Frank Giustra: Bubble 'Unravelling' Started, Entire Market, Economy Next

The government can do anything it wants in the name of protecting the system. The government can easily come in and say, you're limited to the amount of cash you can take up. They've done it elsewhere, and this bubble is beginning to unravel, as it should, and I think it's going to take the rest of the market down with it. You're going to see a recession, a very major recession, because of the level of debt. It's my great pleasure to welcome back to our show esteemed guest Frank Giustra, CEO of the Fiori Group. Frank is not just knowledgeable about current world events, he's got a good take on the business environment. In North America, globally, what's going to happen with inflation, what's going to happen with monetary policy, what's going to happen with commodities, and we'll talk about the tech sector, which, by the way, Frank was on my show last year warning us that an unwinding was going to happen. Has it happened already with the S&P having fallen today and in the last couple of weeks and with the tech sector having multiple stocks drop double digits on bad earnings? Frank, welcome back to the show. Good to see you again. Yeah, nice to see you, David. We also have to revisit what the midterm elections, what the Democrats winning both chambers of Congress is going to mean for Iran, what it's going to mean for oil, and what it's going to mean for economics and growth. I got to start by asking you about Jensen Huang, because this is like all over the news, it's trending. Do you think he should have left the board, is my question, and resigned? This is like some other billionaire CEOs responding to this. CZ from Binance saying, it's a mistake for NVIDIA to let Jensen go. Yeah. Palmer Lucky from Anduril saying, China wants Jensen out, so I want him in. Thank you. Elon Musk saying, I guess jokingly, it would be an honor to hire him. By the way, President Trump has floated the idea that Tim Cook should now run NVIDIA. And we're talking about this because it's the center of the AI trade that you warned us about last year. So what's your take? Should he have been let go, forced out, resigned, whatever you want to call it? I don't think we know yet the basis of the accusation of the Chinese spy part of it. I think we need to learn a little bit more about was this really a Chinese spy. Yeah, there's no evidence for that, by the way. There's no evidence. Was anything really passed on? I mean, there's a lot of... A lot of panicking going on. And I don't, I hate to comment on things that I don't know the answers to yet. And, you know, the media tends to run with these things. NVIDIA is obviously a very high profile company in the US market. So I think it's too early to tell whether he should have been fired or not. I mean, you know, obviously what he did. Thank you. What he did to his family was horrible, but again, I just don't know enough to really comment on that part of it. Well, you can't comment on the unwinding of the AI trade, which you warned us about. This is from the Treasury Department, okay? This is a slide that they put together, just for the reader's background. So we have here at the circular financing feature, they call it a feature, not a bug, by the way, GPU vendors like NVIDIA. Uh, they sell their chips to customers like Neo cloud companies that buy GPUs. They rent, these companies rent out their computing power to other companies that buy, you know, their services and they're funded by banks, private credit, so on and so forth. Let me just read to you a few stats from CoreWeave's latest earnings. CoreWeave is a Neo cloud company reported earnings law earlier this week. Stock went up 25%, huge revenue beat, it grew 168% revenue year over year. The stat that I want to bring to your attention is Their interest expense is 4.1x their operating profit. So how is this going to be sustainable? I don't think it is sustainable. I think it's really about the valuations. And there are two parts to this that I've been worried about. The valuations, which have been historically off the charts, and really the level of spending where no one has been able to point to a long-term ROI that I can see in all of these billions and billions of dollars being spent. So I've been calling this a bubble for a long time. All bubbles end. Sometimes they go a lot higher than you will ever expect, but they all end. And this bubble is beginning to unravel, as it should. Good. And, you know, I think it's going to take the rest of the market down with it because it's such a large component of the S&P. Yeah, it's already been happening. Yeah, so it's happening and it's not. Something that's unheard of. I've been through many of these cycles before in other sectors. And I remember the dot-com sector back in the late 90s, early 2000s. And, you know, if you looked at very recently before this market rout, the Warren Buffett's market to GDP ratio was 240%. At its peak, the dot-com bubble was 150%. So, you know, these markets have been overpriced. And, and again, I can't see the return on these billions and billions of dollars that have been spent, someone's going to lose, you know, you can't have all winners. And typically, when you have a new technology come out, such as AI, and these, and all this stuff that backs it up, things get overheated. And there's a lot of, there are a lot of players that enter the market, a lot of money gets spent, and a lot of that goes to money heaven. Kevin, you know, companies miss earnings all the time. It's not. unusual for a big tech company to miss earnings. It's unusual for a company like Google to drop 12% on an EPS miss. And this is the same week that Intel dropped 30% on a revenue miss. It's the same week that AMD dropped 10 multi, you know, double digits on bad earnings. I just like what's been happening in the last two weeks? Like why this extraordinarily bearish reaction? Yeah. Because, David, what goes up must come down. And the higher something goes up, the more it comes down. So the fact that Google is off 10% and Intel is off 30%, that's because you look at how far they've gone up in the last 12 months. And it's just a reaction. It's the beginning of an unraveling that I've been waiting for. You've been warning us about this. You said insiders were selling last year, right? This was last year. Can you just jog our memory as to what you were seeing and