What do you think is the root problem of the US economy and financial system?

Incompetence, corruption and, of course, just plain stupidity. But there's not much you can do about those things; they're intrinsic to government.

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Nick Giambruno: Doug, what do you think is the root problem of the US economy and financial system?

Doug Casey: There are several, including incompetence, corruption and, of course, just plain stupidity. But there's not much you can do about those things; they're intrinsic to government. But perhaps something can be done about ignorance, which starts in school: What, for instance, do most people learn about economics and finance? Very little. As Mark Twain said, "It's not what people know that's the problem, it's what they think they know that just ain't so."

All of the economics that's taught in the schools—what little that is taught—is completely backward. Plus, almost everything you hear on television is conventional, unsound, and wrong.

I'd like to believe anybody that's reading this right now that has at least heard of the "Austrian school of economics," understands the value of gold, and knows a bit of basic economic theory and history. Without at least some fundamentals, people stand to suffer a huge drop in their standard of living if the economy goes sideways.

When the current financial crisis started, in 2007, it was the leading edge of the huge financial hurricane that hit in earnest in 2008 and 2009. Now we're in the eye of this hurricane, but we're going into the trailing edge of the storm, and it's going to be much worse and much different than what happened in '08 and '09. Or, for that matter, in the 1930s. So hold onto your hat.

Nick Giambruno: Can President Trump fix this mess?

Doug Casey: Everybody is talking about Donald Trump. He's a complex individual. I actually made money bets that he would win the election. But that’s not the only reason I’m glad he won.

Is Trump a good thing or a bad thing? They say, "Oh he's a racist." "Oh he's a sexist." "Oh he's a homophobe." "Oh he hates Muslims." Frankly we should analyze those things, but I think they're basically all lies. In fact, he's just a businessman, flying by the seat of his pants. He doesn't have a core philosophy.

What's going on in the US now is a culture clash. The people that live in the so-called "red counties" that voted for Trump—which is the vast majority of the geographical area of the US, flyover country—are aligned against the people that live in the blue counties, the coasts and big cities.

They don't just dislike each other and disagree on politics; they can no longer even have a conversation. They hate each other on a visceral gut level. They have totally different world views. It's a culture clash.

I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime. There hasn't been anything like this since the War Between the States, which shouldn't be called "The Civil War," because it wasn't a civil war. A civil war is where two groups try to take over the same government. It was a war of secession, where one group simply tries to leave.

We might have something like that again, hopefully nonviolent this time. I don't think the US should any longer remain as one political entity. It should break up so that people with one cultural view can join that group and the others join other groups. National unity is an anachronism.

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