Transcription
The risk is overvaluation. The triggers are obviously as far as the eye can see potential triggers, but they are not causal. So if, if, if we went into this crisis with markets priced well, they wouldn't be that risky. There'd be dips and, you know, things would happen, but you wouldn't be a risk. But the markets are way, way overvalued.
I welcome back to Metals and Miners. I'm your host, Gary Bow. Today, we have a very important discussion to work through on the war, oil, economy, metals, and more with Dave Colum. Dave, it's an honor to have you back on Metals and Miners. Welcome to the show.
Uh, I'm glad to be back. You're one of the most, um, thoughtful podcasters. I'll say that right up front.
Thank you, David. You actually, you actually do, uh, some of them, let me go, some of them ask me formulaic questions, and you actually come up with good questions. And so you reel me in, reel me in like a fish. And, uh, and, and at the same time, it's not formulaic. So, so don't [ __ ] up this time.
Hey, I'm going to do my best. I've got a lot, a lot here. We'll see, we'll see if I can live up to that. Dave, you've been sharing your economic perspectives for decades. There's a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty that's happening around the world right now, and that's causing confusion and worry for so many regarding the markets. We have a lot to discuss, but before we do, what's the big takeaway for those tuning in that you hope that they walk away with after listening to this conversation?
Um, well, for markets, the risk is overvaluation. The triggers are obviously as far as the eye can see potential triggers, but they are not causal. So if, if, if we went into this crisis with markets priced well, they wouldn't be that risky. There'd be dips and, you know, things would happen, but you wouldn't be a risk. But the markets are way, way overvalued. I just listened to Bubba Horowitz, who I didn't, I'd only heard hints of, and he, he put the sort of a 60% correction in his dialogue, which is, I, I think Bubba may be optimistic.
So.
I've interviewed Bubba a couple of times. The last time he was, he was, um, in the 60 to 70% range as well. That was pre, that was pre-war. But all right.
That'll hurt. I mean, that'll really stink.
That would really stink. I've never ridden a market down like that. So, I missed '87. I missed, um, I missed '99 to 2001, 2002, 2003. The closest I got was some, some of the rockiness on gold going from 1900, which I bought at 220. So, so what? But from 1900 down to about a thousand, that was about the most painful thing. So.
Yeah. Okay. Let's begin with the ceasefire that was announced yesterday evening. What's your read of that situation?
Uh, I'll believe it when two weeks from now they haven't, they haven't blown each other up. So, I, I got to, I don't know what it means. I think there's, my understanding is there's ships, you know, on the wrong side of the strait, and they're trying to figure out if they should go through the strait, right? My understanding is that they're going, "Wait a minute. I'm, I'm not going to be the first to go through that place." That's my understanding. But that was just picked up from a, some tweet or something. So, I'm playing catchup on this one. But, um, I would say that, um, overall, I think Iran is owning this story.
What do you mean by that?
Well, Iran, first of all, you have to ask, what does it take to win? And a win for the United States is different than a win for Israel is different than a win for Iraq. So, the United States, as far as I can tell, there is no win. We're just idiots. Um, we just, we shouldn't be there. We shouldn't have participated. Um, so for us, I guess a win is for the Strait of Hormuz to open back up, admittedly, probably with some tariffs and fees and things like that. So, so we participated in a war where I don't see how we're going to possibly come out better off than we started. I, I, I can't fathom it. Um, Israel, I believe, and this will get you in trouble. I believe Israel's definition of a win is to turn Iran into a pile of rubble. I, I think that's what they want. And so, they, I think they would like us to stay in the game and just, just Gaza 2.0 the place. And, uh, and, and Iran's win is interesting. First of all, they have homefield advantage, so there's nowhere to go. So, it's not like we're going to chase them off Iran. It's a huge place. It's a big population. It's a highly literate population. It's a technological society. And, um, and there's an ongoing debate about who has more weapons and who's going to run out. And we'll know when one side's still shooting and the other side's not. But, but, um, I think the people who think Iran has been destroyed are out of their minds. I, I think Iran played rope-a-dope in a very big way. So, um, but again, I'm just sitting in Ithaca reading the internet, right? Can you get more flawed than that? Um, but, but Iran's win, I believe. Here's what I think Iran has to do. If I was give, if I was the advisor, the military advisor to Iran, I'd say, "Here's what you got to do. You got to make sure that the world suffers badly from this adventure, right? From the bombs dropping on Iran, the strait getting closed. You got to make sure the world pays dearly for this war game that's being played. And then you got to survive, which they will, because they've survived for 3,000 years. There's no reason to believe they're not going to survive again. And you want it such that the next time Israel says, 'We're going to go at him again.' The entire rest of the world says, 'No, you're not. The last time you did it, you sent the world into a into a catastrophe. We're not going to let you do it again.' And that becomes Iran's win. So their win is the long-term win. Their win is, forget about the beatings they're taking now. They need people to say, 'Never again, let Israel bomb the [ __ ] out of Iran because we paid too much of a price.'"
Okay. Well, that, that obviously remains to be seen. That's a story that hasn't been written yet.
Um, remind me, who was the, was it Ken Norton in the, the rope-a-dope? Was it, who was it with Muhammad Ali?
It was, uh, I think it was George Frazier. Not George.
Joe Frazier or George Foreman?
I think it was George Foreman.
All right. So, let's say it was George Foreman, and he was beating the snot out of Ali on the ropes, and then Ali waited until Foreman punched himself out, right? And then that's when he took over. That's the rope-a-dope you're talking about.
Well, sort of. Ted Postal, who I, who I was only marginally familiar with, but I've been some do, doing some D. He's this MIT tech head, which is almost redundant. Um, but he knows military tech well, supposedly. He's one of the guys who in the past analyzed what the Patriot missiles were and were not achieving and things like that. And he says that Israel totally boned this by using vastly important weapons to bring down, um, garbage that Iran was throwing at them in the first, they call the 12-day war. I don't, I don't call any war the last 12 days a war. Um, I'd call it a skirmish. Um, that, that they used up a lot of their really important defensive mechanisms to try to, to, to keep Iran from getting to him while Iran was throwing their meatballs. Iran was throwing old weapons that were supposedly not even blowing up when they hit the ground, half the time. And, and, and Israel's defense wasn't doing a very good job. And so they didn't even achieve anything. Now, supposedly, uh, uh, Iran's drones can now get through the Iron Dome pretty effectively. So, now all of a sudden, um, and apparently the weapons Israel used to, to beat back Iran's early missiles could have been used against drones, although, you know, if you got, if you got 600 drones flying at you, that's like killer bees, right? That, that really is not something that you're going to take out of the sky. And, and then the question is, does Iran have stuff in underground caverns that are absolutely profoundly destructive that they haven't even touched yet?
