Transcription
How are you, man?
>> Good. How are yourself?
>> Good. Good. Is this where you say, "I told you, Mario. I told you the war is not over."
>> Don't know yet.
>> You saw the strike.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Obviously,
>> of course, it's on a Friday night.
>> Of course. Exactly. I literally uh the title of this is like the US bombs Iran as soon as markets close.
>> It seemed like it was time for it. I the producer should probably took the put the thumbnail. Surprise, surprise.
>> Yeah.
>> Um
>> where do we start? Let's before we get into the strike, I want to get your thoughts cuz you're um I enjoyed our conversations because you look at things from an economic lens and we I remember we had we agreed together about the importance of China and all this in the bigger picture. We discussed this I think in our first interview since the war started. Um, and you've always been concerned that the war is not over because the US has not achieved its objective from capturing the trade of Hormuz. In one of my interviews today, it's a recorded one, not live. So, anyone listening is you can't it's not live yet. But in one of my recordings, I spoke to a man a a um executive from a um a rare earth company, I think a Canadian or American rare earth company, and they broke down how significant that risk is on the on the US national security that that China controls rare earth minerals. They're refining. So kind of makes the confirms the argument that the US needs some leverage over China. It's becoming extremely important. All rare earth companies except the one I spoke with. I think they're called Realloys. They're the only company that doesn't use any chemicals or or um uh equipment from China for the refining. All other they told me, I couldn't believe it. All other rare earth companies outside of China use either Chinese chemicals or equipment and parts. And so it just shows how strong that dependence is.
Now my question to you is oil prices have plummeted uh faster than what most of my guests were telling me. Um, a lot of it comes down to China. No one no one could really explain to me why China did this and what they did exactly. So that's what what the kind of the black box is right now. So maybe your first question is starting there. The oil prices like what the hell happened?
>> Well, the market is thinking that there's a positive uh offramp here. And yes, the Chinese absolutely helped the oil prices by not buying every barrel that they possibly could have. What we don't know from the Chinese perspective is how much of their strategic reserves actually got used. And it's a fair bet that it's probably quite a lot. So the Chinese also have a lot of leverage on oil prices moving forward and how quickly they want to respond and refill all those reserves. But that's China. I think the the overriding message from the oil market is that this was not as catastrophically bad as some people had expected. And therefore, you know, it isn't it it isn't looking like there's going to be some lingering long run, you know, $100 per barrel oil into next year. Now, that doesn't mean that oil prices aren't going to bounce here in the short run because there's going to be some kind of uh first of all, you know, we talked about this many times before that uh the uncertainty over how the Iran conflict will actually end up because we're not even close to the end here yet. I mean, we're we might be in the middle stages of it because uh you know, the negotiations, everything is going on, but we we really don't have any idea what the final outcome's going to be. So, the oil market has taken sort of a optimistic take on it in part because of what the Chinese have done. So, we're sitting here with a ton of unknowns. And in the oil market right now, unknowns means you want to sell. You don't want to be long oil. You want to be so selling oil because, you know, there's that threat of once this thing is over with, oil goes back into the $50, if not less, $50 range or not less. So, that's where the path of least resistance is for crude oil.
>> So, where's your stance now on whether the war is finished or not?
