Between the Lies Podcast

I heard a rumor that Trump wants to cap credit card rates at 10%. Personally, I was just thinking it's already too easy to move up economically in America. Not like we have an unaffordability crisis constantly making headlines or anything. Welcome to another episode where Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital and I break down another government solution that's likely to create more problems than it solves. Spoiler alert: When you cap what lenders can charge for risk, they just stop lending to risky people. What We Cover:

• Why credit card rate caps mean fewer people get credit, not cheaper credit
• The Big Short connection: How Wall Street just invents new financial products when you regulate the old ones
• Rob's breakdown of what happens when a 400 credit score and 850 credit score get treated the same
• Why this is probably negotiating theater rather than actual policy
• The return of secured credit cards and why that's worse than high rates
• Wall Street's morning panic versus end-of-day reality check
• How Bitcoin and policy loans could fill the gap if traditional credit disappears

Key Insights: Rob nails the fundamental problem: if it was YOUR $10,000 on the line, would you lend it to someone and cap your return at 4%? Of course not. These companies aren't going to willingly lose money. They'll either stop lending to anyone below stellar credit or invent some new financial product that technically isn't a "credit card" but functions the same way with different rules. We've seen this playbook before. Remember The Big Short when Michael Burry walks in wanting a financial product that doesn't exist? Wall Street just invents credit default swaps on the spot. Same thing will happen here. You decree this thing called a "credit card" can't charge more than 10%? Fine. Here's a new thing called a "flexible spending arrangement" that does exactly what credit cards used to do. The Real Talk: Yes, credit card rates are insanely high. Rob has over an 800 credit score and still gets quoted 15-16% on his card. But the solution isn't price controls that eliminate options for people who need them most. The payday loan crowd everyone loves to hate? Those people need money and don't have it. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you just need a hand up, and you may not look good enough on paper to qualify under strict risk caps. The Silver Lining: This kind of credit crunch could actually push more people toward Bitcoin and private banking solutions. If you have assets, why wouldn't you lend against those instead of begging traditional banks for permission? Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

Housing prices are too damn high. You can try Mamdani's approach, or you can try Trump's. Time will tell who's right. My guess is neither. Welcome to another episode where Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital and I try to figure out what unforeseen and cataclysmic effects might come from Trump's latest housing market intervention. This week's headline: banning institutional investors like BlackRock from buying single-family homes. Sounds great on the surface, right? Get the big bad corporations out of residential neighborhoods and maybe regular people can actually afford houses again. Except nothing is ever that simple when you're dealing with decades of monetary manipulation. What We Cover:

• Trump's proposal to ban institutional investors from single-family home purchases
• Why easy money and lower interest rates might make housing worse, not better
• How BlackRock props up home prices by always being willing to pay asking price
• The 15-minute city agenda and shifting investment from suburbs to urban multifamily dwellings
• Why homes became wealth storage vehicles instead of just places to live
• Japanese and South African housing models where homes depreciate like cars
• The $9.3 trillion increase in money supply since 2016 and what it means for housing
• How to position yourself to buy when others can't

Key Insights: Rob breaks down the core contradiction in Trump's approach. If you ban institutional investors from buying homes while simultaneously pushing for lower interest rates, you might temporarily slow the market. But cheap money historically drives asset prices through the roof. So what happens when everyone suddenly has access to 3% mortgages again? The exact opposite of affordability. Here's something most people don't think about: homes require constant upkeep. They're naturally depreciating assets. The fact that we treat them as appreciating investments should be a massive red flag that money itself is the problem. In Japan, homes depreciate like cars because building is easy and cheap. In South Africa, same thing. They're roofs over your head, not generational wealth vehicles. The money supply expanded by $9.3 trillion since 2016. That's why everything costs so much. Every dollar from 2016 is now worth a fraction of what it was. Housing prices didn't really go up - your dollar just became worthless. The conversation gets interesting when we discuss what this means for investment capital. If BlackRock and other institutional investors can't buy single-family homes, where does that money go? Maybe into urban multifamily developments. Maybe into the 15-minute city build-out that's been planned for years. The Bigger Picture: Rob nailed it when he pointed out that homes were never intended to be stores of value. Strip out inflation and the actual increase in home value since 1912 was about 1%. It's the currency debasement that creates the illusion of appreciation. But here's the positive angle: if institutional investors actually do get shut out of residential markets, that creates opportunity for individuals and small landlords. The question is whether you're positioned to take advantage when prices correct. Ready to build capital that's available when opportunities appear? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit on controlling your financial future. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

