Introduction:
Jason Burack is an Investor, Entrepreneur, Financial Historian, Austrian School Economist, Investment Analyst and Contrarian. Jason co-founded the startup investor education and financial education company Wall St for Main St, LLC, to try to help the people of Main Street by teaching them the knowledge, skills, research methods, and investing expertise of Wall Street.
Jason feels the knowledge he has acquired over the years will help make sure consulting clients are better prepared to navigate through these difficult financial waters. Jason is co-author of The Dragon Metals Report on Rare Earth Elements, The Treasure Hunting for Precious Metals Stocks Report and the Petro Profit Report.
Key Takeaways:
(3:34) Jason plays a video clip: an overview of Little Rock, Arkansas
(6:27) Introducing Jason Burack
(7:17) A discussion of the macroeconomic picture
(8:59) Why a country would want to weaken its currency
(12:24) Innovation, prices, and the free market
(23:48) Drilling down on the sharing economy
(28:12) Closing comments
Links:
For more information on Jason Burack, go to http://www.JasonBurack.com.
Visit Jason’s investor and financial education website Wall Street for Main Street at www.wallstformainst.com
Bio:
Jason’s articles, interviews, podcasts, video blogs, and other related content have been featured on the popular investing websites: Forbes, Money Show, Financial Sense, Contrary Investors Cafe, Bull Market Thinking, The Gold Report, The Critical Metals Report and The Daily Gold. Jason has taught beginners how to invest and also has consulted for high net worth investors and every type of investor in between.
Jason has a double major in history and political science from Virginia Tech and has also tried law school and MBA programs before dropping out.
Audio Transcription:
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, this is episode #404, #404. Now, don’t get confused today, because we have Jason Burack as our guest! So you’ll have a Jason squared. You’ll have two Jasons on this episode. But before we do that, I want to tell you, our next episode is gonna be a really important one. I mean, hey. They’re all important, right? But the next episode, we’re gonna talk about analyzing a real estate deal. And this is fundamental stuff. But it is just so critically important. Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, he used to say at the beginning of the training season, he used to hold up a football and say, gentlemen, this is a football. The fundamentals. See the fundamentals are critically important. And we’ve gotta review them. We’ve never done this exact episode before, that we’re gonna do as #405, the next one, but we’re really gonna dive deep into how to analyze a real estate deal. So that’ll be important. 406 we’ve got Tom Essaye on the show. 407 we’ve got Congressman—well, former Congressman—he got pretty famous by losing his job, actually, and that is Todd Akin. We’ve got a whole bunch of great stuff coming up on future episodes too, so keep tuned in for all of that great stuff.
Before we get to Jason, our guest today, who’s got some very interesting thoughts on economic and monetary policy that affect our investments, that affect us very much as real estate investors—what I wanted to do—I almost kind of was hesitant about doing this today, but, I think I just want to get it out there. And that is, I want to play a very short video clip. It’ll be of course just the audio portion of it. A lot of these, when I play a video on the show, you don’t necessarily need to see them always. Just hearing the audio really gives you the whole story. And this is very short. I think it’s just I think, I don’t know, about two and a half, three minutes, something like that. And it’s just an overview of Little Rock, Arkansas. So, I’m gonna do that.
And also wanted to let you know, because you have requested it, we have been, for a few years now, looking at some of the oil exploration areas, the boom areas, in Texas and North Dakota. We’re kind of looking at one pretty deeply again. I don’t know if we are going to start recommending that. We’ve always been checking it out. Many of you have asked us about it. And my concern is that it could be too cyclical, and it could be something where you can make a lot of money in a short time, but not our typical long-term buy and hold investment, which we are mostly interested in. So, we’ll keep you tuned in on that, and have more information on upcoming episodes for that. But before we get to our guest, let me just play this little quick clip for you, and then we’ll be talking with Jason about some very interesting stuff for investors. So, here we go.