But Dave, let me ask you this. I mean, um, George Foreman versus Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali, even though he was taking some punishment, he still, and this will sound funny because he ended up having diminished faculties later on, but he had his faculties, his capabilities, his, his quick-twitch muscles, his, his maneuverability in the ring, his, you know, his dancing. He, he still had full capabilities despite what George Foreman was throwing at him. Would you, are you saying that Iran, in this rope-a-dope, still has complete and full capabilities to do what they did pre-war, or are they diminished in their capability at this point? And, you know, yes, they might be trying the rope-a-dope, but it may not succeed to the same degree that George Foreman did because in that scenario, Muhammad Ali did not lose his, his faculties the way I, maybe Iran has lost some of their infrastructure and some of their capabilities at the hands of, I don't know, 13,000 strikes or something like that.
Well, it's, it's all, it's my understanding that in the first two days, Iran took out the advanced warning facilities that were available to Israel from the United States located in various countries. So, when, when Iran was attacking its neighbors, you're going, "Why would you do that?" Right? Why would you piss off your neighbors? I think it was, they were actually knocking out US installations, um, that, that, that provided advanced warning. And advanced warning, Postal makes a very good case for why knowing something's coming with some warning saves a lot of lives compared to, compared to when all of a sudden you just blow up, period. And, and because you can take cover, for example. Um, they say, you know, they talk about how they destroyed Iran's navy. The doubters of that story say Iran didn't have a navy, that, that their navy was irrelevant. And so the question is, are Iran's missiles and drones, have they been dealt with? And, and again, there's, we'll call it rumors of underground caverns that are humongous. Now, Iran's had 40 years to figure this out. And, and if you think they're just a bunch of Persian idiots, you, you've really made a mistake. George Friedman years ago, when he wrote America's Secret War, said never underestimate any of the players. And, and so Iran, to, you know, when, when we said we took out Iran's nuclear facilities, if they were important, they'd be a mile underground. They would not be reachable. Now, suppose these cavernous facilities with huge amounts of weapons, let's pretend like that's true, also have huge supplies, have heavy earth-moving equipment. They can dig their way back out. They just blew up the opening and, and the mountainous terrain. Supposedly, Iran can pop a drone right out of a cave and hit the strait that's right down below them with so little warning. And, and now the bottom line, if Iran wants to get nasty, they take out Israel's desalination plants, and Israel dies of thirst.
All right, let's, let's start moving into a little bit, um, of, of other topics here. Um, the, we, we will be touching on the war a little bit more. President Trump, he's volatile. He's unpredictable. He's proven to take actions and to say things that no one really else has or is, unless it's been some, you know, volatile, extreme kind of group like Iran saying, "Death to America," whatever. Uh, but institutional portfolio managers, they need stability, predictability, and really a minimum amount of volatility. They can't have every headline impacting their returns. And right now, that's what's happening. Despite the ceasefire, do you view the current environment as more risk-off for financialized assets and risk-on for the monetary metals as they bring more stability and predictability and they're outside of, let's call it, the, you know, the headline-impacting, uh, type news?
Well, again, if the markets are as overvalued as I think, I just, you know, I read, there's this, these guys called The Market Ear on Zero Hedge. You ever see The Market Ear?
I'm not sure.
On Zero Hedge. Yeah. It's called The Market Ear. It's AI-generated slop, in my opinion. And, and Zero Hedge has adopted quite a bit of it. So, if you get Zero Hedge Premium, a ton of articles by, by The Market Ear, and they made the statement that, "As usual, retail investors were selling at the low." I'm going, "The low is 5% off the all-time high." That's just garbage. That is AI slop of a higher order. The low retail sales. When retail is selling at the low, the ones you care about is the low, like when the, when this market ticks back to, you know, uh, S&P 2000. That's when the retail seller selling will be a classic low mark. And I, by the way, have 2000 at about historical average valuation to be, to tell, to tell you how bearish I am. I think if, if you look at the valuation metrics, 2000 puts us at the same valuation. There was the average valuation for 110 years starting in 1880 to 1990. 110 years of valuation. That's a baseline. 2000 gets us to that average valuation.
So you're in Bubba's camp. 70% drop. All right.
Bubba's camp. Bubba is an optimist.
He's an optimist compared to you. All right. Um, f-stay with me on this one. It's come out.
By the way, your comment section is gonna go bananas telling you how wrong I've been for so long. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
Well, we'll, we'll just see. All right. So, stay with me on this one. It's come out that this, and you've probably heard this about this, the CIA used a secret tool called Ghost Murmur that using, did you hear about this? That John Ratcliffe talked about. Basically, it finds heartbeats to rescue the airmen. And he, he likened it to hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert. It's, it is quite amazing. And if you're in the camp that AI is going to radically change the world, it's going to, you know, potentially lead to, um, everything being overhauled in, you know, and employment and everything else, then, you know, you probably are also in the camp that AI is already being deployed and that AI has advanced capabilities beyond even the things we're aware of right now. But the, the, the pervasive narrative that many people have been repeating is they've been suggesting that President Trump, the administration, and the Pentagon did not think of any potential consequences before attacking Iran. That they went into this without a plan, that they did not think about the intended, unintended consequences and what happens if this happens, etc. But this technology deployment and the success in bringing the airmen home alive, the hard military achievements and other factors, it would suggest otherwise. That they did have a plan. They did consider some things. What is your read? Did the Trump administration have a plan and consider the potential consequences here? Or do you believe this was really off the cuff? Nothing was considered, and therefore, ultimately, what we're facing is a potential economic catastrophe that we will realize, and it's going to ultimately be blindsiding because it wasn't considered.
Well, I think the economic catastrophe is independent of whether they had a plan. Their plan. Um, let, let me point out two things. One is the heartbeat story. I actually don't buy it because, first of all, in a thousand square miles, how many heartbeats are there going to be? There's going to be a lot of heartbeats.
I guess it depends on what thousand square miles we're talking here. Is it the Sahara?
Yeah, there's probably, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But, but the point being is, I think it's easier to stick a, uh, to stick a chip in the guy's belt than to go listening for his heartbeat. So, is there something about that story that strikes me as internet crap?
Can the chip, can the chip be, um, send off a signal that the Iranians could have found?
I, I just, I just don't believe the heartbeat story. How many animals are running around the desert with heartbeats? Right? I mean, I, I, there's something about that story that just strikes me as just scientific nonsense. Okay. Now, there is the, the backstory on the rescue, in which it's claimed that if you look at the details of the rescue, what it really looks like was a raid that went bad, and that they made up the rescue to cover for the fact that the raid went bad. And I'm more inclined to believe that story. This, that it's, almost like when Jimmy Carter left a bunch of fried helicopters when they tried to save the, this, so, so, so that if you listen to CIA types, they say, "Look, this is not how you'd rescue a guy. You'd go in with such and such a Black Hawk, blah, blah, blah. You would not drop these two, these monstrous planes in." That just, nothing about him made sense unless your goal was maybe to try to rescue the uranium, is the argument that gets made, and it didn't work, is what's being claimed. And so the rescue might be total horseshit.
Maybe. I mean, the truth is, is we're living in different times because of AI, because of technology. And it's, it is possible. I'm not saying that you're incorrect. I'm just saying that it is possible that there are methodologies and procedures and processes that are just looking completely different today because of AI and technology that's, that we've never had. But let me ask you this question, Anna. But sending 155 guys into a rescue for one guy, that just doesn't work for me.
I'm not, yeah, I'm not a military strategist, so I don't know. Um, but.
That's a high risk-reward ratio right there.
Yeah. All right, let me ask you this. Anna Wong, you may know her. She's a highly respected chief US economist with Bloomberg. She was a former Fed and Treasury economist. She recently said the following: "My own calculation shows that those 15 million barrels per day that transit through the Hormuz can be mostly replaced in two years by higher production elsewhere plus diversion. The issue with the bottleneck seems to be a short-term issue based on the data." Does Anna have this wrong?
Probably. She's probably just a pathological liar like every other politician from every other country in the world. Name a country. She's not a politician. She works for Bloomberg.
Yeah. And how many, how many journalists work for the federal government? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Right. They're they're paid to write their stories. Um, you can't name a country that hasn't written a narrative about what some about some political event in which they, in which they didn't lie to make the narrative optimized.
Very true.
Right. Right. And so, so, so they're always lying. They're always lying. And so.
If they're lying about everything, how are we supposed to know what's real at all?
That's a fascinating, that's the fascinating question.
But we take, but we're taking positions based on what? Like, we're inclined to believe this or inclined to believe that. But if everything's a lie, how, like, what leads us to believe that we're more inclined to choose this lie over this lie if everything's a lie? Because I look at the Shiller P/E at 40 and I go, I don't think that's a lie.
The data. So the data.
It's that simple for me. For me, the positions I take as an investor are based on just the risk-reward. And, and, and so I don't take positions based on the CPI because that's a lie. Uh, I don't take positions. There's just tons of things I don't trust. But there's things I think are true. And every valuation metric I look at says we're way overvalued. Which means as an investor, at some point, there's never been an asset class that got way overvalued that didn't find its way back to cheap. Never in the history of capitalism. So the trip back to cheap, it's gonna suck.
Yeah, it is. All right. So many have taken.
So I think she's lying. I think she's lying. Okay.
I think she's lying. Two years. I think she's lying.
Okay. So, it's not a, it's not a, um, it's not a short-term.
I think it can be replaced, but it's not trivial.
She's trivializing. She's trivializing two years to replace what's coming through the Strait of Hormuz.
So, in other words, she said it's a short-term bottleneck. You're saying it's not.
Two years is not short-term when we're talking about millions of barrels of oil.
She was saying overcoming this is, it's a short-term issue. You're not, you don't agree with that.
Well, two years, that's like saying, you know, we don't have any food, but in two years we'll overcome that.
I think they're two different.
And the fertilizer story, the f-fertilizer story, right? These are, these are treacherously short-term events.
Yeah. I think, I think her, her statement was two different sentences there that are getting.
Okay.
Uh, put into one. One sentence was, "My own calculation shows that those 15 million barrels per day that transit through the Hormuz can be mostly replaced in two years by higher production elsewhere plus diversion." The other thing she said separately was, "The issue with the bottleneck seems to be a short-term issue." She wasn't worried about, in other words, $150, $200 oil or, um, or even, you know, inflation that would go off the page like it did after COVID.
Well, let's take the first sentence. The first sentence was, "In two years, we could, we can replace the oil." That's the first sentence you read was, "In two years, we can replace the oil that's that's going through the Strait of Hormuz." That's not short-term. The world has imploded if it takes two years to replace that.
That, I agree.
Right. And then she's, and then she's talking about the Strait of Hormuz being a bot. I have no doubt that Iran wants the Strait of Hormuz open back up. So, so it'll get, I think someone said it well, it'll open up organically. I think. So, in that sense, I agree with her. But if it takes two years, that's like saying, "In two years, we'll have enough fertilizer. In two years, we'll have enough helium. In two years, we'll have enough." And it's like, they're going to be a lot of dead people.
Okay.
If two years is the number. If she said two weeks, I'm not even positive that's true.
Okay. Can you hear me? Okay.
All right. So, many have taken a very panicked, end-of-the-world, end-of-the-economy type position since the war began over a month ago. The narrative has been very loud. It's Middle East risk, massive oil, LNG, helium, fertilizer disruption, everything you were just talking about, constant escalation. But on the flip side, the market hasn't confirmed this level of panic. You mentioned earlier, what, a 5% off the high on the S&P? I think maybe 10% on the Dow was the bottom. Gold is high, but, you know, it was used for liquidity purposes. It's definitely not behaving like there's a panic.
Go. On the flip side, gold is the only market that's always right. Not because it moves one way or another, but because everything else is being repriced around it. Oil looks tight, but there's a wall of supply both onshore and offshore sitting right behind it. Oil price settled 100 at under 120, which was the high. It, I think it reached what, 115 yesterday before the announcement hit. And the last I looked, it was down around 95 or so. Um, all of this is still off the high from the Russian invasion. By, by, um, inflation-adjusted numbers, the Russian, the high of oil after the Russian invasion would be about 143. We haven't hit that yet. The key, the key thought here, though, is this is, if this were the end of the world, if the economy was truly about to blow up on a historic level, wouldn't markets be showing it by now? I mean, if this was really the big one, would we really need to be told? Wouldn't price already be moving like the worst is about to hit us?
