Trump's Secret Plan for a US Economic Renaissance | Brent Johnson

**Brent Johnson** (0:02)
One of the primary tools that any government has to control their population is the money. And that's why the legal tenders laws exist. It's why they say gold can't be used as money. You know, you can't pay your taxes in Bitcoin because they need to be able to control those channels. The world is looking for protection in times of uncertainty. It's not necessarily just a rejection of the dollar. It's kind of a rejection of fiat. This was not only like Euro dollars, but it was a potential way for the US to have a kind of a world-class cutting-edge technology version of the Euro dollar market that they could actually use as a weapon and control. And that's kind of the dream of every government. And so this scares the heck out of me, to be really honest. I mean, this is not for the faint of it. This is really big.

**Danny Knowles** (0:57)
Good to see you, Brent. Thank you for coming back on the show. I can't, it's nearly a year since we last spoke. And one of the things that you said in the first interview, which I think is the perfect place to start, is you called for $5,000 gold and we got it. And I think probably maybe even you would agree. Was that quicker than you thought it was gonna happen?

**Brent Johnson** (1:19)
Oh, yeah, I didn't think it was gonna. Well, that's a good question actually. If you'd asked me 10 years ago, I would have said it would have come quicker. But then the length of time it took to double or almost triple was shorter than I would have expected.

**Danny Knowles** (1:36)
So what do you think has been driving this? Because this can't just be sort of retail foam and there must be some sort of central banks really stacking gold pretty hard right now.

**Brent Johnson** (1:45)
Yeah, you know, I think that's exactly what it is.
I think it's both central bank demand and demand from overseas. It hasn't been driven dramatically by United States or even Western based buyers. And I think the thing I would point out, I think a lot of people probably thought gold was going to go to $5,000, but I don't know anybody that thought gold would go to $5,000 and the dollar index would still be in the high 90s. You know, synonymous with the gold $5,000 call was typically calls for DXY to be in the 80s, 70s or even 60s. And so, you know, I think the fact that the DXY has remained strong on a relative basis over the last several years, even though gold has been rising, shows that it's not necessarily just a rejection of the dollar. It's kind of a rejection of fiat overall. And it's an indication that the world is looking for, you know, a protection in times of uncertainty. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, government bonds and fiat currencies are a representation of the country and not necessarily a representation of value, right? And so I think that's largely what's been driving gold.

**Danny Knowles** (2:56)
Yeah, so DXY obviously showing dollar strength, which has kind of been your theory on the dollar milkshake thing for a while, is that gold and the dollar can both be strong at the same time. Why do you think that... In fact, let's go back a little bit. Maybe we should start off... We obviously covered the dollar milkshake theory a lot, in the last show. Should we just lay that out quickly, so everyone has context, in case people didn't catch the last one we did?

**Brent Johnson** (3:20)
Sure. So, this all started in 2018, and then I started talking about it. You know, I did my first interview where I discussed it in late spring, early summer of 2018, and then I kind of started pounding the table on it more in 2019 But what it essentially said was that I thought that for the first time in 40 years, interest rates were going to start to rise. And I thought that because that hadn't happened for so long, that I thought that would cause a number of knock-on effects that markets just weren't ready for. Then first thing I thought what happened was that the dollar would get stronger, because typically with higher interest rates, you know, that the higher interest rates will pull capital into that market. And then combining that with the fact that the United States dollar just has many advantages that the rest of the world doesn't, you know, the system is kind of set up for dollars. I thought there was the opportunity for the dollar to get quite a bit stronger. And at the time, the DXY was around 88 or 89 So it was below 90