>> Oh, we have no I don't even think we should comment on it really because we have no idea. Um, you know, they gave themselves a 60-day memorandum of understanding to hammer out all the details. And I I honestly think that we'll know something maybe on day 58 or 59. Uh, we have no idea how close they are. I mean, both sides are going to mug for the cameras. Each side's going to say, "I got this. I got that." You know, the Americans surrender. the the the American administration is going to say we got them on at the you know we got them on their knees and we don't really have any idea what the details are and what what actually is being discussed not only what's being discussed but what is actually realistic what is the final agreement actually going to look like what are we still don't know what what kind of demands are being made back and forth in those details so you know I I think we just need to reserve judgment until we get closer to the end here and it's not really a surprise that the conflict has kind of flared up a little bit because because you knew the Iranians were going to test the American resolve. Um, there was going to be that kind of uh that kind of you know pushing the envelope into the gray area and ambiguity to see what would happen. I mean that's just this natural fog of war type of stuff in these types of situations anyway. So you got to reserve judgment and we've talked about this Mario. This thing is complex. There are a lot of different angles to it and there's a lot of different perspectives that need to be need to be hammered out and taken account of. Not the least of which is what happens with Hormuz. And I don't I don't think I've heard a u a unifying um narrative about from either side what you know what exactly they expect to happen going forward. So I I mean we have no idea what's happening here.
Um, there's one of my guests was telling me yesterday actually that he's he's worried about how fast he's in Iranian and he he's you know supportive of the Iranian government and he's worried about how fast oil prices have fallen because it gives more breathing space for Trump and that now today I'm thinking like huh is that why Trump was emboldened to you know not only retaliate against the strike yesterday by Iran but retaliate in a in a strong way striking the Iranian mainland for the first time since theou um how fast can oil prices spike? How would it take a lot? How much supply is out there? I'm not sure if you're following it closely and um you know are we out of the woods or things could just turn around very quickly if Iran decides to close the trade of Hormuz.
>> Yeah, that would be bad. But I think you know what you said is exactly right. There is a bit more margin for error here because again the the balance of opinion in the oil market has shifted favorable. Now there's a couple reasons that could be and one of them is not good. It could be that demand has fallen off faster than people expected. And so it's not necessarily the market is pricing supply normalization. It's actually pricing demand destruction. And there are there are a couple of confirming and corroborating signals that suggest that could be the case. And if so, that would be a huge variable. And you know, the US strikes Iran, which you know, reignites the supply fears. But if demand has fallen off sharply, then oil prices aren't actually the biggest thing to be concerned about and they won't actually rise all that much. But again, we don't really know if this is um if say this is just a one-off, I don't think you'll see much reaction on Monday. Uh if Monday morning, you know, Asian trading starts on Sunday night, Monday morning, uh Asian time. And if this is all that there is, I don't think you'll see a whole lot of reaction in the marketplace. Maybe you'll get a couple dollars per barrel in some of the major global benchmarks, but if nothing else, if there's no further escalation, I think the market has priced in enough margin to say, "Look, we know this is uncertain. We know there's a lot of moving pieces here. Um unless this is a full-blown restart of the conflict or the Iranians come out and say we're going to we're going to start charging tolls on on shipping or they make some more concrete moves to close off uh traffic. There has been enough movement in traffic to convince the marketplace that this is the balance of opinion has shifted more favorably. So yeah, with oil prices down,
>> what would it take? You've already hinted at a couple of things. What would it take for oil to go back above 100?
>> Yeah, it would have to be going back to the uh to the pre-memorandum of understanding state of affairs. And to get even higher than $100 per barrel, I think you're going to need to go back to the pre ceasefire conditions where, you know, we're actually talking about the US and Iran and US and Israel actively bombing Iranians, the Iranian mainland all over the place. Again, that would be $100 plus barrel per barrel oil. Um but short of that uh again I think there's the other part of it that uh you need to consider is the demand side of it and that's that may be where the the uh the attention is quickly refocusing.
>> Um were you surprised at how far oil how fast oil prices plummeted?
