ICE people.  That's a tough job. Certainly there can be problems, but there can be problems if we don't do something, if we don't work together. So that's my two cents. I don't want to drag this out any longer, but I'm going to send out a letter to all the council members and Chief Burke because I definitely think we're moving a little fast here to be quite honest, just because Brattleboro did it and this town did it and Addison County Sheriff's Department did it. I don't think that's the reason that South Brownlee should just jump onto the wagon. So let's take it through a little bit further. That's my two cents. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Any other comments, Megan? Thank you, Mr. Boyd. That's why my first comment was, is that for years, and I've been on this council, now I'm in my 12th year, the police chief has always said in response to this question, we do not ask for the status of immigrants or immigrant status of anybody when we stop them. So it is already the policy that now we have two police chiefs on the record. And I don't see any reason why the policy should not reflect the practice. And I think that it's critical that when we have people who are working here, that we bring into this country that are providing a service to us, that we make sure that there is a sense of security for these people. And they know that they are being brought here in a move of goodwill. If they break the law, just like Olga said at the beginning, if they do something wrong, they will take the consequences. They are aware of that, just like anybody in our country. If there is a law broken, we must face the consequences. But all they're asking for is if there is no law broken, that their immigration status is not something that is to be reported. And that has been the practice. And I see no reason for it not to be put into a policy. And as we heard, it's not just Brattleboro and Winooski and other towns. This is something that our attorney general is looking at. And so I do hope that it goes into the law. Okay. Well, I think how we've left it is, Sean will work with Will and the committee and finalize the language. You will share that with the council. We can have a joint statement. And that will be on an agenda. So, Mr. Boyd, that is another opportunity for the public to comment. I don't think it's been a hidden issue for communities in the state. We may not have had council conversations about this. But although we have with our former chief and I think we've had similar conversations with Sean when he was both interviewed and provides updates to the council. But I respect your opinion. It may differ. But I think Councillor Emory summed it up really well. It's the policy of the South Burlington police department. And I think it's important for those policies to be written. So that's how we will leave it. And Sean, I don't know if we want to give you a time certain, but I guess as soon as possible. But take your time and get the language right. Does that sound okay? I'll undertake setting up a meeting with the committee and will as soon as possible and be in touch with next steps. Okay, great. Thank you very much. So moving on now to item nine, which is council consideration and possible approval of a resolution requiring that a third party conservation easement on the so-called wheeler property be conveyed and completed within six months of enactment. And let me tardily say thank you to everyone who participated in the conversation on item eight. I appreciate your time and energy. Thank you. So this is a resolution that is asking the city to pay for the cost of the conservation easement on the wheeler property. It's, let's see. I had to shut down my other electronics. So I could continue with this meeting. And I'll see if I can bring up a resolution on my laptop or my iPad rather. Say something while you're doing that. Certainly may. So I fully support this. The only question I just want to put on the table is if Tom Hubbard or Kevin are on it with six months, I'm fully supportive of the resolution and I'd vote for it right now. I just want to know if six months makes the most sense with the pandemic or if we said 12 months. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just want to give that certain deed is that a let the budgeting for the next year, better cycle through. But yeah, I'm a yes. You got to do this promise made. I'm just wondering if the six months is the right time interval to commit. Well, I think the way the council left this the last time, we were kind of in some pretty difficult financial straits. And so the decision of the council, as I remember it was to wait until we could budget it and had the funding for it. So I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. You can. The estimate is that from Amanda, the last look at this was it would be roughly. Good guess would be in the $40,000 range to do the work and do the payment to the third party. To administer. The property. You know, you were burned up a pretty good chunk of your legal. But in the past, you know, there would be a way of that. In 2012 I would strongly encourage not in fiscal. 21, but that's going to be gone here in three months anyway and fiscal 22. But if this is important to the council and you want this done, you know, we'll take money from someplace else. Or from the legal outside legal fund. We have hit that fund pretty hard view. alternative is you take all the money out of the open space fund and and then you I think well certainly by the when July 1 comes along you'll have adequate funding there to go ahead and take this on so it's up to you for finding a way a way to get it done if that's what the council wants. Okay does that answer your question Tom? Well it does mostly the other piece of it that you spoke to at the end is the last conversation I remember it's stressing that this should be justifiably from the open space fund which that makes sense to me I support that I just want to make clear that we that I support moving this forward making this happen it just we need to do it right and funding it from the right source. Yeah and I from a funding standpoint that source is available I would say as I've noted to the council once you've made that decision to conserve that land if you pass this resolution tonight it will not be available for ag mitigation and if we do ag mitigation on the soccer field at South Village we'll either have to pay for it you can you can buy your way out of that commitment normally it's you can buy your way out of that commitment or you can find other land to conserve if you own the land that's fine and if the Department of Agriculture allows you to do it reasonable proximity to South Village they'll let you do that but we have we have two ag mitigation parcels already on the Wheeler property and it could accommodate what we would need to have from South Village it also as you all know it also creates a restriction on the development of that property if you kept it until then until we at least had a definitive answer about whether or not we need that for prime ag and then conserved it through the traditional methods that you've been talking about that could be done too so I kind of think it's prudent to find out what we have to do at South Village so we don't end up paying a lot of money on impact fees we're having to find another place and do the surveys on the property that will cost us money to make sure that it complies with what the agriculture department wants and then conserve it but we'll give you whatever you want have those surveys occurred for the Nolan I mean for the Underwood property in terms of isn't that ag land I mean we're trying to it was been it has been ag land Helen but I think they they're looking for reasonably consistent soil types the Department of Agriculture classifies different soil types from which is the highest on down and I think they what they want to go for is soils that are reasonably similar what is being lost so to speak in the creation of the star field this is reasonably new the Department of Agriculture some years ago didn't view soccer fields and even baseball fields I think as disturbance of agriculture soils but now my understanding is that they do and so I'd like to explain that but yeah how how long do you think I mean we're planning to build the soccer field can you mitigate it before you build it or do you have to wait till the soccer field is built and then say you have to mitigate it before you build it okay so what's the time frame for the soccer fields in um at South Village we're hoping that that begins and Tom's on the phone to or on the call to I we're hoping that begins this summer do we have any updates yeah I think it would I think it would be this construction season so this is something that I'm hopeful we could mitigate fairly early on in this process so that they can get the go ahead and um know where the where that mitigation is going to take place and then move forward with the construction of the soccer field so we could use Wheeler to mitigate that ag land possibly we've done it possibly if it's the right kind of soil and then we could do the easement yeah with third party if you give yeah months to nail that down if you could give us two months to nail that down with the agriculture department okay and then back to this that would help okay Tim and then Michael so uh do we have an opinion from uh Andrew our attorney city attorney about the complexity of trying to establish a conservation easement on the Wheeler property that already has or has two act 250 easements on it right yes it does correct so I mean have so I would assume that do they have to be resurveyed to be able to be extracted from the conservation you know it did like to be subtracted from all the rest of the land that's to be conserved I mean so that's that's the question I'm asking is is how much extra legal work has to be done to be able to not interfere with the act 250 um easements if you were to put the rest of the land into a conservation easement sure I I haven't researched that a particular question in much detail Tim but I can say I mean from from the hip I don't think it would be a ton of additional legal work just from a drafting of the easement itself I think it would be um we could have language that references those permits and say that it's subject subject to any encumbrances on the land I think that type of language is very common um in legal document um so I think yeah I guess that's that's my from the hip answer I don't think that they're from a management standpoint there may be some uh something we'll need to do um in whatever management plan that is drafted with the land trust not certain how much of that needs to be legal review um but uh but I think that I think that's where the core of that issue will come from is is is in the management uh discussion with the land trust michael miter um yeah the the two uh prime ag soil mitigation areas uh the conditions uh the activity conditions on those two are very much in line with what uh a third party land trust would expect uh to to have for the for the entire property so um I don't see that uh that that's going to cause any problem I'm sure they can work it in the other question I have is um there's an area in on the underwood property that is already being found and among the conditions of the latest uh prime ag soil um mitigation requirements is that it continue in agriculture so uh since it's already being used agriculturally that might be a better place to do the mitigation for this soft field um I really feel that this wheeler nature park is a nature park and should not be a dumping ground for um prime ag soil mitigation opportunities there's enough of it in there already and we don't want to complicate it and encumber it any further um it's uh and just to go back to something that Kevin mentioned we I