whether or not you're, you know, there's any more information you're seeing from, you know, the people you're talking to? No, it's pretty much, you know, I was just watching like all market watchers. I look at what is going on with the public, when the institutions are selling, when the retail starts buying, and when things, when everybody believes that that's the only sector you invest in. And this has been... The concentration in the sector is unprecedented. And so, again, I've been doing this for over 45 years. And, you know, you see these things come and go. And this one is an extraordinary move that we've witnessed the last couple of years. This is beyond anything I've ever... Ever witnessed. How is this different from 2000? And then we'll move on to the midterms. I think 2000 was, you know, in 2000, a lot of the dot-com hype was based on companies that had no revenues. The difference this time is that there are revenues. You know, we're seeing there are real revenue-producing companies. But you still have to justify valuations. That part of the equation never changes. So that was the only main difference. But it is. A lot of excitement about a new technology that's going to change the world, just like the internet changed the world, and long-term, a few survivors are going to do very, very, very well. But 90% of them will go poof. Before we continue with the video, let's talk about one of your most important assets that may be at risk right now. Most people will assume that personal information is private unless they choose to share it. That's not how that works. Data brokers collect your name, home address, phone number, even details about your family and sell that to anyone willing to pay for it. Today's sponsor, Delete Me, is what I use to cut that down. Their team finds where your information is listed on data broker sites, submits removal requests to the ones that have it, and keeps checking because these listings tend to come back. My latest report showed 253 records reviewed. And Delete.me has saved me 23 hours of searching for my own information since I joined. Scan the QR code on the screen here or go to jointdelete.me.com slash David Lin, linked down below in the description, and use my promo code DAVIDLIN for 20% off. Take control of your privacy before the holidays. Now, back to the video. Two other changes happened following the midterm elections. Oil went down from 105 to 89. That's WTI. And interestingly, the 10-year yield in the U.S. went up. So oil is no longer a yield story because prior to that, they were moving in lockstep. But now oil is coming down. And the 10-year yield shot up like this hockey stick here right after the midterm elections. What's going on? What changed? I think you can probably pin that on a couple of... scenarios. First of all, I think that you have to think about what's going to happen with this Iran war situation now that the midterms are over. Trump was hinting all along that after the midterms, he would attack. You know, he was saving his third attack on Iran till after the midterms. So the expectations, I think, were that that would happen. It hasn't happened yet. It still may And of course, If that were to happen, oil would shoot up again, and the yields would start to spike as they have been spiking all along. So I think that was part of it. You can also suggest that maybe the market believes that the Democrats are going to spend more than the Republicans, if that is even possible. I mean, I think both parties have perfected the art of deficit spending. And I really, I don't see any fiscal discipline coming into play here. Democrats in power, I think they both spend, they just spend on different things. Yeah. And we have to talk about the states that flip blue. Extraordinary results from the midterm, like a historic, really, I was reading a title from the BBC. It says the last time Kansas had a Democratic governor or someone in the Senate, rather, the Wizard of Oz was playing in the cinemas. Yeah, it was 1930. Yeah. How did this change the 2028 presidential election odds? I think, listen, obviously, I'm saying the obvious here. I think the Iran war had a lot to do with it. Trump campaigned on being the no war president. And in many of the voters eyes, they were betrayed by that. And that obviously caused the inflationary cycle that we're in at the moment. And the fact that interest rates have had to go up to compensate for that inflation. People have mortgages, you know, it's, you know, car loans, credit card debt, and people are hurting, you know. In the U.S., you have a very extreme K-shaped economy where most of the population is struggling. And this war did not endear voters to the Republicans, which kind of supported Trump along the way on this. So I think that that was a very big part of it. I think equally, corruption, corruption. Listen, all politicians, in my view, are corrupt to a certain extent. But what this administration has done is... At the scale at which the corruption is out there and the sloppiness in which it's being conducted was so obvious to people, it was reckless corruption. And so people, I think, on those two issues, and obviously the tariffs were a real problem, especially with the northern states that do a lot of trading with Canada, that upset a lot of small business owners. So it was just a series There's a series of things that upset People so badly. And then Trump ran, say, put, you know, pretend I'm on the ballot. And he was the most unpopular president in who knows how long, I mean, at 32% popularity. And so I think all of those things came together and people want to change. Whether they're going to get it or not, who knows? I'm very skeptical that we're going to get real change in fiscal discipline. I think we'll see the ugliness really start in January when the Democrats take over Congress And there are going to be investigations. on everything and a lot of time is going to be spent on investigations and then you have to ask yourself who's governing to make lives better for the people that voted them in. So I'm not that optimistic to think much is going to change with respect to the economy because of this win. But I think it's just going to get uglier and messier and that's very sad. Are you hopeful that tensions U.S. and the rest of the world, specifically Canada, are going to ameliorate following January? Like, do you think the trade war is going to get better