mines in the New World you
have the Potosi you have the Potosi mine and some of the biggest silver
loads ever discovered and I mean the Potosi is still the biggest as far as I
know the biggest silver discovery and so the Spanish Empire is just cranking out
these eight realities at first they're cobs they're these very primitive
basically you're making plates over chopping it up and then filing it into a
rough kind of a coin shape and putting the stamp on it and a lot of that's
just getting sent back to Spain to pay their debts to the Fugers and everybody
else a lot of this money slipped through the hands of the the Habsburgs and the
other Spanish monarchs they're fighting the Dutch they're fighting all over the
place and they're majorly in debt to all these bankers so a lot of it slipped
through their fingers that's why Spain never became like a super wealthy
country despite discovering the biggest amount of precious metals ever right
but a lot of a lot of those Spanish dollars later on they finally get they
get milling technology in Mexico City and other new world events the Spanish
mill dollars become kind of the standard in the colonies even when they don't
have them on hand a lot of times they start becoming the unit of account in
these different cloning for these different colonial planters and
merchants instead of the pounds sterling and so then when the u.s. gets its
independence they're already talking about dollars in the Constitution before
the u.s. mint ever existed and so it's already the unit of account at the time
of independence so I'm thinking about the word dollar because because I know
that there's like there's a saying in German came from Fowler yeah because I
know in German they say their name Fennec is this tallest next bit so they
talk about the Fennec you know he who does not honor the Fennec is not worthy
of the toll are so I guess the toll are where like all are yeah so it's a
Germanic word your kind father is kind of where that comes from okay so again
so I don't know how deep to go with this but in don't go too deep we got we don't
want to lose the viewer at home so all right so obviously the Roman Empire is
making it the denarius okay most and most of their silver is coming out of
the mines in Spain they're using slave labor okay they never really update
their technology and they kind of just exhaust those mines that's the only
thing they really have to export to the east for luxuries because the Romans
never really developed manufacturing this is also why there's a big
silver shortage in the Middle Ages like we were talking about in the West yeah
there are big silver deposits though in places like Poland, Tyrol like the
northern Balkans like the like Czech areas there's there's there's a lot of
good copper and silver mines in those areas at the in the early Middle Ages
those places are still controlled by the eastern Slavs and by a lot of cases
pagans and it's a slow process of Catholic Germans pushing east and establishing
control over those areas and then once that those silver mines start being
developed by Western powers that money comes into circulation and you have the
Renaissance and and then you have the German princes asserting themselves
against Rome's authority and but one of the big mine areas there was Tyrol
okay in the north of Italy south of like Germany in that area and is that where
we get a dollar so they were making that Yulkinthaler is one of the areas
and that they were making these big hefty coins and that's the Tolar again
so in the Middle Ages they had these thin like little wafers of silver coins
yeah and once they started really pulling all the silver out of central
Europe they could make these beefy silver coins for once and it really
stimulated commerce and a big one is the dollar yeah so then the Spanish are
having dollars yeah and well the Dutch as the trade terminus for all this with
their river systems they have the dolder and that is kind of so you have
like the Tolar and the Dutch have the dolder and then we have the dollar okay
and so then so then basically the the colonists when they're gonna declare
their independence they don't want to do the pound sterling they're gonna call
their monetary system the dollar exactly so they as like a silver dollar yeah so
you have this theoretical unit of account the Dalton right now but now
you're an independent country you can't just use Spanish Empire coinage and
points that would be not we're good exercise of sovereignty so they want to
start minting coins they set up a mint they're like well who's smart about
money Alexander Hamilton of course they put him on the committee to figure out
what kind of coins we're gonna make the assumptions of course that we're gonna
make a dollar so he thinks about all right well what weight should we make it
yeah how much they're gonna be worth and so like if you just weren't thinking at
all you would say we'll just make it exactly the same as the eight routes
here's the problem with that is if you're striking brand-new coinage and
you have all the Spanish Empire coinage that's been circulating for decades in
some cases centuries it's a little bit worn down so weighs less and so there
would be an arbitrary have the Jews been clipping it a little bit maybe been
clipped down a little bit there's the arbitrage opportunity there that people
would just export and melt all the American coinage right Gresham's law
and so what he did is he took a sampling of I don't know exactly how
many different okay so basically what is de facto not the de jure exactly a
realist but and that's what they call pieces of eight yes in like a in like a
pirate book or something yeah and then and then we're gonna not get real it
means royal so it's like the state coinage so we're not gonna take like
what it's supposed to weigh we're gonna take what it actually de facto way it's
not the de jure weight but the de facto weight and then that's what they base
the dollar on the dollar is based on the dollar so the dollar was then defined as
371 and 1/4 grains of fine silver okay which was like a few percent less than
the Spanish one okay and then and then what about some of the other coins that
would like the dimes and the nickels and the pennies that those like how far back
did those go so like why do you call a quarter two bits yeah it's because well
two out of eight is all right because it's eight reales the dollar is the
pieces of eight so then a quarter of eight so then that's why it's two bits
four bits like the Navajos that's the way they this is why stock prices were quoted
in eighths and similar fractions up until the 80s oh okay any interesting
questions from the chat about coins or not not necessarily directly related yet
but one one kind of thought experiment is they're wondering if precious metals
will continue to be used as currency once pretty much digital currency is
just pretty much the goal like is is precious metals currency gonna just go
away forever is it is it I don't think so you think it's always going to be
there how does the Antichrist I'm kind of piggybacking off of this how does the
Antichrist regulate the trade of gold and silver though yeah I don't know if
it's fair to say that the mention in Revelation necessarily means that it's
still gonna be a precious metals currency because it just doesn't the
doesn't the New Testament sometimes it's like in Revelation it'll do
something that's an analogy that we can understand like obviously Revelation
can't talk about digital currency because it's being written in the first
century AD so maybe just the the measure of wheat for a penny is more just a
value in our minds that's actually digital I mean current events though but
is he talking about actually the transport of goods to Babylon and
specifically like what's gold and silver text in mine what I'm just
curious was the measure of wheat for a penny also the fact where they'll throw
their gold and silver out in the street because like it's not the commerce is
worthless or whatever but you know if you look at current events central banks
have been on a gold buying spree for a while now yeah I was just thinking this
is the merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones is being transported
to Babylon yeah so so like I'm just saying that could be different to the
jewelry yeah it could be but at the same time like even gold bars and stuff are
still considered a transportable good there could be a difference I think
between what's lawful and what's practical like what's happening just
because the Antichrist has implemented this system I don't know that it doesn't
mean people wouldn't be bartering and trading outside of that black market
yeah until a certain point you have different kingdoms still and one of
gold strengths is that there's no counterparty risk and so like
obviously the basis of the international financial system right now is US
treasuries US dollar well there is a counterparty risk there if the US becomes
unreliable of course I mean like if they just get like like they just get 38
trillion dollars in debt or something and then so and so like some central
banks are diversifying their reserves they're beefing up their gold you know
it's still useful and silver was just declared a strategic metal by the US
Geological Survey the other day this is what he does for a living I know he
doesn't hear about metals not being used for money I'm kind of curious because
I've had this thought experiment about the the difference between like owning
gold physically yeah owning gold through a trust fund or a trust company that
like they store the gold and you own it that's more or more than like buying I
think you could like buy like stock in a company that holds gold and I kind of
think of these as three different concepts maybe a little bit like I'm
like owning gold through like a stock or I'm only gold where someone else is
storing it or I'm only gold physically I think you're talking about an exchange
traded fund so it's yes different than owning stock in a company but it's
similar but they have registered inventory with like the mercantile
exchange like like registered warehouse gold yeah sure I guess these are my
thoughts like I think some people want to own gold from like a doomsday
perspective yeah and and like from this is my thoughts and I want to get your
opinion here is that owning gold from a doomsday perspective is is kind of like
not gonna work no matter what and and it's like if let's take all three
scenarios if it's the stock fund well that's gonna just a bit that's just
gonna disappear if someone else owns it they're not gonna give it back they're
not gonna hand it over if you own it so that's they it's doomsday scenario
owning gold in my mind would just paint you out as a target like if I have
physical goal I have to still transport it and I have to like barter with
somebody and as soon as anybody identifies that I actually had gold and
no one else did like it probably just put a huge target on my back and it'd
make me like the sprinter in the driveway almost the exact same thing it's
pretty much it's pretty much liquid gold is sitting there gold on wheels but I'm
just saying like to me if there's a doomsday scenario owning gold doesn't
actually help me what does it still wouldn't silver make more sense because
if you were in some kind of a post-apocalyptic situation if you pulled
out of gold coin it's a little bit of a radical instrument to have whereas if
you had silver coins it's pretty chill what do you think I think I like that
opinion I mean based on the last 4,000 years of history yeah doomsday hasn't
happened exactly I don't base it we shouldn't worry about I don't base my
investment decisions on the end of the world I mean if it's the end of the
world just like go 3x long the Dow because if you're raw if you're if it's
if it's not really doomsday then now you're up like a huge amount and if it
really is it doesn't matter I kind of agree with that investment strategy
because it's like if you invest in the Dow like just for a stock general stock
fund as long as they don't crash everything you're good and if they crash
everything you're doomed anyway so it's just kind of like I'm not into doomsday
prepping anyway because you know doomsday is only gonna happen one time
chances are it's probably not gonna happen I think the reason that the
conversation even goes there with gold is that because like in the 70s like
there was a lot of like in 80s there was it was associated with like
survivalist yeah prepping a lot and like wait a minute didn't the government
there is all the gold at one point so in 1933 that's older yeah we were in a the
Great Depression we're in okay we're a couple years into the Great Depression
and they needed to recapitalize the monetary system and so they needed to go
from $20 and 67 an ounce gold as the statutory standard to $35 an ounce gold
because that would reliquify the system you're making the gold more
valuable in nominal terms okay and so they called in all the outstanding US
gold coin and you were allowed to keep up to $100 face value of gold coin per
person so around you could keep around five ounces per person. Did you get the
equivalent in currency? You got it back like in folding money or whatever. It
bought it from you. Yeah it's like eminent domain but yeah from a gold perspective.