know there's enough funding in the open space fund as well as the park maintenance fund which come from the same source uh to pay for the estimated 15 000 dollars of legal fees and the one time 20 000 dollar endowment that would go to a third party land trust okay so are we um are there other questions or comments I think um Roseanne had a question in the um up a box about why why are we building a soccer field on prime ag land but I believe that was a requirement for that development it is correct in that I mean when they designed that and built that that was something that the community required in order to get their um permit that's correct okay other comments Michael that brings me to another question if if it was a requirement of the developer and it's then the developer should be responsible for finding the prime ag soil mitigation land as was the case with Oak Creek they had to buy 28 acres of land and deed to the city so uh you know it's the developer who's who's who's doing something in this case a soccer field on prime ag soil so the developer needs to find the mitigation property that's the it's the developer that's building it for the city the city will own it um outright and so it's really our project that they're building uh who owns the land um we will own the land um I'm not sure if the transfer has taken place but um it will be city property for the city to do with what it wants that's my understanding okay well what's your pleasure council matt you got your green light on uh I support the resolution okay I'll move to approve it can we do that yeah if there's yeah we can make the motions and if there's any more discussion we can have it so um and well matt just looked it right that's right so maybe on a second it okay is there any further discussion tim so I mean six months I mean it's kind of an arbitrary number right I get it um I'm not totally comfortable with six months because I think there's going to be complications I think it's not going to be easy to think that's great so I would either say push it out another three months make it nine months or make it a year but I mean if we have to come back and do it again because we've run into some problems that's fine um but you know I I know you and I might not be here in a year tim say again you and I might not be here in a year good point okay nine months I don't care I mean six months is fine but if we don't make the six months you know I I don't want I don't want to be punished for it if it doesn't happen right you know but I think they can figure out I mean they're going to have to if the construction season for the soccer field is this summer that's only a couple months away um they'll have to find the land for the mitigation so that issue will be resolved at some point and then I think we need to move forward they've been waiting since December 2011 but let me let me be clear though if you pass this resolution tonight then it takes and it sends a signal to the Department of Agriculture that this is going to be conserved land it does take that property out of contention to be a future ag mitigation site so we'll have to hope that we can find some soils on other land that the city owns to conserve not already conserved by the way to conserve or we'll have to pay fees to mitigate ask a question on that yes you may tell what is the approximate value of those mitigations I mean if it's going to cost us $40,000 in attorney fees when you talk about avoiding these impact fees through prime ag redirection what are we talking Kevin is it equitably $40,000 is it more than that is it less than that I'd love to pay for the legal fees to put to this conservation easement so if you're seeing the opportunity to do this prime ag offset to justify that that would be helpful but how much are we talking about it's generally my recollection of the ag soil mitigation is generally two acres for one so if and so let's figure that the the area of the soccer field is four acres or less and so you would have to pay into the fund I think two dollars for every one dollar of per acreage value that you are disturbing so let's say the let's just say the land was a thousand dollars an acre and it was four acres you probably have to pay eight thousand dollars into an ag mitigation fund I that's the way it used to work now I don't know the value the proper is a thousand is a thousand dollars an acre or not but whatever that value is double it and then that's what you pay to the department of agriculture because fundamentally the program is set up so that if you're going to in the words of the agriculture department destroy a prime or destroy agricultural lands the ag department wants to be able to buy lands to conserve someplace else for agricultural purposes that's the that was the concept behind ag mitigation if you can find land that isn't currently conserved that you control and you put a mitigation agreement on that land I think that's only one to one but that might still be two to one as well but regardless that's how the ag department then conserves agriculture soils in vermont that are that are going to then be developed so how do we develop any houses on prime ag land I mean you're saying that if an acre is worth I don't know 20 000 dollars in the southeast quadrant and you build houses on it the developer pays 40 000 per acre to the ag department yeah yeah that you can't enact to this all occurs in act 250 it's not a local ordinance it's not even a it's not a state agency regulation it's an act 250 obligation where the department of agriculture comes in makes their case that the that the ag lands are being destroyed by the development and the developer either goes someplace and there are restrictions on this now too goes someplace and buys property him or herself or contributes into the fund but yeah it could be very expensive so we should probably not let any land houses be built on prime ag land no wonder it's so expensive megan yeah I was under the impression that we had nearly already conserved wheeler thanks to this mitigation I mean is there that much land left to to mitigate I mean that's been the claim in the past that it's nearly preserved already there's some there's there's some land left that can be used for mitigation but a restriction a restriction on on the property because of the soils that are are mitigated there is probably it may not be as strong as a full-on conservation easement would be but a lawyer would have to describe that but I think you know they're similar megan would say that this by conserving it it would be reasonably a belt and suspenders approach to this but you also have a vote taken by the community back in 2011 so um so you have a clear statement here okay um Michael and then we need to decide something yeah yeah well I just would like to comment on Tim's statement that six it's only six months it's ten years and six months Tim and it's time we got on with it I mean there've been so many roadblocks raised to slow this down and uh the myself as a as a citizen and uh as a member of the South American land trust um and as a member of the task force that that uh wrote the recommendations for this easement um it's it's just not it's it's unimaginable that we should delay it further the city made a promise ten and a half years ago you should keep it now and not any other roadblocks in the way I mean yes I'm getting hot under the collar about it because that's the way I am but I like to think it's done and I think you guys should get it done tonight and money and to correct Tom didn't do 40 000 in legal fees it's about 15 as Kevin has explained and another 20 000 um as a as a one-time payment for the endowment to the to the land trust that is going to be monitoring it that's all I have to say please possibly resolution okay Sarah doc did you want to say something yeah thanks um I too am eager to have you pass this resolution tonight it's been too long um but I'm reflecting back on what type of soils are at South Village and um I was just looking in the sus ag uh interim zoning report and there's a fancy chart of all the soil types I don't specifically remember what soil type the area designated as the soccer field actually is I mean it may not be prime ag it may be statewide or some other classification and I assume the intention is to mitigate with similar type of soil uh and they're not all equally valuable for agricultural purposes I've also heard it asserted that a number of the houses built at South Village actually were on the best agricultural soil and that the part reserved for the farm was actually inferior agriculturally and they've had to do a lot of dancing around to make things grow in the area that was designated as the farm so um I just throw that out as as another comment that we may not be talking about prime ag or we I don't really agree with the fact that we've used wheeler as this kind of dumping ground for these little side projects of the city over the years I I don't really see our perpetuating that practice going forward thanks okay so what is your pleasure are we um thinking nine months would be a better time frame that would take us to December right April March no April May June July August September November December so yes but I heard Kevin say that if we pass the resolution even if it's for nine months it might negate the ability for the money to be used as the offset again I'll vote for it tonight the council wants to call the vote but I also heard Kevin talk about two months so Kevin if you if we did the nine months but you could clearly come back to us as to whether or not we can mitigate the the soccer fields with wheeler within the next month or two um month within the next month is that something that is worth considering and then we vote on this for six months uh a meeting for now again if you want to have the vote tonight Ellen I'm gonna vote yes but if Kevin needs a month determine if we can save the city some money for this I'm for that too well I can look and if you give me a month we'll do the we will we will do the best job we can to find out if what the soils are at um at the soccer field and whether or not wheeler could be used as a mitigation location after a month if we can't figure that out you come back to the resolution I think we can probably get it done in six months um Tim Tim points out that you know things stuff happened but um I think six months is probably an adequate amount of time to get it done um or after a month if you give us a month and then say five months so a total of six we'll try to get it done in that still in the same time frame if we had a month to figure out whether or not um wheeler could still work for mitigation um I think that would be not was I understand what michael's saying um I disagree with him about the notion and was there for that matter about the notion of dumping things on wheeler I mean it's there's no dumping here it's just it's a restriction on the use of the property um that has served us well so if we can't find out in a month then you pass a resolution with five months in it michael and the and the advocates for it still get what they want and the voters get ultimately get what they voted for same frame give us a month so is that amenable to the um council that sounds reasonable to me yeah it's fine we're ready to go with this the way it is but I but that that does involve a motion that involves withdrawing a motion right so will you withdraw your motion well throughout my motion okay so we will put this off for a month and we'll come back in a month and find out if we've been able to determine the soil for the soccer field and if there's any that matches in the nature wheeler park or if it could possibly be used in the underwood land I don't know what other property we have other than what's behind the city hall but I don't think that's prime aggrande Michael last comment this awesome