WEBVTT

NOTE Silver Circle: The Independent Film and Graphic Novel

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.280
That's the head slide, but I'm the producer

2
00:00:02.280 --> 00:00:03.400
and the director of the film.

3
00:00:03.400 --> 00:00:06.120
We're a tiny little studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

4
00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:09.780
which is right outside of Boston by Harvard and by MIT.

5
00:00:09.780 --> 00:00:11.920
And I also want to thank Jeremy Davis

6
00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:16.040
for helping to fund this particular event.

7
00:00:16.040 --> 00:00:18.000
So let's flip it.

8
00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:21.760
So I'm gonna talk quickly about some of the ideas

9
00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:22.600
that are inside of it.

10
00:00:22.600 --> 00:00:25.160
I'm gonna talk really about this Haslip book,

11
00:00:25.160 --> 00:00:29.840
which I recently read and it led to some interesting insights.

12
00:00:29.840 --> 00:00:32.720
I'm sure it'll be on sale here.

13
00:00:32.720 --> 00:00:35.360
Talk a little bit about why we're going out through this

14
00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:39.760
from the cultural angle as opposed to electing candidates

15
00:00:39.760 --> 00:00:42.880
and spreading leaflets around.

16
00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.960
I'll talk about the story, I'll talk about the economics,

17
00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:48.720
and I'll talk about some of our audiences.

18
00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:50.440
And I'll let you know how to keep in touch

19
00:00:50.440 --> 00:00:51.440
with what we're doing.

20
00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:55.320
The interesting thing about this Haslip book,

21
00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:58.080
What You Should Know About Inflation,

22
00:00:58.080 --> 00:01:04.160
He wrote it in 1960, it was re-released in 1965, and at first when I saw some of the

23
00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:09.600
numbers I said, oh this is quaint, you know, this is cute, I mean, the population of the

24
00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:16.340
US is 160 million people, that's half of what we have now, you know, and he's complaining

25
00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:22.720
about debt, that's 286 billion, I mean, we breathe out that much, or I could be more

26
00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:34.720
and more crude, but it's, there's just, you know, that's nothing in terms of what we speak about in debt now, where we're, you know, $14 trillion in debt, not even counting all of the entitlements.

27
00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:49.720
And the gold window, he talked about it being closed, but it was still partially open. It was finally closed in 1971, where foreign, you know, so at that point, foreigners could still exchange, you know, could redeem U.S. dollars for gold.

28
00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:54.280
that went away years after, a decade after he wrote this thing.

29
00:01:54.280 --> 00:01:57.540
So at one level it's quaint but it's

30
00:01:57.540 --> 00:02:02.000
very pressing. It's the same warnings as we hear today in the press

31
00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.720
and what's interesting is that nobody really listened.

32
00:02:05.720 --> 00:02:09.060
Nobody really followed along with that.

33
00:02:09.060 --> 00:02:13.320
And what's kind of happened, I put the little book on the graph right about

34
00:02:13.320 --> 00:02:15.400
where he wrote it

35
00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:16.280
and

36
00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:27.200
Things have gotten a lot worse since then, it's kind of his nightmare. Our debt has stayed

37
00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:32.120
relatively flat in absolute terms and went down coming from World War II spending in

38
00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:39.240
terms of GDP. The major inflection points in terms of where debt has gone is in 1971

39
00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:44.120
when the gold window was finally closed and we started fighting more heavily, and then

40
00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:50.960
in various crises in 1980 and then the whole Bush-Obama explosion of debt happened starting

41
00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:57.960
in 2000. So it's much worse as well as we have twice as many people to deal with. The

42
00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:05.520
only reason it's even more muted is that we did get more GDP. So it's a terrible outcome

43
00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:14.000
as far as this book, so it's not really quaint at all. And let's go to the next slide.

44
00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:32.120
The interesting thing, other than the numbers, that comes from this book is that he talks about sound money as a gold standard or as something that really enforces a balanced budget and enforces small government.

45
00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:38.120
It really creates an environment where technically you really can't go outside of your bounds.

46
00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:45.500
It's like being a person or a family, you can't spend outside of your own boundaries

47
00:03:45.500 --> 00:03:49.040
for long because you'll go bankrupt and bad things will start happening.

48
00:03:49.040 --> 00:03:56.400
The gold standard kind of enforces that and fiat money, the Federal Reserve enables us

49
00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:02.920
to do weird debt financing things that we really shouldn't be able to do.

50
00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:17.920
are the basis for imperialistic war, they're the basis for welfare, all these things that are expanding government come from fiat money, come from dishonest money.

51
00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:27.920
And in a sense that's fine, if people want that, you know, it's not sustainable, but in a sense, you know, there are two different mindsets.

