In this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan welcomes Andy Schectman to the show. Andy is the founder and CEO of Miles Franklin Precious Metals, a company dedicated to transparency, ethics, and long-term wealth preservation.

Andy kicks things off by explaining why gold prices breaking down isn't as bad as many people believe. He says that while the paper price of gold is going down, the physical asset has been going strong. In fact, since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, billions of physical gold bars in contracts have been delivered to CME Group's Commodity Exchange ("COMEX"). Silver also had strong deliveries to COMEX, with December 2025 seeing a record 65 million ounces in contracts delivered. Andy also says that one reason why gold exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") have experienced increased outflows is because large firms are redeeming their shares in exchange for gold to fulfill delivery contracts. And some of these contracts are for foreign countries that have lost trust in the central banks...

Trust in the financial system has and is still eroding... All [the foreign governments] care about is that they continue to buy gold and not only buy it, but to repatriate it – repatriate it from the Bank of England, like India has brought back almost all of their gold from the Bank of England and others from the New York Fed, like France, like Germany, like Poland, the Czech National Bank, the Dutch National Bank, the Bank of Austria, Hungary, Turkey. They're all bringing their gold back because of [a] lack of trust.

Next, Andy shares his thoughts on bitcoin (BTC) and gold. Contrary to the stances supporters of either asset have, he doesn't believe investors need to be in only one of them and opposed to the other. He believes it's best if you invest in both. Andy personally invested in 1 BTC early on so he could have some exposure to the development of bitcoin. Andy then talks about the country's debt problem. With the U.S. in debt by more than $39 trillion, our country needs a way to pay it off. Andy says we have no way of selling products to other countries in the hopes of being paid in dollars, and other countries have established their own methods of trade without relying on the U.S. dollar. And with a trifecta of worse education rates, a lack of at-home manufacturing, and AI replacing certain jobs, the future outlook is grim...

The dollar is not going away. It still has the most robust rails, but we don't want to be the reserve currency anymore. Let me show you how that would work. First, we're broke. We know that we don't make anything... We've offshored all of our manufacturing largely. Ray Dalio just came out and said 60% of this country has a literacy rate under the sixth grade... And here comes AI just in time to kneecap all the jobs.

Finally, Andy says that Trump does have a plan to address this problem. The key is to bring manufacturing back home and sell that to the world. The U.S. cannot afford to be reliant on other countries. Also, the U.S. needs to aggressively buy gold. That would go straight into the Treasurys and help pay off our debt. While in the short-to-mid term this will be painful for Americans as certain services might need to be withheld, in the long term, Andy says it would be worth it. He ends the interview by warning investors to not save their money in dollars due to its dwindling value but to put their money into hard assets instead...

If you save in dollars, you will go broke. You are not a contrarian. You will be a victim... The most well-informed traders on the planet and the most well-funded traders on the planet – the central banks, the family offices, the commercial banks, and whoever the hell is standing for delivery for billions and billions and billions every month for the last going on 19 months – they know where the puck is going... Do what the big money is doing, tune out the noise, and don't save in dollars.

Click on the image below to watch the video interview with Andy right now. For the audio version, click "Listen" above.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

This Week's Guest

Andy Schectman is the founder and CEO of Miles Franklin Precious Metals. Prior to founding Miles Franklin, he started his career as a licensed financial planner specializing in Swiss Franc investments and alternative asset strategies. He has deep expertise in gold and silver markets, including physical supply and demand dynamics, COMEX activity, central bank accumulation, and the growing disconnect between paper and physical markets.

Andy has appeared on numerous programs, including the Solari Report with Catherine Austin Fitts, Liberty & Finance, the Mark Moss Show, David Lin Report, Kinesis Money, Soar Financially, Investing News, Kitco News, and many others. He's also the host of Little by Little with Andy Schectman, part of Miles Franklin Media.

In addition to his media work, Andy is a sought-after speaker at major investment and resource conferences across North America, including the Rick Rule Investment Symposium, Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, and other leading industry events focused on macroeconomics, mining, precious metals, and global monetary trends.

Dan Ferris:                 You need to hear this podcast. Every investor needs to hear this podcast. I strongly suspect, and our guest today strongly suspects, that President Trump is going to make a major announcement affecting gold on July 4 of this year, just in a couple weeks. OK? We're going to talk about that and more. And I have a presentation about that very thing, that July 4 event, that's coming out later this month. Click the link below or aim your phone at the QR code on your screen to learn more.

Our guest, Andy Schectman, is the most knowledgeable gold investor I know. He knows more about the physical gold market than anybody I've ever spoken with. So let's do it, let's talk with Andy Schectman. Let's do it right now.

Dan Ferris:                 Andy, welcome to the show. It's good to see you.

Andy Schectman:        You too, Dan. Thanks for having me, buddy. I appreciate it.

Dan Ferris:                 You bet. So we need to talk about two things. But like when people know you're on the show, they're going to want to talk about two things more than any other. Those two things are gold and silver. [Laughs] Obviously. And as we speak here in mid-June 2026, gold's down about 20% from the January high, and silver's down about 40% from the January high. And I'm seeing things like, I saw a guy today on Twitter put up a little chart, and he was – I think he's tracking like GLD flows or something, "It's time. It's time to get back in."

And I'm wondering about things like, I don't know, the announcement of gold-backed currency or gold-backed crypto or whatever, that might come soon. And personally, I am kind of buying the dip here on certain select gold names. I think it's time to get really surgical with that. But what do you think? What do you think about the here – as we sit here, 20% down on gold, 40% down on silver?

Andy Schectman:        Honestly, I think that gold and silver have not really broken down as much as it has been shaking people out, flushing out leverage, if you will. The reason I say that is that while the paper price has been pushed lower, the physical market at the highest levels, Dan, is telling a very different story. We've already seen nearly 3 million ounces of gold stand for delivery here in June on the COMEX, which is still only halfway through the month, and already over 3 million ounces. Do the math – that's between $12 and $13 billion.

Dan Ferris:                 OK, hold on a second here. Are you telling me that folks have bought COMEX futures and held them and taken delivery?