well it's not Kevin it's not what I want it's absolutely not what I want I'm just being a citizen's advocate here it's what 66% of the voters who voted in 2011 want not what I want and as far as adding restrictions to the wheeler with additional yeah yes mitigation you asked about 21 acres of the of the 119 it's currently yes mitigation land and yes there are restrictions and personally I don't think we should add any further there's there are places where you can find the the mitigation land elsewhere that the city owns and that's that's my two cents worth and all right thank you so we've sort of taken care of item nine then we'll be back in a month to hear this again I will have the same resolution on your agenda for the 19th Helen okay say it'll say five months rather than six okay thank you all right so now it's item 10 this is good news guys consider and possibly approve refinancing of the pension loan the top tell us your good news yes this is good news so um as you know over the past few months we've been we've been looking at this but currently we have just over seven million dollars as a as a balance left in it of the 10 years left in the current loan for for the pension so recently given where interest rates are where they are right now it's pretty low we solicited some proposals from the local institutions we got four proposals back they're all lower than what we're currently paying which is 5.41 percent one of them stood out to us it's the best offer that we received at a refined refinancing at 1.5 percent no prepayment penalty which means we could pay it off at any time we could pay more ahead of time if we wanted to it was a almost a 1 percent better offer than any of the others that came in we calculated that it's about a million and a half dollar savings over what the current loan is at 5.4 1 percent with the one and a half percent comparison we save almost 1.5 million dollars over the next 10 years which is substantial so our recommendation to you tonight is to accept that recommendation i know that tim has a proposed motion from andrew that's been prepared but i think that what td bank has to offer at the one and a half percent no prepayment penalties as well as an option to extend into next year for the first payment we we've got all the things in that proposal that that i think are the most attractive right well thank you for your good work so tim do you have a are there any questions before tim reads the just just a comment just to just to ask time to reiterate that the savings that we will be realizing includes the prepayment penalty of the old loan right that's correct okay just just wanted to highlight that if anybody was wondering about that right so so this is good so i do have a motion here um where is it oh my god i've lost here is so i moved that we approved closing the prior loan for the pension fund and approved the current loan with td bank under the terms of the proposal and authorized the deputy manager and city attorney to seek bond to counsel to finalize and execute the documents necessary to accomplish same second okay it's been moved and seconded um any comments or questions top tim i just want to comment on that tom and his team for doing this hard work and getting these offers from these banks and really just you know ringing the you know the washcloth to get that last trip out so i i think it's a win for the city and it's also a win for our banking associate as well right absolutely any further you ready for the vote okay this is money so we'll do a roll call um megan emory hi akota hi tim barrett hi thomas jifnan hi and the chair votes i so it passes five to zero good work tom hubbard thank you thank you all i tried hard to get some pension money out of congressman tonight right i know i know yeah they got the right their hearts in the right place that pension guarantee corporation needs that money to shore up those pensions which have been abandoned by companies that went bust or else they were ransacked by whoever owned you know took them over sure all right we have done um item 11 earlier so we now need a motion to convene is the south brilington liquor control commission to consider the following gazillion um liquor licenses in the community will move in a second second okay um are there any questions about any of these it was blank there was one question i love it matt this is really getting into the weeds tim there was a question about the holiday in and whether or not they should be serving alcohol because of of their the people that are staying there now is that still an issue do we i don't think they're serving alcohol there tim okay but they still want their license renewed yeah yeah okay so it's a formality okay i don't have any problems with anything else okay so do i have a motion to approve i'm not going to read them all all the ones printed on item 12 on today's agenda have a motion for approval a second okay all in favor let's drink to this right signified by saying i there was water but i yes yeah exactly it's beer i was washing down my dinner which i just ate sorry but yeah okay and other business we had one item and i can't remember what it was now um park road for me was it the park road whether we want to um yes thank you um matt so is that something that the council would like to um find out um from our legal council whether that's an agreement that we can change or that even if it's the um safety is of enough enough concern to do that matt so i i agree mr bossange that i that i share safety concerns i think anyone i think everyone does um putting an additional curb cut on dorset street is not a is not a safety fix in my opinion it was before the development review board uh and we discussed it um i understand why people that live on park road want that to be the curb cut i do not see how making a curb cut on the bike path off of dorset street improved safety i think it i think it does the opposite so we can discuss it but i'd be opposed to it okay i don't see how we have any jurisdiction in this whatsoever i agree it's fully permitted is it fully permitted at least it's a fully approved application i don't know if they had they pulled their permits yet but and plus the ldr's are from back in 2004 or something like that right i i'm not in favor of putting another curb cut on dorset street to access this park road is a perfect curb cut for it yeah i don't understand the argument at all but i mean obviously they think they have an issue i don't see the issue um i mean the pictures showed you know a snow covered street lots of streets are snow covered at different points than they're not but it is a hill because i walk that a lot and it's pretty steep it is a hill i'm just saying i think that is a challenging and it does go across a bike a not a bike well a walking path in two places so helen can i can i interject a little bit yes you may for other business purposes you need to decide whether or not you're going to have this discussion as a council at a future meeting as opposed to doing it now yes i'm sorry all right so is there enough interest in having this as a public conversation or not this is a dearly matter in my eyes i agree with him i'm i'm sorry to you know have to pass on a resident's concern but that's fine yeah okay i do have two items all right yes real quickly um the first item has to do with a fence that is behind a residence on mary street kevin a woman who called me her son lives on mary street apparently a plow pushed snow into that fence and broke it a fence that the city put up and i was just wanting to follow up on that and know if the city will take care of that uh is that one of the fence we put up there at that last property on the south end yes yes and our plow broke it well it's this way if we if we put it up and we broke it we'll fix it so should i call she didn't call you you didn't have a conversation with this woman i didn't but um maybe justin did i i i did not yeah she she calls a lot so yeah i'm sure she's called kevin i mean um justin but if you want to get back with her megan and say that's i we put that fence up i think at their request because of the development that was going on and the and that pass through behind uh the allard square was going to become an active actual driveway to the school so i'll take a look at it find out what happened and uh if we put it up and in all we'll fix it and we broke it we'll fix it i think we planted some um uh shrubs too yeah we did we done it we've done it we've really improved their property considerably yeah but that's the second issue um it was uh on social media a resident very you know concerned that the school budget is being passed um prior to all of the figures coming in from the state and i was just curious was back in the day when we voted on on it's not on budgets but on other things in may um was that with that date at all um i can't even think coincide with you know better coincide with the state calendar with regard to the school budget yeah tom so i'd love to hear what matt has to say about how the legislature works with uh coming closer to knowing that yield number i i'd assume it'd be near may but i just want to say before maybe you speak to that if you have some thoughts uh cori parent is introducing a bill regarding vote by mail and he wants to make a universe or an amendment to a bill and he wants it to apply to town meeting day and in that discussion i am advocating that we look very carefully part of this study to moving town meeting day back to may because i hate walking neighborhoods in february and also to allow for eight weeks instead of just five so this absentee mailer for the town meeting day only gave down a five weeks to send out ballots whereas last fall we had eight weeks so giving eight weeks to encourage more vote by mail for town meeting day would be easier if we went back to may as for for the state data matt if you have thoughts on that my impression is we would know what the yield is likely to be more so in may than we do in march past that this year for next year please well yeah okay we can make that no it makes a lot of sense i don't know why we do it this the second the first tuesday and march that must be some traditional farmers but one of the reasons that it was because farmers were didn't have much to do so it was convenient to meet then and spring planting would be the worst time to have a town not 20 years ago it was in may sorry one of the issues is the school districts need to have contracts with their teachers a vote approved by the voters and a budget approved by the voters before they can sign contracts with teachers and if that gets pushed off later into the spring the only option that school districts really have is to give teachers a pink slip against the possibility they may not have an approved budget so there there's a contractual deal with teachers that weigh into this as well all right so the legislature just has to go into session in june well there were many years when we did i i went into the early weeks of june quite a few times well is that so you know i don't that's a legislative thing as well as a charter change isn't it would be also this charter change school board discussion that would have to take place if we wanted to pursue and the discussion shouldn't happen tonight i didn't mean for us to have a full blown discussion yeah well we can use identify that as a possible topic for our steering committee meeting if you want to have that conversation and get the perspective of the school board and superintendent we can yeah that's a great idea look the last thing on this which is a very important discussion when we vote i just want to say i heard it used to be in may and i heard somebody speculate that we moved it to march just so that every four years we would be on super tuesday um and thus having to be more of more importance for the presidential elections but that's not a good reason to vote march if you ask me because at the town meeting day that's why well the town meeting we moved it well let's let's have that as a fuller conversation with the school board and you know i think kevin brought up some um important issues and it probably is a little more complicated than it sounds like because our terms for city council end in march so then do you have one year where you get a couple extra months i i don't know a couple of my terms were shortened my term was shortened so i didn't complain because i was first elected in may just so you all know no okay it's very nice going here a long time okay so um we need to go into executive session for a brief meeting i have a motion i moved to the council enter into executive session to discuss matters related to the evaluation appointment and employment of a public officer and employee inviting in tom humbert andrew bouldock and kevin door so moved okay all in favor hi hi okay so town meeting well


