Transcript: Gold Wholesaler Chris Olson on Tucker Carlson Show

So there can’t be enough of it to satisfy everyone’s demand. So it has a certain level of value just intrinsic to the characteristics of the element.

And if you were going to look at, say, the periodic table of elements and figure out which of those is going to be suitable or ideal for money, the only two that really shine are gold and silver compared to the rest of them.

So over the course of history, it’s been a natural progression for societies to adopt gold as a medium of exchange simply because it has those hallmarks and those characteristics that allow it to be useful as a medium of exchange and a store of value.

The Hidden Cost of Inflation

And it’s when you go away from that that you begin to have the horrible problems in society that come about through inflation or the artificial creation of credit. Because when you do that, you’re essentially conveying arbitrary power, purchasing power, to entities that didn’t really earn it.

So it’s a form of counterfeiting to build on top of that, to counterfeit gold or create paper claims or to inflate a currency that’s backed by gold. All of those are fundamentally lying and they’re fundamentally stealing.

And so inflation causes horrible effects within a society that nobody can really diagnose or pin to inflation, but it’s really at the root of those things, and it causes the gradual centralization of power towards those that are able to issue a currency without any tether to reality or to manipulate the rules of the system.

And so, for example, whoever’s closest to new money within a society has more purchasing power than the market expects that they should have, because the signals haven’t gone out that there’s excess money in society so prices don’t change. And that’s ultimately where inflation comes from.

TUCKER CARLSON: That is such an interesting point that I’ve never considered. The people who are closest to new money have the first mover advantage effectively, like there will be inflation, but the system doesn’t know it yet, and therefore they have more money at lower prices than everyone else is going to have. Is that what you’re saying?

CHRIS OLSON: That’s the real power in it. See, if everybody—say you lived on some desert island and everybody had a fixed amount of money in their accounts. And on that island you had a well-established economy and there were prices that were pretty stable.

And some magical event happens overnight where everybody wakes up and the amount of money in their accounts has doubled, but it’s doubled evenly for everyone. And if they were to collectively understand that together, they would realize that the prices of everything should also be doubled.

So just because you’ve doubled the amount of money in circulation doesn’t mean you’ve doubled the amount of goods and services or actual wealth. You’ve just doubled the claims on wealth. Right?

So in that case, nobody has an advantage because everybody has equally doubled the money supply. They all know it. At the same time, prices double and nothing’s different. You just have more money and higher prices.

But if just a few of those people were to get extra money, then the prices wouldn’t change and other people wouldn’t understand what was happening. So the market that determines prices would not be able to detect or prevent what’s basically a hack.

In a sense, it’s allowing people who haven’t earned a claim on those goods and services to take them arbitrarily. That’s why they call it fiat money, because it’s by fiat. Simply “I say so,” and that’s a real problem.

The Universal Recognition of Gold’s Value

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s funny, you’re a gold dealer, not just wholesale, but retail as well. One of the biggest—billions of dollars of gold. But that’s a better explanation than I’ve ever received from any economist. So I kind of want to just call you an economist now. I doubt you’d accept the term.

I don’t want to be digressive, but I can’t control myself on this. You were saying that from the beginning of time, gold was used as a medium of exchange because of its inherent physical properties. But I also find it interesting that gold was considered valuable and used for trade on every continent on Earth before we believed there was any communication between those continents.

So separate civilizations—the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Incas, ancient African civilizations—basically every civilization before, again, there was any contact between civilizations, all decided of all the metals and elements out there we’re using gold. The first and second temples were adorned with gold, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right.

It almost feels like there’s a metaphysical thing going on. I mean, I don’t know the answer, but have you ever thought of that?

CHRIS OLSON: Definitely, yeah. I think all of reality is symbolic, and I think gold symbolizes something. So it seems like it’s baked into the fabric of reality itself that if you’re going to need money, if you’re going to have money, then you’re going to need something that’s suitable to it.

And it seems like quite a coincidence that you happen to have two elements that fit that bill so well. And it would explain why—

TUCKER CARLSON: But that everybody recognized it thousands and thousands of years before the Internet. I mean, independently. What are the odds?

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, the odds are astronomical. And I think that’s why that explains why that would happen. If it’s basically encoded into reality in a sense, a symbol of wealth that’s meant to be viewed as such, then you would imagine that people would discover that.

The ancients were very, very smart. Ancient civilizations were not necessarily as ignorant as we might think they were.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, we’re coming to learn that. I don’t see anybody building megaliths now. I see a lot of poured concrete garbage. I don’t see any megaliths. So clearly they were more sophisticated on many levels than we understand.

Gold’s Performance vs. The Stock Market

Okay, so I talked about this last night at dinner, but I think because you have been in this business your entire life, you’re a major player in the business. You spend your life with people who understand the value of gold. But outside of your world, gold is constantly attacked, constantly attacked and derided as an investment for unsophisticated people, for the dummies, for the crazies, for the paranoids who think society is collapsing, don’t believe in the US dollar or whatever.

And so I asked you last night to look up the performance of gold relative to—let’s just pick the markets. The S&P, Standard and Poor’s 500 biggest companies in the United States. That’s a widely used measurement, the performance of gold. It beat the market almost twice. Am I making this up in my mind?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, if we look at performance over the time period from say January 2000 until today—

TUCKER CARLSON: 25 years.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, 25 years, you see gold up roughly a little over 1,000%, whereas the S&P is up less than 400% over that same time period, including dividends. So it’s clear that there’s something more happening with gold.

The Performance of Gold vs. The S&P 500

TUCKER CARLSON: Can you say that one more time? So in the last 25 years, if you bought an index fund, or let’s just say strictly speaking, the performance of the S&P for the last 25 years and two months has been what? It’s up what?

CHRIS OLSON: Less than 400%, and gold is up over a thousand.

TUCKER CARLSON: Over 25 years. This is not just like some, you know, because there’s been a run on gold recently. The spot price has risen a lot to record highs. So anyone who says gold, and I know like Warren Buffett or all these other geniuses are all against gold. But actually if you’d gone all in on gold 25 years ago, you’d be more than twice as rich as someone who just kept it in the markets. That’s what you’re saying?

CHRIS OLSON: Yep, definitely.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so why didn’t I know that till last night?

Government Policy and Gold Suppression

CHRIS OLSON: Well, it seems to have been a policy objective of the United States government to discourage the use of gold and to suppress its price relative to the dollar in order to maintain dollar dominance on the world stage. And that dollar dominance has been the primary means by which we’ve been able to live well beyond our means and command a military budget that’s larger than any other country on earth.

And if gold is a competitor to the dollar, gold really serves as a barometer of the health of the dollar as well. And there have been multiple times in recent history that gold has risen precipitously, or silver, against the dollar. And whenever that happens, it’s a threat to a debt-based system to see real assets appreciating against the currency in that way.

So additionally, you’ve got other foreign governments that are holders of gold, central banks. And if you can suppress the price of gold against the dollar, you can also suppress the purchasing power of those governments against your own.

But what we see now, especially since 2022 with the sanctions that were placed on Russia as a result of the Ukraine invasion, the U.S. Treasury debt is no longer a neutral reserve asset. It’s not safe from a national security perspective for countries to rely on dollars or to expect that they might not be seized or sanctioned.

TUCKER CARLSON: So this is the problem with sanctions on Russia. Stealing people’s stuff because you don’t like their politics.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, it was a huge mistake to do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Suicide.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, because it really has literally threatened this dollar-dominant system of world trade. And I’m not sure why the Biden administration would have been interested in doing that. It seems like they’re doing—

TUCKER CARLSON: Because they set out to systematically destroy the United States. Yeah, there’s no—I don’t care what people’s stated motives are. I care about what they do. And if everything they do points in the same direction, that’s the motive.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah. Don’t look at what they say, look at what they do.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s exactly right. The point of a system is what it does.

CHRIS OLSON: Exactly.