So, let me ask you this question. Um, '08, '09 was pretty close to the end of the world. The markets corrected down to historical average valuations. So, they, they were able to stop the average. If you use markets as the indicator, the so-called subprime crisis, which people saw coming, um, the real estate market, the residential real estate market turned over in '06. How long did it take the equity markets to come out of their stupor to realize that that was a problem? Took two years. So, so the markets are not all-seeing. The markets are filled with idiots. The markets are filled with 22-year-old pinheads at Goldman. Here's even worse. You know how AI feeding on AI produces degenerated AI? So, someone actually wrote the 10 digits 0 to nine hand-drawn, and then recursively had AI recreate it. And that not only turned into garble, but the 10 digits turned into identical garble. Each digit was identical. So, so AI feeding on AI is a problem. Now, what are the markets? It's AI feeding on AI. It's computers taking cues from computers, taking cues from computers. I, I think the markets are now slop.
Okay. What do you think is going to happen over the coming 6 to 12 months that most are not expecting right now?
Um, well, I hate to predict markets going down because you're, you're just never right.
Well, it doesn't even have to be about the markets. It could be something else.
Um, I think, well, I think Israel is going to get the tire beat out of it. Let's start with that. I think, um, I think, um, China is going to be as inscrutable as it's always been. So, we keep hearing about China being in the background, and, and the claim is Iran is really just a proxy for China, and I don't know what to do with that. Uh, some people think that China is going to take over Taiwan as our weapons deplete. But I don't think China needs to take over Taiwan. It's their biggest trading partner, supposedly. That they're just saying, "Look, it's already ours." That their stance is, "You can pretend like they're independent, but, you know."
So, is there something, is there something that you see coming, whether it's markets, economy, geop-
A real black swan?
Or anything, anything? Or maybe it's the reverse, maybe it's, you know, everything's going to be wonderful and roses. I don't know. Is there?
Well, the markets look like they're rolling over to me. The, if, if you do a five-year plot of the S&P, it really has this sort of gentle rollover.
Kind of like the late '60s, early '70s, right?
Well, I, I think that we're heading for some sort of stagflationary world. Um, I tend to think that, you know, if they actually, the second worst scenario is that AI, um, is a bust. Uh, you know, AI, AI is going to bust, right? We know AI's got to bust. So, here you've got companies that, what is it, was it Google who were taking out $175 billion worth of debt, supposedly, some of it hundred-year debt, to buy software and hardware that has a life expectancy of a, a, so, so that that can't work. It can't work. And so I think the AI buildout, um, the AI buildout is going to turn out to be a dwarf, for example, the broadband buildout of the dot-com era. And, and, and I, you know, you're watching credit default swaps of Oracle, you know, soar, and you're watching Oracle shares tank. And so I, I don't think the market is buying the AI story, um, at the level the AI guys want. And as one of the CEOs, one of the banks, major banks said, he said, "If you got to borrow, you know, a trillion dollars, you got to tell a spectacular story." So, that's what we're hearing. So, even worst-case scenario is that is that AI does start doing everything and we kick everyone out of jobs, and then we get to, instead of dealing with a person, we get to deal with AI slop for the rest of our lives, where you get in infinite loops trying to get help on that broken refrigerator of yours. And who knows what, and the whole system will become brittle and awful.
Okay. And so, one way or the other, I don't like the direction of AI. I think it'll have fantastic benefits in some places and fantastically annoying in others.
Okay. All right. All right. So, Dave, follow me on this one. It's, it's now being said the following: that Iran's basically their hostage actions over the strait is basically sewing the seeds of the end of their economic leverage over the strait. And it's used and its use as a weapon of mass disruption because every country in the region post-war is going to build transportation and logistics infrastructure away from the strait, just as Saudi Arabia did years ago with its East-West pipeline that's carrying something like 7 million barrels a day. There's a man named B Jaffar. He's the UAE's special envoy for business and philanthropy, and he wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times just yesterday. It's titled "Future Trade Will Not Depend on the Strait of Hormuz." He said the following: "While we're of course all currently focused on the strait and its effective closure inside the region, a different story."
Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Yeah, I did. You were cutting out a little bit. I can hear you now.
Okay. In this is what he said. He said, "Inside the region, a different story is unfolding. One that's going to outlast whatever ceasefire or escalation comes next. A 50-year-old trade and infrastructure model is being redrawn in weeks. Realizing how over-reliant the region was on the free passage of vital goods, those investing in post-Hormuz resilience are constructing the trade infrastructure of the future." This was his bottom line. And he said, "However the current crisis is resolved, no government will return to a posture of strategic dependence on a narrow strait controlled by an unpredictable neighbor." And that makes sense. He said, "The pipelines are going to be expanded. The port capacity is going to be built. The power grids, the water systems, the trade quarters connecting the region's economies are all going to be formalized. The world is watching what is being destroyed. It should pay equal attention to what is being built." So, it appears that this is the new way. Aside from the infrastructure damage imposed on Iran by this war, and the military and the leadership damage that they've also incurred, they're going to likely lose their ability over time to hold the world's energy hostage as well. These are losses that will take decades or longer to come back from. This may have been a key component as to why we got some type of ceasefire yesterday. I don't know. But humans always seem to adapt, and this man, B Jaffar, is talking about that for the entire region. They are going to adapt to this very quickly, and they are making changes, and they will no longer be reliant on this strait. What's your read of what he of what he was sharing?
If you look at the staging behind me, it's sterile. It's, it's brand new. I've been involved in renovations in the chemistry department. It takes us from the point that we decide we have to do a renovation, it takes us two years. So, I have no problem with all of those statements, except for the implicit time scale being short enough to not cause massive pain. So, for example, Trump's idea of onshoring, you know, manufacturing is brilliant, but, but a company like some chip manufacturer can say, "We're going to build a hundred billion dollar plant in Texas." They will not have to put a shovel in the ground while Trump's in office. They won't be able to even. And they'll design a chip manufacturing plant that if we then put some socialist in power, they'll say, "Okay, that chip manufacturing plant, the design is perfect, let's move it to India." So, so the point being is, I, I think everything makes sense except for we're talking somewhat, I think probably too extreme, but generational time scales of change. So, they say, "Oh, we're going to build pipelines." How fast are they going to build pipelines? We're back to the, they need fertilizer in April, right? And they talk about mass starvation if they don't get the fertilizer out of there. And, and sulfur supposedly comes through there. And, and so, so, so I have no problem with the long-term consequences being exactly what you said, but that's like saying, "We're going to go through World War II, and at the end, we're going to have this whole new world." But it's like, "Yeah, but we got to get through World War II."
