Karen Hudes studied law at Yale Law School and economics at the University of Amsterdam. She worked in the US Export Import Bank of the US from 1980-1985 and in the Legal Department of the World Bank from 1986-2007. She established the Non Governmental Organization Committee of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association and the Committee on Multilateralism and the Accountability of International Organizations of the American Branch of the International Law Association.
In 1999 Karen reported the corrupt take-over of the second largest bank in the Philippines. The Bank’s Country Director in the Philippines reassigned Karen when she asked him to sign a letter warning the Philippines’ government that the Bank could not disburse its loan. Two days after informing the Board’s Audit Committee of the cover-up in the Philippines, Karen was reprimanded and placed on probation. The Chair of the World Bank’s Audit Committee requested an inquiry into the World Bank’s Institutional Integrity Department. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations followed up with three letters to the World Bank. The World Bank forged documents and fired Karen in contempt of Congress.
In 2007 Karen advised the US Treasury Department and US Congress that the US would lose its right to appoint the President of the World Bank if the current American President of the World Bank did not play by the rules. The 66 year old Gentlemen’s Agreement that Europe would appoint the Managing Director of the IMF and US would appoint the World Bank President ended in 2010.
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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman! During this program Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing: fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it! And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.
JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, and this is episode number three hundred and forty-five. A lot of interesting stuff, a lot of great stuff going on. From a monetary and governmental perspective, I think the world is getting a lot worse. You know, I was talking to someone yesterday and we were talking about international markets and this move to expatriate from the US, and get out of Dodge, if you will. And I was saying my usual thing, I’m saying look, I think the US is going in the wrong direction; obviously the healthcare scenario is an epic disaster already, and it hasn’t even begun. I mean, the stupid government, for—what did they spend, $100 million, or $400 million? Michelle Obama’s classmate, of course, conveniently got the no-bid government contract to build the website.
Now I don’t know how you could possible spend $100-$400 million on a website, unless of course you’re the government. And I understand that website, www.healthcare.gov, what a joke. I went there myself. Which may be a giant surveillance program, actually. We should talk about that on a future show. And I think we posted an article about that in the members section, actually, how Obamacare really isn’t even about healthcare; it’s about surveillance. Be careful visiting that website. Maybe disable your cookies. Don’t accept cookies from that site. Because some claim—the conspiratorial people, who might be right, by the way—claim that that website is being used as a huge tracking opportunity for the NSA. Anyway, I diverge again. Where was I going with that?
Yeah, and I understand that that website is complicated, in the fact that it does a lot of things on the back end with the exchanges and so forth. But, $100-$400 million dollars? And the rumor on the street, actually, it’s not a rumor—Darrell Issa got some documents that show only 6 people actually signed up the first day, and 17 people the second day. I mean, isn’t it funny that people think, you know, of course the website will be fixed, it will be working, ultimately. Even the government can make a working website, believe it or not. But, it is mind-boggling to me that people actually trust that our impotent, lame government could actually manage one sixth of the economy—that they can manage healthcare. I mean, they can’t even launch a website, for God’s sake. We will see, we will see. So, my perspective again—from a monetary perspective, from a mathematical, economic perspective—the future is not good.
And my way of countering that is game the system. Follow my philosophy of investing for bad monetary policy by owning commodities—owning commodities with long-term low fixed rate debt below the rate of real inflation. But then, on another perspective—and I’ve talked about this many times—technology may save us. It may save us all. How would that be? Well, just read an article today about how a father whose son was born with a birth defect—he didn’t have one of his hands—blood flow was cut off in the womb, and one of his hands didn’t develop properly, so he had this sort of stub of a hand with no fingers.
Well, guess what? You know I’ve been in love with this idea of 3D printing for about a decade now. The father downloaded plans on the Internet to 3D print a prosthetic hand, for free. Yes, free. Amazing. For free. He downloaded these plans, and he made his son a working prosthetic hand that is really pretty awesome, for $10. Yep. Did you hear me? Ten bucks. Yep. Two cups of coffee, two lattes at Starbucks, basically. Ten bucks, he made a prosthetic hand. Whereas normally, you would pay $20,000 or more for this prosthetic hand. And, the great thing about this 3D printing revolution—if you want to know more about this, again, read the book Makers by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine. Phenomenally interesting, we’ve got to get him on the show.
And by the way, I just had John Stossel on—I believe that interview is in the members section. I also had John McAfee, speaking of Johns, from the McAfee virus protection frame. If any of you think—if you’re listening to this other real estate show, and they’re always talking about investing in Belize—[LAUGHTER] you’re gonna want to hear this interview with John McAfee about his experience. His very, very scary experience in Belize. So, that’ll be coming up. I think that’ll be show #351. But anyway, the future is bright in so many ways, and read the book Makers by Chris Anderson—unbelievable advances in 3D printing. But it’s not only the cost, not only that this prosthetic hand only cost $10 to make for his son—it’s the fact that you can constantly tweak it and tinker with it and make it better. So for example, if the hand that he’s made now—you know, he thinks it could be improved. Heck. In a half hour—a half hour! He can go and he can change the design and tweak the design, and his son can have a new hand tomorrow!
