[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West. You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. All right, expenses are through the roof. The military claims they've got readiness. We're spending billions. It's out of control. And best of all, Donald says, maybe some carriers and troops are coming home.
[00:00:34] Do you believe it? The gold and silver, a little bit off, but oil skyrockets. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. I'm Sam Bushman with hard-hitting news the network's reviews to use. It is the Freedom Lovin'. We're taking America back. Honest Money Thursday, ladies and gentlemen. So the Honest Money Report starts now. That means Heath Perkins with me, FreeWaterCoinCo.com. Welcome back, sir. Thank you for having me on, Sam, again.
[00:01:02] All right, where's gold and silver looking, sir? Gold sitting at $4,613.20. 20, okay. Silver? $73.13. 73.13. And what does the ratio look like with that, Heath? Almost exactly 63 to 1. All right, so it's a little higher than we've seen it over the last couple of days or weeks or whatever.
[00:01:34] $4,613. So down from the high, but way up. Silver. 73.13 for a dollar, ladies and gentlemen. Look at that. A dollar costs 73 bucks. Heath, that just kind of really underscores what the heck is really going on. The Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady amid inflation concerns. They basically kept the interest rates unchanged.
[00:02:02] They claimed, hey, there's uncertainty about future cuts due to ongoing economic pressures. Now, isn't that always the case? I mean, they make this claim like, oh, we're out of data. We don't know what's going on. This seems all hazy right now. But isn't it always hazy when you're trying to predict the future, no matter what it is, the economics, the weather, what your wife's going to say? I mean, I'm just saying, come on now. Yeah.
[00:02:32] Well, everything's up in the air in a sense. But you have markets like consistency. They like consistency because you can have a fairly predictable outcome based around consistency. But there is nothing. Well, then to do that, you're going to have to have Donald out of office. Donald is not a consistency guy. Oh, no, no. Not at all. This is like we have wild cards in every angle of the economy right now. It doesn't matter where you're looking. There's a wild card.
[00:03:00] So you're not going to get the consistency that the markets like. And due to that, you really can't predict things. And then even when you try to predict things, you really can't account for the curveballs or the extra aces up the sleeve that the Fed has. So it's just kind of a struggle. I mean, one example that I've given in the past is in 2018, we were supposed to have a housing collapse. And there was supposed to be a correction in the housing market.
[00:03:30] But in October 2018, the Fed stepped in and started buying all the bad assets off the bank's books. So like you can't account for things that just have never happened in the past. Like the Fed has never bought, you know, bad assets like that off the bank's books to preemptively prop up the market before that crash was supposed to happen. So it was just you don't know. It's hard to predict things these days because there's just too many wild cards. I will say this.
[00:03:59] One of the best ways if you want stability, if you want to get rid of a lot of those wild cards, what you do is you get the government out of the middle of it. The government has a role of creating a level playing field and then keeping the hands off of, you know. And what we need to do is just have the free markets run as they do. And over time, that creates stability. That takes out wild cards. It doesn't mean everything will be perfect, but it does mean things will be much more stable.
[00:04:27] You'll know the interest rates are following reality, for example. Now, oil prices surge amid the Middle East conflict. Supply disruptions going on. Energy markets are tightening. And they're tightening for some interesting reasons. Now they're starting to say because we can't move the oil to where it needs to be to be consumed or used, it's pushing crude prices higher because what are we going to do with all the backlog of oil?
[00:04:54] We have oil everywhere except for where it needs to be, in other words. Because since you can't, you know, unless you're going to stop production, what do you do with all the oil that doesn't move anywhere, doesn't get consumed, just kind of bottlenecks and sits there. And so as a result, gas prices are climbing nationwide as global energy pressures increase. Consumers are facing higher fuel costs. They say the average cost for a gallon of gas in the U.S. right now is $4.30.
[00:05:24] And many say it's going to go closer to $5 before it ends. Keith? Yeah. Well, and the U.S. doesn't rely as much as we used to on the Middle East for oil. Like, we're a far bigger oil producer. We're even exporting oil now. So for us to say that there's, in the U.S., a struggle with oil prices, it seems to be that a lot of the oil companies are kind of jumping on the bandwagon and just increasing prices to go along with the rest of the world.
[00:05:54] Like, it's not like we have a shortage here. So it's weird to see these things manifest in a way that logically it shouldn't. And because of that, it's like, are we looking at the same kind of things that we saw back in 2020 with COVID where grocery stores didn't necessarily have higher costs, they just increased prices, took advantage of the moment, in a sense?