De-Dollarization and the Future of Global Trade

TUCKER CARLSON: And the point of the system they created was to destroy the United States, to knock it from its perch, to degrade it, to break it apart. And destroying the dominance of the dollar was something as insane as their reaction to a war that they started on purpose between Russia and Ukraine. Just tells you everything. But where does that leave us now?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, there’s a process underway that many people refer to as de-dollarization, and a lot of it’s centered around BRICS economy. And you’ve even seen President Trump talk about threatening sanctions on these countries. I think 100% sanctions if they attempt to move away from the dollar. So he’s obviously been advised as to the threat that that poses to U.S. national security or foreign policy objectives.

But there is a distinct move to look for a neutral reserve asset that can be used to settle balances of payment accounts between various countries that are trading with one another. And historically it’s been dollars and treasuries for decades now as the world’s reserve currency. But now they need an alternative.

And the only alternative that’s ever truly existed has been gold. Some people talk about maybe Bitcoin could serve that purpose. And I mean, on some theoretical level, maybe it could. But it’s also got a number of security issues and technical issues, infrastructure problems that many foreign governments—based on electricity.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. And people have to generate electricity. All of this stuff is based on electricity. And all of it, AI, our whole life is based on electricity. And electricity is a little over 100 years old in its current form. So this is a pretty new technology, and it can be taken out really, really quickly.

So that’s just a fact that no one ever wants to say anything about. But an EMP attack eliminates crypto and the Internet and AI and, you know what I mean? It’s all sort of transitory, actually.

CHRIS OLSON: Right. And it’s also not as private as one might think.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: So you have the blockchain where every transaction is public as it has to be.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: And so gold is really the original cryptocurrency, because I can have value, physically transfer it to you, and truly nobody knows about it because it doesn’t need to happen on a blockchain. The gold is the gold.

The Privacy and Portability of Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: How hard is it to transport it privately? And by the way, I should say, I think you and I are both starting with the assumption that it is not a crime to have the fruits of your labor. So it’s a crime to steal. Of course it’s a crime to defraud people. But if I’ve earned money, I have a right to have it. You have no right to know where I have it or what I’m doing with it, as long as I’m not doing something illegal.

And so let’s just say that’s our core assumption. All this money laundering nonsense, which is really just a way to control our population, not to stop money laundering, which is the basis of our government in the first place.

All right, so with that in mind, it is not only okay, it’s virtuous to have money in a private form that other people can’t see or control. That’s okay. It’s okay because you’re not a slave. You’re an autonomous person.

With that in mind, how hard is it to have gold, to move gold, to transact with gold outside the view of other people, with privacy?

CHRIS OLSON: It’s very easy to do. And I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Private money is a foundation of human liberty, of freedom.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re trying to make you feel guilty about it. “What are you into, kiddie porn?” Right, says the kiddie porn guy.

CHRIS OLSON: Exactly. And so it’s directly linked to your sovereignty as individuals, as nations, as families. But to transfer, you could move a million dollars worth of gold in a package that’s going to weigh about 35 pounds and be about that big. That’s a million dollars worth of gold.

TUCKER CARLSON: So a little smaller now.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, yeah, it just keeps getting smaller. The value keeps going up.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Which means it’s a denser store of value than it was.

CHRIS OLSON: Exactly.

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Moving Gold Across Borders

TUCKER CARLSON: So is it hard to move it across borders?

CHRIS OLSON: You have to declare it whenever you’re importing or exporting metal into other countries, like you would have to declare any type of good. So there are laws for customs in every country. So you’re going to declare it. But in the majority of nations around the world, importing pure gold is not going to be taxed. They’re going to allow it, they’re going to facilitate it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there aren’t tariffs on gold?

CHRIS OLSON: Generally, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why? That’s interesting.

CHRIS OLSON: Well, every country has need of it, every population has demand for it. So it’s in the interest of nations to allow their populations or their governments or their corporations to be able to obtain it for the purposes they need it for without making it artificially expensive. Let the market determine the real value of it.

And so that’s the purpose of gold. And that’s why nations give it that favored treatment, because it’s a form of money, as it always has been. You don’t tax money that’s crossing borders. You don’t put a tariff on euros or a tariff on dollars. You want the money to be able to flow because it’s good for trade. And the same is true for gold and silver in most cases.

Who’s Buying Gold?

TUCKER CARLSON: So with that, obviously, without betraying the privacy of any of your clients, and I should just be clear about one of the things that you do is supply gold to people. You know, someone wants gold, “I want $10,000 worth of gold. I want $10 million worth of gold.” And you’re one of the people, aren’t that many, actually, who can come up with it reliably and you send it to them. Who’s buying gold? The categories here, not people, of course.

CHRIS OLSON: Well, in general, retail investors buy gold. Hedge funds, family offices are interested. Absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Even though you are a key player in some sense in the country’s financial system, actually, because gold is a part of that system, you probably are not watching a lot of CNBC, right?

CHRIS OLSON: I don’t have much time for mainstream news. There are many mainstream investors in gold. Many very intelligent advisors are constantly advising for it and have been for a long time. And I think it’s always been kind of a standard piece of advice amongst wealth managers and advisors to have, say, 10% of your portfolio in gold.

That used to be a standard recommendation, just because it’s always been understood to be a hedge against inflation and volatility. It’s an asset that moves contrary to other assets. So it’s a way to balance a portfolio to some extent.

Sourcing Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: Where does it come from? I want to buy—I call you and I say, which I’m not going to do because I can’t afford it, but I want to buy $100 million worth of gold. I have no idea if you have that on hand. But if you don’t have it on hand, where do you get it?

The International Gold Market and Trading Systems

CHRIS OLSON: Well, the gold market internationally is primarily operated through exchanges such as the COMEX, operated by the CME Group out of New York, the London Bullion Market Association in London, the Shanghai Gold Exchange. There are other gold exchanges in, say, Russia and in India as well.

And so that’s where the bulk of the trading occurs, where they’re clearing hundreds of millions of dollars every single day in contracts. And that’s being fed primarily by refineries who are purchasing the gold from mines and also are trading gold that already exists. So that’s the major source of gold and that’s usually in the form of large exchange traded standardized bars in bulk.

Like the COMEX contract here in the United States is settled in a 100 ounce gold bar. And so that would be a single futures contract that firms like us would purchase or other people who need to buy and sell futures contracts will purchase that type of a commodity.

From that point, bulk gold is taken and it is further processed into smaller coins and bars by private mints and by government mints specifically for the purpose of making it available to people that want to buy it in formats that are useful to the average person.

And so the primary source is going to be big banks, funds, ETFs that are trading mines and also the secondary market where whenever there’s a large amount of liquidation that’s happening. If there’s more than the retail market can absorb of retail dealers, and I’m referring to that as just the non-exchange traded markets, just this is the open market in the United States, for example, if people sell too much as they have been for the last year and a half, what that market needs to do then is absorb all of that selling pressure.

And a lot of times they’ll have to send it to a refinery and have it melted down so that it can be cast into formats that can be delivered into the futures markets. Where there’s deeper liquidity, there’s more money to absorb the purchasing power or the selling demand of the market.

So even the secondary market will at times be feeding back into that. So there’s a lot of plumbing internationally that provides for the efficient flow of precious metals and price discovery and trade execution and settlement. It’s a very well established system that operates internationally and without too much friction.

There’s always a little bit of friction involved when it comes to stuff. That’s when you’re moving precious metals or changing it from one form to another. So the least amount of friction is going to be like unallocated pool positions in London. But that’s also the highest amount of risk. So it’s always a trade off.

If you want to de-risk it a little bit, you’ll get allocated bars. But now that means that you’ve moved it out of the unallocated pool, you’ve gotten serial numbers and it’s in another section of the vault, that’s going to have some friction.

But if you want to further take possession of those things now it has to flow out through dealers and operators that can take possession of those big bars. And now you’re hiring armored cars, you’re insuring it. You’re financing the position that you have to carry for a period of time that costs you interest and opportunity costs with your capital.

And you’ll have to then reformat the big bars into smaller coins and bars. And that requires capital, equipment and labor, other inputs. And so there is friction to move it between the major sources of liquidity and the different markets. And so as you’re doing that, that’s where actually the premium comes from.

