Transcription
After last week, I'm very discouraged. You know, we've been hearing about the fourth turning for 20, 25 years now. And we've all kind of known that like, sort of around 2025, we were going to enter this period where, you know, 2025, 2032 is going to be really hairy. I think we're there. I think we're there.
[Music]
>> Luke Groman, founder of FFTT, it's so great to see you. Thanks for joining me. And happy Fed Week.
>> Happy Fed Week. It's, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me back on, Natalie.
>> Well, since you're such a star at really forecasting what's happening on the macro side, can you just share what is your outlook? What do you expect to happen this week? And how will the markets react?
>> I think they'll probably cut 25 basis points. Uh, if I had to guess, the markets won't like, if that's what happens, the markets won't like that. Um, but I don't think that selloff would last for very long. Um, I, I just think there's bigger forces at play, uh, ultimately. But that's, yeah, that gun to my head, that would be my guess. But my, you know, how strongly do I feel about that is very loosely held.
>> What do you make of the fact that we have stocks at these all-time highs, but the economic data is worsening? We have unemployment ticking up. Uh, the FHA is doing these revisions and essentially trying to prevent as many delinquencies as possible and consumer sentiment. I mean, I, I don't, for people that are wondering, how, how can stocks be at an all-time high when Main Street's really struggling? What do you say?
>> I would say, uh, go look at Argentina, go look at Venezuela, go look at Weimar Germany. Stocks were awesome in Weimar Germany. They were literally, you know, assassinating moderates in the streets, and they were, you know, having political discord, and their industrial base had been hollowed out by war, uh, and by war reparations. And, uh, so I think my read of what we're watching in stocks is, unfortunately, I think the markets have begun playing by a new set of rules, which is, we have seen five or six different times in the last five years that nothing will be allowed to hurt the Treasury market. Treasury market starts to dysfunction, more liquidity comes, like that, either by a weaker dollar from the Treasury or action from the Fed. Um, and I think they're doing the math around true interest expense, which is like, okay, we need to cut something.
You know, Doge, the failure of Doge, I think, is not given enough, um, contextual importance, which is, you know, something that we've talked about before, something I was harping on over and over earlier this year, which is, look, here's what the US government spends its money on. It's spending 80% of all-time high receipts on entitlements to boomers and silent generation. Sorry, excuse me, 70%. Um, it's spending 25% gross interest. It's spending 20%? 15%? No. Yeah. Uh, a trillion on, uh, on, yeah. 20% on defense. What are you going to cut? You know, you can't cut entitlements. And, you know, if you think you can cut entitlements, like, I would encourage people to look at the tragedy last week and revisit your view. And I think that's, you know, from an economic standpoint, maybe the biggest takeaway of last week, which is if you thought there was a tail chance that entitlements could be restructured in any reasonable time horizon, yeah, like last week marked it to zero. So there is no chance entitlements are going to get, are going to get marked down. Defense is only going up.
>> Yep. Yep.
>> All there is to cut. Rate. So I think, I think markets are beginning to play by this new set of rules, which is bad news is good news, good news is good news on a nominal base. Like I've got, you know, I think the, you look at a chart of the S&P 500 over TLT. You look at a chart, which is the long bond ETF. You look at a chart of gold over ETL. You look at a chart of Bitcoin over TLT. Like, it's all the same, it's all the same chart with, you know, gold has the least volatility. S&P has the second least volatility, and, and Bitcoin has the most volatility, as you'd expect. But they are all up and to the right. They're hockey sticks. And I think we're just seeing more and more investors, and, you know, the market's playing by the new rule, which is, I, I just can't own bonds. Like, I can't, not only can I not own bonds, but they're going to run this thing so hot because they don't have a choice. You know, the Fed is not being preempted because, you know, Trump's an idiot. It's, they're being preempted because he's, he, they came in like, "Well, we're going to cut." And then they looked and they did the math like, "Oh god, what did I get myself into? All we can cut is rates." So, you know, some of those things I say, uh, I don't, I don't say lightly, but I, I, I do think that what we're seeing in markets is the, is the discounting of that we're past a tipping point of this sort of, "Just get me into something that's going to hold purchasing power," uh, when, when they do what they have to do.
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You've spoken a lot about fiscal dominance, uh, where essentially monetary policy becomes subordinate to government spending. But I get a lot of, um, questions about this from viewers that maybe don't have an expertise in macro, and they're wondering, how does government spending end up with stocks at an all-time high? How does the money funnel into essentially these assets? Because I think the first impression that people would have is that, oh, if the government is spending a lot, they're spending it on their employees, or maybe infrastructure, government programs. How is it ending up in stocks?
>> Yeah, I think it's ultimately, you know, dollars are fungible, right? Once, once you emit it into the economy, you can't control what happens to it. You know, we saw that with the Stimmy checks during COVID, right? It was like, okay, well, toilet paper, or, or, or TVs, or, or whatever people were buying with that stuff. Um, and so ultimately, that means deficits are, are, are, are, uh, they are, uh, inflationary over time. Now, I would argue that, um, historically, part of the strategy of the US government has been to sterilize those deficits, um, by, in, by making, by giving tax breaks that steered the money into financial assets as opposed to, um, real, real economy. Right? So, for, you know, I've been in the workforce for, whatever, 30, 30, 30 years. Uh, I've always gotten a, you know, a tax break if I, I can put up to 15% of my salary into 401k, right?
>> Um, and so that's what I've done, and a lot of other people have done. Same thing for a number of different professions. Uh, and that works because, all else equal, I would have made 15% more each of those years, and the government would have taken the rake, but I would have spent more into the real economy. I would have bought real goods. Inflation reported would have been a bit higher than it was. Uh, and that would have hurt the bond market, and, and, you know, everything has been done to, you know, help the bond market, defend the bond market, support the bond market over the last 40 years. Uh, and that, that, that strategy actually, in the short run, like so much we do as a country, makes sense in the short run, even in the intermediate run. The problem with it is that in the long run, it leaves equity prices. You know, if you keep running deficits, you keep inflating equity prices. And if you don't include asset price inflation in your calculations of inflation to adjust the economy accordingly, which of course they didn't, you end up with a situation where equities become the key marginal driver to consumer spending and the key marginal driver to US government receipts. And so now the government becomes critically dependent on stocks going up just to keep the wheels on the cart for their debt. And, you know, if you do some other things from a tax perspective, which they've done to accelerate that, if you do some really stupid things fiscally that have literally negative economic value added, like $8 trillion on war in the Middle East and certain other things, bailouts, uh, for, for fraud, um, those are negative value adds. So negative economic productivity. Uh, so where I'm going with this is that, uh, I don't know that it's greatly appreciated. There's not, there's a, there's sort of a stock and a flow, right? There's a stock and a flow issue to what I've just described. The stock issue is that we're running $2 trillion dollar deficits a year structurally. And that money, where's it going? Well, I just said 70% of it's a cash payment to either boomers and, and silent generation or their care providers, who are then turning around and spending it into the economy because, remember, what percent of the US economy lives hand-to-mouth, right? Is it 60%? Is it 70%? So any money you give any of those people is going to be spent instantly, right? So there's a velocity of money. So that's the sort of the flow issue. The stock issue to this strategy, I don't think is appreciated still what's happened, um, and I think it ties back to your point of why, you know, what I was talking about before of just why I think S&P markets, why is the market at all-time highs? S&P TLT, you know, what S&P over TLT stock, Bitcoin over TLT, gold over TLT is that now the boomers and the silent generation, to a lesser extent, have all this money. They've got $70 trillion, $80 trillion in assets. And there's a hard stop at death, right? You can't take it with you. So all of a sudden, all these asset markets, which for the boomers' entire lives were essentially a sterilization of inflation that would have been higher, driving rates higher, making the US government's fiscal situation more intended. It would have been a free market. Uh, all of that sterilized inflation in paper assets is now coming into the real world. Go to a restaurant. Take a look around you. Who's there? Boomers.