Okay. All right. So, earlier we were talking about the stock market, and you gave your, your number for the S&P of being around 2000. Um, you, you know, the 2000, the year 2000, um, dot-com implosion, and the 2008 drop were two very different types of drops. The 2000 to 2002 was mostly tech.com related companies. I think it was about an 82% drop there.
Yeah, 83% is the precise number, I think. Yeah, 82%.
The S&P, I do think dropped 45, 50% during that time as well.
Um, but there was more of a rotation in the underbelly, as commodities, miners, metals, they actually did fairly well during the initial drop and took off after. But the 2008 drop was more like a deflationary vortex that just sucked everything down with it at the time.
Um.
Right.
What are you seeing, um, when you say that you think that the fair value for the S&P is 2000? Do you see a more, more like a 2000, the year 2000, a 2002 style drop where there's a rotation in the underbelly of the market to hard, hard value type assets, or do you see more of a deflationary type vortex pull down of everything?
Um, I, you know, if I, just throwing darts using historical models because we don't know the future, so you have to use historic. I, I view kind of a Nikkei model. I, I think the way you bring a market back, we've got, we've got 30-plus years of recency bias. We, we have been above fair value for, for, for the last 30 years for all of about, except maybe a month, about a month, we've been under historical average valuation. It's going to take a tremendous amount of time for that muscle memory to be ground out of investor psyches. And, and, and one of the things that's going to happen is boomers are going to retire, and they're going to reverse the flows of their passive investing. Potentially, uh, recession will help reverse the flows because if no one has a job, there's not a lot of, not a lot of retirement accounts being contributed to, things like that.
So, so, so I, I believe that the way you, when I see someone talk about a 10% drop, they talk about a correction. I go, "If that thing bounces right back, that corrected nothing. It's a stupid term." You correct. Look at, look at the Dow. Look at the first 40 years of the Dow. It, it soars and it drops and it takes off again. And if you knock out about four or five years of it, the thing just is like flat. It just kind of gradually rises. So the correction in the early '30s was correcting the excess of the late '20s. That was a real correction. Um, you drop 10%, you've corrected nothing. You bounce back 10%, you've reinforced the complacency of the average investor. The average investor has to get knocked on their butts. Get up and say, "I'm fine. That was fine. I don't mind 10%." Even though they seem to really hate 10% now. It gives you an idea how stupid they are. Um, and, and there, there was a poll done by Natixis or something that said that the average investor thinks, starting from these valuations, can the, the poll showed 11.4% above inflation return. That that is psychotic. I will state that clearly. The pros were also polled, and they said, "No, no, no, they came at 8.4%." That is psychotic from these valuations. I think zero would be good news. And, and, and, and you, you never get, you never get 11.4% above inflation in which you're not expanding valuations ridiculously. That's just not a real number. That might happen in some banana republic that's all of a sudden gone techy for a, for a decade, but it's not going to happen in a, in a fully industrialized world. There's, show me an example of that. So.
Okay. So, the Middle Eastern nations, you know, they've been cash-rich for quite some time. They've been investors in technology, AI, etc. Do you see a capital crunch coming for them because of the impacts of the war, where they need to redirect their capital back to their damaged infrastructure and other projects and away from big US tech and other initiatives that they used to fund? And if so, what kind of impacts is that going to have?
Well, I mean, their money could redirect towards Russia and China, too, right? And the BRICS. I was on, I've done a couple of podcasts with Steve Hanke, and at one point, he's a currency guy, right? And, and, and so if you're talking to Hanke, and you expect him to discuss the BRICS in the language of currency, but I said to him, I said, "BRICS is not about currency. It's about a complete shift in alliances." And he 100% concurred. So, the BRICS, you've got 25 countries who are saying, "We are no longer hanging out with the United States. We're now hanging out with the new cool kids, and they're the BRICS." And the BRICS includes Russia, includes China, right? Includes Brazil, includes, but there's like 25 countries. So, there, there are big, big geopolitical shifts that are going on. And so, yes, I think there will be a capital move in other directions. But the rotation model, I find disarmingly soggy in the sense that people say, "Well, if I just own the S&P, it'll rotate from the expensive guys to the, to, to Philip Morris, and I'll be fine." No, I think you're going to get the crap kicked out of you as it's rotating. Just find some other place to go.
I was talking about, you know, last year, um, there was a lot of pomp and circumstance. Trump was visiting the Middle East, making deals.
You know, there was a lot of capital that was being brought over to the United States from Saudi Arabia and other places. And if they've got infrastructure damage from the war,
Then that capital will not show up.
That capital will not show up. So, what are the implica? You know, yes, I agree with you. It can go to the BRICS, whatever. But I'm really just talking about the capital that has to be redirected to infrastructure repairs and other things because of the damage from the war. What happens if the markets, um, you know, don't get that capital?
So, so that capital, my understanding, a lot of it was coming over to buy Treasuries, right? So, the first thing you would say is that probably Treasury rates are going to fight any effort to push them down. So, you would expect that if, if, if the petrodollar, what you're describing is a petrodollar collapse, right? I think.
I'm asking you.
If, if, if, if, if the money earned by selling US oil is not being recycled back into our Treasuries, then, then that, that, that, that's a model that's been going on for decades, and now will be gone by that description. If Saudi Arabia has to take the dollars and spend them on something else instead of Treasuries.
Yeah. And I don't know how much, I don't know how much capital it's going to require. I guess, no, nobody does until the war is fully over and everybody can assess.
Bombing the crap. Yeah, I know. This, this war is, we're in a ceasefire that's been, been 12 hours old,
Right?
And, and if you look on, on the internet, you can still see people getting the crap bombed out of them.
It's true.
And I think that's Lebanon, which I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why Lebanon's getting bombed. And I can read stories about, you know, how some Hezbollah guys pissed off Israel and whatever, and, but, but, but they're getting Gaza 2.0 pretty good.
Yeah. I don't know.
And the narrative is not as good. And so, so there's so many ways this thing can go bad. And one could argue the ceasefire helps Israel because Israel can then just redirect its energy to Lebanon, bomb the crap out of them, waiting for the ceasefire to end. Somehow, this part of the world looks like it's not yet ready to give up killing each other.