Jason plays a video clip: an overview of Little Rock, Arkansas
ANNOUNCER: Little Rock is the capital and largest city of Arkansas with a metropolitan statistical area population of approximately 717,00 people. The city name originates from a rock formation on the south bank of the Arkansas River called La Petite Roche, or, The Little Rock. There are many factors about Little Rock’s economy that make it an attractive target for income property investors. The first factor is employment opportunities. There is a significant corporate presence in Little Rock, with Dillard’s Department Stores, Windstream Humidifications, and Axiom, headquartered in the city. In addition to this, other large companies such as Metropolitan National Bank, Bank of the Ozarks, Rose Law Firm, Nouvelle Financial Services, Central Flying Services, and Stevens, Inc. Brokerage. The port in Little Rock, on the Arkansas River, is an international port designed as a foreign trade zone.
In addition to its corporate presence, Little Rock also presents a significant public employment footprint with the state capital, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and its associated healthcare partners. The cost of living index in Little Rock currently stands at 87th, versus the US average of 100. The city hosts two major universities as a part of the University of Arkansas system. When combined with the robust employment profile of the city, Little Rock stands as an area that is primed for prolonged economic growth. The key to the demographic economics of Little Rock is found in the income distribution curve. Median household incomes are slightly skewed towards the working class segment of the population, with stability in the middle class segment. This points to opportunities for income property investors in serving the housing needs of these population segments. Another key consideration in Little Rock is its cultural scene. With multiple museums and cultural centers, the city is a central point in the area for both visual and performing arts. The city has been honored with multiple awards and recognitions, such as in 2013, when Kiplinger named Little Rock as the #1 place to live in metropolitan areas with less than one million people.
In 2011, Forbes rated Little Rock as the second cleanest city in America, and Outside Magazine named Little Rock as one of its best towns in 2013. The value that Little Rock brings to investors is its long term viability as a center for employment, culture, and quality of life. Investors have the opportunity to build their financial future by serving the housing needs of people in places like Little Rock. Many of the opportunities in major areas are becoming saturated. Markets such as Little Rock represent a value opportunity for investors that has not yet attracted major institutional capital. All times of uncertainty are also times of opportunity. The way that we approach these opportunities will determine what kind of financial future we will create.
[MUSIC]
Introducing Jason Burack
JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Jason Burack to the show! He is the cofounder and CEO of Wall Street for Main Street; their tagline is, “changing the way you invest.” And I’ve had some great discussions with him on his show about Austrian economics, and investing, and just generally what’s going on out there in the world. So it’s a pleasure to have him on. Please don’t get confused with our names; it’s Jason and Jason today. Jason, how are you?
JASON BURACK: Glad to be back on part two of the Jason & Jason show.
JASON HARTMAN: That’s right, that’s right. Where you located?
JASON BURACK: Right outside of the Belly of the Beast. Right outside of Washington, D.C.
JASON HARTMAN: The Bailout Capital of the World.
JASON BURACK: The twin towers…you have DC and you have Wall Street, which are like the Lord of the Rings analogy, because those are operating the two evil capitals of crony capitalism, and any other analogy you want to use for what’s really going on in the status quo.
A discussion of the macroeconomic picture
JASON HARTMAN: They really are, they really are. No question about it. Let’s talk about the macro picture, if we could. What do you see as happening? We’ve got massive government debt, we’ve got very, very legitimate inflation concerns. Or opportunities, depending on how you look at it, of course, and what side of the investment spectrum you’re on. We’ve got a very frothy seeming Wall Street. Stocks are really high. What are your thoughts about the macro picture?
JASON BURACK: In terms of macro picture, I think it’s smart to look at the top first, especially in this environment, where central banks are all trying to, you know, goose the economy. And it’s not just the US. It’s Japan, it’s Europe, it’s China…everyone is trying to get their Keynesian economics on. The funny thing is, Jason, that almost all these central bankers all went to school at either ivy league schools—so, the London School of Economics—whether they’re in China, Japan, or anywhere else, they’re all reading from almost the exact same playbook. In terms of my view of the world economy, government statistics aside about GDP and things like that, and I think basically every single government fibs or lies or cheats all to a different degree, in terms of inflation, unemployment, GDP, and things like that. So it’s not just the US or China who’s playing with their numbers. In the real economy, based on conference calls I’ve listened to, the boots on the ground research I’ve done, my contacts all over the world, I think every single country, in the real economy, in terms of purchasing power in the US consumer, is in one degree or another of worsening stagflation. So, the stagflation, for your listeners who are not familiar, is higher inflation, and either no wage growth, or higher unemployment, depending upon your definition. I think the inflation is probably higher right now in the developing world, in India, in Russia, in Brazil, in China, in Asia, South America, it’s higher there than it is in the developed world, but the developed world does not want a strong currency, and they’re trying to weaken their currency to catch up. That’s just basically what I see right now.