>> Go to a resort. Take a look around you. Who's there? Boomers. Go on a nice vac. Who's? Boomers. Why? It's like when homes.
>> They've got the money. Guess who's buying the homes, right? How can, how can, how can mortgage rates have gone from two and a half to seven and a half, and home prices haven't taken a like they haven't, they haven't missed a beat. Home prices are at all-time highs. Why? Talk to a real estate agent. Well, boomer giving their kid cash to pay a house. Like, so I think that dynamic is sort of part and parcel, or, or sort of, you know, part one A to what I described before, which is the markets, the markets are realizing that there's no getting out of this, right? There, there's, they're going to have to print the money because that's where they've gotten themselves. And I think within all of that, there's this secondary effect of like, like there's a hard stop at death. Spend it while you got it. And who's, you know, and the challenge in all this is like, well, we just need to hit stocks to slow inflation. Yeah, that would work if stocks weren't the key marginal driver to not just consumer spending, but to GDP and to tax receipts. And even then, that would be okay if the US hadn't blown all this money on negative productivity stuff to run debt up to $37 trillion. You know, we are not earning a positive return from the $8 trillion we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are not earning a positive return from the bailouts of Wall Street. Uh, we're not really, you know, earning a positive return, I hate to say this, from, from the entitlements we're paying to. That's, that's the stage of life they are. That's not discriminatory. That's just an economic fact. You know, you are productive, and then once you get to a certain age, you know, you donate to the system and then you take from the system. That's just how it works. So, we're spending all this money. If you wanted to tank stocks to slow inflation, all you're going to end up doing is blowing up the Treasury market because stocks back the Treasury market. And, you know, then we go right back to sort of, you know, rule number one. Nothing's allowed to hit the Treasury market. And I think that's, like, I think that's why stocks just go up every day. I think that's why, why, why you're seeing what we're seeing, which is, I think, and forget about it, I think I know based on conversations I'm having with very serious people, this is a conversation happening at the highest levels of finance, like they can't do anything about it. They have to do this. And I think that's what we're seeing in asset prices.
>> Aren't these characteristics of the fourth turning, and why we're seeing especially young people turning to certain types of, let's say, politicians and candidates that are promising to help them, especially with their economic resentment? Um, candidates like we have in, in New York City with Zoron. Um, the populism essentially rising. I saw you tweet recently about the fourth turning.
>> Yeah, I think it's Fourth Turning, uh, which is very well known. I think Peter Turchin, T-U-R-C-H-I-N, his book *End Times*, I think doesn't get nearly the credit it should. I would argue it's actually better than *The Fourth Turning* about describing what we're what we're witnessing. And the, the construct of his book is, uh, that during periods of time in history going back millennia, uh, when you have two factors: significant wealth inequality and what he calls elite overproduction, right? You, you know, we've got, we got too many people graduating from college, not enough people, you know, welding, not enough engineers, uh, you know, stuff we've talked about a lot. What you end up with is, uh, political instability. And then it just becomes a question of, are you wise enough? Do you have wise enough leaders to take some of the medicine you need to do to reduce that wealth inequality and to sort of restructure the economy? Because if you don't, then elite, you know, then, then elite overproduction tends to work itself out on its own in very unpleasant manners. And in the book, he says, look, the, the current, this, I think he published a book in '23. He said, in '23, the level of US wealth inequality and elite overproduction combined is the highest level since the 1850s in the US. We all know what happened in the US in the 1860s. Um, and it wasn't pleasant. So, yeah, I think everything we're watching, unfortunately, a lot of it is symptoms of it. You know, um, you know, at some point, you go, "Okay, well, that's no, it's not a one-off anymore." Um, I think there's going to be a lot more manias. Absolutely. I think there are, um, and I think they're going to be centered in, you know, in, in other blue cities versus in red cities, uh, at least to start, uh, because you're just not seeing the wise, the wisdom from leadership. And I say this out of, you know, both sides, you know, both sides of the aisle.
>> And it's not just a wisdom issue, it's a political issue. In other words, we don't have a political system that allows us to do anything that lasts longer than, you know, I, two years at most, right? They're already talking about 2026 elections, uh, which are 14 months away. So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm, after last week, I'm very discouraged. Um, I really thought maybe things would could get pulled out, but after last week, I'm, I'm really starting to be pretty discouraged.
>> Me, too. Um, I, I've had a really difficult time processing what happened. Um, it's giving me hope that a lot of people are coming together, but also destroying my hope that so many people have celebrated in something so horrific. And just to see how divided we, we really have become is, um, it's really, really discouraging. But a lot of it, a lot of the frustration I feel like, even though we have our social differences, a lot of it is rooted in these economic issues and people feeling very, very frustrated, left out. Um, and what I've taken away from your work, especially in the, in recent months, is just how unsustainable this post-1971 monetary system really was from the start. It was never built to last. And so now we see it unwinding. And you wrote recently, um, "The rules-based global order is already dead. It just has not been marked to market yet in asset prices." Um, can you talk a little bit about that, maybe for people that are coming in and a little bit newer, trying to understand this monetary reset that's underway? What is that rules-based order and how, how has it been coming apart?
