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Joe Wiesenthal
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wiesenthal.
Tracy Alloway
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe Wiesenthal
Tracy, you know what I'm proud of? Ooh, I don't, you know, look, I'm not a trader or anything like that. I don't like trying to make a lot of calls or oh, look at, you know, I'm not even a pundit and get things right. That being said, you know what? I think we did well. I think we took the prospect of a serious change in the US Trading relationship with the rest of the world as a serious possibility.
Tracy Alloway
We took Trump both seriously and literally.
Joe Wiesenthal
We definitely, yeah, I think we took him pretty literally when he was talking on the campaign trail and in the early days after the election when the markets were flying because all they were talking about was tax cuts and deregulation. I think we were giving serious airtime and writing time to the aspects of Trumpism that might not be so market friendly.
Tracy Alloway
I think that's right. Also in our newsletter, just a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about how weird the markets actually were because we weren't seeing that much risk priced in right. Like spreads on credit. Still pretty low. FX volatility at the time was pretty low. Just lots of weird stuff going on in the markets. And there's someone else who noticed this.
Joe Wiesenthal
Well, that's right. So I'm looking at a edition of the Odd Lots newsletter. Everyone should Google Odd Lots newsletter and sign up for it. And we had a guest contributor. He wrote a piece for us on November 27, 2024 when markets were surging and he said this time really is different. And he's a frequent odd loss guest and he has been very in tune with the big changes going on in the world and major turning points. So I'm thrilled to have him back. We are speaking, of course, with the one and only Victor Schwetz, head of Global Desk Strategy at Macquarie Capital who said this time is different? And I think it turned out to be different, huh?
Victor Schwetz
Yes. Yes it did.
Joe Wiesenthal
It turned out to be different. Why? Okay, let's just go back. What were you thinking on Wednesday, April 2, Liberation Day? The chart came out. Massive tariffs announced on the rest of the world, virtually every country, friend foe, et cetera.
Victor Schwetz
Even small islands.
Joe Wiesenthal
Even small islands, depopulated islands. Tariff levels that are like higher than Smoot Hawley or whatever.
Victor Schwetz
Right?
Joe Wiesenthal
What went through your mind?
Victor Schwetz
The question I keep asking myself, what is this administration trying to do?
Joe Wiesenthal
Yeah.
Victor Schwetz
So in other words, what is the objective? Is objective to raise revenue in order to partly pay for tax cuts? Is objective to reshape America into some form? Is it to bring manufacturing back? Is it to change the flow of savings and investments on a global basis? What is this administration trying to do? And my answer consistently is they want to remake America. They want to make it different to what it was before. But you can't remake America unless you remade the world at the same time. So it's a revolutionary movement rather than just a little bit of a bypassing it for problems navigating a few bumps on the road. It's much, much deeper. The only question that I keep coming back is what is a pain threshold and what are the sort of brakes on the system? Because most of the breaks we've been discussing for the last four or five months have either disappeared or were in some form co opted by the system. So there is only very few breaks left. And so one of the breaks is really the pain threshold at which stage people will feel that their lives have gone much worse than they used to be. And the other break, of course, is everything to do with electoral cycle associated with it. And so to me, that's the only question. It's not that they there is any consistent economic theory behind what this administration is trying to do. Every time I listen, it's very clear that they don't fully understand sectoral balances. They don't fully understand that you can't have declining deficits and rising capital inflows at the same time. So it's clearly not guided by some conventional economics. It's sort of guided by a desire, as I said, to change America and different parts of administration of different views. So there is a technocratic part which is Elon Musk Andreessen, Peter Thiel. They have very different views. They're much more global. They want technology to progress. They open to immigration. There is a whole range of things. Then there is a populist wing, probably JD Vance is the most obvious example of that which are completely opposite. Returning America back to 1950s or maybe even late 19th century, closing the borders. Then there is a little bit more technocratic wing saying that what Bernanke and Greenspan were discussing in the past, which is making sure that savings and investment on a global basis actually balances at some point in time somewhere. And so all of those wings are in conflict. If they are in conflict, expect irrational moves, quick shifts, but do not expect that suddenly tariffs are going to go away. Suddenly restructuring of capital flows will just go away and normality will return.
Tracy Alloway
Okay, so you mentioned capital inflows. And this, to me seems to be the big hole in the Trump administration strategy, such as it is. And it's, we want to build a bunch of stuff in America. Ostensibly, we want to boost manufacturing. Maybe that goal sits alongside a bunch of other goals. As you just mentioned, that's really expensive. And when I look at the markets right now, it's very unclear to me where that money is actually going to come from.
Victor Schwetz
Yeah, I agree. One of the ways you can try to handle basically deglobalization of capital, because so far we've been talking mostly about deglobalization of goods. We have not yet spoken about deglobalization of services. But with goods and services comes capital. And so when we start talking about deglobalization and fracturing of capital, that's where wealth funds come in. That's where various superannuation and pension funds come in. Now, a lot of countries already either started that or significantly increased the size of those funds. For example, Korea will start much higher contribution to their pension funds. So if you think of Australia, Australia already done it, Singapore has done it, Norway has done it. More and more countries are talking about creating some form of pool of capital within those countries. But once again, is it efficient allocation of capital? Not necessarily. Is it looking after the interest of pensioners that they're supposed to service? Not necessarily, but that could be one way that you actually will accumulate some capital over time in order to fund it.
Joe Wiesenthal
I wanna go back to your point about the revolutionary element within Trumpism. Do we need to start looking at Lenin, the Russian Revolution, Mao Zedong to get a. Or China to get a better understanding of what this sort of like zeitgeist or impulse?
Tracy Alloway
Can I just say, can you imagine asking that question like a year ago? Yeah, well, I have changed.
Joe Wiesenthal
I got into my, you know, I got into my 20th century history habit, like, right at the right times, I read a bunch of Books.
Tracy Alloway
That's right, you're middle aged Destiny.
Joe Wiesenthal
And what I'm trying to really ask Victor is I want him to validate my choice to take up a 20th century revolutionary history hobby. Was I right to go back and start reading all those books as I.
Victor Schwetz
Got into my mid-30s? You do. And you can go to 19th century as well. Basically anything that resembles more or less the modern times. And there were various breaks in the system. Now remember us I keep highlighting is not a nation of laws or rules. It's a nation of habits. It's a nation of norms. Usually laws in the US are designed very sloppily. And the idea is that we need to compromise. Eventually the judiciary branch will figure out where exactly the limits are. And so founding fathers never knew whether they want to have monarchy or whether they want to have democracy. Like initially, George Washington was supposed to be addressed as His Majesty. It was George Washington who insisted on being called Mr. President rather so they were never quite sure what to do. So they never delineated the power. What is an executive power, what is a state power, what is a federal power, what is legislative, what's judicial? And so the result is US is a nation of norms, whereas Europe is a nation of rules or the nations of rules. And so the result is in the US it's actually relatively easy to smash those norms if anybody wants to. That's what Andrew Jackson tried to do. That's what Abraham Lincoln did. That's what Theodore Roosevelt did. That's what FDR did, That's what Richard Nixon did. And so what you're seeing is every time those changes occur, there is a reason why Andrew Jackson or FDR behaved the way they did. And there was a reason why they were pushing executive branch as aggressively. And so the reason for that is some kind of a displacement within those countries. And so you can't necessarily compare to cultural revolution because some of the drivers were different. You can't necessarily compare to Bolsheviks in Russia. But the essence is the same. In every one of those cases there was a dislocation. And one of the answers during dislocation is some form of populist approach. Because the right wing usually does it better than a left wing. Because the right wing essentially saying in many ways cultural Revolution was the right wing. They essentially saying blame the foreigners, blame the elite, blame cosmopolitanism. We must go back to tradition. Whereas left tends to be dominated by more complex social and economic issues.
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Tracy Alloway
With other countries and their history, but can you talk about the parallel that you see in in US history? What time period is, you know, 2025 most similar to?
Victor Schwetz
Well, if you, if you go back through a relatively short US History, probably the times of Andrew Jackson, probably the times of Abraham Lincoln, and I would argue the times of fdr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt probably will be the most similar periods. You can add Richard Nixon, but that was very different in my view. The same with Theodore Roosevelt, who also was smashing quite a few things. I think it was different. But those three I sing in my view, which is the beginning of the US with the first populist wave in 1820s, 1830s, the Civil War, and the 1930s was FDR.
Tracy Alloway
Why FDR though? Because it seems like the Trump administration is backing away from a lot of fiscal spending.
Victor Schwetz
Yeah, well, the idea is not whether you're fiscally spent or not. The idea essentially is what is the executive branch allowed and not allowed to do?
Tracy Alloway
Oh, I see.
Victor Schwetz
And the other idea is the government penetrates more and more of your life. So on the one hand, Republican Party says we're going to deregulate some of the regulations. On the other hand, they're telling companies what their margins should be and what their prices should be and what policies they should pursue internally, whether culturally or otherwise. So is Republican Party deregulating party? Well, the answer is no, it isn't. It's actually penetrating government much deeper. And that's very much what FDR did through a variety of programs that he tried through 1930s.
Joe Wiesenthal
You know, I would obviously love to just sit here and talk history and political theory with you too. But I know also, you know, in your day job, you go around the world and you talk to people and they ask you questions, et cetera. One of the things that we've been talking about is this sort of like, you know, the end of American exceptionalism, which has been at least, probably longer, but in some sense at least a 15 year story in markets. The only game in town is the US Global diversification is for suckers and losers, et cetera. Now suddenly you get these little impulses of change. When you're around the world talking to people. Do you sense that there is a real opportunity for a meaningful shift in terms of allocations of discretionary investment capital?
Victor Schwetz
Yes, there is no doubt that the last three months was a incredible shift away from American exceptionalism. The view essentially if you go to late last year was, yes, there will be a lot of stuff going in the social and cultural areas, there will be a lot of stuff going on in other stuff in other things. But from an economic point of view, US will continue to pursue a relatively rational policy. So as soon as you sort of undermine that pillar, then people start asking question, what is exceptionalism of the United States? Why US has been growing faster than other countries over the last 15, 20 years? What were the drivers? Are you undermining those pillars? Are you undermining those drivers? Now, other countries are not necessarily exceptional. So if you think of Europe, they're suffering from excess capital, unlike the United States, they have slower growth rates, they're mostly mercantilist. But on the other hand, if Europe is shifting, the growth rates will improve, utilization of capital will improve, and they will not be as dependent on trade as you go forward. So if you think of US equities adjusting for inflation, risk premium did go up from two and a half to 3.5%. But if you think of Europe or if you think of China, for example, you're Looking at about 6 to 9% inflation adjusted risk premium. So should that risk premium come down, in other words, if US is not such so distinctly different to Europe or China, why should it be trading at 20 times when China is trading at 11 times? And so increasingly those questions are asked when you tell people, but you know, US might have an existential problem, but Europe and China have a massive structural problems. You do understand that China is in a liquidity trap that they will not be able to get out very easily unless there is a paradigm shift. You understand that Europe also have a structural problems they need to overcome. And so there is a limitation. The way I describe it, we gradually go into the world that no one is exceptional and therefore it becomes much more tradable opportunity between the markets. Rather than saying, as you correctly said, Joe, over the last 15 years, you never bet against the US and by the way, if you think of that phrase, never bet against the U.S. if you said it in 1930s, it would not have resonated. If you said it in 1970s, it would not have resonated with people that you don't bet against the United States. So we kind of going into this period largely, I must say, for self inflicted reasons, but nevertheless, I think you're right. There will be more cross flow of capital into other markets.
Tracy Alloway
So speaking of risk premia, one of the things, just one of the things that has happened in recent days is we saw a spike in U.S. treasury yields. And I think again we're recording this on April 8th. Yesterday, Monday, April 7th, we saw the yield on the benchmark 10 year go from like just below 4% up to I think around 4.2%. And everyone's kind of scratching their heads because normally you would see treasury yields go down because people buy bonds as a safe haven. Right. What's your explanation for yields going up?
Victor Schwetz
Well, to me there are two explanations. The same applies to US dollar because normally you would argue that when uncertainty is high, risk is high, people go into US dollars and into US Treasuries, but now they do not. They go into other places. There is even discussion that European bonds or Japanese bonds might be a better place to be. So there are two things. One is US Exceptionalism that we've just discussed with Joe. The other one is potentially liquidation of positions that is occurring because remember an average American is probably, if you include the currency, 10, 15% worse off than what they were, poorer than what they were, say on January 1st. And so there is some liquidation that is actually occurring as well.
Tracy Alloway
So sell what you can, not necessarily what you want.
Victor Schwetz
Sell what you can. So to me there are two answers. One answer is a sunsetting of US Exceptionalism and the other answer is liquidations. However, coming back to that historical perspectives, Roman Empire survived many anomalies and many poor administrators, so to speak. And the reason was the underlying strengths of Roman society and Roman economy. And so the question is whether the underlying strengths of the US which it can contribute, labor, capital, it's growing multi factor productivity, it's got the best balance of tangible and intangible assets. It's got a tremendous geopolitical position whether those positives ultimately will reassert themselves or at the very least reduce the degree of drag that otherwise would have occurred. And to me, I'm still hopeful that that is the answer.
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KPMG makes the difference by creating value like developing strategic insights that help drive M and A success and embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage or deploying tech enabled audits to deliver more accurate and transparent outcomes. Brighter insights, Bolder solutions, Better outcomes. It's how KPMG makes the difference every day. KPMG make the difference. Learn more at www.kpmg.us insights. Join us in New York or via livestream on May 13 for Bloomberg's Winning the Innovation Modernizing Without Disruption event and Networking Reception. This event will gather executives to share experiences and provide insights into strategies for implementing groundbreaking AI, cybersecurity and data management technologies that will transform your workplace. This program is proudly sponsored by Rocket software. Register@Bloomberglive.com innovation by the way, we're recording.
Joe Wiesenthal
This April 8th right now. It's 9:20am President Trump posting to his Truth Social account. I just had a great call with the acting president of South Korea. He says they have people on the plane right now. They're clearly in the mode now where they're like, oh, we're like trying to this is about deals. Because there have been other. I mean, yesterday, for example, there was an FT column from Peter Navarro saying this isn't about deal making. So even the question of is this about negotiations or deal making is fluid. And there's probably, if we're being honest, some sensitivity to the market going.
Victor Schwetz
I mean, I mean, there are plenty of inconsistent stuff. But the question you're raising would the market react positively when we get more and more announcement that the countries are negotiating? Absolutely. You have to remember small countries have no leverage whatsoever. So whether you're Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, whatever you are, you have no leverage.
Joe Wiesenthal
They have nothing to offer.
Victor Schwetz
Well, well, well. The thing is, the thing is that at least Korea does have some domestic market. To ask a country like Sri Lanka, who is poorer and relatively small, to run a balanced trade with the United States is impossible. So the only countries that are capable of a pushback is Canada, uk, European Union, China and Japan. Now, UK and Japan decided not to do it. And so the question comes down to Canada, European Union and China, an extent to which they're going to play a hardball. But to have 50 countries or 60 countries or whatever, the number is coming in trying to negotiate, that's an easy part. Now the market will react to it, but it's just temporary. It's nothing more than that.
Joe Wiesenthal
By the way, Tracy, Trump says he's also waiting for a call from China and he says China really wants a deal. So I'm just, yeah, yeah, I Have.
Tracy Alloway
This image in my head of Trump, like, sitting by the phone in the Oval Office, just, like twiddling me one, hearing me. Yeah, exactly.
KPMG
Okay, so okay to text twice.
Joe Wiesenthal
I texted and I feel bad, like, oh, he doesn't have read Xi Jinping. Doesn't have read receipts on. I have no idea. Keep going.
Tracy Alloway
That's right. Okay, so we mentioned in the intro that up until recently, markets had been, like, pretty quiet, pretty complacent, you might say, given what's happened over the past week or so. Now that we've seen the big crash in stocks, we've seen spreads on, you know, high yield investment grades start to go up. It's not a blowout necessarily, but it is up significantly. Is risk sufficiently priced in at least for the short term?
Victor Schwetz
Nobody knows because it depends what the policies will be. If the policies are not changed, then the risk is nowhere near priced. And in fact, if the high yields were, say, triple C, which are now 10, 11% spreads, if they go up to 15, the world will freeze. If the average spreads, which are now more like four and a half, go to six, both global economy and the US Economy will freeze. So there are some breaks, as I said, on a system, at the end of the day, you can't freeze it. We saw what happened in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Florida. At the end of this year, you're gonna have Virginia, New Jersey coming up. Then you have, of course, you have a midterms. So there has to be, if certain Texas senators are coming out and saying that there's gonna be a bloodbath in midterm if this continues. He's absolutely right. So there are checks and balances still in the system. Them. But one of the things to remember that even if we pass the high point of tariffs, we might not have passed the high point of other things that are going to come through. And so the question is, over the next several years, are you going to continue seeing it? And I think the answer is yes. We didn't talk about geopolitics, for example, an extent to which that could shift as well. So it's not just tariffs.
Tracy Alloway
So speaking of breaks and checks and balances, you mentioned earlier this idea of a pain threshold for Americans. Talk to us a little bit more about that. Like, where do you sense the pain threshold actually is and what matters most to potential voters?
Victor Schwetz
Well, I think the way I look at it, there is a very solid part of the population which actually bought into the idea that you must burn down the house in order to build a bright future. And I don't know whether it's 30% of the population, one third, but there is a very large constituency which fully accepted that. So when Scott Basson talks about detox, this is the audience that accept that whatever you want to build requires pain in between. But on the back of that community, you can't really have political capital because there are other people who switch for a variety of other reasons, primarily inflation, inequalities, immigration. And so that could constitute as much as 20% of your audience. And to those people, I think the pain is already there. And that is why at some point in time, and I agree with Jamie Dimon, I think he said something like, we need to wrap it up reasonably quickly. I think I would agree with you. Not just because of economic uncertainty and investment uncertainty, not just because forward soft data, which continues to show enormous collapses occurring, but also because the pain is going to spread much, much wider and the hard data will start backing it up very, very quickly. Some of the paying companies, some of the collecting companies are already seeing that you already see in the mortgage market that. So you need to wrap it up. And I think that's what the market is looking for. Now, Federal Reserve, of course, in a difficult position because even if we assume average tariffs go down from say 25% to 15%, that still implies an inflationary spike, which could be as much as 100 basis points or more. So you'll start looking at the PCE of probably 3.5% or more as you progress through the year. On the other hand, economy will be slowing. So the question is whether FAT will take it as a transitory. And the other question that we keep raising is that we're seeing elimination of independent institutions across the United States. It doesn't matter. Security and Exchange Commission, epa, whatever that is, what is actually protecting Federal Reserve? And the answer, as I said earlier, US is not a nation of laws and rules. It's an emanation of conventions and norms. So there is actually not a great deal of protection legally that Federal Reserve has. So the next step on this journey, if in fact Federal Reserve is caught between rising inflation and slowing gross rates, otherwise known as stagflation, if they're actually caught in that, the question is whether Federal Reserve will be able extent of independence that they have been enjoying certainly over the last several decades.
Joe Wiesenthal
Yeah, we did a really great episode last week, I think, with Lev Menand on exactly this question and how in the end it's just the norms and if the norms change, that's it. Victor Schwec thank you so much for coming back on Outlaw. It's always a thrill to catch up with you.
Victor Schwetz
Thank you. Thank you.
Tracy Alloway
Thanks so much, Victor.
Joe Wiesenthal
Tracy, I. I love Victor's characterization of the US As a country of norms and Europe as a country of rules. Because I always think, like, I've said that, joked about every time I'm in Europe, and it's like you're with a group of people and you like, try to get like five. Squeeze five people into a cab, you know, and they're like, no, it's impossible. It's impossible. And then they eventually like, okay, you can, like, squeeze one in. They love saying that over there. I've been observing this all. No, it's impossible.
Tracy Alloway
How often are you squeezing into cabs.
Joe Wiesenthal
With five Europeans drinking or something or whatever, like, with friends and. No, it's impossible. It's impossible. Oh, can we get one more person? Can we wait? And anyway, well, okay, I think that's not the point. I just wanted to go on this rant about this impulse in Europe to always say everything's against the rules.
Tracy Alloway
I mean, it's right. It's. Yeah, okay. All right. I do think the norm's point is really important, and we've been bringing it up on the podcast quite a lot. Like, so much of the US Is based on habits and I guess a sense of shared values or a sense of this is the way things have always been done. And we're just going to be polite and keep to the guardrails that exist. Well, they don't really exist. They're not codified necessarily in the law, but we're going to keep them because if we don't, that would be bad. That's gone for sure. And I think this is feeding into some of the risk premium that we're seeing around US Assets dollars in US Treasuries, as Victor pointed out, like, we're kind of getting a denormalization discount on U.S. assets.
Joe Wiesenthal
Yeah, it feels like it. It certainly does. And like, again, and the most simple norm is that policymakers want stocks to go up.
Tracy Alloway
Yeah.
Joe Wiesenthal
And they were cool with their.
Tracy Alloway
That's what.
Joe Wiesenthal
Now, I think maybe right now, the middle of this week, we're seeing a little change because I think there is this little bit, like, whoa, okay, maybe we left our hand on the stove a little bit too long. You can't just have multiple days of meltdown that are as intense as March 2020 or 1987. So you get these headlines about deals, and those are report about Scott Besant. But like, you know, it's very, it's very chaotic, but it does feel like maybe there's some sort of sensitivity going on to what's going on in the market. But this was a great point of Victor's, like, what are the thresholds that kick in? The soft data has been absolutely terrible. It seems like only a matter of time before that spills into hard data. We'll see.
Tracy Alloway
Well, the other thing I would say is the administration has set up many different goalposts and it kind of switches between them. So Trump will talk about how much stocks went up in his first term. But then there's also this narrative that if stocks go down, you know, lots of people who were shut out of the market are going to get their chance to buy the same with housing. So I don't know, they, they can kind of spin it either way. Like, if stocks go down a lot, that's successful for them. And if stocks go up, that's successful. It's weird.
Victor Schwetz
Yeah.
Tracy Alloway
All right, shall we leave it there?
Joe Wiesenthal
Let's leave it there.
Tracy Alloway
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Joe Wiesenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Check out Victor Schwetz's writing. Just Google Victor Schweitz Odd Lots newsletter and you can see all of the things he's written for us. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmenarmon, Dash O'Bennett at Dashbot, and Kalebrook Brooks at Kellbrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com oddlots where we have all of our episodes and that daily newsletter you can subscribe to. And you can chat for free 24. 7 in our Discord with fellow listeners. Go check it out. Discord, GG Oddlauts.
Tracy Alloway
And if you enjoy odd lots, if you like it when we connect politics with what's going on in the markets and history like Victor Schwetz does, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel on Apple Podcast and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Joe Wiesenthal
SA.
Odd Lots Podcast Summary
Episode: Viktor Schwetz on Trump's Historical, Revolutionary Moves
Release Date: April 9, 2025
Host/Authors: Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway, Bloomberg
In this episode of Bloomberg's Odd Lots, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway engage in a comprehensive discussion with Viktor Schwetz, Head of Global Desk Strategy at Macquarie Capital. The conversation delves into former President Donald Trump's transformative and revolutionary policies, particularly focusing on changes in U.S. trading relationships, tariff implementations, and their broader economic implications.
The discussion opens with an analysis of massive tariffs announced on virtually every country, including small and depopulated islands, surpassing historical precedents like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
Schwetz emphasizes that Trump's administration pursued a revolutionary agenda aimed at fundamentally altering America's economic landscape, which required simultaneous global changes.
The conversation shifts to the deglobalization of goods and services, highlighting the challenge of sustaining capital inflows necessary for ambitious domestic projects like boosting manufacturing.
Schwetz discusses how countries are responding by increasing contributions to pension and wealth funds to manage deglobalized capital, though he questions the efficiency of such allocations.
A significant portion of the episode draws parallels between Trump's policies and historical revolutionary movements. Schwetz compares the current trajectory to periods under Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR).
He elucidates that like these historical figures, Trump's administration sought to aggressively reshape the executive branch's power, though with differing motivations and outcomes.
Schwetz introduces the concept of a "pain threshold," referring to the point at which economic hardships begin to significantly affect voters' perceptions and political support.
He warns that prolonged economic pain could lead to widespread dissatisfaction, potentially triggering political upheaval.
The hosts and Schwetz analyze recent spikes in U.S. Treasury yields, unusual in times of uncertainty when yields typically fall as investors seek safe havens.
Schwetz attributes rising yields to diminishing faith in American exceptionalism and ongoing liquidation of assets as economic conditions worsen.
Schwetz discusses the erosion of the long-held belief in American exceptionalism, leading to a reassessment of risk premiums associated with U.S. assets.
He suggests that as the U.S. is perceived as less exceptional, investors may diversify away from traditional U.S.-centric portfolios, increasing capital flows to Europe and China.
The episode touches on the challenges faced by the Federal Reserve amid rising inflation and economic slowdown, compounded by the diminishing independence of institutions.
Schwetz expresses concern over the Federal Reserve's ability to manage economic stability without institutional safeguards, given the current political climate.
The hosts and Schwetz wrap up by reflecting on the fragile balance of norms and the potential for further economic and political instability. They acknowledge the resilience of U.S. underlying strengths but remain cautious about the future trajectory.
Joe Weisenthal [30:43]: "Well, it is similar to getting a denormalization discount on U.S. assets."
Tracy Alloway [30:31]: "It's kind of feeding into some of the risk premium that we're seeing around U.S. Assets dollars in U.S. Treasuries."
Schwetz remains hopeful but underscores the importance of monitoring how quickly the pain from current policies will impact broader economic indicators.
Viktor Schwetz [03:24]: "They want to remake America. They want to make it different to what it was before."
Tracy Alloway [06:28]: "That's really expensive. And when I look at the markets right now, it's very unclear to me where that money is actually going to come from."
Viktor Schwetz [12:55]: "Probably the times of Andrew Jackson, probably the times of Abraham Lincoln, and I would argue the times of FDR."
Viktor Schwetz [25:50]: "There is a very solid part of the population which actually bought into the idea that you must burn down the house in order to build a bright future."
Viktor Schwetz [27:50]: "The question is whether Federal Reserve will be able to extend the extent of independence that they have been enjoying certainly over the last several decades."
Tracy Alloway [30:31]: "It's kind of feeding into some of the risk premium that we're seeing around U.S. Assets dollars in U.S. Treasuries."
This episode of Odd Lots provides an in-depth analysis of Trump's unconventional economic policies and their ripple effects on global markets and U.S. financial norms. Viktor Schwetz offers valuable historical context and foresight into potential future shifts in global capital allocation, the erosion of American exceptionalism, and the consequential adjustment of risk premiums in U.S. assets. The discussion underscores the complexity and interconnectedness of political decisions and economic stability, offering listeners a nuanced perspective on current market dynamics.
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