Whistling Past the Graveyard | Mark Thornton

[music] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Misesus Institute. Well, there is an old and familiar saying about difficult personal [music] and social situations. When a weak-willed or broken personality is faced with a difficult or dire situation, the individual simply ignores the problem and pretends to be confident and cheerful about what is to come. Here, the individual is said to be whistling past the graveyard. Today's episode follows up from last week's episode where I reviewed the Trump administration, Chairman Walsh, Secretary Bent, and showed them to be just playing games. They are trying to solve massive long-term problems that are now being realized with only shortterm maneuvers instead of addressing and solving those long-term problems. like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound or using wallpaper to cover up the structural damage from an earthquake. Now, recently, Secretary Basset announced Operation Economic Outcast, but this is just yet another program of economic sanctioning against Iran over the last half century. And now it's trading partners that promises to be so severe that the economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime will be closed. Secretary Bet called it the economic D-Day of our generation. He certainly appeared confident, cheerful, and relaxed, predicting that oil prices could soon fall to $40 a barrel. And then he also recently proclaimed that he now has insider information about currency policy of foreign nations and dared traders in the market to bet against him. Called himself the House. But was this false bravado? It certainly appears to be an act of denial based on current and likely future conditions. His policy ignores reality and reveals his lack of courage to stand up to the facts and his boss, President Trump, and Congress. Here are some objective facts about the current situation. These new sanctions are both illegal and immoral. Second, Iran has suffered through and survived a half century of US sanctions. Iran has not been materially hurt by the recent attacks relative to the heavy damage it has imposed or inflicted on the 17 US bases that circle Iran in Israel and the Gulf states, many of which we have already effectively abandoned. Three, Iran has two economic and military superpowers of Eurasia on its side while the US is struggling to maintain its show of force halfway around the world from its home base. US forces are running very low on key ammunition, general supplies, military morale, and they have few military options left available to them. Iran has deployed two new weapon systems for the first time in the last two weeks and has even captured our brand new super secret sub spy submarine. Four, Iran Iran has been the singular nation trying to undermine genocide. And despite the assassination of its spiritual leader by the US, who vehemently opposed Iran having nuclear weapons for religious reasons, as well as the Iranian political leadership, who were actively engaged in negotiations in good faith and the intentional murder of Iranian children and civilians. Iran agreed to our MOU, the memorandum of understanding, which President Trump also signed on June 17th, but refuse refuses to comply. As a result, the international community is siding ever more with Iran and against the United States. While the US and Israel have imposed a comprehensive ban on information about war events, the basic timeline indicates that it is the US and Israel that have mostly initiated military violence which Iran then retaliates in an escalating tit fortat situation. But they have recently warned that they will begin retaliating with overcompensating force to encourage an end to this overall conflict. This mil this foreign adventure in the Middle East has made our primary economic and political problems much worse at home and for innocent citizens around the world. Now, let's ignore this issue for the moment. I'm going to be treating it in a episode coming up very soon and concentrate on how well the administration's policies are doing in terms of isolating Iran. Now, for Iran's part, they have signed a new nuclear power agreement with Russia. Iranian oil sells instantly on world markets. Standing with Iran, China has reaffirmed international law and the illegality of the new sanctions under international law. For the US's part, things have not been going well in terms of isolating the enemy. Rather, we seem to be increasingly isolating ourselves from the rest of the world economy. First, on August 7th, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a mutual defense pact called the Mecca Defense Alliance. Just on the surface inc agreement, it signals a strong move away from reliance on the US defense. Two, the legislation to integrate the US and Israeli military and intelligence services more than they already are remain stalled as part of the broader fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act due to widespread voter opposition across the United States where support for the Israeli state has plummeted. Three, President Trump broke off trade negotiations with Canada, imposed harmful tariffs on Americans and Canadians, and initiated a trade war with Canada. Four, President Trump also threatened to prevent all trade with countries that have a trade deficit with the United States unless the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates really as the ultimate in economic buffoonery. uh because countries with an overall trade deficit are the only ones that can possibly invest in the US economy and buy US government bonds. Five, the petro dollar deal has fallen apart. The deal helped prop up the value of the dollar and the price of US government securities. But now OPEC countries are accepting other currencies and are not buying as many US government securities. Six, foreign purchases of our government bonds have plummeted. Sales from other countries have risen with little old Norway now planning to sell off $80 billion dollar of its stockpile despite this the recent spike up in interest rates. Gold now makes up almost an equal share of central bank re reserves compared to longterm US government bonds not the overall US dollar but just the long-term US government bonds which of course are critical leading experts across many different categories of knowledge consider the US position in this conflict tenuous at best and even catastrophic. Despite the US military successfully conducting multiple assignments against Iran, it has failed to achieve President Trump's four policy goals. And so, through no fault of their own, our military is now further away from victory. And Iran is in a position of what the experts call strategic dominance. Based on public statements and leaks, really the only hope in the Trump administration for victory is the engineering of a successful coup against the Iranian regime, possibly with the US or Israel executing a false flag operation. A false flag is when a country's spy organizations commit a heinous crime against its own citizens or other non-combatants and innocents, but where the blame for it falls on the enemy. This would be yet another direct violation by the United States of international law. Ironically, it was our own illegal engineering of a coup against the Iranian government in 1953 that led to this situation in the first place. In next week's episode, we will examine the facts of the economy related to the problems of printability in the August 29th episode and some of the things I talked about today and some of my predictions regarding the war against Iran, etc., and what it means in terms of the family budget and CPI statistics moving forward. Side B of this episode, we're going to replay a very recent interview I did with Rothbartian economist Mario Anko. Um, where we discuss today's economic problems from an Austrian economic perspective. Stay tuned. Saturday, September 5th, 2026, Manco 64, home of alternative economics and contrarian views. Well, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mark Thornton today. Uh special guest for me. He's a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and uh I owe a lot to the Mises Institute uh for my knowledge of uh economics. Uh I've been following um yeah the Austrian School of Economics for over 25 years. So it's great to have you on again, Dr. Thornton. Uh so uh Dr. Thornton, uh, what's on your mind these days in terms of the economy? Uh, for me, what worries me the most is the bond market. Having worked in the bond market for many years and, uh, seen how bullish the market uh, was from like, well, I wasn't around, but from 1980 to 2020, yields were always going lower, and now they're going up. And uh what uh concerns me is that uh the uh secretary of the treasury and also the Fed they they seem to think that they can uh grow the economy out of the debt. Uh is that something you see as possible? >> Oh well absolutely not the way they're doing it right now. You don't grow the economy with inflation. And I share your concern about interest rates certainly because we have had you know that long-term downturn in interest rates from 198081 uh to the year 2020 2021. I [clears throat] remember my father buying long-term US government bonds in 1980 and 1981. He said it was the smartest move he ever made [laughter] because interest rates were very high back then. Uh and he made a bunch of money off of it. And you know, it's been smooth sailing uh for those for that 40-year period plus uh with the wind at your back in terms of uh worldwide lower interest rates. And now, you know, since bottoming in 2020, of course, interest rates have risen significantly. Uh they've broken out of that long-term downtrend. And uh now they're broken out above, you know, the 5% level on the 30-year. And uh of course, Washington is very worried about this. Uh we've seen some rather inappropriate behavior by the Federal Reserve chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury uh trying to rig all of these uh [clears throat] situations with respect to interest rates and the dollar and Fed policy uh before the election before the midterm elections here in the United States. But you know this is this is always the the sort of the panacea of Keynesian thinking that you can inflate your way out of the debt. Now you can uh grow your way and mitigate uh some of the awful expense of national debt. And of course everybody knows that in the US we have $40 trillion dollars more than 100% of GDP and of course Japan and the UK many other countries [snorts] that had a good financial uh rating are now sort of teetering um given the certain circumstances. But growing your way out of an economy is not through inflation because monetary printing degrades the economic function. It stops savings in multiple ways. And savings