>> So, you know, the rules-based global order, I would say from an economic standpoint, has been sort of this, you know, we, we send our factories and jobs abroad. Foreigners make stuff for us, they send us the stuff, we send them the dollars to pay them, and then, you know, they, they reinvest the dollars into our financial markets. And that's been very good for China. It's been very good for Washington. It's been very good for Wall Street, right? As they, they did, Washington gets cheap deficits, Wall Street gets to touch the money first effect. And, you know, in the short run, it's great for America too, because when you go from 30% of GDP in 1980 to, you know, 125% today, you know, I would say we're, we're on the wrong side of the margin of utility curve and probably have been for 10 years. Uh, but at least until you got to the peak and started rolling over the marginal utility curve of more and more debt,
>> we had a great debt-fueled consumer party, right? Like, hey, how awesome. And who, who doesn't like a party? I certainly do. Um, so that is sort of the rules-based global order. And, you know, an addendum to that has, has been highlighted by many people correctly so, uh, it's an oversimplification, but I think it's a truth is, if you, if you, as a foreigner, tried to do something to change the rules-based global order, the US military shows up and kicks your head in. Uh, and I think that's sort of, um, you know, a, a 15-second version of geopolitics since roughly the year 2000. And that's fine. Like, that's, you know, that's real, real politique. That's realism. That's history. That's humanity. Okay.
>> And we once had the leverage to do that.
>> And we once had the leverage to do that. The challenge that I think is again, I think is one of these big variant perceptions and one of the new rules that the market is playing by that most US investors simply are not, is we went too far, as we always do, right? That's, you know, parties are good. Going too far with parties, you know, you end up with, you know, mom and dad's Porsche upside down in somebody, some neighbor's living room, right? Um, the issue is that US military on the margin is now made in China. And so we have hollowed out so much of our defense industrial base, particularly around certain key components, rare earths, etc., uh, that we literally cannot go to war. So now the, the whole, the last people to understand that the whole, well, ultimately the US military backs the dollar, which backs the rules-based global order, as it were. The last people to understand that the US military can't do that to China, to Russia, ironically, are Wall Street. They're still stuck in this, "Well, we'll just go beat up the Russians." Who, we just haven't tried hard enough in Russia. We haven't tried hard enough in Ukraine. If we actually try, like, dude, read the report. We, in 11 days of medium intensity combat, we chewed through like 15% of our air defense, TAD air defense missiles. Like, we literally couldn't go a month against the Russians or against the Chinese. And the military knows this, by the way. Um, and that, you know, again, this is for me. I'm not being anti-American. I'm not being unpatriotic. I'm telling people as it is.
>> Some people take it that way. That's fine, whatever. Uh, but my point for the economic side of it is, if the dollar was backed by the military, and the dollar backed the rules-based global order, and we know obviously the Chinese and Russians are trying to make changes to the rules-based global order, and the military absolutely cannot kick in the Russians and the Chinese head because they don't have the supply chain to do it. And they won't have the supply chain, engineers, welders to do it for 10 years, best case. 10 years, best case. Um, now, then you come to a very, very powerful conclusion that you highlighted, which is the rules-based global order is dead. It just hasn't been marked to market yet. The West doesn't understand we can't go to war to stop what's happening here. And what's happening here is, uh, ironically, the communists have have instituted, the communists and the Russians have instituted a capitalist new rules system, which is, we're going to trade in our own currency, and we're going to net settle it at the central bank level in gold. And that gold's going to float in everybody's, in everybody's currency level. That is way more capitalist than the dollar-based system of the last 40 years, ironically, very ironically. But that's where we are. And, you know, I think it's why stocks seemingly just go up on whatever news it is. I think it's why gold goes up seemingly over the last several months, um, on every day ending in Y. You know, when markets are open, gold goes up.
>> And I think, I think there's a quorum of investors around the world that are realizing this. Like, look, this is either going to go nuclear, or we're going to get a restructure of the rules-based global order. And, you know, as you know, that's why I think what Trump said two weeks ago was so powerful after this SCO meeting, which was, to me, red light. I mean, I thought two weeks ago was the most important, uh, geopolitical week in, in, in since 1989. Like, I think it was that big. The combination, the SCO meeting, the Chinese parade, the, the, uh, the new gas line between China and Russia, and then Trump admitting that India is going with China and Russia, saying they're plotting against us, but then wishing them well. Like, I think that was, and then the US military, by the way, saying we're going to pivot from China, uh, to the homeland. So, I, I, that's why that's what I mean when I say hasn't been marked to market yet. Like, I think we are still, I think we are like three pitches in, in the first inning, to Wall Street understanding what just happened here over the last two, three months.
>> Well, let's pull on some of those threads because it seems to be a growing consensus that there is a monetary reset underway. But is the monetary reset that the BRICS is trying to achieve the same as the one the US is trying to achieve through things like the CHIPS Act, stablecoins? Like, are there two simultaneously underway that are battling each other? Or actually, are we just moving toward a neutral reserve asset, gold, maybe in the future, Bitcoin? And this will all actually work out in the US's favor in some ways?
>> I, I think there's a battle for the moment. I, I agree with that sentiment. I think ultimately, the CHIPS Act is an attempt, attempt to, um, find repressible balance sheet, right? If they can, if they can get stablecoins big enough, um, you know, that lets them do a couple things. You know, number one, at conceivably, depending on on how they manage it. I mean, look, if Bessen comes out and says, you know, Eurodollar markets are no longer eligible for swap lines, you know, but everything in these stablecoins are, uh, that could conceivably create a, a flow of capital out of Europe and around the world into these dollar stablecoins, which will be backed by T-bills. Okay, we'll see how many, how much money flows out. I could see some would. But as with so much that we do, it's a very short-term solution because ultimately it turns around and creates a crisis in Europe like tomorrow. And when Europe has a crisis like tomorrow, guess what? They're going to sell the dollar assets they've been buying under the old rules-based global order for the last 40 years, which now totals $62 trillion, by the way. $27 trillion net, $27 trillion net, $62 trillion gross. So like, it would be an attempt to basically, "Okay, we're drowning. We need to keep our heads above water. Quick, grab Europe, shove them under water, and stand on them." And, you know, we can take a few more breaths of air. Um, yeah, it's, it's not, it's not nice, but like, that's where we are in this movie because we've played our hand, um, not very well for the last 30 years. Um, the, you know, the other thing it gives Bessen the flexibility to do conceivably at some point is, if he's able to suck a bunch of money in here into stablecoins,
>> and it doesn't immediately turn around and blow up his asset markets, which it probably would, but let's just for the sake of argument, it would conceivably allow him to then disintermediate the Fed altogether, which is to say, all this money came in overseas that wants the backing of a dollar, of dollar, you know, because we're not going to back the Eurodollar system anymore, uh, with swap lines. And, but the payment for that is that we're issuing non, um, in the, the T-bills that are in, in two and a half, three trillion in stablecoins, which is his number, not mine, over the next four years. Um, we're going to, we're going to make them non-marketable T-bills. And the yield on them isn't going to be four. It's going to be 30 basis points. And he would have restructured the debt. He would have, you know, and, and again, that's probably highly inflationary. What I can't weigh in my head is like, I can see how capital here into T-bill stablecoins will be good for the dollar, bad for the euro. But then if we turn around and are going to run two and three trillion dollar deficits at 30 basis points where he has completely disintermediated the Fed, I'm not sure that's good for the dollar. But I'm trying not to grow a brain about it. I'm just like, okay, well, one way or another, it's good for Bitcoin. One way or another, it's good for gold. Um, that part, that part to me seems pretty clear. So I ultimately, when I look at what he's trying to do, where I, I, and that's why I bring up Bitcoin, I don't see how what he's trying to do doesn't end up being good for Bitcoin. I think ultimately he needs, you know, I think he needs a much higher price of, of Bitcoin to sort of drag stablecoin market cap higher anyway. Uh, and in this sort of dynamic, you know, look, if he sucks that much liquidity into, into, into stablecoins and then, you know, we start using these stablecoins, right? JP Morgan starts issuing stablecoins. You know, one part of the CHIPS Act that it has been made apparent to me that is not that well understood is that bank reserves can be used to, to back stablecoins as well.