So, today we did an exercise, an emergency deployment rate in this exercise. Basically what that is is we practice responding to a crisis, we mobilize the entire battle group, we went through the procedures of going and drawing ammunition, moving to a staging area, make sure all our communications are working and that we're able to talk to each other, and then we move into an assembly area and wait for a follow on mission. This was unique because this was our first time, but also we mobilize the entire battle group to include our ally partners, which are Romanians, the United Kingdom and the Croatians. Why is it important to do this? It's important because the purpose of the Enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group Poland is we're supposed to respond rapidly to any crisis, and that takes constant practice, and so this and through the subsequent ones, we really see ourselves being able to deter threats by being able to respond rapidly to any type of crisis or emergency situation. Let's talk about your soldiers first, the Dark Rifles. What does it mean to you seeing your team, Marshal, Alert and Deploy, like how does it make you feel seeing what you saw today? I'm incredibly proud. I mean we've practiced for years and years for this moment, we have rehearsed and rehearsed to be able to transition from inaction to action. I call it our fire drill, being able to go from doing what you're doing, be alert and then deploy, and then quickly out and be able to respond to any threat. Our soldiers are incredibly motivated and I think this is a great learning opportunity not only for ourselves, but how we operate with our allies. So you mentioned allies, so how does it make you feel seeing the Romanians, the British, the Croatians come together toward a common goal like this exercise? What stood out today is the absolute professionalism and the great demonstrated training that our allies have. I mean they're excellent at what they do and really watching them and how they operate really taught us a lot. And I look forward to how as we continue to do more of these exercises, we're just going to get faster and better and be able to respond quicker throughout the coming months. What is stronger together mean to you in relationship to this exercise? Well what's stronger together means really in this exercise is first, notice that each one brings a unique capability that ourselves don't have. For example, the Romanians bring the capability to respond to anti-air threats. The Croatians bring a capability for long range fires. The United Kingdom brings the capability really to look deep and let us know the likely approach of enemies and then we bring the capability to find and finish the fight with our infantry. So just by ourselves, we're not as capable and not strong but together we're a highly potent fighting force. What do you want to add, sir? Oh, it's Rick. You know, really it's a great exercise for us really to shake out the dust and really to exercise that principle we say so often here in battle group polling that we're stronger together.


Jason welcome to the show. How you doing pretty good Amir nice to meet you likewise you and I connect I didn't know how we connected actually I started following your channel Main Street the and your Educational videos for a while which I commend you man great job on that Thanks. It's it's over a decade of hard work taking over 500 books on business investing the economy Thousands of articles interviewing over 500 experts and then condensing it into easier to understand Information for people on Main Street. Well talking about easier to understand information Let's talk about what's happening currently because lots going on we have obviously the pandemic is happening We have oil wars, but you and I before the show we're talking about this Anybody who was following this space could see exactly what was going to happen It's not like this was a black swan event where it's like, oh my god. I'm so shocked at what's happened to the economy So what's your take on this? Yeah, the mainstream financial media is making it like it was a black swan But in actuality the global economy in terms of exports whether it was South Korean exports Germany They were in recession for at least six months. Germany was in recession all of 2019 South Korea was having really bad export data for really since the end of 2018 And a lot of it had to do with how much the Chinese economy the real economy in China and the data is tough to get Especially from the Chinese government the National Bureau statistics occasionally you'd get some information about stagflation higher food prices But from reliable sources like Leland Miller China beige book He's done interviews on real vision TV and also hidden forces podcast to great free sources for your listeners The Chinese economy had really started to stall the tariffs the trade war that Trump started China was totally caught off guard and a lot of Chinese manufacturing was Uneconomic, let's just say and so they're a call head of manufacturing a lot of stuff and for profit now The Chinese government and the Chinese banking system was subsidizing and bailing out manufacturers not all of them in the bailouts Were different. It's been going on for a while But the balance had increased but a lot of the Chinese economy had shifted over the last ten years from Manufacturing things for a profit and really the last five or six years is when things really accelerated Into paper trading both management products dummy corporations by local government financing vehicles That started dummy corporations and then over borrowed and the Chinese economy had gotten it had basically, you know petershift and Jim Rogers very pro very pro china very pro long-term China growth Ten years ago so ten years ago the Chinese economy had very little debt There was a very high savings rate in the Chinese economy and then in the last five or six years That has totally been flipped where the amount of speculative real estate and go cities in China It just and the credit in China and the lack of savings. It it's just all exploded It's gone exponential the to give you some examples a mirror you and your listeners the amount of credit in the Chinese economy It went from I think barely five trillion in total credit in their economy about ten years ago And they had four trillion dollars at that time in foreign exchange reserves So they had a lot of reserves There was a very high savings rate about 40% in for Chinese households at that time and then the credit over Only a ten-year span went up over 8x in the China's economy and the average salary for a lot of people in the Chinese economy is only Honestly, there's more affluent people in China But there's also a lot of poor people in China and their version of the middle class is not making the same salary as People your listeners up there in Canada people here in the US and people in the European Union So China's economy was sputtering long before The global pandemic and the global the global pandemic a mirror I think in my opinion was really the last thing they needed because they were already having immense economic problems The Chinese banking system started to melt down in May 2019 And we had there was at least from what we know publicly There was at least five or six bank failures in a two or three month span And I was doing videos about this on my channel showing the different stories The bailouts were just getting crazier and weirder and larger And it got to a point where one of China's two largest state-owned enterprise banks China construction bank I think this was August 2019 But the people's Bank of China their central bank and the Chinese government ordered this large massive bank to bail out Hunan Province for 300 billion dollars over a five-year span And that would be the equivalent if the US federal government asked JP Morgan to bail out the state of Illinois For the coronavirus so China was having really bad banking system problems Interbank lending problems They were dealing with a lot of stuff bad things in their economy and the global economy was suffering Long before the coronavirus and the coronavirus was really in my opinion just the knockout blow Yeah, like I have a Interesting thoughts though. So two things number one earlier in the year China was pushing hard in Hong Kong Would you say one of the reasons why is because Hong Kong is that satellite? Exchange that they can have liquidity or access to USD greenback Yeah, yeah, but also, you know, Hong Kong has some freedoms So Hong Kong people protesting that makes Beijing look bad the puppet politician that they put in Hong Kong The protesters that makes that makes them that makes Beijing look bad. So Beijing was looking bad But yes, you're correct. Kyle Bass has talked about this a lot The Hong Kong banking system is used for money laundering also Hong Kong banks have a real problem there Kyle Bass has talked about the dollar peg might break and they are extremely levered the Hong Kong banking system both to Hong Kong real estate high values and Also real estate loans into mainland China. So that's really the problem with the Chinese economy is how much credit is in the economy the dollar denominated debt and the dollar denominated debt and this is another big problem Why the coronavirus is creating these massive massive Interventions by central banks all this dollar denominated debt a lot of it was from emerging market governments emerging market private companies and Well over a trillion dollars of it was in China, especially from the Chinese real estate sector on speculative Real estate construction. So Jim chain knows has estimated that about 20 depending upon how you measure it about 25% of China's GDP was solely on speculative real estate. So they have their housing bubble To what happened in the US from 2002 to 2007 The mentality in mainland China from a lot of people speaking a lot of people was at real estate prices would not be allowed to go Down, you know very similar to the attitude Americans had Except that the people in China were saying that the government wouldn't allow housing prices to go down And there was some anecdotal evidence that the government had canceled some sales in some different Provinces that were below different levels of the Chinese government had canceled some sales below market But a lot of that credit in the Chinese economy was tied to speculative real estate And the real estate was there propagating that to keep up with their so-called 6% GDP growth that they promised everybody Yep, yep Yep, so it's all about it's all about infrastructure It's all about construction and a lot of the real estate building after they had already built out a lot of the infras There's only so many infrastructure projects you can do So now it's just getting excessive There's bullet trains in China to tier 3 