is the key to economic growth. And so if a country wants to help grow its way out of the burden of a national debt, they need to do things like cutting taxes and most especially and the studies have proven this that spending austerity. countries that have resorted to spending austerity where they've cut programs, they've cut budgets, they've had spending freezes, hiring freezes, payra freezes that those countries actually do uh grow significantly with those policies. But inflation just undermines the functioning of the economy. >> Yeah. I I mean and no politician or very few politician or like one or two that I can think of like the former uh congressman Ron Paul and Thomas Massie who's been uh going to not be a congressman uh next uh come next year and maybe even uh Rand Paul. Uh very few politicians uh want to take the tough decisions. It seems to me that um the Trump administration or the Trump MAGA move is almost like a a controlled opposition to the uh original Tea Party that Ron Paul started cuz even though Ron Paul said with uh Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid that would have to be phased out but I don't see things improving unless you cut the size of government And I don't see uh the Trump administration nor a Democrat administration changing that that or a Congress. And um maybe you could touch upon that and also uh include and add your thoughts on war and its consequences because when you look back at history, wars um yeah they they wreck the free market because uh governments uh they take on a lot of power. Sometimes martial law is implemented and they implement a command economy and you always see like uh a lot of inflation and uh suffering for the general public after the war. >> Yes, I I I agree with you. I I think the United States is captive um [clears throat] you know not of the ordinary political system but the global elites and the billionaire elites in the United States really have firm control over our political process. They control our politicians almost universally. uh they paid out uh millions and millions of dollars to get Representative Massie um out of his seat. I have a 2028 Massie yard sign in my front yard right now, but I'm not very hopeful that we're going to be able to do anything in 2026 here because I think, you know, the global elites have firm control. They control our media. Um it's, you know, it's amazing what the American public is being fed and what they believe. Um and I think everybody in the world should know that um that we've lost control of our government. And I think that's true of many uh of the major governments um around the world that the people have lost uh whatever control they used to have. And uh and so we're we're going to be stuck in this pattern until something very significant happens and somehow you know the political situation changes but I think the trends in markets uh speak for themselves. I don't see anything that are really uh changing the trends with regard to uh things like interest rates, uh currency values, um precious metals, um and so on. Uh we're we're pretty much stuck with that um until something significant happens, I'm afraid. Um and I think the war in the Persian Gulf is a is a perfect example of that. the vast overwhelming majority of Americans o oppose our activities, our war um on the on Iran and the Iranian people. Um and the vast majority of Americans now um look negatively on the state of Israel and our role, our connection um our very curious connection that is somehow forcing the US to uh more or less follow the lead of the state of Israel and uh continuously engage in wars in the Middle East and and it's having terrible ramifications, not just here in the United States. I mean, our budgets are even worse are in worse shape. Uh we've used up the strategic petroleum reserve. We've lost the petro dollar uh status. uh commodity prices in the United States have broken out into all-time highs in terms of the um CRB index. Uh Goldman Sachs and other indexes of commodity prices are at [clears throat] historically high levels. And of course, my analysis has shown that it's not just oil. Americans are paying attention to oil and gasoline prices uh as they've historically done. It's easy to do. You see the price on, you know, the corner gas station and so forth, but it's really has ramifications uh throughout the United States and around the world. Uh European gas prices are very high. Natural gas prices uh fertilizer prices have gone way way up and third world and second world agricultural sectors are suffering. Uh the price of diesel which is uh come a lot of that comes out of the Persian Gulf. their oil and they're refining uh that they're they're very lowcost producer and uh and so not a lot is coming out and diesel prices in the United States have skyrocketed to well over $5 a gallon. And of course that affects not just pickup trucks and diesel cars, but also all the trucks, the 18-wheelers that, you know, carry goods and services and people and everything around in our economy. So we're going to be getting all sorts of transportation search charges. Um, and of course agriculture um runs on diesel fuel both [clears throat] here in the United States and around the world. uh mining equipment uh is runs on diesel and that's going to be a significant uptick in uh the price of all of those metals and of course the agricultural goods. Uh and so you know this is really