>> Well, part of the reason why QE wasn't like wildly inflationary is because essentially banks were bribed with interest on reserves to, to not lend those reserves out.
>> Right.
>> What I'm describing and what this CHIPS Act provides for by having reserves being able to back stablecoins, if they start being used as money, that's like the banks taking the money out and just injecting it into the economy. That's wildly inflationary. Is that good for the dollar? Bad for the dollar? If they pull the money over here, I, I don't know how that nets out, but I know one thing. It's really good for Bitcoin. I know it's really good for gold. Like, and so again, I'm trying not to grow a brain about it. Buy gold and Bitcoin and they can figure that out. So I, I, I do think they're trying to maybe stand up through the cry, the through the stablecoin. I think there is, you know, two dynamics. I think there is dynamic one, which is, "Oh my gosh, we need repressible balance sheet like yesterday." And then I think dynamic two is ultimately, if we're in this great power competition, and part of that, you know, part of that competition is, is what's the, what's the new and future global reserve asset? Then I think, yeah, you can, it's partly can be what he's doing with stablecoins can partly be seen as trying to stand up Bitcoin as a competing reserve asset, which, by the way, has competed very well against gold over, you know, life today, last four, you know, okay, but life today really well. So, let's see. But I, I do think it's, there's this competition between Bitcoin and gold as the next global primary reserve asset that is starting.
>> Well, and I'm sure you saw that Russian minister that essentially commented on this, saying that the US is, um, taking on, like it's like a scheme that we have that we want the crypto market and maybe Bitcoin to help us reduce our debt. And so it seems like the BRICS nations are actually catching on and thinking that this is our strategy.
>> Well, I think, I think that's exactly the strategy, and I think he's right. Um, look, I, like, I think it's a kind of a naive statement on his part. Like, Putin was talking about how we were going to eventually have to devalue our debt in 2016, right? I can, I've got the receipts. You can see it on, on his commentary. Um, so they've known this was how it was going to go. And that's before, you know, the last nine years of nonsense that that has transpired in terms of our debt with COVID and all this stuff. And so, um, I, I, I think they've known that, you know, and I look at things like, you know, the CEO of Tether, right, Paolo Ardoino said last week, you know, "We're buying gold, Bitcoin, and land because of the hedges against coming dark times." Like,
>> Yeah.
>> The math tells you this. Like, this is how it's going to go. Like, the only mystery is like, when, and then sort of tactically, right, it's like, well, you know, what, how, how actually are they going to do it? What are the events that are actually going to trigger it? Uh, I think that's what they're going to try and, and by the way, I think it's really good for the world. Um, it's really good for the US. It's not really good if you own a lot of bonds, but like, that's been in the cake, so, you know, if we want to restructure, reshore, rebalance, if we want to separate from China strategically, like, that can't happen unless something devalues Treasury bonds relative to gold and Bitcoin to like zero.
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I want to get more of your thoughts on Trump essentially in the last few weeks sort of standing down as the BRICS leaders come together. Uh, you mentioned the SCO, the Chinese parade where we saw all of these crazy weapons, and you wrote that essentially that's, it's sending a message that if we try to mess with the reordering, the restructuring, moving to a neutral reserve asset where gold floats in different currencies, we basically risk nuclear war. Um, can you talk a little bit about that and really what's at stake and how you're sort of saying that Trump is actually choosing peace?
>> Yeah, I think he is. Um, and, you know, forget about what I think. I think the National Defense Strategy report that came out three days after I wrote that, um, said basically exactly that, which is we are pivoting from China and we are, uh, going to focus on the homeland and our own, our own, uh, hemisphere. Uh, and then two days after that, Pete Hegseth met with his counterpart from China and said, "Listen, we are not interested in a conflict with you guys." So, uh, yeah, I think, you know, I, I don't have the engineering training to look at the weapons that China displayed, um, and know what I was looking at and whether that scares people or not. I know that, um, mutually assured destruction was a very effective tactic between the, the US and the USSR for 40 years. Um, I've been told by multiple different people who don't know each other that what the Avangard missile that Russia demonstrated in Ukraine in November of last year, we don't have an answer for. Um, and if we don't have an answer for it, that changes everything, right? That changes, that changes 400 years of naval doctrine. You know, naval doctrine said if you control naval checkpoints, you control the world.
>> And that's what our, and the, and the Brit strategy has been, and, and why we have this blue water navy. If we don't have an answer for the Avangard, and you sail a carrier battle group to cut, you know, cut off Taiwan, the carrier is going to lose. Like, and then you're in, now you're in World War II, because America is not going to stand aside and, and, and let a carrier get evaporated. So, uh, and when I look at ultimately the, you know, the game theory of it all, particularly vis-a-vis what has transpired over the past two, three years in Ukraine, Russia, um, I think there is a realist wing of the Trump administration that seems, fingers crossed, seems to have control of the, of the controls and is saying, "Look, you know, we don't have the industrial base to, to fight a conventional war. We don't." And if that's the case, then we need to retrench. We need to sort of retrench with honor. We need to back off and refocus here. God knows we got enough to work on. I mean, it's not like, you know, we spent all this money in the Middle East and, and have an awesome infrastructure while we spent all the money there. No, we pissed the money away there and our infrastructure here is suboptimal, uh, to be kind. So, um, I think that's exactly essentially what's, what has just happened. And again, this has happened in the last 10 days, 12 days. Um, it's so powerful. I think, yeah, they're effectively choosing peace. They're effectively choosing, um, "Hey, let's rebuild. Let's run this thing hot. Let's reshore. Let's reinvest." You know, if, if, you know, 1940 to 1980 were, "What's good for GM is good for America," and, and 1980 to 2020 was, "What's good for Goldman Sachs and the Treasury market is good for America," I think, you know, from sort of 2022 on is going to be, "What's good for the domestic industrial base, working middle class, is is good for America." I think that's the choice that's made. You know, now there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, meat on that bone to chew still. So, let's see how long it goes. It's a highly political thing. It's going to make China hawks very unhappy. Uh, but I think it's a realist view. Um, and so it's, you know, as discouraging as I said last week was for me on a number of fronts, I, I think on net, I'm still very encouraged simply because of the further reinforcement. Last week, we heard about the, the, the, the realism around, "Look, we need to reinvest here and, you know, stop trying to play empire." Like, that, that part of our life is over.