So when you look at, say, the price of gold that you see on your TV screen, the reason that you can’t buy it for that price from a dealer of coins or bars is the product that they’re selling. Well, it’s based on that price. It’s got multiple layers of friction that have been added into that product, of course. And so that’s where the premium comes from.

TUCKER CARLSON: It is a physical product. It’s not theoretical. Right. It’s someone has to actually put it in, you know, has to melt it.

CHRIS OLSON: And that’s all friction.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: But, you know, if you wanted to buy gold at the spot price, the only way to do that is to actually buy futures contracts on the commodity exchanges, which is where that price is being ultimately set. But that’s usually not the best option for your average investor. You don’t have possession and control of it. And if you want to take possession and control of it, you’re going to add some friction back into the asset.

Customer Delivery and Physical Possession

TUCKER CARLSON: What percentage of your customers take delivery, have it sent to their homes?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, technically, 100% of our customers take delivery as it’s strictly defined under the law, which means it leaves our possession, and it’s going to go to either a qualified depository that’s acting as an agent of the customer, or it’s going to go directly into the possession of that customer physically.

So the percentage that takes it home and buries it somewhere in their backyard or wherever, it’s probably north of 50%.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? Like real amounts of gold?

CHRIS OLSON: Real amounts of gold and silver.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s interesting about it is it doesn’t, if you do that, it pays no dividends. So you got to really believe in it.

CHRIS OLSON: Right? But profit and value is not always expressed in dollar terms.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?

The Value of Sovereignty and Control

CHRIS OLSON: Well, there’s a lot of value to having your wealth under your control and in your private possession, which maybe it’s worth the trade off of not having dividends being distributed.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think the value is?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, you have sovereignty, you have control. You’ve eliminated essentially all counterparty risk. So you’re the one who knows it’s actual wealth delivered. It’s not a claim on wealth anymore. It’s not a hypothetical, it’s not some paper certificate that says “I owe you this” or “we promise that you have this here.”

TUCKER CARLSON: “We promise, we promise.”

CHRIS OLSON: It’s, and you can trust some people’s promises. There’s always trust involved in a system. But you know, there are other promises that maybe you shouldn’t trust. So you want to de-risk a little bit.

But once you have it in your possession, that’s wealth delivered. It’s no longer a claim on wealth, it’s a settled debt. You know, if you look at say Federal Reserve notes, the Federal Reserve notes are not actually wealth, they’re notes, which means they’re debts. They’re debts of the Federal Reserve. They’re a claim on the assets of the Fed.

And so whenever you pay somebody with a Federal Reserve note, you’re not actually settling your debt to that person. You’re exchanging one debt for another. So they haven’t actually taken possession of actual true wealth, which is what gold is, or, you know, any other type of asset or capital asset.

But when you have gold now, you have actual wealth crystallized physically incarnate, so to speak, in a tangible form that is no longer subject to any other counterparty’s duty to perform on your behalf.

Converting Gold to Cash

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing. How do you spend it?

CHRIS OLSON: Right now, because of the way our economy works, you need dollars for practically everything. Even Bitcoin, as popular as it’s become. You know, if you go to a merchant that accepts Bitcoin, that merchant isn’t actually taking the Bitcoin and keeping it on a wallet somewhere. They’re converting it to dollars almost instantly in most cases.

So the same is true for gold at this point, largely that, you know, you can’t really easily spend it directly because most people need dollars to operate on a daily basis, to pay their taxes, to pay their mortgage, to go buy food at the grocery store. So to spend it, it usually involves converting it back into dollars, selling it to somebody who’s making a market for it, getting the money and then using it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Which seems reasonable at this point in time. And of course, that will evolve, as all systems do, you know, maybe not in our lifetime, but of course it all evolves. We don’t use drachma anymore, denarii or whatever.

How do you do that? How do you convert? So I buy, I don’t know, 30 ounces of, I buy 30 gold coins, 1 ounce coins, and I keep them in my safe, and then I have a need for them. How do I convert them to US Dollars?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, you could usually contact the firm that sold them to you. And if they’re in your possession now, you’re going to have the challenge of getting them back to that firm. You’re going to have to transport them through a common carrier like FedEx.

TUCKER CARLSON: How hard is that?

CHRIS OLSON: It’s usually not hard, especially with gold. Silver is a little more challenging just due to the mass, but there is some risk involved in that. So there’s the cost to ship it, there’s the cost to insure it. So that’s added friction.

Normally when you’re dealing with a major market maker or distributors who’s involved in precious metals, they should normally, in most cases have a strong repurchase price. So it’s often in your interest to do it that way.

But you could also, practically every major city in this country has multiple dealers who would be more than happy to buy your gold coins from you. In practically any major city, you could walk in with two gold eagles and walk out with $6,000 cash.

TUCKER CARLSON: So will they give you spot price-ish for those coins?

CHRIS OLSON: Usually if they’re honest, yeah. And you can, you know, you can check the price. You can call around and people do that all the time. See what people are paying and just, you know, make sure to keep them honest. But, you know, there are dishonest dealers out there for sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: But given that you can get the spot price on your phone 24 hours a day. And I’m looking, you know, gold is $3,025 or whatever. And I look it up and then I call the coin shop and say, “I’ve got two, you know, double eagles or whatever. I’ve got two gold coins. Assess if they’re real, and if they are, will you give me spot?” Is it possible you’re going to get that?

CHRIS OLSON: Oh, certainly. Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

CHRIS OLSON: And for some coins, you might get more than spot. Some of them command a premium depending on market conditions and the type of coin.

Privacy and Reporting Requirements

TUCKER CARLSON: When I get the cash for those coins, how private is that transaction?

CHRIS OLSON: It’s a very private transaction. So there’s no specific reporting requirement that says that dealers have to report every purchase that they make from the public. Once you get to large volumes of certain types of gold or silver, they technically require a 1099 report, which really just discloses the amount of gold and silver that they purchased from you and the price they paid.

It doesn’t disclose the profit or loss that you made in that because they have no way of knowing that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But if I want it totally private, what’s the threshold at which it has to be reported? Do you know?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, that threshold is subject to debate amongst people within the industry. There’s some obscure regulations.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. But roughly.

CHRIS OLSON: But typically it’s, you know, like 25 ounces of gold or say 1,000 ounces of silver. But it has to be in specific forms. Like, for example, the US Gold Eagle is specifically exempted in law from 1099 reporting. So, you know, you could sell a million dollars worth of gold eagles and no one in the government needs to be notified that you did that.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s totally private. So if I have gold eagles or if I have up to 24 ounces, which is, I’m not good at math. Help me now, Chris. $3,000 times 24 is roughly $75,000. I can just walk into any coin shop and give them that.

CHRIS OLSON: I get bills if they have them.

Privacy and Cryptocurrency vs. Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: If they have them. So that’s kind of what they promised me Bitcoin was going to be. I was super excited about crypto, not as an investment. I’m not much of an investor, that’s for sure. But I do believe in privacy and I think it’s a fundamental human right. So I was hoping that you could use Bitcoin for that kind of thing. Not don’t want to buy anti-tank weapons or whatever. I just want to buy like dinner or whatever I want to buy. But it’s not bad. But I just want privacy.

But gold, I could take gold that’s sitting in my safe at home and go and get $75,000 or unlimited. If I have certain kinds of coins and there’s no record at all, I just get the cash.

CHRIS OLSON: Correct. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

CHRIS OLSON: Now the dealer is going to have their own records.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, whatever. But that is privacy.

CHRIS OLSON: True, exactly. It’s the original cryptocurrency.

The Stigma Around Privacy

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s so weird that I feel awkward even saying this out loud. They’ve sold the lie that like, if you don’t want them in your face at all time in your bedroom, monitoring all your behavior on your iPhone, that there’s something wrong with you. You know what I mean?

They want to put Ed Snowden in jail for disclosing that they were spying on me. Who’s the criminal here? The people spying me are the criminals. Not Ed Snowden for telling me the truth. But they’ve so brainwashed everybody, even I think I’m pretty off grid mentally. I don’t look at the media either, ever. But I still feel like, oh, you know, it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about wanting privacy.

