difficulties and failures are great teachers. One principle that I've really learned is pain plus reflection equals progress. I've learned that there are lessons and and difficulties and failures are great teachers.What painful experiences have you been through that have led to your progress in life. I'd like to tell you about one that really stuck in my mind and changed me in a really beneficial way, but it was painful. 1980 and 81, long time ago, um I had calculated that American banks had lent to foreign ...

be generous and be around people who are generous because it's a system that works. Okay. When you're generous with others, they're going to be generous with you if you have the right side of people. If they're not going to be generous with you, then move on.But that generosity means that you'll get more as well as that you'll give more. Not only is it functional because of that, but it's spiritually enriching. The relationships that you have are the most important things in your life.So having great relati ...

and you have a lot of young people here that would all like to be you. Um, what advice would you give them from your, you know, looking back at your 20-year-old self. >> I think the important thing is that you you have the life that you want to have.How you define success uh is important. I I I I don't think that there's a right path for success. I think that I was lucky in that I fell in love with the game that if I played the game, I ended up making a lot of money. I don't recommend just going after life ...

Throughout history, there have been two things that people have always wanted as a source of wealth. One was gold and then real estate. And what do you think about if you're nervous about paper currency and the valuation of it, why not just buy real estate and hold on to it.Is that not a good idea. Um, it's not a good idea. Uh, it's not a good idea because um, uh, real estate is more interest rate sensitive than it is even inflation sensitive.So if you were to say if this environment happens does it go it g ...

The most important thing is uh um the basics. Educate your children well so that they can be productive and they're civil so that they work well together. Come out to a civil society in which there's productivity and that there's a good capital markets and a good environment so that there's good income and get the basics, the fundamentals right, meaning earn more than you spend, have more assets than liability, a good income statement, a good balance sheet.If you do those basic things, most people productiv ...

As the country becomes the largest international trading empire, its transactions can be paid with its currency, making it the preferred global medium of exchange. And because their currency is so widely accepted and frequently used, people around the world want to save in it, making it the preferred storehold of wealth and thus the world's leading reserve currency. The Gilder was the world's main reserve currency when the Dutch led world trade. The pound was when the British led and the dollar has been sin ...

It used to be the case that the US dollar was backed by gold and US government said if you don't like these pieces of paper we'll give you gold and ultimately we we ended that we're never going to go back to that presumably right >> probably presumably that's right but not if you watch these gold c these cycles that because you have the devaluation then um people feel don't have confidence in the fiat system over a period of time and through history they've um at that point. The way that works is you print ...

Is China uninvestable until this tariff war or these tariff tensions are fixed. I think for many countries there are be very big risks and the important thing is to pick your size of your exposure. In other words, I my mantra is 15 good uncorrelated return streams.I think you have to have diversification and that China as a small piece should be part of that diversification. All things considered, if it's not a geopolitical and you're not instructed to do otherwise, by and large, I think that some element o ...

The reality is that most of what people call money is actually credit. The total amount of credit in the United States is about $50 trillion and the total amount of money is only about $3 trillion. Remember, in an economy without credit, the only way to increase your spending is to produce more.But in an economy with credit, you can also increase your spending by borrowing. As a result, an economy with credit has more spending and allows incomes to rise faster than productivity over the short run, but not o ...

Now, I'll take you through the big cycle in more detail. Give me 20 minutes and I'll give you the last 500 years of history and show you the similar patterns across the Dutch, British, US, and Chinese empires. 500 years of big cycles.I'm going to describe the typical cycle by dividing it into three phases. The rise, the top, and the decline. The rise.Successful new waters that rise, both internal and external, are typically started by powerful revolutionary leaders doing four things. First, they win power b ...