I mean, this is a game changer, folks. A massive game changer. As I may have mentioned to you, I’m launching a new show soon called the Longevity Show, and I’ve been interviewing people for that show, and it’s been fascinating! You know, some of this stuff, quite frankly folks, is just kind of a hobby for me. I’m just interested in the topic. When I was a kid, I always loved science, and was very interested in that. And some of the advances in longevity, which create huge economic issues, by the way, that will influence housing prices, monetary policy, entitlement programs, I mean, just giant, giant issues. So it all relates back to our thinking as real estate investors, and our thinking as ways to game the system, and how we invest for all of these radical changes. Well, amazing technologies that are coming our way so quickly. That are here today, that are changing things so quickly.
So again, technology may save us all from the impending doom of our bad government and our bad monetary policy and our spendthrift ways in this country, so, we will see it. Heck, we’re not the only country. America is not the only one. These problems are pretty much global, as so many countries have spent themselves into oblivion in so many ways. Just ask Japan. Just ask China with their upcoming demographic problem—if you think China has got it made, no way. China has huge problems coming its way that are just going to be—going to be really, really bad. And I think the US is still in a pretty favorable position.
But, I was talking to someone yesterday, I told you about the grass is always greener concept of this movement to expatriate and look for greener pastures elsewhere in other countries. And Earl Nightingale had this great quote—he said, if the grass is greener, maybe it’s because the grass is getting more care over there on your neighbor’s lawn. Well, the grass is still the greenest here, I think. Although it’s starting to look a little dingy. I just think it has a long way to go before we want to think about moving onward. So anyway, hey.
Thank you to all of you who have purchased our special deal, the Meet the Masters Home Study Course, the physical product, for half the price of the digital product. I know this is upside down, makes no sense at all. But that product is available again at www.jasonhartman.com. Gosh, I think that link is www.jasonhartman.com/closeout, or you can just go to it directly from the product page. And that is available while supplies last. There’s not many left, but I do have some left, and I want to get those sold ASAP. But thank you for all of you who’ve purchased them. I shipped my first batch out last week, and I tell you, it felt kind of good to ship those, the physical product. Because we always sell things digitally. And anyway, that’s available while they last. There’s not many left.
I think I’ve got one box left of these, and they’re $247, half the price of the digital product. We’ll get that to you as quick as possible. But that’s got I think about 15 hours, it’s 22 speakers, if I’m not mistaken, talking about great different things from Meet the Masters. And our Meet the Masters event, live, is coming up in Irvine, California in January. That will most certainly sell out pretty quickly, because a lot of people have been registering. So we look forward to seeing you all there, getting in on those early bird prices, which by the way, do go up as time progresses.
So, those two things, and then the last thing I want to tell you before we get to our guest, is if you are a contrarian investor—if you are one of those opportunity-type investors that like to do things, you know, that’s a little bit out of step with the norm—and a lot of times these are the people that of course make the most money. Well, check out our website under the properties section, www.jasonhartman.com/properties, because we have a bit of an inventory glut in one of our markets right now. Kansas City, we’re pretty much sold out there. St. Robert, we’re pretty much sold out there. Austin, Texas, pretty hard to source inventory right now, but Memphis has got—we have on our website, which, you know, is never totally current. But it’s a pretty good indicator.
We have literally 17 properties available right now at www.jasonhartman.com/properties in Memphis. And that is amazing. It’s almost never that high. And these range in price from about $65,000 on up. And the return on investments here are projected at anywhere between, oh here’s one at 36% annually. 38% annually. 41% annually. 37% annually. 48% annually, that’s the highest projected return. And again, these are based on pretty conservative assumptions, so check that out—www.jasonhartman.com/properties.
And we’ve got some great shows coming up; Harry Dent has been in our members section, but we will broadcast that show on the podcast soon. We’ve got Kevin Armstrong coming up, Everte Farnell, John McAfee, Steve Paige is going to talk about credit enhancement, John Stossel will be coming up, Jeff Desich, CEO of Equity Trust is coming up to talk a little bit about some new tweaks on investing with your self-directed IRA. So a lot of great stuff. But let’s get to our guest, and we will be back in just a moment.
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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Karen Hudes to the show! She studied law at Yale Law School and economics at the University of Amsterdam, and had a very long tenure at the World Bank—about 21 years, in fact—and has a tremendous amount of experience. She is working with a group of whistleblowers on various issues, and I think you’ll find her experience and what she has to say today to be very, very interesting. Karen, welcome. How are you?
KAREN HUDES: I’m fine, thank you so much for having me, Jason.
JASON HARTMAN: The pleasure is all mine. Where are you located today, just out of curiosity?
KAREN HUDES: Right out of Washington, D.C.
JASON HARTMAN: Right near the Beltway, where—I call it the new bailout capital of the world.
KAREN HUDES: I live right down the block from where Larry Summers used to live.
JASON HARTMAN: Wow, very interesting, very interesting. Well, you’re in the thick of it, you definitely are. Tell us a little bit about your very long tenure at the World Bank. And you actually retired a little bit early, didn’t you?
