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- [00:02]
Podcast Host (Explain It To Me)
Bare walls, clear surfaces. The minimalist aesthetic is having a moment, and for some it's a form of resistance.
- [00:10]
Podcast Guest or Commentator
I think a lot of people have a sense that, like, we live in this very consumerist society and feel kind of a desire and need to like, push back against that.
- [00:19]
Podcast Host (Explain It To Me)
How to Live with less that's this week on Explain It To Me New Episodes Sundays Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:26]
Podcast Host (The Vergecast)
Foreign
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Heather McMahon
this week on Net Worth and Chill. I'm taking you inside my sold out New York City book tour stop for my brand new book, well Endowed. I sat down with the hilarious Heather McMahon for a night of laughs, real money talk, and honest financial truths. We're getting into everything the book covers from how to actually build wealth, how to protect it, and how to stop leaving money on the table. Whether you've already grabbed your copy of well Endowed or you're still on the fence, this episode will show you exactly why everyone's talking about it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF
- [01:05]
Podcast Host (The Vergecast)
until now, mobile phone companies have worked very hard to ensure their phones do not start fires. But we found one company that dared to go in a different direction and make a phone with fire. Starting as a feature on the Vergecast, we talk about all the greatest and weirdest phone concepts from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Plus, after years of legal battles, Google and Epic are now best buddies, contractually obligated to not say mean things about their app stores anymore. That's this week on the Vergecast. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:33]
Ed Elson
Today's number 14. That's how many months Kristi Noem served as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. That makes her tenure the second shortest in American history. However, the good news is she lasted longer than her dog. Money Market matter. If money is evil, then that building is hell. Welcome to Prof. G Markets. I'm Ed elson. It is March 10th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices rode out a volatile session, with the s and P500 falling as much as one and a half percent. By close, however, the major entities were back in positive territory after Trump said the Iran war was, quote, very complete. Pretty much. Oil prices moderated after surging over the weekend. We'll talk about that shortly. Meanwhile, the dollar climbed and Bitcoin topped $69,000. Okay, what else is happening? The global energy market is facing its most severe shock since the 1970s. The Strait of Hormuz closed for the first time in recorded history, pushing the price of oil above $100 a barrel. On Sunday, it spiked as high as 119 before crashing back down to $85 a barrel on Monday as the G7 signaled it is ready to release strategic reserves. Meanwhile, Qatar halted 20% of the global liquid natural gas supply after Iran fired drones at a Qatari facility. Okay, here to help us break down what is happening in the Gulf and what it means for energy and for oil, we are speaking with Mohammad Sergi, editor at Semaphore Gulf Mohammed. Thank you for joining us. So much has happened in just a couple of days. This story is changing literally by the hour. I mean, oil skyrocketing and then coming way back down. What do you make of what has happened over the past couple of days? And what do you make of prices in reaction to what's happened?
- [03:45]
Mohammad Sergi
Yeah, thank you for having me. This has been just an incredible turn of events, I would say, for the Gulf. And all the eyes went towards Hormuz. And that's the choke point for the natural gas that comes out of Qatar, obviously, and that had a huge price, price spike in gas prices in Asia and in Europe. But even more importantly, it's the choke point for about 30%, if not a bit more than the treated oil in the world. And, you know, it's what comes out from there. It's all of the oil from Iraq, all of the oil from Kuwait, and a significant portion from Saudi Arabia and the uae. The idea here is that we couldn't see any more ships going through over the weekend. And this one was the unthinkable, the closing, the closing of Hormuz. And I think that's why we saw this huge swing up and down. But then when people started looking at, okay, so what, what is actually happening to supply? Is the market well supplied and how much can go through the pipelines that bypass Hormuz? There's a, a pipeline that goes from the east to west in Saudi Arabia usually has capacity, I would say between 5 million, could go up to 7 million barrels a day. So they could, they could potentially move most of the oil that they need to the Red Sea. And there's another pipeline that goes through the UAE down to the Gulf of Oman. And I think once you, once you start factoring that in, the supply scenario changed a little bit. And that's potentially one of the reasons why the prices came back down so quickly.
