the u.k.'s government reportedly turns down the request for ecuador to grant diplomatic status to briefly julian assange. and the u.s. says it will spend one hundred fifty million dollars rebuilding iraq the city is devastated by the war on islamic state a figure dwarfed by how much the pentagon has requested this year the military operations there. and germany refuses to deport a turkish extremist who supported terrorists in syria his prison term is almost up and he could be released next year. the latest on these stories head to bronte dot called stay with us for the courage to report finding out why big porn is boosting the japanese stock market and if you're watching in the u.k.

moves into china's new deal with their boss. funny appropriate no circlip remember the south of france through customs they stole deal oh well they were the kaiser report i'm max kaiser today we're going to be covering some interesting things. well max in the second half we have a special with jim rickards we were in new york in december as you remember during christmas we had an interview with him but we did a little extra so before i talk about bitcoin because i know that might trigger him we're going to talk a little bit about gold just to remind everybody just briefly that i've gone long gold for twenty eighteen i believe we're going to see a few good years it's been very boring for the past four years where it's been

trading in a tedious range especially if you're a big coin investor at which has been parabolic and exciting so just see now i've gone long gold and gold miners and so far they're doing pretty well so that's fantastic this is you know i think you're going to be really nicely versus the price of let's say oh i'm copper or so industrial metal or maybe you know christmas trees in crypto terms it'll be like you're dead but you know in other terms it'll be exciting well yes because it encrypts a currencies are exciting but the other thing that i think is happening is not only will the tax cuts they will benefit us but they will not benefit the budget deficit and the national debt also you have the fact that. but you know the stock markets

go into two twenty eighteen at some of the most overvalued numbers in the history of stock markets so i reckon that obviously markets can remain at more rational than anybody could remain solvent short betting against it but i think should there be a spectacular bust i think even with you know even though the fed has raised interest rates a little tiny bit i think there's there's little that's going to be available to combat the crash that does come if it does come in twenty eighteen or twenty one thousand and i think therefore it's probably quite wise to hold called that's my opinion that's why a couple of mornings or so i've picked up on was the debt you mentioned debt is rising and gold tends to track the rise of debt you know house of the last few years has been stuck in kind of a bearish trend those compared to some other stuff but if it catches up to the debt chart you know if you overlay those two you know you could easily get to twenty

four twenty five hundred on gold and that would bring it back to kind of a normalized price action versus the amount of debt in the system i agree with you there so that's like a almost one hundred percent move from here and of course silver being it's crazy uncle would mean you know so over a fifty sixty seventy dollars an ounce you know that would be a big bang for the silver box for sure and i'm not in any doubt about that now speaking of sort of the debt economy's overloaded with debt you had the bubble of japan from one thousand nine hundred eighty seven eighty eight when it started to crash eighty nine eighty nine of those capering track. and so it's still you know what the stock market there are still twenty five percent below that peak in one nine hundred eighty nine so however you know what three decades law that last decades. they're looking forward to possibly coin actually finally boosting g.d.p. their queen could boost japan's g.d.p.

no more analysts say japan's bitcoin craze could help the country's economic growth research analysts at no more instinet said we estimate the wealth effect from unrealized gains on big queen trading by japanese investors since the start of twenty seventeen and estimate a potential boost to consumer spending of between twenty three point two billion yen and ninety six billion yen which is about two hundred six million to eight hundred fifty five million i think that's you know it's something i point three point three percentage points they would add to g.d.p. we were the japanese are some of the biggest forex trader in the world well this is an amazing story because they were saying real geo political impact of bet going on a g. twenty country g seven country japan actually the spending power that comes with the rise of big going in the millions of people who are buying it in japan the multi billion dollars that they've appreciated in value is causing a genuine effect in their economy and this is going to be the year twenty eight or

a big going to crypto currencies have this geo political influence you've got the central bank of ghana who is allegedly we're going to get more of a rumor on twitter might not be real going to dig into this i'm reaching out to my contacts in ghana to get some people on the show to talk about this but they're adding to their central bank only for a fact we know that all gary has three billion dollars worth of bitcoin right and that's because they have some bad guys there are a lot of the you know the online hackers and you know scam artists that sort of nigerian prince scam artists a lot of it goes through there the people of venezuela have been you know using record as a savior as a lifeline because they're currently one of the hyperinflationary collapse so there's four countries right there that are still in some process of getting more involved in a geo political level in into bitcoin and of course they're going to be buying that for. there are central banks and the sovereign wealth funds we buying it as well plus has funds and you know you get to twenty thousand and twenty eighteen as a reasonable price target pretty quickly so i mean these could be issues that