Why a country would want to weaken its currency
JASON HARTMAN: Make sure the listeners understand what you mean. I think the natural inclination is for people to think, why would the developed world want to weaken its currency? Isn’t a strong currency what every country should want? Well, not exactly, right?
JASON BURACK: In the Austrian school, people want a strong currency. You want purchasing power, you want savings, you want people to save money, and you want capital brought to your country if you have a strong currency, because people make investments. The Keynesian playbook is the exact opposite, and the Keynesians—the Keynesian economics is essentially going back 150 years of economic history to mercantilism. So, Keynes was not as innovative a thinker as he was credited for. He pieced a lot of stuff together from John Law and other people. He really skipped over 100 years’ worth of economic gains in the field of economics with von Mises and Hayek and things like that. He skipped over those guys’ works, and he went back to mercantilism. And the mercantilist view is to weaken your currency to boost exports; use monetary policy to try to gain a trade advantage. So, you had Japan try to do this for a long time. China has been doing this, taking over the reigns for the main “currency manipulator,” and you have these other countries on dollar pegs, all trying to prop up the US dollar, and the US consumer, so they can sell more goods and services into the US. One of the byproducts of that is that when the US does a quantitative easing program, and if you’re on a US dollar peg, the inflation that’s created is not kept in the US. It’s exported outside to the Chinese economy, because China has to print more RMB to soak up those excess dollars, because they’re pegged to the US’s base money supply.
JASON HARTMAN: Which, by the way, is an awesome deal for the United States, I should mention. I mean, I hope you agree with me on that.
JASON BURACK: Yes.
JASON HARTMAN: Before you go on, Jason, I just want to explain…everybody listening is at different levels of understanding. Some people are just getting interested in this stuff, because they know that the whole system is basically rigged, it’s just a big scam, and they want to know how to react to it. And some people are very advanced, of course. So, for the benefit of everybody on the spectrum, Keynesianism is the idea from John Maynard Keynes of priming the pump. Saying that the government should intervene in the economy at times to get it going, and inject money into the system, and that’s known as quantitative easing. It’s money printing, essentially. It’s money creation out of thin air. And the US is exporting its inflation. Normally the inflation rate should be quite a bit higher than it is. But because the US can export inflation through those dollars out to other countries, like China, as Jason mentioned, it’s a really good deal for the US. And then the US does another thing, which you might come to, Jason, but I’ll just maybe get there. You know, everybody wonders, why the hell can’t we control our southern border? Well, who wants to control the southern border? Not Washington, D.C., because all of these illegal immigrants are importing deflation to offset the true inflationary pressures within the country. Ultimately what happens is, they’ll work for a lot less than American laborers. You get the effect of prices not being as high as they otherwise would and should be. But what you really have, in the long term, is a very dysfunctional thing, because of course, they take jobs away from Americans, number one, but number two, there are tremendous costs on the government system. And these things can of course both be argued, but that’s my opinion. The government can print more fiat money to pay those costs of, you know, welfare and entitlements and so forth. You know, free medical care, etcetera. Jason, thoughts?
Innovation, prices, and the free market
JASON BURACK: In a free market economy, prices, almost everything is almost naturally deflationary, because there’s more competition—
JASON HARTMAN: Innovation.