Do you feel that? Are you so off the grid that you don’t even know what I’m talking about?

CHRIS OLSON: No, no, I definitely feel it. I mean, just even talking about it in this interview, it’s like, are you saying something wrong? Are you allowed to say that? Is that dangerous? Is that a threat?

TUCKER CARLSON: Even so brainwashed, it’s, that’s unbelievable.

CHRIS OLSON: Is it a threat to the regime? I mean, the system of control, taxation, monitoring, everything done in the name of safety?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but it’s just so funny because I know you. I don’t think I’m giving away too much. You’re like a faithful Christian with six kids. Like, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re a law abiding person and even you are like, oh, I feel weird.

CHRIS OLSON: The positive law is what they call it, like you haven’t actually harmed anyone, but you know, it’s kind of the Department of Pre-crime wants to make sure that you’re doing okay things and not potentially a threat to somebody. So even though you have only certain.

TUCKER CARLSON: People, they don’t care if you’re a threat to others.

CHRIS OLSON: But it’s like, selective enforcement is always very interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: A threat to their power, which this is, by the way, just to be totally blunt about it. You know, privacy is a threat to their power. That’s why they’re opposed to it. Tough luck is my view.

Government Control Through Currency and Taxation

CHRIS OLSON: Privacy and sovereignty, and that’s why they’re opposed to gold. And that’s why you want to keep everything in Federal Reserve notes and heavily regulated. You have bank Secrecy act, you have everything that relates to dollars in terms of what you can do domestically and even internationally. So it’s a very powerful tool for control.

Add to that income tax laws, where they, you know, we didn’t used to have an income tax in this country. We were a free country once. But once they need to get in and figure out how much did you earn, as though it’s their business, you got to pay your fair share. It’s not even about paying your fair share. It’s about managing the wealth of your citizenry and making sure that some people are not richer than they ought to be.

Because if the government wanted to, you know, pay its debt some other way, it easily could, but instead they choose to use the people as a source of revenue. And that’s, you know, think of the percentage of time that you work for the IRS every year so that you can fund regime change operations or some other bizarre foreign policy objective like we see with USAID and some form of foreign country.

It’s like that entire system is just fundamentally unjust and undemocratic, and it really doesn’t represent the will of the people. It doesn’t allow them to be as free as they could be. It doesn’t allow families to preserve and transmit generational wealth. And it’s all done in the name of this obscure concept of fairness, which is defined by bureaucrats and politicians thousands of miles away from you.

So it’s a horrible system. And yeah, you’re right. You can’t be allowed to have privacy or sovereignty. There should be no ability for you to opt out. You cannot secede. You cannot be different. You’re all subject to this system of control and monitoring to ensure that the policy objectives of whatever administration or regime happens to be in control at that time, decides is what’s good for you.

Storing Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s scary. How hard is it to store gold?

CHRIS OLSON: Gold is relatively easy to store because it is so small. You can concentrate so much value in such a small piece that you could hide it in your bookshelf. You can use security by obscurity. You can stash it in different places. You could, you know, hide it inside your wall.

TUCKER CARLSON: A jar of peanut butter.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, jar of peanut butter. You could get a, one of those little pop can, fake pop can safes that you put the soda can in your fridge and hide it in your refrigerator or bury it in your backyard. Gold doesn’t rust, it doesn’t tarnish, unlike silver. So you know, you could bury it. So it’s very easy to store gold on your own when you have a lot that it becomes more of a security risk. And yes, then you need to get a little more strategic.

Risks of Buying Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: Can we talk about the downsides? I like to assess. I’m not an investor, but my goal if I make money is I have no expectation of becoming Larry Fink. I don’t want to be Larry Fink. I just don’t. I think it’s fair not to want to lose what you earned. That’s how I feel about it personally. And so how do you indeed, I know you are honest. So I’ll just say how do you like. What are the risks to buying gold?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, the risks of buying gold primarily are gold is volatile like any other asset, just because of the economic system that we’re in. And so prices are going to swing. There are going to be corrections. It’s hard for anyone to know what should the true value of gold actually be. And even if you did know that, what are the things that prevent that from actually happening? So there’s always some level of uncertainty.

So if you’re, you know, if you, if you put all of your money into gold, let’s say because you think the world’s going to end tomorrow or which, in which case you wouldn’t need gold but you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Fair, but probably.

CHRIS OLSON: Want to buy macaroni.

TUCKER CARLSON: But yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, well, you’ll, you’ll need, you know, if the world doesn’t end but it comes close, you’re going to need some system to barter and trade with. And in that case gold. Gold is perfect. But you know, say you put all your money into gold and it turns out six months later you need that money for something. And the price of gold is maybe down 10% at the time. Well, now you’re going to be forced to liquidate.

So it’s as with any asset, you don’t want to put too much of your liquid assets into it, or you could potentially be at a loss. So you never want to put too much money into anything. You need to have that spending money for all of your daily affairs and unexpected. So that’s one risk.

The other risk, of course, is going to be storing it securely. You know, it could be stolen from you, you could be robbed, or you want to make sure that people don’t know that you have gold, or especially if you have a lot of gold, you want to make sure that that stays really private because there’s always going to be the risk that somebody could come and take it and walk away with it.

And there’s no, no reversing that. You can’t cancel that check. Sort of like cryptocurrency. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, or maybe you’ll forget where you put it. So you got, you got to have a trusted treasure map that only trusted associates have. So beyond those risks, what about fire?

Gold’s Durability

TUCKER CARLSON: So you put it in your house. I’ve got $500,000 of gold in my wall. Let’s be honest. It’s not going to be stolen. No one’s going to find that. It’s impossible. But the house burns down and the gold melts. How much value does it lose?

CHRIS OLSON: A few percent.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s it?

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah. Maybe four to five, depending on how contaminated it gets. You probably have to, you know, smelt it down and get it refined again. And so you’ll, you’ll shave off, you know, between 2 and 5%, but you’ll be able to recover it all.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it doesn’t burn up?

CHRIS OLSON: No, no, it’ll just melt. You’ll have a slag of melted coins sitting at the bottom of the ashes of your house.

TUCKER CARLSON: You ever seen that?

CHRIS OLSON: We have, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHRIS OLSON: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We’ve, we’ve bought many, many times. We’ve had packages come in from other dealers or from other customers that are melted gold or silver coins. And that’s exactly what we have to do. Smelt it down and get it refined.

TUCKER CARLSON: But it’s not a huge loss.

CHRIS OLSON: Not a huge loss, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s durable?

CHRIS OLSON: Very.

The History of Gold

TUCKER CARLSON: How much of the gold, have you ever wondered? Because gold has been in circulation since the beginning of recorded history in a very, very famous way. I mean, I don’t think there’s a book in the Bible that doesn’t mention gold, for example, but many ancient texts mention gold. So do you ever wonder, like, in this coin that I’m holding, was any of this gold, you know, in the Second Temple?

CHRIS OLSON: Oh, it’s certainly possible. Pretty much all of the gold in circulation remains in circulation. So there’s always new gold being mined and added to the supply. And that’s about 1 to 2% per year of the total supply. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So gold inflation is 1 to 2%.

CHRIS OLSON: Right. Very manageable. But typically gold is not lost, unlike silver. Silver is used in industry and silver is typically not. It’s not worth recovering through recycling in a lot of cases. And it’s used in electronic components, photovoltaic cells for solar, that type of thing. So it’s an industrial use metal.

Gold is also used industrially, but typically it’s going to be worth it to recycle it and recover it. And so most of the gold that’s ever been mined in human history is still with us today. And so, yeah, you very, you very well could have some, some of the molecules in your gold bar or coin could have been in the Second Temple or who knows where.

Understanding Silver

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. You keep referring to silver. I wanted to just keep that separate. I know much less about it. Let’s start with the price. What is silver trading for right now? Ish.

CHRIS OLSON: A little under $34 right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: An ounce?

CHRIS OLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: For silver. Okay, give me perspective on that. Is that a lot or a little or.