Yeah. Okay. So, let's move over to the Fed for a sec. Fed, uh, recently Fed Chair Powell, he held rates steady. You probably saw that. Um, he saw the oil shock as being temporary. For the Fed to look through an energy price shock like what we experienced and treat the resulting inflation that should be arriving as transitory. Maybe long-run inflation expectations are more well-anchored than we realize. I don't know. The New York Fed's March survey of consumer expectations, that was released a few days ago, should give Fed officials, I guess, some comfort as long-term inflation expectations remain low, uh, during March, despite the sharp increase in gas prices. What is your take on inflation?
Well, they lie their ass off about inflation. Let's start with that. Um, I think the Fed will take a stance like that when they don't want to lower rates. They need some reason not to lower rates, and so they'll make up a good story about how everything's fine. I think if, if, and I'm just wildly guessing here. The rest of the work. Well, they were wild guesses too, but this is wild, wild guessing. Um, I think the Fed is probably terrified of making a move and having the bond market defy them because then we will realize that the Fed is a bunch of feckless bureaucrats. And so I think Powell is looking at at the interest rates going, "If we start dropping rates and the long-term rates go off, not down, we've got a big problem." So, I think they want to wait until they know. Now, here's a question I ask you. So, um, so Trump was said that he would, he would put in Powell's replacement, and it would be some person who would do exactly what Trump wants. That's just print, print. Lyall Brainer would have been, would have been a logical candidate. And instead, he puts in Kevin Walsh. Why did he do that?
Well, Dave, he hasn't been installed or approved yet. So, I don't know if he's going to or not going to do anything that Trump wanted. So, that, that all remains to be seen. I know the narrative surround-
He is the most out, he's the most outspoken hawk against the last 15 years of loose monetary policy. That is exactly the wrong guy based on what everyone said Trump would do. Yeah, it's, it is curious. There's been, you know, some narratives floated about him doing that to get rid of Powell because otherwise Powell would have stuck around. I mean, there's, you know, I'm not in those rooms, so I, I don't have the answer. I don't, I don't know why he made the choice. And I don't know how Worsh is going to, uh, behave. You know, what actions is he is he going to take? One of the questions I had for you is what actions do you expect a Worsh Fed to take that are different than what a Powell-led Fed has been taking, or do you expect it to be the same?
I, I have this model of Fed appointments that that makes sense to me, and that is that in retrospect, when you look at the various Fed appointments, they look like the person who was chosen was chosen for what was going to happen. And so you put in Volcker, we had to fight inflation. So we put in a guy who had, you know, balls of steel, right? And he did. And then we had a fairly free market-oriented administration, and we put in Greenspan, and he was supposed to be less of a fair capitalist. He turned out to be just a narcissistic ego-maniac. But, but, but, but we know what he was supposed to do. He was.
An Ein Rand acolyte, right? And so he let the markets run wild and created some pretty big bubbles. And then he goes, "And who do we put in?" We put in a guy two years before the Great Financial Crisis who's an expert on the Great Depression. How lucky was that, right?
And so we put in Bernanke. Two years later, boom. Bernanke's supposed skill at the Great Depression, which I completely disagree with his views, his stated views. I believe he's not as stupid as the things he said. Um, and then he goes, and it's like, "But we're not done." So, what do they do? They put in a placeholder with Yellen complete. Just keep doing the same crap that Bernanke did, and this lifeless Fed governor, which wasn't going to do anything dramatic. And then we say, "Okay, but now we have to start tightening." So we put in Powell. He raises rates, right? So it seems like this is all sort of being orchestrated. And now we're done with Powell and we're going with Worsh, who's been critical of the Fed for decades. Now you can say he's going to change, like when you get married and you think your new wife is never going to change, and you know you have this wishful thinking. Or he's been put in to be the guy to usher us down into the valley of death, to be the guy to let the Jenga finally fall, to let price discovery finally have its way, and that he's the guy who has shown the fortitude to do that.
Now, back to Volcker. Volcker appeared to be like he was totally independent, but I think Volcker was acting in the best interest of the banks. And so, the banks said, "Look, we're going to be hurt by this. We've got to deal with inflation." I think the banks might be saying, "We're going to be hurt by this unless we have the right guy to handle this big, big problem, which Colm's been talking about for 10 years." Well, it's an interesting theory, and it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, if we do have true price discovery, your 2000 price point could prove to be prescient. We'll have to wait and see. Um, that's going to hurt a lot of people for sure. Uh, a lot of people, a lot of people.
Um, I was looking at consumer statistics before, you know, while I was putting this together. The Redbook retail sales index, it rose 7.6% year-over-year during the week of April 6th. So this past week, it's currently at its highest level outside of a brief spike in 2018 and during the pandemic rebound when everyone was flushed with stimulus checks, going back more than 15 years. Despite all the news to the contrary, there's been remarkable strength in consumer spending. It's really quite impressive if you look at the chart. What's your read on the consumer?
Well, I really don't know how they construct it, but it could just be that's inflation. The consumer has to spend more to put food on the table, to pay for their cars, to pay for their insurance. So, the consumer is resilient because they have no choice.
Is that consistent, or is the Redbook more nuanced than that?
Um, I think the Redbook, I didn't read their explanation. I was just looking at the chart, and the chart just looks like the consumer is stronger than what the narratives out there are suggesting, despite the fact that a lot is being thrown at them, which is quite a bit. But the consumer, therefore, is consuming more as measured in dollars.
Yeah. But I mean, for some reason, you know, like when you look at the credit card balances, they're record highs, but yet when you look at the delinquencies, they're not record highs. When you look at mortgages, they have taken on the average mortgage is bigger than it's ever been before by quite a bit. And the delinquencies, while they've risen some over the last 12 months, they're not in danger territory right now. So, what I'm noticing is just that despite everything that the consumer is facing, which is a lot, they're more resilient. Now, I don't know if they're getting help from, you know, their boomer parents or grandparents. I don't know what the behind-the-scenes is really.
Or the private credit market.
Private credit. There could be a lot of extra things going on here that are not known to us as we review that data. I don't know.
But in a sincerely good news, deflationary economy, the consumer would, in theory, spend less, not more. Right. I'm having trouble with the idea that the consumer be spending their asses off is anything but just inflation.
Yeah. Well, I know quite a few kids that like to spend their you-know-whats off as soon as they get a dollar in their pocket. But anyway.
Well, you know, and the fastest way to bankruptcy I know is to be married to a grandmother.
All right, let me ask you this, Dave. What is the most counterintuitive or counter to the mainstream belief that you hold right now?
I think the last hour pretty much says it.
What's the most counter?
I mean, your positions on the consumer, the stock market, Iran, where the United States is versus Iran, etc. They're not, they're more mainstream in my opinion than they are counter.