basically negate my bet on gold because i'm betting that the stock markets will crash if the economy starts booming especially in japan which has been dead for so long you know it could be a change my thesis but right now i feel like it will crash and here's some data you so. going into the first quarter of twenty eighteen moreover the fact that the rise and decline prices was concentrated in twenty seventeen q four could result in the wealth effect materializing in twenty eighteen q one in the first quarter of twenty teen and if that is the case we estimate a potential boost to real g.d.p. growth on an annualized quarter on quarter basis of up to about point three percentage points and on top of that i want to say the fourth quarter of of the u.s. g.d.p. i think december is going to show a real shocking amount of spending and durable goods and. investment

by companies cap ex i know for a fact that i did that because once you know they are the tax cuts came in at the end of december you know your write offs your deductibles like are way higher for a twenty seventeen if so if you could jam in as much cap ex and twenty seventeen years you're going to be able to write off far more of it than you are in twenty eighteen so i know i bought are a lot of equipment computers and stuff that we need for the kaiser report and our other productions so i think we're going to have a surprise. and how much further this market rally might be able to go oh well that's an interesting analysis you know to further look at the price of gold action and what am i doing twenty a day and i've been saying for a while that the bitcoin is ation hyper because it is ation of the global economy will put a dent in the machinery on wall street to suppress the price of gold as we've seen

them do for a number of years and that will free up a path for gold to move higher as well and no more their analysis shows that the japanese hold three point seven million bitcoin which would equate to about twenty eight point five billion dollars at the exchange rate day at that moment that they did this analysis sure well it's sound money and it's money that is pushing out all the junk money all the money the money world is collapsing the u.s. dollar is in a hyperinflationary collapse against big going and money is headed today you know they tried it in nine hundred seventy one they went off the gold standard effectively and we went into a period that's never been tried before of every single currency in the world referencing each other with no buttress or without any balance without any reference commodity to give that any kind of reasonable foundations and failed so the other child i see for twenty eighteen is the. real bitcoin companies coming to the market and the exposure of these kind of fake hysteria

a lot of people there is kind of a dead dot com like crazy around big point people have no understand and they're just throwing money at all sorts of stuff all sorts junk that they have no idea what it is one of them is c.e.o. of soaring block chain stock sells about eight hundred seventy thousand dollars worth of the shares the head of a small biotech company turned krypto has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock sales already john or president c.e.o. and chairman of riaa block chain disclosed in a filing with a us securities and exchange commission that he sold thirty thousand three hundred eighty three shares at a weighted average price of twenty eight dollars and sixty one cents remember the stock of this company called riot blog chain it used to be a biotech company they soared by six hundred percent once they change their name to block chain and their their nasdaq stock symbol to riot from like bio p. . but the fact is that this company right lists three block chain investments on

its website a canadian digital currency exchange called coin square a crypto currency accounting firm called verity and test pay which is planning to apply blocks technology to telecom payments so not very big companies in this case and the value of his company is that two hundred seventy million in december just because he changed his name to block chain to talk about hooters you can talk about hooters that's a company here in the united states which is as the name suggests it's like a rush it was a restaurant chain it kind of went out of favor because of all this whole hash tag me too and when was rice becoming a little bit more prominent and hooters was a chain where you go in large breasted women serve you beer or food yes that's the concept of food hers and one of the companies that owns a lot of hooters restaurants that's publicly listed introduced a crypto. see. yeah they announced it would start they would have their own crypto