52
00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:41.920
And he makes a very good point several times in the book that if we actually implemented, say Ron Paul won and implemented sound money now, it would be voted off in a few years because people in the body politic aren't ready for it.

53
00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:51.920
If you look at the complaining that goes on in policy right now, just to reduce the budget by a small amount, you know, people raise the hue and cry about cutting the smallest thing.

54
00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:59.920
is the smallest thing, they talk about severe budget cuts to get rid of the things that shouldn't be on there in the first place.

55
00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:07.920
So there's really a mindset change that has to happen in terms of people being ready for something that's responsible,

56
00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:13.920
because clearly the fiat money fueled type of government is not sustainable.

57
00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:20.920
And it's always entertaining to me that people that are interested in environmental sustainability

58
00:05:20.920 --> 00:05:26.920
never pay attention to financial sustainability. It's always very interesting.

59
00:05:26.920 --> 00:05:34.920
So basically, this is maybe a bold statement, but I'll make it because here I'm a filmmaker

60
00:05:34.920 --> 00:05:40.400
and not an economist, but I think at some level people really aren't ready for the kind

61
00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:45.720
of Society that's implied by actually having sound money and having to have a government

62
00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:54.720
that's small enough to have that. And that leads me away from electing the right people

63
00:05:54.720 --> 00:06:00.760
and leafleting people and trying to pass this bill or that bill. All that's on the path

64
00:06:00.760 --> 00:06:07.640
of it. But the part that excites me the most as an entrepreneur and as a storyteller is

65
00:06:07.640 --> 00:06:14.360
is to actually start to change the culture and start to change people's minds and to

66
00:06:14.360 --> 00:06:20.080
open their minds into what sorts of other worlds are possible. What is it like to live

67
00:06:20.080 --> 00:06:25.000
in this sort of thing? Or what is the bad side of inflation? What happens? What is the

68
00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:30.560
personal cost of inflation when it finally runs its course?

69
00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:35.600
And movies are a great way to do that. I happen to own an animation studio, so it's easier

70
00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:42.600
to Do. It's a very technical craft, but you're not going to get your friend to read this

71
00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:49.860
book or to read Rothbard, who's very entertaining, or the small print version of Human Action.

72
00:06:50.800 --> 00:06:55.480
Your friend's not going to do that first. They're going to want to see something that

73
00:06:55.480 --> 00:07:00.360
attaches to their heart and attaches to their storytelling side more than to their mind

74
00:07:00.360 --> 00:07:05.760
at First. So, in my sense, a cool movie is kind of the ticket. The left has discovered

75
00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:12.760
this years ago. Almost every film you see has some sort of leftward tint. Look at Wall-E.

76
00:07:12.760 --> 00:07:17.920
You know, it's a post-apocalyptic trash everywhere, and there's robots going around, and the only

77
00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:22.960
people you see are these big fatties that are completely irresponsible. Day After Tomorrow.

78
00:07:22.960 --> 00:07:29.960
There's millions of films about bad corporations and evil corruption by corporations. There's

79
00:07:30.360 --> 00:08:00.360
When we wrote this, I'm very clear. The bad guy is going to be the Federal Reserve, who, yes, they're a private bank, but the bad guys are going to be the government. It's not going to be some evil corporation, some Citibank kind of figure, some Gordon Gekko kind of figure. So it's a different, the way that you tell the story directs people's minds. And people want to fight the bad guy. They want to fight the man, so to speak. In this case, we're directing them towards

80
00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:04.360
A much more interesting man, quote-unquote, to fight.

81
00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:08.360
So, let's go on from there.

82
00:08:08.360 --> 00:08:12.360
Obviously, the story and the characters are primary.

83
00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:16.360
It's the kind of thing that we, if it's not a good story,

84
00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:20.360
if it's not a good thriller romance, people are just not going to be interested in watching it.

85
00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:24.360
We don't want to make a bad movie. And in fact, we want to make a movie that

86
00:08:24.360 --> 00:08:28.360
people who know nothing about the Federal Reserve would be

87
00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:33.200
excited to see and know really nothing about, they don't have to learn monetary policy out

88
00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:34.200
of it.

89
00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:40.880
I'm going to go a little farther more quickly just to preserve time.

90
00:08:40.880 --> 00:08:46.200
The basic idea with the movie though is basically it's 2019, there's a severe economic collapse,

91
00:08:46.200 --> 00:08:50.160
the dollar collapse, it's not as bad as it could be, we only have prices ten times what

92
00:08:50.160 --> 00:08:57.920
they are now in nine years, and gosh, eight years now.