We barely contained ourselves last episode talking policy loans, so naturally we're back at it this week. Welcome to another episode where Luke Tatum, Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, and I dive into exactly how we're putting infinite banking to work in 2025. Not theory. Not sales pitches. Just real examples of what we're actually doing with our policies this year. What We Cover:

• Luke's plan: Managing uneven income taxes, floating business expansion costs, and financing his nephew's first car
• Rob's vision: Launching his own podcast, exploring passive income opportunities, and potentially replacing the family van
• Nicky P's reality: Pulling a policy loan for a car down payment instead of begging some bank for approval
• The three-generation wealth curse and why proper structure prevents it
• Seven-generation thinking versus the instant gratification mindset destroying families
• Estate planning nightmares and why most inheritance situations become multi-year legal battles
• How to make generational wealth transfer appealing instead of a burden

Key Insights: Luke breaks down something most people miss about policy loans - knowing your cost of capital upfront changes everything about budgeting. When you finance a car through a dealership, they sell you on "make extra payments to reduce interest." With a policy loan, you proactively decide your payment schedule, and if an emergency hits, you can skip payments without consequences. Your policy, your rules. Rob shares the statistic that haunts every wealthy family: by the third generation, wealth is completely gone if you didn't structure it properly. That's what Nelson Nash's "think long range" rule is all about. Jack Spirko talks about seven generations out. That takes a completely different level of thinking. The conversation gets real when we talk about estate planning. Most people who've dealt with it know it's a nightmare - disputes between siblings, outdated trusts, homes that can't get divided, lawyers who screw up wills. One of my bandmates is still dealing with his mom's estate because the lawyer created problems that should've been easily handled. He'd rather wash his hands of the whole thing because it's such a pain. The Bigger Picture: We end up discussing wealth taxes and unrealized capital gains taxes. The people pushing these policies don't understand (or don't care) how intertwined everything is. You can't extract wealth from the system without collapsing the entire structure. Everyone's 401ks are invested in the same system. Here's the silver lining: We're not in those traditional systems. While politicians manipulate markets and buy votes with your own money, we're building sovereign wealth using 200-year-old financial instruments with contractual guarantees. Perfect Spiral Capital Insight: Whether you're starting with $50/month or managing multi-policy systems doing six-figure cashflow, infinite banking lets you finance your life without asking permission from institutions that charge you for the privilege of using your own money. Ready to understand how to actually use policy loans in your life? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

As we close out 2025, Luke, Rob, and I wanted to do something different. Instead of talking theory, we're sharing exactly what we actually used our policy loans for this year. Welcome to the Christmas edition of Between The Lies, where we get real about infinite banking in practice. Not the sales pitch version - the actual day-to-day mechanics of how this works when you're running your life and business. I'll be honest - my policy is tiny. About $50 a month. That's it. But you know what? Once a year, without fail, my car needs something I don't have cash for. And every single time, instead of begging some bank for a personal loan at whatever ridiculous rate they'd charge, I just access my own money. No approval process. No questions asked. Just my capital, available when I need it. Luke's story is even better. He uses his policy primarily for income taxes - both federal and state. Think about that for a second. Instead of giving the IRS an interest-free loan through withholding all year, he keeps that money in his policy where it's earning dividends and growing cash value. Then when quarterly taxes are due, he takes a policy loan, pays the government, and spends the next three months repaying himself while his policy keeps growing. The government charges you interest if you underpay. But when they hold your money all year? Crickets. Rules for thee, but not for me. Rob gets into some advanced stuff - financing his family's annual beef purchase through his policy, taking loans for property taxes, even picking up Bitcoin when it dropped. Every time money flows out to pay for something, he's capturing that transaction within his own system instead of letting it vanish into someone else's pocket forever. Here's the mindset shift that changes everything: You are financing things whether you realize it or not. Every dollar you spend is a dollar that's not earning money for you somewhere else. That's an interest cost even if you're paying cash. Luke mentioned something during our morning meeting that perfectly captures how they train us to accept poverty: bank savings accounts pay 0.5% interest. You're trained to think keeping money is wasting it because it's "not earning anything." So you're incentivized to spend or invest in things you don't control. Meanwhile, properly structured whole life policies are growing every single day while also giving you access to that capital. The difference between regular people and wealthy people like Elon Musk isn't that rich people have more money sitting in bank accounts. It's that they have assets. Musk has billions in company equity. When he needs cash, he takes loans against those assets. Banks love it because they know he's good for it. You can do the same thing at your scale. Instead of the bank, it's the insurance company. Instead of stocks, it's cash value in a mutual whole life policy where you're actually a partial owner of the company paying you dividends. We're not talking about millions here. Rob mentioned clients saving $61,000 on vehicle financing alone. That's real money that could have gone to building generational wealth instead of bank profits. This isn't get-rich-quick. It's capture-what's-already-yours and make it work for you instead of someone else. Ready to understand how private banking actually works? Check out PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