- [05:21]
Ed Elson
Help me make sense of what exactly markets are reacting to because there seem to be so many different stories here, one of which is Israel striking many of the oil facilities over the weekend in Iran, we all saw that giant cloud of smoke in Tehran that was going viral and seemed to be kind of the image of this war. There's also the fact that they announced the new supreme Leader, who is going to be Haman's son. There's the fact that Trump was then saying that he had opinions on how this regime change would work. So that seemed to be a signal, oh, yeah, they're going after a regime change. Then they kind of pulled back on that. There's the fact that the Strait of Hormuz was closed. And then there's also the factors that seem to be bringing prices down, which is that, I guess G7 nations said, oh, no, we have our own oil anyway, so it's fine. The price action is so temperamental. And it's hard to understand exactly what traders and investors are actually reacting to here and therefore, which things are actually important for people like us, who just live in the US who probably aren't going to get shot down in this war, but will be affected on the consumer side. So my question being, what exactly have markets been reacting to?
- [06:46]
Mohammad Sergi
I think it's more the first part of the factors that you were mentioning. So if this war is extended, if we see no off ramp for the US And Israel and it has to continue, and therefore that choke point stays closed. So at some point you're going to see a supply crunch. And that's really the major fear now. The world is oversupplied with oil. A major theme really, over the last couple of years, looking forward. So if you look at IEA reports, they had it at 4 million barrels a day. Obviously, OPEC for years has been constraining its supply and they've reversed some of their cuts over the last year or so, year and a half or so, because they felt that demand was growing, particularly in India and other Asian markets. But if you take out 20% of the oil, then obviously that's a huge supply shock. So that's the reaction. So it's a fear that this thing is going to last a long time. And now we're seeing messages, even just before coming on here. President Trump had an interview, I believe, with cbs, where he's saying that the major operations or the large part of the war is over with Iran, and hence, is there an end in sight? And he also, I think he mentioned that some ships are starting to come through hormones, some supermax, they're called, the biggest tankers. If they come through, you can basically make a case that there is going to be at least Enough supply to meet demand in the market and hence prices should not be rising at such a rapid pace. But that, that initial fear, that trigger of fear, that's exactly what it is. The traders shot everything up.
- [08:44]
Ed Elson
Well, he wrote on Truth Social, he said, quote, short term oil prices which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA and world and safety and peace. Only fools would think differently. I mean, I think the big question here is like, what will this actually do to the price of gasoline in America? I mean, we've spoken with, with experts who've said that, you know, basically like a $10 increase in the price of oil is going to increase prices at the pump per gallon by around 25 cents. But then the question becomes like, well, what happens if it goes up by $50 one day, down $50 the next day and keeps on swinging back and forth as we are literally seeing right now? I mean, what can you say about what the price of oil will actually do to consumers in America right now?
- [09:36]
Mohammad Sergi
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's a tough, it's a tough question because, you know, it doesn't necessarily, you know, oil goes up to 110 and all of a sudden they go out and change all the signs and they're like, you know, here you go here, you know, you were at 250 or 285 and now you're at 450. Right. So, so there, there's a lag in some of this. I think there's a certain averaging that happens and it's a, there's a moving average over, over a couple of days that they price into, into the pump because it's a refined product.
- [10:03]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
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Mohammad Sergi
This is obviously, no, no, huge relief to people who are really worried about, you know, their pocketbook and how, and how much, you know, their, their main factors in life and gas prices are going to go up. But it's, it's one of the, it's like a question of like, what is the real price of oil and what should it be and should it always be stable at like $75 to $80 a barrel, where that's a fair price or does it change over time? Right, but then how does it affect inflation? It's inflationary, there's no question about that because it rises, it increases the cost and the factors in every single input of the economy.