It was the law but it was not like no one was going around
checking your closet. It's probably hard to trace down. It was an
honor system and a lot of people just thought well the dollars go back anyway
they didn't really think a lot of it and you could in historic and
numismatic coins you could keep if they're older than a certain date they
were exempted, jewelry was exempted, your dental gold is exempted. And then our
money was based on the gold standard for 40 years or something right? Yeah. At what
point did it change again? I can't remember. 1971. 1971 so about 40 years. And so yeah
so Bretton Woods started breaking down because we were doing the guns and
butter for Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson you're fighting he's fighting a war and
doing welfare at the same time. The debt's piling up. France and other powers
that are holding a lot of dollars because we did the Marshall Plan we
helped re-industrialize Europe Europe's now producing goods we're buying them
they're accumulating dollars and there's way more dollars outstanding than we
have gold and so they started trying to take delivery the French actually sent
destroyers to New York to take delivery of some of their their gold you know and
you know Nixon gets a bad rap for closing the gold window but he really if
he hadn't have done that we would have no gold left we would be flat broke and
so he just he pulled the plug you know arguably we do have gold in Fort Knox what
about all the gold that was under the World Trade Center do you know anything
about that I know that there are coins that trade and certified holders that
were recovered from there I heard I heard rumors there was like 90% of the
gold underneath World Trade Center was was unrecovered after a 9/11 attacks
yeah it sounds kind of like that's conspiratorial I'm just curious have you
heard about that I can't speak to that no I know I know that they did were
there a lot large gold repositories underneath the World Trade Centers I
mean maybe banks have their I don't know that'd be something to ask the banks
that had offices there is gold insured well yeah like COMEX warehouses have to
be insured well would it be wouldn't be covered by like your homeowners
insurance if you if you had gold coins at your house or something but you're
talking about you're talking about the gold you took about the 9/11 gold was
it you know let's say you own the building and you're afraid it's gonna
be destroyed by a terroristic activity so you get terrorist insurance for the
building right let's also say you had a huge large gold repository underneath
and some vault system you could potentially get insurance for this gold
I'm assuming to where if someone came and just stole the gold you get paid
all of this insurance money you know maybe some percentage or something like
that is that something that even exists like let's say I'm you know even a pawn
shop owner you can write an insurance I mean I'm sure you can write an
insurance contract for almost anything if someone's willing to write the policy
so I have no idea this is standard practice that your local pawn shop your
local coin shop or whatever has some kind of an insurance policy for all the
gold and jewelry no I think that would be it would be a little too risky for
the for the underwriter when you're dealing with just like a non
institutional entity like that I mean at the same time like like here's the
thing just like our church just to rent a building we have to have like two
million dollars of general liability insurance or whatever and we all have
homeowners policies and stuff so I'm sure that like I'm sure if I go I don't
have any gold you know silver and gold have I okay but if I did I'm sure your
homeowners insurance would cover and I'm sure if we had gold here or something
which we don't if we had some gold plated idolatry or something like I'm
sure would just be covered by our general liability policy so probably
other businesses are probably the same way it's just it's just possessions it's
just your possessions are covered up to however many million I mean I would like
homeowners cover gold and sure what you own and possessions of course just it
just covers everything you I mean that that would be my guess no I mean well I
think that there are sometimes for coins and boy and stuff like you might have to
get it might be special you might have to get a writer on your yeah I'm just
curious you know most standard policies will cover it up to an amount but yeah
but but they might if it's something radical like that you got to get a
special yeah that makes sense well just like an investment perspective right
like if you want to get away from inflation you're trying to protect his
inflation you kind of like I always say it's like real estate gold or maybe you
could just do like yeah but at the end of the day you know how do you get how
do you protect against gold though in physical possession you lay not up to
yourselves treasures upon earth where where where moth and rust is corrupt and
where thieves break through and steal exactly because because I think that
it's one of those things where if you want a foolproof investment for your
money it's impossible there's no such thing because God can always find a way
to destroy you financially like look at Job he was like really invested in a lot
of different cattle and he's diversified and God still just wiped him out in a
single day just because if God wants to wipe you out he can wipe you out you
could be robbed whether it's electronically whether it's physically at
the end of the day nothing is guaranteed in life nothing is certain
everything's temp the things that are seen are temporal and the things that are not
seen are eternal. Well I mean if someone with a legal background I can think of a
million contingencies for anything but I don't throw up my hands and then not
like take my best shot because I mean something like silver you know when I
started in the business it was still in single digits and now it's 48 yeah so
that's a good that's a good ROI gold oh yeah the ROI on gold has matched the
dollar the last 20 years. Well I agree with everything you just said and I
think that's a really important guiding principle but at the end of the day like
if God gives me ten talents you know I don't want to bury them in the ground I
want to like put them out and you know use them to gain something and just to
protect myself from the inflation that's happening to me I think some people just
genuinely want to know like what do I do with even it's just a little bit that I
have. I think people do have these questions and the people that are in the
industry we don't tend to like give straightforward answers about what we
do. Right well if I had a bunch of gold in my possession I wouldn't want to
tell anybody you know because I've thought about it and I'm like you know
owning gold just doesn't seem like a winner. Now the silver happens to defuse
silver coins kind of nice because even the doomsday you know it's just silver
at the end of the day it's not even gold but having a bunch of gold in your
possession you just you're a target for a theft you're a target for just you
know things being damaged even in doomsday scenarios. Well I know you say
the doomsday has never happened and of course doomsday has never happened but at
the same time you know there was a Great Depression in the United States there
was the Weimar Republic in Germany. Civil War. Silver would have worked right?