CHRIS OLSON: It’s not much at all. We think it’s highly undervalued. A lot of people do.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why do you think that?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, throughout history, gold has typically had a value relation to silver of between 12 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold or maybe 15 to 1. It’s kind of floated around there. That’s typically been.

TUCKER CARLSON: How far back can we track that?

CHRIS OLSON: Oh, we can track that many centuries. There’s plenty of evidence for it.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the cool thing about precious metals. Like, people keep records. I mean, there’s a continuity to it. Like this is. We’re not the first people to have this conversation.

CHRIS OLSON: Right. We’re not reinventing any wheels here.

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

CHRIS OLSON: Like, this is a tried and true method of running economies.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s 12 to 15x gold is 12 to 15x silver, typically.

CHRIS OLSON: Typically, yeah. Today, right now, the ratio is about 90 to 1, which is very high. 90 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold. Well, there’s a lot of reasons why people say that. That is, you know, and suppression is one of the main ideas.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’ll just ask the obvious question. Has there been a big expansion in.

The Supply of Silver and Gold

CHRIS OLSON: Supply? Oh, no, no, the supply. The supply continues to go down. And if you look at what the miners pull out of the ground, people are mining gold and silver is often found with gold.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? Vice versa?

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, typically. And what’s coming out of the ground? The ratio is about 7 ounces of silver to every 1 ounce of gold. Roughly, it’s between 10, it depends on the mine. But 7 to 10 is the ratio.

TUCKER CARLSON: 90 times the silver. Correct, huh?

CHRIS OLSON: Correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, well then that doesn’t make any sense. So if there hasn’t been a massive expansion supply, but the value, relatively speaking, has dropped dramatically, then what is that?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, it’s part of, it has to do with the fact that silver is not a medium of exchange right now. It’s not used in the marketplace. And also central banks typically don’t carry silver on their balance sheet.

So we look at the price of gold right now, the vast majority of that price run up is the direct result of central bank purchases who are preparing for some type of potential revaluation event, it would seem. Silver, on the other hand, doesn’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, hold on, what does that mean?

The Coming International Monetary System

CHRIS OLSON: Well, what’s the real value of gold? What’s the real value of the dollar? It would appear that we’re on the cusp of a new international monetary system, which is the result of certain foreign policy decisions that were made in the previous administration, as well as just the underlying nature of the game. The economic system, like the rules of it, have changed multiple times.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re not encouraged to probe that too much. It’s more like, hey, go have a race war. Do you know what I mean? White people are bad, black people are bad. It’s about the trans community. It’s like, okay, but the one thing we don’t talk about is this sort of thing. I can’t believe how ignorant I am of some of it. And I’m interested.

CHRIS OLSON: It’s a theory of mine that really this is the root of almost all of our problems.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that, how?

CHRIS OLSON: I think the ability for the creation of artificial credit or money by powers, central powers, let’s say the banks or primary dealers of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve System, the government, it gives too much power and too much control to too small a group of people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I’ve noticed that. Yeah. Okay, now we’re getting warmer.

The Hidden Tax of Inflation

CHRIS OLSON: So the changes that have occurred in our society over time, none of these things would have been possible without the ability of the government to just artificially inflate its credit and monetize its debt. And inflate the currency.

Otherwise it would have to come to the people and tax them directly. But instead, they’re able to levy a hidden tax against every holder of a US dollar, which is not just the American people, but people throughout the entire world.

TUCKER CARLSON: The world, yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: So it gives a lot of power to certain forces that are at work. And I don’t think those forces operate for the benefit of or the good of common people like you and me. They have different plans and there are different goals associated with these centralized powers.

And so not being tethered to some kind of a standard has just given them too much freedom to do too many things that people normally wouldn’t agree with or wouldn’t pay their taxes to allow. And that’s happening globally.

So the necessity of change has never been more apparent. For every reason that we’ve discussed and plenty more, we could go on and on and on about the evils of that type of a system. And so in the interest of fairness and honesty and honest dealing and a proper valuation of what is the thing actually worth, it’s going to require a lot more work.

We used to be on a gold standard, which was a result of agreements that were made internationally after World War II, which, and even before World War II, actually. But it pegged the value of the dollar to a certain amount of gold. And that gave everyone dealing in dollars the ability to actually properly account for what is a dollar, what even is it. But as usually happens, we just continue to print more dollars than we had the proper amount of money.

Nixon and the End of the Gold Standard

TUCKER CARLSON: Just fight a war in Vietnam, kill 60,000 Americans, and we couldn’t continue. So in the early 70s, the President took us off the gold standard. Is that a fair?

CHRIS OLSON: Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

CHRIS OLSON: The expansion of the money supply, all of our unfunded liabilities. Other people, foreign governments that held dollars saw the writing on the wall and they started demanding their gold. And the gold was flowing out of Fort Knox and we had hundreds of tons. I don’t have the exact figures, but we were losing tons, literally of gold to foreign redemption. And at some point, someone had a meeting with the president, said, “Mr. President, we’re…”

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re emptying the vaults.

CHRIS OLSON: They’re emptying the vaults. And maybe the vaults are empty. We’re not sure. I guess the President’s going to find out maybe at some point if they let him.

But yeah. So they decided to suspend redemptions. And at that point, the price of gold was allowed to float. So there became this sort of secondary market that was no longer part of the government, but it was relegated to banks who began to make markets and determine what is the value of foreign exchange, what’s the value of the dollar versus the British pound or the German deutsche mark.

But a lot of that was also continued to be related directly to gold. And so gold had a floating price at that point. And so the floating price of gold becomes a benchmark and a barometer of the health of any individual currency, which then becomes part of the reason why the government is now interested in managing that price of gold as a matter of policy.

And just like they had a gold standard at one time, but they had to default. And that’s what that was. It was a default by the US Government. It declared bankruptcy and revalued its debts.

Then the system became one of, okay, now let’s manage this. And you’ll notice 1971, 1972. That’s a bright line in human history where we see the purchasing power of the American middle class steadily decline from that point forward every single year.

And almost any benchmark of any of the ills in our society go right back to that time frame because that unleashes certain forces that nobody can properly diagnose.

The Spiritual Dimension of Money

There’s a quote by Keynes, John Maynard Keynes, who said something, I can’t remember the exact quote, but that inflation works havoc and basically misery on a society in ways that not one man in a million can diagnose.

And so it’s a very subtle change that occurs within the body politic when you begin to debase a currency, and as you debase a currency, you’re kind of debasing the people and you’re committing fraud and institutionalizing it on a grand scale. And that’s really an abomination in the eyes of God.

The Bible talks about unjust weights and measures being an abomination. And so there’s a real price to that type of activity being allowed to occur at some scale on an institutional level within your society. And we’ve globalized it.

And so from that point, and it’s not as though there weren’t many evils that we had prior to that point, there were plenty. But at that point they became leveraged, in a sense, the ability to maximize certain effects on society through the use of money and artificial money creation, sort of like alchemy, in a sense, gave certain powers, just enormous ability to manipulate and control society in every level.

I believe it was JP Morgan, who said that “give me control of a nation’s money. I don’t care who makes its laws.” So something to that effect. And that’s very true. If you have control of the money, it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. It doesn’t matter who’s elected. It’s money rules.

TUCKER CARLSON: You have control of the food and the shelter and the water. I mean, look, you have control of human life.

The Federal Reserve and Income Tax

CHRIS OLSON: And you’ll notice that it was during the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1914. That’s the same year that the income tax was instituted. So those two things seem to go together. They seem to be two parts of the same tool.

And so we’ve watched that tool just expand grotesquely to the point where it is. And since 1971, just every ill that you can conceive of in society has expanded consistently from that date. And so now we’re at a point where all of the fruits of that have come home to roost in every possible way.

And I’m convinced it’s directly related to the money. And we can point to lots of other problems, which they are problems. You’ve got symptoms, you’ve got other secondary causes. But I think a lot of those symptoms and secondary causes would have never had the power that they do have if it weren’t for the ability of certain forces to enact their will using the money system to which they’re untethered to any outside force or to anything that should ever hold them account or check their power other than their own determination.