um having a delayed effect. I just woke up the other day to watch your show Mario around 4:00 in the morning and my local news was on and they had a farmer a local soybean farmer and he, you know, I predicted this two months ago and he was finally saying, "Hey, you know, the uh the price of fertilizer, you know, was killing us this year and now the price of diesel is killing us uh as soybean farmers and cotton farmers and peanut farmers in this area." And you know that their communities are also already hurting. And of course that's going to have reverberations around Alabama and around the United States and in agricultural districts all over the globe. So it's a very very negative thing that is being treated um as uh theater um on our newscasts and you know very little information is being disclosed to the American people about all of the long and wide ranging impacts of that war. >> Yeah. And today uh the day we're speaking today we had the uh job data and uh it was stronger than expected but like the non-farm payroll uh is basically like a survey and it's ex they extrapolate how many jobs were created in the previous month was revised up. Uh and the reason I'm talking about that is because you just mentioned the energy and oil and diesel situation. And it seems like uh there's so much manipulation of what's going on. And what concerns me not just for the UK but also for the US is that people are blind to what's happening and that we could see in a matter of weeks uh things change dramatically. Um, and you mentioned as well that uh, Secretary Besson and Fed Chairman Wars have been trying to manipulate the yield curve and the currency markets as well, the yen. Uh, it seems to me everything is manipulated. But I if you look at uh, consumer confidence for example that sevenyear 70-year lows. um the top u 10% uh uh wealth percentile of Americans, they control like 50% in consumer spending. I I've seen as well that u subprime auto loan defaults are the highest levels in many years if not ever. So yeah, how uh serious do you think this is? And how can um I mean not just the average person but people that have savings uh I mean what can we do to uh mitigate uh what I think could be a pretty uh big crisis because uh we're kind of being told that everything's fine but uh it seems to me like we're driving towards a cliff. I agree and you know I see things through I see things through the eyes of Ludwig von Misus and his business cycle theory and of course that points to exactly the K-shaped economy that the US and other countries are experiencing right now where [clears throat] a small percentage of the population that holds the wealth is making tons and tons of money and workers in those industries are doing very well, but it's a small segment of the population. And in this recent report, you know, we've seen uh construction workers, for example, have been doing well in recent months and and pay wages in the construction industry uh have been doing well because we're still building a lot of high-priced houses in the United States and we're still building a lot of data centers um all over the country. And so there's a segment uh of the wealthers and the workers and the industries that are experiencing booms in the economy that are doing very well. But the vast majority of Americans, and this lines up with, you know, consumer confidence and political polls about um the very high percentage of Americans who distrust and do not approve of the US government or do not trust or disapprove of the activities of President Trump in the Congress and all the rest. And of course, Misesus' theory along with Hayek and Rothbart, they've shown that artificially low interest rates s at a sustained level will drive male investment, bad investment in the economy that will be revealed as bad investments later. And that that money tends to go into advanced technologies. Uh technologies that are on the shelf all the time but get taken off of the shelf and get implemented before their time uh because of those low rates. And uh we saw this in the tech bubble. We saw this in the housing bubble. This is a perennial aspect of our technobbubble economy. And so, [clears throat] of course, there's going to be a reckoning of all of this. We've had 16 or 17 years of higher and higher prices in the US stock markets. Um, and the US stock markets have been leading the world. And I think that's indicative of um the relative strength of the US market and um uh foreign participation in the US market. There's there's over the last several years there's been a lot of European uh participation in US stock markets where they [clears throat] have seen a limit on their traditional investments and a limit on their investments in European stock markets and so some of that money has moved over into the US. Uh so it's been building for a very very long time and of course you know when that you always see uh public officials, Fed officials, uh investment managers, you know, people on Wall Street saying, "Well, we've we've got a new era. This is a new panacea, a new way of doing things, a new technology that's going to increase efficiency. It's going to in increase productivity." Um and that new technology does do that, but it's all overblown. It's all been brought forward in time. And uh that's where the um reality uh where the economy hits the reality uh of those um mismatches in the economy of investment. While at the