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Katie Greifeld
This is an iHeart podcast.
Kelly Cavagnaro
Hi, I'm Kelly Cavagnaro, Managing Director, Head of North America Institutional Distribution at Janice Henderson Investors we believe working together is the way to work better. Like combining your portfolio plans and our in depth strategy. Your valued assets and our valuable insights. Your mission and our vision working in harmony to seek the right investment opportunities. Janice Henderson Investors Investing in a Brighter.
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Matt Levine
News how's your body battery?
Katie Greifeld
Oh my God. I slept terribly last night. I'm so glad you asked. This is bad. I'm at 17, I woke up and my body battery was at 51. Usually I wake up in the 80s or the low 90s.
Matt Levine
So what was weighing on you?
Katie Greifeld
I'm moving tomorrow. I'm psyched. I'm going back to New Jersey. It's where I belong.
Matt Levine
I thought you were going to say you were stressed about your bird.
Katie Greifeld
Oh God, I'm so glad you brought up the bird.
Matt Levine
So Katie has a bird now?
Katie Greifeld
I have a bird.
Matt Levine
So this is like Katie's exotic pet hour.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, I have a lot to say about this bird. So he's a European starling.
Matt Levine
Sure. By the way, one of my proudest moments and like you didn't really notice this, but you showed me like two pictures of this bird on your phone. Yeah, he's like pretty small in these pictures and I was on your phone and I was like oh, a starling. You're like yes, it's a starling. I was like, yes.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, you clocked that.
Matt Levine
I am the bird identifier.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, well they're super common around these parts because they're an invasive species. Which explains why now we're in possession of the bird. My dad actually found him at my parents house like as a creepy crawly little like no feathers, alien baby thing and I called the raptor Trust. And they said, you know, because it's a non native species, we can't help it. They said, try to return it to the nest. I tried that. I couldn't find the nest. And I said, hypothetically speaking, how hard would it be to raise this bird? And they said, actually, it's really easy to hand raise European starlings. So that's what we've done.
Matt Levine
He's sitting here at the podcast right now.
Katie Greifeld
My parents are taking care of him at my direction. It's kind of fun. Cause it feels like they're my employees.
Matt Levine
How many video calls are you doing a day with your parents?
Katie Greifeld
Many, actually. I have a new photo to show you now. He's about three to four weeks old. I'm really proud of this photo. Not that anyone listening can see it. Hold on.
Matt Levine
Put it in the shoutouts.
Katie Greifeld
My dad texted me this morning.
Matt Levine
You know, we can put it in my email.
Katie Greifeld
Oh my God. Yeah, well, we'll put this photo. Look at him.
Matt Levine
Aw, he's a bird.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, he's a real bird now. So we want to release him. So. No, not yet. There's three important milestones that this bird needs to pass before we can think about releasing him to the wild. He needs to be able to perch. He's getting better. My mom has been putting him on a stick and he will perch on the stick. He needs to be able to fly. Obviously he's flapping around. He. He's not flying yet.
Matt Levine
Is your mom like clapping her arms to demonstrate to him?
Katie Greifeld
That's the conversation we keep having is we're not birds, you're not birds. It's really hard. And the third thing he needs to be able to do is feed himself. The hand of God has been feeding him mush. Mush for weeks now. So he needs to.
Matt Levine
What's your mush recipe?
Katie Greifeld
Oh, I'm so glad you asked. So high protein, dry cat food. You soak it for a while. I've been doing a hard boiled egg and then you mash it up.
Matt Levine
Hard boiled egg.
Katie Greifeld
Y kind of feels bad feeding egg to a bird, but he doesn't know. And then I have this like eggshell mix. It's made for chickens to try to give them more calcium so they lay better eggs. But basically what starling, baby starling, growing starlings need is a lot of protein and a lot of calcium. So this mix seems to be working pretty well. I've adjusted it as he's gotten a little bit older. As the photo shows, he looks like a real bird. So we'll See if his bones will support. He continues to learn how to perch and fly.
Matt Levine
Well, I hope you'll bring him into the podcast before you.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, well, chuck him off the balcony. The thing is, and I promise we'll move on soon, is that if he's not able to be released, and we're not going to release him to a certain death, if he isn't meeting these milestones, then we just have a bird now, which isn't the worst thing.
Matt Levine
No, it's clearly the outcome you're rooting for. All right, I think we're done. We'll see you next week.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, no, I think that that was a good update and. Yeah.
Matt Levine
Hello and welcome to the Money Stuff podcast, your weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money. I'm Matt Levine and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion.
Katie Greifeld
And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.
Matt Levine
Katie, there's been some tariff news.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. I feel like we have to timestamp this conversation because everything is changing very rapidly.
Matt Levine
We were recording this at 4 o' clock on Thursday, May 29th.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. And about 24 hours ago or less court, which I learned existed.
Matt Levine
The US Court for International Trade.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. Based in Manhattan.
Matt Levine
Sure.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. That's where the trade is. It blocked the tariffs that Trump put on on Liberation Day.