Andy Schectman:        Correct.

Dan Ferris:                 To the tune of 3 million ounces. Wow.

Andy Schectman:        And that's just in the first two weeks of the month. There's a difference between taking delivery and leaving COMEX. In the last 30 days, roughly 1 million ounces has got up and left COMEX. And so, you know, there's a difference. Now you can have it delivered into the COMEX ecosystem. There's two different – there's registered and there's eligible. Registered are the bars that are backing the contracts and that have been rehypothecated. But eligible, we have nine Brinks vaults in our storage program. They're all with Brinks and throughout North America. One is in New York City. It is the only one of the nine that is a COMEX depository.

So I have as an example, let's say I have a client who has one million ounces of 1,000-ounce silver bars in that Brinks facility, it is a COMEX facility, and those are eligible. They are not for sale. They could be transferred to be registered, but they are eligible, and she just leaves them there. So when metal gets delivered to COMEX, that doesn't mean it leaves COMEX.

Now it's important to understand, Dan, that I've been doing this for now 36 years, and if we look at the first 34, less than 1% of contracts would ever stand for delivery. In other words, give me the numbered bars, please. I just want the paper settlement. When you see – now this has been going on for 18 straight months. Eighteen straight months, since Trump won the election, every single month we have seen billions upon billions upon billions upon billions upon billions delivered, and it has been completely missed by the mainstream. Nothing else matters to me. Everything else is misdirection. Everything else is just noise.

When the most well-informed traders on the planet are standing for delivery in ways that we are seeing here, not just here in the United States, which we can talk about, but that is an anomaly in every sense of the word. It is not weakness. It is accumulation under the cover of falling price, which is a tool of misdirection. Sure, pullbacks are very uncomfortable, but they do not change the thesis that gold and silver are real value. They are not someone else's promise to pay, and that's why they matter.

You look at China, they've been buying for 19 straight months. They bought 10 tons of gold in May, the largest monthly addition in over 18 months. This follows the eight-plus tons they acquired in April, and it's making their 19th consecutive monthly net purchase. But we can also talk about silver. I'll give you an example. In December of 2025, COMEX set a single-month record with 65 million ounces delivered. In January 2026, 49.4 million ounces delivered more than seven times January 2024's level. All of 2025 combined settled 474 million ounces. Right?

So when you talk about how much more has been delivered recently, let's just look at 2026. In February 2026, 25.1 million ounces were delivered. That was the highest February on record, making it the highest two-month delivery rate in exchange history. But 39 million ounces in February, about 2.9 million pounds, got up and left COMEX. They got on trucks – $4.5 billion worth got on trucks. Someone ran logistics, someone ran insurance, and [someone] drove away 2.9 million pounds of silver worth $4.5 billion. And where is the mainstream media saying, "Who the hell is doing this?"

March 2026, 10,526 contracts deliver. That's 52.63 million ounces standing for delivery. And here we are in June, still early, about 2,200 contracts or so have already delivered. But let's just say from January to May 2026 we've seen 169.3 million ounces of silver physically delivered. And when you talk about that kind of volume, from January to May of this year we're already 45% above the entire 2023 full-year's worth of deliveries in just five months. And that's silver. Let's talk about gold for a moment. February of this year was the biggest month ever, 40,711 contracts delivered, that's 4.7 million ounces. June, here we are in June, 33,930 as of yesterday, probably closer to 35,000 contracts. But you're talking huge, huge, huge volume. January to May, the total comes to 98,720 contracts. That's 9.87 million ounces. That's $45 billion in physical gold in five months has been delivered.

So my point to you is simply this, and we can look at like, for example, when the price got its rear end kicked in the first three months of the year, China imported more silver in the first three months of the year than at any time in the history of the country. And here we just see in February, largest gold and silver deliveries – largest gold delivery, and the 39 million ounces leaving COMEX as the price got its teeth kicked in. In other words, the biggest money in the world is using price as to run cover for physical accumulation. And when I tell you that less than 1% of contracts ever stood for delivery, I'm dead serious on that, and now all of a sudden the one –

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, that's what I thought.

Andy Schectman:        It's true.

Dan Ferris:                 When you started talking about physical delivery, I was like, well, like nobody – it's like you said, 1%t, it's nothing. And now, do we know the percentage now?

Andy Schectman:        It's a massive amount. In February almost all the contracts that posted stood for delivery. I don't know the number, but it is much, much, much, much longer, or bigger. And I would just simply say that these people are the most well-informed traders on the planet. And at nine figures every month for going on a year, over a year and a half, these people don't screw around. And you know, I think–

Dan Ferris:                 This is not speculation.

Andy Schectman:        No.

Dan Ferris:                 This is an accumulation for like long-term, fundamental, strategic-type reasons.

Andy Schectman:        Right. And one other thing, you made a comment at the beginning, and you talked about the outflows out of ETFs, and I want people to think for a moment that one possible explanation is that the ETF metal is being tapped as a source of ready available supply. What I mean by that is that when physical demand rises and large quantities stand for delivery, like we've been seeing on COMEX, authorized participants have the ability – and those would be those that fund the baskets, like Goldman and [JPMorgan] and Citi and [Bank of America] – they can redeem ETF shares, shhh, very quietly, and they take possession of the underlying metal, and they use it to satisfy delivery obligations or replenish inventories or move it to COMEX warehouses or ship it to buyers elsewhere in the world. In that sense, ETFs can become a source of physical supply during periods of tightness.

And so when we talk about ETF draining, it isn't always as it seems. In other words, yeah, shares were sold off. Well, what if it's Goldman Sachs saying, "We want the physical. Let's not make the big footprint that we otherwise would on COMEX. Let's just redeem 10,000 shares and stand for delivery." OK. And they do that all the time.

Dan Ferris:                 OK. So the fundamentals are a lot stronger than just following prices might lead one to believe.

Andy Schectman:        Which is the greatest tool of misdirection. I couldn't have said it better myself. That is correct.

Dan Ferris:                 Buy the dip is the upshot here. [Laughs]

Andy Schectman:        Well, and when we talk about the dip for a moment, Dan, you know, the BIS, the most powerful bank in the world, Bank of International Settlements.