Fiat money. We decide what percentage of the Fed’s balance sheet should be gold. It used to be 40%. Then it was changed to 20. Then it was changed to, I think maybe 10 or 5. And then finally they said, whatever amount we want, we’ll just call it whatever we want.

So they’ve got carte blanche to decide what money is and how much money there is and to regulate its use in every possible way. So money really is at the heart of maybe almost every problem, right next to the spiritual realm. And they are directly connected.

Yes, there’s a reason that there’s a force called mammon that’s referred to throughout scripture. So yeah, it’s a dangerous master. Truly is.

The Gold Scam Exposed

TUCKER CARLSON: So let me just ask you to describe. You don’t need to use the names of the companies. They’re all famous. But how does this sleight of hand work where these companies convince mostly older, mostly conservative Fox News viewers? Really, people I love, convince them to buy gold at twice the price. How do you do that?

CHRIS OLSON: It’s a huge problem and it’s been happening in the industry for decades. Everybody knows about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I didn’t know.

CHRIS OLSON: Now everybody in the industry at our level understands what’s happening. And basically it involves companies that will receive a call from some individual, usually someone with a retirement account who believes that they need to buy gold. And it’s a good idea. You want to get gold, so, but where do you go to get it?

And so it’s a trust based transaction in the first place. Some major media figure has endorsed them as they tried to get you to endorse them for large sums of money. And now that media figure’s entire audience is a potential customer now and a potential trusting customer who doesn’t understand the way money works or how gold works. Because as we’ve discussed, it’s not a topic of daily conversation or activity for people.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you feel that it’s important. That’s what drew me to it. I was like, there’s something about this that’s important. And then I’m interested in history and I’m like, everyone else has thought that since the beginning of recorded history, so maybe there’s something there. Right?

CHRIS OLSON: Yep. And so not knowing how it works, they call them up and they say, “I have a retirement account and I’d like to put $100,000 of gold into the account.” And the salesman says, “Yep, we can help you do that. Just sign this agreement and we’ll get the paperwork started and we’ll sell you $100,000 worth of gold.”

And the typical understanding of most people is they think it’s like buying a stock. So they’re assuming that if they bought $100,000 worth of gold, but it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, that’s the assumption.

CHRIS OLSON: And if there was some fee associated with that transaction, that it would be disclosed or that it would be fine.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s fine. You take a vig. That’s okay.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, 1 or 2%, maybe 3 or 4 if it’s silver. You’ve got a range of acceptable percentages associated with precious metals transactions, depending on the format and the size and the delivery requirements. And so there is a certain percentage which is fair and typical.

But what happens in these types of transactions is the customer is charged 40, 50, 60% above the price of gold or silver and they don’t know it. And I’ve received receipts from customers of these types of brokers and I’ve looked at the numbers. I’ve seen them in hand showing people paying 75 or $80 an ounce for silver coins when the price of silver was 25 or paying.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s disgusting.

The Impact on Elderly Investors

CHRIS OLSON: And these people, old people who don’t understand what they’re doing, and when they turn around to try to cash out, they want to buy a piece of real estate or help fund a grandchild’s college education, they see that silver and gold are both up maybe 20%, they go to their IRA account, try to liquidate, and they’re underwater. They haven’t earned any money. They’re still down from their original investment.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’ve lost money. They’ve lost money even as the metals have risen.

CHRIS OLSON: Exactly, exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: So how does that work?

CHRIS OLSON: And it’s because the people that sold them the metal marked it up 50 or 60 or even 100% in some cases I’ve seen. And they’ll try to justify it by saying, “Oh, this is a scarce coin or a special issue coin.” And often that is part of the game. They’ll get these obscure coins that are an exclusive mint issue from one of the major mints, and they’ll get access to that exclusive coin so that if you try to look it up online, you won’t find that coin anywhere.

And it’ll be some special gold or silver coin that only they have access to. But fundamentally, there’s nothing intrinsically valuable to it other than its gold or silver content.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s still a commodity, isn’t it?

CHRIS OLSON: Still just a commodity. It’s not a collector’s piece. And that’s typically not what people, the people are not looking to invest in collectibles in their IRA accounts when they’re looking for gold. And so you’ve got bait and switch tactics.

The True Value of “Special Issue” Coins

TUCKER CARLSON: So just to prove the point, if you’re, in addition to being gold seller, you’re obviously a huge gold buyer from a lot of different sources, but one of them is from dealers around the country. Someone comes in and says, “I want to liquidate.” So you get a special issue mint coin or a commemorative coin brought to you. What do you pay for it?

CHRIS OLSON: Typically it’s going to be very close to the spot price.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re buying it for the gold, not for the spooky voodoo of commemorative.

CHRIS OLSON: There’s no market for it. It’s a modern coin. It’s not valued by collectors. It was minted specifically for the purpose of being kind of scarce. But at the end of the day, people don’t care about that. There’s no reason to value it higher than other gold or silver coins of the same purity and weight.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it has, in real terms, no added value, no extra value because it’s limited edition from the New Zealand Mint or whatever.

CHRIS OLSON: Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: Rich Corinthian leather.

CHRIS OLSON: It’s all just speculation that it should be worth more. But when it comes down to it and they try to liquidate these special issue coins or whatever type of coin they were overpriced and sold, they come to the market and find out the market values their assets at the price of gold or silver. And it’s not just us. They could go to any dealer in the country and get the same story.

Now, they might go to the original dealer that ripped them off. And that dealer will often try to save face and prevent a bad review online. And what they’ll do is maybe offer the customer more than anyone else in the market will pay and they’ll try to pay them off to just be satisfied or go away. So it’s a little game that they play.

But if they pay 30% more than the value of the gold or silver for that coin, the dealer that bought it back is not going to be able to get that price from the normal market. So they have to go find another mark to pawn those off.

TUCKER CARLSON: Classic Ponzi right there, in a sense.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, very close to that.

The Lack of Regulatory Oversight

TUCKER CARLSON: So I don’t know how I can describe this without getting sued, but this seems really wrong to me. Do you think that?

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, it is. There was a bill, actually, it was a regulation change. I can’t recall offhand which agency it was. It was probably consumer protection that they were considering a rule change to require anyone that sells anything to retirement accounts to be forced to act as a fiduciary. And right now there is no requirement for that. And if this change were implemented, it would significantly change the enforcement tools that the government might have to go after companies like this. And right now they really don’t have any enforcement tools.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I guess what offends me, this is what, so you told me this, I think when we first spoke. And that’s when I decided I wanted to start a gold company, which I’m not qualified to do. So I partnered with you. But the outrage I felt stemmed from the fact that they were doing this with retirement accounts. That just seems over the top.

I mean, if some drunk rich guy calls in and you fleece him 40% on a gold sale, it’s immoral, but it’s not quite the crime that you’re describing, which is some old Fox News viewer calls in and goes, “It’s my IRA, my Individual Retirement Account.” And you’re selling stuff that isn’t worth what you’re selling it for. But by a lot. I mean it’s a full scam of old people.

CHRIS OLSON: A full scam. And I’ve seen story after story of—

TUCKER CARLSON: But why does nobody say anything about it?

CHRIS OLSON: People have attempted to say things and do things about it. There was a court case against a company in California, specifically a very large company, and it was brought by the State of California who actually looked into this dealer’s practices and ultimately forced that dealer to settle on a number of these counts and to change their practices.

Though even after changing those practices, there were still issue after issue of different types. So there was that one case where some action was taken to a certain degree. But if one of these dealers folds or goes bankrupt or gets sued out of existence, they’ll just pop right back up. It’s so easy for anyone, really.

Media Endorsements and Accountability

TUCKER CARLSON: So I actually asked for a list of all the media people who are shilling for these, I think they’re criminal enterprises. That’s my view. But certainly it’s not defensible. If you know what actually happened, you can’t defend it. It’s wrong. And so I asked for a list of all the media people because I was in the media my whole life and there are a couple people I really dislike on that list.