or right crypto or something and the stock skyrocketed based on based on the on a lot of you know what happened was the stock kind of went you know reacted a lot of way many react when they go to hooters yes well i think those sort of things it shows that there's a demand for some sort of investment part of the problem is that there is the i.c.a.o. so a lot of the big names the sort of cryptographers and engineers and anybody who could devise a real crypto currency air real block chain you know there's no real incentive for them to go to the public markets they just would rather do and i.c.a.o. because they don't have to give up equity then in a way so i think this is the problem is that for any ordinary investor who doesn't know the world of crypto know how to get an ether wallet and get these tokens they go to the stock market looking for anything and all you have to do is change a name to blotching and a lot of people can get scammed that way because those are not want to harken back to the dot com era where big companies put a dot com in their name and the valuations went up dramatically that's true there

seems to be a lot of this plagiarism going on where you just say all the block chain oh i'm script oh and you have an immediate response in the marketplace and i mean are we talking a lot about gold because in the second half we got jim records in this kind of a sympathy chat about gold just to make jim calls of no gold i'm talking my book it's called talking my vote talk of your book so your book era gold person and silver i would imagine well i actually over the christmas break i spoke to about two i heard of two different. whales who were going along gold as well i think really yeah so i think this is a kind of ok that's fascinating well we got to take a break when we come back as jim rickards don't go away much more coming your way so stay right here at the car is a report on our. hostility

on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battle of the. new socks for the tell you that because of the public by itself most important. off the bat doesn't help you on the cool enough to buy their products. big box that we. will watch. in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon and more mysterious than the cia and better guarded than ford knox was customs. and all the science is controlled by them and they impose the opening times so it was it was just films all plus the procedures in place of the strictest in all europe must to pieces by artists like

pecans oh and modigliani i can't boards and sold in the side this warehouse that's where the freeport comes in it covers up deals which are naturally discreet commercially discreet stealth but also discreet cigars they concern fraud from some of those paintings a link to dark secrets nobody knows how many of these secrets a kept inside the geneva freeport system you'll never obtain an inventory of all the works in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred thousand is it a matter of confidentiality only is it the world's black box of the art business. welcome back to kaiser report time now to go to the one the only the prolific author the trends see year the forecasts are on paralleled jim rickards good to

with emacs welcome to twenty eighteen thank you i have joined us so far so far so good will see how it ends up they could be the year of living dangerously all right so let's get through some question the see there because you are without a doubt got your finger on the paulson terms of trends and the intersection between markets and other things as they are got talked about what we may be seeing in the next year or two now one trend obviously is artificial intelligence you've got a boom you know what driving cars chat bot. what's happening in ai how big a market is it works going well and there's potentially a limited this is now where what we call third third wave third generation so the first generation is kind of you know big data and simple rhythms a second generation was was deep learning where the machine could teach and so its output would become input that would basically span the capability of machine third wave is now building these physical exam networks and getting inputs from other

sources of exactly i.b.m.'s watson machine which is the it's not the fastest computer because the fastest computer that can read the volume of plain language that it does and a different languages so now it's like having a thousand alice working twenty four hours a day actually maybe ten thousand on this you can't replicate that with with humans but you can do with machines to can they bring that amount of data and with meaning the machine learning combined with the recent big data in the algorithms and very powerful sounds are going to have for a punk band fozzy cognitive network. yet you play instruments i don't have much older child and i did every. probably wouldn't be able to keep it between us ok let's ask about what this does to the workforce because obviously if you have self arriving cars and. truck drivers for example is a huge work force in america and south having trucks what happens to the workforce i think there are structural problems with the workforce that have nothing to do with technology and what we're talking about they do have to do the education and

training the opioid crisis there are a lot of protheroe a lot of structural headwinds but as far as this technology is concerned it doesn't displace as many people as a lot of people think for example let's say you're a you're a nurse's aide and there's certain tests that you do and you can automate those it doesn't mean you get rid of the nurse's aid it just means the nurse's aid has more time for sort of you know more personal care or other kinds of observations of cetera so you know the computer keeps getting better in the a keeps getting better so the quality of the care goes up it doesn't mean a person doesn't have a job it just means that they might you know pivotal a little bit or have different skills that the machine can't match so i don't see a display look at an amazon warehouse stand thousand robots those aren't people those are robots well a lot of drivers out there and there are people in those warehouses and they're working pretty hard so you're right about things overstated yes you're right about the robotics and the automation absolutely right about that but it's not displacing as many jobs as you suggest is actually making those jobs more productive there are however there are structural problems in the workforce but i don't think it comes from robots as