>> Not necessarily. I was actually you know the downside was you know markets love momentum especially in something like oil futures where there's lots of leverage. So you know there was always going to be a tremendous downdraft. I mean, Trump kept saying it. He was right. So, as soon as we're done with this thing, oil prices are going to plunge. That was always going to be the case. What I was looking for was where there would be a short-term bottom and then maybe a bounce in oil prices as the marketplace started to really reassess where the situation is politically, but also where the situation was as far as oil supply restoration, tanker traffic, you know, how much supply and production had been damaged and taken offline, how quickly we get back to normalization. So, I'm still looking for a bounce. Uh, whether it's it's driven by a geopolitical premium that comes back in the marketplace or whether it's driven by reassessment of the where the situation is, I still think you'll get a bounce in oil prices at some point. Um, but the the initial the initial downdraft was all about pure momentum. Um, every anybody who's leveraged long just getting covering their positions, getting out, lots of leverage, speculators going in and shorting the marketplace because that seemed to make a whole lot of sense. But after you get the initial downdraft, that's where you start to get more of a um more of a an informational signal from oil prices.
Jeffrey Curry today was telling me something. Um he was he had a question to he wasn't asking me, but he was a question he's been thinking about. He can't think he can't know the answer. If he can't figure it out, I'm sure I can't. He's like, Mario, what I don't understand is the demand destruction on the Chinese side. Why are they still not buying up oil? If they did use their reserves, oil prices are low. why and they're not, you know, first not using their strategic reserves anymore. We're seeing a pickup um in imports on the Chinese side. Um and he's worried there's some agreement maybe even between him and Trump and Trump to keep prices low. Do you think it's a possibility?
>> I think that's one of the I mean you look at a couple different possibilities that's right at the top of the first thing I thought about why aren't they?
>> Okay,
>> because I mean look you know we've we talked about this a couple times ago when I last vaged you. You know what happened at that summit? We don't know. Nobody ever said anything. Nothing ever came out of the summit. Um there was you know the usual press release stuff and you know feelood stories here and there some memorandum about you know investigating invest but nothing t nothing substantial came out of the summit that we know of. And so to me that was sort of like okay the point of the summit wasn't for the public. The point of the summit was so that Trump and she and all the you know staffing people and the high level staffers can get together and start you know talking with each other in various different ways. So if that's the case, and I don't think that you should discount that possibility at all, the other question on the other side of this, what did Trump give she? Um because, you know, she's a pretty shrewd shrewd negotiator himself. You don't want to underestimate the Chinese or the Chinese leader. So if she is saying, okay, we'll back off oil prices to give you a little bit of a hand here, President Trump. What did Trump give the Chinese? That's I think, you know, another major question to it. But that is certainly a big possibility. The other possibility is that just the Chinese are waiting for lower oil prices. They understand the economics working very well.
>> Pretty low already. Like it would be the wise thing to first stop using your strategic reserves. But more importantly, I'm sure they stopped just stop buying up oil. Like
>> like I said, I would use demand demand destruction plus normalization of supply. You're not looking at $70 per barrel. You're looking at $50 per barrel. And that's a substantial a substantial difference. And the Chinese were doing that. I mean, look, when were they refilling that again? What would they be without Chinese suppression? What would they without Chinese uh uh demand destruction? What would the price of oil be?
>> Much higher. Much higher. But the point, I mean, look at what the Chinese were doing last year. They waited until oil prices were down into the $60 range um before they started really feeling their really filling their strategic reserves in 2025. It was almost as if they were preparing for what their situ look at some of the statistics where it relates to what they had done with the strategic reserves and all. It's almost as if they knew this was coming. I mean, look, they have a the intelligence service, and I'm not sure, you know, the Trump administration and Israel haven't exactly been shy about what they're going to do. So, maybe China was just refilling the reserves or topping up the reserves, anticipating what was the likeliest outcome with Iran. But either way, the Chinese were patient in in adding to the reserves, waiting for prices to go down to almost the absolute bottom. So it would not be surprising to me at all if that's what they're doing here because they probably have more than enough reserves with the level of demand destruction that's taking place that's taken a lot of the marginal flow out of the oil the marginal bite out of oil prices in China. It wouldn't be surprising if that's the other explanation to or maybe even the main explanation. They're just waiting for oil prices to get back into the $50 range either expecting nothing further to happen in Iran or just looking at the the macroeconomics and the economics of oil and saying that's the likeliest outcome. If you got $50 per barrel oil in the future, why not wait? If you if you don't have to buy oil at 70, why not wait for 50.
>> H Or Trump gave Shei something or
>> Trump needed low oil prices more than she.
>> Yeah, he promised not to do something else. Maybe lay off of Cuba for a while. I, you know, we could speculate and it wouldn't really I mean, it would just be naked speculation, but that is
>> I'm not going to speculate anything. Taiwan. I'm not gonna I won't speculate.
>> That's going too far. Uncharted territory. Well, then again, he did freeze. He did he didn't give up Taiwan. He's not going to give up Taiwan. Take a lot more.
>> No, that I think that's the major that's going to be a major sticking point on their side. Yeah.
>> He did freeze the arms sale, though.
>> Yeah. So, I'm There's either a grand bargain or grand economics from China.
>> Grand conspiracy.
>> It's never a conspiracy. We know that this stuff takes place. It's not a conspiracy. It's reality.
>> What do you make of the price of gold?
>> Gold is getting liquidated because there's less dollar flow, more dollar demand and dollar needs. So gold is a reserve asset. It's being sold as a reserve asset and unfortunately it's an illiquid market where buyers are scarce. So a lot of volatility in gold and it's spilling over into silver for you know silver got way too far ahead of itself. So the fundamentals in silver were bad anyway. So the short run for precious metals is not not not a positive outlook though it should it should improve over time but you know you don't know where the bottom is in either one of those just in the short run anyway.
>> Why is the demand what's the demand coming from for the US dollar?
>> Well part of that is because there's a shortage of dollars. It's just you know basic supply and demand. If you got to increase demand for dollars at the same time you have you know less supply of it. The dollar goes up in price. I mean that's not exactly how it works but in in the conceptual terms that's how you should conceptualize how um currency exchange values move especially the US dollar. So the US dollar strength is a reflection of fewer dollars floating around the world.
>> What do you make of the new Fed chair and the meeting it seems more hawkish than expected.
>> Yeah. And then the market keeps saying it's a complete mistake. The markets are you know that's the the upside down Pringles over here. the markets are I mean look the 2-year 10-year spread in US treasuries you know u very nearly reinverting again which is a signal that again if you want to talk about demand destruction in the macroeconomy that's one that suggests the market's getting a little bit nervous about that side of things which would mean that if the Fed does raise rates in the short run they're going to come rolling back down at some point which is what the markets are actually pricing you look at inflation protection securities inflation expectations they crashed they absolutely plummeted even more than oil prices which is another signal the market is thinking this is not just supply normalization in oil. There's might there might be some demand destruction. If that continues to play out, then the Fed can hike in July or September and it's going to be cutting by the end of the year no matter what.
I have another question for you. One of my guests yesterday or two days ago, let me see the name. I'm really bad with names. Just uh disclaimer like as in horribly bad. Um I still don't remember the name of my own mother. Um so yesterday I had a two days ago I had a guest and you'd know him. Screw it. All right. I can't I can't find it. So, and he was making he he gave me a very interesting theory. He's talking and we've I've been talking to a lot of my guests about the price of um sorry the manufacturing base in the US and the US cannot have cannot bring back manufacturing to the country if the dollar remains high. It just doesn't work. Um so weakening the dollar may work in America's best interest. And a lot of people have looked at comments that Trump made earlier. I remember them from like a year ago or whatever it is where he's talking about how a weaker dollar is a good thing or something along the line those lines or bitcoin or stable coins not stable coins I think the bitcoin because they're dollar denominated but bitcoin could take some pressure off the dollar blah blah blah uh but the the the gentleman I had his theory was that the US could be intentionally weakening the dollar in order to bring manufacturing back to the country as we're seeing now the world move away from de-globalization for for national security um is Is that possible?
>> No.
>> Oh, that was quick.