JASON BURACK: There’s more innovation. The best example is Apple; Apple came out with the iPhone, right, and the iPhone was the top dog for a while. And it had very high margins. And those high margins attracted competitors like Samsung and elsewhere, and you know, Apple has to keep innovating, coming out with brand new phones, or their margins are gonna be destroyed. Prices of phones are gonna fall. This is beneficial for consumers. It’s raising the consumers’ standard of living. They’re getting higher quality goods and services over the long term at a lower and lower price. Some companies are gonna go out of business if they don’t keep reinvesting their profits into research and development and things like that. You know, we’re not seeing those free market forces, because government is interfering in the currency; they’re messing up the currency. Almost every government is trying to devalue their currency and create unlimited amounts of currency. You have extra rules and regulations in taxes, you have the government and other agencies trying to create the minimum wage laws to get them higher when wages really need to fall, for certain types of jobs. There’s just no buts about it, that wages have to fall for certain things. But the argument is that if wages fall, then people won’t be able to afford things. But prices and wages adjust. The people who are in power, the Keynesian central planners, the politicians, the unions, the special interest groups, they don’t want prices to fall. In a healthy economy, in a free market, wages and prices at this stage in many industries should be falling now at this point; due to other interventionist policies, it’s just not being allowed.
JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Very good points. Very good points. What do you think this means to the standard of living of Americans? And then, if you venture, you know, any other countries around the world you want to mention. But especially Americans. See Jason, I think that America is getting poorer. I think most people in America—and I’m talking if you take, there’s 310 million people or so in the country—a good 250 to 270 million of those people are just going to continue to get poorer and poorer and poorer, because of these inflationary forces that are just baked into the equation, if you ask me. And their standard of living will decline. Now, of course, technology and innovation—and it’s a pretty exciting time to be alive; I’m not a pessimist. There are some fantastic things happening in the world—could save us. That’s the only thing I think that could really save us. The only people that are gonna really benefit from this are people that get it, and game the system. They control resources, they control commodities, they control things that have intrinsic value, and they have long term fixed rate debt against those things that have intrinsic value. That’s how they arbitrage or hedge, at least, the whole scenario, in my opinion.
JASON BURACK: The majority of people in the United States have gotten much worse off. Wages in real terms, Jason, have not really risen in decades, in terms of middle class lifestyle. People have had to borrow a lot more. Households that used to be able to have one man or one woman working in the household, used to be able to support a whole family with kids, and have savings, and things like that, a couple decades ago; that’s not the case really anymore. And unfortunately, more people are having to go back to work. Kids are having to, in school, get side jobs and things like that, just to pay the bills, just to put food on the table. And unfortunately, unless you really understand what’s going on with the economy, and you are well educated, you have a financial education, you’re using debt properly—not using debt to consume, not using debt necessarily for a student loan and a liberal arts degree or something like that, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble going forward. Your bills are going to keep going up, your restaurant portions are going to decrease, and you’re going to blame the wrong people if you don’t understand what’s going on; you’re going to blame the evil greedy restaurant for your food portion being decreased by one half with the food prices, saying, this evil greedy restaurant did that, but it’s not really the restaurant’s fault, because they have to have a profit margin to stay in business. Their margins are being squeezed, their input costs are going up, and a lot of that is due to higher energy costs and inflation and things like that. And that’s why I do my work with our podcast and things like that. I’m trying to teach people that a lot of the problems here are coming from governments and central bankers and interventionists and Wall Street that are doing a lot of the problems, and it’s not, you know, the main street small businessman—it’s not his fault that he has to raise the prices. He has to do that to survive too. He has a family, he probably has debt. Hopefully with the work you do, and with the work I do, people are gonna learn what’s really going on in the economy. It’s not the evil greedy capitalists’ fault that we’ve been ingrained, unfortunately brainwashed, to learn about from the mainstream media and from government schools and textbooks, a lot of mainstream textbooks and things like that—you know, it’s evil to make a profit, it’s evil to run a business—unfortunately I think that’s a lot of the stuff that’s taught in schools.