now that the Democrats are in Congress? I think so. There's going to be a lot of pressure on Trump on budgetary items and things he can and can't do. And I think Trump is going to have to back off with the very aggressive approach he was taking towards tariffs with the rest of the world. I think he's going to lose, mostly he's going to lose power. domestically, with domestic issues, where he still retains power and in a very dangerous way is with foreign policy. Because as you know, presidents are supposed to go to Congress to ask for permission to go to war, but they never do. And I think Trump is kind of on the fence at the moment with respect to Iran. I'm hoping that he's coming to the realization that he cannot win that one as much as he hoped he was going to be able to win. He's going to have to create a win, manufacture a win, and get out of there because it's a no-win situation. So I think that that, but on the other hand, he's got Israel with Netanyahu now who's fighting for his political life. And pushing, aggressively pushing for a third attack on Iran and calling Trump every day to get Trump on side for an attack, there's a real danger that it will happen. I hope it doesn't. And I know Trump really doesn't want it, but he may be forced into it or some red flag moment. False flag moment will happen that will draw America in. This is what I'm afraid of between now and whenever there's a change in government in Israel and whenever, well, he's going to be president for two more years in the U.S., so who knows what kind of damage he can do in two years. But it's the foreign policy that really scares me. So you think there's still upside risk for oil, is what we're saying? 100%. I've sold, I've not sold my oil stocks. I bought oil stocks before the Iran war, which had nothing to do with anticipating an Iran war. I bought them because they were cheap. They're paying great dividends. It was an unloved sector. And, you know. I have not sold. Now, some of these oil stocks have come down, but I still haven't sold because I believe there's a really good chance that oil will stay elevated for quite a long time, regardless of what happens. Well, what is your inflation expectation here? This is the market's inflation expectation. This is the 10-year breakeven inflation rate, which tracks the 10-year treasury constant maturity securities tips, as you know. And this came down shortly after the midterm elections. So clearly the markets are anticipating something to happen that will bring down inflation a little bit prior to before. But anyway, I'll get your take. Well, my take is that the only thing that's going to really cure inflation at this point is a recession. And we may get one if the Fed continues on this path of higher rates for longer. And I just wrote an article today. Just go to francistrade.com. It just got published about an hour ago, which talks about the tug of war that's happening with gold at the moment and the reasons why I think the Fed is in a box. But if they do push for higher rates for longer, if they hike the rates in December, I think they're going to either manufacture or inadvertently cause a recession. And that will bring rates down on its own. So that's the only way I think that rates are going to come down. And I think that's the only way inflation is going to come down if we get a real severe recession, a deflationary recession. Also on francisstracom is your book, which we're going to get into. Your book talks about building wealth, how you built your wealth, but just on the Fed and inflation alone, how do we secure the wealth? Again, we're going to talk more about your story in just a bit, but since we're on this topic, people are really concerned about securing the wealth, which is where gold comes in, but gold has not been performing well. What's the thesis still for gold? This is for gold. In this article that I just referred to, and I talk about the tug of war, you've got on the bullish side, you've got a long-term structural change in the gold market, which has been driven by global central banks. Their buying is long-term and strategic. It's not influenced by rates. Um, and Watching this unfold, and I've been predicting this for six, seven years now, and it's going to be ongoing. There's a de-dollarization movement happening very, very slowly, and it's being replaced with gold. And that will continue. And it's a China-led initiative, although many other central banks around the world are continuing to buy gold in record amounts. We had a record third quarter buying in gold by China. And this is going to continue because they're still sitting on about $620 billion of U.S. treasuries. They're down by about half, but they've got a little ways to go. So I think that that's the bullish case for gold, which is structural and long term. The bearish call on gold is a short term pressure caused by. A stronger dollar, which is being fueled by higher 10-year yields. And that, like I said, I think that that is short term because the Fed is in a box. You've got a $40 trillion plus, federal debt that has to be financed consistently. We're running interest costs at $1.2 or $1.3 trillion a year, and that's using an average interest rate of 3.5%. If rates keep going higher, you take that number to 5%, we're going to have $3 trillion deficits. And that is unsustainable. We're bankrupting the nation. And the Fed knows this. The other part really is the household debt, which is standing at a record $19 trillion in the US, $13.5 trillion of which is mortgages. You've got $1.3 trillion in credit card debt, $1.7 trillion in auto loans, all record levels of debt that have to be financed and refinanced. So Kevin Warsh doesn't have. access to the traditional tools that, say, Paul Volcker had back, you know, in the early 1980s. He doesn't have that luxury to be tough on the economy by jacking up rates to kill inflation. If he jacks up rates in a Volcker style moment, he'll implode the entire global economy and he knows it. So I think that eventually, like I said, either it's going to be a manufactured recession. or event that gives the excuse to lower rates or it'll be done because of their actions and you're going to see a recession, a very major recession because of the level of debt. Do you think there's more incentive now for the government after the midterm elections to allow this crisis to unfold so they can step in and intervene? Like