Doug Casey Talks Covid-19, Fedcoin, and the Future of Western Civilization

My good friend and mentor Doug Casey joins me on the podcast again to discuss world events, politics, U.S. monetary policy, and why Fedcoin isn’t as far-fetched of an idea as it sounds. We pick up on topics we discussed in our first conversation, “The Money System - An interview with Doug Casey.”

Doug is known for outlandish opinions, but the situation we find ourselves in now is something that he’s talked about for a long time. While we’re experiencing this turmoil here in the U.S., he’s watching it unfold from his ranch in Uruguay.

Doug: I feel rather smug watching the collapse of the U.S. comfortably on my widescreen as opposed to uncomfortably out my front window. Over the next six months I expect I can turn the audio off and put on Rolling Stones’s “Street Fighting Man.” 

1984 meets Brave New World

We essentially have two major issues coming together: the decline of Western civilization and its Enlightenment values and the rise of a police state.

Doug: It’s not quite Orwell’s 1984 and it’s not quite Huxley’s Brave New World, but it takes some of the worst elements of both of them. 

The problem is there’s not much anybody as an individual can do at this point. You can try to leave to avoid suffering the unpleasantness and inconvenience — but where can you go? All the countries in the world are going in the wrong direction. 

In my upcoming third novel, Assassin, our hero, Charles Knight, becomes an assassin to eliminate malicious government officials. So that’s one route. It’s a good thing I’m saying this in a novel; otherwise the men in black would be knocking on my door.

Stoking racial divides

When George Floyd was killed, it was the most unified in opinion I have seen America since 9/11. Everyone thought that cop was a piece of [expletive] who needed to be in handcuffs. Everyone thought he should’ve got the perp walk. 

A moment when there’s literal total agreement somehow gets turned into the most divisive issue of my lifetime overnight. How does that happen?

Doug: The pot was boiling. This was just the catalyst that made it all blow up. It’s been coming for some time. As bad as things are right now, things are still kind of held together because the stock market and bond markets are basically at all-time highs. When they melt down and the banks are in trouble and there’s another wave of unemployment, who can say what’s going to happen?

Too many elites

Russian-American scientist and writer Peter Turchin studies how societies grow and evolve over time. He’s getting some renewed attention now because in his 2017 book, The Ages of Discord, he warned that things would get worse by 2020. His underlying thesis is that there’s a overpopulation of elites in the U.S. and trouble happens when they start fighting each other, which is happening now.

Doug: My friend Jim Rogers said that at some point in the future, the guys driving the Lamborghini’s are going to be the guys driving trackers in the middle of cornfields, because commodities are going to go up. There’s lots of good arguments for buying farmland. At the same time, there’s lots of good arguments for continuing to stay away from them because the longest bear market in all of history is commodities.

Monetary reset

The monetary system seems set for a reset, something that’s happened a lot in the past. The U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency carries all kinds of implications. Add the fact that, like most countries, we have a huge amount of debt that is unpayable. Americans tend to believe that if something isn’t working right — whether it be education or healthcare — the problem is we’re not allocating enough capital.

In an environment where we have all these factors going on, it’s hard to imagine it’s not set for a monetary reset where things fundamentally change. 

The rise of Fedcoin?

One idea Doug floated a few years ago was the launching of a Federal Reserve cryptocurrency. It doesn’t sound as out there of an idea any more.

Doug: It’s going to happen. Bitcoin is popular. Everybody has a cell phone today, and the government loves the idea of something like Fedcoin. If you deal in Fedcoin, it’s all done electronically through your cell phone, which means they know everything that you buy and sell. There’s no cash anymore. At that point if they don’t like you, they can close your account.