>> First of all, the US government doesn't control the dollar exchange value. I know everybody believes that that's the case and that the US government has an interest in everybody making in making that belief into or the central bank has control. No, none of that stuff. The dollar floats based on that macro the economics of currency movements and the dollar isn't actually the dollar anyway. That's eurodollar. Uh we we the world runs on a eurodollar standard which is already outside the control of the United States and Federal Reserve to begin with. So yes, the Trump administration
>> just a lot of my audience don't know the eurodollar is dollars outside the United States pretty much.
>> Yes. The technical definition of a eurodollar and I know it gets confusing because it sounds like you're mixing up the European common currency with the dollar but euro the term euro just means outside or offshore. So a eurodollar is offshore dollars and there's there's
>> let's call it let's call it offshore dollars just for the audience to make sure to know what
>> offshore dollars. But the thing is there really isn't a distinction between offshore dollars and onshore dollars. It's all basically the same dollar system. The money that you use is not physical federal reserve notes or paper currency. It's not even Federal Reserve bank reserves because nobody outside a bank can hold those. The money that you actually use is bank money. And banks we're talking about are not US banks. They're US banks, European banks, Japanese banks. They're global banks that run basically a dollar denominated system. So that dollar denominated system is not under control of the US government. Yes, the US has ability to influence bank behavior through several different means. A perfect example of that is when you go back to 2022, remember the Biden administration made a huge deal about kicking the Russians out of SWIFT. Well, no. The what the Biden administration had to do was go to Europe to put pressure on European regulators to put pressure on European banks, which were the majority of the eur the consortium that actually owned SWIFT to try to delist some of the Russian count Russian banks that participated in SWIFT. So the you the point of this is that the the the global reserve currency that we use is a bank currency not a government currency. So in the context of the Trump administration wanting the US dollar to weaken they do want the dollar to weaken but it is not in their ability to weaken the US dollar. The US dollar is going to go where the the mechanics of US of eurodollar flows take it. Now would a weaker US dollar bring manufacturing back to the US? No. Absolutely not. We've had a weaker dollar period. In fact, between 2001 and 2000, actually March of 2008 when Bear Sterns failed, the US dollar continued to fall in value. And during that period, manufacturing jobs continue to be lost. And it's a simple matter of macroeconomics, basic macroeconomics. There's too much cheap labor around the rest of the world to make it economically viable to bring manufacturing jobs into the US without absolutely gargantuan subsidies, which I mean they've tried to do in certain areas. But overall, you're not going to bring manufacturing jobs to the US when the differences and differentials in labor costs are just so astronomically high. It won't matter if you even re even if you could revalue the dollar, you'd have to revalue the dollar so low that it would be catastrophic in financial terms.
>> All right. So two points. Number one is you know the Fed could just print dollars. I not you know just for the audience not literally print dollars but you know sell more treasury keep selling more treasuries flooding the markets with dollars. I'm not saying they can control the price of the dollar but they can definitely influence it. We've seen that happen historically whenever the printing price is on the dollar weakens.
>> See that's a misconception too. What does the Fed actually do? The Fed does not print dollars. The Fed makes bank reserves and bank reserves are a quasi money interbank basically a clearing house loan certificate. So, it's it's the best that the Federal Reserve can do is create these bank reserves and hope it somehow influences bank behavior because commercial banks are the ones that own these bank reserves eventually at the end of these operations. And as the commercial banks own the bank reserves, unless commercial banks do something in response to whatever you whatever operation the Federal Reserve is undertaking, then it doesn't matter. The Federal Reserve is just moving stuff around from one pocket to another pocket. they're not actually creating useful money in the outside system. And that is one of the biggest problems that we had with QE. QE attempted to influence the behavior first of all of people in the real economy, which that didn't work. And QE attempted to influence the behavior of bank through bank reserves influence the behavior of commercial banks. Commercial banks, especially after 2008, did not respond to that signal because of course they didn't. They were cutting back. They were pulling back and cleaning up their balance sheet. So it didn't matter what the Fed did. The commercial banks continued to pull back and pull back and pull back. Which is why the inflation that everybody predicted from the Fed's money money printing never happened. It didn't happen because commercial banks are the monetary system, not the central bank or what everybody calls the central bank, the Federal Reserve. And this has been consistent throughout history and even just recent history. The Japanese experience with quantitative easing was exactly the same. In fact, the Federal Reserve talked about it before even getting to 2007 and 2008. They talked repeatedly about how the Japanese QEs didn't work because the banking sector in Japan was so messed up. So the point of this is that it's what matters is the banks and the Federal Reserve's policies are meant to influence bank behavior. But if those policies can't influence bank behavior, it doesn't go anywhere.