In all those cases gold was great fire insurance. There you go so there are like
little miniature doomsdays where the silver or gold could be helpful. Maybe
silver bullets that might be the most important currency. Some questions here
someone asked and they said this may be a dumb question but why did governments
like the US still have a gold deserve even if our currency is no longer backed
by gold? Yeah like what is the function of the gold in Fort Knox if it's a fiat
currency what is the gold it's function in Fort Knox? Well you always want to
have options with your reserve assets to provide liquidity in different
situations with different trading partners perhaps in an emergency. It helps
establish legitimacy but even if you have a bunch of different things
pyramid it on top of an asset I mean you were in banking you understand this that
like you might have a fractional reserve in the bank but it can plug little gaps
here and there. Okay so let me ask you this so it's almost analogous it's
almost like a macrocosm of say let's say I'm just a normal person in America and
I'm functioning based on my checking account my savings account I got this
credit card I got this vehicle payment I got this mortgage or whatever but then
it's like you know you still got a safe somewhere in the back with some gold and
silver and guns and just in case so it's almost like the US yeah the dollar is
the most important you know financial instrument in the world or whatever but
you know hey if it all goes to crap Fort Knox is our backup as a mission with I
mean if the dollar goes to zero through some bizarre contingency yeah I mean
just for sake of argument right yeah and you've got to buy the semiconductors
for your fighter jets to keep the Chinese off of California gold something
that everyone will there you go that makes sense it's a backup yeah it may
not even be a backup as much as it just like and that's not the that's not the
answer the Federal Reserve would give you they'd give you some very like
academic answer about like monetary policy mm-hmm but that's just one of
many possible answers gotcha yeah the government has gold we got to store it
somewhere why not Fort Knox yeah another question is do you know how
physical currency has over time turned into more of a digital version now
longer being backed by gold I'm not sure if I understood the question
fully myself but I guess this well I mean here's the thing we've seen
currency evolve into a digital version so and in my mind money physical money
doesn't even seem to matter at all it seems like zeros and ones and the
computer screen is what's really driving the train I'm kind of curious how does
physical money still relate in today's currency versus the digital. So going
back to the beginning of centralized civilizations like Egypt and Babylon you
didn't even have coinage until around 700 BC with the Lydians because they
had easily accessible electrum in like the riverbeds that they could find in
native deposits and mold and the ingots and whatever they function on it like a
credit system you can still make loans you can still make debts you can still
make all kinds of things purely through script you know based on maybe
agricultural production or different things like you could have a loan
contract in Egypt that says like you know I'm loaning you you know five
bushels of seeds and at 10% interest you owe me this much bushels of wheat in two
years from now or else I take your land so it was it was barter more than
saying there's a ledger system so Roth Rothschild did not invent this in the in
the little TV show or whatever he's telling his kids like right off the
auspices marching the Zion yeah I don't think anybody was claiming that he was
inventing it I think it's more just he's instituting it they say that double
entry bookkeeping was invented by the northern Italians and like the 1300s or
so but you know even though there's not documentary evidence for in Egypt of
Avalon it's kind of common sense that you need double entry bookkeeping at
least to me I mean maybe we just think it's common sense because that's how
banks think about the Bible I mean we have the unjust steward literally
writing off sure that's on the books in in in that particular parable and he's
obviously for Jesus to use that parable it would have been something that
everyone's familiar that can be done without that can be done without double
entry yeah but it's just a more sophisticated version of that that
comes about in the 1300s yeah yeah but some of the oldest even some of the
oldest records in the Greek language for example so you think about societies
they had a very strict priestly hierarchy and royalty and stuff and so
these institutions could legitimize these contracts so a lot of times like
in Babylon like it was the you might get like a temple seal so it's backed by the
good faith and trust of the temple yeah or the government would affirm
that you know we have on deposit FDIC is like temple a hundred bushels a week
from this guy yeah or whatever now that makes sense some of the oldest documents
in Greek and even like some of like linear B is all like receipts when the
Bible says take not script for your journey yeah so this is this is a it's
almost paper money travelers checks it's a credit system yeah travel with among
merchants wait I want to make sure I understand this you're saying the script
was not like just paper it was like money yeah yeah paper money yeah a
merchant might have however much funds on accounts and you know he he knows his
cousin and tire he's in Jerusalem his cousin's entire you know there's a
network of merchants that have money on deposit I think I always just read that
it's like paper so I guess I'm learning where he says like when he says don't
take any script for your journey don't take two coats the script is like a
traveler's check where you safer for a travel on on presentation you don't you
don't have a coin bag on your hips for when the highwaymen come this is this
is what I learned from Rothschild so a lot of people a lot a lot of people
today like you know they're used to everything being a debit card credit
card but even in our lifetime or gift card even in our lifetime when I was a
kid you know traveler's checks were a big thing and then like I went to travel
like ten years ago so to answer the question I went all the way back to each
of the Babylon for it I guess I'm being too thorough but the point is is it like
there's always been ledger and credit systems and we just have faster
communications now to do it with that are more efficient and less half probably
even more reliable unless less fraud is possible you know versus a clay tablet
or something yeah but what I was what I was gonna say is that like when I was a
kid it was like you didn't you couldn't pay with a debit card debit card didn't
exist there was an ATM card that got you cash out of a machine and then you know
the credit card restaurants didn't take credit cards grocery stores didn't take
credit cards so like when I was a kid you know you didn't get a gift card for
your birthday you get like a gift certificate and I remember getting like
a gift certificate to Burger King you know when I was a kid like and it was
literally for Burger King it was like $10 at Burger King and that that would
be like the script in a sense because it's like you show it to Burger King
and it's like as good as cash. When the Federal Reserve Board is like discussing
the transition to debit cards they obviously have already this very
complicated check clearing system going into that and so checks are drawn on all
these different local banks and so the debate was well do we want the debit
card this electronic funds transfer system to be that every bank can just
have its own clearing system with its own debit card like or are we going to
let sort of the credit card companies provide those services for them? Yep.
And so we and we ended up with this like triopoly of like. It's through Visa. Visa
and MasterCard. Maybe Discover. Yeah instead of like every bank having its
own specific debit card that would have actually been lower cost. Yeah. But a
little bit more complicated for the Fed to clear all those payments. Yeah but but
yeah I was just I tried to buy travelers checks like ten years ago and they're
like dude those stopped existing a long time ago like there's no such thing as
a traveler's check because you don't need it anymore but it was because you
don't want to go traveling with some huge amount of cash because then you get
robbed whereas the traveler's checks that they get stolen you can get no one
ever really wanted travelers checks in other countries like well you took them
to the bank yeah you never could pay you couldn't pay anywhere no one ever liked
it like when I went to Germany when I was 18 you know I had a stack of a
thousand dollars in travelers checks and so what I did was I would just go to the
bank and turn in those travelers checks for Deutsche marks because they was
actually before the euro and so I would get the Deutsche marks and everything
and then I tried to do that later in life and they're like dude that what are
you talking about like that's archaic that's like gone but but but it makes
sense that you know even in the Bible times you don't necessarily want to have
a bunch of gold and silver on you because it could be dangerous just get
robbed there's no paper trail whereas if you have this paper script hey payable
upon receipt this is worth so many shekels or denarius or whatever hopefully
hopefully the bandit can't even read yeah and then but if the bandit shows up
with it it's like yeah but these things like personalized because like how the
script work if I just rock if I just take the paper from you and it just says
100 denarii or whatever well because it's probably like it's a small world
people know if I can at least get word hey I'm sending this guy and and he's
it let's say the same person is showing up every month with these and then I
was really happy they have a sister some rough-looking guy shows up with a
script that you're usually getting from this clean-cut guy and it's like when
you still hold this you still have this in right like rural Afghanistan rural
Pakistan parts of the Islamic world where you have these networks of guys
that they deal in cash they all trust each other and so like let's say you
want to take your Afghanistan rupees and send them to your cousin in Lahore
Pakistan you go down to this guy you physically give them the bills yeah
because they don't have like maybe you don't have a real bank like we do sure
and he just calls his cousin in Pakistan yeah and says hey this guy gave me the
money give your money to the guy on the other end will settle it in like six
months with a courier yeah and so it's like they use like a courier or if it's
enough back and forth it might not at all ledger ledger based transaction at
that point that's interesting I want to read a couple comments Marie YouTube
says that she saw a documentary about the Twin Towers and said they moved the
goal two weeks before so pastor Thompson said what's up guys and I heard he said
that you're single brother bill hey ladies we got the smart guy in the house
he's single Alex says in the chat I got a lot more traction as the bad boy in
college than I do is the smart guy in adulthood so well he's got a little bit
of a bad side okay also Alex that he didn't know that about the script he
thought it was what actors carry around well I think it's I don't think there's
a T on the end of it in the King James I believe yeah script see yeah SCR IP
yeah so when we still but it's but it's basically it's in many ways the
forerunner of paper money in a sense you know when I was it's funny when I was a
kid in Christian school no I know it's not exactly the same but I just meant