JASON HARTMAN: I agree with you that that’s taught in school, and certainly politicians, especially on the left, exploit class warfare like crazy. I mean, it’s really disgusting what they do. But, I’m gonna kind of take a middle ground on that, in a way, and this is how I’ll say it. The big capitalism—it’s not really capitalism, and I’ll say that in a moment, but, you know, when it comes to Wall Street and the big corporatocracy—the big giant corporations—I think there is a lot of evil there. Because they are not functioning in a true free market. They’re operating with crony capitalism, lobbyists, and big law firms. They’re changing the law so that the consumers don’t have the rights they should. They do this under the guise of tort reform. I can tell you as a person who has owned and does own now several businesses, the whole threat of litigation issue, and frivolous lawsuits, is just not a big of deal as it’s played up to be by the right. By the republicans. Just operate a good, ethical business, and you know, you’re gonna get sued a couple of times, probably; those don’t usually go anywhere when they’re truly frivolous. You just be careful, and understand that’s the price of doing business. With things like commercial arbitration act, they’ve just wiped away the rights of consumers. You have so little recourse anymore, against the big corporatocracy. When you use lobbyists, and you get the benefit of big government and crony capitalism, that is evil. Now, they’re not really capitalists. That’s the first thing. But most people think they are.
JASON BURACK: They’re definitely not capitalists. They’re more of a fascist type of scenario where they’re trying to set up a cartel because they know they can afford the regulations. They’re setting up barriers to entry for entrepreneurs to start them; it’s like with Bitcoin. Bitcoin and the banking sector, how it could potentially drastically lower fees for consumers—I mean, the banks have been making—and credit card companies—have been making humongous cuts off of profits for every little transaction, all the way up the value chain. When a merchant takes a payment for a credit card and things like that, there’s a humongous amount of access fees that are added on that don’t really need to be added on. They’ve been getting fat off those profits for a while, and they’re not gonna give that up, because they’ve been paying the regulators and lobbyists and things like that. In a free market, we would have more beneficial to consumers and the prices on things would drop, but in a lot of industries, that’s not really the case. Especially the older an industry tends to be. Because there tends to be more established lobbying, and more established regulatory framework, and things like that, and that just adds to the cost.
JASON HARTMAN: You hear these companies, hear their spokespeople on television, bemoaning regulation. Oh, government regulation, they’re just—they won’t get out of our hair, blah blah blah, but the truth is, they welcome that regulation, because like you said, it raises the barrier to entry, and keeps new competitors out of the game. It reinforces their monopolies, or their near monopolies, or their perceived competitive market, where they’ve got like two, maybe three competitors and they’re all buddies. Okay, that’s not legitimate competition. It just helps them keep their monopoly or near monopoly, and keep new entrants out, so new entrepreneurs can’t get in the game. It’s rigged.
JASON BURACK: Unfortunately, Jason, we need more entrepreneurs. So, we need the taxes for small business, we need it to be easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to create jobs. When you have Obamacare, which is basically—I don’t know about you, but my small business contacts are telling me that they’re only willing to hire part time now, because a lot of the Obamacare stuff, and then all these other rules and regulations for other industries, they’re not willing to take as many, and then to add to that, the fact that small businesses can’t borrow for as cheaply, normally, as large businesses can. And the deck is being stacked against a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses in many industries. Now, obviously there are some industries where it’s easy to put up a website, and you can have an ecommerce business going in a year or less, or something like that. But I’m talking majority of industries in the United States have so many rules, regulations, red tape, fees, permits, things like that. It’s not quite the Soviet Union, where there’s no private property rights or anything, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s basically Europe, and to get around the laws and things like that, you’re paying exorbitant amounts of money to lawyers and things like that just to be in compliance.
JASON HARTMAN: You can’t play in that game! It’s just too hard for the little guy. And you know, when you look at the entrepreneurs—like the vast majority of the innovation is coming from these small, nimble, lean companies that just think of ways to solve problems that the big companies—you can’t blame the big companies, really. Like, why should they go out on a limb and try to do, you know, some of these innovative things? Because if you’ve got $10 billion in revenue every year, and you can just increase your market share by 10%, that’s a huge number compared to incubating a bunch of startups that are in totally different fields or things like that. So, you know, you can understand why the big companies don’t innovate that much, and why the vast majority of the really, really innovative stuff comes from small companies. I mean, certainly, you know, don’t send me a bunch of emails, folks, about how, you know, Apple’s got the cool new iWatch coming out. I get it, okay? And they’re a big company. But, the real, like, the new ideas. The new ideas are coming, by and large, from small entrepreneurs who think, gosh, this is a pain point in my life. This is a problem that’s out there, that I think there’s a way to solve. You look at the sharing economy. You look at Uber, you look at Lyft, all of these car sharing companies. Airbnb for house sharing and stuff. You know, it’s just very interesting. I mean, all that stuff came from small entrepreneurs that were sitting in a room one day and thought, this ought to exist. And they brought it into reality, you know?
