Global Inflation Falls Everywhere But America: When Money Becomes Worthless
If you're noticing that your grocery bill feels heavier than ever while news outlets claim inflation is under control, you're not imagining things. At Perfect Spiral Capital, we break down what's actually happening to your money, and why the official numbers don't match your lived experience.
Between The Lies is a weekly podcast where we cut through mainstream financial narratives and show you how money actually works. This episode dives deep into global inflation, the real cost of currency debasement, and what you can actually do about it.
“So when the IMF says inflation is up, or inflation is down, or inflation is decreasing or whatever, what they’re talking about is consumer prices... But inflation is how many total dollars or total yen or whatever currency, total buying units there are in the economy to buy those things.”
What We Covered
The Inflation Definition Problem
When the IMF announces that global inflation is falling, they're measuring something specific: the Consumer Price Index (CPI). But here's the critical distinction that most financial media ignores: inflation and rising prices aren't the same thing. Inflation is about the money supply expanding, the total number of dollars (or any currency) circulating in the economy. Rising prices are just the visible effect of that expansion.
Think of it this way: if you slice a pizza into more pieces, you haven't created more pizza. You've just divided the same pizza into smaller slices. When central banks expand the money supply, they're doing exactly that, printing more dollars to buy the same amount of goods and services. The effect? Prices rise. But by calling this "rising prices" instead of "inflation," politicians and central banks get to propose solutions that don't involve stopping the money printer.
Why 110 Ounces of Gold Tells the Real Story
Here's a fact that puts currency debasement in perspective: In 1913, before the Federal Reserve existed, 110 ounces of gold would buy you a nice three-bedroom house. Today, that same 110 ounces of gold still buys roughly the same house in most markets. Gold didn't become more valuable. Your dollar became worthless.
This isn't accident or market forces, it's the direct result of monetary policy. When we abandoned the gold standard in 1971, we removed the physical constraint that forced governments to be honest about their money supply. Since then, the purchasing power of the dollar has collapsed while hard assets like real estate and gold have maintained their value relative to gold itself. Your "home appreciation" isn't wealth creation. It's currency depreciation making the same asset cost more dollars.
“True investing is about finding the right opportunities where you control the vast amount of the variables. Dollar cost averaging is not doing that. You don’t control most of the time what you’re putting into, you don’t have any input into whether or not it goes up or down.”
Real Investing vs. Chasing Trends
Most people confuse saving with investing. When you dollar-cost average, taking an automatic deduction from your paycheck and putting it into a mutual fund, you're not investing. You're hoping. True investing requires identifying opportunities where you control the variables and can act decisively when conditions align.
The difference matters enormously during market cycles. In 2007-2008, the housing market collapsed and real estate was on sale. But people stuck in 401ks had to wait weeks for paperwork while the best opportunities disappeared. Those with liquid capital, what the show calls "dry powder", could move immediately.
This is where infinite banking creates real advantage. By accumulating capital in properly structured life insurance policies, you maintain control, liquidity, and ongoing growth. When an opportunity appears, you're not calling your retirement plan administrator. You're writing a check.
Bitcoin's Practical Limitations (And Why That Matters)
The hosts love Bitcoin. They own it. They believe in sound money principles. But when Luke Tatum asked his wife where they could actually spend Bitcoin in Arkansas, the answer was sobering: nowhere within hours of driving. You still can't pay property taxes in Bitcoin. Groceries don't scan cryptocurrency at checkout.
This isn't anti-crypto sentiment. It's reality. Bitcoin represents genuine sound money principles, but adoption for daily transactions remains limited. Until that changes, you need a foundation in a currency that's still accepted everywhere, dollars. That's precisely why having liquid capital available for deployment is more valuable than being locked into any single asset, even a deflationary one.
“110 ounces of gold bought a three bedroom, three bath house virtually anywhere prior to 1913. You can still buy that today with 110 ounces of gold in most markets. It doesn’t mean gold’s more valuable. It simply means the value of the money itself is eroded. Nothing’s really changed in terms of hard asset values. It’s that our money is just worth that much less.”
Key Takeaway
Stop waiting for the next big market crash or the perfect investment opportunity. Start building a capital accumulation system you control, one that grows regardless of monetary policy while maintaining liquidity for deployment when real opportunities appear. That's the difference between being a victim of inflation and being positioned to benefit from it.
“You don’t just take a deduction out of your paycheck. That’s not investing. It’s looking for good opportunities and taking action on them, and that’s what infinite banking allows you to do.”
Related Episodes
Episode 001: Why the Fed's Interest Rate Decisions Destroy Your Wealth
Episode 002: How Central Banking Created the Wealth Transfer Machine
Episode 005: The Infinite Banking Strategy That Survived 2008
Ready to build a wealth foundation that survives monetary chaos? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit and connect with Luke, Rob, and Corey for a direct conversation about your financial future.
“The politically well-connected... they may have already known that interest rates are about to get cut. They may have already made their decisions based around what’s about to happen. So if you’re on the leading edge and you’ve got the money to deploy and you’re well capitalized and you’re ready to go... you get to have benefits that other people don’t.”
FAQ
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No. Inflation refers to the expansion of the money supply, central banks creating more currency. Rising prices are the visible effect of that expansion. This distinction matters because it changes how you solve the problem. If you treat rising prices as the problem and try to control prices through regulation, you miss the actual cause: an expanding money supply that needs to stop. Luke explains this using a pizza metaphor: slicing the pizza into more pieces doesn't create more pizza; it just divides the same pizza differently.
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The U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971 because other countries realized we weren't actually backing our dollars with gold reserves. We were printing far more dollars than we had gold to support. When other nations demanded their gold back, we had a choice: admit the fraud and shrink the money supply, or abandon gold and print freely. We chose to print freely. From that point forward, the dollar's value became purely a matter of government confidence and policy, no physical constraint limited printing.
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Because inflation benefits those who receive new money first (the Federal Reserve, major banks, the government itself) while harming those who receive it last (regular wage earners). Those benefiting from inflation control the media narratives and policy discussions. They have zero incentive to address the real problem. Additionally, most financial industry professionals have built careers and business models around a high-inflation, currency-devaluation environment. Stopping inflation would disrupt their entire industry.
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You can't control what the Federal Reserve does, but you can control where you store wealth and how you deploy capital. Real assets (land, productive businesses, properly structured life insurance) maintain value across inflation cycles. Infinite banking provides capital accumulation and liquidity independent of central bank policy. The strategy isn't to predict what the Fed will do; it's to build systems that work regardless of what they do.
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Bitcoin has powerful sound-money characteristics, a fixed supply, no central authority, censorship resistance. But adoption remains limited for daily transactions. You can't pay property taxes in Bitcoin. Most stores don't accept it. Until adoption expands dramatically, Bitcoin works better as a wealth store than a daily currency. The real solution combines multiple strategies: some wealth in hard assets (gold, real estate), some in sound-money tools (Bitcoin), and most in infinite banking systems that provide control, growth, and liquidity regardless of currency conditions.
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Dry powder is liquid capital always available for deployment. Most people live paycheck-to-paycheck with zero reserves. When opportunities appear (market crashes, real estate deals, business acquisitions), they can't act. Those with dry powder can move immediately, acquiring assets at depressed prices and generating outsized returns. Infinite banking structures accumulate dry powder automatically while providing guaranteed growth.