like as far as convenient it could lead to it because I was thinking about when
I was in school they showed us they're like oh here's why we need coins you
know or no this is why we need paper money because you know if you pulled up
to buy something and they show somebody with like a giant shopping cart full of
like quarters and nickels and dimes or something stupid or then they show these
like bone-in-the-nose type people in Africa with like these giant rocks and
this is like this is their money or something it's like some hundred pound
stone or whatever and then they're like see this why we need paper money but if
you think about you know if let's say that I wanted to buy a car right I want
to go down to the car dealer and I'm gonna buy a car for 30 grand or
something right and it's like well see what are you gonna do bring a bunch of
coins you know you gotta use paper money but then I'm thinking myself well no
because could like like $30,000 in gold like it wouldn't be that crazy you know
what I mean like you can easily bring down $30,000 in gold I think that the
real reason why we have paper money is so the bankers can steal from us and
rob us with this fiat currency scam creature from Jekyll Island all that
kind of stuff because because I think that like like if we were living in like
a libertarian utopia would paper money exist or would we just be using coins
and then using the script as a way to you know maybe be safe on the road or
something like one thing about that once again the last 4,000 years we know
there's been no libertarian utopia there's this guy named Thomas Hobbes who
wrote a book about it called Leviathan on why it's not possible but yeah you
know coinage and money it's always a function of the state it is part of the
state's function to create this common system of value and to regulate the way
in which people extend credit and so like I mean even the Greek coin was
called the stater and then like that that standard moved over in to Italy and
that's where you get the denarius it's like so as the Greeks decline the Romans
rise and they but they borrow the Greek coinage in a lot of ways and there's a
guy George Friedrich Knapp wrote the state theory of money and because when
we're talking about debts contracts these are issues of law and in society
laws a function of the government so they're intertwined so as a numismatist
numus literally just means like customer law and so like money is a function yeah
so the numismatics numismatist is etymologically related to the nomos
which is the law yeah and then coin numus yeah that makes sense I'm not
nearly as knowledgeable as brother Bill in this subject especially with all the
history but I have thought about this concept and I've never really been
against fiat currency mm-hmm because in my mind going back to what you brought
up this example like bringing this big chunk of rock or you know bring in
enough coins or something obviously just by human nature you're gonna want to
bring whatever materials the least cumbersome so you know gold having the
highest value is gonna be the least cumbersome right physically but the
problem is is because gold is so valuable that even just a tiny bit would
have so much value that the chance of being robbed your target yeah yeah so it
becomes again cumbersome not just physically but cumbersome from a like
yeah taken from yeah so I think the beauty of fiat currency is is that it's
just basically a mode of convenience right but here's a point though both
agree kids here's the problem with fiat currency it's not fiat currency it's
like inflation all this other stuff to me if we both agree like this this
physical dollar is the exact same as these coins and we can use these to
trade that's not a fiat currency that's a gold-backed dollar yeah but fiat just
is I thought a fiat currency is because it's backed by nothing no that's why
it's called fiat no fiat is there's another word for law well I just know
well I just know that the word fiat is Latin fiat luxe let there be light so I
thought it's just like this is worth something because we said it is that's
how I always sure sure but I think that fiat currency can have a gold back
I'm just saying that it makes sense to have this mode of transportation and
even electronically we like the debt the debit card we like the credit card
system it's just it's just inflation is causing problems and the value of money
and like all these other things that are happening in our economics that are
negative interest is a bad thing and inflation is a bad thing inflation is
just like reverse interest in my opinion in a sense but I am kind of curious you
know what about Bitcoin I just want to get to this question because I'm curious
about your thoughts. Let's come back to Bitcoin. I want to finish his thought but then go to Bitcoin.
What is fiat currency? Am I defining it wrong? Oh well I was I was gonna
address the credit system yeah you know the arguments about cumbersomeness I
mean this is sort of like almost extraneous right because you can have
warehoused stuff that's represent you can have representative currency for it
like the drawback of having a you know a commodity currency is you cannot extend
credit into the future like what what you do with a credit system currency is
you extend the credit to build a rail network or a bridge or a power station
before it exists before the money in terms of like gold or something exists
for it now you can you can pay the laborers with the script you can buy
the materials with it once it's built and increases the overall economic
capacity carrying capacity of the society the overall economic output and
you get that credit back through the production that results from it and and
so that is actually a more growth oriented system than if you had to save
up millions of dollars of gold before building the factory right what if you
could just build the factory on credit and now you have more stuff mm-hmm you
have more economic production yeah you're gonna be able to pay that back
quicker than I could have saved for it out of existing production yeah it's
like if I tried to save up for a house or something I'm just never gonna buy
it and then I'm just gonna rent for the rest of my life and then this is why
Alexander Hamilton wanted to establish a national bank so then we could fund
infrastructure projects those infrastructure projects would increase the
total productive capacity of society and so really what I mean what's inflation
it's when you have too much money chasing too few goods well what if you
created more money but through the creation of that more money you're
building factories roads so that's what's supposed to be happening but then
it goes it goes astray and then that's why we get inflation so after World War
II the Japanese all the debts were wiped out because all their capital of the
banks was blown up by American bombers yeah so they're back to square one
they're restarting the central banks gonna recapitalize all the banks they
did what was called window guidance and they basically told the banks you have
this exorbitant privilege to be able to loan money and receive interest on
imaginary yeah you have to direct it towards the industries that we tell you
to that are gonna be productive industries so you have to loan X percent
steel X percent to electronic manufacturers and stuff like that yeah
and don't give people loans for just consumption like you or I could go to
American Express and just get a $20,000 loan for vacation that's that adds that
it's not building America it doesn't add anything to the productive capacity
right so but if you were adding more product yeah more output at the same
time you're adding more money the the widget and the and the dollar unit
balance out so that you don't have runaway inflation so are you sort of
defending you're sort of defending fractional reserve lending defending
fiat currency like like how it could it could work out theoretically somebody's
clearly abusing the system to get us where we're at yeah I'm defending the fact that it
creates a lot more growth when done by a benevolent but the problem is that the
people are doing it are not benevolent so I guess my point is I've just come to
terms with the fact that people are super evil the heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked who can know it so that's why I'm thinking to
myself and maybe I'm you know too radical on this I'm just thinking to
myself like we should just be just everything should just be gold and
silver just hard currency and yeah if you want to have a piece of paper and
say this is worth this coin and I can turn this in any time I can turn in this
dollar anytime for a dollar of silver and just no fiat currency no fractional
reserve lending here's the problem with that what's the problem is that another
nation-state actor that doesn't have that hang up is going to ramp up their
own internal production through the use of the national credit system and totally
one laps on us in terms of the economic output but didn't but didn't but didn't
America the way I just said it isn't that how America was for a while and
didn't we do pretty good or we have I mean we have we just been doing voodoo
money from the beginning we have the first national bank and the second
national bank then Andrew Jackson killed the bank we had a giant crash and those
were his last words when he died I killed the bank well and then gave its
deposits to all his friendly banks in the hinterlands and then they abused
that privilege so I want to correct something I said in interjecting this
conversation you're right that fiat currency is not backed by gold yeah so
it's commodity currency what if it's backed by something fiat is backed by
the government so think about this when we had the war of independence with the
British as we said as I said before earlier in the discussion there was very
little species or like bullion we didn't have a lot of hard currency so how do
you buy all these war materials pay all these troops fight a seven-year war
against the biggest empire in the world they issued the continentals and the
continentals get a lot of grief from libertarians because they eventually
went close to zero and you kind of had to do it but here's the thing here's the
thing it worked yeah some people are maybe ideological purists and then other
people are more pragmatic like hey we're fighting we got to win so they're kind
of cheating to and this happened again in the Civil War yeah the war breaks
out we don't have an income tax there's not a lot of ways for the federal
government to raise revenue half the country's no longer under their tariff
regime yeah and so they tap the banks in New York and Boston for loans well at
that time New York and Boston financial systems are not nearly as big as they
are today they tap the bankers out within the first few months of the war
they're like they cry uncle they're like hey you're 80% or whatever of our books
now like if you go down we go down we can't loan you any more money yeah and
Lincoln didn't want to go hat in hand to the Rothschilds and the bankers in
Europe for high-interest loans he is the Treasury Department issued greenbacks
which was true fiat currency and they did inflate somewhat over the course of
the war to like I think it was like a dollar sixty or two dollars the
greenback you know okay so it's been kind of a necessary evil at times is
your view that it's kind of like yeah it's not great yeah it goes down in
value yeah but sometimes you're in a bind you got to do it it's a dirty but
but it's like now that we're just like the most powerful nation in the world it
seems like we're just carried away with we're just carried away with with just
printing money out of the fact that it's accepted worldwide or our standard of