same time of course the savings rate in the US has been uh declining and is a very low level right now. And so when you put forth that you know all of these things that the Austrian business cycle says and you say well there's all this new investment but there's much less savings. You know how do you link those two up? And people are like well I'm not sure. Well, of course, we know that it's artificial credit that's been issued by central banks. And, you know, historically, you know, eventually that credit evaporates uh into uh firm firms cutting back, going bankrupt, households having to cut back and and uh go bankrupt or have foreclosures, unemployment, layoffs, and all of that kind of stuff. all of the negative things where the Fed has to come in supposedly to the rescue. >> Yeah. And it makes you wonder um the a AI uh [clears throat] I mean we can safely say it's a bubble. Um but there's also a bubble in government bond market. Um so which one do you think uh is more serious? Well, I I think it's the government born market, but maybe the AI unwinding could could trigger the the government born market crisis because I I've uh I mean since last year I think AI and also building of the data centers that that has really uh contributed to GDP growth. Uh if you strip that out GDP is anemic. And the other thing uh Mark is that uh the budget deficit to GDP is running like at 6% which uh usually they do that uh in times of recession or big crisis. Uh so um yeah how do you see the AI bubble and also the government bond market? Do you think uh it's a lot like uh the dotcom bubble and u if there were were to be a crisis where would they try to pump the economy again because after the dotcom bubble burst they're able to pump up the real estate market but I I don't see what else they could pump up after that. Well, I think both the government bond market and artificial intelligence are bubbles and that they're going to break and that they're going to have negative consequences um on the economy. Uh but the private sector adjustment is uh much less malignant in terms of its impact on the economy. you know, certain projects will be shut down, others will be unprofitable, some companies will have to restructure, other companies will go bankrupt, and it'll roll up on itself. But with the government bond problem, it's much bigger, and I fear how the government is going to react to that. Uh, is it going to get its fiscal house in order? Is it going to send positive uh signals to the market about cutting spending and cutting programs and and and austerity and that sort of thing? Or is it just going to is the Fed just going to come in and print trillions of dollars and do massive amounts of quantitative easing? Um you know that that makes the problem worse. Uh and it makes it linger for a very long time. So with the tech bubble uh in the year 2000, you know, we had this huge stock market bubble and all of these tech companies and all this online stuff. Um but you know once the bubble broke and tech stocks you know fell 50 70% uh and a lot of them went out of business it it really you know it sort of cured itself very quickly because through uh companies cutting back uh going out of business merging with other companies uh it was a it was a very quick uh self-corrective the process on the private market side. Uh but with a government bond um bubble um and and the types of reaction that the public sector is going to make uh towards a meltdown in government bonds uh and we've seen of course you know other countries in the past and more recently uh you know how they react. They don't do the fiscally sound uh approach to uh what you should do um in in a in a situation like that uh to restore your credibility and to help pay down the debt and all that kind of stuff. And and so that makes me think that the government bond problem and the crisis will be addressed incorrectly. It'll make the problem worse and it'll make the problems that manifest themselves linger for a very long period of time. And uh and so that's the one that probably have the greatest uh long-term consequences. uh you know if AI had to shut down right now and we had to do we had to make do with what we have in ter terms of artificial intelligence the world could would get by just fine and you know eventually AI and the data centers could be filled out uh more um than they already are and you know everything would be just fine just like you know with the tech bubble uh you Americans weren't a as adversely affected because most of the burden was placed on the investors um in those bubble companies. >> Yeah. And talking about AI, uh what's your view of the uh idea that AI will bring down inflation? Um I I I think uh Wars is trying to play on that concept. No, that's that's you know for me uh inflation is always a monetary phenomenon and that productivity you know does um tend to lower [clears throat] uh things like CPI statistics and and those sorts of things or or the price of certain goods. um but it doesn't do away with the adverse effects of monetary printing and there are many you know Austrians believe that there are many uh effects of monetary printing there's the there's the cycle there's the uh dist you know the K-shaped economy male distribution of income and wealth uh that happens in the economy there's the suppression of savings. And that's really one of the things that America really needs to look at is policies