[00:06:24] Are we looking at oil companies here in the U.S. doing the same thing right now because the rest of the world has higher prices? You know, the base logic isn't quite there, but, you know, I guess the smoke that's around this, this shedding off of the Strait of Hormuz, that kind of clouds it enough to where people are okay with it somehow. So I mean... Maybe so, maybe not.
[00:06:50] I'm seeing mixed markets, and so I think that kind of the reporting is off, in my opinion, because you have these claims that are true, but they're disconnected. I don't know what you want to call them. Painting strokes in the painting? So let me give you some examples. Headline says this. Consumers face higher fuel costs tied to political instability. Then it says the U.S. job market remains strong despite broader economic uncertainty.
[00:07:19] Employment data shows continued hiring, even though other economic indicators point to slowing growth. Health care costs rise as insurance premiums increase nationwide. Consumers are facing higher out-of-pocket expenses, driven by system-wide cost pressures. Then, housing market remains constrained by low inventory.
[00:07:48] Limited supply continues to keep home prices elevated despite higher interest rates. So now they're kind of saying there's not enough houses. But is it the higher interest rates that are the problem to build houses? How many builders want to build when they know the interest rates are so high people can't buy? How many illegals are in those homes that can't be used by Americans? So we've got a shortage. Then it says this. Education policy battle. Expand at state and local levels. Curriculum standards.
[00:08:17] Parental rights remain central issue across the country. Now you can say, well, Sam, that's not even economic. Oh, yeah? You don't think so? When people are debating about education policy and wondering about their kids' education, they're trying to put their kids in college or something. They're wondering if the degree is going to pay off. Then it says this. Retail spending shows signs of strained discretionary categories.
[00:08:45] Consumers are pulling back in non-essential areas while maintaining core purchases. Well, unless you're totally broke, how do you not maintain core purchases? And what's a core purchase? Steak or a hamburger? What's a core purpose? Beans or a hamburger? Okay. So you just go on and on. Infrastructure projects face delays due to costs and supply issues.
[00:09:12] Major transportation and construction efforts continue to encounter what they call setbacks. You look at all this and you just go, I see so many different headlines. I think that there's so many different signals. No one knows what's going on. And the more the government manipulates, the more the government puts their thumb on the scale, the more things are going to become uncertain. The more things become uncertain, the more hesitant the consumer becomes.
[00:09:39] Are we talking circles here, Heath? Yeah. No, definitely. Not just the consumers, but the investors. Investors without certainty in the market, they're not going to invest. And that's in a new business idea or in potential property development. If they don't know where things are headed, they also stall. So it's not just consumer stalling, it's investor stalling.
[00:10:08] And the sad part about our GDP is when those two stall, who gets to pick up the tab? And it's the government gets to increase spending at that point to keep GDP going up. So we're a bit of a catch-22 if the government causes the issue. Does the government get the right then to continue spending at higher amounts to compensate for the lack of consumer spending or investor investing?
[00:10:34] I mean, it's just a tough thing to handle because you just have too many catch-22s in this one where what goes before what. So I hope that makes a little sense. Let's talk more about it in a second. Heath with me, ladies and gentlemen, Heath Perkins. He's with FreeWaterCoinCo.com. We're going to talk about Congress. It relates. Hold on, everybody. Cybercrime is exploding.
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[00:12:16] Reserve your seat today at JBS.org forward slash SLC26. That's JBS.org forward slash SLC26. All right, Heath Perkins with me, ladies and gentlemen. Freewatercoinco.com. You've got a friend when it comes to honest money. Think gold, baby. Think silver.
[00:12:43] Think finding the coins that have the best return for you and your family. Gold is at $4,600. $13. Wow. Silver's at $73. Not at the all-time highs, but certainly still up there big time. The Federal Reserve is simply doing their best, but yet not good enough. Why? Because no human, folks, can handle dealing with what should be the free market.
[00:13:12] I don't care if it's Donald or I don't care if it's Rocky Balboa. The fact is you can't have humans manipulating the interest rate, ladies and gentlemen. You just can't do it, folks. So that's something important to understand. All right. Congress struggles to advance spending bill, Heath.
[00:13:32] I guess ahead of funding deadlines, lawmakers remain divided on budget priorities, increasing pressure to avoid a shutdown. I mean, we're just back at the same battle they have that's become constant in their epic failures. Yeah.