>> Jesus, how decentralized is the US dollar?
>> Very decentralized though. Not decentralized enough. It's run I mean
>> Bitcoin way the way the way you're describing it, we pretty much don't even need Bitcoin anymore. The US dollar is becoming Bitcoin.
>> Well, no, I think it's the opposite. I think we do want cryptocurrencies, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not going to work. But you do want cryptocurrencies because it's not decentralized enough and it's it's basically broken down because it is it is you have a basically a global cartel of banks, which not ideal for a currency. Now, yes, it worked. It worked for many many years and it created unbelievable prosperity as it did. But that was only because of the unique circumstances of you know technological evolution. We needed the banks to make to create a payment network and a payment system that was deep and dependable in order to um allow for the latter half of the 20th century to unlock all sorts of prosperity. And banks were basically the only only kinds of businesses and firms that could do something like that. So they kind of took it on themselves to create this this global payment system that then created a global homogenized reserve currency system. But we've progressed way past that because you have to ask what does a bank actually do? A bank isn't isn't a storehouse of money. You don't put physical cash in a vault. A bank is nothing more than a bookkeeper. It's a ledger keeper. We we use a ledger a form of ledger money. Nowadays with the technology we have and Bitcoin proved this. We have diff different kinds of ledgers that you know that are distributed and decentralized enough we don't actually need banks to uh create a to run a monetary system for a payment network for us. We can actually do um truly decentralized cryptocurrency ledger money. So we can move beyond the banking sector a little bit of disruption involved and a little bit of additional evolution. But the dollar does need to be replaced. It needs it needs to go. The eurodollar let me be clear the eurodollar system is uh past its expiration date. Um I don't know if I I want to read this report but before that I had one more question. Oh based on what you're saying then the you wouldn't be too bullish on the price of gold based on what you're saying because a lot of it you know a lot of the the the the bulls on gold is because the devaluation of the dollar but if you don't think the dollar will be or can be even devalued then the price of gold will not reach the the numbers that people the figures that people are throwing around.
>> Well they're wrong about that. That's the problem is that gold is not an inflation hedge nor is it a comp it's not a competitor to US dollars to begin with. Um gold is simply a safe haven asset. So anything that drives
>> the US dollar is that's one of the features of the dollar as well.