that will in be positive for Americans saving money and investing in their own economy, starting their own businesses. uh in America with a population where they're just living paycheck to paycheck and never progressing, never getting further along is is a very sick uh American economy. So that monetary inflation uh you know it has many effects uh and increased productivity uh does not do away with all of those effects. It might suppress certain government statistics um but it doesn't it it's it's no um it's certainly no cure all. As a matter of fact, it masks the real problem. And so, you know, a lot of things do that like opening trade with China. um you know that helped mask the CPI inflation uh in the United States by bringing in a lot of cheap imports from China. Um you know that kept the CPI uh type statistics lower than they would normally be. Uh but you know the Fed is a government bureaucracy. It's in charge of the money supply. Unfortunately, it's in charge of interest rates. And you know, the main problem is the monetary inflation that comes out of there. And there in no way should we credit the Federal Reserve uh for the fact that the American economy that entrepreneurs and innovators have somehow made the economy more productive. And so I would disassociate those two things entirely. >> Yeah. No, I agree with you. Uh, and if that were the case, that technology brings down inflation, uh, the dollar wouldn't have lost 99% of its value since 1914. U, the other thing I wanted to ask you, >> yeah, that that's a great point. I mean the American economy over the last uh you know 150 years has become you know certainly the mo one of the most efficient productive economic engines in the world and the value of the dollar has lost 99% of its value >> because of the Fed. >> Yeah. So yeah, it always goes back to the Fed I think and uh you spoke about how the global elites are in charge and uh I think uh with what uh is going on in terms of the debt, inflation, uh government bond markets, I I think the policy makers and the globalists are between a rock and a hard place. And to me, at the same time, it's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because I think it could lead to social, political, and economic unrest, not just in the US, but here in the UK and Western Europe. Um, so yeah, it's a two-part question. How do you see how do you see the probability of that happening, the unrest and the turmoil? And uh second uh what would you say would be u the step in the right direction to make sure the global elites don't control our economies as much as they do now? Well, I think about that question a lot and I don't have any great answers, but I fear the fact that we certainly are um at a point where uh civil unrest, social unrest, political unrest um is at a very high risk right now and because we haven't had an ideological revolution uh as much as you and I would like uh towards limited government and towards sound money. That's ultimately what we need is to change the ideology and we're doing it, but it's slow and it's methodical and it's it's very difficult when you're up against the global elites who control politics and they control the media. It makes breaking through all of that um inertia very very difficult. and you know revolution uh you know I know a lot of uh good-minded and good-hearted people would like to see a revolution of sorts but unfortunately even when revolutions are started by the good guys uh very often history has shown that the bad guys uh end up in control of those revolutions at the end. So the, you know, the French Revolution, uh, was started out with the good guys, but ended up with the bad guys and Napoleon and World War and millions of people killed. And the Soviet Union started out uh with the um excuse me, the Russia started the Russian Revolution started out um on the behalf of the good guys and the moderates and ended up in the hands uh of the radical communists and uh you know all of the death and destruction that brought uh to Russia and the Soviet Union. Even the American Revolution which was started by the good guys um you know and and was and they they won uh but ultimately there was a coup and a convention and you know was taken over by the moderates and the centralizers. So we have to fear political revolution but what we need is an ideological revolution. It really comes down to changing people's minds and people's hearts um based on rational thinking and sound economics really uh is is the ultimate key. You're doing a great job, Mario. Uh but we need a lot more people out there like you um in in terms of steering this thing in the right direction. So, I'm very concerned about, you know, because I do think the global elites are in control. They're in firm control. Uh they're worried right now for sure. uh because of there's widespread opposition. Um there's been a uh we keep statistics in the United States on political violence uh where citizens are engaged with politicians and bureaucrats usually at a very local level uh and you know physical altercations uh violent altercations um and reports to like the FBI uh all of that's at an all-time high since they started keeping those statistics. So, it's bubbling over uh here in the United States. People are fed up. Uh they're looking for leadership. Uh and I'm hopefully I'm hopeful that that's uh going to occur. But ultimately, all good things in this world come from the