living would would crash immediately because we're too we're too deep into
the system well I mean I want to I want to interject here because with the fiat
currency I you know from my understanding again it's like if we only
have a commodity based economy and there's not as much money flowing around
essentially and so just me wanting to buy a house me starting a business just
like all kinds of things be borrowing against my future there's less
opportunities for it there's less physical currency floating around that's
so so the goods just being bought and sold there's a lot less of that so by
having a fiat currency and having more more capital into the economy it gives
us the opportunity to borrow against our future to start a business to buy a
house to do some of these things that I wouldn't normally do because if I have
to wait to store up enough gold to fund every single project then it's gonna
kind of stifle me it's gonna cause me to be more conservative or whatever and
additionally you know we obviously like make a crop and then we produce that
crop and that generates income or you know the GDP for the government and for
their country right but also just intellectual accomplishments also
increase our means of production as a country just technology and different
things so by us as an economy just extending forth all this credit and all
of this you know fiat currency being everywhere maybe we we benefit from the
intellectual advancements and from the economic advancements that we're gaining
as well not just from you know everybody just sitting around being a bumpkin
waiting and the rich stay rich and the poor can never actually change their
star even though the Bible's against usury, usury has pretty much been a
fact of life since ancient times and when you have a closed commodity system
where there's X amount of gold okay so there's a thousand units of gold like in
the world let's just say take a word whatever that unit is right if people
owe interest on it then the creditors will over time accumulate that
entire portion about existing gold whereas if you have a more open credit
system where you're adding new credit to the system people then the pool is
increasing to pay back that original loan with and the creditors aren't
actually accumulating on a percentage basis as much of the outstanding capital
well you could have a fiat currency without interest right yeah you could
here yeah he's just saying he's just saying de facto the world we live in the
sinful world that we live in people are gonna charge interest they always have
they always will it I think at the end of the day the reason that economics
here's how you mitigate that if people are charging interest yeah and then the
government comes in it says surprise there's more money now yeah it actually
it disadvantages the user oh yeah I mean I mean when you're in debt inflation is
your best friend I mean yeah here's the you go out and buy a house and you have
this 30-year loan and then all of a sudden inflation happens your house
payments pay the same you rack up a credit card debt and then inflation is
like help but if you have money in the bank inflation is your enemy and I
understand inflation hurts everybody I get it but but but but here's here's
this is what gives me a headache so that's why you want to save in gold and
pay back your debts and dollars that's why China's mad at us because of all the
debt that we have yeah we just keep devaluing our currency so really you
know own that much many treasuries anymore they want more gold than they
want dollars but here's here's what irritates me about politics and
economics because I'm not super into I know we're talking about economics and
politics and stuff like these are not my favorite subjects because I feel like
there's no right answer like there's no right answer for economics and there's
no right answer for politics because the problem is just like there's so much sin
in the world and people are so ungodly and people are not benevolent and people
are selfish and wicked and the world is just so much worse than you think and
people are just worse than you think and so what happens is like no system is
every system is going to be abused so at the end of the day like you know we
should just be happy that we live in America we have one of the best
standard of living we have great opportunity and even though we could pick
apart a lot of things about it politically and economically it's like
everywhere else is pretty much worse and so the libertarian paradise isn't gonna
exist or any other paradise you know everybody's got their paradise of
choice none of these utopias are no economic or political systems gonna work
because human beings are so inherently sinful they're gonna find a way to screw
the little guy no matter what the system is if it's not libertarianism it's
feudalism it's you know whatever well here's my parable economy just needs to
work it just needs to be operating right and it's like a merry-go-round and
it's like the merry-go-round is long as you stay on you're basically gonna have
fun the faster it goes the more fun you're gonna have so like the fiat
currency is just making it go fast it's going really fast it's hard to get on
because you think God what he did is he used to do the Jubilee which is basically
stop the merry-go-round every once in a while yeah let everybody get back let
everybody get back on the ride keep spinning and the thing isn't like the
American experiment we don't have a Jubilee supposedly the Fed was supposed
to regulate things so that people didn't get monopolies and stuff because
eventually everybody gets all the goods you know if you play the game long
enough right and eventually in the merry-go-round eventually everybody
falls off and so it's kind of a problem but I think that's why God systems the
closest you're gonna get to the best system right you just want it to be
spent if it's not spinning it's not fun at all for any yeah if it's spinning and
it's fast and everybody's on it's fun if it's spinning fast no one's on it's not
fun so it's basically you want as maximum people on the merry-go-round
while it's spinning about as fast as it possibly can and of course the jubilees
there for what everybody does a merry-go-round that's not spinning would
be like just these really like bone-in-the-nose kind of countries or
something where there's just like just like communists like just or war-torn
country or just something like failed state yeah yeah basically there's no flow
of money there's no like opportunities and then and then the merry-go-round
that's spinning too fast for me to get on is like high barriers to entry for
me yeah so in primitive societies they mostly just have like customary payments
like ceremonial type of payments like the concept of like money value for
everyday items isn't really there there might be like a bride price eight cows
for my wife or something there might be like like a like a murder price like oh
you killed this guy in his tribe over there you got to make peace by giving
him the set that's not really thought of in terms of like oh that's worth X
number of money units it's just like that's the ceremonial right number of
cows or whatever mm-hmm interesting and so like like monetary values some people
think you know maybe it did originate from these like ceremonial type of
things like the Wehrgeld in the German societies were like their common law was
that you know if you did injuries to different classes of people it cost you
a different amount of money to make them whole that sort of thing. I mean with our
current system we're kind of stuck with what we got I think that if we could get
the Fed to just lower interest rates all the way down to close to zero or even
consider negative interest rates for a little while it can help the economy I
don't think you're gonna completely get away with it get away from it but like
having 6% interest or 8% interest I think is just thievery and robbery I
don't think it actually helps the economy I know economists would say like
oh we're trying to slow down you know hyperinflation and all this kind of
stuff but I feel like just by raising the interest rates in general they are
just exacting wealth from America and just taking a bunch of wealth from us
but again I like the idea that you can borrow against your future
who is extending the credit and for what purpose yeah and so one of the
problems we have is that commercial banks like to keep things really simple
and reliable and in our system the most straightforward thing for them to do to
have good collateral is to loan against real estate and what happens is that it
just like snowballs up the real estate value you're extending credit to buy
buildings then now you have collateral so you can get more credit to buy more
buildings and the real estate values just keep getting bubbled up through
that system whereas if you had a more a more centralized credit issuer you know
I could say a national bank they would say okay like we're gonna earmark this
amount of credit creation for people buying homes but then we're also gonna
make sure that we're lending to steel producers and railroads and mines and
whatever because those are those are slightly riskier investments commercial
banks again like to keep it real simple they just want to lend on a house or a
piece of retail property or something yeah but our most real estate values
going up over time just due to just inflation in general and the price of
goods going up because you know to build a house cost there's that but it's it's
one of the easiest things to get a loan to purchase and so that that creates more
demand yeah what he's saying is that like these these other loans for the
like infrastructure type stuff is adding more value to society in a sense right
where's when you loan to buy real estate all you're doing is but it's a risk yeah
it's a risk your loan so they'd rather do the easy loan that doesn't really
benefit society yeah but doesn't the government do this and with their grants I mean
people like specifically Elon Musk isn't he getting tons of money and federal
funding to do things like his Tesla company and SpaceX I'm saying that if
you have very low interest rates in order to goose the economy it still
matters what assets are being loaned against to procure and so in our system
the banks are most advantaged and safest by just loaning against real
estate and so what happens is people get a loan to buy real estate now they have
collateral they can get more loans for more real estate now they can get more
collateral to buy more real estate and they can just so mass wealth for
themselves yeah through that well but a private bank is they have no vested
interest in society as a whole that's what it's saying personal enrichment
whereas a national it's like the country might have a vested interest in the
country itself right and so like like an executive like a strong executive that's
comfortable in its position and its power will take a view of like that they
want the country as a whole to thrive because that enhances their long-term
power but if they're only in for four years at a time they're just thinking
about well how can I goose the economy in the next six months well I'll inflate
home values everyone will feel richer so I wanted to send this idea what if the
what if the federal government says we're not going to do anything to private
banks but if you want you can borrow money from just from us like we have our
own option to borrow money and it's going to be a lot less percentage and it
can be for maybe even riskier loan type situations obviously that would disrupt
a lot of the income going to the banks but would that be good to the you have
that in limited amounts now with the the push to reshore and re-industrialize
yeah the SBA they're trying to extend that I think to more like factory type
situations you see this sort of interesting phenomenon of like the
government taking a direct stake in MP materials that the rare earth miner
they're actually buying shares of a private company that's pretty that's
pretty interesting development that they're directly capitalizing a rare
earth miner that way. So someone brought this up to me and it's not in the chat
but I think there's an intriguing question they're basically trying to say
how do you solve this problem though in America where you have you have very
wealthy individuals I mean you have individuals that just have retarded
amounts of money what are they supposed to do with this because you know in
some ways like they just keep buying you know more shares of stock and they just
buy more companies and they buy more land and they buy more and I guess some
people are just worried especially people like Pastor Anderson that these
are bad people too right they're buying real estate and buying more companies
to do even more harmful things like what do we do with these just billionaires I
mean approaching even trillionaires so potentially at some point like what do
we do with what do we do with them and what do they do with their money and
what's fair so this is a problem that again goes back to like ancient Greece
where we have or northern Italian city-states things like this we have
oligarchs on the one hand and the sovereign on the other hand and like at
different times one is more ascendant than the other and like yeah the United
States government has taken kind of a stand like a hands-off like hey if you
want to have 300 billion dollars like you know we have a free system you can
do that but it doesn't Elon Musk have like 400 billion dollar net worth or
something like that right now yeah but at the same time it's not like he has
400 billion dollars sitting in the bank isn't it all most of his money is tied
up it's stock it's talking like Tesla it's talking and yeah I don't even know
if it's even that simple is it I mean honestly yes can you really get that
liquid it's pretty much like Tesla and I think his other SpaceX but here's the
thing like but he couldn't but he can't just sit there and just be like all right
I want to sell all this and liquidate cuz then he would crash it because he's
owning such a huge amount of it he would you're 90% of his money because
what you'll hear about with with guys like him is oh Elon Musk is worth you
know 400 billion dollars worth but then you'll still hear about them being in
like a financial jam yeah and so it's like how can somebody who has 400
billion dollars be in a financial because it's not liquid it's tied up in
these businesses and withdrawing it would destroy well it depends on which
person we're talking about he doesn't have that much money correct you know
and and you're like I'm not I disagree with you a little bit and here's the
thing okay brother Bill is the expert here but he is the expert so I'm gonna
answer but then and then let him answer and then we should probably wrap up but
because I think we lost your wife's interest a long time ago on this
podcast never been watching I know I mean one way of looking at it is him by
closely holding those shares has kept those shares off the trading markets and
therefore increased the share price faster for the people that did also that
also bought in so for the average person that has it in like a 401k or something
the fact that one guy is hogging half the shares that reduces the amount of
shares outstanding if you want to get into Tesla you have yeah you have to buy
it from these smaller holders you know so what my I want to contend on this
point for a second because let's let me explain this Bill Walton died and his
shares were given to his children and he's the he's the founder of Walmart
yeah and here's the thing Bill Walton being alive didn't necessarily keep
Walmart going like it wasn't like him personally that was gonna keep the
company going so when they got those shares some of their children really are
exercising their their shares selling them and getting pretty much virtually
massing that particular wealth when someone like Elon Musk obviously the
company kind of is Elon Musk in a lot of ways right so like he is Tesla he is
SpaceX and some of those things so obviously if he just sold all his shares
and is leaving the company it probably wouldn't really you know get what it's
worth because of the fact that it's so tightly that's my wound up in his future
that's what I'm but there are certain individuals that are close to his net
worth that they're not as wrapped up in their company that if they sold off all
their shares they could literally have hundreds of billions of dollars in the
bank I was just talking about that particular example of Elon Musk I agree
with you that there are people who could get liquid with that kind of money but
to answer your question you said what should they do what should they do with
it I think that you know what we would want to see them do with it would be to
like add value to society create jobs Andrew Carnegie yeah like like you know
building these railroads across America what if they don't want to that's the
more question I'm saying like what if they don't want to well then does the
government have a responsibility they're not being benevolent they're being you
know they're being they're being misers here's the thing most people other than
say like I have a Bible verse for this so most people probably perhaps with the
exception of a certain heiress or whatever most people don't get to those
levels of wealth yeah without being driven to just like keep doing it
regardless like it's a personality yeah like a guy like John D Rockefeller is
building companies until the day he drops dead even though he could be on a
beach yeah and so it's just you don't get to that level unless you have the
personality where you're just gonna keep doing it what's sort of like a it's
like a I'm sure you've read Atlas drugged no yeah not you're you're not a
libertarian we all we all had our libertarian kind of weird no I know that
she's a weird I know that she's a weirdo and it's not even necessarily great
literature as far as the writing but but in the book it's I know the arc of the
plot yeah it's a little bit it's a little bit kind of oversimplifying things
and it's it's it's not a super deep but in the book basically you know you have
these industrialists that are that are kind of like you said the personality is
they want to build things they want to do things you know like I think Elon
Musk or somebody like that you know really does want to like improve
technology and go to the moon and go to Mars and all stuff and so that's that's
kind of like in the book Atlas Shrugged it's kind of like yeah you know you have
these guys that are you know making steel and building railroads and doing
all this you know to benefit society and they're doing it for their own greed in
the sense that they want to make money but they also like you know but here's
the thing they also take pride in their product they're improving society and
then you have the government that's basically just looting them and just
slowing them down so you know what I mean that's kind of the what the whole
book is based on the government's providing the framework for the capital
markets for them to even yeah but not in the book though in the book the
government is just out to screw business and just take their money and just cheat
and steal and the industrials these things it's a very oversimplified these
things happen in real life in like certain third world countries oh yeah
so then in the book of course you know the plot all of the smart people who are
running all these businesses they all go on strike and just withdraw withdraw
from their businesses withdraw from society and then everything collapses
because how that plays all the greedy people are gone and then it's all just
crap because nobody does anything how that plays out in real life is that
those people just move to a different country yeah well but eventually there's
nowhere to go if everywhere everywhere it has this abusive government then
it's like eventually where do you go I kind of you should be coming to America
ideally you know for freedom I mean if you believe that they at least most of
them act in a rational self-interest I mean like yeah they're gonna take those
people in I mean we took in Nazis after World War two in Operation Paper Sir
just because they were good at building this or that and like you know that's
maybe that's morally dubious but like the fact is that the government's some
government is gonna take those people in to utilize their skills yeah I mean I
preached a sermon where I kind of talked about how people just hate rich
people but it's like they still pay for stuff so it's like that's the point of
the book and I'm not promoting Ayn Rand because Ayn Rand is a complete weirdo in
her personal life I get that I'm just saying and obviously the book is like
it's only giving one side of the story and so it's a caricature I totally get
that but the book is making a valid point you know that hey these ultra rich
people they are adding value to society by building these businesses giving us
products that we like building infrastructure and doing all this stuff
and so instead of hating these people in a sense we should be somewhat thankful
that they're reinvesting the money and so you know you asked what should these
people who have hundreds of billions of dollars do with their money well we'd
like to see them do is build more businesses more infrastructure build
more develop technologies and stimulate the economy. Obviously I would love to see
that I'm just saying like does the government have a responsibility? I would
say no I am I am libertarian. Okay here's the thing it's like we have the ability to have these
highly wealthy highly productive people exist in our society without running our
society because we have such a strong central government that's secure in
their position they're not threatened by those people. No like I mean a lot of
people made to do about Elon. Wait a minute so you're telling me there's not a small group of
rich bankers that are controlling our government and have a political action
committee designated to run our government? Well I'm saying that if our
government were less powerful instead of as powerful as it is or more powerful that like
these people could exercise even greater control over society become like feudal
lords basically. Yeah I understand. And they're kept in check by the power of
the state because like at any time let's say Elon Musk slips up and commits some
felony if whoever's in government at the time wants to pursue it they could put
him in jail and but whereas. So what about like when Jeffrey Epstein has a list of
powerful people what happens then? I don't I mean I don't think. He just accidentally kills
himself in prison. Yeah I don't know about that. I just think Elon Musk is going on the outs of
this so like yeah they may be threatened by him but I think they are threatened. I
think the government is threatened by Elon Musk. They are threatened by. As a general principle you can have
titans of industry without them threatening to become an oligarchy if
you have a very powerful central government that is able to keep them in
check with the law through the power of the state. I mean weren't a lot of powerful people afraid of the
Federal Reserve and a lot of them were on the Titanic and they all happened to
die and then the Federal Reserve happened the next year. I feel like Pastor Shelley
just keeps taking this conversation the same direction. Alright so there's one
more question. There's one more question here. He's playing to the crowd at home.