[00:13:54] Now, you watch a few things from news broadcasts around the world, and they all kind of mock America when it comes to, Oh, America's back at the shutdowns. Are they going to shut down? Are they just going to make a bigger bill and spend more money? And they just kind of laugh at the cycle of us going through shutdowns again and again and again, and there's really no shutdowns.
[00:14:19] It's, and we'll get a little bit of pressure here, but it's just about spending more money and putting a little bit of fear into the economy to spur us on to be okay with spending more money. Yeah, we, we've been, we've been through this cycle so many times. It's just kind of background noise when they're saying that we're going to have shutdowns. So I don't know how to take it.
[00:14:49] What do we do about this? Because really it's a congressional issue, Heath, in my opinion, where we, you know, on one hand, government spending us into oblivion with $39 trillion in debt. I don't see an end to it really anytime soon is the problem. And yet on one hand, they shouldn't spend. They know we, the people don't want them to spend.
[00:15:09] We know the economy really demands that they don't spend, but they're forced to spend, spend, spend basically on non-essential areas. And then most importantly, this war discussion. Okay. Lawmakers are divided on priorities, but what about the war priority? Turns out they say now we've spent $25 billion on the Iran war alone. $25 billion. I don't know how to even kind of interpret a number like that.
[00:15:39] That doesn't even count like the Russia-Ukraine deal. That doesn't count the fact that we're in about 130 nations militarily speaking. Now the U.S. military emphasizes readiness amid global ongoing conflicts. Defense officials highlight preparedness as tensions persist in all kinds of, quote, local but global regions. I don't know how to respond to all this. Because at the end of the day, when is this spending going to end?
[00:16:09] And if it doesn't end, you'll never have stability in the economy. Pretty soon they'll say, you can't get tires for your car. We need all the rubber for the war. I mean, are we going to end up there even though they claim that we've got it under control, Heath? Yeah, I mean, every war you see rationing and priority goes to, you know, the military efforts.
[00:16:32] And right now I think the U.S. is, I mean, citizens and stuff, we're, we've been in so many wars for so long, for just a continual time frame that we're just tired of it. Like, we don't, we saw what happened after, you know, us going to Iraq and Afghanistan and the PTSD from all the soldiers coming back. I don't think our nation can handle, you know, even trying to support the veterans that are coming back
[00:17:02] that can't handle normal society due to the PTSD and things like this from, from being overseas and, and doing things that they're not necessarily, you know, on board with. You know, like I had a cousin who came back and he was an Apache captain and he was watching night raids every single night. You know, five or six in Afghanistan a night. And he was watching people and, you know, losing their lives.
[00:17:32] And he was the backup, you know, a couple miles away. And it just, it ruined him. It changed him. Like, he's not who he was before that. And our, you know, our brothers and sisters, you know, cousins, whomever, like we can't handle, you know, the, the mental instability that we'll come back from, that they'll come back with from these again. So it's just, there's too much being put on the table for us to just go to war willy nilly, you know, whenever anyone feels like it.
[00:18:01] Like, um, if we can't diplomatically discuss things, why, why are we in these positions? Like, like, can we not use words? Like, it's a struggle. Um, I know people have different ideologies. Um, but there needs to be some way for us to like work with each other. And I, I, I'm a Ron Paul fan and his best way of saying, you know, if you want to, if you, if you want the world to be okay, just make friends with everyone and trade with everyone.
[00:18:31] Open your trade. Well, and that's the problem. What we want to say is we want to demand Iran doesn't get nuked. They're saying don't mess with our nuke program. We're peaceful. But they're also starting to have the justifiable case that says we've got to have nuked. You people are so out of control. We've got to have some way to stop you. And sadly, it's hard to say they're not right on that score. Um, but now the U.S. considers further military action. As Iran conflict drives costs higher.
[00:19:00] So now we're in kind of a catch 22. What does the Congress do? On one hand, do they fund it? If they don't, they're not kind to the troops. They're not backing the president. I mean, it's a bad position to be in. And by their dereliction of duty in the first place and going to war. Now they put themselves in a bind where I don't know that there's any good answers for them now. Is there? No. Um, I think if we went back to the Constitution where Congress has to vote on us going to war, um, I don't think we'd be in a war.
