And that is quite a testimonial, is it not?

Yeah, it is.

It's so good to hear that.

Why do you think he feels this way about you? I think because I work so hard like in like putting my heart first and like trying to do what's the best for me and everyone around me.

And I'm really like a motivated person, like happiness and success and just all good stuff.

I can be hard on myself.

I always look at like anything I can fix, like negatives or what I'm going through or my past or whatever.

Am I wrong about that?

And that is quite a testimonial, is it not?

Yeah, it is.

It's so good to hear that.

I think he feels this way about you.

I think because I work so hard, like in like putting my heart first and like trying to do what's the best for me and everyone around me.

And I'm really like a motivated person, like happiness and success and just all good stuff.

I can be hard on myself.

Am I wrong about that?

that's right what do you think about all that bill i mean you've been around the world of central banks for long enough you also of course at the bank of canada for you were one of the deputy governors of course they sold all their gold a few years back after you had left which maybe wasn't quite the brightest thing to do at the time it seemed like a good idea What do you think about this idea about the United States formalizing a monetary renaissance of gold by formally revaluing gold in Fort Knox?

My first comment is that he probably wants to visit the vaults to make sure the gold's really there.

But sort of more seriously, we just mentioned in passing this whole question of fiscal dominance.

And fiscal dominance, the point that you get to where the government's debt is so large and so short term, and we're discussing really the US situation now at the moment, that there's a reasonable possibility that they cannot sell longer term debt at what they would consider to be acceptable prices.

And if that happens, and we're seeing sort of bits of this already, because the Treasury now has moved away from selling longer term securities, and they're starting to issue many more Treasury bills, Well, this is just really one step away from actually having the central banks buy the stuff and issue not a 30-day treasury bill, but a one-day overnight money liability.

Okay, so we're getting closer and closer to this kind of situation.

Well, if the market starts to feel that the debt service problem has become sort of unsustainable, the reaction will be obviously one of, I am out of here, you know, that I don't want to buy this stuff at all.

Could I give you the last word? Bill there's a paradox isn't there in all this because you've got them talking about restoring trust by revaluing gold to levels which would have been thought to have been stratospheric and idiotically high only a few years ago the reason why the gold price is so high is because there's a lack of trust as you said earlier on and therefore revaluing levels to somehow make that de facto lack of trust de jure would in a way be inscribing still higher the loss of trust it would not really be shoring up the trust i think it would be demolishing it further so there's a paradox in what bilam is saying do you think we're going to get to that state also where there could be a really apocalyptic breakdown in trust in fiat currencies or do you think that sounder judgment, sounder reasoning, sounder people, sounder policies, not least in the United States, will somehow come to the fore and rescue us from the most apocalyptic vision.

So what's next?

Well, one of the, one of the points I guess that I'd, I'd make is that we should not assume that there'll be any-- that we, we will necessarily have a smooth transition to whatever's gonna come next.

Uh, I believe that the economy is a kind of complex adaptive system.

Uh, and it's a kind of system that is subject to tipping points, just like the climate and, and many other complex systems in both nature and society.

And so you can get very sudden movements.

And I guess my principal concern at the moment is that one of the principal movements might in, might in-- might involve the, the bond vigilantes coming back, and that you could have a sudden rise in bond prices, uh, that would cause a lot of problems elsewhere.

Um, and one of the other sort of hobby horses of mine at the moment is, is trying to point out the fact that the future is likely to be more inflationary than the past because all of the big driving secular forces that, that were leading inflation down for many years, virtually every one of those forces is now going into reverse.

What, what, what are the effects of this being adopted on a wider scale?