>> Yeah. But those two can can coincide. They're not mutually exclusive. So you can have periods where the dollar is rising in exchange value. And in fact, I would expect gold to rise at the same time because the US dollar is rising in exchange value because of the mechanics of the eurodollar where money supply and money circulation are being tightened and the deflationary consequences of tight money lead to increasing safe haven demand. You saw that during 2008, believe it or not, even though gold was incredibly volatile just because it, you know, it tends to get sold as a collateral of last resort. But overall, gold performed much better than most most other assets despite the fact the dollar was screaming higher and we went through a deflationary uh uh uh deflationary event. It's a mistaken conception. The idea that gold is strictly an inflation hedge or hedge against a falling devaluing dollar. That's just simply not the case and it's not true. So, you can be bullish on gold and still think the dollar is going to go up. In fact, if you think the dollar is going to go up and go up sharply because of deflationary conditions, then you were going to want to own gold because there's going to be more demand for safe haven. And we got to remember it's not gold is not strictly about what's happening with the US dollar or the US specifically. There is tremendous amount of demand for gold from places like China for that very reason. Regardless of US dollar mechanics or anything else, you're sitting around in China, you think, um, not there's nothing going right here. the Chinese system, you know, it's riddled with a a low-grade banking crisis that threatens to pop out any day. Now, you've got the property development sector, a property real estate bust that continues to bust and continues to create all sorts of dangers and downside. The Chinese economy is a mess and getting worse all the time. So, there's tremendous demand for gold from China because it's one of the only assets that you you look around, you think, well, this is probably the only thing worth with worth buying. And again, it's it's the same safe haven type of behavior. So that's what underpins gold. And the more gold goes up, the more you think, okay, what's driving safe haven? And there's no shortage of of stories and explanations uh these days about why there would be a sustained demand for safe haven.
Last question I want to ask you is um who do you think benefited the most or profited the most from the war in Iran? This is what the report says. Alo report just made out made mapped out who actually made money from the Iran war. The list is exactly what you'd expect and somehow still shocking when you see the numbers laid out go through Saudi Aramco total energy so energy companies and starts talking about the price of oil tanker companies as well and then prediction markets.
>> Yeah, you know what the next one's going to be Mario?
>> Which one?
>> The next one's going to be development companies. Um development companies are there's going to be tremendous amount of build. I mean they already talked about the $300 billion fund to rebuild. I mean that's that's just a drop in the bucket. If uh there is some positive resolution here, you expect some of those Gulf state companies, in fact, this may be one of the things that China and she talked about. Maybe Chinese companies are leading the uh the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iran. Uh that's not I mean that's not completely far-fetched either. Those are the going to be the businesses that are really going to win from this as in any conflict. The people who clean up at the end and rebuild and start from scratch, those are the ones who really make the money. And of course there's going to be, you know, rebuilding of arms, restockpiling, and all that kind of stuff. But really, to me, it's the developers that are going to win.
>> H Interesting. Anyone else?
>> Um, you know, financial firms, the UAE,
>> they they always win.
>> Yeah.
>> The UAE because of Fyro,
>> because of a lot of different There's a lot of stuff going on in the UA UAE right now. Yeah. They took a lot of damage and a lot of hits, but I think the UAE positioned itself to come out on both sides. Uh, whatever happens here, um, you're already seeing the UAE, I mean, just what was it today or yesterday talked about, um, um, the UAE is becoming a massive eurodollar center. I mean, they just floated a huge total return swap for Nigeria and US dollar funds. um the UAE status as a dependable dollar distribution money center offshore because the UAE has a special district that is very definition of offshore. I think the UAE has played it very smartly to become a dependable um gateway for financial firms and financial resources to go through the Middle East and on into places like Africa, parts of Asia and maybe financing the reconstruction of Iran and maybe other parts of the Middle East too.
>> Interesting. It's very contrarian to what a lot of people are predicting that the UAE will be one of or people were predicting especially during the war that the UAE will be one of the worst hit countries out of this. But since the war ended early and the UAE is already improving relations with Iran, uh things are not looking that bad at all anymore. You're saying they're not not only they're not looking bad or neutral, they're looking very good.
>> I think they are. I think the UAE comes out that comes out really far ahead.
>> Interesting. Jeffrey, always interesting. I should probably next time I have you on the show just say Jeff what Jeff not sorry not Jeffrey Jeff you tell me what's interesting what's on your mind instead of me trying to come up with good topics. That was a good discussion as always. Thank you so much.
>> All right. See you Mario.
>> Take care man. All right guys um this is it. Um hope you enjoyed today's 11 interviews. So one of them hasn't been published. I'll see you again tomorrow to continue the conversation. Bye guys.