>> Yeah. The realism around the geopolitics. I thought it was really ironic seeing Xi Jinping with a backdrop of this arsenal of crazy weaponry, but talking actually about peace and cooperation and how we all, we all actually need to get along with each other in this more multipolar world that a lot of Americans and investors and analysts are not acknowledging. Um, and sort of, you know, to that point, how do you think this is going to play out when you, when you say if they're going to focus more on sort of like the domestic side, building up an industrial base, but Main Street, it seems like they've just been left out constantly. And as they print more money, it flows into assets, which most people don't have. And it just, I feel like it creates this spiral even further where the average person is disenfranchised, feels left out, doesn't know what to do, and wants to elect, um, you know, anyone that will just hand them free stuff, kind of, I guess. Uh, so I mean, how is this going to play out? Because it seems, it seems like they're trying to do two impossible things. They, they don't want to upset the boomers and the Goldman Sachs, but they also, they're going to be overthrown eventually by a society that's going to go into revolution.
>> Yeah. You know, last, last week, Politico reported that, you know, at a birthday dinner for Shamath, you know, Bessen told PY he was going to punch him in his effing face.
>> Oh, yeah. I saw you wrote about that.
>> Yeah. And I, I think Bessen doesn't strike me as a guy that does that lightly. Um, I think he's under a lot of stress for exactly the reasons you just said, which is they're trying to do two impossible things. Like, in the end, we have reached the moment, you know, where a hard decision has to be made. And historically, over the last 40 years, 60 years, 80 years, time immemorial, governments in trouble domestically. What do they do? They start a fight externally. They create a, they create an enemy that is an other that is a foreigner. They go to war
>> to stimulate the economy and to take the pressure off themselves. Well, what the last two, three weeks and really what the last two, three years in Russia and Ukraine have taught US administrations, this one and the one prior, but was, we, that's not an option, right? So the options are, crush the bond market and crush the currency and and stimulate and invest, um, go to war, or let everything collapse in a deflationary spiral, right? And so like, they never choose, "Hey, let's save the bond market and collapse in a deflationary spiral," right? So we knew that wasn't really a choice. It's, it's a theoretical choice. So they were left with two choices: print the money, kill the bond market, inflate, grow, you know, and, and hopefully some of the AI and robotics and stuff can, can drive enough productivity to offset some of the inflation. Maybe Bitcoin and gold will take away some of the inflation and sterilize it. Stocks will go up, but wages will go up more. We'll see. Or go to war. And what we just learned last two, three weeks, war ain't an option,
>> right?
>> War ain't an option, right? Like, uh, the US Army wrote, uh, US Army War College wrote a study of what was going on in Ukraine in, in August of 2023. August of '23, and said that if, uh, if the West put boots on the ground, they would expect to lose 3,600 casualties a day. A day. America had 50,000 casualties all in, in 20 years in Afghanistan, is what the report said. And a casualty for the uninitiated is somebody wounded or killed. Can you imagine what would happen to the political stability of this country if they start sending thousands of boys home in a box to defend what? Ukraine. Listen, I, I have Ukrainian friends, and I don't think it's right that Russia invade Ukraine. And would I, I've got three draft-age sons. Would I send my three draft-age sons there to defend that? It's not my fight. It's not their fight.
>> Right.
>> Um, so back to the point, which is war's not an option.
>> Yeah.
>> So what are you left with?
>> We're going to have to eat the paint ourselves. And I, I suspect Bessen's starting to realize that. I think Trump realizes that. I think there's starting to be stress around that. How do you spin that? Like, they're going to run it hot. Inflation, right? And I tie it back to the initial point, which is I think that's why gold goes up every day that ends in Y. I think that's why stocks go up on like, good news, bad news, all news, no news. Um, I think why Bitcoin is still very, you know, strong near all-time highs.
>> I think that's what we're watching is the markets realize like, "Oh, there's always, you know, you go back millennia, there's two choices: war or inflate."
>> Yep.
>> Great points.
>> War's gone.
>> Before we pivot, uh, more to Bitcoin, I just want to touch on one last thing related to China. You are one of the only analysts I see that really tries to educate, uh, the public about our rare earth element disadvantage, how much China has leverage in that area, and why it's so critical and important. Can you maybe break that down simply for people and why it's important to pay attention to that and how it's influenced the tariff negotiations?
>> Yeah, I'm just standing on the shoulders of, of some giants that have helped me with that. I knew, I knew of the issue and I knew it was a big issue. Um, there was, there's a great report. It's publicly available by a defense contractor or consultant called Govini. G-O-V-I-N-I. You can Google it. Uh, I think it came out last year. And it shows the US defense supply chain across different ways they cut it, how dependent it is on China, um, and has been. And ultimately, one of the big ones is around these rare earths. Why is that? For some reason, our leadership and policymakers have built the greatest military in the world that literally gets 90% plus of, you know, that, that needs these, these rare earths, and, and there's certain ones, and there's certain sort of military grade. It's not like, you know, you can take something out of a refrigerator and stick it into a missile like they were saying the Russians were doing four years ago. Um, it is very high market share to China. China's got not just, I don't know, 50%
of the mining or 60% of the mining, but they've got like 70, 80, 90% plus of the refining, depending on. And it's even higher, like Gallium. China's got like a 98% share. We highlighted last week and, and this stuff is in everything. It's in like 11,000 different applications, and it's, I've been told, um, there's certain ones that are in basically every single missile application of the US military, across branches. And guess who basically the sole source supplier of like one of the key magnets is? China.
Yeah. So that's why I've been on it as hard as I have, which is like, it's not about sort of aggregate sizes of things. It's about bottlenecks, right? That's what do I always say? I, I look for, I read a lot of publicly available information. I'm looking for economic bottlenecks. If your missiles don't work, if your F-35 doesn't work without like this little thing from China, what do you have? You got, you got a lot of expensive paperweights.
So, to me, you know, I didn't do anything special. I just put myself in China's shoes. I pretended, hey, here's what they're doing to you. What would you do? Like, well, that's easy. Okay, boys. The rare earths as of tomorrow. You got your last one.