KAREN HUDES: Yes I did. I went to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and told them that there was corruption at the World Bank, and Senator Lugar wrote three letters to the World Bank saying don’t fire this lady. And they promptly fired me. But much to my chagrin and surprise.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, can you imagine that they don’t like people saying that the organization for which they work has corruption going on, right?
KAREN HUDES: Well, actually, I didn’t just go right straight to the US Congress. It took me 10 years. I did what a lawyer is supposed to do when they work for an organization that has bonds on the capital market. The World Bank has $180 billion worth of bonds. So I went up the corporate ladder, I went to the audit committee, and then I went to the US Treasury, for about 2, 3 years. I’m trying very strenuously at all of those levels to get things straightened out, and I just went to the US Congress as I was obligated to do as a lawyer working for an organization that has bonds publicly traded.
JASON HARTMAN: In other words, what you mean there is that you couldn’t just come out and do things recklessly, because it could collapse those bonds, right?
KAREN HUDES: Well, also, you remember just a couple of days ago, President Obama was criticizing Edward Snowden for jumping the gun and not giving all of the institutions the chance to do their job. Nobody can criticize me, because I did exactly what—I played by the book all the way.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Well, it’s amazing. So, what kind of corruption did you become aware of?
KAREN HUDES: That’s a very, very important question. At the time, when I first started blowing the whistle—see, the worst thing about a cover up is that it snowballs. And what I was first blowing the whistle on was corruption at the end of the East Asia Financial Crisis in 2000, when in the Philippines there was a president—Joseph Estrada—who was corrupt. And I was working on a banking sector loan, the second largest bank in the Philippines. The borrower, one of the borrowers, was Philippine National Airlines, which was in default on its loans. And the man who owned Philippine National Airlines bought stock from the employees in Philippine National Bank, and then the conditions of the loan couldn’t be met, and I went to the man who was in charge of that project in the Philippines, and I told him that he had to write a letter to the government, telling the government that the World Bank could not disperse the rest of the loan. And instead he had me reassigned. Now, I had been working together with the Chief Justice of the Philippines at the time, Hilario Davide. And I stayed in touch with Hilario Davide through the thick and thin of this. What happened on that loan was, we ended up cancelling the loan for $200 million, and then there was Japanese financing, that got cancelled for $200 million. And the people who had their money on deposit in Philippine National Bank had a run on the bank, and so Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation had to bail out that bank for $500 million.
JASON HARTMAN: Basically their equivalent of our FDIC, right?
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. So that was $900 million worth of problem loans, and at the end of a project, the World Bank writes an evaluation, and the evaluation said that we could not have foreseen that this was going to happen. And so, I went to the evaluation department and I said—
JASON HARTMAN: Sounds like the way Moody’s rated a lot of that toxic debt.
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. I went to that group and I said, you’re lying to the board. You can’t do that. You have to correct that. And they didn’t. And they tried to fire me. And I didn’t like that. So—I studied in Holland, so together with the man who represented the Dutch government, we went to see Jim Wolfensohn, who was the president of the World Bank at the time, and we said there’s corruption in the Philippines, and you’re lying to the board. And Jim Wolfensohn said, oh don’t worry, I’ll fix that. And Jim Wolfensohn’s idea of fixing that was to tell my boss that I had been up there to complain about him.
JASON HARTMAN: Unbelievable. One thing, it does snowball, just like you said. But for example, in this case, with this bit of corruption, and I know there are many examples, and hopefully we’ll have time to share a few others, but, what was the motivation for this? Who profited? As Deep Throat said, you know, “follow the money.” Where was the profit in seeing this bank bailed out, the $900 million loss.
KAREN HUDES: This I didn’t know at the time. It’s just that by sticking with the problem, I found out. And the answer to that question is that there is a corrupt group that’s very, very powerful. And they thought that they were so powerful that they could act with impunity, and one of the things that that group has done—and I know who they are now. At the time, if I had known who they were and how powerful they were, I probably never would have started.
JASON HARTMAN: Are you going to give the name of this group?
KAREN HUDES: Yes, and I’ll tell you exactly who they are and what they’re doing, because we have stopped them. We have stopped them in their tracks. This group is responsible for corrupting the United States government. And they’re the ones that own all of the major financial institutions. They own the Federal Reserve board. They have bought up—they don’t have that much money. I mean, they have a lot of money, but their power is 10 times more than their money would account for—
JASON HARTMAN: Are you going to say the Rothschilds—
KAREN HUDES: That group is there, but it’s more than that. Because this syndicate predates the Rothschilds. There was a corrupt group in the United Kingdom that teamed up with the Jesuits and the Vatican before the Rockefellers ever came on the scene.
JASON HARTMAN: What year are you talking about, to give us some perspective?