a second and education or lack of education lack of opportunity lack of labor mobility bad tax policy and i would not underestimate the impact of the opioid crates and also the second time you've mentioned the lp out crisis what's going on there jim what do you mean the open i think it's been very well covered but but the point is this this addiction is very widespread so if you're serious out if you can't hold a job if you're a recovering addict might not be able to get a job or if you're a closet addict you might be on the job and performing dangerously and that affects productivity loss effects in there all these not applying for the opiate crisis the big drug companies and the doctors and pharmacies that all played along with the tens of billions of dollars of profits have been made i mean i just a really simple example so. so you get some you know you get some more and so look out of these to be found we know we know what so what well then how do you how do you address that what if what he did well we actually have a pretty good civil tort system in this country is this is going to play out like the tobacco crisis is companies going to you know friends with some of the big

class action lawyers and they're circling the wagons ok another so you like technology you know sure big technology for our kids i like markets i like markets l.a. technology like technology and markets on the bus but i'm also wary of some of the some of the downsides so what about the the stupid question futures you know there are there are big coin futures the effects of big oil has popped over the the wall street divide they've got big question answers. you know jamie diamond has come out you know as a fraud you're taking the same position as jamie dimon which i know you must love that well i say it's a fraud a ponzi and a mania all the same time ok but the futures contracts. what is the time walk us through that and if the wall street hates because some of it does i think so does the wall street likes something that makes money and then futures make my you see the big corn crowd when they saw that the sky were doctors exchange and c.m.e. were listed because futures they see this validates

a bubble but that's not true they're out to make money but is it off a feeling prophecy in other words it's own it's own prophesied it starts trading because futures people in are now paying their employees and decline in others and so it's becoming a unit of account it's becoming a currency in this way and doesn't it you're in analytics and data meister don't use do you see in your work how old this kid transform the global markets as we know it well i was very privileged to meet the man who came up with the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy where we came urban public really great so shows us of the twentieth century if there if there were a nobel prize in sociology which there isn't he would have won it had that long term capital management you were there obviously the catalyst. liquidations and i were i met robert. as professor emeritus clubby but his son robert c. merton who did win the nobel prize was one of our partners and i met his father so he can have the self fulfilling prophecy but the point is it can be good or bad

a bank run is a self-fulfilling prophecy the corn prices going up is a self-fulfilling prophecy because when prices going to two hundred dollars can be a self-fulfilling prophecy it's basically crowd behavior cascades and what's called and icing hyper synchronously what sometimes it becomes the new the new reality the new norm you know that the printing press for example was a great little technology at the time and your beloved catholic church was like wiped out and a lot of ways because the printing press the catholic church the stronger than ever but there's then that the printing press is the perfect analogue because this is where because fans let's call them really confuse the public you have to separate the corn the technology the printing presses the technology a printing press can produce a bible or can produce pornography so one's good one's better but they are not the same printing printed paper and the press so i think i'd like the law change and the validation of the change through the coin are paraphrases they are interlinked they are one it is the father son and holy ghost if you will of the movement that

is this currency is the coin is the currency and i'll agree it's a kind of currency it depends on the block you block chain has a future because it does not bother with regard to the because the future is very uncertain point in a sea of that the price of because i fear for the because futures are cast settles there's no actual big corn about just people making bets and you get a cash payoff in cases like on the racetrack but the big point future is there was a huge diversions to the big question price list on the exchanges that's rare because there's an arbitrage opportunity there is the oldest trade the book when you when that happens you sell the future you buy the physical the fact that that was not converging tells me there's no liquidity in the physical because otherwise you could do the trade yeah it's an efficient market at this time it's a new market and we're certainly saying. some big growth in them are. let's talk a little geopolitics or so north korea. twenty eighteen hot zone with on a very high probability of war now there's you know probably get past the olympics there are some channels being opened up between north korea and the united states

and that's a good thing but you really only two two well there are three outcomes one is kim jong un gets assassinated this regime change we could probably only do that with the help of the chinese pretty clear the chinese are not on board so i give the maybe a twenty percent probability but you can't make it zero so the other two probably one is kim jong un stands down he verifiably voluntarily gives up his weapons development programs invites inspectors a set or i give that maybe a ten percent chance he's not going to do it he might pretend but he's been lying for twenty five years you know this is been dumped in trump's lap it's really the fault of clinton bush and obama how do you rate tillerson. elect or something he's doing a good job under difficult circumstances and how he's gonna you know knock says the president a little bit but i personally rated very highly i think is that he's the right man for the job and when you're the c.e.o. of exxon you are the secretary of state in some ways i mean he goes around he says that he considers the home so they have their own security intelligence security apparatus of course sort of that era well to size to the u.s.