It says could Trump mint a coin? I'm thinking we're in theory. Theory of the state.
You're in hypothetical like La La Land. You're in like how it
should be and I'm in like dark mode but it's this question is can Trump mint a
coin that bears the value of the entire debt and present it to the Fed? Well
that's kind of a silly question. Yeah. What about this though? Just mint a coin and say this is a 38 trillion dollar coin. We didn't get to this. Bitcoin. Can we at least address the bitcoin question. Well I mean I can address that actually. Let me ask this question. Could Bitcoin. Let him answer this question. You asked this, let him answer it. So if you were to present the Fed with this coin, let's say the Fed holds however many amount of
Treasuries they hold. Let's say they hold 4 trillion, 10 trillion, whatever's on the
Fed's balance sheet. And you say we're gonna cancel out your portion of the debt.
Well it's like, well then how do you do open market operations with a coin?
Like who is that liquid to then? You have all your assets, you have the
Fed's entire balance sheet in one coin. It doesn't make sense. You would need some
people to clip it. Yeah, it would be pointless. It's kind of a
silly question. But basically... You're basically saying why would you
not monetize the debt and the reason is because that would cause... And when I say
that I'm a libertarian, I don't want the people at home to think I'm talking the
Libertarian Party or something. I'm a lower-case-L Libertarian. Okay, and you
know, in fact, and I would say like... And this can be a learning experience
for the people at home that you don't have to agree with all the pastor's
politics. Yeah, of course not. To be in their congregation. I think they're super sick.
Because politics and economics, like I said, there's literally no right
answer. So, like, I totally... Like, a lot of people in our churches, they kind of
hate on some of my libertarian views, which is totally fine because, like, I'm
not even sure about some of my libertarian views. Because, again, you know,
all I'm sure about is what the Bible says and what the Bible teaches. A lot of
this economic and political stuff, there's a lot of room for interpretation. The Bible has a lot
of stuff about canons. Because I like, you know, I like, you know, me though,
personally, like, I like a lot of the classical liberal economic stuff of, like,
like, what's his name? Well, you're reading, like, Montesquieu and stuff. You're, like,
often guillotine-land libertarian. He's a classical libertarian. Hey, I really like
Microsphere, okay? I'm just going to say. Wow. But anyway, you know, on the French Revolution,
I'm definitely rooting for the revolutionaries. So you say you're more of a Jeffersonian than
a Hamiltonian. Absolutely. That's not even a question. We're wearing loggerheads here.
Yeah, like, but here's the, like, von Hayek and stuff. Like, I like that stuff, you know,
which is, like, that's not necessary. I mean, how do you feel about, like, those kind of
Austrian economists and the, when I, you know what I mean when I say classical liberalism.
Von Mises, von Hayek.
Yeah, like, you know what I'm talking about, like, classical liberalism.
Hebraic economics.
Like, to me, that, like, that's not that radical, is it? I mean, how do you feel about that
stuff?
Okay, so, their theories of economics are, they come from, like, they create an assumption
and they say, well, this will naturally follow from that. So, it's sort of like, what would
you say, deductive, instead of inductive of looking at how states and reality operates
and going from there. So, yeah, I'm not an Austrian.
I am.
I mean, I was, when I was younger.
Well, I was heavily influenced by, well, someday I'll grow up to be like you. But, you know,
I'm just saying, like, I was heavily influenced by, like...
I've consumed hundreds of hours of Mises Institute lectures.
I was, you know, I was heavily influenced by Ron Paul, and I've read some of those Austrian
economists, and it made a lot of sense to me. And, you know, I like...
Who do you like in politics right now? I like Thomas Massey.
I like Massey.
I've met Massey. He used to be my representative when I lived in Northern Kentucky.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't really like him throwing, like, a wrench in the gears of, like...
I like him. He's my favorite politician right now.
I mean, he is principled, I'll say that much.
Yeah, I feel like he's kind of the new Ron Paul.
He's like a real dude. He, like, came to our Civic Club and, like, hung out with us.
Yeah, and here's... I still love Ron Paul. I like Thomas Massey.
That's kind of where I fall on things.
But it's like you said, like, I totally respect your view.
And I even realize that, you know, you're a lot more knowledgeable about these things than I am.
And you might be totally right, and I might be totally wrong.
But at the end of the day, I don't really care that much about economics and politics.
You know, that's why we don't really talk about this very often.
This podcast is a little bit of an anomaly that we're kind of delving into this stuff.
But I just thought it'd be cool to have you on just because you are so knowledgeable.
And I think this is just a great lesson for the viewers at home, too, that I can like
totally respect someone's knowledge even though ideologically we're not the same.
I can still respect the learning and the knowledge and the, you know, because it's good to respect
other people's views about things that are not necessarily concrete in the Bible or something.
You know, obviously I'm not going to respect somebody who doesn't believe in the Trinity
or something.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I got saved from your preaching over a decade ago.
Well, cool.
And I'm still here.
I didn't wash out.
Amen.
So I'm just saying like there's, there's the stuff that's like concrete in the Bible.
So what I'm saying is I didn't, I didn't let, you know, minor political things.
Yeah, of course not.
Yeah.
That's silly.
No.
So don't do that.
We're all growing and learning.
Amen.
On some of these issues anyways.
I was getting a master's degree in economics and I kind of walked away because I just feel
like it's studying a bunch of failed economic models.
And that's kind of like your opinion, this is all bad in a sense.
But like, I'm glad that I've had this conversation.
I'm glad I crashed Joe's party because I've learned a lot even in these conversations.
But I do want to get to the Bitcoin.
And I think the viewers at home want to get to this question.
So again, my perspective is that Bitcoin is like a Ponzi scheme, ultimately.
And it could crash.
Some people think because of the way it's coded and blockchain technology and blah,
blah, blah, that it's like super safe.
I just want to hear it from Bill's perspective.
Give us your Bitcoin pitch.
Oh, you have some players like the guy that says--
And Vinklewatch Twins, like a part creator owner on this?
I don't know anything about that.
But I mean, it's pretty widely distributed globally
and among different classes of people.
So like a true overnight crash, I
don't think is feasible just from logistics.
A lot of it's in cold storage.
So how do you sell that overnight?
Yeah, but let me put this theory out there.
What if the US government just said, hey,
we think that Bitcoin is usurping
the monetary policy of America, and we think
it's a danger to our economy.
So we've now decided that it's illegal tender
and that no one in America can buy or sell Bitcoin.
Would that not possibly create just a mass dump
of the product, and then a lot of people
getting away from it while possibly crippling it
and causing it to be destroyed?
I'm just putting out a theory.
- The state decided to regulate it as a commodity.
I'm struggling to remember the guy
that did the lecture series at MIT about it,
but he's now like, you know, like undersecretary
of the treasury or something like that.
And so his whole theory is like to regulate Bitcoin
as a commodity and that the other,
that all the other coins are more like a security.
So they're able to create these Bitcoin ETFs
and have custodial people holding it.
- So will the government kind of adopt Bitcoin
as into its repertoire of just another thing that exists?
Do you think the government will create
its own digital Bitcoin, digital currency
that it kind of rolls out?
What is your kind of anticipation for the future?
- I think people are still filling out
how the blockchain technology will affect banking.
And if it is indeed more efficient
than our electronic funds transfer system,
they'll probably eventually switch over to it.
Just like debit cards were technically feasible
a lot earlier than they became widespread,
people used checks way after we had that technology.
And so if a blockchain is the most efficient way
to move funds between banks,
that'll probably end up being what we do.
- I'm not getting the entire vibe.
So are you saying there's a positive future
for Bitcoin or a negative one?
What's your feeling?
- Crypto tokens and coins in general,
if they end up being part of that ecosystem
of how you move assets around on the blockchain,
you know, they could have like a lot of,
like a lot of blockchains are like structured
on top of Ethereum and things like that.
Does it?
- All right, I've totally lost interest in this now.
- But could Bitcoin be good?
- We don't already know if those things
are gonna be a good store of value
just because they have that function.
- Could Bitcoin be a good use?
Like it could be like a good system,
but then used by the anti-Christ because it is a good system
that it's an easy way to prevent fraud
or to like track currencies.