Here we go again. Big tax refunds are on the way, I'm told. Sounds like the money printer is revving up again. Welcome to another episode where Luke Tatum, Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, and I try to make sense of political bribery disguised as tax policy. This week we're tackling Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" and why your bigger refund check is actually just theft with extra steps. The pitch sounds great on the surface: expanded standard deductions, no tax on tips or overtime, boosted child tax credits tied to inflation. Everyone gets more money back! Don't you feel great? Except we're adding hundreds of billions to the deficit every month while pretending this is sustainable economics. It's the political equivalent of maxing out your credit cards to celebrate getting a bonus at work. Luke breaks down something that clients at Perfect Spiral Capital hear regularly: why give the IRS an interest-free loan through withholding? If you don't pay exactly the right amount quarterly, they charge you interest. But when they hold your money all year? Crickets. Rules for thee, but not for me. The frustrating part is how blatant the manipulation has become. Politicians discovered they can promise anything they want and buy votes with our own money. We millennials are watching housing prices require literal fortunes because they've been printing money for decades. That's not market forces - that's monetary debasement wearing a "prosperity" mask. Rob nails it when he points out that anything "free" you're paying for - your dollar just buys less. You might not feel it today, but fast forward 20 years when everything costs double or triple what it does now. You paid for it. Through inflation. The bigger issue is cultural. We've lost seventh-generation thinking entirely. Most of what millennials deal with today is the product of boomers looking out for themselves. Housing as an investment vehicle? That should be a red flag that money is being looked at backwards. Your house deteriorates every year - why is it supposed to be worth more? Luke brings up a critical perspective shift from Austrian economics: talk about value in terms of real assets like gold or Bitcoin, not dollars. What's this worth in hours of your labor? How much of your life do you have to give up to maintain it? When someone steals your car, they're not just taking property - they're stealing years of your life you spent acquiring that vehicle. But people don't see it that way because the system trains them not to think about it. The broken window fallacy applies here too. Politicians justify destruction by claiming it stimulates the economy. Rebuild houses, buy new furniture - think of the jobs! But priceless memories, antiques, entire livelihoods are gone. War destroys things and humans. It is not good for the economy. So what do you do when politicians want to steal your money, change the rules, and buy your votes? You position your bigger refund check into some kind of long-term, sovereign, controlled-by-you asset. Because the government is not looking out for you. A system is what it does, not what it's supposed to do. If the point of our monetary system is to make money worth less, you need to build outside it entirely. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

We keep getting asked in the YouTube comments: How are you any type of alternative when life insurance companies still make money off investments? This week's Between The Lies tackles that question head-on with some uncomfortable truths Bloomberg doesn't want you to understand. Luke and Rob break down a recent Bloomberg article warning about private equity firms creating "credit hazards" in retirement funds. The article highlights companies like Apollo Group and Athene taking risky leveraged positions with your money. But here's what Bloomberg conveniently omits: They're talking about stock-owned insurance companies playing PE games, not the mutually-owned companies we actually work with. Rob explains the fundamental difference most people miss: Mutual life insurance companies are owned by policyholders, not stockholders chasing quarterly profits. These companies survived the Great Depression with only 5% failure rates while 16% of banks collapsed. During 2008's financial crisis, even AIG's life insurance subsidiaries required zero bailout money - completely solvent while their mortgage-backed securities division imploded. Luke tackles the private equity angle directly. Yes, PE firms use 80% leveraged deals to extract value and leave companies holding the debt. But that happens with stock companies optimized for shareholder returns, not mutually-owned insurers where policyholders vote on major decisions. There's a massive difference between Apollo Group manipulating Athene's portfolio and Northwestern Mutual's 130+ year track record of contractual profitability. The real story Bloomberg won't tell: Life insurance companies are the single largest store of genuine wealth in America. They're required by all 50 states to maintain massive reserves, undergo annual stress testing, and prove liquidity to pay claims. While 65-75% of their portfolios sit in investment-grade AAA corporate bonds, Bloomberg focuses on the 0.25% in higher-risk investments and screams about systemic failure. This is classic fear-mongering designed to keep you dependent on Wall Street's 401k casino while ignoring the only financial institution that's actually required to be solvent. When you control your own capital through properly structured mutual life insurance, you don't need to worry about whether private equity firms are playing games - because those aren't the companies you're working with. Rob's bottom line: When you're informed about how these companies are actually structured, you know what to do. Vet who you work with. Understand what products actually do. Build wealth through systems designed for long-term policy owner benefit, not quarterly shareholder profits. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast (Free Toolkit)