But there are also way more people I really like, including a couple actual friends of mine. So I decided, it’s all publicly available if you’re interested to clean up yourself. So I decided I was not going to call anybody out by name. But I really hope that this tape circulates and that they decide, I doubt, knowing a couple of these people are legit good people. So the best people in the media, actually.

And I just don’t think they have any idea. Some agent’s like, “Oh, Gold Company X is going to pay you, whatever.” Who turns down millions of dollars? I just don’t think they know, but I hope they do now. And I just want to be clear that the business that you and I are about to roll out is a response. At least I’ll speak for myself. It’s a response to this.

I think it should be easy. I think gold’s important. I don’t think anyone should put 100% of their money in it for the reasons that you described, because it’s a commodity, and it goes up and down, but as a long hold, it doubled the markets. What’s the argument against it? So I really think it’s important for—

CHRIS OLSON: People to buy gold.

TUCKER CARLSON: I buy gold. In fact, any profit we make from this, I’m taking in gold personally. But I just think it should be easy for people. And you don’t make, you make whatever, 4% rather than 100%, but that’s okay. That’s a normal business.

Transparency and Fair Pricing

CHRIS OLSON: Be transparent, be upfront. And that’s going to be part of our goal in the operating new venture, is to be as completely transparent as possible. Part of that is to give customers the indication of what would you pay me today for the product you just sold me? And that difference between the bid and the ask, the sell price and the offer price is called the spread.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHRIS OLSON: And the spread is really the determinant of what is the cost of the asset that you’re investing in. What is the friction if you need to sell it tomorrow, how much are you going to lose? And if you sold it back and the market didn’t change, you should expect to take 3 to 5% off of your value.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHRIS OLSON: Because that’s the typical profit margin of an honest—

TUCKER CARLSON: Much better than a new car, I’ll tell you that.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah. Well, and this is a commodity money. So there’s only so much that should be added in terms of value and processing and costs to that transaction. When we’re talking 40, 50, 60% that you’re just taking, you’re just taking at that point. There’s no justifying, but you’re taking from—

TUCKER CARLSON: The best people in the world. That’s what, obviously, I was glad to be fired from Fox. I’m really grateful. I don’t work there, but the viewers, I really love the viewers, and I met a lot of Fox viewers. I’m related to a lot of Fox viewers. And that’s the one group I, they have enough problems. The government hates them, and you’re stealing from them.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, it’s a tragedy. It really is. And I’ve seen the stories and the people that are promoting these companies, the people who have large audiences, need to do a little investigation and check out the actual practices of the companies that they’re recommending and understand what is the spread on the typical deal that these companies are offering to their customers, to the audience members of those people.

Red Flags to Watch For

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they don’t even put their prices on the website. That tells you everything. You’re selling something, tell me it’s going to cost.

CHRIS OLSON: Or if they do, they’ll do the bait and switch. You’ll call for that and they’ll say, “Well, you should maybe get this because,” they’ll say something like, “The government can’t confiscate this coin.” Or they’ll tell you some secret story, some secret sauce about the thing you should really buy that’s going to cost a lot more, but there’s a story behind it.

So yeah, that’s one of the typical signs is they don’t have e-commerce or they’re not going to display prices. Now, there’s plenty of honest companies too that are telephone only. They just, they’re not into technology and they’re honest brokers. We work with people like that. So that’s not a guarantee.

But these companies almost always will not display their prices or their spreads because they don’t want you to see that. And it’s typically very high profile celebrity endorsements because it’s a con job. They’re relying on your confidence, your trust.

A Mission-Driven Approach

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re stealing the trust. And by the way, in some of these people, some of the media figures for promoting this stuff are just not good people. I know them well, but there are also a bunch of them who, as I said, I know really well. And they are good people and they’re basically really honest people. And that’s why they’re popular, by the way, because they’re honest and they’ve earned that trust over a long period.

And so anyway, I think it’s a tragedy for them. It’s misleading, probably unintentionally to their viewers, just the whole thing. One of the reasons I was grateful to partner with you is that even though you’re in the money business, you don’t worship money.

CHRIS OLSON: Right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. At all. And also, you don’t need to do this. You’ve been successful enough. I just, being honest, don’t need to do it either. And I don’t expect to get rich doing this, but I really believe in it and I think it’s a good thing. I mean that too.

The Value of Transparency in the Gold Industry

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah, I agree. You know, we’ve been very successful. We’ve been in business since 1976. We’ve sold and delivered over $5 billion worth of metals in the lifetime of our company. And I’ve been in it since I was born. My dad started the company, so it’s always been part of my life. Grew up doing it.

And I came on board to help my dad and I wanted to do things right. I wanted to help him do things right. I wanted to support our customer base, which at the time was primarily wholesale dealers that we would supply, retail dealers that we supplied as a wholesale dealer. And so those have always been my motivations.

I never, when I was a kid, I didn’t think I would be in precious metals. I wasn’t interested in what my dad was doing, but I wanted to help him. He needed help. And so that’s what I did. And I wanted to do things right.

And we’ve been very successful and we’ve been transparent and honest, and that’s been a cornerstone of the way we’ve operated for decades. And I’ve known about these companies and never really felt that it was something that I could do anything materially to affect.

So when you first contacted me and you had this idea about doing something about it like this, I jumped at the opportunity because, you know, like you said, I don’t need more to do in life. I wasn’t really planning on expanding my list of projects. I’ve been wanting to scale back, honestly, because I’ve been successful and I’ve been working really hard a long time.

But this opportunity to me was of greater value than just the business. If it had just been business, I wouldn’t have been interested. But to be able to actually disclose this particular problem on a platform like yours is of so much value to the people that you and I love. The American people, the Fox News viewers, just average Americans who are trying to protect themselves from the predation and corruption that’s rampant everywhere in this country.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s true.

CHRIS OLSON: And like you said, it’s like they need this kind of abuse. One more thing to get. They’ve been hit from every single angle. The people are suffering so badly. And I’ve read these stories.

So the idea that you would talk about this particular issue and bring it up in such a way that your audience is going to know about it, the industry is going to take notice. The people that are promoting these companies are going to hopefully think twice and go back and do the math and ask some really hard questions, that’s something that is of such huge value that, you know, just this interview alone is worth everything to get that information.

TUCKER CARLSON: I hope so. Man, I almost took the money. It was like, I was like, wow, how great. You know, it’s like, I honestly think I’ve been fired for less than a week. And you know, most of our staff came over from Fox paying their salaries. It’s like, wow, I’ve got quite a burn right now.

And I was like very psyched. I was like, oh, gift from God. And it was only because I was on a long drive, like a five hour drive, just spacing out, thinking about it and just in like a hyper autistic way, I was like, oh, it doesn’t make any sense and I’m terrible at math. I know nothing about math, but just like I can smell like things that just aren’t obviously true, like how does that work?

And I just led down this rabbit hole. So anyway, I’m super, super excited. Let me just ask you one last question because of course I keep stepping on your answers as usual.

The Silver Question

Silver. People buy a ton of silver. It was traditionally, you said about 1/12 or 1/15th as valuable per ounce as gold. Now it’s 1/90.

CHRIS OLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: I just don’t understand that. It’s got tons of industrial uses. Why is it 30 bucks an ounce?

CHRIS OLSON: That’s a really good question. We think it’s going to change. If you look back at when the first major high in silver was about $50 an ounce in 1980, when the Hunt brothers were cornering the market, which is an interesting indication of maybe what its real value is, maybe not. But the inflation adjusted number, if you want to calculate that to today’s dollars, is about $190. So we’re nowhere near that’s how much.

TUCKER CARLSON: Inflation we’ve had since 1980.

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah. $50 then is $190 roughly today. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, man, I remember 1980 really well. I was 11. I mean, that was a. Wow. Really? That’s a lot of inflation in 45 years.

CHRIS OLSON: That’s the problem we’re talking about. But you know, and then most recently in 2011, silver again tested that nominal figure. But adjusted for inflation, that number is today, in today’s dollars, maybe 70, 75 bucks. So we’re nowhere near any of those previous highs.

And historically since, since about, you know, maybe 1915 to present, if you look at all of the fluctuation of the gold silver ratio, it’s roughly, the average has been roughly 53 to 1 instead of 90 to 1. So even if we just changed, if the ratio was to be the basis for revaluing the price of silver, it would be over $50 right now based on the price of gold. It’s where silver maybe should be, if you think that the ratio is a fair comparison.

TUCKER CARLSON: And to restate, there has not been a radical expansion in supply.

CHRIS OLSON: Correct. In fact, the supply that’s coming out of the ground, like I said, miners report it being roughly a 7 to 1 ratio, maybe 10 to 1 ratio, depending on the mine that you’re extracting from. So it has industrial demand. A certain amount is lost every year. So there’s some amount of a deficit, I think. I don’t have the exact figures, but then the amount that’s coming out of the ground is nowhere near a 90 to 1 ratio or even 50 to 1. It’s 10 to 1 or less. So the possibility.

TUCKER CARLSON: That sounds like market manipulation.

CHRIS OLSON: Maybe that’s what a lot of people claim. I’m not enough of an expert in some of that inside baseball. I’d let other people talk about that issue who have a lot more information than I do.

TUCKER CARLSON: But is there some motive for that that you can think of?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, I’m not sure what the motive may be. It may be residual to previous positions that were taken when silver was more of a monetary asset. From what I understand, there are a lot of short positions by certain bullion banks that trade paper contracts to sell positions that they don’t ever actually intend to deliver on, which is a standard practice. You just roll those contracts and buy it back, sell it again.

And there are legitimate reasons for doing that, but also there are reasons that are purely economical or even manipulative. From what I understand, there are positions on the books of various banks where every dollar silver goes up, they’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars collectively. So that may be potentially part of the motivation.

I’m not sure exactly what the motivation would be, apart from also the fact that silver is very closely associated with gold. So there’s probably a number of reasons why it may be happening that I’m not aware of.

Government Gold Valuation

TUCKER CARLSON: What does the US Government, I read this, but I can’t recall, price its own gold at. Biggest holder of gold in the world, I think.

CHRIS OLSON: Or supposedly $42.22 per ounce.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that less than the market price? Oh, quite a bit less. Like $3,000 less, almost. That’s crazy. How do you, how do you do that?

CHRIS OLSON: Well, the Fed can choose how it wants to value its assets. They can either.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the Fed is magic, is that what you’re saying it is?

CHRIS OLSON: Yeah. Yeah. They can mark their assets to market or they can mark them to cost. They have the amazing power to value or revalue different assets on their books. That’s part of the magic that we all enjoy. So, yeah, it seems undervalued now.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I buy gold from the US government at 42 bucks?

CHRIS OLSON: Wouldn’t be nice. Wouldn’t it be nice? Yeah. So there are people who watch the value of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and market to market because there is enough information, I think that people are able to do that. Or you could look at the money supplier or take other barometers of what is in circulation.

But there have been a number of times James Rickards, who is a famous commentator on these topics, he’s written a few books about this topic and he describes in one of his books, I believe it’s “The Death of Money,” where he discusses the fact that the Federal Reserve, technically on paper marking everything to market, has been underwater a couple of times. You know, essentially insolvent.

And, but that didn’t include marking the gold to market or revaluing it to some other price, which may be arbitrary or it may be an actual market price. And so it would appear that the gold on the Fed’s balance sheet has always been sort of a standing tool, like an ace in the hole to say if we need to revalue this asset to rebalance the balance sheet of the Fed of our currency, then we’ll revalue that asset.

The Potential for Gold Revaluation

TUCKER CARLSON: What would happen to, since the United States is supposedly the world’s largest holder of gold, what would happen to the gold price if they did that?

CHRIS OLSON: It depends on what metric you would want to use. People talk about the old gold standard under the Federal Reserve where we had a 40% reserve ratio. 40% of the value of the dollar had to be backed by gold. There’s other ways to determine it.

So if the value of gold were set to say 40% or some other number, it’s going to be between, you know, maybe $20,000 and $40,000. As high as $40,000 to get that ratio back. Now many things could happen between now and that point which could change the makeup of the balance sheet of the Fed. So who knows where that number would actually end up, but it would be multiples higher of where it is right now.

I think it was Luke Groman who said that if we wanted to get to a one to one parity with Chinese Yuan, we would need roughly a $22,000 gold price and that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Per ounce, per ounce.

CHRIS OLSON: And that’s if we have the amount of gold that we actually say we have. If we don’t have that much gold, then the price goes up because the dollar goes down in relation to what gold we do have. And that seems to be one of.

TUCKER CARLSON: The dollar just evaporates at that point.

CHRIS OLSON: Depends how much gold we have in that scenario. But it would be a serious blow to the confidence of other central banks into what is the dollar really worth in some future scenario where international currency settlement gets tethered to gold of some type.

And I think that everybody’s preparing for that. Why are central banks net purchasers of gold since 2005 and just upped it since 2022? So a revaluation and a rebalancing has to come for peace and for prosperity and for fairness. It’s good.

Gold as a Tether to Reality

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, if you were actually, as you so wonderfully put it, tethered to reality. Gold is reality. If you were tethered to reality, you couldn’t have a ton of neocon wars. They’ve never been popular. They wreck the country, everyone kind of hates them. But it doesn’t matter what people think, because you make up the money supply when you need it. I don’t think we would have any of these wars if we were tethered to gold.

CHRIS OLSON: And we probably wouldn’t have hollowed out our industrial base. Globalism wouldn’t be possible, at least in terms of the American version of globalism, without that fiat currency aspect. And if we want to have, say, like Luke Groman, who you’ve had on the show here, very smart guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, incredibly smart.

CHRIS OLSON: And his idea of the revaluation of gold to obtain a parity of Chinese yuan to the US dollar one to.

TUCKER CARLSON: One to one.

The Case for Honest Money Standards

CHRIS OLSON: That would be good for us as well, because the Chinese yuan is so incredibly cheap compared to the dollar. And I think that’s been—people have accused China of being a currency manipulator to maintain that artificial cheapness because it makes Chinese imports so cheap and American exports to China very expensive.

So that’s helped to fuel a lot of the offshoring of our industrial base to China over the last almost 30 years now, since roughly 1997, I think, is when that began in earnest.

But that also is sort of a side effect of maybe this fiat currency system that not only are we able to manipulate the world, but maybe other people are also able to use that system that’s set up against us. And that’s probably what’s been happening too, in terms of our relationship with China.

So I think there’s a lot of problems that we could solve internationally and even domestically if we were to return to some form of an honest money standard, an actual standard that everyone is held to. Yes, a set of norms, and that makes everyone forced to deal honestly so that your word is your word and your currency is your currency.

And we disclose what these things are. And we’re transparent. That would be a first step towards maybe rectifying so many of the evil things that have happened.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, lying is evil. And if you’re in a society that’s—

CHRIS OLSON: Or you just—

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t even get to the truth, then you know you have a huge problem. Anyway, I hope our small effort moves the needle a tiny bit, and I’m grateful to be in it with you. So thank you, Chris Olson.

CHRIS OLSON: Thank you.

Introducing Battalion Metals: Transparency in Gold Trading

TUCKER CARLSON: So, as you heard, that was Chris Olson, one of the biggest gold wholesalers in the United States and a genuinely, in my view, honest man. And we are starting a company together that will allow people, just normal people, to buy gold in a very clear way.

Price is on the website. You can check the spot price and you can know exactly what the markup is. We’re not in this to get rich. Hope it’s successful, but that’s not the point of it.

The point of it is to make it easy and transparent for people to buy gold because we believe it’s important for the reasons we just described. And that’s all sincere, but you can judge for yourself because full transparency.

So if you’re interested, the company’s called Battalion Metals. And the web address, not surprisingly, is battalionmetals.com and we’re open to any questions about this. We want to bring honesty back to this business.

There’s no reason it should be a scam or shrouded in secrecy. By the way, secrecy is a tell for dishonesty. Someone is hiding something. There’s a reason they’re hiding it, and we are not hiding it. But you can judge for yourself. Battalionmetals.com.

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