That's what I hear more of your perspective. Oh, I think you're bringing whack jobs on your show. I think you and I are hanging in a bit of an echo chamber because I know all your guests when I see them on, and you know all your guests, and there's if you took the top 50 finance podcasters and the guests are rotating through, trust me, I know that one well. And so, there could really be an echo chamber. And I got into it with Doomberg the other day where he threw out Building Seven. Not to go into that stuff, but he threw up Building Seven. I said, "How many people understood what you were talking about when you said Building Seven, just as a passing joke?" And he said, "I don't know, 14%." I go, "Really? 14%." And so, you know, it's an echo chamber if it's only 14%.
And so, I worry about that. I worry about that. And I wonder, does Wall Street, does the big money pay attention to the podcast world? We know people, guys like Luke Groman and Lyn Alden and various people like that are getting great facetime, right? Would the guys at Goldman know them? Would the guys at...
I'm wondering if we're not playing in some like junior A hockey in Canada where no one knows us.
So, I was on. You know who Chimath Pala is? Yeah. So, I was on.
Good luck.
I have a family member who works on Wall Street. They invited me on to a group call that he was creating a new spa, and he was giving heads up to the department.
Doc, doc.
And there was probably 50 people on there, and I had the pleasure to sit in on that call. And so he's very much aware, and I know Bill Ackman is as well, of what's happening in the podcast world. Chimath has his own podcast, and it was really interesting to hear him talk about his initiatives and what he believes is coming. And during the Q&A, I texted my family member and said, "Is it okay if I ask a question?" And they were like, "Well, you can ask one, just don't, because you're not even really supposed to be..."
You're not really supposed to be...
So I went ahead and asked because his initiatives were centered around, you know, AI, robotics, of course, all the big things that are coming. And he got more granular than that. But my question is, well, where's all the metals going to come from to make those happen? Because most of the metals required for what you're wanting to achieve are either already in a supply deficit or will soon be. And I was pleasantly surprised to hear his response and to hear him talk about the importance of these metals and that he is actually personally directing some of his quite a bit of his investments as part of his strategy towards these metals. So I would say yes, in this changing world of news, if the overwhelming majority of the people don't tune in anymore to the CNNs, Foxes, etc., of the world, they just don't trust them anymore, and they're tuning in more to the people who are being invited onto these podcasts and who are in the trenches of Wall Street or of economics or of the mining companies, etc., and are looking for strategic data points and key information.
So they're starved for real, real information.
I think so.
They're starved. So I read a, I posted the other day, I read a Bloomberg headline that said that high oil prices would be good for inflation. I'm going, "Who's writing your headlines?" Right? Yeah. I go, if that's true, then that would be the most counterintuitive thing imaginable, right?
And so, we have every number of years, a serious crisis. And the irony of it always is that there's some fateful moment. I always say, 2:03 on a Tuesday afternoon, where the market reaches an all-time high, which is a metric of optimism, right? And it will be an all-time high in which, at that very moment, the optimism reaches an absolute zenith, where the justification for the optimism is zero. So this all-knowing market that's looking forward has no idea that it's looking down from the summit and about to suffer badly. So markets get it right at the inflection points, but they don't get it right at the tops and bottoms. And so, as some wise investors say, catch the middle 80%. Avoid the tops and bottoms. And so, right when we all think it couldn't get better, it will be the moment where you are at the precipice of a catastrophe. Well, and a catastrophe doesn't mean, you know, 70% in one year. A catastrophe, look at the Nikkei. How many years did it take for the Nikkei to break even without even inflation adjusting? And the answer is 35.
I think our markets could become uninvestable for decades.
Yeah. I mean, and if I had to take the temperature based on what you just said, of everybody feeling euphoric and happy, it doesn't feel like everybody feels euphoric and happy right now.
And that's why I called it the complacency bubble. Because for the first time, people think we're not euphoric and happy, which is causing people to say exactly that. Therefore, we're not at the top. I'm going, but everyone seems to know we're in a bubble. And what are they saying? They're saying somehow the Fed's going to save us. And I'm going, since when? Let's call the Fed elites, just to get really weird. Since when do the elites take care of the peasants? When in history have the elites taken care of the peasants? The answer is never.
That's exactly my issue with this scenario. And I'm not saying that I'm a believer of this, because I'm really not quite sure. I've heard both sides of the argument, and I could see both sides of the argument. But in the argument where AI and robotics take over all jobs and there are no humans working anymore, the UBI, or the high level of UBI, you know, there are two theories on this, are going to be dispersed, and they're going to be basically taken from these few who have it all. And I say, well, in what time in history have benevolent leaders willingly given up enough to take care of society? It just doesn't seem like that's very logical.
Well, they might when their position is at risk, right? But I don't see that means therefore humans. We've lost price discovery on humans, right? We don't have price discovery. Our labor is not, you can't put a price on our labor value, to our labor, or education, or anything. By the way, people ask me, you know, what does this mean as an educator? If someone were to say to me, "My kid's 17 years old, they're going to go to college. What should they study?" I have no idea.
The world of tomorrow could look extremely different than we could even possibly imagine. And we're suffering from future shock because the rate of change is too great. So, buggy whip makers got put out of business, but it took several decades before they were really put out of business. And so, you have a chance for the system to adjust and equilibrate. And it's like if you melt an ice cube. If you pour hot water in an ice cube, it fractures because the change was too abrupt. And so, if AI really does knock out human ingenuity, there's a seminar being taught at Cornell, a seminar this week, where some guy's talking about how to use AI to write. And I'm sitting there going, we have an English department with 50 tenured faculty. We have an entire freshman writing seminar program in which this guy runs, I think.
Which may have no purpose.
Yeah. And it's not to say that writing isn't important. And I'll tell you how I've noticed this. I read a lot of articles where the title of the article looks like I should really care. And within about two or three paragraphs, I'm bored. And I realize that I'm bored because I'm picking up the soullessness of AI. It's hyper-organized. It's... And watch the graphics. Go to Zero Hedge and watch some of the articles being posted in Zero Hedge where you see a plot, and you go, that plot is not drawn to be digested easily by a human being. It's got all these squiggles and all these lines, and it's not usable by a human being. If I can't look at the plot and go, "Wow, look at that. The inflation rate just did this," it's a worthless plot if I have to sit there and scrunch my brow for an hour to figure out what the hell the plot is. And I think those are AI-generated plots. And so AI's AI is going to produce slop.