Dan Ferris:                 Right.

Andy Schectman:        They came out and they almost took the CME Group, the COMEX, to the woodshed, I believe. Most people wouldn't read it that way. I did. And they came out in, I don't know, a month ago, and they said, "Look, the reason the price fell was because of the actions that the CME took in a stupid way." What do I mean by that? So if we look at silver as a prime example, silver was rising every single week into the end of the year, from December to January, up up up up up up up up. And as that was happening, they kept raising margins. But not massively, but they kept raising them. And then we get to January. January is notorious for rebalancing of ETFs. And when you have levered ETFs that have gone way out of whack in terms of the percentage gain of the underlying asset, and their prospectus says, "Hey, come January all of this needs to be rebalanced." So what happens is that you are guaranteed crazy volatility the first and second week of January, it's notorious for this, as all of that excess has to be sold off to rebalance the ETFs.

So what they basically said was – look, into the first and second week of January, as all of these ETFs were being rebalanced, guaranteeing selling, you had the CME Group raise margin requirements by 300% at the worst possible time. The worst time. Because they were doing it right as things were being rebalanced. Now to give you an idea what I mean by margin, just to kind of see, understand, your listeners understand, we would typically have 2 million ounces of silver in our warehouse. And in order to protect our inventory from price fluctuations, we will sell the exact same amount on COMEX, all the way down to one ounce. And so if we have 2 million in inventory, we sell 2 million on COMEX. The price falls by $10 on silver times 2 million ounces, I'm down $20 million in my inventory. But what I sold short on COMEX went up the exact same amount. I'm market neutral.

It would cost me typically in December – December 1st it cost me $15,000 in my margin account. That's just let's just say this bottle of water is $15,000 ash, just sits in there. Now I can control one 5,000-ounce contract. Or if I'm a speculator, I want to buy a contract, put $15,000 in your margin account, you're good to go. By January 1 or thereabouts, they had raised it to $54,000 And if you didn't post that extra money your contract is liquidated. And so they raised margins by 300%, so we would have to have $50 million sitting in our margin account just to hedge our position. That doesn't even talk about gold or platinum.

And so the margin rates went up so much along with the rebalancing, where selling begets selling begets selling, and the margin calls and selling and more selling, and the price collapsed. And they said, "You know what, this price collapse was structural, not fundamental." In other words, it was synthetic and orchestrated largely through ETF rebalancing and massive margin increases at probably this most stupid time.

Dan Ferris:                 Right. But, Andy, in a massive bull run like that, they have to increase margin by some amount, don't they?

Andy Schectman:        Of course they do. But they changed it to a percentage of a rising number, and they just guaranteed that the onus of large margin requirements would create a sell-off. And yes, they can raise the margins a little bit, but to raise it by 300% in a month guarantees a collapse. You're guaranteeing it. And so, you know, I don't think they need it to be that aggressive, I guess I'll put it to you that way. And they would have been better to wait a little bit, or to do it slower, knowing that the first two weeks of January you're guaranteeing that silver is going to have a massive collapse as the rebalancing of the ETFs into the 300% increase in margins, you're guaranteeing the worst possible atmosphere for any speculator or any hedger.

And then what had happened is they blew up the entire refining industry, because if you're a refiner, I mean I'm talking across the entire United States, where if you're a refiner and you brought in $50 million worth of silver in various forms, from doré to candlesticks to junk silver, you've got to break it all down, you turn it into shot, and then you melt it into bars and rounds. That could take six weeks, eight weeks. Well, the price of silver – so they have to short what they pay for. They've got $50 million in inventory, that takes weeks, they short on COMEX so they're market neutral. Well, the price kept going up and up and up and up and up and up so fast that their short position was getting clobbered. They kept getting margin called. And then they increased margin requirements by 300%, and all the refiners said, "I'm out. We're done. Can't take any more business." And they're still back-ordered from the beginning of the year because of that distortion.

But yes, to your point, it should be a little bit. This is far more than a little.

Dan Ferris:                 Proportional. It should be proportional.

Andy Schectman:        Yes.

Dan Ferris:                 Constantly.

Andy Schectman:        And this was far more. And that's all created an environment, a synthetic environment where we were guaranteed to see a price fall.

Dan Ferris:                 Right. In other words, silver didn't go up 300%. [Laughs]

Andy Schectman:        But isn't it interesting that in that environment, the month of February – January, February, March, China imported more silver than in any time in the history of the country. Ever. And they're the second-largest-producing silver country in the world. The price got kneecapped and they're buying it hand over fist. Price gets kneecapped and people are standing for delivery here hand over fist. Do you think there's some correlation there between, you know, the people who know where the puck is going and those who are just watching where the puck is?

Dan Ferris:                 Right. So just stepping back 30,000 feet, the fundamentals have not changed at all then. If BIS is, and you guys are right, then this was kind of a technical, as you said, synthetic, artificial, whatever, price collapse – engineered price collapse. And the people who buy based on long-term fundamentals for strategic reasons, they're not letting up on the gas pedal at all.

Andy Schectman:        No. You still have the day-to-day volatility, sure, but the real problems haven't gone away.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. The price is what it is, right, yeah.

Andy Schectman:        Right. Yeah, debt exploding, deficits are still massive, interest costs are rising, currencies are being debased, geopolitical risks still escalating. And more importantly than all of that is that trust in the financial system has and is still eroding. And so I think these are the reasons why you're seeing the central banks and their purchasing being inelastic. They don't care about the CPI number – they don't care about anything. All they care about is that they continue to continue and continue to buy gold. And not only buy, but to repatriate it. Repatriate it from the Bank of England. Like India has brought back almost all of their gold from the Bank of England, and others from the New York Fed. Like France, like Germany, like Poland, the Czech National Bank, the Dutch National Bank, the Bank of Austria, Hungary, Turkey – they're all bringing their gold back because of lack of trust.