93
00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:01.320
And the Federal Reserve has vastly expanded its powers and there's a group of rebels

94
00:09:01.320 --> 00:09:07.320
that are fighting the Federal Reserve as both in terms of their policies but also in terms

95
00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:13.920
of personal motivations and primarily for the right to make their own money out of silver.

96
00:09:13.920 --> 00:09:17.800
So it's kind of a, that's where the name comes from, but they basically make an alternative

97
00:09:17.800 --> 00:09:23.840
currency, this is real silver, you have one of them in the 10th ounce version, but they're

98
00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:30.200
They're basically trying to create their own currency, much like Von Notthaus was recently

99
00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:34.240
convicted of.

100
00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:39.000
So I already talked about some of the economic factors in there, but the dollars lost what's

101
00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:43.240
called the World Reserve currency status, which has given us the ability to do many

102
00:09:43.240 --> 00:09:45.600
of the bad things the Fed has done.

103
00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:50.680
And we create this new innovation that I hope they don't do, called the Department of Housing

104
00:09:50.680 --> 00:09:51.680
Stability.

105
00:09:51.680 --> 00:10:05.680
So they kick people out of entire neighborhoods of houses, thousands of houses across the nation, and they guard them to be empty, and they expand and contract that supply of houses to control housing prices across the United States.

106
00:10:05.680 --> 00:10:14.680
Just in terms of supply and demand, it would actually work. It's like paying farmers to burn their crops after they burn it to control crop prices.

107
00:10:14.680 --> 00:10:22.680
So it's not far-fetched at all, but I hope nobody gets that idea.

108
00:10:22.680 --> 00:10:29.660
So and as I said, they fight back by making their own silver currency.

109
00:10:29.660 --> 00:10:36.540
We create the Coin Act of 2016 where it's illegal to barter using these things and as

110
00:10:36.540 --> 00:10:41.000
many of you have seen, there was a legal case that came through in the last couple of weeks

111
00:10:41.000 --> 00:11:11.000
for Bernard von Nothaus was convicted, I think he'll get up to 25 years for making silver coins and trying to pass them off as dollars. The way that our rebels do it is slightly different, but if you're an economist geek like I am, it's the reverse Gresham's law, where good money drives out the bad. Gresham's law is where bad money drives out the good when there's a fixed dollar value to it. This

112
00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:16.080
This had to be one dollar or you had a paper dollar bill, you'd always give me the paper

113
00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:20.220
dollar bill and hold on to the thing that has value. Reverse question is loud, there's

114
00:11:20.220 --> 00:11:24.640
no direct tie between them that says one dollar. This is an ounce of silver, that's all it

115
00:11:24.640 --> 00:11:31.200
is and they float against each other. There's some good scholarship on this by Selgin and

116
00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:39.200
White that you can find I think out in the bookstores or in similar sites. We're basically

117
00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:44.200
We're really planning to release the film this fall into the heat of the presidential debates.

118
00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:49.200
I mean, there should be a lot of talk about debt, there should be a lot of talk about responsibility,

119
00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:55.200
and much to our benefit, the Federal Reserve has come to the fore during all that time.

120
00:11:55.200 --> 00:11:58.200
I can talk more about distribution later if you're interested in that,

121
00:11:58.200 --> 00:12:04.200
but we're hoping you get at least a limited theater release and then get out onto online DVD.

122
00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:11.200
We have three different major audiences, the Liberty folks, which were here. There's silver

123
00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:16.120
and precious metal people, which are a world unto themselves, but there's a lot of intersection

124
00:12:16.120 --> 00:12:20.200
in with Liberty people. They'll talk the way that we talk, but they have a lot more gold

125
00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:27.320
and silver. And as an animated film, we work a great deal in the comics world, which are

126
00:12:27.320 --> 00:12:33.520
not necessarily libertarian, but they're awesome. I mean, a lot of you are probably, our comics

127
00:12:33.520 --> 00:12:41.240
are animation fans, but we go to a lot of comic conventions and they're huge. A Liberty

128
00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:46.240
convention will have a thousand people at it maybe. A comic convention will have a thousand

129
00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:51.560
people in skimpy costumes waiting in line to get in the door. You know, I mean New York

130
00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:56.960
Comic Con had 90,000 people. I was just at San Francisco last weekend with 50,000 fans

131
00:12:56.960 --> 00:13:02.760
and 30,000 fans the week before in Orlando. Big, big enthusiastic base of people who want

132
00:13:02.760 --> 00:13:07.760
and a lot of them are already down with being against the Fed.

133
00:13:08.020 --> 00:13:11.180
So, towards that end, we're actually also releasing

134
00:13:11.180 --> 00:13:12.560
a online graphic novel.