- I don't think it's really viable
as a payment system itself.
It's more of a commodity.
- It's like an investment.
- A saving instrument, yeah, I mean.
- You know what's funny is that back in the day,
I actually owned a bunch of Bitcoins.
If I still hung onto them, I'd like have so much money.
I'd have some incredible amount of money,
but I was just like, "Yeah, these are stupid,"
and I just sold them, so that was a bad choice for me.
- Crypto might be-- - Wow.
(laughing)
- 'Cause you went through that period
where a lot of payment processors were cutting you off,
and if you had had crypto during that time,
it could have been a lifeline.
- We were literally taking, you could at one point
donate to Faithful Word using Bitcoins a long time ago.
Yeah, we took that as a donation.
- Why did you stop?
- I don't know, it was like, it was complicated.
I didn't understand it.
I didn't want to mess with it.
And then somebody gave me some Bitcoin stuff
and I was just like, I ended up just selling them all
a long time ago and just liquidating them.
And it was, yeah, should have hung on to that Bitcoin.
But anyway, this is the Bible verse
we were looking for earlier.
He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him,
but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.
So I guess that's that concept of like kind of being a miser
and hoarding the wealth versus reinvesting wealth
for the betterment of society.
- That's another aspect.
- I didn't even say give it away, I said sell it.
- Yeah, exactly, for profit.
- That's another aspect of a credit-based currency system
is if you have a commodity-based currency system
and your gold is in a vault, that's dead money.
Whereas even if you, in a credit-based system,
even if you are a miser
and you just have it in your bank account,
the bank is loaning that money out to other parties.
- It's interesting to get your perspective
because obviously I think that, you know,
if people are listening to me in my sermons or my friends,
you know, I tend to kind of just give this really like,
kind of libertarian Austrian economics
kind of view financially.
So it's kind of interesting to get your take
as a little bit of an apologist
for some of these other things, you know what I mean?
And I definitely respect your view.
- I fully understand the Austrian libertarian position
from like--
- You've been there when you were--
- I've been there.
- When you were younger.
- But I'm also--
- When I was five years old.
- When I was a fetus, I believed in that stuff.
(laughing)
But I'm also a historian.
- No, you're very knowledgeable.
- Politics is the art of the possible
and history is the example of what that is.
- Yep.
- And so, I just looked throughout all of history
and money's a function of the state.
- Sure.
- And that's just how it is.
- Well, we should probably land the plane,
but it's super interesting talking to you as always
and appreciate your knowledge and your expertise.
- We didn't talk about actual coins
as much as we might have.
- No, but we talked about the interesting biblical stuff
at the very beginning, so.
- And I think I gave one or both of you
a widow's mite at one point.
Did I give you one?
- Yes, I have one too, yeah.
- Okay, yeah. - Absolutely.
- 'Cause a lot of people probably can't conceptualize that,
and it's just a little fleck of copper
that the Herids were issuing a small change.
So you have the Imperial Roman system,
they're issuing the Vidadari, as like your primary money.
There was like maybe some limited gold coins.
- Your three and a half grand silver deal.
- Right, your work horse coins, Vidadari.
Well, local cities and these little kings,
like the Herids, where you have these local rulers
that are allowed to stick around
for sort of like institutional continuity
when they take over a new province.
They could issue like small bronze
as like to sort of lubricate like the local exchange.
Think of it as like,
we still have our photo reserve notes in our pocket,
but imagine if maybe Arizona was the one
issuing your quarters.
- Right, that makes sense.
I want to read a couple of comments before we sign off.
Maria YouTube says she doesn't know what blockchain means.
Will Harms said a Paul a gist.
Hats off to Ron Paul.
Very interesting topic tonight.
And another thank you for this one.
So we got some positive feedback.
- Yeah, I think people are either going to love it
or hate it.
I kind of both love and hate the conversation
that we had tonight, so.
- I was more digging the coin etymologies than like--
- Yeah, I don't even know what people like.
I don't even care.
I just brought you on 'cause I like talking to you.
I always like listening to you.
I just love to learn,
and this guy's just like a walking encyclopedia,
so I just like to hang out with him
and just listen to him talk about history and finance
'cause there's just so much information there.
He's just consumed a lot of historical materials
and so forth, so.
I hope that people at home enjoyed it,
got something out of it.
If you didn't, well guess what, I don't care
because I do what I want.
And so like, I'm not interested.
And here's the thing, on future episodes,
I'm just gonna talk about stuff that I wanna talk about.
I'm not really interested in talking about
whatever's the hottest, coolest thing.
I'm just gonna talk about stuff that I like
with people that I like.
So anyway, thanks for coming on.
- I thought the show was great.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for letting me crash.
Sorry if you didn't enjoy it.
- You took us a different direction,
but the viewers probably liked the crap you were saying,
more than the real stuff we wanted to talk about.
- I was trying to dumb it down for everybody by asking--
- You did a great job with that.
- My own really bad questions.
- Well, one thing I did want to kind of get out
was that, you know, minus Babylon,
'cause Enki Babylon is working on this, like,
uniform, like, tablet credit system, right?
But if you go, starting with Persia,
Persia got coinage, Persian Empire got coinage
from the Lydia's, from Asia Minor.
So these Greek colonies are doing it.
- Croesus, right?
- Yeah, Croesus, yeah.
I mean, apparently it was a real historical--
- Sure, yeah.
- And so they get it from them,
and so they sort of, like, introduced coinage
into that region.
Then the Greeks, when Alexander comes,
they introduced coinage into an even broader region,
all the way into India and whatever.
The Romans spread coinage, you know,
now up into all more different places.
So each succeeding iteration of the Babylonian system
is spreading like the money system
over a broader geographic area as it goes.
So that's like--
- Yeah, that is interesting.
And then when you think about Babylon--
- Because most primitive societies were not using coins.
- Yeah, yeah, and I think that the thing
that's interesting about coins,
you know, obviously before they used coins,
they're still using precious metals as value,
because, like you read the Iliad and the Odyssey,
for example, and it's like, everything's like,
hey, you're gonna get this tripod,
you're gonna get this helmet,
you're gonna get this sword.
- In Genesis, it's talking about people
being bought for money.
- Yep.
- Now, you could-- - Or Abram is buying the grave.
- And he's buying the cave.
- Buys the cave of Machpelah, yeah.
- So, and people could get confused by that,
because that's centuries before coins existed.
- But it's not a coin, it's a weight of metal.
But it describes money, it defines it as
current money with the merchant.
And so, it's defining money as the media of exchange,
whether or not it has the state stamp.
- Right, so that's the difference with a coin.
It's kind of that state imprimatur.
- The new most.
- Yeah, I think that that's the nuance
that people are missing when you say,
"Oh, this is coins kind of started with the Lydians,"
and blah, blah, blah.
They're like, "Wait a minute, what about older than that?"
And it's like, yeah, obviously people are trading
in precious metals, and you could call things money.
- And even then, it's still a creature of law
because that's a customary law that he would buy that cave
in the way he did or whatever.
- Well, I know that you didn't love my questions,
but I have one more, okay?
So I'm interested if the government--
- The fact that they would honor his property rights
to that cave, even while he's off herding or whatever,
like there is some law in that region going on.
- Well, I'm definitely not an anarchist here, okay?
So don't put that on me.
- There had to have been some form of government.
- Yeah, I mean, I'm for government.
- We need some government, and I'm interested--
- Absolutely.
- If the government prints a bunch of money hypothetically
and just gives it to whoever they want,
is that a modern day form of coin clipping?
- If they do what again?
- If the government just prints a bunch of money
and they're just giving it to their NGOs or whatever--
- Of course it is.
They're devaluing the country.
- That is a modern day coin clipping.
- Yeah, if they're just inflating away
and giving it to their cronies or whatever, yeah.
So I think we--
- So they're APAC friends.
Then they're basically coin clipping again.
- Yeah, so I think we can like--
- So you don't have to have coins to coin clip.
- He's just playing to the crowd is all he's doing here.
- All right everybody.
- We can distinguish that from legitimate exercises
of national policy, yeah.
- All right, God bless you guys.
Have a great day.
The Missions Conference starts in 33 minutes
and we're gonna be hearing from this guy tonight.
He's preaching tonight at our church in about 45 minutes.
So we'll be live with that too.
God bless you.
See you later.
- Here's a coin from the--