#775: Private Credit Is The Next Bomb with Dave Collum & Rudy Havenstein

**Dave Collum** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

**Marty Bent** (0:10)
When you talk about a Fed just going nuts, all the central banks going nuts.

**Dave Collum** (0:16)
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. You probably should be.

**Marty Bent** (0:37)
We can't hear us.

**Rudy Havenstein** (0:38)
Okay. Cool.

**Dave Collum** (0:39)
All right. Maybe it's the R stands for retarded.

**Marty Bent** (0:47)
Well, so far, I can't argue with you.

**Rudy Havenstein** (0:49)
It seems that way, doesn't it?

**Dave Collum** (0:52)
There is a certain parallel universe going on here.

**Marty Bent** (0:55)
Yeah. All right.

**Marty Bent** (0:55)
Well, somebody's SNRI is different than SSRIs, Dave.

**Dave Collum** (1:00)
So my wife is coming off SNRIs, which turn out to be a horrific class of drug. I can't rule out the possibility that it has saved people's lives, but they throw standard people on them. And she was on effects for about 15 years at least, at a high dose for pain management, which because there's, well, there's rumor that could help probably in the New England Journal of Medicine, where they lie their ass off about what could work. And she has to go off it for complex reasons.
And so we tapered down over what we thought was a rational tapering period. To find out that if you, instead of listening to the authorities, tell you how to taper off, you listen to people who have tapered off. What you discover is that a calendar year of tapering is bare minimum. And then you discover people who have tapered off, whose brains are completely fucked up and they've been fucked up for years. And then you learn about people who go back on it for obvious reasons. And some percentage of them, when they go back on it, they don't recover. And so it's really just a nasty situation. So she has these wild panic attacks and has trouble control of thermal regulating. And she doesn't have brain zaps for those who know this world.
But it's conceivable. It's not a fixable problem. And it's all because Pharma wants to sell us a Fxer and Prozac and all that crap.

**Marty Bent** (2:49)
Yeah.
Again, I'm sorry to hear that. And I was telling you some personal stories with family members on SSRIs and just being thrust upon them during a time of deep stress, but trying to wean them off, it's not easy. And I think it gets to the crux of a lot of our ongoing conversations, both the three of us together, and then Dave, you and I, independently over the years, which is like this rot at the core of the system, which is fucked up with bad incentives and just manifest in different ways, and in this case, the pharma industry.

**Dave Collum** (3:27)
Well, the one I jumped on first, before we even taped it off, is just by coincidence, they wanted to put on statins because she had a leg, they had her legs checked for circulation because she's had so many surgeries.
And one of her legs was getting 50 percent, and the doc wanted to put her on statins immediately. And I had heard bad things about statins, so I said, no, we're waiting. And she went to a specialist, and the specialist said, no, your leg's been hammered about 25 times by surgeons. It's not about statins. Your cholesterol's fine. This is nuts. She went back to her GP, and her GP still wanted her to go on statins. And then you read about statins, and you discover that, well, first and foremost, your body has cholesterol for a fucking reason. It's not there as a byproduct or anything. It's not something you want to drive to zero. And the side effects of statins turn out to be excruciating lower limb pain, which, by the way, that's a problem, and swelling, and early on sent dementia. And there's people who talk about getting ending up in wheelchairs within two years. People end up demented within two years. I mean, it's a real nightmare. So I actually went on Twitter and said, give me an anecdote. Give me anything you got. Is someone in your family been on a statin? And what was your experience?
And I got about 500 responses. I would say 495 of them were, don't touch those things.

**Rudy Havenstein** (4:56)
I'll be part of that five. I've been on it for 14 years.