Well, Steve and Bill, thank you so much for being with me today. I asked you to join the podcast so that we could talk about two very important topics. One is what we just saw happen with the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. And then also we’ve got a debt ceiling battle ahead of us with Congress, and I wanted to talk about that. And how the economy is affecting the banks and how the debt and the spending and the printing of money is affecting the economy. Just small little topics.

Let’s start with this topic that I touched on with Gordon a little bit. This company called Gotion, which is a big Chinese outfit that is explicitly tied to the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, it’s baked into their articles of incorporation and so on. And they’re going to take over 400 acres of pristine land in the heart of Michigan with $700 million plus subsidy from the government of the state, tax dollar money, obviously. Bill. This would seem to be ill-advised on a lot of different levels.. And I just wonder, is this obviously a problem in the microcosmic sense, but we’re seeing stuff like this happening across America. And I just wonder what your thoughts are about the folks who are enabling it.

And a question that we often ask is whether it is advisable, under present circumstances, to have your money invested in China. You may not think you do. If you have money in the stock market, you almost certainly have some of it tucked away in Chinese companies because that’s what people Bill used to work with think is warranted, in terms of perhaps your best interests, but certainly theirs.

Let me start by asking you to work through with us, Bill, what seems to be growing pressure on the reserve status of the dollar, the reserve currency status of the dollar, notably as a result of Chinese machinations with Saudi Arabia and Iraq in recent weeks that have agreed to buy, rather sell to China, china being the buyer, oil and gas in renminbi rather than dollars. What’s up with that and is it a problem, do you think, for the reserve status of the dollar?

Let me start by asking you about a topic that we turn to with you most weeks, I think it’s fair to say now, and that’s what’s going on in communist China, on the economic side in particular, Bill. It seems as though there’s increasing evidence that it’s really bad business doing business with the Chinese Communist Party at the moment. Your thoughts?

Thank you. So Bill, the last time these guys got together in one of their capitals, Vladimir Putin visited Beijing and on the eve of the genocide games, secured, I think, the green light from Xi to invade Ukraine as long as he did it after the Olympics were over. Might we expect this new chapter to open up a new front, do you think? Maybe in Taiwan, maybe elsewhere, including against us?

And we’re anxious to get his thoughts on what on earth is going on at the moment with respect to prominent banks in our country, notably Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature on the East Coast. And as we are speaking to him, the President has been making some remarks about what the federal government is up to, and we hope to be able to parse all of this with, well, a former insider, but a man who certainly knows his way around this beat.

Bill Walton is in the house virtually, I’m very pleased to say. And he is explaining to us what is going on with both Silicon Valley Bank and two cryptocurrency financing banks, all of which are in trouble. And President Biden and his team have professed that actual creditors at places like Silicon Valley Bank are going to be able to get their money. And it’s said, but it’s not a bailout. So Bill, what do you make of all that? Is it a bailout?

Well, our panel was on banking. And we had three small businessmen on talking about their troubles getting banked because they were in unfavored industries like guns or like fossil fuels, which have been shut out of the market, shut out of the banking business by the likes of JP Morgan and Bank of America. And that’s a big issue for us. But our conversation quickly turned to something that we all agreed was a much bigger threat, which is the looming implementation of central bank digital currencies. Now, that’s a mouthful, but what it means in essence boiling it down, is instead of your checking account with the bank you have now, which is problematic in some cases, you are instead banking with the Federal Reserve or an agency that we set up to manage this currency system.

So much to talk about. Bill, I just wanted to pick up where we left off a moment ago with Trevor Loudon who was warning us of this phenomenon of elite capture. And it has been particularly evident and I would argue devastatingly effective in your old stomping grounds, Wall Street. Your thoughts on the importance as this new select committee in the House of Representatives gets underway with hearing tomorrow that it be fully able to focus on the problem of people who have well, been working for and arguably betraying our country too, the Chinese Communist Party, whether it’s among the masters of the universe class or elsewhere in the financial sector.