JASON BURACK: They didn’t spend that much money. I believe some of these websites were put up for $20,000 or something like that.
JASON HARTMAN: Oh, even less.
JASON BURACK: Yeah, $20,000 or less—well, maybe some other fees and things like that. But basically where someone could list, oh, I have a spare apartment I’m leaving, I want to make some extra bucks renting it out, and all of a sudden you have a more efficiently run global hotel type of chain, where they don’t own any physical assets, yet they’re generating a steady stream of cash flow from collecting fees for matching up buyers and sellers. You have a market there—
JASON HARTMAN: Oh, no question.
JASON BURACK: Where there was no market. So, it’s just—it’s just amazing, though, that you know, that you have the entrenched people, the tax unions with the medallions for Uber, and you have, you know, all the other hotels who paid the regulation fees and stuff like that. You have everyone fighting it. You know, in the long term, we need more entrepreneurship and innovation, because that’s what creates jobs in the real economy. It’s not these big large corporations being able to borrow almost near zero and buy back their stock. That doesn’t create jobs. Normally when corporations fire employees, their stocks go up.
JASON HARTMAN: Absolutely. And believe me, they will get rid of those employees as fast as they can. As we get to the age of increased use of robotic technologies—they may not be physical robots, but software robots—as well. Believe me, the big corporations will embrace that sooner, because they can afford the capital expenditure to do it. It’s totally true. But you know, Jason, I’d like to really drill down with you for just a moment, if we could, before you go, on the sharing economy. Because I think the whole concept of Uber, Airbnb, those types of sharing economy companies, are very interesting. And they have profound economic implications. And this is what I mean. Before Uber, before Airbnb, the world had about—you know, just approximately—the same amount of resources, in terms of cars, and houses, and apartments, available, as it does today. The amount of resources hasn’t changed much. But what those companies have done so brilliantly, even if they didn’t intend to, is they’ve taken dormant resources, and put them to work.
And there are companies now where you can own a car, and you can put it into a rental pool. Not through Enterprise Rent-A-Car, or Avis or Hertz—you know, you can just do it yourself through an app on your phone, and share your car. And if you don’t have a car, you can share someone else’s. And so, you know, my car right now is sitting in the garage. I’m not using it. It’s a dormant resource. It’s worth absolutely nothing sitting there. In fact, it’s worth less than nothing, because it’s depreciating, and it’s costing me money to own it. The sharing economy is fascinating. I mean, it’s really—I think it ultimately does offset some of the inflationary pressures in the economy. I think there are two sides to that I’d love to get your opinion on, because on one side I think, oh well, you know, the sharing economy is kind of deflationary. But on the other side, I think that gosh, if people have more abundance, more access to resources, that ultimately could be inflationary, because it allows them to do more things, and increase velocity of money. So, I don’t really know. What do you think?
Drilling down on the sharing economy
JASON BURACK: The innovation coming out of Silicon Valley, and the sharing economy is no doubt part of that, and you mentioned some of the websites, but that and the Shell oil revolution, has definitely prevented the US from collapsing already. The US would have definitely collapsed, our trade deficit would have exploded even further, had we not been having some type of job creation, value creation, innovation, out of Silicon Valley, and that’s what the free market can produce. Look at a lot of the projections. Go back and look at some of the projections for robotics, or some of these others things. Robotic experts, Jason, I went and watched documentaries on YouTube; you can look up robotics documentaries that are an hour long. They didn’t think any of the gains that had occurred in the last 12 years were possible in their lifetime. The free market produces a lot of surprises like this, and this is what the Austrian school of economics teaches; that people, you know, when entrepreneurs are given more free time, and there’s resources available, they’re going to figure out how to rearrange those resources and use them more efficiently. But when there’s rules, regulations, taxes, hurdles, a lot of barriers that are making it difficult to do that, it’s not gonna happen.
So, Silicon Valley and the Shell oil revolution have been two of the things that have definitely prevented the US from hyperinflating, besides the US being able to export so many dollars outside the country to more willing participants who are propping up the dollar and the US consumer. In terms of Silicon Valley and the sharing economy, I think it’s great, buy you gotta be careful, because look at all the groups that are fighting it right now. They’re gonna spend a lot of money to do it. I think that’s why the net effect of things is, in the future, you know, until all these bilateral trade agreements that China is doing with Germany and Switzerland and Brazil and you name pretty much any other country outside the United States right now, they’re doing bilateral trade agreements with them. Until all these things are finalized in some type of agreement where, you know, the dollar as world reserve currency is over, we’ve moved on to the next system—we’re going to be stuck in stagflation. So, we do have some deflationary pressures in terms of the things we mentioned, and then you have the Keynesians who just won’t allow any real type of deflation in asset prices, at least in nominal value of certain things like that, and it’s just creating a muck of things.
If you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re a good small businessman, and you’re in a growth market and you can grow your company, you don’t really worry about these things until the government comes with rules and regulations trying to stop you. But hopefully we don’t get to the point where we go to the Soviet Union where there’s no private property rights, or it gets to the European levels of things where—in Italy, I believe, in order to get a credit card machine, or a cash register, I think in Italy, I heard this from someone in Italy, you have to bribe like five government officials. I don’t think we’re to that level of corruption and cronyism and bureaucracy, but unfortunately, Jason, except for a few key sectors, I see less free markets and not more.
Closing comments
JASON HARTMAN: Jason, give out your website, and tell people where they can find out more about Wall Street for Main Street.
JASON BURACK: Our main website is Wall Street for Main Street, which is www.wallstformainst.com; we have a rapidly growing investing podcast on iTunes, and also on our YouTube channel, which is Wallstformainst, and—
JASON HARTMAN: All you have to say—that’s a hard way to give out your domain name. Let me help you. I would say it’s just, Wall, and then ST for street, you know, and then spelled out for, and then main st. So, Wallstformainst, and just abbreviate street.
JASON BURACK: To expand on that a little bit more, we cover Austrian school economics, so we look through all markets, a lot of different asset classes, through a free market Austrian school lens. We look at macroeconomics, we just interviewed someone from China today who’s been living in China for 15 years, a China expert; we look at different asset classes, commodities, precious metals, energy, real estate, we had you on recently, and things like that. So, we’re just trying to see things for the economy, and not trust all the government statistics, and try to figure out the reality of things, and how that affects peoples’ portfolio, and their businesses, and things like that.
JASON HARTMAN: Well, Jason Burack, thanks so much for joining us today, and keep up the good work. Keep getting the word out there and educating people about this. I do think it’s catching on. You know, there’s definitely a class of people who really are starting to get it, and it’s just more and more every day. So, I’m glad your podcast is out there, and you’re informing people about this, and keep up the good work.
JASON BURACK: Thank you, and keep up the good work too; I enjoy your work as well.
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ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): I’ve never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found that’s what Wall Street considers him to be!
ANNOUNCER (MALE): Really? How is that possible at all?
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Simple. Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes, because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.
ANNOUNCER (MALE): I know! I mean, how many people do you know, not including insiders, who created wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? Those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): Stocks, and other non-direct traded assets, are losing game for most people. The typical scenario is: you make a little, you lose a little, and spin your wheels for decades.
ANNOUNCER (MALE): That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win! Which means, unless you’re one of them, you will not win.
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And, unluckily for Wall Street, Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.
ANNOUNCER (MALE): Yep, and that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios. He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times, and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): We can pick local markets, untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing, and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely.
ANNOUNCER (MALE): I like how he teaches you to protect the equity in your home before it disappears, and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): And this set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered for only $197.
ANNOUNCER (MALE): To get your creating wealth encyclopedia, book one, complete with over 20 hours of audio, go to www.jasonhartman.com/store.
ANNOUNCER (FEMALE): If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker, Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.
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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
The Jason Hartman Team