And that's what all of this boils down to, I think, is a system that is based on trust has witnessed a massive erosion of said trust. And that's why the Central Bank's – look, they realize that there's been more debt accumulation in all of these countries than really can be serviced in this environment. And that's why they're buying gold. They're not buying gold for any other reason but that they see where the big picture is. And it's been nonstop, really, for going on nine years, the Central Bank's quietly doing this, and I would argue it's actually accelerating underneath the surface.

Dan Ferris:                 And you're right, we used to hear about it a lot more, I feel like. We heard about the Central Bank buying more, and now that – it sounds like it's shifted into another gear practically, we don't hear about it at all.

Andy Schectman:        Well, I think there are reasons for that. Misdirection is very pervasive. And I think misdirection is taught in every major business school on, it's like the book, The Art of War, they read it in major business schools on corporate hierarchy, in law schools on formulating arguments, it's mandatory reading at West Point and at CIA, and most major Japanese businessmen read it prior to starting their career.

Dan Ferris:                 Sure.

Andy Schectman:        It's about misdirecting through price, through rhetoric, how to beat your opponent without throwing a punch, and I think it is very much misdirection. When you see –

Dan Ferris:                 Who's doing the misdirecting?

Andy Schectman:        Well, it's what it is. When you see this kind of metal standing for delivery on COMEX, someone thinks it's important enough to spend hundreds of billions of dollars the last 19 months, and no one says a word about it. Nobody. And that's the part that just drives me nuts. The mainstream media is supposed to be so adept at telling us what's happening, and they miss the biggest story completely. They look at price, they look at technicals, they look at all the nonsense, and someone should just say, "But I've got one question: Who the hell is standing for delivery for billions every month without missing a month since last a year ago, November?"

Dan Ferris:                 But, Andy, you're the – you're the Miles Franklin guy. You're the guy. Like shouldn't you be able to call up the Financial Times and say, "Look, you need to pay attention"?

Andy Schectman:        Well, I try. You know, I've been invited on some pretty big shows recently, and it's getting closer to the mainstream, and you know, I try. But they don't let – you know, part of the reason that I wouldn't get as much credibility maybe as if you were doing it, is because I own a precious metals company. And people seem to think that doing the right thing and running a business have to be mutually exclusive of one another. I put my name out there, my face, my real name – I'm out there more than anybody. There's thousands of videos, and I say it like it is, what I believe, and I say it honestly and respectfully. But I still own a precious metals company, so much of what I say by some people is dismissed. I wish it weren't the case, because I believe in my soul.

Dan Ferris:                 I sort of –

Andy Schectman:        I spend a lot of time researching.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, I sort of get that. OK, well, it makes a basic sense, but on the other hand, you're also the guy with all the knowledge. [Laughs] I mean –

Andy Schectman:        We live in a cynical world, Dan. People are very cynical and they can't accept that as being reality.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah.

Andy Schectman:        You can. I've known you for a long time, and we're in similar circles. In this industry and in the circles that we rotate in, you screw up, you're done. It's word of mouth, and reputation and integrity are everything in business and in this industry, which is a small industry. My company has never had a customer complaint, ever, in 36 years. Doesn't mean I don't screw up or we don't screw up, but we make it right. Then in terms of my motivation for doing this, sometimes I ask myself why do I do it. And this is going to sound really stupid, and I don't mean it to be, but I almost feel like I'm supposed to be doing it. Now I know that sounds conceited. I don't mean it to be. I try to internalize why do I do this, and it's something that I get up every morning excited to dig into the news and to figure out what's going on and to tell people, and to be honest and sincere about it.

I own a gold company, so some of it is just, I think, dismissed. But for whatever it's worth, I have theses and theories that I've been saying out loud recently that no one's talking about. I believe President Trump is trying to bring back manufacturing, and I've laid out a detailed scenario on how I believe he's going to do it. And in 2019 I'm screaming about the BRICS, and I'm the only one saying this stuff publicly. And in 2019 I'm screaming about the BRICS, everyone says, "You're out of your mind, Andy."

Dan Ferris:                 BRICS countries. BRICS countries, yeah.

Andy Schectman:        And lo and behold – yes. And now everyone understands it. But the point of it is, is that I think that speaking with conviction, using facts behind it, and integrity, that's something that means a lot to me.

Dan Ferris:                 All right. Yeah.

Andy Schectman:        And I don't think we've seen anything yet as it pertains to gold. The whole new story is being written on gold. It is being rewoven into a monetary system, Dan. It's being rewoven right in front of us, and I think that this is just Chapter 1.

Dan Ferris:                 Well, from your lips to God's ears. We had a whole century from, I guess call it Wellington's victory to World War I, when prices did not – there were bouts of inflation, there was war in the U.S. and other places, but overall it's this – it's basically the century of deflation, which is the norm, and ought to be the norm in developing modern economies. Then, of course, we all went off the gold standard for World War I, and then 1933, and all the rest of it. And here we are, thinking it's normal to pay $6 for a gallon of diesel and whatever. It's just –

Andy Schectman:        Well, you know what's interesting about all of that? You said something there that I've never heard someone say quite that way, and it really resonates with me, about it should be deflation – prices should get lower with technology and innovation.

Dan Ferris:                 Abundance, right? Yeah.

Andy Schectman:        Right. So if you take any asset you can think about – let's use a house. Let's go back to 2005, because I've said this before, just I know it. In 2005 price of a house in Middle America, if you Google it, it will say was about $240,000, the average price. And gold was $450. And if you do the math, that's 530 ounces or thereabouts. Today the average price of a house according to Google, $500,000, and gold is what, $4,300, $4,400. So if you would have used the 530 ounces that you were left by your grandfather in 2005 to pay off your house of $240,000, you would have had no debt. And your wife says, "You know what? Let's leave that for Junior. Let's leave it for our son or daughter. We'll pay off the house." Well, look, 21 years later your house has doubled. It's done well. In dollar terms, it's doubled. But that 530 ounces now will buy you five houses almost fully furnished.