Welcome back to Between The Lies, where we navigate economic uncertainty with Austrian economics and practical wealth strategies. I'm Nicky P, joined by Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital. This week we tackle something that should terrify every investor: what happens when the people you trust to predict market behavior can only shrug? Nvidia and Alphabet together make up 13% of the S&P 500. Bitcoin ranks third in global market cap. These aren't century-old companies with predictable patterns. We're literally older than significant portions of the market we're trying to analyze. What We Cover:

• Why 13% of the S&P 500 has zero meaningful track record
• How market sentiment drives valuations without underlying fundamentals
• Bitcoin's 15% correction and what institutional money movements reveal
• The shift from volatile tech assets to stable hard assets
• Why insurance companies have 200 years of data while tech has 20
• Network access requirements for Bitcoin during grid-down scenarios
• How digital wealth compares to physical assets in crisis

Key Takeaways: Rob explains why even smart money is struggling to predict outcomes when massive market segments have no historical precedent. Luke breaks down how emotion drives markets and why companies are essentially propping each other up with billion-dollar deals. We examine why the early 1900s market boom at least had tangible assets backing valuations, while today's tech sector operates on speculation and hype. The Bitcoin question becomes critical here. Yes, it functions as designed. Yes, the network could theoretically run on ham radios. But if we're in a situation requiring ham radio Bitcoin networks, we have way bigger problems than cryptocurrency. The same skepticism applies to any digital wealth when infrastructure fails. The Reality Check: When institutional money starts fleeing Bitcoin and volatile tech for stable assets and gold, that tells you something. Smart money sees something coming that retail investors don't. Gold maintains purchasing power across centuries. Insurance companies weathered 2008 while everyone else panicked. Bitcoin might be the future, but it needs dollars today. Perfect Spiral Capital Insight: Luke and Rob operate in 200-year-old financial instruments with contractual guarantees and full reserve requirements. No speculation. No hoping the next quarterly earnings beat estimates. Just mathematical certainty compounding automatically regardless of whether Nvidia tanks or Bitcoin crashes. When markets lack historical reference points, you need foundations that don't require crystal balls. Ready to build wealth that doesn't depend on predicting the unpredictable? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit.

Trump just announced 50-year mortgages to "fix" the housing crisis. His logic? If FDR's 30-year mortgages were good, then 50-year mortgages must be better. Bigger number equals better, right?

Wrong.

In this episode, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital break down the mathematical reality behind Trump's latest intervention. The numbers are brutal: After 10 years of payments on a 50-year mortgage, 93% of your money goes to interest. You'd have just 7% equity in your home.

You don't hit the 50/50 point—where your payment is equally split between principal and interest—until year 39. Most Americans move every 7-8 years. They'd build essentially zero equity.

But the real issue isn't just the mortgage product itself. It's why we need it in the first place. Rob explains how decades of monetary policy, deficit spending, and inflation have driven asset prices through the roof. Houses aren't just expensive because of supply and demand—they're expensive because of deliberate government intervention at every level.

From minimum square footage requirements that prevent affordable starter homes to BlackRock using cheap government money to buy up real estate while families get priced out, the system is rigged from multiple angles. This isn't capitalism—it's crony capitalism on steroids.

Luke reminds us that when he was born, mortgage rates were 8.5% but people could afford houses. Today rates are lower, but homes are unaffordable. That tells you everything about who benefits from "easy money."

As Rob points out, 50-year mortgages are just another intervention following previous interventions. When you prop up one part of the economy, it distorts economic signals and creates new problems. Then you need another intervention to fix those problems. It's economic flex tape slapped on a rotten subfloor.

The comparison to 2008 is unavoidable. Fannie Mae just eliminated its 620 FICO score minimum to guarantee riskier mortgages. Combine that with 50-year terms and easier lending standards, and you've got all the ingredients for another housing bubble disaster.

But here's the positive takeaway: Economic downturns create massive opportunities for people with capital ready to deploy. Luke shares how he and his wife made a pact after 2008 to never get caught flatfooted again. How many millionaires were made during the recovery? A whole hell of a lot—because they had liquidity when assets were on sale.

That's what Perfect Spiral Capital does. They help individuals and business owners get properly capitalized so when opportunities appear, you can act on them. While others panic about government policy, you'll have dry powder ready to deploy.

Capital attracts opportunities. The question is: Will you be ready when they arrive?