Yeah. We weaponize the dollar. They can weaponize these rare earths, essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. And let's see who runs out first. And to me, it was so crystal clear, especially given the dollarization of of of China's commodity imports. And, you know, Russia helping them. Um, it, it wasn't even a choice. Like we were going to run out first. It's not even close. So,
uh, it creates enormous leverage and, you know, there's other factors to it. Like I've been told that that that China has universities that 35 different universities that have rare earth engineering, uh, degrees. America has zero. Um, you know, and and to understand like like these are not things that you wouldn't, you know, if if if they came out and said, Luke, they're going to put in a rare earth element refining facility in Lorain, Ohio, which is like 10 miles upwind of me, I would, I would sell my house tomorrow and move. Like this is, this is not stuff you want by yourself. And so I understand why it happened in that way. And like, if your job was the national security of the United States, like, what, what were you doing the last 15 years? Because by the way, the Chinese weaponized rare earth against the Japanese in 2010. Um, so this isn't like, oh my gosh, this is such a surprise, right?
So, so that, I mean, think about it. The the Chinese weaponized rare earth against Japan in 2010 and the Americans did nothing. Nothing. The United States weaponized the dollar against Iran in 2012, kicked them out of the Swift system. And what do they do? They've built this gigantic Alipay, WeChat, you know, WeChat, um, $9 payment rail, gold, offshore yuan, like they have an entire way. Is it fully functional yet? No. Is it as as as uh, efficient as the dollar system yet? No. But it's like, I mean, Giannis Verifakis two months ago called it, it's a giant six-lane highway in each direction, ready to go. And then we said, well, hey, we're going to grab Russia's FX reserves and people are like, all right, well, we'll start using it a bit. So like,
wild. It's a, it's a fascinating contrast in just how we kind of do things, which is like, oh, you just weaponized against our most important ally in the Pacific, you know, how, you know, how about them cowboys.
Um, it's so crazy.
What were you doing? What were you doing? And then we do the opposite. The Chinese, you know, we weaponize our our best weapon, the dollar, against the Iranians and the Chinese build a whole second system in under 10 years. Astonishing to me.
Well, it's clear some people understand this in the administration. We made that, um, that public private partnership with MP, right? We took equity in it. Seems like we are prioritizing this a little bit more. And this is why some of the trade deals have sort of everything gets pushed or delayed or extended. So it makes sense that, um, some people are recognizing that we need to do something about this, right?
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think like, look, there's, there's a way where this goes that, and I really want to give the administration the benefit of the doubt because I do think like you're seeing these signs, right? The MP, the, uh, the, the Nippon Steel deal where we get the golden share, like we're starting to do a version of industrial policy. And it's, it's kind of how you'd expect it to go. It's unwieldy. You know, we're not China. Are we on Chinese systems? And it's so we're, you know, trying to sort of do some Chinese things while still maintaining some some uh, you know, some truthfulness or some some faithfulness to to uh, to what we do best. But when I look at things like the defense department, um, who's, you know, Fineberg, uh, David Fineberg, who used to run, I believe Cerberus, um, as sort of, he's sort of right behind Hegseth. Hegseth's the face of the place, but, you know, um, I think Fineberg is really driving hard to bring the, you know, to to, and he knows what he's doing. He's, they've been, they've been in that world for a while. They know how to do this. So that that gives me, that's why I say, you know, I want to give them, uh, uh, some benefit of the doubt because I see some people there working sort of behind the the front lines that I think really know what they're doing. And I also want to give them the benefit of the doubt because I think ultimately the way this goes is we're going to get a weekend where it's like, hey, gold's $8,000 now and now we're going to revalue, you know, one way and however that happens. Um, and we're going to, you know, we're going to, um, you know, we're going to devalue the debt. We're going to revalue our gold, and it's going to put $3 trillion into the in the TGA, and, you know, basically we're not going to have to issue any bonds, and we're going to use that to fund reshoring or whatever. It's going to be highly stimulative, um, highly inflationary in the short run, but the right thing to do. And then, you know, if that kind of thing happens, you go, "Oh, okay." Like, they were trying to get a running start. And the Doge thing, you know, I get they had to politically try and failed before it, you know, they So, I'm trying to give them a benefit of the doubt, but like if they don't do that sort of debt devaluation, like none of this is going to work. The debts, like the debt's the elephant in the room. You can't, you can't do anything that doesn't blow up the bond market.
Yeah.
Because we've waited too long.
Right? Right. I know. There's so much at stake. This is so fascinating. So, let's talk a little bit about Bitcoin because a lot of people think that that's where we will end up in terms of a neutral reserve asset, even though we're seeing all the the performance really with gold this year. Um, but people do think that Bitcoin should be higher right now. Why do you think it's not?
I don't know. Um, I don't know. I mean, I think it should be higher. And knowing what I know, I like, I'm still buying Bitcoin. I'm buying, I buy gold, Bitcoin every week at these prices. Um, you know, I don't know. Uh, I'm not
buy 150 or 200.
I don't know. Um, you know, Bitcoin's kind of a funny thing. As someone who's been in markets for 30 years, like, like it does nothing for like forever.
And then like in two weeks, it, you know, you know, one of my, one of my mentors in this business, um, great smart guy, brought me along, just amazing, said to me, you know, he always had a lot of phrases. One of the phrases he always said is like, 80% of the moves come in 20% of the time. And and
and I just think, you know, there's enough,
you know, there's, you know, the thing I hear most about Bitcoin is, oh, it's just a tech stock. Bitcoin is just a tech stock. And in the short run, I could see that, right? Call up a correlation. And, you know, tech stocks act like death. You know, that some of that they've broken some technical stuff and, you know, whatever. I get it. I don't think it's a tech stock. Uh, I think that's going to fail. Uh, but until it does, I think, you know, short-term traders are continue to trade it like a tech stock. You know, NASDAQ's down 2%, Bitcoin's going to be down three. NASDAQ's up 2%, Bitcoin's be up three. But we're quickly getting to a spot where I think it's going to be seen as, you know, it's it's not a tech stock. It's a neutral reserve asset. And I think events are going to prove that. So, and that's, I think that'll ultimately one of the 20% of the times when we get, you know, 80% of the move.
Yeah. There's a great book called Psychology of Money that I love by Morgan Housel, and he talks about that too with stocks, how a lot of the moves happen in a very short amount of time and you see a lot of volatility, but if you, if you really, if you stay invested, if you ignore some of the, you know, the temporary crashes, you'll see that it's up and to the right. And Bitcoin has certainly proven that as well. Um, I see you talk about things like electrical infrastructure equities, but you never really comment on Bitcoin treasury companies or recommend them. And I'm kind of curious, like, what do you think of them? And why isn't that maybe, um, something you discuss a little bit more? Do you only focus on spot Bitcoin?