[00:19:28] Um, when people have to have a voting record that supports or opposes a war, then, um, you, you can quickly change, um, you know, Congress and our senators based upon are you pro-war or not. Um, you know, we haven't voted on a war since World War II. But we've been in all these wars. And one of the kind of, you know, unfortunate, you know, side effects of not voting on going to war is we don't necessarily have to keep all the rules of war.
[00:19:56] Um, so we do things overseas that just aren't as ethical as they should be because we're not declaring we're going to war. So we're not technically in a war according to their, you know, kind of loopholes that they have. So we're just... How much of this is over oil versus how much of this is, you know, kind of a hegemony, dominance kind of thing? It's hard to say, but as the United States considers further military action, as costs go through the roof,
[00:20:20] now a major aircraft carrier is set to leave the Middle East amid the evolving strategy. So the idea that Trump has now is, hey, we can go in and do this crazy, hardcore, another massive assault, and then we can just control the Strait of Hormos, and at some point, you know, something's going to break. Something's going to gain on that front. I think, again, he's probably miscalculating, Heath. Yeah.
[00:20:48] Um, for us to feel like this is going to be a war that we can truly win, like, we haven't gone... we haven't voted on a war since World War II, and we haven't really won the rest of the other wars we've gone into. So, like, without the nation behind the support and actually seeing all the facts and having the facts displayed and the nation saying, yes, let's, you know, clean up this issue or whatnot, um, you don't have people who have their heart into it.
[00:21:17] And so how do you win a war when you're fighting individuals in their own territory where they're fighting for their families, they're fighting for their survival, they're fighting... You're not going to win against that. Like, we've seen it in Afghanistan for decades. Like, they will just go and do whatever they can to survive, and they will survive against a nation who doesn't have that resolve. So, it's... Now, the other interesting thing about it is we mocked their leaders.
[00:21:45] When we took out leaders, we said their leadership's all gone. Then the leader didn't appear magically like we wanted him to, to debate Donald on the stage. They just kind of disappeared. We mocked them and said they don't have any leadership. Now, today, their leader comes out boldly and says, the United States has failed in their war against us. And so now we look like fools because they have a leader. Now that, you know, it's failed and aircraft carriers are starting to come back home, and we try to change our strategy, they're basically declaring victory.
[00:22:14] Now, I'm not saying they have victory, but that's their pitch now, and they're coming out on the national stage going, you guys are fools. Everything you said turns out not to be true. You say we don't have any leadership. Yeah, we do. You say that. Now your carriers are going home. I mean, everything we... Hey, we're going to go ahead and annihilate them. No, we're really not. We've got a deal going on. Iran says, no, you don't. Turns out we don't. Donald Trump sends people, Jared Kushner and these clowns, and then basically he's like, oh, they had to turn around because we're not going to meet with them.
[00:22:42] And I mean, everything he says he gets punked on, and it's just making us look worse around the world. Meanwhile, economically speaking, major companies are calling for consistent federal rules governing artificial intelligence. So now the tech industry is pushing Washington, saying you guys got to weigh in on this stuff. Congress can't weigh in on that. They're too busy deciding if they're going to spend this into oblivion. And how can Congress regulate without any money? So I'm just telling you right now, I don't know where to turn for this, and I don't mean to be so negative.
[00:23:12] The only solution that I see is in midterms. We've got to put people in there who realize the federal government's not responsible for everything. You've got a narrow constitutional responsibility. Go look at the list. It's pretty small. Yeah, there's a lot of power within that list, but that list ain't very big. We need to elect people that understand that reality check. Heath? Yeah. Yeah. No, I get a report from the John Birch Society, and everyone who's been voting constitutionally in the past
[00:23:41] have kind of fallen out of that. You're not getting constitutionally conservative individuals that are voting with the Constitution. They're just giving themselves extra power or extra spending or whatever it is. It's like it's getting out of hands, and we need to clean up Congress and the Senate if we have any chance of trying to turn this back around. Midterms is maybe. It's no vote Republican or Democrat.
[00:24:11] Hey, Heath Perkins, really quick, what's the best thing to get right now? Right now it's 90% silver. It's a great buy. It's been higher than pure silver before, but right now it's down below, so you can buy it for 5% back from Scott. Dimes, quarters, halves, it's all available at freewatercoinco.com. I depend on them for my purchases and constitutional currency trades. You should do the same. They've got guidance for you
[00:24:38] to make the best decisions for your portfolio. Thank you, Heath Perkins, freewatercoinco.com. God save our republic.