government over the other in some eyes right let's talk about gold ok gold of course getting back to you know before bit quite people used gold and but it's still around russia's buying a lot of all right so there are serious geopolitics they're going on you know one of the first guys to come out and say identify that a country like russia by buying lots of coal is giving themselves some strategic advantages going forward because if we have a collapse in the current monetary system for the currency system and we go back to something equating to a gold standard russia and other countries china are going to be in good shape what's the update on that well there are no you lynn is the head of the central bank russia's my favorite central banker in the world. things really smart doing things right but was interesting is that beginning in the middle two thousand and fourteen through the beginning of two thousand and seventeen of course the price of war collapsed went from about one hundred dollars a barrel low of about twenty five now it's you know up around

a little bit closer to sixty but still a collapse somewhere it was russia's reserves in round numbers went from about five hundred billion dollars to three hundred billion dollars so it's a forty percent decline in the reserves during that entire time she kept buying gold she never sold an ounce ago she sold euro she sold dollars she sold treasuries do whatever she had to do but they kept buying also very impressed with smart oh i met your guy hughes is russia is closing in on two thousand tons us as a thousand tons approximately the us is four times bigger but the but the us economy is twelve times bigger so if you look at the gold to g.d.p. ratio which is how i measure it twice russia is twice as strong as the united states such as russia it's also i don't. think gold to g.d.p. in russia is double the united which is a source of strength say china is not there yet because their economy is much larger but they're acquiring gold why don't they are going to list a lot of trade failing there was you know hand-wringing about all those roubles dying is crashing but that they're out of a good. well they they've allowed the river to trade pretty freely but they are

doing it with a good central banker this isn't the ninety's this isn't yeltsin when you know the ruble collapse they're actually much better central bank managements a day as a saver and much stronger go position but we talked earlier. in one of our interviews about russia and china and others working on it just to be legit technology basically a coin not decline but but some token some digital coin would have been crippen's out of a that they could use to make payments between among themselves so a balance appends bypass the i.m.f. bypass the switch i call your existence car rental ok ripple as they're calling the banks right now the value all across the world it's a it's a pretty mind coin they're likely they're likely to develop their own coin but be that as it may using the tribulation acknowledged but the point is. combining the old in the new gold is one of the old as far as money if not the oldest form of money digital cryptocurrency is the newest form of money the washer be using both gold for source the source of strength digital cryptocurrency is for convenience

and these are payment and then you know i wore my colleagues who were always like used to our sanctions used our sanctions to be careful to wish where they do work in the short run but they're going to force people to write an essay and that's happened ok but you'll spot quickly dumber for a goal than twenty eighteen words at it it's how to hire a lawyer think for sure they're your arms and records have holes going higher and twenty we're going to go back i thank you all right what i was going to do it for this edition of the kaiser is part of a mascot or a stay here and i guess jammer eckert's he's a smart guy he's got books he reads books you should read books you can find us on twitter accounts report and i stand by off.

a cursory glance at the media environment could easily give you the impression that the vast majority of journalists studied psychology at university so many are convinced donald trump is not mentally fit to be president or this a journalist suffering from rage but syndrome. unfortunately it appears that once people learn that you've reported a sexual assault or may have been involved in an incident. that they become scared if you instead of being scared of the perpetrator.

in the heart of the swiss on the shores of lake geneva. in the land of banks and discretion you will discover the most secretive place in switzerland. in the middle of a warehouse complex a stone's throw from the border with france the geneva freeport. watched by surveillance cameras and surrounded by barbed wire fences in this complex is traditionally a custom zone where merchandise is stored before being exported abroad. but today it has become a permanent storage site with sixty thousand square meters of space rented by the city of geneva and to transporters or to private individuals to safeguard their assets. behind these anonymous double locked doors there is gold.