So did the price of your house go up twice in dollar terms, or did the dollar fall in half? In other words, did gold – you can buy five houses for this non-interest-bearing asset that sat under your mattress for 21 years, earning nothing but dust, and it's gone up 500%, or fallen 500%, in gold terms, deflated, but in dollar terms, went up. Any asset that you can think of – you measure it in gold terms and you will see what you just said is true. This is the whole reason behind tying gold to the monetary system, is that it does just that, it retains its value, and even any asset you can think of is going down in price, whereas in dollar terms everything is going way up. It's just that the dollar is a melting ice cube, and gold is a mere opposite of that.

Dan Ferris:                 Yep. And those other assets include, for example, stocks.

Andy Schectman:        Yes. Absolutely.

Dan Ferris:                 Gold has beat stocks this century.

Andy Schectman:        Yes, it has, 9.9% since 2000 on gold, 9.6% with dividends reinvested on the S&P 500. And no one reinvests all their [crosstalk]

Dan Ferris:                 With reinvested, yeah. That's generous. That's a generous accounting. But yeah, because you're right, nobody does that.

Andy Schectman:        Right. So but yeah, you don't own gold to become wealthy – you own it because it is wealth. And the smartest people in the world, just like 6,000 years ago, when gold and silver were mentioned 700-plus times cumulatively in the Bible – here we are, 6,000 years later, and the most well-informed traders on the planet, that being the central banks. And whoever the hell is doing here in the United States is saying, "You know what, I'll take delivery, thank you very much."

Dan Ferris:                 But, Andy, Andy, Andy, bitcoin is going to displace all this. Bitcoin's the new gold, man. It's scarce.

Andy Schectman:        Yeah, but I have made a habit, Dan, of trying to give a big hug to the bitcoin community. I speak on many bitcoin channels: Mark Moss, Natalie Brunell, Paul Barron, Swan Bitcoin, Crypto Banter, because I think in many respects we all see the world the same way. You're old enough, like I am, to remember the old Reese's peanut butter commercial, where two guys are walking down the street, one guy scooping peanut butter, the other guy eating chocolate, they bump into each other, "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter." "You got your peanut butter in my chocolate." They each take a bite and say, "Wow, that's good."

I think we see the world the same way. One wants to profit, one wants to preserve – so why not marry the two ideas together and say, "Look, you don't have to be a gold bugger. You don't have to think that bitcoin is the next gold, but look at the two of them together and how it strengthens your portfolio and your understanding of monetary history and of the situation we are in."

I am not a bitcoin person. I own basically one, only because I didn't want to kick myself 30 years from now, saying, "I should have at least talked about it. I should've at least owned one." I've been buying little bits here and there. But I only buy one. Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, that's my thesis. That's my thesis in one sentence: You don't want to not participate to some small degree in this.

Andy Schectman:        Yeah.

Dan Ferris:                 Absolutely.

Andy Schectman:        But I think the two communities should unite instead of being divisive.

Dan Ferris:                 Absolutely. I wish more people on both sides –

Andy Schectman:        We'd be a whole lot better off.

Dan Ferris:                 Yes, I wish more people on both sides would do exactly that.

Andy Schectman:        And I go on these shows and I extol the virtues of owning metal and I don't badmouth bitcoin. I say I'm a neophyte, I don't own squat – no squat, and own very little. But I know that we go into the same door for the same reason. Now when we walked in the door we may go this way, but, you know, it's –

Dan Ferris:                 But you're in the same room, yes.

Andy Schectman:        Yes. And you can use the Las Vegas analogy as a good, I think, explanation. You can sit at a table and make a lot of money, and the longer you sit there, the chances are you're going to walk away poor. So take some of those chips, put them in your pocket, so when you go to the cage you walk away with some money. Take some of that profit, put it into gold, and let it ride. And leave your initial investment there, and pull it off and put it into gold, and then you understand both sides of the equation. And really they're saying the same thing, that the system is broken. And one of them is barely a teenager, and the other is over 6,000 years old. So which side do you want to end on? And I just think there's no reason to bash either, but to embrace both ideologies and have a little bit of both.

Dan Ferris:                 All right. So I tried to egg you on, but you gave a fantastic answer.

Andy Schectman:        I'm not going to fall for it.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, not going to fall for it. Good for you.

Andy Schectman:        Thank you.

Dan Ferris:                 Good for you. Because there's a lot of folks on both sides that are just sort of – they're doing that binary – it's just like in politics, right, it's team red and team blue constantly going at each other, and that's –

Andy Schectman:        That's another thing that bothers to me no end, it's about being an American and seeing a common thing, and the divisiveness that we've seen really is disheartening for me. I grew up in a house that – my parents were hippies, I played college baseball. I'm a jock who grew up in that environment. Liberalism means a lot different to me than it does today. But the point of it is that you don't have to believe in something to understand it. You don't have to celebrate something to respect it. It's – I don't know.

Anyway, don't mean to get off track, but I would just simply say that it would be a whole lot better when we realize that we're all – we're all here for the same reason. We don't need to be at each other's throats over politics. You don't need to be defined by who you voted for in the last election. And I did vote for President Trump, and I would do it again. And I'll tell you something, Dan, if I had more time I would tell you my thesis about how I think he's going to bring back manufacturing. And I truly do believe this is what he's trying to do.

Dan Ferris:                 OK. We've got some time. You can sum that up for me. Because that's a topic of great interest to me.

Andy Schectman:        All right. Well, let me tell you what I think. He – and thank you for allowing me the stage on this, because it means a lot to me. Now I'm either stupid or have just enough courage to say this out loud, and I've been saying it in front of very smart people and I don't get much pushback, I get a lot of "Wow. That might be."

Now let's start with the fact that we are – we're broke, right? We're $39 trillion in debt, but that excludes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, government/military pensions.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, it's $100 trillion.

Andy Schectman:        All in.

Dan Ferris:                 All in, yeah.