basically engineer a reason to Well, intervene in what sense, though, David? Maybe through the Treasury buying bonds, maybe through more QE, for example, maybe through fiscal stimulus. Celeste? I think we're headed towards QE, a third round of major QE. They're already doing QE already. I mean, the Fed balance sheet has gone up by close to $300 billion in the last year. But I'm talking about 2009-style QE or 2020-style QE. I have been saying this all along. QE is coming back, and it's going to come back in spades. They have no choice. It's simple arithmetic. There's no way out of this. box they've put themselves in. So there will be QE coming. I don't think it'll have the same efficacy as the last QEs have had. I think we're getting to the point where it will just cause more acceleration with the dedollarization and eventually a dollar crisis. And I say eventually. I'm not sure it's going to happen overnight. But I think eventually we're going to have a U.S. dollar crisis. What practically, just one question on this, what practically does a U.S. dollar crisis look like? What happens to the dollar? What happens to yields? Yeah. Yeah, well, you're already seeing de-dollarization by foreign players, mostly central banks. That in itself doesn't cause a crisis. When a crisis happens is when the domestic holders of U.S. dollars start to panic. They start to see that their domestic currency is being... devalued at a rapid rate. So what do people do? They rush for the exits. They turn their dollars or any currency for that matter. It could be euros or yen, whatever. They take their currency and exchange it for other things, either currencies outside the country or hard assets, real estate, whatever. They just want to get rid of the dollars or rid of the currency. Well, you have to ask yourself what everybody, every investor needs to ask themselves is what does the government then do when that panic starts? And it's called financial repression. And it's all been done before. There's nothing new in this stuff. And there are different ways for governments to create financial repression. They can put interest cap rates on interest on your savings accounts. They can do capital controls. They can use moral suasion to force institutions to buy U.S. debt. There's so many ways to do it. That repression is going to come. Come on. Because… A government always saves the system first. It's usually at the expense of its citizens. It doesn't care that much about the citizens. It cares about keeping the system intact. And you can look throughout history, very recent history in other countries around the world, and throughout the last 500 years, governments go to extreme measures to protect their currency. And I see that coming. So I think people need to... Be very careful where they put their money. Hard assets is one place to put them, things that you can touch and feel and that have scarcity value. Those are the things that will protect you from financial repression, from high or hyperinflation. Speaking of the government protecting the system at the expense of people, here's a perfect example to illustrate that exact sentence. Paraguay, a couple weeks ago, okay, this isn't exactly old news, new news rather, but I'll just bring it up. This is from the beginning of November. People in Paraguay woke up to their bank deposits frozen. So the central bank of Paraguay said that its board voted. Unanimously on Monday, this is the beginning of November, to put Ueno Bank into resolution after its solvency ratio, a measure of the bank's capital against its risk-weighted assets, falls below the legal minimum. And they did this because they were afraid that if they don't do this, the bank is going to go insolvent before they pay back the creditors. So Ueno says it has about 3 million customers. That's 60% of the adult population. They just woke up and couldn't access their funds anymore. I mean, what's your reaction to this incredible story? My reaction is, you know, obviously it's very sad for those 3 million people, but I don't think in this particular case you're going to see contagion. Okay, that's what people were always, the first people. First thing a person will ask sitting here in North America or in Europe is, will this cause contagion throughout the banking system? And I think this was very limited to this bank was not interconnected in the global financial system. It was a local digital bank. So I don't see that causing any havoc where we live. But that sort of thing can happen here independent of that of that collapse easily. I mean, the U.S. banks are underwater. Their only savior is that they're under water by about $300, $400 billion, and the only reason that, you know, they're still solvent is because they're pretending that their mark-to-market securities are priced at par at maturity. And, you know, again, another reason, if rates continue to go higher, you're putting the smaller banks in jeopardy. And that's another danger the Fed has to be very cognizant of. By the way, I think this caused the ex-president to resign, and now he's being impeached. But this is an incredible story. This isn't a bank run. This is the central bank seizing the bank. Imagine you wake up and the Bank of Canada or the Federal Reserve or the FDIC says, hey, XYZ Bank needs to be put into receivership for whatever reason. You can't access your funds. I mean, that's unfathomable to people here. It is, but, you know, we've seen it in Greece, Cyprus. I mean, you know, they easily can, if there's a banking crisis, they can easily, the government can easily come in and say, you're limited to the amount of cash you can take out. They've done it elsewhere. I mean, it's happened throughout history. How's that legal? In the 1980s. Because the government, again, the government can do anything it wants in the name of protecting the system. OK, I mean, we've seen it time and time again. And people always think it'll never happen here because we're, you know, this is America or this is Canada or this is, you know, this is England. It can happen. And I think that that's that's a real possibility. I'm not I'm not predicting it, but I'm saying it's a very, very big possibility. By the way, why is China buying? Gold. You're right. Third quarter ends with strong official gold buying. I'll just pull up the official numbers from the Bank of Canada, from the World Gold Council as you answer this question. But basically, gold pulled back a little bit and China bought... Forty one billion dollars. Chinese gold was down But Chinese inflow was offset by lower gold in the month. But, yeah, it was strong inflows into the central bank of China. Is there is there a reason why the central bank demand remains strong right now? Yeah, because they have a long term strategy to replace U.S. treasuries with another tier one asset. Which is gold, and it's the only tier one asset that is not in jeopardy of being sanctioned or confiscated or whatever else the US government feels like doing from time to time. So I think that they are creating a mirror financial system to that of the West. They're creating all of the institutions, all of the programs and structures to be able to function outside of the US dollar system. And that's an ongoing effort. And it will continue. And gold's going to play a role. And this is something I started predicting six years ago, that gold will play a role as a settlement piece, not a reserve currency, but a settlement piece to back up the yuan. And the example that I use is in bilateral trade between countries, China and other countries, you've got scenarios where there will be a surplus of yuan. That are unwanted, say by Saudi Arabia, which is selling oil to China. And at the end of a period, it ends up with a bunch of unwanted yuan that it doesn't need or trust or what have you. It can exchange those yuan today on the Shanghai Gold Exchange for physical gold. And now you're seeing China set up these vaults. The first one in Hong Kong, another schedule for Singapore, Kuala Lumpur. Dubai, Riyadh, and perhaps Switzerland. And the objective, in my opinion, of all of these vaults is to provide the settlement piece if someone doesn't want to sit on yuan. China understood that the world's not ready yet to accept yuan as a reserve currency, much like they accept the US dollar as a reserve currency. So this is their way around it. And the objective is very simple. Exit the US dollar system so that they are not in danger of being sanctioned. Much like Russia was sanctioned after the war. Yeah. I'd like to play for you a brief clip of Scott Besant on exactly the trade issue with China. Just take a listen to this 30-second clip and we'll react together, please. The security of our nation. Of course, the U.S. trade imbalance with China has long been a source of friction, and unlike a political class that tolerated this, President Trump has taken decisive steps to address them. However, let me state firmly and unequivocally tonight, as we work toward a more balanced relationship, our objective is to de-risk, not to decouple. For decades, the American economy has grown too dependent on foreign supply, while China's has become increasingly reliant on foreign demand. In other words, the United States must produce more of what we consume, while China must consume more of what it produces. Okay, de-risk, not decouple. What does that mean for the trade imbalance he's talking about, but also the critical minerals that we need from China? Yeah, well, he's come to this realization because all of the tariff threats have not worked. Now, they tried two things, the tariff threats against China. To do certain things and to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. OK, that was one of Trump's biggest platforms. Bring manufacturing back. And Trump has spent the last couple of years making these grand announcements about Japan and Korea and Europe investing hundreds of billions of dollars for manufacturing facilities in the U.S. Only 10 percent of those are reality. The rest were just headline numbers. That we're eventually refuted by countries like Japan, Korea, and Europe saying, we didn't say that. We said we will encourage businesses to invest in the U.S. They can't force business to invest in the U.S. So the whole bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. has been, I think, to date has been a failure. And I don't think that is possible in today's world, given the difference in labor costs between these countries. I don't think it's possible anymore. But... You know, China has been too successful. That's the problem. They have trade imbalances in a lot of places because they sell more stuff than they buy. And I think that that has to correct itself at some point. But China is a much stronger position to dictate terms than the U.S. is, in my opinion. What does this mean for commodities? I think we have seen it. Now, there's a panic around the world to hoard the necessary materials that are necessary for a functioning economy. And I think that that hoarding. Is part of the reason why commodity prices, whether it's copper or zinc or, you know, all commodities are going up in price quite dramatically. And that's because of this hoarding. Countries can no longer rely or trust supply chains for the raw materials. And this is, you know, for folks to follow us, people like yourself and I in the mining sector, the commodity sector. This is good news for those people because I think you're going to see elevated commodity prices for quite a long time. And in some things such as copper, you're going to see supply deficits hitting us within the next four to five years, real serious supply deficits. That's why there's a mad scramble for all of this hoarding taking place and alliances being made, friend-shoring with countries. The U.S. is running around the world, especially in Latin America, trying to cut deals in Colombia and Ecuador and Peru. To access critical minerals. And, you know, China's got a 25-year head start. So they're in a very good position. And the U.S. has to play catch up. Yeah, this 25-year head start, what does that mean practically for what Scott Bessent is saying, which is we need to de-risk? I mean, realistically, what can the U.S. and its allies do to catch up to this 25-year head start? We can't just start a mine tomorrow. It takes time. That's right. It does. It does. And that's why I think a lot of it is going to be very, very difficult to do. But they're working very hard. And I think a lot of it has to do with the... Time involved, you nailed it. The big issue in the mining sector to produce these commodities is far too long. And a lot of it has to do with regulation and the bureaucracy involved in regulation. And I think. Countries, and I'm very active in Colombia, where I've been doing mining business for decades now. And, you know, you have a new government there in place, which is going out of its way to attract foreign investment in the mining and oil and gas sector. And they're doing it by streamlining the process of permitting so you can get something online faster. What we can't tolerate any longer is these twenty year Time frames to put a copper mine in production is just ridiculous. It shouldn't take that long, and most of it has to do with permitting. And so I think the world is going to be forced into accelerating the permitting process. And you've seen this in the U.S. You're going to see it in other countries, Colombia. One of you. Africa has always been a little bit faster than other countries. You can get mines put in production in Africa a lot quicker. The Chinese have demonstrated. So I think they're just going to accelerate the process. But it's still going to take time. That's why I think that. With metals like copper, for instance, where there's a real serious supply deficit facing us, I think that that's going to have to be reflected in the price eventually. As hard as we're all going to try to put these mines in production, they're not going to happen fast enough. The U.S. has FAST-41 under Trump, so this is a permitting system whereby basically it's going to be faster to get something permanent, but it also has dashboards that you can follow. I've spoken to some mining leaders about this. You know about this, right? What difference is this going to make? Well, I think obviously it's going to help, but the problem is that the U.S. doesn't really have a lot of copper projects to put into production. There's only about. Two or three that I'm aware of, they're not that big, you know, and I think that the U.S. should focus on alliances with countries that have these large deposits available to them. I think that's the that's the real issue, not, you know, obviously, it's going to help to fast track projects in the United States, but there aren't that many. Yeah, you've got relationships and working relationships in South America, like you said, but how does cooperation between the U.S. and South American mines look like? What does that mean? That means that as Marco Rubio went down to South America about two months ago, he went to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and he signed critical minerals deals, which basically, in very basic terms, what it says is, we, Colombia, we, Peru, will mine the stuff and sell it to you. Instead of China. Okay. That's really what it says, bottom line. It's just that it's accessing a supply chain. Yeah, well, he taps on that. I think that's a very important development. I think this is a good time to talk about what the current generation is feeling about building wealth overall. So your memoir came out a couple of weeks ago, and this is very relevant to not just people who are interested in your life, You know, the masses who, like you talked about earlier, we're experiencing higher credit card rates. We're experiencing higher mortgage rates in Canada, right? The bank of Canada is going to make a decision soon. We're experiencing higher auto loans. And it's just like, okay, we read a book like this and it's, it's, it's, it's inspirational, but then, but then it's like, okay, has the system, his system been rigged against us to even achieve what you did when you Right. Can you just comment on that first? Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because I get asked that a lot. And so I do a lot of mentoring for young people. I've been doing mentoring for 30 years with teenagers in schools that, you know, trying to motivate them as to what to do with about careers and so forth. And one question I'm always asked is, if you were our age, what would you do? In today's world, to find financial security, find a career, and my honest answer is I don't know, because the world is changing so fast. AI, my biggest concern with AI and a combination of AI and robotics is what it's going to do to job opportunities. You know, all these AI tech leaders are, you know, saying, oh, it's all going to be great. New jobs will be created, whatever. I think there's a lot of horseshit involved in that. The thing is, P.S., it's going to displace a lot of jobs, a lot of opportunities. I can't think of many jobs that a combination of AI and robotics won't eventually be able to do. And it's happening at such a rapid... These speeds, things are evolving so quickly that I think the disruption is going to be very, very scary. I mean, I've got my own 26-year-old son trying to figure out what to do with his life after, you know, getting a degree in filmmaking. And, you know, he's trying to struggle with the idea of how do I incorporate AI in my career choices because that's the way the world is going. And he doesn't have the answer and I really can't help him. You know, It was easy when I got into this business, you know, decades and decades ago, it was easy to get a job and advance and have opportunity. I don't think that same opportunity exists for this younger generation, sadly. And I say this with a lot of remorse. I just really think it's a scary, scary situation. Did your founding of Lionsgate, by the way, influence your son to go into filmmaking? No, he was, he started out loving acting in high school and then acting got in, you know, he took filmmaking courses in high school and eventually went to university to study film filmmaking. No, I don't think it had much to do with, we both love movies. We watched together the hundred movies, top hundred movies of all time over a three or four month period before he graduated from high school. And that was a very enjoyable time with him. By the way, your publisher's own notes on page two of your website. If you're poor and you focus on making money and you make lots of it early on, then what? Yeah, then what? What was your approach and what should be the approach? Well, I think, again, everybody's journey is going to be different. This book, The Money Dilemma, talks about my own personal journey. I was fortunate. I was lucky. I made money early. There was a lot of luck involved. I figured out how to use that money intelligently to build my wealth, to build my business, which was an investment bank at that time. And I spent many years doing that. So, but I was lucky. And I think I came to the realization that money on its own, and I know a lot of our viewers here are gonna think that's such a cheesy, easy thing to say from a guy that's made a bunch of money, but it's true. And I have so many friends, people that I've known. Very wealthy, successful people that share my feelings on this. Money on its own is not enough. If you only focus on money, you will have a very empty unhappy life, and I know a lot of very miserable millionaires and billionaires, people that only work towards making money. Life is short. Listen, I'm 69 years old, and I've got more yesterdays than tomorrow. And I appreciate that I found the balance in my life because life goes by quickly, very quickly. And if you are sitting on your deathbed at the end of the day, and all you're thinking about, all you've done is create wealth, and I've seen this, I've watched people on their deathbeds. That's friends of mine just filled with remorse going, all I cared about was money, money, money, money, money. And they're miserable. They're unhappy. They've wasted their lives. Money's important. It gives you freedom. It's freedom. Don't get me wrong. I think money's very, very important. But it shouldn't be the incomplete focus of your life. You have to find purpose. Purpose that is outside of just building wealth. Purpose in helping others. Purpose in family. So many things that you should focus on to have a balanced life. And this book deals with a lot of that. And it also tells a very wild, wild story that's going to entertain a lot of people. It's a very entertaining book. A lot of mistakes were made in my life. I wrote this book with warts and all. I mean, it's got everything. I didn't hold back. It's very candid, very raw. So I think people will find it entertaining and educational. You've donated hundreds of millions of dollars to humanitarian causes focusing on poverty and food security. Like what was the shift that made you give away a lot of your money? Like you woke up and you had an aha moment. It's like, okay, I need to give back to society. Why? Yeah, I think it started slowly. And then I had an epiphany back in 2007, where I just made it done so well in that commodity cycle that started in 2001. I'd done so well. And I just, I just remember thinking, you know what, what what am I doing? I can do so much. I've got the resources, I've got the connections, I've got global connections. And I focused on poverty. That's one of my four foundations is poverty. I do other things as well. But poverty was near and dear to my heart because I traveled through the developing world looking at mining ventures and oil and gas ventures. And you see poverty. And when you see it up close and you talk to the people and you realize the struggles that they're going through and you realize that you can do something about it. So I used my business acumen to create a model There would be a model that would... reduce poverty at scale in a sustainable fashion. And that was a really tall order that I launched in 2007. And it took me seven years and a lot of money, over $100 million at that point, just to get to a model that worked. And now it's working beautifully. It's one of the best anti-poverty models in the world. And I feel I'm leaving something behind. I'm leaving, you know, when I'm gone someday, you know, there are going to be a lot of people that will have Putting their kids through school when they couldn't otherwise afford it. You know, in a lot of these poor countries, you don't have the opportunity for a higher education. It's just you have to, you know, you have to go to work and support the family. And so I think that to me is, you know, I found my purpose and within that purpose, I found my peace. Do you feel like your relationship with money would have been different if you grew up rich rather than poor? Let's say you made it either way, but you came from a wealthy background, which your book states you didn't. Would you have done anything different with your money? Sadly, I'll never know that, obviously. But sadly, I believe that yes, had I grown, had I been born into wealth, I don't think I would have been hungry in the first place. I don't think I would have had the same. My relationship with poverty, having lived it, you know, not that we were ever starving in my family, but we had nothing beyond a great meal. My mother was a great cook. Besides that, we didn't have much else. And so I understood what it felt like to not have things. And it made me very hungry at a very early age. I had jobs starting at the age of 12 and I worked throughout high school. I've worked every job you can imagine. It's all in the book. Some very dirty, disgusting jobs just to be able to. Yeah, and for people who are watching this right now who may be in a situation where they have to teach their kids about money, what can we learn from you? Can you give us a few parenting tips? Because your kids didn't grow up in your background, right? Yeah. So a couple of things. And listen, everybody, raising kids is not a science. It's an art. And every kid is different. Every kid has to be treated and raised differently. But I think with my own kids, we basically, their mother and I basically said, you know, you see all this stuff here? Look around, you know, this house, this and that. It's not yours. You're not going to end up with it. We're going to give you the best education that money can buy. And then you're going to go out and do it on your own. And they grew up believing that. Now, maybe they don't believe it completely, but they certainly believe that growing up that, you know, we meant it. We said, you guys, we're going to put all our money in our foundation. You guys are just going to have to make it happen on your own. And I think that helped a lot. I think, but again, you can't, you can't create a different reality than what they live in. They live in that reality of having a nice home and being able to do all the things and travel as we did when they were growing up. You know, you can't hide that. So, you know, it's really how you raise them. And one word of advice to every parent out there, your kids will watch what you do more than what you listen to what you say. So you can preach all day long, but they watch and they see hypocrisy. And so you got to, you got to walk the talk. And, you know, I remember being challenged by my kids, you know, on occasion about certain things, you know, so you got to just got to do it by, by just by example, you know, that's the only way to do