bottom up. They start with you and me and our audience. Uh fixing our own situation, fixing our own family situation, our own community situation. Um and finding the right leaders at the local level, the community level and so forth. They never really start with some savior riding in uh from the mountain on high and changing everything uh you know with a snap of the finger in the blink of the eye. Uh all bad things uh [clears throat] come from the top down and all good things start from the bottom up. >> Yeah. And it's interesting you spoke about the founding fathers. I think uh Benjamin Franklin was asked after the uh constitutional convention by two older ladies uh Mr. Franklin what government have we got a monarchy or a republic and he said a republic if you can keep it uh so it seems like um yeah that's gone out the window and I think uh the Federal Reserve Act is a big reason for it in 1913. So [snorts] uh Mark uh to wrap up could could you tell the viewers a little more about the Mises Institute and how they can access uh your um your website and like your u the stuff that you have in have there because a lot of people might think well I don't I can't afford to uh go to school anymore but uh I think the Mises Institute provides a great service and a lot of it is uh is free. >> Yeah, we're Yeah, we're not about uh as a matter of fact, we have a conference coming up next weekend where we're not saying that the ideal thing is to go back to college or go to college and get educated there because they're just going to teach you to become a communist in at university. Uh so that's not the way. And we try to make it accessible for everybody uh on this planet to go to our web page misuses.org mises.org. We have daily articles uh daily videos um all sorts of materials. We have several podcasts including my own the minor issues podcast. We have a political co uh podcast, a libertarian podcast, an Austrian economics theory podcast, and of course you can download all of those and subscribe to all of those to listen to them at your leisure. We have all sorts of books and things that you can download for free. As a matter of fact, if you go to our homepage, uh every month we're giving away a free book. Um, and you can you you can sign up right at the top of our homepage to get a hard copy of the book or to uh get access to downloading the um, you know, the PDF as well. And this month in September, we're just starting with a great uh, but unknown little classic by Murray Rothbard, and I highly recommend it. Our vice president for academic affairs, Joseph Solerno, recommends that he it was what he really turned him on to Austrian economics when it came out in 1969. It's called Economic Depressions, Their Cause and Cure. And as you can see, it's a very small book. It's a very short book. Uh, and it really does an excellent job. Rothbart does a phenomenal job as always in explaining these things uh to a general audience um you know in a very direct fashion uh and so it's not like a you know an academic um act of confusion. It's very easy to understand. I would highly recommend that you can go every month and get something like this. Uh, and we have conferences, you know, we have an undergraduate conference in the summer called the Misesus University that students can sign up for and there's a virtual Misesus University that students from around the world can sign up for that that happens in July. Uh we have a conference for graduate students, for academic professionals um and business professionals. Uh and so we have everything that's wide open. It's you know all for free basically. There's no registration. It's open all the time. So please come and get it. Uh because the intellectual ammunition is what is going to win this war. >> Yes, it's for free. But I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch. So sometimes I do donate to the Mises Institute. So they do depend on donations. And uh I haven't read that um Rothbart uh book. Uh one of my favorites is what has government done to our money? Uh and uh the great thing about Rothbart is you don't have to be an economist or even a PhD economist to read it. So, um, I'm going to put, uh, you also have a YouTube channel, so I'm going to put links below in the description. And >> Oh, yes. Yes. We have, you know, a lot of material on YouTube. As a matter of fact, we have all the old lectures from past Mises Universities and past conferences. So really, if you have any interest in just about anything, we've probably addressed it uh many times over. Uh and so please come, please check us out. Uh it's great to have your donation, Mario. We are a nonprofit. We do depend on uh contributions. And of course, government doesn't give us any money. Uh big corporate foundations don't give us any money. It's just individuals, a lot of small entrepreneurs who own their own businesses. Uh, you know, donate to the institute. Uh, we don't have any institutional funding, big corporate funding or certainly any government funding, um, that supports us. It's just people like you and me. >> Yeah, that's great. And, uh, like you said, it has to be from the bottom up. Uh, Mark, thank you so much for coming on. and uh I wish you a great weekend, Labor Day. >> Thank you, Mark. >> Yeah, thank you very much, Mario. It's great to be back on with you. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I look forward to doing again. >> Me, too. Thank you.