and tier 4 cities a lot of them not every single one but a lot So there's only so much infrastructure projects you can do before it becomes excessive the Japanese Excessive excuse me the Japanese government ran into the same problem with their Economic central planning. I know you follow the Austrian school So you can misallocate capital if you're doing infrastructure investments if you're subsidizing your manufacturers Peter Schiff would disagree with me on that. I respectfully disagree would disagree with him about that So capital can still be misallocated on an infrastructure and with manufacturing. So manufacturers can be It's it's it's called the unions and the back shady deals They get misappropriated the most Do you think there's unions in China? We call them unions here. You can you can call it organized Official or official organized parties of the CPP Well, the thing is in China if you if you have an union you start protesting if you march with pick up a pick up with Picket lines. There we go picket lines We're seeing some protests now over rent is too high because the Chinese economy it has imploded From a bunch of different factors before their coronavirus and now afterwards they've done a lot of different bailouts a lot of capital injections I think they were injecting hundreds of billions of dollars in just a month or two, but that was going on for most of 2019 too I did a video on my YouTube channel showing a lot of the different types of bailouts There was at one point according to the New York Times in August 2019 There was an extensive article interviewing a bunch of Chinese business owners There was two hundred billion dollars worth of IOUs circulating in the Chinese economy that these these state-owned enterprises This local and city governments were not paying teachers. We're not paying government workers They were getting paid maybe a couple months late, but they weren't getting paid any interest for waiting So it was it was a mess the Chinese economy was a mess Thanks to Trump and the tariffs and the trade war and also stagflation on higher food prices Especially pork and some vegetables and then we had a ground zero in Wuhan. So that made things a lot worse How do you think this is going to affect them with the you know if you follow Brett Johnson's theory of the milkshake theory? So short-term medium-term us becomes a liquidity can't spend the liquidity king or the king of currencies for since World War 2 how does this how how's that going to affect China? Okay, so I agree with a good amount of what Brent Johnson says except I think a lot of it has already occurred So Brent Johnson has said that all this flight capital From china from europe from emerging markets will all come here to the u.s Well, what happened in 2019 with our stock market if you look at a chart of apple And charts of Boeing and other companies before they crashed in the last couple months Those stock charts were going parabolic. Meanwhile, the earnings were horrible We're mediocre or horrible. So I think we already had over the last two years A lot of what Brent Johnson described the problem is the dollar index didn't get to 110 120 or higher and that's because these governments The whether it's the treasury departments or the finance the finance ministries of these different governments and or the central banks Like the federal reserve, they're all trying to manipulate their currency exchange rate Or devalue their currency so they don't want most people to notice. Um, I'm in the For right now. Anyway, I'm in the dollar tug-of-war camp. So I am neutral on the dollar against the other currencies I think all the currencies are garbage, but I think most professional money managers Um, they want to retreat into they view still view the dollar and u.s. Treasuries as safer And other countries on a relative basis But overall, um, the fed has intervened massively There's been an unbelievable amount of trillions one of the common themes that I was talking to you about before You know when we first met on twitter was rules changes And this is something your listeners are really going to have to pay attention to It is really tough even for financial professionals because of all the different rules changes Um, there's so many of them. So I'll just give some examples So it is illegal for the federal reserve to actually buy anything but u.s. Treasuries And mortgage back securities. That's it. That's all they're legally allowed to buy So what did they do to get around the rules to move the goalposts to have? Um, lucy pulled the football when charlie brown was trying to kick it They created a dummy corporation similar to what enron did. I interviewed daniel d martino booth The reserve recently and she said basically it was illegal. So they Created with the with the u.s. Treasury coordinating a special purpose vehicle, which is a dummy corporation And then they went and they started financing. So technically the u.s. Treasury owns all these things that the fed has been buying so these um Municipal bonds these investment grade corporate bonds that are not going to be investment grade for much longer There was 150 billion in investment grade corporate bonds that were downgraded recently You have junk bonds. You have junk bond ETFs. You have leveraged loans. You have collateralized loan obligations You know, um, the the fed's official balance sheet amir is up two trillion dollars in a very short amount of time But that's not the real story the real story Is what daniel d martino booth and I were discussing how all the shenanigans the real shenanigans and many many trillions Was off balance sheet that people will not see if they go to the fed's different websites and look at the official balance sheet So even though the official balance sheet looks like a hockey stick the reality is much much worse Now you have that's one side of it So you have all these bailouts and you think the dollar would be devaluing quickly and collapsing And this is why i'm in For now the tug of war camp because there's two powerful forces You have the fed and the treasury president trump trump administration who all want a weaker dollar If the dollar rises too quickly like when it got to 103 on the dollar index I think a couple weeks ago and then they just panicked and there was all these announcements Another i called it another day another bailout fast and for your fast and furious rules changes And on the other side of that is how much dollar denominated debt? And this is what brend johnson is talking about when you have all this dollar denominated debt You need dollars to pay it back so you don't default So maybe you can't pay the whole thing back, but it's like your credit card bill, right? If or your mortgage if you don't at least make the minimum payment you're in big big trouble So people need dollars, but the problem is that the global economy is not functioning There's a cash flow problem. So you don't have american torus You don't have american companies buying goods and services outside the us and those foreign companies Getting those dollars those other countries that relied on tourism getting those dollars So that's why you're what you're having now on the other side of this and that's why it's a tug of war Because that's a powerful force on one side with the demand for dollars to prevent default On that 12 13, but why wouldn't I as the as an investor or as a company go to another country? Like for example the US dollar versus Canadian dollar has a premium or even better example US dollar versus Australian dollar Where I can get a premium on old assets in that country It's a good question. So normally what other private foreign companies did was The investment banks or banks that they borrowed from were offering them less interest So also the loans were taken out. George gammon was on your show. He talked about this extensively I listened to that interview. Good job He said that a lot of these loans were taken out when the dollar index was actually really weak And they expected that trend to continue. So this was a monumental screw up By foreign governments and foreign banks foreign private banks and foreign private companies So this was betting that that trend of weak dollar would continue So that that's part of it. The other reason is dollars are more liquid. We're on a dollar standard So if in other countries Dollars are or more easily accepted than other currencies So if you're in Japan and you have Canadian dollars the odds of a company in Like a taxi cab driver taking Canadian dollars probably nobody wants Canadian dollars I'm sorry. I singled out your currency But if if it was Australian dollars if it was euros A your Japanese taxi cab driver if you're going to tip him might not accept that But if you have us dollars, he might say okay fine. So us dollars are kind of viewed. We're on a That's the best way to think about the current system. The current system is heavily flawed But it's it's the shitty system we've got for now. So we're on a dollar standard and the u.s Takes advantage of that incredibly So the you have two powerful forces here. You actually have the the fed the treasury President trump trump administration all want a weaker dollar if the dollar gets too strong They want to weaken the dollar which means they might purchase more and more assets to try to get the dollar weak And the other side of it in this tug of war that i view of things for now now eventually this rope will break I think the fed will ultimately win because that's what history says Eventually the fed the fed and the treasury will win they will weaken the dollar But we're going to have a probably a lot more volatility in the near future with currencies The other side is the amount of dollar to nominate debt But what most financial professionals miss is the extra dollar derivatives So these are dollar liabilities. This is the currency Of adjustable rate mortgages. These are called forward dollar swaps. These are what countries Did so they didn't have to Blow through their foreign exchange reserves. So if you're have you ever known currency trading? Or x Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, so if you're looking at the fundamentals of a country right with the currency You want to see if the country has a lot of foreign exchange reserves You want to see if they're if the country is running if they have a government budget deficit problems You want to see if the country is doing a good job managing government finances if the central bank has foreign exchange reserves to defend the currency and the exchange rate And normally and we know this through history with the asian tiger crisis the mexican peso problems other currency crises Normally when these countries that are running dollar pegs or other currency pegs When they blow through their foreign exchange reserves So the foreign exchange reserves go from a respectable amount the currencies in in the currency is not moving around violently in a volatile way to all of a sudden the foreign exchange reserves are the Treasury departments in these different countries are running through their foreign exchange reserves defending the currency exchange rate And then uh currency traders are starting to question whether the currency peg is going to break And that's a lot what happened to the during the asian tiger crisis, and then you had after net capital outflows So there was an enormous amount of hot money that came into Thailand and other asian countries during the asian tiger crisis And then as soon as the foreign exchange reserves were blown through people started worrying about the currency pegs The government budget deficits the finances problems with dollar denominated debt. This is an occurring theme here This is why the plaza cord was done to in 1985 was japan and germany were having problems too So the u.s to to refresh people's memory the plaza's cord was to reduce the value of the u.s dollar It was it was a 50 devaluation that was agreed now in exchange for that So the u.s. Did want to devalue dollar because all these people running These central banks these governments these treasury departments They all kind of have the same playbook. It's all canxian or neo canxian They all think with a version of mercantilism the austrian school would call it mercantilism anyway That if they have a devalued currency That's good because that benefits their economy for exporters So if everyone wants to have a weak currency to boost exports to see that's a problem then So the u.s. Do you have triphan's dilemma? You have all these other countries that want a weaker currency for exports and in the u.s Government wants a weaker currency too, but it's a reserve currency So that's triphan's dilemma. Yeah, well, it's importing issues too Like i'll give you examples since the u.s. Dollar has popped against the canadian. We have a lot of companies who have Remote freelancers around the world, but they're denominated in u.s currency They don't want to take any other currency But the forex exchange for canadian to us isn't i mean worth it anymore not even worth the exchange rate anymore No, like if you're looking at the value that you get is like you can find the same type of value In canada as opposed to now exporting that type of labor before Yeah, well, there's other competitive advantages besides just labor and currency So canada might have canada might have cheap energy at some point.  