KAREN HUDES: Oh, it was 1200. This group has been corrupting everybody since 1200. So that’s who they are. And they never thought that people were going to find out who they were, because they thought that they were so powerful. And one of the really good things about the World Bank is that it’s a knowledge bank, and there’s a very accurate political analysis tool that was actually developed in the defense industry, and this political scientist, Jacek Kugler, came to the World Bank in 2004, and I modeled rule of law with him, and it—this model has been predicting, ever since I testified in the UK Parliament and the European Parliament, that we were going to have rule of law. That all of the people in the world were going to work together to eradicate this corruption, and that’s exactly what we’ve done, and that’s exactly what’s happened.
JASON HARTMAN: So, good for you. So you’ve scored a win. Does the group have a name? It’s before the Rothschilds? What’s the name of this group?
KAREN HUDES: Well, I think the Jesuits would be where this started. But there’s the Knights from Malta, and there’s a whole—it’s a conglomerate. It’s not any one place. It’s not any one place. But they’re been teaming up to do this.
JASON HARTMAN: Right. One thing I want to ask you, and I think it would really help the listeners clarify some things. You know, there are three organizations that are kind of—I don’t think people really understand exactly what they do, or what their role is. Like, can you just give a brief explanation of what is the World Bank’s role, what is the role of the IMF or the International Monetary Fund, and what is the role of the Council on Foreign Relations? I mean, you’ve dealt with—you worked for one group for 21 years, and you’ve dealt with the other two pretty extensively, it sounds like.
KAREN HUDES: Yes. Well, at the end of World War II, this institution—World Bank, IMF—they’re called the Bretton Woods Institutions, named for the ski resort in New Hampshire where they were set up.
JASON HARTMAN: In the famous Bretton Woods meetings, of course.
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. And they were set up, you know, there’s the agenda that was above the table, and then there’s the agenda that was hidden. And I didn’t know anything about the agenda that was hidden until after I got involved in trying to clean up this corruption. But, what was above the table and what is there and what will help us going forward, is the fact that the World Bank is—it’s a cooperative. At the time it was set up by 44 countries, but it’s now grown to be 188 of them. And one of the people who was at that original conference was a Dutch lawyer named Aaron Broches. And Aaron Broches was an old man by the time I got to know him in the mid 90s. And he gave me the operation manual for the World Bank. He said that the legal department is in a very important strategic position in the World Bank and IMF, because what you have is, they looked at what happened in the United Nations where it was one country one vote, and that doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.
So what they did was they tried to weight the vote in accordance with the economic power of the institution. And then in the beginning they had a board of 12 executive directors. That number has grown to 25 now. But the 7 biggest economies each get their own executive director: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and then the rest of the countries get grouped in what they call constituencies, and so what you have is you have a forum where you can actually work out what the problems are in a very—in a deliberate way. It’s convening the parties before a war. The main reason that the World Bank was set up, and the IMF was set up, was to prevent a future war, because a lot of wars happen because of economic imbalances. And there’s no place to work them out.
And this very accurate stakeholder analysis on rule of law started predicting—and that was the reason that I didn’t walk away from the problem, because it’s very, very accurate—and it was predicting that if the US would play by the rules—if this corruption would be stamped out, that the United States and Europe would continue to govern in what they call a post—well, a lot of people call it different things. But like a coalition. But it also predicted that if the corruption continued, there would be a terrible currency war, and that the Asian economies, which are growing and gaining in strength, that there would be a currency war, and that those economies would come up very fast. And so it’s in the United States’ interest—security interest—to fight this corruption. And so, in 2008, I spoke to Chuck Hagel about this, and when he became the Secretary of Defense—and don’t forget, it was Barack Obama who appointed Chuck Hagel to this. So, I went to the Defense Department, and I said, who knows about this stakeholder analysis? And I went to the Inspector General’s office, and the next weekend, that person contacted me on LinkedIn, and I had been in touch with them now for about five or so months. And we’d been working the problem through. We’d been involving the governors—I’d started involving all the state attorneys general in this corruption problem back in 2011—
JASON HARTMAN: Tell the listeners what your position was at the World Bank. What did you actually do? You were a lawyer—you worked in the legal department, right?
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. And I was also interviewed for the job of General Counsel, and then the executive search firm asked me, why are the General Counsels all getting fired left and right? And I said, it’s a very easy answer. It’s because there’s corruption, and the board is very angry, but the corruption is not being resolved, and it’s the legal department whose job it is, working with the board, to stamp out this corruption. So I have been—since I was fired, I have been writing and meeting with all of the different countries, the executive directors, I’ve been testifying in parliament, UK Parliament, and the European Parliament, and you know, we’ve been talking about this stakeholder analysis and the fact that we will ultimately prevail if we just stick to it, and that’s exactly where we are, and we have prevailed. But the corrupt people have bought up all the media, and refuse to tell the people what’s happened!
JASON HARTMAN: Right. So when you say, we have prevailed, to whom are you referring?
KAREN HUDES: It’s 188 Ministers of Finance, and right now, where the matter stands, is, I have now written to the people who are in charge of putting items on the agenda of the General Assembly, and I’ve told them to put this item on the General Assembly, the fact that this corruption is finished. And that all the people of the world need to know this. So, we’re ending the cover up with a flourish, I would say. That’s who we are.
JASON HARTMAN: Wow. I’ve just gotta ask you—someone in your position doing this, aren’t you concerned about your safety, or, well, first the safety issue.
KAREN HUDES: Yeah, because these guys play tough! These guys don’t like what I’m doing!
JASON HARTMAN: I have no doubt about that. These very powerful forces would benefit by you going away, wouldn’t they?
KAREN HUDES: Yes, but the way I’ve been doing this—first of all, I started out being totally ignorant of the problem, or the danger, and people didn’t think I was going to get this far, so in the early part it wasn’t that dangerous—I was just sort of flailing around helplessly. Not really helplessly—what I was doing was, I was laying the foundations. So for example, one of the pieces of evidence that I have is a very detailed chronology of exactly who did what to whom. Don’t forget I was going to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which was chaired by Joe Biden, and had Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on it, and Senator Lugar, so this was my coalition in the US Congress. And you know, I’ve worked with all of the different committees—the Banking Committee, the Committee on Appropriations, I’ve worked with the House—there isn’t hardly a representative in US Congress that doesn’t, that has not been involved one way or another. And the US Congress, when they gave money to the World Bank, put a big condition on there. They said, we’re not going to disperse a penny until the whistleblowers are made whole. So, we’ve got the US Congress four square behind us. But anyway, so was I afraid? Well, when I started to realize what was going on, I went to—I’ve been helped all along the way by any number of people, and don’t forget, I’m just one of a group. So there was no way by doing anything to me that the problem was going to go away. This group was going to continue. And one of the people that has been extremely helpful is a guy named Larry Garrison, who’s my PR guy. And people knew that if anything happened to me—and he stuck with me—if anything happened to me, this was going to be big news.
JASON HARTMAN: That Garrison, that just sounds so reminiscent of the JFK assassination. Wasn’t the DA’s name Garrison, or something like that?
KAREN HUDES: Oh, you know. I could spend the whole rest of the time talking about the Kennedy assassination. Because a good friend of mine actually was involved in suing Lyndon Bates Johnson, who was going to go to jail until after the assassination. And there’s papers on that.
JASON HARTMAN: Let’s not get off on this tangent; maybe we’ll do a whole nother show about it. But, didn’t Kennedy—wasn’t he one of the people pushing to end the Federal Reserve? That’s what I’ve read.
KAREN HUDES: Absolutely.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, you don’t want to say that kind of stuff when you’re in power, because there are a lot of people bigger than the President of the United States.
KAREN HUDES: This goes back to Lincoln! This goes back to so many of the early founders of our country!
JASON HARTMAN: Well, Lincoln was under a different central bank. I mean, we’ve had three central banks in the US, but we didn’t have the Federal Reserve in its current form under Lincoln, obviously.
KAREN HUDES: No, but he—when the debt was coming due, this is when the squeeze was being put on these presidents. No, this is not a little problem. But we have it licked now, actually.
JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. Well, we have, really we have it licked? We don’t have the problem of central banks licked.
KAREN HUDES: I’ll tell you what we have. This business about central banks—you know, a lot of people like to make it very, very complicated, but it really is not all that complicated. You can have real money, like coins, like silver and gold, or you can have paper money. And it was always the intention of the founders of this country that we would have real money, and it took a lot of effort on the part of these central bankers to get us off track. And it’s very easy to get back on track. For example, North Dakota has its own state bank. Virginia has recognized silver and gold as legal tender, and any number of other states are about to do that. There are any number of organizations that are now issuing currency that’s backed by commodities. It doesn’t have to be gold—
JASON HARTMAN: And there’s even BitCoin, that’s basically a mathematical equation.
KAREN HUDES: Yes. So, it’s a very easy thing to move away from this paper currency. And you don’t—you don’t even have to abolish the paper currency. You just give people a choice. And who would rather be paid with paper or with real currency?
JASON HARTMAN: Look Karen, we all know what would happen. Immediately people would flock away from the fiat money. That’s why they have legal tender laws, to force us into this box, that we have to use their fiat currencies. You know? I mean, it’s just—of course ridiculous. But that’s what governments do.
KAREN HUDES: Well, what has happened now is that you’ve got the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—that have moved away from the fiat currencies, and so, the world is now not stuck to the dollar anymore, and so, things are going to move very, very fast, and this powerful group is powerless to prevent it.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, I don’t know if they are. They influence the largest military on earth—
KAREN HUDES: Okay, let me tell you where we are with the military.
JASON HARTMAN: I don’t have any worries about the US losing its position having the reserve currency of the world. I think that is here to stay for a lot longer than some people think. We may disagree on that.
KAREN HUDES: I’ll tell you why they’re vulnerable. They’re vulnerable because they have done so many terrible things, and there’s a cover up, and there are enough people that know about what they’ve done, and the cover up. And so, the fact that they have bought all of the media is not going to protect them. Because more than 70% of the American public has learned to distrust their captive media. So, they are terribly vulnerable. All that has to happen is that people have to listen to what’s going on, and their neighbors who know what’s going on have to tell them. And they’re vulnerable. They’ve been breaking the law, and they’re not going to continue to break the law. That’s all. They’re finished.
JASON HARTMAN: Well—
KAREN HUDES: They are finished. I went to the army. I went to the Defense Department when I wrote to the General Assembly. And I—because what’s happened with Germany, Germany asked for its gold back from the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve said no! That’s an act of war. Now, what Germany has done in the last couple of days, is they’ve said they are not going to share intelligence information anymore with the United States. And I wrote to the army, I said, I had been warning—not army. I wrote to the Defense Department. I said, I had been warning you about this, and there is a very easy way, in the national security interest, to prevent this from continuing. This is very dangerous, this is very bad. And it is if you back me. I said, and I’m telling everybody that you’re backing me. And if you’re not backing me, I want you to say you’re not. So that’s where we are now. If the Defense Department says that what I’m saying is incorrect, and they’re not backing me, then we have a problem. And if they are backing me, then we have no problem. And people can find out. That’s all. So, the army is not supporting the Federal Reserve, the army is supporting rule of law, they’re supporting me.
JASON HARTMAN: I hope you’re right.
KAREN HUDES: That’s what I said. Because the last thing I said was, heaven help us all if I’m wrong.
JASON HARTMAN: Look, when it comes down to that—and I want to go back onto the topic at hand here a little bit more, but—history has shown, unfortunately, over and over again that people with the ability to inflict violence—people with weapons—will, generally speaking, follow orders, even if it means attacking their own fellow citizens and doing really, really ugly things.
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. And so what I have done, as far as that goes—I have all bases covered here. There’s a group inside the Department of Defense, which teams up with Homeland Security and 10 governors, and I’ve been in touch with them. They’re under Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Verga. I’ve been in touch with him. Every time the media starts trying to incite violence, either through false flags, or crazy false reporting, I’ve come back to this group and I’ve said, you had better correct the record and stop inciting violence, because we do not want violence. There’s no reason for violence. We just simply follow the rules. We simply tell our citizens what’s going on. And I have had any number of interviews, and a lot of citizens know this. And as a matter of fact, I just today got an email from somebody who said, you know, you’ve been telling us that you’ve been in touch with that group, and the Homeland Security group that’s supposed to keep peace, and I don’t see any sign of it. And so I plastered that all over, and I forwarded that to the Department of Defense, and I sent it to all of the 188 members of the World Bank, and I said it’s time for us to get our story straight. So that’s where we are. It’s time for us to get our story straight. Is the army backing rule of law, or is the army ripping off the American people? Where are they? I think they’re with the American people. I don’t think they’re with the rip off artists.
JASON HARTMAN: I hope you’re right.
KAREN HUDES: That’s what I hope too.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, most definitely. Well okay, so, you didn’t—when I asked you about the three organizations—the IMF, the World Bank, and the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations—you talked about the two, but I don’t think you touched on the Council on Foreign Relations. They seem like they’re cloaked in mystery, that group. I had G. Edward Griffin on the show, and I’m sure you know who he is, he wrote The Creature From Jekyll Island—
KAREN HUDES: Yes, I’ve read that, it’s a great book.
JASON HARTMAN: It’s fascinating—it’s very, very, very comprehensive, and very well done. And he’s been on the show a couple of times, and he really thinks that the point that needs to be influenced is the CFR. They are the ones who are really, really kind of running things. Do you have thoughts on the CFR, and maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about what it is they do, and your interactions with them?
KAREN HUDES: Yes. The Council on Foreign Relations is the hinge between the United States and the United Kingdom. A lot of people think that with the Revolutionary War that the United States wanted independence. They don’t know about the flow of funds, where there were reparations paid, and that the money that people are paying on their taxes are actually going back to the Vatican. It’s a rude awakening. It sounds almost impossible. But, and believe me, I didn’t want to believe this. I thought it was crazy when I heard that. But it happens, unfortunately, not to be crazy. And the Council on Foreign Relations is the group—it’s almost like the Masons, or any of these other secret societies, where there are layers of secrecy, and the people at the very top get to know the whole story, and the people down at the bottom are sort of hangers on and get to bask in the glory of the people. What it is, is it’s people that are hogging information to try to gain power. And the reason why I am so convinced that this problem is over, is because we have exposed this. These secret societies are like cockroaches; they have nowhere to go and hide. We know what they’re doing. A lot of people know what they’re doing. And we are holding them to account, and they have got to explain it to everybody, what it is that they thought they were doing. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and it’s not going to continue.
JASON HARTMAN: If you think it’s really not going to continue, what does the end of this secretive control of our economy—what does it mean? What does it look like, and when will it end?
KAREN HUDES: Well, a lot of this depends on how actively the people that are listening to your program take this news. Are they going to deny it? Are they going to say that I’m making absolutely no sense and go on about their business? Or are they going to try to figure out what’s actually the case? Go on my website, which is www.kahudes.net, and read all of the articles and the proof and the background information? Are they going to make it their business to be citizens? If they are, then this is going to be a wonderful story, because what’s going to happen is, we are simply, seamlessly going to drive out that lousy money which is making everybody miserable, with good money. And we can do it very simply and very expeditiously. And then we can go on about our business.