Matt Levine
Yeah. Most of his tariffs are the Liberation Day tariffs. And actually the pre Liberation Day, like Canada and China tariffs, the opioid tariffs, the fentanyl tariffs, those were all blocked by the court as of like Thursday afternoon. The appeals court for the Federal Circuit, which is like the appeals court that handles that you also just learned exists that handles the appeals from the court from the international trade. That court put a temporary stay so it could consider whether to put a longer stay. So everything's very much in flux. But yeah, the Court for International Trade said these tariffs are illegal.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. And it seems like we're heading to the Supreme Court.
Matt Levine
I mean, certainly. Yes, yes.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah.
Matt Levine
Probably won't be at the Supreme Court by the time this podcast airs on Friday.
Katie Greifeld
Probably not. But, you know, crazy things have happened. I mean, coming into this morning, futures were up a ton on the S&P 500 because it was like, okay, the trade war's over. It's not. It seems like the consensus that has emerged is that Trump has plenty of other tools to put on tariffs somehow. And I don't know what this does to the US Negotiating stance. It feels like it lessens it by quite a bit.
Matt Levine
I guess that's Right. I don't know. It feels like the US Negotiating stance is so mercurial and so unreliable that I'm not sure how much it affects the negotiating stance. Because on the one hand, as you said, he has a lot of tools to put on tariffs. And if you are a trade partner in negotiations with him, the threat has gone from I will put on whatever tariffs I, I like pursuant to my unlimited authority to put on tariffs, to I will find some stuff to do and it'll be super annoying and confusing. It's like, that's not that much better. Right. That's still a pretty bad threat. And in some ways, I feel like a lot of what I read about people who are in the posture of negotiating with Trump. You read about this in, like the situation with Harvard. People worry about making deals because he is not a reliable interlocutor and can always just change the deal. And there's not a lot you can do about it. In some ways, you having a little court supervision might be kind of good for the negotiating posture. I don't know if that's true, but it just seems like it's nice that there's just the soup son of law here and procedures, because I wrote about this today, Thursday. In some ways, this is a complicated case. There's all these statutes, there's all these questions of what things should be left to the executive's discretion. But in many ways, it's a very, very simple case, which is that the Constitution of the United States, which is like a real document, you can read it, It's a real thing that exists. Not everyone involved in the government has read it, but there's a real document that people at least say they care about. The Constitution just says the Congress has the power to impose tariffs and the president doesn't. So all this stuff of executive orders imposing tariffs is really on a first order analysis, just not what the Constitution says. And I think that's kind of the court's starting point here.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah.
Matt Levine
So it seems like kind of simple stuff and there's more complicated stuff, but it is in some ways a relief to see that the Constitution still has some controlling power.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, that does seem like something that you would root for.
Matt Levine
I do. I'm weird like that.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. When it comes to the negotiating stance, the standpoint that I've seen bandied about is basically, if you're another country negotiating with the U.S. this kind of removes the urgency or the incentive to make a deal with the US because now it's in flux. How much power Trump actually has to enact these tariffs.
Matt Levine
Yeah, that's right. But you wouldn't bet against him having a lot of power to do whatever he wants. Maybe you would. I don't know.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, yeah. I don't know. The one consensus, maybe we'll see when.
Matt Levine
It goes to the Supreme Court tomorrow, but I don't know.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. At least on this Thursday, the consensus that has seemed to emerge throughout the day and you've seen this in like the slow bleed of the S&P 500 from our pre market euphoria was this just turns up the volume so much on the trade policy noise, because who knows what's going to happen?
Matt Levine
And then other noise. Right. I mean, one overhang to financial markets is how much rule of law is there. And every time a court says Trump can't do something, you have wider variance in the outcome of how much rule of law is there. Because, like, maybe you'll be like, oh, yeah, the Constitution does say that. Nevermind. Or maybe like Peter Navarro said, nothing has changed after a court said the tariffs were unconstitutional. Like, I don't know. That's like a threatening posture.
Katie Greifeld
It was kind of funny that this all happens within hours of Trump being told about the taco trade.
Matt Levine
The taco trade?
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, the taco trade being Trump always chickens out. It was coined by an FT columnist.
Matt Levine
Rob Armstrong at the ft. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Greifeld
Basically that, okay, Trump comes out with this big announcement. You know, we're going to slap a gazillion percent tariff on so and so. And then, you know, inevitably it's walked back. And that's the taco trade you bet on. This is going to be walked back. And Trump was told about that in the Oval Office and he was upset, as you would imagine, and said, no, this is negotiating, this is how it's done. Which, you know, maybe there's some truth to that, but, you know, as an investor, I can see how you could also turn that into a trade, even though it feels like, you know, in the last couple weeks or so it's become less profitable because it feels like the shock value is fading.
Matt Levine
Right, right, right. So a couple of things. One, like Chubb always chickens out is the insulting to him phrasing of it.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah.
Matt Levine
But the trade is when a drastic tariff announcement comes out, the actual result will be less than that, either because of negotiation or because you check it. Like you can be agnostic about the cause. You can just say, like, this isn't as bad as it sou. The second thing I want to say is that Lewis Ashworth At FT Alphaville apparently got jealous of his colleagues ability to coin a term that became so famous. So he wrote a bunch of other potential acronyms like Mexican food themed acronyms. The one I liked was Taquito, which is Trump always quickly undoes initial trade offensive. Just like a little bit more specific about the thing that's happening. The other thing I want to say is that a reader emailed me to be like, would it be a good trade if you were a journalist to short the market and then ask Trump about the taco trade? Because the mechanism there is you ask Trump about the taco trade and he gets really mad and then he says, I'll never chicken out again. And tariffs get higher and the market drops. I think you could have imagined for a second that Trump getting mad about the phrase taco trade could have been bad for stock prices. But of course it was quickly followed by the trade court ruling, which is good for stock prices. So it's a little hard to isolate the impact of getting Trump mad about the taco trade.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, that's pretty funny. It could work if he had explicitly said, I'm going to tariff even harder right now.
Matt Levine
I think that it would have been reasonable to think that he might have thought that. But then, you know, events moved on. Yeah, that's what happens a lot. That's kind of the real core of the taco trade, which is events just keep moving on.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, well, it'll be interesting to see what happens to the taco trade as we continue to muddle through whether or not these tariffs are illegal and what other types of tariffs we're gonna get. There's all these different tariffs that this ruling doesn't cover. When you think about steel and aluminum, for example.
Matt Levine
Well, so the Liberation day tariffs are 10% to 150% tariffs on everything. Right.
Katie Greifeld
Baseline.
Matt Levine
It's a 10% baseline. But then every country had reciprocal tariffs that were much higher. It's an amazing trauma calculation of the trade deficits. It's like a whole thing. It was truly universal and it was basically, you talk about steel tariffs, you have a sort of national security justification or whatever. You have some theory behind steel tariffs. But the Liberation Day tariffs were. The US runs a trade deficit and we want to stop that. And so we're going to have tariffs that are calculated through some formula designed to zero the trade deficit, essentially. And the court said, you can't do that. The law that he used, IEA, IEPA, International Emergency Economic Powers act of 1977, the IEPA allows you to respond to an emergency. And if you have tariffs that are responsive to an emergency, that's fine, but it can't be the case that all international trade for the last 30 years is an emergency. This is too much. It's too much power to the executive, so you can't do that. But can you find specific goods to tariff and use other laws that say you have specific economic tariffing powers? Maybe. Probably. Often there are more limits in those laws if you have to do fact finding and put out a report. And they're time limited. Right. So it's not as completely broad as the powers that they claimed under aipa, which is why they did the AIPA stuff. They were like, we're going to do everything all at once with no review, no fact finding. So AIPA was the law they thought they could use for that. If they can't use that, then they have to find other laws which will be a little bit more narrow. But you can still do a lot of tariffing.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, I mean, there's section 232, for example. That's what's being used on steel, aluminum, vehicle and auto parts. There's other laws as well, but usually there's some investigation associated with it. So it takes months versus President Trump is sitting in the Oval Office and.
Matt Levine
He signs something because again, the Constitution says that Congress can make tariffs. And so Congress has in the past, past laws saying, here are some tariffs that the President can impose. Right. But like ultimately it's the Congress's tariff power. And the Congress doesn't say in any of those laws the President can make any tariffs he wants. It says, you know, he does an investigation, these particular things for these particular reasons you can make tariffs, but it's not an open ended grant of power. And one thing that the court said yesterday is that if it were an open ended grant of power, and one way to read IEEPA is it's an open ended grant to make whatever tariffs you want. I don't think it's a good reading, but it's like the Trump administration reading. The court said if you read it that way, then it would be unconstitutional for the Congress to give all of its tariff power to the President with no limitations whatsoever. And I think that's right. I have a personal interest in this. I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast, but I've talked about that column. But that idea that Congress can't just give its power to the executive with no constraints is called the non delegation doctrine. And it has had a Controversial career in the Supreme Court. But one of the important cases in the recent Supreme Court about the non delegation doctrine was argued by my wife, who's a criminal defense lawyer. And so I was in the audience for that. And so, you know, I have, like, a little rooting interest in the non delegation doctrine.
Katie Greifeld
I get it. Even though to oversimplify and dumb it down, it seems like that is what has happened here. And it doesn't seem like Congress is too upset about it.
Matt Levine
So the, like, potted history of the non delegation doctrine is that it's never had any effect whatsoever. Like, there is lip service paid to the idea that Congress can't delegate all of its legislative powers to the President. But that lip service is always paid in cases saying, but this delegation is fine. Right, including my wife's case. But there is, like, this notion that interest in it has been revived and, like, one day they're going to find a delegation that is too broad. Maybe it's ipa. I don't know.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Again, timestamp, this is on Thursday. It'll be fun to see how this shakes out. I don't know. I would love to be a fly on the wall in, like, some of these negotiations because I don't know if you're Japan negotiating with the US Right now or India. Do you just wait and see.
Matt Levine
I don't understand why this would really change it that much. I just think that the thing that, you know, as like the Japan trade negotiator or whatever is that Trump really wants to make deals. He really wants to have wins. He really doesn't trust free trade. He's really willing to push the boundaries of the law as much as possible. He's not really aware of what those boundaries are. To think, like, I'm going to tell him to stop it because a court struck him down seems crazy. Now more than ever, you make a deal. Now more than ever, you're like, look, this court was wrong. We understand. Here's our tariff concessions. Maybe you get a better deal now and like, you're rushing to make a deal. I don't know. I don't understand the idea that now you're like, oh, it's fine, no more tariffs. I'll just walk away from the negotiating table.
Katie Greifeld
Seems crazy. I don't know. Maybe you don't walk away, but maybe you say, why don't we break for lunch for a little bit? Why don't we?
Matt Levine
I think now is the opportunity to make a good deal. I don't know. Don't listen to me. I don't know anything. But to me calling him up and being like, I'm in your camp, buddy. I want to make a deal. I know that you have the constitutional power to impose these tariffs. Let's make a deal. To me, this is the opportunity. You don't break for lunch.
Katie Greifeld
That's true.
Matt Levine
You get the deal now. Yeah, no, I'm exaggerating. Because if the deal involves him imposing lower IEBA tariffs on you, those are illegal. Maybe so, I don't know. It's harder to know what the deal is, but I don't know how it changes the posture that much.
Kelly Cavagnaro
Hi, I'm Kelly Cavagnaro, Managing Director, Head of North America Institutional Distribution at Janice Henderson Investors we believe working together is the way to work better. Like combining your portfolio plans and our in depth strategy, your valued assets and our valuable insights, your mission and our vision working in harmony to seek the right investment opportunities. Janice Henderson Investors Investing in a brighter.
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Matt Levine
What.
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Katie Greifeld
Most of our topics today are vaguely and in some cases explicitly Donald Trump. Related Fannie and Freddie, for example. Fannie and Freddie back in the news, another bit of unilateral policymaking in explicit implicit guarantee.
Matt Levine
Yeah, Donald Trump. The verb is so hard. I want to say he tweeted, but in fact he posted on Truth Social, which you can say he truthed.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, he truthed.
Matt Levine
I am working on all caps taking these amazing companies public. But I want to be clear. The US Government will keep its implicit all caps guarantees and I will stay strong in my position on overseeing them as president. So Fannie and Freddie, the government sponsored enterprises, had a long prehistory as being implicitly guaranteed by the US Government. So like they explicitly said, so they guarantee mortgages. They have trillions of dollars of mortgages and they issued mortgage backed securities that are guaranteed by them. And those securities always said these securities are not guaranteed by the US Government. And they said that because otherwise you'd be confused because everyone thought they were guaranteed by the US Government. That's what's called an implicit guarantee. They say it's not guaranteed, but everyone thinks it's guaranteed. Then in 2008, they went bust and they turned out to be guaranteed by the US government effectively because the government stepped in and took them over, bailed them out and made sure that creditors were made whole roughly 16 years ago. And ever since, people have said this can't continue forever. They have to return to private hands. And I always said, why? It's fine. No one.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, calm down.
Matt Levine
Yeah. But so now once again, because Trump is in office and because there's a lot of money to be made, there's talk of returning Fannie and Freddie to private hands. And the mechanics of that are really complicated. And there is opportunity for people to get hundreds of billions of dollars of value. And so that's of great interest to a lot of investors.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, there's bags to be made.
Matt Levine
Bags to be made.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. Which could bring us to Bill Ackman. But we don't have to talk about that.
Matt Levine
We don't have to. But Bill Ackman is one of the big investors in that trade. But Fannie and Freddie were put into conservatorship by the government in the financial crisis. Their stock became in the ballpark of worthless but never stopped trading. And at some point in 2012, I think the government changed the deal from the bailout to say from now on, all of the profits of Fannie and Freddie forever will go to the government and shareholders will Never get anything ever again. Which you might think would make the stock worthless and made it almost worthless. But some people thought that can't be true, like that'll change. And so they bought the stock and now they own stock. And it is unclear from first principles how you would re privatize Fannie and Freddie, but it seems likely that whatever happens, the current shareholders of Fannie and Freddie, who bought the stock at pennies when it was declared to be worthless for all time, it seems likely the current shareholders will get a bag.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. Haven't they already though, like in market prices?
Matt Levine
Yes.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Levine
Like the stock has gone up because people are anticipating that Fannie and Freddie will be returned to private hands. And specifically their private hands, like specifically the existing shareholders of Fannie and Freddie will not in fact be zeroed, but will end up being shareholders of Fannie, Freddie and will get a lot of value.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. It would be kind of funny if some of these big vocal investors who are calling for the reprivatization who have bought the stock when it was pretty much worthless, sold now in this insane run up that it's seen.
Matt Levine
Yeah, why not?
Katie Greifeld
Yeah.
Matt Levine
This good jobs at return.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. Stocks of both companies are trading at their highest level since 2008, but you look at the long term chart going back to the 1980s and it's still nowhere close to where it was.
Matt Levine
Yes. Because right now they're controlled by the federal government and their charters say that their shareholders can never get any money ever. So that's worse than the old business model.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, for sure. I don't know this timeline. Even though Trump is posting on Truth Social about it, it seems like this has picked up in urgency. This process would take years and years.
Matt Levine
I want to just be clear. There's two things. There's like, you can return Fannie and Pretty to private hands and then there's the specific question of how much of it do you give to the existing shareholders? You do zero. You can say, okay, the deal is the deal. And by the way, the deal is hotly controversial. People think it's really unfair. There have been a lot of lawsuits. I want to respect their feelings that in fact the 2012 deal to zero the shareholders, there's a good case that it's pretty unfair, but whatever, given that it exists, you could re privatize them without giving existing shareholders anything. You could just raise new money to capitalize them. You can say there's some corporate complexities to doing that, but you could raise a lot of new money and essentially dilute the Existing shareholders down to zero. And you could do that by saying the government has. I think when I last read about this in January, in the accounting of Fannie and Freddie, they owe the government $340 billion before the shareholders can get anything. And so you could say, okay, we're going to go out and raise $340 billion of new capital to repay the government. And after we raise that $340 billion, then the existing shareholders will have 0.0001% of the companies or whatever. And so their shares will be worthless. Not worthless, but not worth very much. But the other extreme is you can say, you know what, that $340 billion that Fannie and Freddie owe the government, that was a mistake. They don't really owe that, so we'll just cancel that debt. And then the existing shareholders are sitting on shares worth hundreds of billions of dollars or more than $100 billion. And those are kind of the two poles. Right. Existing shareholders have nothing or they have more than $100 billion of equity.
Katie Greifeld
Two scenarios.
Matt Levine
Two scenarios. I don't think it's a priori necessary to choose the second one. I think there's reasons to choose the second one. You might think it's fairer to the shareholders. You might think the shareholders got a raw deal in 2012. It's a reasonable thing to think. And you might think that giving the shareholders a good deal is a good way to. You'll need to raise money for Fannie and Freddie. You'll have better capital markets access if you treat the shareholders nicely. But it's also the case that giving $100 billion of value to these existing shareholders, it's a little bit of an optically strange move.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. I don't know. It feels like any scenario is just going to be messy and strange. So what I care about circling back to I'm moving is what this could mean for mortgage rates.
Matt Levine
Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Greifeld
Like so. Bill Pulte, he's the head of the FHFA which oversees Fannie and Freddie, he had said back in February that any effort to re privatize the two must be carefully planned to make sure that the housing market remains safe without pressure on mortgage rates. So the explic implicit guarantee, even though there's a lot of question marks and details to be worked out there, at least that seemed to remove some of the risk that mortgage rates would spike here.
Matt Levine
Right. Who knows what a re privatized Fannie and Freddie looks like? But here are some possibilities. One is there's an explicit government guarantee that they pay for. So there's a fee and that would be incorporated into your mortgage rate. So it might raise rates. Because right now Fannie and Freddie kind of have an implicit but somewhat more than implicit but less than explicit guarantee because they're in conservatorship and they have a line of credit with the federal government and they don't pay for that or they pay a lot for it. But the accounting is somewhat complicated. But in a world where the government charged a 50 basis point fee for a mortgage guarantee, then that's 50 basis points on your mortgage. You could have a fully private Fannie and Freddie where either they are Fortress balance sheet, AAA super safe and raise a lot of capital and that raises their costs and thus raises mortgage rates. Or they're like, yeah, aa pretty good and raise capital and then possibly the mortgage backed securities trade wider and that raises your mortgage rates. The implicit guarantee is essentially they're backed by the government but they don't pay for that backing. That's probably the cheapest for your mortgage.
Katie Greifeld
Right, let's go with that one then.
Matt Levine
Seems to be what they're going with.
Katie Greifeld
That's good.
Matt Levine
I don't know. There's other stuff too. I was reading a paper today, a privatized Fannie and Freddie. Right now they're arms of the government. They've always been arms of the government. You could imagine them being more free marketsy. Right. One thing that Fannie and Freddie do is there's a thing called a conforming mortgage. And if you meet the requirements of a conforming mortgage which are not that low but not that high, then you kind of get the same rate. The rate for a conforming mortgage is the rate for a conforming mortgage. But you can imagine a fully private Fannie and Freddie having more discrimination among borrowers where there's less cross subsidization and very credit worthy borrowers get lower rates than medium credit worthy borrowers. So it could have the effect of not raising or lowering mortgage rates but just increasing the dispersion of mortgage rates. That would probably be fine for you.
Katie Greifeld
You don't know that.
Matt Levine
I have a guess.
Katie Greifeld
Maybe I have a horrible credit score. You don't know.
Matt Levine
I don't know. I looked up your credit score, so. Yeah.
Katie Greifeld
Well, seems like we're going to be talking about this for years.
Matt Levine
I know, I know. I've talked about it a lot. It's heated up and cooled down over the years and I used to write about it a lot and then I didn't for a long time because in the Biden administration. Nobody talked about this. I used to write about it again in January because people started tweeting about it and now it's like feels like it's kind of coming back.
Katie Greifeld
I feel like the shares are just a good metric of how much this is being tweeted about the shares.
Matt Levine
Suggests the market expects some real action.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, there's a lot of social media activity.
Kelly Cavagnaro
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Matt Levine
Bitcoin treasury companies yeah, when.
Katie Greifeld
Did that phrase become real? I guess MicroStrategy.
Matt Levine
I think MicroStrategy probably coined it years ago, but it's become everywhere in the last few months.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah, especially everywhere like in just in the last few months because MicroStrategy started doing this in 2020.
Matt Levine
I think that when MicroStrategy started doing this, first of all, MicroStrategy was kind of a real company.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. They are a software company.
Matt Levine
Right. And they sort of started slow. They bought some bitcoin, they got kind of memey. And so like early in the days of MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin, you could say, and I probably did say that it looks like every time they spent $1 buying Bitcoin, it increased their market cap by $2. And that's a good trade. But it wasn't super, super, super obvious. Right. They would say things or levered bitcoin. It was like they had a business. Who knows how you value the business? All this stuff. You could look at that and be like, well I can't just copy that. I can't just put bitcoins in a public company and have them be worth twice what they're worth as bitcoins. And so I think it was a little bit slow adoption. People copied them, but not everyone copied them. And then in the last few months people have realized that you could take any random public company and just stuff it full of bitcoins and it'll double the value of the bitcoins. And so that just feels like a great trade. There are a lot of people who own a lot of bitcoins. Right. And if you own $200 million worth of Bitcoin, you can sell them for $200 million. But if you stuff them into a public company, they'll be worth a billion dollars. And that's more.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah.
Matt Levine
So everyone's doing it.
Katie Greifeld
Everyone's doing it. And especially this week it feels like everyone is doing this. So you know, you kicked off the week by talking about Sharplink Gaming.
Matt Levine
I guess they did it. No, they did it Monday. Yeah. Or Tuesday. They did it this week.
Katie Greifeld
Whatever is a flat circle.
Matt Levine
So Sharplink is great. Like Sharplink is the purest form of this because they were a sports betting marketing company or something. Yeah, they had a $2 million market cap as of like mid last week. Someone pumped them full of $425 million of Ethereum or ETH. And so now they're trading at a 2 plus billion dollar pro forma market cap. I want to be clear, I wrote about this and I said market cap, but they don't have $2.4 billion market cap. They have a $2.4 billion pro forma market cap. Right now they have some shares outstanding. Not very Many of them. And the shares trade at a high price. And they have, whatever Bloomberg will tell you, $80 million market cap, something like that. But they've also agreed to issue all these shares to these investors who want to pump them full of Ethereum. And if you count those shares, the market cap is like $2.5 billion. This is important because we talked about QXO a few times. It's the same deal where you have a company with very few shares outstanding and a huge pot of money coming in. And the retail investors are like, oh, look, this company has $400 million of Ethereum and its market cap is $80 million. I should buy some more stock, right? That's wrong because the 80 million doesn't count the 420 million of Ethereum. But the stock is like the publicly traded stub is small enough and the market cap is confusing enough that people are buying it at a 5 or 10 times premium to the value of the Ethereum in the pot. And there's nothing else. It's a $2 million company, but there's Ethereum in a pot and it trades. Is that a large multiple of the value of the Ethereum?
Katie Greifeld
It is somewhat interesting that they went with Ethereum versus Bitcoin.
Matt Levine
Oh, I just think that people need to pick a lane. And bitcoin is so saturated that people are doing Solana, they're doing Ethereum, they're doing.
Katie Greifeld
You mostly hear about coin, they're doing.
Matt Levine
Dogecoin, they're doing everything. But a lot of them are in bitcoin. But it's not only bitcoin anymore. Yeah, I wrote about two other big ones this week. Household name companies are DJT, Trump Media and Technology Group and GameStop. Up both announced Bitcoin treasury buys and their stocks both went down, which is like, that's the end of it.
Katie Greifeld
Okay, the trade's over.
Matt Levine
I don't think the trade is literally over because I think those are special cases of companies that were kind of already meme stocks. But it's definitely the case that any random company for at least several weeks that announced that it bought a lot of bitcoin, the stock would go way up. And people are like, oh, we should do that. And then these two big name ish meme companies announced it and their stocks went down.
Katie Greifeld
It's like, oh, Trade's over for GameStop. So they announced in March that they plan to add.
Matt Levine
Right. This is not new news for GameStop. They actually bought the bitcoin this week and it went down.
Katie Greifeld
But like, in some ways. It's amazing that it took this long for them to come up with a plan that we're going to do this for GameStop. I feel like. I don't know, I would've expected it a couple years ago, but here we are.
Matt Levine
Okay, first of all, I would expect it from amc, who does everything.
Katie Greifeld
It's true.
Matt Levine
AMC bought a gold mine because that was funny, right? Yeah, like amc, sure.
Katie Greifeld
You know, somehow I had forgotten about that. I filled my.
Matt Levine
Sometimes you remember it, I'm like, oh my God, they bought a gold mine.
Katie Greifeld
Maybe we should talk about that more. I would like to get a status report on that.
Matt Levine
I know every so often I'm like, oh yeah, they bought a gold mine. And I write about it, but I never go check on the gold mine. I have no idea. I'm not even sure they literally bought. I think they did some sort of merger with a gold. I don't know anyway. But no, GameStop has always been a little bit less doing every meme. But they do a lot of memes. They've done some crypto stuff. But yeah, I think that if you want to do a bitcoin treasury strategy, you kind of have to be all in on it. And GameStop I think still want to sell video games at the mall. And I think it was reasonable for a long time to think that if you're just GameStop, you don't really have an advantage in doing that strategy. MicroStrategy was there at first. It's not clear why a copycat would be particularly valuable. You might have tried to do something else before getting into the bitcoin strategy.
Katie Greifeld
So you wrote that you compare. Maybe Michael Saylor will do something cooler with its bitcoin than the CEO of djt. But it doesn't seem like there's anything to do with it that's cool other than just buy more of it.
Matt Levine
Okay, I hear you. I don't really disagree.
Katie Greifeld
I don't disagree. They're not going to sell it.
Matt Levine
I was being intentionally vague about doing cool stuff. Okay. One view of these bitcoin treasury companies is that they're sort of like a meta pump for bitcoin. Right. The idea is they will buy all the bitcoin and not sell it and that will cause the price of bitcoin to go up and they'll all be rich. It's just like a diamond hands theory of bitcoin abstracted back one level to these treasury companies. But another theory, and a related theory I guess, is a lot of them, including microstrategy will talk about investor education efforts. We talked about this with 21.
Katie Greifeld
It's another big Jack Mullers.
Matt Levine
Jack Mullers, yeah. Big bitcoin treasury company with tethers bitcoins. And they're like, we're going to do investor education. Or Nakamoto holdings merged with an opioid company, a tiny drug company.
Katie Greifeld
That one I haven't heard of.
Matt Levine
It's called Kindly md. It's just like. It's just random. All these random tiny companies. You can pump them full of bitcoins and they all talk about, we're going to do marketing, media, investor education. It's all, we're going to make the price of bitcoin go up.
Katie Greifeld
Right.
Matt Levine
And so your theory is not only will they own bitcoin, but they'll do stuff to make the price of bitcoin go up. I don't know why that would make you buy them rather than bitcoin, but whatever. But I will say MicroStrategy have a really interesting capital market strategy where they're like, we're going to use every part of our cap structure to raise more money to buy Bitcoin. And you can imagine being like, I'll buy the equity because they will get more attractive funding to buy bitcoin by selling converts at a high volatility. I don't know. That's not a crazy position. But most of these companies are just like, yeah, we're going to buy bitcoin and we're going to talk about buying bitcoin. Why would you pay a premium for that?
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. I don't know. This is a tangent, but I just want to talk to the average employee at MicroStrategy, which is now just strategy, by the way. We've been calling it MicroStrategy.
Matt Levine
It's still officially, whatever.
Katie Greifeld
Nothing matters because they employ thousands of people. I want to talk to an average employee there who isn't involved with the bitcoin strategy at all.
Matt Levine
It is a little perplexing, but.
Thrivent Speaker
If.
Matt Levine
They get paid in stock, they're pretty happy.
Katie Greifeld
I don't know, but I agree, obviously. But do they just think of it like, I work at a conglomerate. There's part of the business that is just so totally disconnected to what I do.
Matt Levine
Right. It's funny. I've always said that the software company really matters because, I don't know, some part. I don't know what part, at least some small part of the microstrategy thesis is they could get in the S and P one day and then they're.
Katie Greifeld
In the NASDAQ 100 because they're a real company.
Matt Levine
Right. And here's the Bitcoin etf. You can't get into these indexes. It's a little bit harder for an active equity manager to buy an ETF share than it is to buy a share of an operating company. So I think there's something very important about what the software employees do at MicroStrategy that's a little bit undermined by KindlyMD and SharpLink, where the operating business is so small, so small compared to the pot of Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Katie Greifeld
Just to your point that perhaps we could see MicroStrategy enter the S&P 500. It is amusing how much crypto exposure there is in the S&P 500 right now, especially with Coinbase being added. These are our. I assume that your 401k is in the S&P 500.
Matt Levine
I don't own any crypto in part because there's a notion of journalistic other. So you're not supposed to own crypto if you write about it. And to me, I'm like, I don't own shares of Tesla, but I own mostly index funds. Which owns Tesla. Right.
Katie Greifeld
So. Yes, you do.
Matt Levine
Yeah. And to me, the neutral portfolio is not owning nothing. The neutral portfolio is owning all of the financial assets in the world in proportion to their value. And so if you own zero Bitcoin, you're structurally biased against Bitcoin because Bitcoin is a trillion dollars of value. So you should own a little bit of Bitcoin to fully reflect the global financial portfolio. And now I do. Through the assets.
Katie Greifeld
Yes, you do. Yeah.
Matt Levine
Why am I so smart?
Katie Greifeld
Why are you so smart?
Matt Levine
If 1% of the global financial portfolio is Bitcoin, why shouldn't I own that 1% of my assets in Bitcoin?
Katie Greifeld
I think that's a pretty reasonable take.
Matt Levine
And I don't have to like it, but I have to like a lot of companies. Right. Like, I'm not right.
Katie Greifeld
Yeah. So you just want a market cap weighted total asset portfolio.
Matt Levine
You're looking at me like that's a weird thing to want. That's like the most normal possible thing to want. Everyone wants that. Just you can't get it, but you can get closer to it by, like, having Bitcoin treasury companies in the S.
Katie Greifeld
And P. Maybe I sound skeptical, but I'm not. I think that's great.
Matt Levine
I'm a simple man. I just want the global financial asset portfolio.
Katie Greifeld
Simple man. I just want to go home and see my bird.
Matt Levine
And that was the Money Stuff Podcast. I'm Matt Levine.
Katie Greifeld
And I'm Katie Greifeld.
Matt Levine
You can find my work by subscribing to the Money stuff newsletter on Bloomberg.com.
Katie Greifeld
And you can find me on Bloomberg TV every day on Open Interest between 9 to 11am Eastern.
Matt Levine
We'd love to hear from you. You can send an email to moneypodloomburg.net Ask us a question and we might answer it on air.
Katie Greifeld
You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review if you it helps more people find the show.
Matt Levine
The Money Stuff Podcast is produced by Anna Mazarakis and Moses Andam.
Katie Greifeld
Our theme music was composed by Blake.
Matt Levine
Maples, Brendan Francis Newnham is our Executive.
Katie Greifeld
Producer and Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's Head of Podcasts.
Matt Levine
Thanks for listening to the Money Stuff Podcast. We'll be back next week with more stuff.
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Money Stuff: The Podcast – Episode Summary
Title: What Growing Starlings Need: USCIT, GSEs, SBET
Host: Matt Levine & Katie Greifeld
Release Date: May 30, 2025
Timestamp: [05:30–10:16]
The episode kicks off with Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld delving into the recent legal upheavals surrounding former President Donald Trump's tariff policies. They discuss the landmark decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade (USCIT), which has blocked several of Trump's tariffs, including those on Canada, China, opioids, and fentanyl.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [06:43]: "The Court for International Trade said these tariffs are illegal."
They further explain that the Federal Circuit Appeals Court has placed a temporary stay on these tariffs, indicating that the situation remains fluid and is likely headed for a Supreme Court review. The hosts emphasize the uncertainty this creates in the markets, highlighting the initial positive reaction in the S&P 500 futures—which fell as the trade war fears persisted.
Market Impact: Levine remarks on the unpredictability of Trump's trade maneuvers, noting,
Matt Levine [07:17]: "The US Negotiating stance is so mercurial and so unreliable..."
Timestamp: [10:16–17:13]
Levine and Greifeld explore how Trump's inconsistent approach to tariffs affects international negotiations. They discuss the non-delegation doctrine, which limits the executive's power to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [09:27]: "The Constitution just says the Congress has the power to impose tariffs and the president doesn't."
The conversation touches on the broader implications for the rule of law in the U.S., with Levine expressing cautious optimism that the Constitution remains a grounding document despite executive overreach.
Timestamp: [19:55–31:04]
A significant portion of the discussion centers on the potential privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that play a crucial role in the U.S. mortgage market. The hosts outline the history of these entities, their implicit government guarantees, and the 2008 financial crisis bailout that led to their conservatorship.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [22:10]: "Fannie and Freddie... had a long prehistory as being implicitly guaranteed by the US Government."
They examine the current push, led by influential investors like Bill Ackman, to return Fannie and Freddie to private ownership. Levine explains the complexities involved, including how shareholders who bought Fannie and Freddie stock at pennies are now reaping significant gains due to stock price increases anticipating privatization.
Potential Outcomes:
Greifeld raises concerns about the timeline and its potential impact on mortgage rates, referencing Bill Pulte’s assurance that any privatization efforts will safeguard the housing market.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [28:24]: "Who knows what a re privatized Fannie and Freddie looks like?"
Timestamp: [32:57–44:16]
The hosts shift focus to the burgeoning trend of Bitcoin Treasury Companies, highlighting how firms like MicroStrategy have popularized the strategy of holding substantial Bitcoin reserves on corporate balance sheets. They discuss the market phenomenon where companies announcing significant Bitcoin purchases often see their stock prices surge, a trend recently amplified by Sharplink Gaming's Ethereum infusion.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [34:02]: "Bitcoin treasury companies yeah, when."
Levine critiques this trend, questioning the intrinsic value added by merely holding cryptocurrencies and pointing out the speculative nature of these moves. He also touches upon other companies like GameStop and AMC, noting their mixed successes with cryptocurrency investments.
Market Implications: The conversation covers the risks of valuing companies based solely on their cryptocurrency holdings, potentially creating market distortions where stock prices don't accurately reflect underlying business fundamentals.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [40:57]: "They're just random tiny companies... they're going to do marketing, media, investor education... to make the price of bitcoin go up."
Timestamp: [43:02–44:37]
In a brief personal exchange, Matt discusses his views on portfolio diversification, advocating for holding a proportionate amount of Bitcoin as part of a global financial asset portfolio.
Notable Quote:
Matt Levine [44:02]: "If 1% of the global financial portfolio is Bitcoin, why shouldn't I own that 1% of my assets in Bitcoin?"
Greifeld affirms this stance, emphasizing the alignment with a market cap-weighted total asset portfolio approach.
Timestamp: [44:41–45:41]
The episode wraps up with standard podcast fare, including calls to action for listeners to subscribe, review, and engage with the hosts via email or social media.
Notable Quotes for Quick Reference:
This summary encapsulates the episode's critical discussions on trade policy legalities, the future of pivotal financial institutions, and the speculative integration of cryptocurrencies in corporate strategies, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't tuned in.