Yeah, yeah, you guys have you guys have plenty of cheap energy We'll see what the government decides to do with protecting your oil industry Although uh trudeau what he's a very radical environmentalist, right? Oh that guy. He's the best businessman in the world, man.  So what do you see how? Let's kind of reduce this or simplify it. How does this affect everyday working class joe? It puts more monetary inflation It creates distortions in in the global economy in the supply chain with all these currencies being devalued So it creates misallocations of capital. It creates the canteone effect So whoever is getting that extra currency whoever is benefiting from the currency devaluation is Not the average joe or average chain So it's creating stagflation. I would say And it's going to be a common theme in the real economy and the government economic data saying there's no inflation Is not going to reflect this but people see this with their bills So either your bills are going up or when you go to the grocery store Um, well now I was going to say go into the restaurant, but now I used to take that for granted Um, when you go to the grocery store or you order take out or delivery from a restaurant given the circumstances We have you're going to be getting less portion of food So you're going to get less goods and services for more currency. It's it screws over the average person By devaluing currencies like that you get less purchasing power And so what can a regular person do? How can they protect themselves or help themselves? They have to hustle they have to maybe build an online business They have to grow they have to grow their income and they have to have inflation hedges in place. Let's talk about that inflation hedges Okay, so in uh inflation hedges gold and silver are normal inflation hedges. They're not investments though So they're just for insurance wealth preservation and savings So you can't save because the goal of all these governments now is to weaken their currencies And some of them are going to be weakening their currencies faster than others But you can't save in the currencies long term. Anyway, you're not getting interest paint You're not being paid any interest to save. So what's what's the point in saving? Soon it might be negative interest someone to take your money Yep, yep, or they or they do what similar to what f dr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1934 and Is he the president that took the gold as well? I think he was yes, and he devalued the dollar So not only did he take your gold. He also weakened the currency devalued it against the dollar substantially So it was a double whammy now not everyone complied with that Yeah, so i'm glad he brought up gold and silver as a hedge most people view it as investment Which is not the very notion of gold and silver is to keep is to hold your value as opposed to as an actual financial investment Well, the problem here in the u.s. For americans is the way golden silver taxed So the government has already thought of this They already realized that they were going to be devaluing the currency and there is no tax advantages to buying gold and silver and holding it You don't lock in you don't lock you guys get capital gains tax, right? Yes, it's um this guy named daniel amerman. He did excellent dan i el am er man Over the last 10 years. He's written excellent blog article showing that when gold goes to 5000 and silver goes to 200 150 200 if you go to sell it your tax bill is going to be enormous. So I think it actually it's taxes I think ordinary income is taxed as taxes a collectible Which is taxes ordinary income so the higher it goes income. So it's not even capital gains Correct, you don't so um if you buy a stock here in the u.s. And you hold it for at least a year I think that's still the tax laws you get to lock in long-term capital gains taxes So if you trade stocks you trade you trade other types of Other types of assets you don't get long-term capital gains taxes the lowest tax on an asset You get as long-term capital gains taxes with buying and holding real estate here in the u.s And buying and holding stocks and then you can lock in I think a 10 percent long-term capital gains tax rate There is none of those benefits for gold and silver A book not an investment now gold stocks are an investment There are good gold stocks and then there are really really bad gold stocks I just had jim rick is on there and he's really He's really uh his only suggestion is as physical gold nothing nothing but well here here's the danger with that amir I know you love bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and I do own some so for full disclosure I own some bitcoin. I own some like coin. I haven't been buying any lately But I think it's really dangerous for anyone to go all in on any one thing Because we're in an environment now where the central bankers the politicians the bureaucrats with too much power in these different countries They can be changing the rules all the time So they can do tons of different rules changes. I only gave one example Early in the interview about the special purpose vehicles But if the banks are in trouble they change the leverage ratios for the banks to make them look more solvent You know, they can do a ton of different rules changes And that's the danger we're in so if you have all of your asset all of your net worth or most of your net worth in just Gold or silver they can put an extra windfall profits tax They can potentially put extra taxes on the gold miners or silver miners They can if you own a lot of bitcoin or cryptocurrency, let's say you are smart and you have a treasure or nano ledger, right? You've taken it off of coinbase They can still x post facto they can say anyone because we saw you bought it on coinbase They can say that we know you have some and that you're going to have to pay a capital gains Windfall profits tax or something because now bitcoin, this is hypothetical now bitcoin's at $50,000. Yeah And they would say that I lost though my ledger with my seed phrase. So I don't know where those things are at But you would you would know all the different storage options. Um, there was what cold storage with I got it into boat. I got I got into a boating accident. So I lost all my crypto You did are you are you kidding? I thought you had it. Oh, that's people have to figure that out You know boating accident, but uh, okay gold silver as a hedge Okay, so so um, one of the smartest yes one of the smartest hedge fund managers rile pal He managed a lot of money at Goldman Sachs for a long time. He's he's rich. He started real vision tv Which has real vision. Yeah. Yes. Yes So he recently said because all the rules changes and this is a really smart guy He pays attention to all the rules. He has a lot of experience. He said with his own personal net worth 25 cash so us dollars in case the stock market crashes And then he has cash for an opportunity in case of let's say rental properties Um in certain areas, maybe the Dallas metro area or Houston metro area Let's say oil tens of thousands of oil jobs are lost After oil continues to go bust and there's rental really good starter rental properties on sale So he has cash 25 of his net worth and cash for an opportunity. He has 25 in gold I would I would probably have some gold stocks in there or silver stocks in there He just has gold though and then he has 24 25 bitcoin and 25 for trading opportunities because he likes to trade Monday through friday So that's what he has for his personal but again that example he's not all in on any one thing So he realizes the environment we're in where you could have good investments and Or you could be short stocks because Of six weeks ago. It was smart to short stocks. Yep the stocks were crashing But look at all the rules changes that trump isn't president trump is announcing So the restaurant stocks were not included in congress's initial coronavirus bailouts And now president trump was just doing press conferences talking about how people are going to be able to deduct entire Penses or entertainment. So either if you order takeout or delivery from some of these restaurants now You're going to be able to write the whole thing off. So this is rules changes with taxes rules changes with taxes rules changes with capital gains And this is the environment we're in it really sucks the average person It's going to give them a headache and there's a lot of financial professionals I speak to who who don't keep track of the rules changes and they're Directing people into only one or two asset classes. That's the danger of things right now Yeah, also, we're entering a weird period of you mentioned the treasury and the fed I will leave china out of this because I I think there's a whole issue with supply chain around the world And as you mentioned inflation of of products mainland It's going to be interesting because in canada. They're rolling out this Semi quasi welfare checks. It's convoluted. I always say in the government They must have a they must have a department the government that's like reverse logic department because they never have any logic It's the most it's like it's like jason and amir get in the room It's like how can we make the thing most complicated possible? And this is what we're going to give out to the people and so united states you guys have a stimulus check I forget what it was like 12 1300 dollars in canada's this weird convoluted thing you can get up to $2,000 Originally, they say it's for four months. That's it's going to go on much longer than four months politicians Premier senators are going to use that for voting privileges. We're entering a weird stage of this quasi ubi Almost very similar to you can even call it communistic socialistic properties Where I think it's our whole economy is going to be very skewed and it's going to I think people really are going to underestimate or they really don't understand that If I was going to if I'm a betting man, and I'm looking at everything And everything we talked about we talked about fed printing trillions of dollars fed having spvs buying out all these ship bonds stuff happening in china The milkshake theory we talked about No matter what all these data points are leading to great inflation Yes, um Eventually great inflation now if for now the dollar index is still pretty strong And that's because all these dollar denominates are defaulting and you have these derivatives these forward dollar swaps were A mirror when things break this bad in the global economy like in 2008 It was over five trillion dollars in derivatives And so when housing housing prices fell people fell upside down on their mortgages It was five trillion dollars on derivatives that broke this system So all the equity of all the u.s. Banks did not total five trillion So the banking system was wiped out all the rules were changed. They did these currency swaps Massive amounts of them we found out about them from the one-time partial audit that ron paul got that bernie sanders and john mccain Both agreed to and then there was a bloomberg news freedom of information act request a 29,000 data dump document And the levy institute went through it and found out that actually 29 trillion In emergency bailout loans was given out all over the globe by the fed and in the fed afterwards Waved a lot of the loans so the loans were given out as temporary a lot of people ended up not paying them back The fed bailed out their friends the fed picked winners and losers Whoever the fed was Most friends with so china look how china with these currency swap press releases That came out that were two of them china didn't get any currency swaps china didn't get any more dollars Mm-hmm Yeah, so that so you have you have the tug of war for now Where this dollar dynamite debt is imploding because a global economy is not sending those dollars to where they were needed People had cash flow assumptions And then you have these derivatives which are imploding and that's why the dollar looks stable for now Because people are trying to figure out what's happening to the dollar and the market's looking at both of the both of these things And the dollar's kind of stuck in the tug of war and it's not moving too much right now Yeah, I don't know man.   I mean, we're Andrew yang he he obviously isn't gonna win the democrat nomination.  He was talking you you said universal basic income I think that's for government dependence Of course. Yes. So so the more freebies that governments give out The more dependent people become on government Well, I was I was looking more into i've been diving more deeply into modern monetary theory But not only on the economic side, but they have a whole section there to talk about Guaranteed fucking jobs.  Look at those make work programs that happened during the great depression There's a lot of misinformation about what actually happened After the october 1929 stock market crash So the narrative is that herbert hoover was this evil greedy capitalist as free marketeer There wasn't enough regulation and that's why the stock market crashed and that's why the economy didn't recover When herbert hoover was still president. That's not the reality of the situation There was an enormous amount of tinkering going on by All the different government agencies that were created at the time president herbert hoover Was putting in wage and price controls. Uh trump has talked now I just this just came out and it's not guaranteed legislation yet, but he's talked I think about paying oil producers To not produce oil. I saw that Well, well, this is a mirror. This is right out of the playbook from Right after the great right after the october 1929 stock market crash So what did herbert hoover and fdr do farmers were paid to not Send their produce oranges and other crops. They were paid to let it die. Yeah Very similar history is repeating The the difference this time is there's a lot more currency out there a lot more and way more debt I think this is also going to be a precipice for the digitization of the dollar Well, I I think I think there's a couple different camps Different power factions here in the washington dc metro area. I've been living in outside washington dc now for metro And in new york city. So I think there's one camp that paid nancy polosi to stick in that cashless society digital dollar Legislation into the congress's coronavirus bailout. So I think that's one camp. I think that's probably Backed by the chinese government and then also the big tech companies in silicon valley. So I think that's what they want They want that that gives If people criticize the government or the wrong corporations like you and me they can they can um ding us They can either tax us more for speaking up or criticizing or they can shut down our credit cards or a bank account So I think that's one faction. I think there's another faction that wants to maintain the status quo And jim rickards. Did you read his new book aftermath? No, I didn't read it. It's actually sitting on my desk. Okay, so I'll just summarize one of the key points Um, he talks about a discussion he had with timothy Head of the new york federal reserve and I think he was also assistant treasurer secretary And timothy geitner says that they're just going to keep the same status quo system or most of it It's not going to change very much So maybe they do some some bailouts of the airlines right and then a couple years later The stock market is right back up when we're the economy gets back to eat somewhat close pre coronavirus levels in a couple years And so they're just going to do all these temporary bailouts and then the stocks are going to rally The government's going to sell them off at a profit after they manipulate the stock market higher And the government's just going to keep releasing their u.s. Government since we have the world reserve currency still Is just going to keep releasing new press releases every day if they have to guarantee Guaranteeing uh bank accounts with the fdic guaranteeing Corporations or in industries, you know all this tinkering all these guarantees We know the government doesn't have the money right? It's all inflation It's all monetary inflation right they're creating it out of thin air But the average person doesn't know what the federal reserve is doesn't understand and and still a lot of people still trust government Unfortunately because they don't know how the system really works Because they don't a lot of people don't even know what the federal reserve is what it does or who's the fed chairman And those people if the government So the federal reserve or the treasury president trump different government agencies issue press releases saying we guarantee everything So there's nothing to worry about So that percentage of people will go along to get along with that system their herd mentality So that that's the other camp is that this current system we have which i don't like I'm sure you don't like it either many or listeners don't like it if they're buying gold in bitcoin They probably either are don't like They're buying insurance to protect themselves so the other the second camp is that they uh The second camp wants to maintain the status quo and they will just issue all these press releases as guarantees with trillions of dollars that they may or may not print and They may end up printing more a lot more than people really know because of all that off balance sheets All that all that I need a water all of that off balance sheet shenanigans And then what we know from 2008 how the real number like I discussed earlier It was not a couple trillion dollars like people think in 2008 It was not even 19 trillion. It was 29 trillion To save the to save the system And then the third camp is what trump bringing in what judy shelton is some type of gold backing So I think there's three camps in washington dc and new york city debating What the us What the us's version of the financial system is going to be in the next couple years So there's a big big power struggle there And I don't know who wins. You're actually talking about bringing it back to gold standard Um, I don't know about a full gold standard But maybe some type of partial fractional gold standard So they would say that the currency is partially backed by gold Maybe it's like similar to how us citizens couldn't own gold, but they allow international exchange of gold. So Yeah, so that wasn't a real gold standard what fdr did in 1934 american citizens were banned from owning gold But foreign governments could exchange their dollars for gold So it wasn't it was a partial international gold standard not a real gold standard because american citizens were screwed Yeah, so that is that is on the table. I don't think the gold I don't think the gold group is winning right now. Let's just say that I think I think the cashless society power struggle and the And the uh cashless society and the status quo Are in the lead So I think those are the two main factions now and the the third camp the gold camp From partial gold backing with a currency. I think they're far behind there's also uh Another player in here that's going to change how perception of the digital dollar is no matter what I I think for I think no matter what the facebook libra dollar will be launched And it will use a basket of different currencies Forex currencies, whether it's the u.s. Dollar the euro The british pound whatever And this is going to open up a billion plus people In the world to the idea of a digital dollar And this is going to be the precipice kind of like the uh The opening for people to get sucked up into this whole digital way of of of money Well the the government currencies are are very very different because then they could track and tax every single transaction If the government wants they can put a value out of You add a tax on all transactions In media very quickly. I don't know about immediately, but very quickly I think it's going to happen regardless, but I think this is also The opening for counter markets. This is where bitcoin comes in. This is where cryptocurrency comes in This is where the whole web 3 ecosystem comes in and it's funny because You know, bitcoin was born post-08 and this is its first economic turmoil that it's facing And it still has some correlation to the equities and s and p. They say so But if you're comparing it to the stocks, it's a 24 7 free market. There's no breakers. There's no bailouts Hardcore austrian economics, you know supply and demand is 21 million three four million is lost something like that And it's holding up it's holding up And uh, I think a lot of people who are intelligent Like yourself and people who understand these very simple principles I think people are going to flock in hordes within the crypto space Yeah, I think crypto is an interesting hedge. I don't have a lot of my money in it, but a lot of my savings in it, but It's really tough to say what the loss changes are going to be with governments because We could see some governments going after that. I mean in china The china's really try to crack down on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies a lot They kicked they've been kicking the bitcoin miners out of the country now for years But that actually benefits bitcoin Oh, really? I'd like to hear that explanation how that benefits One point is quite centralized in china miners for the hash power In fact, canada's becoming more and more a big player because we're getting really cheap You can get cheap as energy and kind of like some places I even saw 2.9 cents a kilowatt And most places around the world around six cents a kilowatt There's even places almost will give it to free They have a like dirty natural gas in lberta We have to have a license and they're pretty much burning that anyways if you can tap into generators You're pretty much getting free electricity and so Since bitcoin is proof of work So you need electricity you need these miners the miners have a half life They last whatever eight months to a year and a half depending on how frequently used and what type of miners you buy The proof of work mechanism in bitcoin has created the greatest