135
00:13:12.560 --> 00:13:16.000
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we put a new page up

136
00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:16.840
on our website.

137
00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:19.720
It goes through the same story and is separately drawn.

138
00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:21.600
So you can actually get a sense of what's going on

139
00:13:21.600 --> 00:13:24.720
in our movie before you see it this fall.

140
00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:28.880
So, let's move up there.

141
00:13:28.880 --> 00:13:30.280
So I encourage you all to follow that way.

142
00:13:30.280 --> 00:13:32.680
There's already a pretty healthy online following.

143
00:13:32.760 --> 00:13:35.160
There's lots going on online for us.

144
00:13:35.160 --> 00:13:38.320
We go to silvercirclemovie.com, it's the main website.

145
00:13:38.320 --> 00:13:43.440
There's a Facebook pan with 11,000 Facebook fans on it.

146
00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:48.480
Very diverse Facebook group, some are into the comics, some are into for other things,

147
00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:52.000
for the politics, healthy discussions there all the time.

148
00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:57.200
There's a political blog called Silver Underground and there's a thing called Refinery where

149
00:13:57.200 --> 00:14:05.600
where we go through how we do the actual production, which is innovative and unique in itself.

150
00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:14.660
So it has some flyers out front and stickers that you can pick up all the URLs out there.

151
00:14:14.660 --> 00:14:18.780
And to us this is really just the beginning, I mean I see this as I'm really interested

152
00:14:18.780 --> 00:14:23.580
in the way of doing storytelling and in terms of injecting into the culture this way there's

153
00:14:23.580 --> 00:14:28.200
This was far too much coming from the other direction and I see this as a really interesting

154
00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:32.300
way and a powerful way to kind of reach people's minds. And then they can go on and read the

155
00:14:32.300 --> 00:14:39.300
fine print copy of Human Action soon after that. But at least this is a way to get ideas

156
00:14:40.820 --> 00:14:47.820
of liberty into the broad, broad culture. So talk with me all you want. I'm here to chat

157
00:14:47.820 --> 00:14:55.820
We're also looking for an intern this summer, in Boston, so talk with me about that.

158
00:14:55.820 --> 00:15:01.820
I think we're above the minimum wage, although I'd love to, but never mind.

159
00:15:01.820 --> 00:15:12.820
So I think the last one is just a thank you slide, so I'm going to go on to show some clips.

160
00:15:12.820 --> 00:15:14.820
I know I'm telling this on set.

161
00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:25.820
Alright, these are performance clips. This is basically the capture of everything on your green screen with live actors,

162
00:15:25.820 --> 00:15:30.820
and then we turn the animation base, we do the animation base on the actors.

163
00:15:30.820 --> 00:15:36.820
So this will go through a lot of those scenes cut together in kind of a fun way.

164
00:15:36.820 --> 00:15:42.820
So you get a sense of some of the story and also what the actors and what happens behind the scenes.

165
00:15:42.820 --> 00:15:45.820
And then we'll show you a clip from the real thing.

166
00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:53.820
You don't know it.

167
00:15:59.820 --> 00:16:01.820
Can you make it louder?

168
00:16:01.820 --> 00:16:03.820
I'd like to.

169
00:16:06.820 --> 00:16:18.820
There's, uh, this girl.

170
00:16:18.820 --> 00:16:20.820
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

171
00:16:24.820 --> 00:16:26.820
Are you kidding me?

172
00:16:30.820 --> 00:16:34.820
When I was the official who led the seizure on the Federal Reserve.

173
00:16:34.820 --> 00:16:47.820
I have a plan, but I need someone with security knowledge of the Fed. That's you.

174
00:16:47.820 --> 00:16:48.820
That's what you see.

175
00:16:48.820 --> 00:16:51.820
Look, you need to understand something.

176
00:16:57.820 --> 00:16:58.820
What's this?

177
00:16:58.820 --> 00:17:00.820
It's all a setup.

178
00:17:00.820 --> 00:17:02.820
She was dead this morning.

179
00:17:02.820 --> 00:17:05.820
That's good on its own. That's an ounce of silver.

180
00:17:32.820 --> 00:17:42.820
I told you before, I didn't know she was here. She is my wife.

181
00:18:02.820 --> 00:18:06.820
The Theory of Money and Credit

182
00:18:10.820 --> 00:18:12.820
Get it!

183
00:18:32.820 --> 00:18:46.820
And just to show you what it looks like, it's only 30 seconds, I know we can get off the next speaker, so this is what the actual output looks like when you take this adapter and turn it into this.

184
00:19:02.820 --> 00:19:04.820
The Theory of Money and Credit