it. Okay. A few more points before we close off. So people should read the book for the juicy details, but here it says in the description, you donated over $130 million to the Clinton juicer initiative, partnering with former U S president Bill Clinton to mitigate AIDS in Africa, alleviate poverty in Northern America. This goes back to fighting poverty. Like you talked about earlier, then you had a controversial break, uh, without spoiling the entire chapter. What happened? Yeah. Yeah, it's in the book, and I don't want to spoil it all, but I'll just say this, okay? I was attracted to Bill Clinton for one and one reason only. I saw him as a humanitarian that wanted to change the world. When I met him, he had left office, and he had started his foundation. And I and I connected with him and I helped him finance his HIV/AIDS initiative, which saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa and other countries around the world. And then I asked him to sponsor my initiative on poverty, which he did by putting his name on it. And to the extent that was it, that's all, and he opened doors for me in countries where I needed to set up our our foundation. But I provided all the money. I created the entire staff. The sad part of our relationship was that, unfortunately, he straddled both worlds of being a humanitarian and politics. And the politics part of it is the part that really hurt my reputation because I was attacked. When Hillary ran for the first time in 2008 against Obama in the primaries, I was attacked for the first time. I was attacked a second time in 2016 when she ran. And it was simple, simply that in American politics, it's a very dirty blood sport. And I learned a lot. And it was, I was naive, thinking that that would never. I would never get attacked for that reason. I was just giving away my money. I thought, I'm insulated. I'm giving away my money. I wasn't doing anything for any political gain. And I had left the Clinton Foundation a decade ago because I just couldn't take all the political. BS that it's a viper's nest in the US. It's a dirty, dirty business. And I was collateral damage. So, you know, we had to separate. I, you know, as much as I admired him as a person doing the things he was doing around the world, I just couldn't deal with being part of his world. I couldn't be in a circle. I'm sure you explained this in the book, but this all happened before the Epstein allegations against Clinton, right? Oh, yeah. No, no. Listen, Epstein was long before I got it. I wasn't even around when the Epstein stuff was happening. I'd heard his name, but I didn't even know who he was at the time. So that was not part of our relationship. It was way after. Final question. What is the one thing you've learned about poverty that you think wealthy people or even the middle class don't understand? Having seen it in Africa? In Latin America, having helped fight it with your donations and your charitable causes, what's something you've learned that you think most people don't get? I think the part that most people don't understand about poverty is that poor people want to help themselves. It's just about the lack of opportunity. It's not about laziness or anything. It's just the opportunity doesn't exist. And what I've learned through my foundation's work is that once you give people the opportunity, They work very, very hard to bring themselves out of poverty. I came from an immigrant family that moved to Canada after World War II, no money, zero money, and had to struggle to make it work for their children. There were four children in my family. And I know how my dad and my mom felt about it. They just wanted us to have a great education so we could have a better life. When I talk to the folks in Latin America and other places that I've talked to over the years, our beneficiaries, the people that benefit from our foundation's work, I always ask, but I get them alone. I ask them one question. I said, what's the one thing that this additional income that we've helped you create for yourself, what has changed in your life? And the answer is so, it's always the same answer. I can give my kids an education. That's all parents want their children to have a better life than they did. And that's universal. You can see that anywhere in the world. And I think that that's the part that I learned, is that give people an opportunity. That's all we do. We don't do handouts. We give them an opportunity to earn their way into a higher income level. Okay. Well, people should check out Frank's work. I mentioned the book. Do we follow you anywhere else, Frank? I'm very vocal on Twitter or X. I'm very controversial on X. I say things that some people like, some people don't like, but I'm very critical of. The way certain governments behave and, you know, politicians and I'm critical of central banks, I'm critical of a lot of things. And the other one is my blog, frankjuestro.com, where I just, like I said, I publish regular articles there on all sorts of topics, geopolitics, macroeconomics, currencies, poverty. I mean, I talk about quantum physics. I mean, I talk about it all, lifestyle, everything. And frankjuestro.com has all of my articles there. You can go back and read as much as you like. There's a lot of material there. What are you working on now? I mean, you mentioned you're 69. You've had success behind you. Why aren't you retired? Because you retire, you die. It's really that simple. I don't believe in retirement. I really don't. I'm working on my second book, which we own next year. It's about gold. It tells the gold story in a very unique way. I think people will enjoy it and find it entertaining. And I've even started my third book, which I hope to do the year after, which is really dealing with how we got here, where we are today. throughout history, how we got to where we are today, where I think we're going. So I'm doing a lot of writing. I do a lot of speaking. I attend a lot of conferences where I'm interviewed and I enjoy it. And I run my business. I run the foundations and I'm raising a three-year-old. So I'm busy. Yeah, great. Well, people should check out The Money Dilemma. I'll put the link down below on Amazon. Thank you very much, Frankie. I appreciate your time. Appreciate you supporting the channel. And I look forward to speaking with you again soon. As always, David, thank you. Thank you for watching. Please do like, subscribe.