Episode 412: The U.S. Dollar Will Fail in the Next 10 Years
On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Larry Lepard to the show. Larry – who boasts more than four decades of investing experience – is the co-founder and managing partner of Equity Management Associates. He's also the author of the recently released book The Big Print: What Happened to America and How Sound Money Will Fix It.
Larry kicks off the show by diving deep into gold – why its price has been soaring recently, where its price could go next, and why a return to the gold standard after "50 years of mismanagement" would be a long-term positive. This leads to a conversation about President Donald Trump's tariffs and their potential unintended consequences, Elon Musk's disappointing Department of Government Efficiency, Trump's run-in with the bond vigilantes, and what could break Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's stubbornness to lower rates...
[Powell] and Trump are locked in this death match. And Powell doesn't want his reputation to be that he's Arthur Burns. He wants to be Paul Volcker... When the bond market goes down another 20% and the stock market goes down another 20% and unemployment starts to go up, suddenly mandate one won't be so important: inflation. Employment will become very important. And then he's going to pivot and print like crazy.
Next, Larry talks about the psychological difficulty of bottom-fishing in the stock market and how fixing the monetary system could solve many societal problems that disproportionately affect the poor. He explains how exactly the U.S.'s fiat currency has "torn up the social fabric" and favors those who are already wealthy. Plus, Larry gives a multistep solution for how the system can be fixed so it's more fair, and he debunks the popular myth told by certain economists that a return to the gold standard wouldn't work...
That's the Keynesian lie... It's a protection racket. They're all protecting their own little turf. Can you believe the Federal Reserve has like 40,000 employees? What the hell do they all do? Seriously. They've got like a thousand economists, and they still can't get it right. When you have a big centralized government, the government's mission doesn't become to do what's best for the people... The government's mission becomes to perpetuate itself. And therein lies the problem.
Finally, Larry predicts currency failure within the next 10 years that will lead the U.S. to return to sound money. In the meantime, he advises investors to put their money in assets that the government can't print – gold, silver, bitcoin, and real estate. He says that bondholders are "the suckers at the table" thanks to inflation. And Larry closes things out by discussing the importance of studying history and longer-term cycles, the opportunity today in gold-mining stocks, and why he believes all investors should hold some bitcoin...
Bitcoin is actually a technological invention that's really important. And it's, I think, the most asymmetric asset in the world right now. I say to my older clients, "Look, you don't have to own a lot of bitcoin, but owning zero bitcoin is not right." You've got to own 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, because this is something that can and probably will go up 10X to 20X in the next 10 years.
Click here or on the image below to watch the video interview with Larry right now. For the full audio episode, click here.
(Additional past episodes are located here.)
The transcript is coming soon.
This Week's Guest
Larry Lepard has more than four decades of investing experience. He co-founded the independent investment management firm Equity Management Associates in 2006 and has served as managing partner ever since. He's also an advisory partner at the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and serves on the board of directors at Rise Gold, Amarillo Gold, Cabral Gold, and Lavras Gold. Prior to co-founding Equity Management, Larry spent 25 years as a professional investor and venture capitalist. He was a managing partner at venture-capital firm Geocapital Partners, a general partner at investment firm Summit Partners, and a financial analyst at Citigroup Global Markets.
Larry got his bachelor's degree in economics from Colgate University and his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.