Well, it's, it's two things. Number one, uh, my my firm's mandate is I can't recommend individual securities for compliance reasons. Um, that's number one. Number two is I don't have the bandwidth to do it simply because I don't have the bandwidth to go through earnings reports and financial statements of individual companies, etc. Uh, and and so I don't, uh, and three, for me, I want to be right for the right reason. In other words, right, you can be right for the wrong reason, which is, you know, you own something and you because you think something's going to happen and it doesn't happen, but it goes up anyway, right? That's right for the wrong reason. You can be wrong for the right reason, which is you can, uh, you can think something's going to happen, it happens, but you don't own the right asset, or you express it improperly, or or suboptimally. And then there's right for the right reason, which is you think something's going to happen and it happens and you make a lot of money. And for me, I I prefer to take the risk out of being wrong for the right reason. And I'm not saying that owning Bitcoin treasury companies will or will not be that. I'm simply saying that I don't do enough of the background work where it's just like I want to not grow a brain. I want to keep it simple. I just, you know, most of my gold exposure is in is in gold. Most of my Bitcoin exposure, um, is in Bitcoin. Uh, I'm a, a investor in a, in a, uh, a Bitcoin related private equity fund. Um, but most of my exposure is in Bitcoin. So that's that's why I don't really talk about them from that standpoint. Um, you know, uh, you know, you know, I think that's really the key.
Got it. Yeah. No, I thought it was interesting because you always talk about, you know, gold and gold miners, Bitcoin, electrical infrastructure equities, kind of these like broad genres, but you never say Bitcoin miners or Bitcoin treasury companies. So, I had to ask. Um, all right. One of my final questions. What's your best argument to those who want a cash flowing asset and that's why they're so against Bitcoin because I really hear some of that FUD, especially from TradFi. It's like, well, there's no cash flow.
Boy, I, I could go for another hour on this. I'll give you a couple.
Um, it shows anyone who says that is showing their Western financial privilege. Um, if you're earning a yield, you are taking risk, right? Your money in the bank earns a deposit yield. Because in a capitalist society, you are taking risk. You are, as a depositor, a creditor of that bank. You are getting a yield because you are lending them money. Everyone thinks that that's their money in a bank. It's not their money. It's the bank's money. And so technically, in a capitalist society, money in a bank is is a risky asset. You are going to, if if the bank fails, you are supposed to lose over $100,000, you know, pre Great Financial Crisis. And by the way, I knew hedge fund guys, like top hedge fund guys, who were running money, moving their money out of banks to get under the $100,000 limit because they weren't sure anything over it would be compensated. Today, that's $250,000. Technically, if you've got $300,000 in a bank and it fails, you should lose everything over $250,000. That is why you are getting paid a yield on that. Um, the yield on a Treasury bond is because governments inflate, you know, and and, you know, I can pull up any number of charts to show you that Treasury bonds have been a terrible, you know, Warren Buffett in 2012 said that long-term Treasury bonds should come with a warning label, long-term bonds, because that's how much inflation always going to have to be. So, everyone always tells me, "Oh, Luke, Warren Buffett owns all these T-bills." Yeah, Warren Buffett owns all these T-bills. Did you ever see what he said about 2012 about long-term bonds? Like, "No, what do you say?" I said, "They're trash. They should come with a warning label." Okay. So, yield is risk. If you're getting a yield on something, you know, FTX, FTX was paying a yield. And I'm sorry to sort of kick some wounds for some Bitcoin people, but, you know, staking on FTX, you were getting a yield. How'd that go? Well, what happened to FTX is what's supposed to happen to the banks. It's just you don't have an FDIC behind you. Uh, the other thing I would say around zero yield is, you know, NASDAQ really doesn't pay a yield, does it? Um, but doesn't stop people from owning that. Um, but that's a bit of a different thing. Well, that's a productive business. They're reinvesting the capital. And that's a fair argument. Um, the other argument is it's a, and why I say it's really another the finan Western financial privilege is these people have never, they've never been through a sovereign fiscal crisis, sovereign debt crisis, like like you need to own gold, Bitcoin, something that is going to because they they are, and and so it, it is really, you know, a lot of the people that say that to me are the same people, same types of people, not literally the same people, the same types of people that were like, well, you know, home prices have never fallen nationally. Or you know, it's a new era in 1999, right? They just sock puppet on the on the freaking Super Bowl and like, it's a new era, you know, they they it's they're going to bankrupt all the old economy companies. Well, they bankrupted some of them, but not really. Not before they all went, you know. So, I think it's ultimately about understanding where we are in the long cycle, understanding, you know, people look at, you know, the US through dollar goggles, like, oh, we're America. It's never happened here. Technically, it did. Like the, the US, the Fed has been running a quasi-fiscal deficit, um, which is an operating loss for lack of a better word, basically, right? They're upside down. They're having to print money. The Fed bought a bunch of bonds. Inflation went up and so they are having to print a bunch of money to pay bank interest on excess reserves to the banks at a low rate, or excuse me, at the new higher rate, while the interest they're receiving from the government on their bond portfolio is very low. That's called a quasi-fiscal deficit. Friend of mine, Jeffrey Sary, um, who we're f, it's funny, we're friends on X, we went to, we attended the same investment banking grad school class in Cleveland in 2000. Small world. And and yeah, it's crazy. Anyway, he pointed this quasi-fiscal deficit out and he said, you know, the last American central bank that ran a quasi-fiscal deficit. I said, no, no. I said, the Fed. He goes, the Fed has never run one. I said, who was it? He said, the Confederate central bank as they were losing the war, as the Confederate dollar hyperinflated to zero. Now, I'm not saying the dollar is going to hyperinflate to zero, but this is what I mean about Western financial privilege. I, I could go to a hundred, I now I wrote a report about, my clients would all know have some idea what it is. I wrote about it in, uh, August of October of 2022. Um, but if I went to a hundred RIAs in America and said, "Hey, what's, what's a quasi-fiscal deficit? What does it mean when a central bank runs a quasi-fiscal deficit?" I would bet you $100,000, but maybe two would know.
Agree.
And that's why that's why 98% of RIAs will tell you, "Well, Bitcoin's still too risky. Gold's, you know, gold's still too risky." I had someone at a presentation in the Midwest say to me, "All right, like, Luke, I understand what you're saying. This is early 2024. I understand what you're saying about gold, but look, if I, if I buy gold and it goes down 30%, I get fired. If I buy treasuries, long-term treasuries, they go down 30%, I keep my job. By the end of this cycle, those will reverse, right? It and so that's why like it's still so early for 0% yielding, no yield assets. They don't understand what's happening. That's bottom line. It's a Western financial privilege that, you know, they're going to get an expensive lesson. And that's okay.
Fascinating. And and an advantage to us who understand this, right? For those of us kind of early adopters. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to cut that and and use that as a segment because I think it'll, it'll, it'll help a lot of people that are maybe asking the same question. Um, all right. Finally, before we wrap up, what are you most concerned you might be wrong about?