Andy Schectman:        Yeah. Yeah. So we're broke. And 1 trillion seconds ago was 31,688 years ago. So for all intents and purposes, we're broke and insolvent, No. 1. And if we added all of those unfunded liabilities to debt-to-GDP ratio, we're well past that 300 debt-to-GDP ratio, where no one's ever come back from. They've either hyper-inflated or defaulted. No. 2, we don't make anything anymore. This is called Triffin's dilemma, and this is kind of the center of what I speak of. And by the way, the previous economic advisor, a true knucklehead, Jared Bernstein, who couldn't explain how Treasurys were created, embarrassed the heck out of himself. But he did write a report called "Dethrone King Dollar," which advocates for abolishing or losing the reserve status. It's a privilege we can't afford anymore. As has Vice President Vance, on several occasions spoken of Triffin's dilemma, we can't do it anymore. The concept of Triffin's dilemma says if you're the reserve currency, the world needs more dollars than we can provide through trade alone.

Let's use Cambodia as an example. We don't do much trade with them, so they're going to need to sell their Cambodian currency in the open market to buy dollars in order to buy oil and transact global business. So over time they continue to do this, the difference, erosion of their value, the currency value against ours is substantial. So someone says, "Well, let's send our T-shirt manufacturing company to Cambodia. We'll make a whole lot more." And that's what happens, is that the world needs more dollars than we can provide through trade alone, so they have to sell their currency to buy ours, and that creates these imbalances. Our dollar's too high. We can't sell our products to the world in a very high dollar, because the cost of converting to dollars first is prohibited.

So the theory is if you're the reserve currency, you will never have a trade surplus. That's No. 1. I believe they are quietly – very quietly trying to shed the reserves desk. You look all around the world, you see all these countries in the BRICS that are setting up. In fact, they just announced – just announced – the Financial Times just announced it two days ago, that they're rolling out nBridge. They're ready to do it. That's the cross-border payment system that was designed by China, Hong Kong, Thailand, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, along with the BIS innovation hub. Cross-border settlement of local currencies, and the whole idea is to settle imbalances in gold.

China's already signed up the [Cross-Border Interbank Payment System ("CIPS")], through CIPS, the Asian countries in Southeast Asia. There are 800 million people, twice the population of the U.S., China's largest trading partner by far. They will trade local currencies with one another, settle imbalances in gold. The thesis here is that we are moving away from just one currency to other countries using their own currency, settling imbalances in gold. Now the dollar's not going away. It still has the most robust rails. But we don't want to be the reserve currency anymore. Let me show you how that would work.

All right, first, we're broke. We know that. We don't make anything, Triffin's dilemma. We've offshored all of our manufacturing, largely. Ray Dalio just came out and said 60% of this country has a literacy rate under the sixth grade. Really. So we're uneducated, we're broke, we don't make anything, and here comes AI just in time to kneecap all the jobs. So, what do you do? How do you look your children in the face and say, "You too have a future, just like I did. You too – the world is your oyster." Really? What job are you going to do? What are you going to do?

My son, who works for me now, was an accountant at Price Waterhouse, getting paid to analyze a real estate investment trust balance sheet. What do they need him for $80,000 a year? They don't. "Done," says AI. Analyze, done. Get away, kid, you're gone. So the point of it is, is that we're broke, we're insolvent, we make nothing. Here comes AI, just in time. And we're uneducated, by the way. So what do we do?

I think Trump understands, no matter what, we must bring back manufacturing. We cannot be reliant on other countries, namely China, for everything from aspirin to penicillin to aircraft parts to military components. And if we do, we're dead. Because we make nothing, we're broke, we're insolvent, and no one wants our Treasurys anymore because of our fiscal irresponsibility and our monetary brain-dead policies. This is why you're seeing countries shed treasuries and buy gold. What do we do?

Here's what I think he wants to do. No. 1, all of the things that we've seen with tariffs and the craziness and the pushing away, maybe there's intent on that. Maybe he wants other countries to trade with other countries in their own currency, not be so reliant on trading the dollar. Let's just throw that out as a thesis, just maybe. All right? But the real nuts and bolts of this program would work, starting with the GENIUS Act that goes into effect next January. Most people don't even know what the GENIUS Act is. It is diabolically genius. What they do is from now, from January on, anytime that you spend dollars anywhere in the world, it will move like that [snaps fingers] on a stablecoin network, backed by stablecoins, backed by short-term Treasurys, 90 day or less, little bit of cash, and 90-day or less short-term Treasurys. You have just created synthetic demand for the U.S. Treasury.

So when people say, "Is Warsh a hawk or a dove?" it doesn't matter. You've just nailed short-term interest rates to the floor, and you've nailed them with 1,000 nails, they ain't never coming up. Because anytime money moves, short-term treasuries are created synthetically to pin the front end of the curve to the floor. Dual mandate of the Fed, gone. Done. You have pinned short-term rates. Anytime money moves around the globe it will be blockchain, like instant transfer, use stablecoins, and then backed by short-term treasuries.

Now, the interest on those treasuries, according to the Clarity Act, is not transferable to you or to me. It is the issuer of those Treasurys that gets to decide what to do with the interest. So the primary beneficiary of this – there will be many that do it, JP, Citi, Bank of America, they'll all issue, but they all have to follow the GENIUS Act rules, which would be backed by short-term Treasurys, and the interest isn't transferable. What if they all got together and Trump said to them all – like Tether, who was under investigation, and then went away. And now, by the way, the CEO of USA Tether is none other than Bo Hines, who was Trump's crypto czar until last August. The rules that he implemented he's now benefiting from, and he looks at him, wink wink, nod nod, "now you guys are no longer in trouble. But here's what you're going to do for us, you are going to take that interest and you're going to buy gold. Lots of gold. You're going to continue to buy gold with all of that interest."

Now what has Tether done for three years in a row? They have bought more gold than anyone in the world but the Central Bank of Poland. They've been buying over 1,000 metric tons at a pop, boom, boom, boom. They're buying more gold than anybody, right? And what does that do? Well, that devalues the dollar, because the only way that you really devalue something or measure the value of something is to do it in gold ounces. Not in currency terms. Remember, Triffin's dilemma is that everyone's selling their currency to buy ours. The dollar index is a faulty measuring stick. Measure it in gold, which is the neutral barometer by which everything is measured.

So you continue to buy gold, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up, the dollar goes down, goes down, goes down, goes down. And now you can sell manufacturing to the world, because that's what they've done to us. And No. 2, you find it easier to pay off your debt. But that's just part of it. This is where it gets interesting. Judy Shelton has been on my show –

Dan Ferris:                 [Laughs] This is where it gets interesting.