And one of the things that we’re going to do, is we’re going to keep a lot of the money that we have been sending off to the Vatican. We’ve had this wacky accounting, where what we do—remember what happened with the post office where we were prefunding all of the pensions in the post office, and we were issuing bonds to try to finance those pensions? That’s for the interest of the bankers. We don’t have to do that. We can keep that money in our community. We can use it, and as an economist, what happens when you keep money in your own community, with jobs in your community, is that it has a multiplier effect. So it’s like we’ve—think of a patient that has had their blood removed and they’re anemic. We are going to keep our blood, and we’re going to be stronger. And how is this going to happen? It’s going to happen because we’re all going to recognize that what I’m saying is correct, and we’re all going to start taking these transfusions—not transfusions. We’re not getting the blood. We’re taking these donations of our lifeblood and our country, and we’re going to keep it and we’re going to grow from it and we’re going to get stronger again. And that’s how it’s going to happen.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, well, that’s very, very good points. So, the great thing about this is, I remember doing seminars back in 2004, 2005, talking about these kinds of items. And, you know, explaining inflation to people, and explaining how the government makes us all poor by spending recklessly and then debasing the debt to foreign countries like China and Japan, and making its own citizens poor at the same time by doing that. And back then, people kind of—their eyes rolled back in their head, they didn’t seem to really get it or want to pay attention. There were always a few in the audience. But nowadays, people understand this stuff. And you know, I credit Ron Paul with a lot of that. The word is out. I mean, the common guy on the street understands a lot of this stuff now, and just 8 years ago that was not the case, just anecdotally, in my opinion.
KAREN HUDES: You know, it’s just, people like to make things complicated, so, everybody goes to sleep, and then they can keep on ripping everybody off. But it’s not that complicated; it’s really very straightforward. Is paper money, or is gold and silver money? Which is money? You know, that’s really very basic. And it’s not hard to understand. But, one of the things that I think we’re going to have to start really learning about, is who are our friends, and who are our enemies? And what is our enemy? Because, you know, we’ve been misled deliberately. We’ve been kept apart, we’ve been, you know, democrats/republicans, or Catholics/Protestants, and this is all to manipulate us. And it’s the same thing when you talk about these countries. Are they our enemies? I can tell you: if these countries were our enemies, we would have been left in the lurch. It’s only because these countries want us to learn about these mistakes and correct them that we have a chance.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, you look at the terrorism threat, I mean, if they wanted to get us, don’t you think they could have gotten us by now? Just, many, many times over? It just seems, to me, like it’s overplayed.
KAREN HUDES: It’s divide and conquer. It’s the old game of divide and conquer. And I can give you a very good example of how I’ve been trying to get things back on track. There was something called the Government Accountability Office inquiry into corruption at the World Bank. That was asked for by Senators Lugar, Leahy, and Bayh in 2008, and the World Bank refused to let GAO do that inquiry. So then, in 2010, I called up the Organizing for America, that’s Barack Obama’s fundraising group, and I said, you’re gonna get bipartisan support if you try to fight this corruption. And so, the person I spoke to said, I’ll get back to you in a month, Karen. And he did. He said yeah, Karen, go for it. And that’s when I went to Senator Lugar’s office, and Senator Lugar then published a report that said that GAO had withdrawn from the inquiry into corruption at the World Bank because the World Bank wouldn’t cooperate. So that was bipartisan support. And there has been a lot of bipartisan support on this. We’re not going to fight this corruption by trying to look at people who are outside our group and finding them suspicious. And this business about Muslims being bad, I can tell you, they have been very, very good. They’re the ones that know that you shouldn’t have usury in interest.
JASON HARTMAN: They don’t believe in debt.
KAREN HUDES: They got it right. So, I can tell you that we are going to have to do some serious sense mending. We as a country, and the people, the American people didn’t know about it, but we as a country have gone to the leaders of other countries that were trying to protect their people and keep their economies growing, and we have murdered their leaders so that we could plunder their countries. We have to do some very serious, serious soul-searching from this. Because you can say, well, we didn’t know about it, it wasn’t our fault. But you know, that’s a little bit of a cop-out. You have to take responsibility for being a citizen and for being informed. You know, we have some serious soul-searching to do.
JASON HARTMAN: So, just on a more practical level, as it applies to people listening—how do you see the future, economically? I mean, you have a masters in economics? No, your undergraduate is economics, and law was your masters?
KAREN HUDES: Well, I went and studied in Holland, and I got something called a Master of—M.Phil., which is like a Ph.D. without a thesis.
JASON HARTMAN: Ah, got it. Okay.
KAREN HUDES: At University of Amsterdam. So yeah, no, I’m an economist, and I can say that I don’t have a crystal ball, but what I do know is that this corruption and this secret society-dominated elite approach to economics is gone. It’s dead. And we are now in a totally different scenario; it’s going to be up to us if we want to have our children learn real skills so that they can help create an economy that’s vibrant and growing. We’re going to keep a lot of the money that went siphoned off outside our country, because of this corruption. We’re going to keep it, and we’re going to grow with it. So I would say the sky is the limit. We are going to be living in a world of abundance.