Ready to make sure you're never caught flatfooted by economic chaos? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for their free toolkit on building wealth that survives government incompetence.

Welcome to day 36 of the "apocalypse" - also known as the longest government shutdown in US history. Except nothing actually collapsed. Parks closed while we sent billions overseas. SNAP benefits are being held hostage while Congress gets paid. It's almost like they're using your groceries as a political weapon. Luke Tatum & Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, and myself break down the strangest hostage crisis in American history - where 42 million people (34% of which are children) get caught in the crossfire between politicians arguing about which subsidies matter more. Healthcare subsidies versus food subsidies. Or more accurately the warfare state versus the domestic population? As if we couldn't just let people keep their own money in the first place.? The SNAP Reality Check: The average family receiving benefits receives $350/month. This makes up to 1.8% of total federal spending. We're running half a trillion dollar monthly deficits but somehow feeding people is what gets dropped? Rob points out the absurdity - we've got enough waste in the other $6+ trillion to cover this without blinking. The Real Problem: It's not about whether people should or shouldn't receive benefits. It's about sociopaths using food access as their political cudgel. That's terrorism by definition - leveraging human suffering for political means. Luke shares the deeper issue: the benefit cliff. Make any money, lose everything. It's not about helping people thrive - it's about control. When government controls whether you eat, they control what you do. The MMT Con: Modern Monetary Theory says you can print infinite money as long as you pay it back during good times. Except we never get to those "good times" where paying back happens. Just endless pulling on the credit card while pretending math doesn't exist. Austrian Reality: Rob and Luke bring the Austrian economics perspective - value needs to come from somewhere. You can't just print prosperity. But somehow during shutdowns, billions still flow overseas while Americans worry about groceries. The Positive Spin: Instead of depending on systems designed to keep you dependent, build your own foundation. Rob shares the mindset shift: take $100, turn it into $200 in 30 days. Buy a dresser, refinish it, sell it for profit. This abundance thinking beats trading time for money. Check out Perfect Spiral Capital's Eight Forms of Capital article to understand how to leverage different types of assets into actual wealth. When you control your own capital through properly structured systems, you don't need politicians deciding whether you eat. The government breaks your legs then hands you crutches. Maybe it's time to stop saying thanks. Ready to build wealth systems that don't require government permission? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit on taking control of your money.

Everywhere you look today, AI is on everyone's tongue. Nowhere more than Wall Street. But is this the beginning of a new economy or just the next bubble ready to burst? Welcome to Between The Lies, where we cut through the hype to give you the real story on what's happening with your money. I'm Nicky P, joined by the money truth-tellers at Perfect Spiral Capital - Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton. This week we're tackling something inspired by Patrick Boyle's compelling analysis: AI's circular financing scheme that's inflating a bubble nobody wants to acknowledge. OpenAI alone has a $7.8 billion operating loss for the first half of 2025, yet we keep propping up valuations on "trust me bro" economics. What We Cover:

• OpenAI's staggering losses and why only 5% of ChatGPT users actually pay
• The circular financing loop between AI tech suppliers, infrastructure companies, and investors
• How 20-50% of the S&P 500 has meaningful exposure to potentially failing AI companies
• Why DeepSeek's cheaper alternative caused market panic
• The energy crisis: AI data centers burning through power faster than infrastructure can support
• Historical parallels to the dot-com bubble and government-subsidized railroad expansion
• Nuclear power as the only real solution (and why we're 5-7 years away minimum)

Key Takeaways: Luke breaks down the "trust me bro" model where companies like OpenAI run $4 billion credit lines at 6% while burning GPUs that depreciate in five years. Rob explains why this feels exactly like the dot-com era - huge valuations, no revenue streams, everyone scrambling to not miss the party like they did with Bitcoin. I call out the mal-investment and government manipulation that's propping up companies that should have already folded. When the White House starts buying stakes in AI companies, you know this is at least partially artificial. The Reality Check: Before 1971's gold standard abandonment, we had zero government shutdowns. Coincidence? Rob draws parallels to how many car companies existed when automobiles first emerged versus how many survived. This shake-out is coming. The silver lining? If you understand fundamentals and avoid speculation, you won't get caught holding the bag. Focus on what you can control - your banking function, capital deployment, and assets that aren't exposed to circular AI financing schemes. Perfect Spiral Capital Insight: Luke and Rob emphasize investing only in what you know and understand. When everyone's blindly throwing money at AI hoping to catch the next wave, smart money focuses on fundamentals. Insurance companies don't buy AI speculation - they build wealth through proven systems. Ready to build wealth outside speculative bubbles? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit.