The Economic Truth: U.S. Debt, The Dollar, Gold, and What’s Next?

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: David McAlvany

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/28/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. And it’s also our monthly focus on economics, finance and biblical stewardship with David McAlvany. He’s the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group comprised of McAlvany Precious Metals and McAlvany Wealth Management. There are a few things that are more fundamental to what we term the quality of life, something that we’ve come as Americans to enjoy in the world actually looking on and admiring for a long time. But there are a few things that are more fundamental to that than economics. Since wrapped up in economics are the components of money and taxes, of course, and savings and investments and a lot more. Yet the economic conditions of any given nation also determines the standard of living in that nation. The availability of food often goes along with that, the ability to travel and the difference between whether life is committed to more leisurely activities or basic survival skills.

But confidence in government and politicians are linked to that as well. And because a nation’s currency and the value of that money is directly tied to a number of things, the tangible value of that currency, whether it be paper that we hold in our hand, like we have paper dollar bills and all of that, or tangible gold and silver, or the amount of debt incurred by that government or the people themselves. The economy and factors driving it are key. They’re key to elections. They’re key in the heart of politicians’ promises to its citizens. And frankly, the whole reporting of economic data is subject to enormous deception, hype and distorted reporting. We all know that. It’s just the way it is. And it’s the reality that underpins what I’d like to cut through today with my guest, David McAlvany, since there has never been a time when the US economic figures have been so contradictory.

Now that’s my perspective. We’ll get David’s in a minute, but the US economy unraveling on one hand, getting tighter, the US and global debt never been higher, that’s for sure. And the title I’ve chosen to frame today’s conversation is simply this, the economic truth, US debt, the dollar, gold, and of course what’s next. Stay with us today as I believe this program will help provide much needed clarity in a time of great need and deception. With that, I welcome to the program, David McAlvany. David, thanks for being back with me.

David McAlvany:

Sam, great to be with you again.

Sam Rohrer:

In this segment, David, I’d like for you to establish the truth, get some standards here. The truth about the current US and if possible global economic condition, kind of a bigger picture view. For instance, I put this out here. US ambassador to Canada, P. Huckstra, former congressman from Michigan. I just heard him just yesterday or so stated on Fox News that, for instance, he said the Trump administration and he still sees an economic growth rate by the end of this year to hit 6%. Well, that’s an incredible number. Yet with US debt, these are Frank, today’s numbers, US debt up 70% since 2019. Total household debt up 35 to 40%, $5 trillion. Credit card debt up by the same 35 to 40%, about 350 billion. And the CPI or inflation rate doubled or about 110% increase. The question is, how is that possible? It seems there’s almost two parallel universes, David.

So here, what is the truth about where we are?

David McAlvany:

Well, great question, Sam. And you’re right. There’s some contradictory views built in. When you look at a measure of economic growth, we use a statistic GDP gross domestic product that kind of captures all economic activity and it also includes government deficit spending. So we do get sort of a distorted view of what growth is comprised of. If I go out and spend money, maybe it’s with cash that I have, maybe it’s with a credit card that I have. In one hand, it’s money that I have in the bank, so to say, or that I’ve already earned. If I use a credit card, it’s money that I haven’t earned, but I’ve got to come up with at some point. And so debt in essence draws tomorrow’s wealth into today and you’re sort of pre-spending if you will. Eventually you’re going to have to pay it back.

And so I think when we think about economic growth, 6% is not a reasonable number. We’re not on track for that currently. Atlanta GDP now has this at 3.8%. The best we got from a statistic last year was a single quarter, which was annualized out to 4.4%. There’s really not a lot to suggest that that 6% number is in any way realistic. Where we do see a lot of spending is in the build out for data centers and AI. So corporate spending is through the roof, which is certainly a huge part of GDP growth today. And government spending in this case, a lot of it’s deficit spending and extra $2 trillion of deficit spending this year that gets factored into the GDP statistic as well.

Net, what are we saying? There is growth. There is economic activity. We’re not in a recession today. We’re not in a depression today. The question is how durable is the spending? Nobody’s asking questions on the AI side in terms of, will this actually pay for itself? Do we have a return on investment here that’s going to be positive in any reasonable timeframe? The answer for that is I think definitive, no. We can’t even figure out if it’s going to pay for itself in 10 or 15 years. Kevin Worst thinks it’s going to be the greatest productivity boom in recorded history. That remains to be seen. What we do know is that the US consumer, which makes up if you look at consumption, 68% of that GDP statistic is coming from the US consumer spending. You really have two different stories there. One is the wealthy who have assets and on the basis of a wealth effect where their balance sheet looks healthy, their 401ks are growing, their assets are up.

They’re willing to get out and spend. That sort of describes the top of what economists have called the K shaped economy. The top leg, if you will, extending out to the right. The bottom leg is 90% of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. And as inflation increases, they are being squeezed more and more. So you really have the tail of two cities, if you will. There are the tale of two economies. The wealthier getting wealthier and are happy about it. Those who don’t have assets to appreciate in the context of this inflation are getting squeezed and are already in recession. So the real world for 90% of Americans, recessionary, not happy. And then a small slice at the top doing quite well. So that’s kind of how it breaks down. You’ve got consumption is a huge piece. You’ve got deficit spending is a huge piece.

You’ve got corporate spending as a huge piece for the AI boom. That’s kind of what we have in terms of economics.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. David, very good. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. My guest today, David McElvane, is the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group. And our theme today is the economic truth, US debt, the dollar, gold, and what’s next. We’ve got an overall macro view of the economy here. We’re going to touch on, we’re going to get some biblical principles as we work through the program. Next segment, talk about interest rates and what’s involved in that and debt. Well, if you’re just joining us today, welcome aboard. This is our monthly focus on economics and biblical stewardship and things related to finance. My special guest has been with me on these programs that we do is David McAlvan. He’s with the McAlvany Financial Group and they have a website at Macalvany.com. That’s M-C-A-L-V-A-N-Y, maculvaney.com. And if you go up backslash and stand in the gap, then there’ll be something there for you.

All right. Now being a case, let’s move into this now, David, the matter of interest rates. We’re hearing an awful lot about interest rates and bond yields with for most people that may go over their head and what that means, but let’s try and the segment take and bring some sense to that. And since 2019, President Trump has been or Donald Trump in office, out of office. I’m just saying that individual, either in office or out, has been urging the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, suggesting even going to zero, or he had on occasion actually said negative, which is hard for people to imagine what in the world’s a negative interest rate, but his insistence on doing so and attempting to influence Federal Reserve policy such as has been the last year in such a public fashion has been rather historic. Most presidents have related kind of quietly behind the scenes, but this has been out there in front and we know now that the president’s choice, Kevin Wash, to whom you referred in the last segment, since he’s now officially the Federal Reserve chair and President Trump so visibly demanding lower rates, now all looking or most look and say Kevin Wash, the new chairman, the new chairman, now finds himself in a box where on one hand, if he lowers rates, the economy ends in trouble.

And if he raises the rates, the economy is in trouble. That doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. I’d like you to share that. Share the dilemma facing the Federal Reserve on the matter of interest rates and then talk about interest rates generally and some of the factors driving this situation, this box as I described it in which our nation now finds itself.

David McAlvany:

Sam, the dilemma is this. We have too much debt to raise rates and on the other hand, we have too much inflation not to raise rates. So this is where the Fed is really in a corner and let’s start with that first point, too much debt to raise rates. We have roughly a third of all of outstanding US treasury debt that has to be refinanced this next year. The average interest cost on our debt today is 3.37%. You compare that to all of the various interest rates that we could pay depending on how far out you go in financing. Finance it at one month and it’s 3.7. Finance it at one year and it’s 3.8. Finance it at 10 years and it’s 4.48. Finance it on longer terms and you’re over 5%. So if you look at that entire, what they call the yield curve, the entire yield curve is above our current average interest cost.

What that suggests is that if you don’t bring rates down, you’re going to have a higher interest cost going forward. And we’re already over a trillion dollars a year in terms of the total interest cost. In fact, in April we had kind of a surprising number, $112 billion in interest that we paid in that month. That annualizes out to 1.344 trillion. It’s not going to be that high every month, but it was a surprising number and if you annualize it clearly, you’re in the 25% of all tax revenue going just to pay the interest component on the debt. So again, the key point here is that we have too much debt to raise rates and we’ve got a third of that debt rolling over and it’s going to be at a higher number than it’s currently at today. So the interest costs are going higher, that’s a problem.

That’s why Trump would like to see interest rates come down. The problem with bringing interest rates down is that inflation is a reality. We’ve got year on year inflation, the most recent CPI, 3.8%. If you look at the producer price index, which is sort of the wholesale price index, it’s year over year at 6%. And if you look at April’s number, 1.4% month on month or month over month change, that annualizes out to about 16.8. That’s a little high. I don’t think we have to worry about that number quite yet, but there’s too much inflation not to increase interest rates. So this is the dilemma that they face. One, it will dramatically impact the revenue and cash flow situation with the treasury and again, inflation’s a reality for us. We’ve got an energy crisis where 15% of global oil is not flowing and we will see that flow through the remainder of the year and impact everything from what it costs to pay for a stock of celery or a tomato or a gallon of milk.

Consumers are feeling the pinch in a big way. One of two ways to fight inflation is to raise rates. As we described earlier, that’s an impossibility, but lowering rates just adds fuel to the inflation fire and destroys the consumer.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And so clearly, I think you made that clear and I’m saying it’s in a box. So however you describe it, it’s a dilemma that does not have a quick, easy response. Now I want you to comment on this because our listeners may be observing and hearing, for instance, that Japan, who has been our largest holder of our debt. In other words, when the treasury, when the Federal Reserve is involved and all the federal government goes out and tries to find somebody to borrow money from to pay for our debt, they go to other countries. Japan has been the biggest. China has been there, but both of them have been trying to get rid of US dollars. Talk a little bit about what that is and how that is contributing to the dilemma we put before us.

David McAlvany:

Yeah. I mean, so one of the things we’re talking about is that the debt issue and the direction of interest rates. We talked about how inflation is likely to pressure interest rates higher. The other factor which is going to impact a regime where interest rates go higher is having too much supply and not enough demand for that paper. So you talked about Japan, you talked about China. These have been the reliable creditors, if you will, the folks who’ve loaned us money and they’re stepping back, right? And this is in a period of time where we’re actually continuing to ramp up the number of IOUs we’re putting into the marketplace. The only way that you resolve having too much supply and now not enough demand is for the interest rate to rise and basically be an incentive for people to come in and finance their deficits.

It remains to be seen if they will step in and at what price they will step in. The bias towards interest rates is definitely higher. In fact, we see going back to October of 2025, the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley is suggesting that the classic model for a portfolio, 60% stocks, 40% bonds, you should cut that bond position in half, cut it to 20% and increase the gold allocation to 20%. Why? Because he sees a structural problem in the debt markets. Interest rates are going higher and as they go higher, the value of bonds goes lower. We’re talking about what investors have typically seen as a safe asset. Bonds now have a certain toxicity to them and are expected to decline in price as interest rates continue to move higher. Again, because of inflation and because of a supply and demand imbalance. And so you’re exactly right.

Japan stepping back, China’s stepping back. In fact, some of the folks in the Middle East are stepping back. So who finances our debt going forward? That’s a big question without an answer today.

Sam Rohrer:

And the problem with that, David, is the fact that our government, Congress, the president together, continue to spend way more than the tax revenue coming in. So we’re contributing to a greater problem at a very time when other people willing to step up and buy our debt is also decreasing. So it almost looks like that however that split is actually almost exponentially increasing. Is that the way you look at

David McAlvany:

It? Yeah, for sure. And this is one of the reasons why I think investors are wise to consider precious metals in a portfolio because typically you would, if you wanted to de- risk a portfolio, you could move to cash. Well, that’s a problem if you have rising inflation or they move to bonds. Well, that’s a problem if you have rising interest rates. Where do you go for a safe haven in the context of inflation? It puts gold and silver front and center. So let’s come back to this debt issue. The congressional budget office said we’re going to have $1.9 trillion in new deficits this year. That was before. Those estimates were before the Middle East conflict and they did not take into account if by the third or fourth quarter we find ourselves in a recession, what happens there? We could actually see the deficit numbers increase by 50 or 100%.

We could be at three trillion, four trillion if in fact we end up in a recession later in the year, but we’re absolutely going north of two trillion in deficit spending this year. The CBO already knew it. They just didn’t know we were going to kind of become the … We’re sort of hitting the hornet’s nest in the Middle East and that has a definite impact to the deficit this year.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you’re listening and saying, “Wow, wow. Okay. Some of that I knew, maybe some of that I did not know. ” But the bottom line is overspending debt always has consequences. We’re going to get to what the Bible says about it because it’s very clear, but that is happening. Now there’s a dilemma. Interest rates can’t raise them. Interest rates can’t lower them. Government refuses to cut its spending, actually wants to increase spending even more. Okay, that’s part of our real problem. When I come back, we’re going to further that conversation on gold, silver, crypto. Where else can we go? Welcome back. We’re right in the middle of the program and this segment, we’re going to talk about the truth about gold, silver, and crypto. We just talked about that. I just mentioned it in the last segment. Today’s program is the economic truth.

US debt, we’ve had discussion on that. The dollar we’ve gone partway into we could go a lot further, but hit the high spot and then gold and silver. And then we’re going to next segment talk about what can we expect? What’s next as things are laying out? Let me give you some numbers here. I did a comparison, little research on my own before I asked David to go more into detail about gold and silver and so forth and how that fits within a nation’s money system and so forth. But here’s some numbers. I think you’ll find it. Well, shocking, frankly, I did. And I just went to 2019. So I just took numbers here May 2026 and compared and looked back to 2019, which was when the world was a little bit more normal. That was pre- COVID, which changed everything and there’s no question about it.

But here’s some numbers. Since 2019 to this point today, US debt climbed 70%, 70% in seven years, right? From 22.7 trillion to the current 39 trillion, 70%. Get that number, that’s US debt. The price of gold has increased by 244%, 244% moving from the price 2019 of about $1,280 an ounce to the current approximately $4,500 an ounce. Price of silver has increased by 300% actually ahead of gold, that same time period going from around $17 to $18 an ounce to the current approximate $75 an ounce. Bitcoin, now it’s different than gold and silver, but it’s out there. We’re all aware of it. Bitcoin has increased 767% moving from an approximately $7,500 value in 2019 to the present approximately $70,000. All right. Now keep that in mind as I look at this. Now, in the same period of time, the value of the US dollar has plummeted 25%.

Practical sense, that means that what it took from all of us when we spent a dollar to buy something in 2019, what cost a dollar in 2019 now requires a dollar and 30 cents, 30% more. All right now at the same time, central banks around the world, according to the world, gold council data have purchased over 170 million ounces of gold or about 53 to 5,400 tons of gold. Now all this to say, here’s the point, you’re not going to remember all those numbers, but they’re huge, right? The point is major change is underway in US finance and how everything is considered, all of which impacts economics and so is the world. And the way people are looking at this, banks and sovereign governments are looking at that change and specifically gold and silver. Okay. Now David, with that being established, add or subtract from anything I said, but would you explain the relationship between national currencies and gold and silver where we used to in this country, people used to be able to have a piece of gold in their hand or silver and they would exchange.

That’s not the case anymore. We have paper money generally now, but explain the relationship between gold and silver and how that’s all fitting into what’s happening now.

David McAlvany:

Well, at the end of the war we entered into an international agreement called the Bretton Woods Agreement and there in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the global central banks decided to use the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency and we moved to the center of the universe. We had the largest gold reserves and we were considered post-war the most stable economy, the most stable currency. We were able to help others rebuild after the war and so everything was referenced in US dollars. Trade for that period from 1944 really to the present, the US dollar has been central to the goods and services moving all around the world and the US dollar and US treasury has been a core holding for central bank reserves. What we are witnessing today is a monetary regime change unlike anything we’ve seen going back to 1944 and we’re seeing a preference for using other currencies other than the US dollar.

So you’ve got the BRICS who, which is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, they want to move away from the dollar and we’ve got central banks who are doing the same thing substituting gold for US treasuries as a core reserve and they no longer see the dollar as this source of stability, which has been assumed since 1944. Of course, it started to unravel in 1971 and at that time a Starbucks coffee would have cost you 30 cents today it’s between four and five bucks, significant increase in a price of Starbucks coffee, which is really to say the purchasing power of the US dollar has gone down considerably and that’s one of the things that you’ve got to consider if you’re a reserve asset manager, what’s happening to the value of my reserves? Are they being eroded because of monetary policy, because of fiscal policy?

What was a safe asset? Is it now categorically a risk asset? How do we guarantee that our reserves are safe? There’s a new dimension too starting in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and the US Treasury seized half of Russian foreign currency reserves, $300 billion worth of reserves and the central bank community took that into account and said there’s a new version of risk, not just the devaluation of our reserves in US dollar terms, but they could actually be taken from us. So what can we do to take our reserves and move them off grid, gain control? And so they have doubled up on their gold purchases starting in 2022. They were running at a four to 500 ton per year rate prior to that, going back to 2019. In 2022, they bumped that to a thousand tons a year. It’s been consistently a thousand tons a year ever since if you’re looking at central bank demand.

They don’t like the dollar for a good reason and they don’t like the US Treasury and State Department interfering in their affairs for good reason. So we have this monetary regime change in motion and the implications for your listeners are that we are likely to see an additional 30 to 40% devaluation over the next three years. What do you hold your reserves in? You might have considered cash a safe or non-risky asset. In the context of the world reappraising the value of the dollar and dollar assets, they are front running a significant move. They are the first movers, if you will, and it’s going to be the retail consumer investor in the United States and globally who is playing catch up. I think we are in fact in a transitional phase from central banks having driven the price of gold and silver over the last four, five, six years to greater public participation.

And I think we are in that phase now and it only began in the middle of last year where investors began to pay attention. If you look at global financial assets, which sum to about $312 trillion today, only 2.7% of that is in gold. Public participation has been very limited to this point. We think that the next two, three, four years, you will see the general public take a major role in the gold and silver market and frankly, there’s not enough space for them to do so without there being an exponential move in price.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. Don’t have much time left, but I want to get a comment on that. Crypto’s come into this whole thing. Bitcoin in particular, it’s seen a tremendous growth. Some banks are actually putting some value in that. Where does crypto if all fit into this potential replacement?

David McAlvany:

It is an alternative to the US dollar and I think will continue to be a popular alternative to the US dollar. There are certainly differences between it and gold as a reserve asset gold I think is a superior option. As a speculative expression, certainly Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will continue to gain a broader audience. So I think your listeners have to decide if they want to speculate on the one hand or create a very solid reserve on the other. I think two different motivations. Although if you looked at sort of the umbrella idea, how do you diversify away from dollars, both of them are credible expressions. Just one is far more speculative than the other.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. All right. Let me go back to gold and silver and just get a quick response for you. The price has gone … The value, it was like $1,280 announced for gold prints back in 2019. I mean, it’s about 4,500. If someone say, “Well, the value of gold has increased,” others say, “Well, the price of gold has gone up because the value of the dollar has gone down.” Explain that.

David McAlvany:

Yeah. I think that’s a very important and I think complicated observation. It is the truth that it takes more currency units to buy an ounce of gold. And you see this as you price gold in other currencies even more dramatically. For instance, if you go to India, a major consumer of gold, gold sells for 450,000 rupees. If you go to yen over 725,000 yen, it’s really a commentary on the weakness of the currency. So part of what we will see in this coming dollar devaluation is gold goes higher because the dollar is worth less. It takes more currency units to buy the same amounts of gold.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, David, just hold on because we’re out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, Steve, with us to have David complete that explanation in the next segment and then we’ll kind of shift to say, all right, in addition, how should a wise believer be responding to these challenges? Okay. As we go into our final segment now, again, if you’ve joined us partway through the program, our focus today has been on economics, finance, biblical stewardship. And we’re going to conclude here in this segment with my guest, David McElvein. He’s the CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group. And as I gave earlier, you have a website at maculvaney.com. And if you go back/stand in the gap, then there’ll be something there that can be of interest to those of you who are listening here on this program. Now that being the case, David, you were making some final statements.

I think about gold and silver, and I had to ask you the question about whether the dramatic increase in the price of somebody going by an ounce of gold or an ounce of silver today, why it’s so much more expensive now than it was back just 2019. And you were explaining that part of it is because the value of the dollar has gone down. It takes more dollars to buy the same thing and what it paid for in 2019. But other things are happening there. Conclude that and then work that into what you think will be the next move that people can expect based on where we are. For instance, you mentioned the BRICS nations are trying to dislodge the dollar. People, those who have been buying our debt are not wanting to buy our debt anymore. China, Japan, Arab nations, oil nations in the Middle East, they’re not wanting to do that, which puts us in a very, very big problem.

We’ve described it a dilemma. The Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates, but they can’t because that’ll hurt the economy. They can’t lower it because that’s going to hurt at all. So we are in a box and there’s a lot of discussion about moving to a digital currency or something of that type. But anyways, give your thoughts on that gold and silver discussion and then go to what you think happening next.

David McAlvany:

Yeah. I think if you step back from the economic statistics we’ve been talking about and look at this from more of a political, geopolitical and sociological perspective, what we have, Sam, is a breaking down of trust and there is greater skepticism of institutions today than we’ve had in many decades. And whether it is the Supreme Court or Congress or the White House or institutions like the World Health Organization or the IMF, there is greater suspicion and as that grows again, I think what you see is gold and silver as an expression of a lack of trust and that cycle is not complete. We have essentially a deglobalization occurring, a dedolarization occurring, and major structural changes which represent a new order and a new perspective in the markets. Investors are just beginning, as we mentioned in the last segment, to adopt this view and public participation in the medals has really just begun in earnest.

You’ve got Deutsche Bank with a base case for gold at $8,000 an ounce. You’ve got Bank of America with an expectation of silver trading by the end of this year at between $135 and $309 an ounce. I think that’s too aggressive for a 2026 timeframe, but those kinds of numbers are very realistic over a two to three year timeframe. And so I think what you will see is people migrating there for a combination of reasons. One, concerns and this breakdown of trust and two, because the opportunity is there and there is an opportunity to grow wealth in that context, preserve and grow. So practical considerations for your listeners and this is sort of broadly speaking, of course, I don’t know individual financial circumstances, but I would pay down debt. I would reduce your stock and bond exposure. I would build a personal reserve and I would balance that personal reserve between cash and bullion, both gold and silver.

What we do is unique in the world of money management. We have two separate businesses. One is a metals brokerage business. We’ve been doing that since 1972. We worked with Senator Jesse Helm’s office in the 70s to get gold legalized again, January 1st, 1975. We’ve been a major player in that space. In the hard asset space or in the wealth management business, we focus on hard assets. It’s interesting that Goldman Sachs came out with a paper March of this year where they said, basically we’ve got the revenge of the old world. Everyone’s focused on these ethereal ideas, AI, cryptocurrencies, things that you can’t really put your arms around. They think the best place to be for the next several years is in hard assets. It’s what they call the halo or an acronym that stands for heavy assets, low obsolescence. That happens to be what our focus has been for a number of years in hard assets, focused on global natural resources, precious metals miners, infrastructure, real estate.

These are things that actually do quite well in the context of inflation and rising interest rates. So whether it is playing defense and again, reducing your equity and bond exposure, paying down debt, building a cash reserve, these are your defensive ways of approaching the markets or taking an offensive, more growth oriented approach like our asset management group does in the halo type companies, hard assets, low obsolescence. I think these are things that have to be considered and it will surprise the general public how high gold and silver go. Part of that is increasing demand with an asset that is very supply inelastic. You cannot double, triple, quadruple the amount of gold that is available and that’s where you see an exponential price move where there’s more demands than there is supply and the only way for that to adjust is with a much higher gold or silver price.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. We don’t have hardly any time left, but you made a comment anyone holding cash inflation that we’re seeing the value of the dollars going down, you say hold a portion of cash and have some intangible precious metals. Clarify what you’re saying there about the cash.

David McAlvany:

Yeah, because when you have a reserve, you need a part of your reserve which is spendable immediately. That’s the cash portion and you have to be somewhat philosophical about a three, four, five, six percent inflation loss because cash gives you optionality. If you have a sufficient precious metals position to offset it, imagine a barbell. In your mind, picture a barbell. On the one hand, you’ve got cash. On the other hand, you’ve got physical metals. Any degradation to purchasing power that you have in the cash portion is offset by the growth in the physical metals themselves. So you’re creating a reserve balancing liquidity with cash, with the insulation if you will, or insurance, that dynamic with precious metals offsetting any loss of purchasing power.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that’s good. And I appreciate your answering that because I think it’s a question that a lot of people have had. So to have both together as the value of dollar cash goes down, which it is 25% since 2019 alone, the price of gold, the numbers I gave, 25% reductions to 2019 purchasing price of the dollar, gold has gone up 245%. So you’re saying if you have a combination of both, and again, as someone listening would consider that, they need to talk to somebody like you in order to figure out how to put that together, but the one offsets the other and they work together, the barbell expression as you’re saying. So I’m just restating what you’re saying just to help clarify, I think a point of question that people may have. Okay, David, again, we’re at the end here, so I’m going to wrap it up right now.

Again, his website for those who would want to contact David or his team, anybody there is mcalvany.com. And if you go back/stand in the gap, there’ll be a way that you can access and get some information and some more personalized response. Let’s put it that way. All right, David, thanks so much for being with me today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being a part of this program. And again, we try to take headline news across the spectrum. So if you listen regularly to the program, you’re going to hear everything from health to geopolitics to economics as we have here to Israel and prophecy to all of that, which that’s the purpose for this program. Thanks for being with us and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.