To be honest, I'm most concerned that I'm wrong that the domestic political fiber will hold together as long as I think it will. And I wish I didn't have to say that. I don't say that lightly. Um, because I feel pretty tight on sort of everything else. Look, if, if maybe something a little less heavy, you know, if I wake up tomorrow and, you know, there's a, you know, political coup in Russia and or China all at once and we've replaced them with sort of, you know, the the Chinese and Russian version of Boris Yeltsin from 1991 and they proceed to sort of sell their country to the West at pennies on the dollar, then like I'm going to be wrong and I'll be the first to say it. Uh, but failing that happening, and I don't see any sign that that's happening, um, then it pushes us into this, you know, this dynamic of of, you know, governments under pressure. And this isn't an indictment of one party or the other. This is governments going back for thousands of years. You can read, you know, you can read, um, and I would recommend everyone does read The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan about late, late Republic Rome, um, about sort of, I mean, because it's like, it's like, oh, you all you got to do is scratch out the names and add the ones in. It's like reading the last 15 years in the US. And war is not an option now. You know, it's either nuclear war, which is, you know, whatever. You know, it's, it's sort of like, you know, you know, when COVID was like, oh, COVID's going to kill us all. It's like, well, if COVID's going to kill us all, what's the freaking like, you know, buy stocks because like we're all going to die. And if it doesn't, like stocks have gotten killed, so buy stocks. Same kind of thing. Like, if we can't go to conventional war without losing, then either we're going to lose. I don't think we're going to go to conventional war, or we're going to go to nuclear war, in which case everybody loses. There are no winners. It's uninvestable. Or we're basically going to sort of go through this really bumpy time where we're we're going to do our best to reinvest and reshore and the inflation's going to be really high and the AI and robotics disruption is going to be really weird. And and so I just think we're in this really, you know, we've been hearing about the fourth turning for 20, 25 years now, and we've all kind of known that sort of around 2025, we were going to enter this period where, you know, 2025, 2032 is going to be really hairy. Like I, I, I think we're there. I think we're there. And I, if any, you know, I have no idea what it's going to look like. And I, if anyone tells you they know what it's going to look like, like run the other way. They don't have any idea. And I don't either. And so for me, it's, you know, I think one of the wisest things I've read in the last, you know, certainly in the last week or two was from a friend of mine who is, um, he said, look, what I don't can't tell is like, if we're shifting from a high trust society to a low trust society. He said, look, this country pulled itself back together in the 60s. We had political assassinations and the country pulled itself back together. But we came into the 60s in a very, very high trust society, right? Camelot and and everything. He said, and if you go to the 20s in Germany, Weimar, there were political assassinations of moderates and and and they were in a low trust society. They had just lost a war. They had, um, you know, their institutions had sort of been rug-pulled around around, you know, the country and they sort of devolved into madness. And he said, "I, I think there's something to be said about a shift from a, you know, if if we're in a low trust society in these events versus in a high trust society with these types of things in a fourth turning." And what he said to me was, I, I don't, I think we might be moving to a secular, low trust society. And I sadly agree with him. I look around the last 10, 15, 20 years like industrial workers rug-pulled. Middle class rug-pulled. Fraud bailed out, rug-pulled. Uh, the financial system rug-pulled. Uh, going to war on a lie, rug-pulled. Uh, the last five years, healthcare, like there have been surveys, you know, Kaiser Foundation, like 60% of Americans don't trust their doctor. Uh, don't trust the mainstream healthcare system. And I understand why. Um, and that to me, when I put all that together into the macro, the financial, etc., that's the part that scares me. Um, you know, where could I be wrong? Like, look, all of a sudden, people waking up and go, "Oh my god, we got to get our capital out of America." That's the one thing that would drive, that would make stocks go down. And that I'm going to be dead wrong in that case. Now, I'm not going to be wrong on gold or Bitcoin. Uh, I'm not gonna be wrong on the dollar, but I'll be dead wrong on stocks. Um, and that's okay because I'm trusting the gold and Bitcoin would be, you know, more than offset it, which I think it amply would. But that's the part to me, and I hate to ramble on this question, but I think it's such an important question. But like that to me is like we are, we are very, we are in very, very dangerous ground. And and I got a lot of people who I really, really respect and who are very, very sober state analysts, military officers, investors, all saying the same thing. And I've, I've been doing this 30 years. I've never seen that before. And it's, um, it is, it troubles me.
I think a lot of people um share your concerns. I certainly do. I've never seen people become so divided. And um, I think that there are few, very few things that do offer real hope, especially to the average person. Um, it's interesting that you bring up a world where where trust has broken down because it seems like that's precisely what Satoshi was trying to address in creating a trustless system. Um, because as this, as this continues and plays out, and we know they're going to destroy the currency, right? I pray that we don't have leaders that take us into war because I saw in your newsletter, I mean, where I hope everyone gets your newsletter, there's a page where it's like it shows you essentially the range of some of these nuclear weapons and how easily it could cause an immense amount of damage if we took it that far and push some of those buttons. And that's the worst case scenario for everyone, right? And I, and I hope we stay far, far, far away from it. But a lot is at stake and I hope our leaders make the right choices and I hope people come together as opposed to pulling apart and turning to violence. So, um, well, Luke, thank you so much. As always, you're, you're absolutely brilliant. I'm so grateful that we have an analyst like you in the space and someone who's an advocate for Bitcoin. Um, any final thoughts?
Yeah, I'm, I'm ultimately, you know, I'm ultimately optimistic. Um,
me too.
By what I've seen over the last two weeks, right? Like I think we're moving to peace. I don't think, I don't think that's understood yet. I think two weeks ago was the biggest geopolitical week since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Um, that doesn't mean it's all, you know, the problem is like sort of, you know, we're, we're, we're on the, we're on the uh, uh, wrong side of the of the of the of the Berlin Wall, right? We're on the side that's going to go through some tumult and reinvestment and inflation and disruption, uh, by virtue of the choices we made over the last 25 years. Ultimately, um, you know, look, if you were in East Germany in 1988, pretty happy about how it worked out over the next 25 years for you, right? You, and I think that's where, you know, sort of the bottom 90%, 95% of Americans, you know, is probably going to be bumpy, but I think they're going to be really happy where they end up. And like I said, I think two weeks ago was like the fall of the Berlin Wall. So, bumpiness, but ultimately optimism.
Well, we'll be looking for more of your forecasts and outlooks. Thank you. Thank you so much, Luke. Everyone, subscribe to FFTT and, uh, we'll see if your prediction of a 25 basis point cut is right. Maybe they'll surprise us with 50 basis points. Thanks so much, Luke.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me back on, Natalie.
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Coin Stories. Make sure you're subscribed to the show so you don't miss any new episodes. And if you can, turn on those notifications and leave us a positive review. They really help the show grow organically with new listeners. We have a free weekly newsletter. You can sign up at the newsblock.substack.com. This show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing should constitute as official investment advice and you should always do your own research. I'm always open to feedback and guest suggestions, so please feel free to reach out at info@talkingbitcoin.com. I'll see you next time.