JASON HARTMAN: So, that is wonderful to hear. When do you think there will be a turning point? The dollar isn’t going away tomorrow. When is that going to happen? And is the future inflationary or deflationary or just stable?
KAREN HUDES: Well, the big issue is the flow of information, because we have got a lot on our plate. First of all there’s something called gold backwardation. What that means is that people are losing confidence in paper currency, and gold is being horded, and people are not going to be selling their gold for paper currency pretty soon. On the 7th of July, that’s when gold leasing stops, because people were afraid they weren’t going to get their gold back at the end of the leasing term. So, the answer to your question is that there may be some serious hiccups along the way. It all depends on how seriously people respond to this information, and how accountable they are as citizens. If they take what I’m telling them as not really very convincing, and they don’t bother to do their homework, then this can really get out of hand. We can go to hell in a handbasket. What happens if there is gold backwardation is that you stop being able to have international trade, and if you look at any of the goods that you buy, they have foreign components in there. Imagine that you can’t assemble cars anymore! It would make what happened in the 1930s look like it was nothing. So, we have got to take this very, very seriously. We have got to overcome the fact that our media has been bought by these crooks. We’ve got to learn how to share information, learn from the information, and act to hold our governments accountable. And when I say governments, I mean your local sheriff. I mean your local counties. Because I went to the National Association of Counties, and I said, you had better get your governors in line with this. We are all moving in the right direction at the right time to meet this challenge.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, I love when Obama really started on the gun control kick. You know, a lot of these sheriffs in various counties said, we’re not going to enforce any such federal laws. Make them if you want, but, that’s just great to see. Because it shows that this whole command and control concept of the economy, or of society in general—it shows resistance to that, and I think that’s great. And we have the internet, but they’re starting to put restrictions on that, the spying and the monitoring—
KAREN HUDES: That’s why it’s so important to be serious about—
JASON HARTMAN: While the window’s open, I agree, while the window is open we’ve got to exploit that.
KAREN HUDES: That’s right. And there’s some people in Holland that I’ve been speaking to, and they know exactly what’s going on, and they say that the whole fate of the world depends on the American people, because we have our Second Amendment. He said, you know, in Holland, if I walk down the street with a knife, I can be arrested. So, he and the rest of the world are counting on the American citizens. That’s what he says.
JASON HARTMAN: That’s what one of my Canadian friends says. He believes that with technology, the window is closing so quickly, because now the government has technology to control populations forever. I mean, indefinite. It gives them such a leg up.
KAREN HUDES: The point is, they blew it! They blew it, and the word got out, and we won! Too bad guys, we won!
JASON HARTMAN: Well, I don’t agree, we haven’t won yet, freedom is not won yet.
KAREN HUDES: Here’s the point. Here’s how you know whether we’ve won. Here’s how you know whether we’ve won. Just pay very careful attention to what the Department of Defense says to the executive directors of the World Bank. Because I told them that the Department of Defense was backing me. If they’re not backing me, they have to tell the executive directors. I said, I’m copying the Department of Defense on this email. I sent it today. And that’s why I’m so grateful that you’ve given me this interview today. I said, you just ask the executive directors whether the Department of Defense is backing me or not, and it’s not because I’m grandiose. I’m not grandiose. I am talking about a whole group of whistleblowers, and I’m talking about rule of law in the entire world. And is the Department of Defense standing for the security interest of this country, or are they standing for corruption? That’s all. And it’s a very simple, crisp question, and it should be a simple crisp answer.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, the website is www.kahudes.net, I just wanted to spell that out for our listeners. www.kahudes.net. I assume ‘a’ is your middle initial, Karen? Or is that just the first two letters of Karen.
KAREN HUDES: That’s right.
JASON HARTMAN: Okay, so, www.kahudes.net. Not a dot com, a dot net. So, what else would you like people to know, just to wrap them up? I mean, the call to action, you’ve said it many, many times, so I think the listeners got that. But just any more information, or any more resources that you want to give out?
KAREN HUDES: Well, I just want to thank your listeners for listening. And stay tuned! Get active! And be your own news collector. Don’t just sit there and read the printed paper. You already know that it’s not going to tell you what’s going on.
JASON HARTMAN: The alternative media’s where it’s at. The stuff you see on the major television news networks is just so corporatized, and it’s just full of agenda. You know?
KAREN HUDES: Exactly. And you know, be good to your kids! They’re your future. Help them to think critically, that they’re not just, you know, learning by memorizing. That they’re asking questions, that they’re not picking simple answers, because they want to know who’s telling them what it is, and why that person’s telling them what it is. Let them learn to sift through different versions, so that they can answer questions.
JASON HARTMAN: Good stuff. Well Karen, thank you so much for joining us today, and keep getting the word out, okay?
KAREN HUDES: Thanks for having me, Jason.
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ANNOUNCER: Have you listened to the Creating Wealth Series? I mean from the beginning. If not, you can go ahead and get book one, that’s shows 1-20, in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information, go to www.jasonhartman.com.
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ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor, LLC. exclusively.
Transcribed by David
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