Andy Schectman:        Judy Shelton has been on my –

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, talk about Judy Shelton. Yes.

Andy Schectman:        She's been on my show twice, once with me, once with Michelle McCrory. Judy was Trump's nominee to run the Fed in 2016. Judy says to me, "Andy, in no uncertain terms" – now this is where we're getting very close – she says, "Trump has told me that on July 4, 2026 it will be the biggest day of his career – of his presidency. It's the 250th anniversary, and I believe he will link a 50-year Treasury to gold."

Dan Ferris:                 Mm-hmm. Yep, as do I.

Andy Schectman:        And in her book she said, five, 10, 20, 30, but originally it's starting with the 50. And all of them, except the 50, will have zero coupon. The 50 might have a 1% coupon, no interest rate. So you have a zero-coupon bond redeemable in gold. Now let's start to add things together. VanEck funds just came out and said, "If the dollar did lose its reserve status" – this isn't me talking, this is VanEck, "we see gold at $139,000 an ounce." And they had this big paper about it, their emerging market bond team.

Dan Ferris:                 Right.

Andy Schectman:        If you have to sell a $20 million bond, redeemable in 20 years, let's say – forget about the 50 for a moment, we'll just make it easy – 20 years, we owe $20 million in gold. At today's rate that's about 4,500 ounces of gold. If VanEck was right, because you don't even have to revalue. Remember Bessent said, "We're not going to revalue gold." But what if Tether, who's buying all this gold for you by proxy, Bo Hines, the CEO, you guys are going to buy this gold, you're going to sell it to the Treasury. Shh, don't tell anyone. We're going to do this by proxy for the U.S. government, and as the price keeps going higher, higher, higher, higher, higher, higher, higher, the dollar goes lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, we can sell our product to the world, we can pay off our debt. We're going to buy that gold from you, you're all going to be rich, and no one's going to – you'll ride off into the sunset. That gold is going to back the Treasury.

But if it takes 4,500 ounces of gold today to pay that off in 20 years, what if VanEck funds was right, and it went up $239,000 as we soft default on the reserve status? It's about 130 ounces of gold that we would owe then. But what would that allow us to do? A zero-coupon bond would mean we have zero upfront borrowing costs, we can bring back all of our manufacturing and build it out, update it, make it new and ready to go. And in an environment where the dollar keeps falling in value and gold keeps going higher, not only is it easier to sell your product to the world and give our children a future, a shot.

Richard Russell, my mentor, said, "Andy, we're screwed. The Fed can either inflate or die. Period. Because we've offshored all our manufacturing. There's three ways to pay off the debt: Inflate, default, or produce more than you consume." Well, Doug Casey talks about that all the time, we definitely don't produce more than we consume. How can we do that? Bring back manufacturing. Give our uneducated children a chance at a life in an environment where the dollar is dying. But if we make stuff and can send it out to the rest of the world and build back our manufacturing, along with our IT prowess and the ability to combine the two, we have a future where maybe, just maybe, we can eventually grow our way out of this problem and become the engine of manufacturing, like we once were.

Now the downside is we are no longer the reserve currency. You save in dollars, you will go broke. The downside is I could see Trump coming up and saying, "Look, this is what's going to happen. We've squandered a good deal, but this is how we give our children a chance. We bring back manufacturing, but it's going to come at the expense of Universal Basic Income for a little bit, until we get our feet underneath us. But this is our duty." It's just like Andy Dufresne, Dan, in The Shawshank Redemption. He had to crawl through two miles of crap to get to the other side, but there was that moment. And I think there's no way that we don't crawl through that crap. Somehow, some way, this might actually give us a chance.

So the higher gold goes, the easier it is to follow. And the one last thing I'm going to tell you that made my day, now I've been saying this publicly for a year, and some people say, "Sure. Could happen. Maybe. It's interesting. It could work. It's elegant. It pays down the debt easier, gives our children a chance, brings back manufacturing," all of that. The one thing that I saw just the other day which put a gigantic smile on my face, was the new hire for Fed Chair Warsh. His name is Paul Winfree, and he's a top conservative economist, and he's now the adviser to – the top advisor, key policy adviser to Warsh. And what's interesting about him – he's been around the block for a long time. He's a former Trump deputy assistant for domestic policy, he's in the Heritage Foundation.

There was a paper that was written called "Project 2025," it was like 50 economists, and they all took a chapter, and his chapter was Chapter 24, the Federal Reserve chapter, where he seriously explores returning to a gold standard to fight inflation. And he actually highlights gold convertible treasury instruments, aka gold bonds, what Judy Shelton wants. So the point of it is that this would allow – instead of going to a gold-backed system, where there's no monetary ability – your monetary ability is restrained by the gold. Instead, you can still do monetary policy, you're not backing the dollar. The dollar is the tool for trade. You don't want to hold your wealth in dollars. Instead, the gold-backed bonds gives us the ability to still enact monetary policy, but the redeeming, and in fact, the worse the dollar gets, the higher gold goes, which makes paying off the debt in gold ounces easier down the road.

So I guess all I'm simply saying is this, I don't know how else we bring back manufacturing, 'cause if we don't, we're broke, we're insolvent, we're uneducated, we make nothing, and here's AI. Good luck to y'all, to the young kids. I think this is a fighting shot. I hope to God I'm right. I truly do. And we'll find out real soon. That's my thesis.

Dan Ferris:                 All right. So as we speak here in mid-June of 2026, I'm flying to Denver tomorrow to record a presentation that focuses entirely on the date of July 4, 2026 for exactly the reason that you have just said.

Andy Schectman:        Ah, wonderful.

Dan Ferris:                 Last year I did a presentation about Stephen Miran's paper, which–

Andy Schectman:        The Mar-A-Lago Accord.

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. Yeah, Mar-A-Lago Accords, which says the same thing about the dollar.

Andy Schectman:        Do you think – I'm going to interrupt you, but do you think there's any coincidence that he was put into the Federal Reserve, the same guy that wrote the Mar-A-Lago Accord? I'm just saying...