All right, so in the interest of time, I wasn't going to ask you this question, but since we started going down this path of the jobs, you have an additional five minutes. I'd like to ask you.
I have all the time.
All right. Let me ask you this question. So the Fed has reported that the break-even jobs growth rate, which is the number of jobs the economy needs to add each month to keep the unemployment rate low, that it's dropped significantly, and that changes how we should interpret payroll numbers. A March 31st study from the Dallas Fed shows that the break-even rate has fallen from roughly 250,000 jobs per month in 2023 to essentially zero today. And it was driven by a sharp reversal in unauthorized immigration and a decline in labor force participation combined with the baby boomers retiring. So we have this net immigration that's negative in 2026. We have a demographic drag from the baby boomers retiring. We have a monthly break-even rate of employment that could likely remain near zero or even turn negative for the first time through much of 2026. And this was spoken about in this Fed's note a few weeks ago. Let me put this in context. The break-even jobs growth rate averaged 185,000 a month in the 70s when the baby boomers and the women were entering the workforce, and it was still 155,000 just a couple of years ago, '23 and '24. So this change that the Fed is reporting to near zero means it won't take barely any new jobs to keep the unemployment rate where it's at. It is crystal clear we're in a completely different economy than we've ever been in before. What's your take on this? How different the economy is, the replacement rate for jobs, etc.?
Well, um, first of all, I think the Fed says stuff to justify whatever it is they want to do. So, I think you got to be careful there. Um, I happen to be reading a book right now by a woman named Deborah Low. So Deborah Low, called Sex Extinction, and it's about mating behavior in hominids now, but it's also about social structure and marriage and lack of marriage and divorce rates and all these things. And it turns out that we are way underachieving in these sex reproduction categories. So, we're going to go from a bolus of boomers to a demographic pinch in a very serious way. And that's occurring all over the world, it turns out. So, remember when you were real young? Are you old enough to remember when they talked about zero population growth and how that was some almost impossible to achieve moment in which each married couple has to have 2.2 children to get zero population growth? It's like, well, we'll never get there. Well, first of all, we have far fewer married couples. We have far less reproduction. We're at like 1.3 now or something like that. China's at, you know, 1.0 there. There's just huge demographic shifts. A guy Peter Zeihan, who I don't trust at all, I think he's a total neocon, but I think his data is good. And he talks about this collapsing. And Elon talked about Elon Musk a lot. And as a consequence, we could have what follows the baby boom, which is some sort of Gen Z bust or Gen whatever bust. And maybe it's a good thing because maybe it's timed perfectly with AI. But, you know, the narrative always changes to suit someone's needs. So, for example, you're now going to start hearing about how climate change is not a real problem. And the reason is because there's a more important narrative, and that is AI needs energy. So, we can't go screaming about climate change because then we can't get our energy. So, all of a sudden, Bill Gates the other day said, you know, climate change is not as big a deal as we thought, right? These guys are talking their book. And heaven only knows, the anti-vax crowd is talking about how it was a bioweapon to shrink the human population. You know, and this Deagel site, Deagel.
No.
There's a Deagel site that's a military website. It has various stats and projections and stuff. It was boring right up until the point where they said in 2025, the US population would drop to 77 million. And everyone said, "What?" And without explanation. And so, you know, who knows? There's a lot of eugenicists out there still. There's people who think that we don't need humans anymore. You know, listen to Yuval Harari, right? I read his books. They were said to be great. I thought they were mediocre at best. The guy's just a psycho. He's a globalist psychopath. And so, yeah, I think there could be a problem with us going backwards coming out of the boomers. By the way, if I really understood demographics, you'd have to be bullish starting in 1980. Besides low valuations, demographics were a big part of everything. And the boomers, they showed up at the workplace, they brought their wives, we had to have a boom. But now the boomers are old. We're a depreciating asset, a rapidly depreciating asset. Do you really want your fleet of cars being a bunch of Corvettes that are in the shop every other week? No. You really want, and you know that healthcare should not be in the GDP because you know that if there wasn't a need for healthcare, we'd be better off. GDP is we're not producing product. This is a depreciation cycle we're stuck in. And I go to the store and I'm stunned at how old everyone is at the store. I just look around. I go, "Everyone's towing an oxygen tank around the grocery store." This is crazy. And so, I think the boomers are going to become a massive drag on society. A massive drag. And we have so many new healthcare units and senior citizen homes being built and stuff like that. That's all a drag. That's not a plus. That's a minus. Boomers. And I'm not trying to be a "hey boomer" guy, right? I'm a boomer. But we're not producing anything anymore. We're producing zero. Yeah, we're consuming. And people think, well, the boomers are going to transfer their wealth to the next generation. It's going to get repriced. I'm confident it's going to get repriced. For starters, they're going to have to spend their money just to exist. They're going to eat. They're going to, so I don't think you should count on your boomer parents to be your retirement money.
Well, this has been a very fun and wonderful conversation with Dave. Before we wrap up, I want to direct everyone interested in the metals and mining sector to dive into our Substack at metalsandminers.substack.com. When you join the quickly growing community, you're going to receive a free report. It's titled, "If you don't own gold, you know neither history nor economics." That's a famous quote by investing legend Ray Dalio, and that's the name of the report you'll receive. I'm also positive you've been enjoying the conversation Dave and I have been having. Please let them know, hit the like and subscribe button, and leave a comment below the video. All right, Dave, would you please share a key takeaway that you want to leave the viewers with who've stayed with us for an hour and 12 minutes, and then let everyone know how they can find you on Twitter.
So to you two who are still listening, you can find me at David B. Colm. Let's start with that. I published 17 year-in-reviews this year. They're on Amazon. I will make essentially no money. This is not hawking them, but they are 17, 4,000 pages of writing over the last 17 years. And then, what's the message? The message is, be careful because when the party's raging, no one wants to leave. It's like those nightclubs where there's a fire and people have their phones out and they're filming it, and they go, they don't understand they're about to die, right? So, at some point, we're going to have another crisis. And the GFC was particularly acute, but the 1967 to 1981 period was horrific. Way worse. Way worse. Inflation-adjusted, negative 75% in 14 years. We're going to have something. Something's coming our way. It's karmic.
All right, we'll wrap it up there. Dave, thanks for coming on to Metals and Miners. You've been so generous with your time and your analysis. We really appreciate it. It's always so much fun to spend the time with you. Look forward to having you back on sometime soon. Everybody else who's tuning in, thanks for watching.
Thank you.