manhunt For the cheapest most efficient use of energy And so people because it's a margins game, right? You have all this overhead capital You're like I have to buy the machines. I have to rent that warehouse. I have to pay engineers And my major cost is I have to pay energy per kilowatt per hour And so there's people running around the world different locations. Canada's a great great location because these miners they produce a lot of heat You can go places in northern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, northern British Columbia, and it's very cold there And since and get this too, it's a two for one since cana has federalized weed I know mining operations in Canada take the heat from the miners into a greenhouse and grow weed as well Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a two for one. You got you got a cool the miners anyway So miners will suck that heat into a greenhouse Now they need like a government rebate or subsidy now Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah And so like one of the biggest miners are in Quebec over here It's block stream is like a hundred million dollar mining operation So mining is actually becoming extremely decentralized around the world And it's actually a good thing that a lot of these miners aren't in China anymore Oh, thank you for that that was very interesting I may have to re-listen to that again after this interview is over that was a very interesting My favorite businesses with highest margins that I found on a publicly traded stock exchange are gold precious metals royalty and streaming companies So they don't actually mine and their business model is actually set up similar to a rental property owner Where they just collect checks and they finance mines and they take a very small portion of the revenues of a mine And if there's exploration successes these royalties or streams that they buy Could run for 10 20 30 40 years Franklin, Nevada, which is the largest royalty precious Over 16 billion dollar market cap 600 million dollars per year in annual cash flows they have over 100 assets online Generating cash flow for them. They have royalties in their portfolio that have thrown off cash flow for over 40 years Really, do you know the ticker? FNV so yeah, yep, but there's there's a handful of these companies So these companies Franklin, Nevada is the largest of them and most diversified with the cash flows Franklin Nevada just lost my chair and thought we've been talking a long time Franklin, Nevada has 90 gross margins and good luck trying to find a lot of businesses that have anything close to that So this 90 90 percent. Yes 90 percent. So this company they only have 40 people Working at the company and all they do is look for new deals. So they're looking for more growth They're looking for more investments looking for more cash flow. That's one of the as an investment That's one of the safest ways to get golden silver exposure are with these larger royalty and streaming companies As long as the management teams don't deviate from the business model Or put too much debt on the balance sheet use too much leverage or do a string of bad deals in a row That puts um with with debt on the balance sheet So those are really the only ways that management can actually screw it up Otherwise the business is unbelievably good at generating cash flow And if the management team has some geologists or either on staff or hire some good consulting geologists They can do these tiny little deals with junior junior miners right for a million dollars or two million Heirs of some of these junior miners that everyone likes to speculate on and they get a royalty So they buy this they buy the equity they buy the shares to help these junior miners So they can go drill on large land packages and the royalty and streaming companies get a royalty on often the entire land package for For forever the land the land the royalties on the land for forever So if the junior miner drills and that becomes a gold mine with 40 years of reserves That tiny little one million dollar speculative investment that call option Optionality that turns into a steady stream of cash flow now for 10 20 30 40 years And somebody's pump. This is a dividend stock Franco Nevada is a dividend stock. They're they're a more mature company. They re IPO'd in 2007 and every year they increase dividends Wow, did you hear cost did you hear cost go today a percent? Yep, uh cost at my day job when I was a uh investment analyst and I was covering uh oil stocks and dividend stocks Uh, I wrote a stensive article on cost code. This was 2013 when it was 110 dollars a share Yep, so it's it's doing what it's supposed to do I love their business model, man. What their margins are so small one to two, but Their model is it's I love it Well, they they generate all their free cash flow from uh memberships membership. I know it's it's you've cash you have cash Every day it's a sass model been real life It's a it's a win win win business model because the shareholders are benefiting Paid more money and have better benefits and have better and have stock options if they stay there Customers are happy because on a lot of items they feel like they're getting a good deal Now not everything's a good deal because something you don't know Some people don't need like a lot of catch up in bulk or other things But if you know what to buy there you can really reduce your cost per unit So I think like it's one of those a few businesses out there That has win win win for shareholders employees investors and management I'm surprised other industries having tried to do that like physically like Creating something of a membership model like that. I Well amazon prime. What do you think amazon prime is the online? Online online. I'm talking about offline, you know Yeah, it's it's really hard to do that because You're not going to make much money off the other see costco does it at scale And they have a proven brand name and they know they have good products there and not smaller companies might not be able to negotiate With some of these larger other companies to get the deals costco does I think clothing might have the option. So like you look at zara, which is like a beast He like ridiculous a size company And they already have decently cheaper Prices compared to their competitors. They pretty much whip off designer type of Fashion and then make it on their own Yeah, I'm not familiar with zara. I don't cover a lot of the retail companies I did an interview with a hedge fund manager kevin duffy a bearing asset management And he's a hardcore contrarian.  It's like You know, it's it's very like, um In your face, it's like, you know, if you see me wearing it this this represents and symbolizes my status in society So it's just more than taking pride in your appearance. It has nothing to do with pride at all It's literally making face, you know, it's it's a theater if I had to call it anything But any other questions you wanted to ask me here? I think we covered a lot man I was gonna ask a question about oil, but that's a whole different fucking podcast oil wars Yeah, I was I was an oil analyst and I called I called the oil price crash I was getting information from my friend who I've known for over a year who was trapped inside wuhan So I was getting reports every day or two really really detailed stuff About how the chinese economy was totally on lockdown way before it hit the news And I was seeing the oil stocks and I was watching the airline stocks and the cruise ship stocks And I was saying there's no way these stocks should be that high When when china shut down the other parts of asia are shutting down And flights at that time, you know at the end of january flights were being canceled to asia And I was just hearing that all these other business people are canceling. I was like, this is gonna hurt the oil China is the main demand driver for oil Merging markets in china china is the main demand driver This is not gonna be and I was already as you know earlier in the interview bearish on the chinese economy I was covering a lot of this that their economy was contracting pretty violently long before the coronavirus So that was the last thing they needed. So I'm you know, I'm not a rocket scientist I just do hard work research And then I tried to do good analysis. Um combining the the research Oh, I lost you Oh, you can now you're back talking about analysis Like I said at the beginning of the interview I think your content that you put out you put a lot of work into it Like both your free stuff that you have on youtube and I know you have a patreon account um If people can if people want to know more about you and look at your work What's the best resource for them to check out? Oh, the youtube channel, which is free and I've interviewed over 500 experts there on a lot of different topics I've actually known trace meyer for many many years since 2009 before he ever owned a single bitcoin He was trying to tell me but he was trying to tell me about Yeah, so I've known trace meyer for a long time when he was just a lawyer and he ran the website run to gold and he wrote The book the great credit contraction. I was doing interviews with him then like those are in the archives I was still like learning how to do interviews and still reading and learning a lot on my own. So I like to I like to think I've improved a lot. Um, they could go to wall street from Uh the youtube channel the the website right now I need to there's some technical issues with it, but the youtube channel is free It's a lot of great content on there W. A. L. S. T. F. O. R. M. A. N. S. T. Dot com And the patreon is I I think it's a bargain other people have told me that It's an immense value. I only charge five dollars a month really that's it. They're all you gotta put it up Yeah, I only yep there is there is really high level content and analysis there I was warning people I predicted The first major oil stock that would go bankrupt. I predicted it two months ago a whiting petroleum There was an audio podcast um end of january first week of february When I said that whiting petroleum would be probably the first oil company major US oil company to go bankrupt. I was warning people to stay away from oil stocks and um, there was a lot of other chart And call analysis chart work. Um, I'm also a fundamental guy So I do a lot of fundamental research um with the company's balance sheet and cash flows As people can probably tell from some of the stuff I was talking about during the interview So there's a combination of things behind the pay wall. It's only five bucks a month again I'm just trying to move a lot of the income that I was making before youtube censorship I mean my channel is not really growing anymore Moving that away from youtube And hopefully patreon doesn't censor me. If not, I have to come up with another plan Direct man. You don't need no middleman make a website. He can use a bunch of different software It's member mouse. It's a million different software plug-and-play. No coding necessary Well, I'm not very tech savvy. So I just focus on being a good financial analyst. That's all you need You don't need to be tech savvy. I'll help you out on that. That's a whole different After the show I will talk about it. But guys, uh, jason, thank you so much for sharing We covered so much today guys if you're watching this or listening this or wherever you Wherever you are go check out his channel Go check out his patreon. Listen, it's five bucks like five. That's like a it's like a cup of coffee now these days with inflation And uh, the the knowledge is crazy man I've been following jason for a while and it's just the depth like the girth and the depth of everything covers is insane Jason once again, thank you so much You're welcome. Keep up the good work, man. You're doing a great job too. Thank you