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah, not at all. Of course. Yeah. So, definitely same page. I think that AI will work out very differently than a lot of the people do. I think that, like every other transformative technology in history, it will spawn vast new industries, much more than it will destroy. It'll be like the Internet itself, maybe even on steroids.

Andy Schectman:        I hope you're right.

Dan Ferris:                 And I did a whole issue of my newsletter about that, where I thought, you know, why would this transformative technology be different than all the ones that preceded it? I just – there's disruption, don't get me wrong. The folks who were busting up knitting machines a while ago, they did lose their jobs a couple hundred years ago. They did lose their jobs – that's why they busted up the knitting machines, OK? [Laughs] So, there will be disruption.

But when I look at AI, I think we are getting closer and closer and closer to getting humans away from all the dehumanizing things that they need to do to make a living. And that's sort of the way I see it. Just like – it's just like the printing –

Andy Schectman:        Well, God bless you, you know? Look –

Dan Ferris:                 Yeah. It's just like the printing press, put words in physical form for a much larger audience. It was not this – it was less and less and less over time of a luxury item to own a book because of that. And I think AI does this – I hope AI does this. Nobody knows the future. It's good to be cautious – can't predict the future. But overall, I was sitting here just thinking, "I'm going to let him keep talking, because I've said like half of this stuff," and I've said half of this stuff in the past year. In different forms. In different forms, you know?

Andy Schectman:        That's wonderful. I'm glad to know that I'm running parallel with such a great mind. That's awesome.

Dan Ferris:                 Well, thank you. That's quite a compliment coming from you. But this is actually a pristine moment for me to address my final question, which is the same for every guest. No matter what the topic, it's the same identical question. The question is simply for our listeners' benefit, if you could give them one thought, one takeaway today, what – this is your moment – what would you like that to be?

Andy Schectman:        It's very easy for me, and I mean this to my soul, if you save in dollars, you will – and I stole this from my buddy, Rick Rule, but I mean it, and now more than ever, you save in dollars, you will go broke. You are not a contrarian. You will be a victim. And I think that the wealthy people saving assets, and it's not a giant bank account in dollars – it's saving in assets. You take a look at all the money lobbed in money market accounts right now earning sub-4% with inflation already above it, and we know the inflation numbers are not real. The CP lie from the BS – I mean the BLS should allow should – should – show maybe about 11% inflation, according to John Williams. But just taking at what they are, using their line metrics of over 4% right now and 3.8-percent on the money market, your real negative return. Real negative return.

So what I'm getting at here is that you have to own real assets and not things like money market accounts, that are paying a return based off of faulty metrics. You own assets, assets will feed you. Liabilities, like the dollar, will eat you. Save in dollars, go broke. Save in assets and you win the game. And the reason I like gold and silver more than anything, aside from the fact that I own a company, is that the most well-informed traders on the planet and the most funded traders on the planet, the central banks, the family offices, the commercial banks, and whoever the hell is standing for delivery for billions and billions and billions every month for the last going on 19 months, they know where the puck is going.

And I say this a lot and get people laughing, but I was going to say Wayne Gretzky. I golf at Trump International from time to time here in West Palm, and Wayne Gretzky's always there with President Trump. I see him all the time. He's not a big guy at all. I'm bigger than him. He's probably, I don't know, standing he's about 5'8"-5'9"-5'10", not big. And yet, he's the most prolific hockey player of all time, and his saying is, "I never skated to where the puck is, I skated to where it's going." And all of these people who are dropping nine figures every single month, or 10 figures every month, which no one's talking about but the guy that owns the gold company, they know where the puck's going. They don't screw around at that level, nor do all the central banks, who have been buying in a very inelastic form now for going on eight, nine years. Do what the big money is doing, tune out the noise, and don't save in dollars, that would be my advice.

Dan Ferris:                 I like your message. I like it a lot.

Andy Schectman:        Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it.

Dan Ferris:                 I'm going to talk about it to some folks inside my company, because I want more people to hear exactly what you just said.

Andy Schectman:        I appreciate that. You have an amazing company with an amazing reputation and it's an honor to have come on your show, and even a greater honor to hear you say that. So count me in if there's anything I can do to pick up where we left off at any time in any capacity. I'm in.

Dan Ferris:                 All right. Well, that concludes this episode of the Mutual Admiration Society.

Andy Schectman:        [Laughs]

Dan Ferris:                 Thank you so much, Andy, for coming, and we'll have you back soon, I promise.

Andy Schectman:        Look forward to it, brother. You stay well.

Dan Ferris:                 You, too.

                                    I promise you, I didn't know how this conversation was going to go, because I haven't spoken to Andy in a long time. He and I had dinner 10 years ago with Rick Rule and I think we've exchanged an e-mail here and there, we've seen each other at a conference here and there, but we haven't really sat down and had a good, long talk. I haven't kept up with him, he hasn't kept up with me, and I did not know that we were going to be so much on the same page and that his work overlaps so much with not one, but two presentations, one of which I put out last year about the Mar-A-Lago Accords, and another one which I'm going to film tomorrow, as I speak into the camera right now, which will come out – it's scheduled to come out June the 26. It's all about the gold-backed Treasury bonds that Andy was talking about that Judy Shelton wants to do. And the implication from her comments is that Trump is going to announce this on July 4. And that is exactly what my presentation is about. Just click the link below or aim your phone at the QR code on the screen to learn more about that.

But that is huge – that alone was enough of a reason for us to record this podcast with Andy. And after we turned off the recording I told him, I said, "We're going to get together. I didn't know we overlapped this much." So I really want to do something with him to present this idea, again, with somebody who's onto it and who is extremely well-informed about the physical gold market. That guy, he's got more data just right on the tip of his tongue than anyone I know when it comes to the physical gold market. I know you heard that as well. So wow, that was really exciting for me. I hope it was as exciting for you. That's another great interview, another great episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I really, really, truly did.

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Announcer:                 Opinions expressed on this program are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Stansberry Research, its parent company, or affiliates.

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