- [10:39]
Ed Elson
Yeah. Just before we end here, a thought on how you do your job as a reporter, as a journalist covering this stuff. Something that I have been struggling with. I can't tell if the markets right now are proactive or reactive. I can't tell if I'm looking at the price and oil traders are saying this is a reflection of what we expect to happen in the future or if they're completely just something changed. Someone got shot, an oil facility got blown up, and now the price of oil is different. And so my question to you as a journalist who covers this stuff, are you looking to the price of oil as an indication of what is to come, or do you look at the price of oil and does it simply tell you things that you've already known, things that you've been covering as a journalist on the ground? When it comes to what is actually unfolding in this war and in the
- [11:34]
Mohammad Sergi
conflict, it's probably a mix of both, right? So it has been that geopolitical risk premium has been muted for a long time. So there have been certain things that have happened in the Gulf and between the June war. Expectations were that oil should have increased, should have popped higher. And even the first few days of the strikes in this last week or so, we haven't seen, of course, oil did jump, but it didn't jump at the same level. It's that closing. I think a psychological switch happened with hormones. Attacks on oil facilities, attacks on processing plants. And there was always this understanding in a way between all of the Gulf countries that, you know, we're not going to hit critical infrastructure. The attacks, the retaliation from the Iranian regime would be against perhaps US Assets, military assets, that sort of thing. And very quickly we saw that there was an attack on Rasafan, which is the LNG complex in Qatar. There was another one on a processing plant in Bahrain in a refinery. So that escalated it. And then as you mentioned earlier, we believe it's an Israeli attack on a refinery in Tehran. So when you start hitting the actual nuts and bolts of export of crude and products from that region, I think it rightfully so changed their trigger. There's still question and the Qatari energy minister said over, I think on Thursday or Friday that he believes that oil can go up to $150 a barrel if this continues for a long time. There are two, the bypass pipelines that I mentioned earlier from the east west line in Saudi Arabia and the one that goes basically north south through the uae. If those are hit as well, then I could see oil going way back up again because of this, because people would say, are they going to be able to get enough oil out to the market if this all ends in March, there's a lot of analysis out there that says oil stays within this range and is manageable. If it's more prolonged, it changes. There's also the question of the precedent that's been set. So the Arab Gulf states where most of the oil comes out from and where all the really good facilities are in terms of that export, and they have all the ships and all that stuff and the customers in Asia now that they've been attacked and attacked repeatedly. Even if you have a ceasefire or some sort of arrangement with the Iranian regime, but they still maintain their drone capability, their short range missiles and their mid range missiles that they can always play spoiler over any type of negotiation or any type of changes. And that would just bake in a premium into the price. So that's kind of longer term. Do oil prices remain elevated despite a resolution to this current conflict?
- [15:03]
Ed Elson
All right, Mohammed Sergi, editor at Semaphore Gulf. Thank you, Mohammed.
- [15:07]
Mohammad Sergi
Thank you.
- [15:10]
Ed Elson
After the break, the DOJ settles with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Simply put, at profgmedia.com.
- [15:29]
Vanguard Representative
Support for the show comes from Vanguard. The role of financial advisor is to do everything you can to set your clients up for success. There are plenty of ways you can go about it, maybe a leveling up of your fixed income strategy. But bonds can be tricky. The market is huge, rates shift and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with scale and expertise matters. Vanguard brings both. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. Institutional quality isn't a tagline. It's a commitment to your clients. It means top grade products across the board. The Lineup includes over 80 bond funds that are actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and traders. A lot of firms love to highlight their star portfolio managers like it's all about that one brilliant mind making the magic happen. Vanguard's philosophy is a little different. They believe the best active strategies shouldn't be locked away with one person. They should be shared across the team. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go to see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio. That's vanguard.com audio all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor
- [16:34]
Kara Swisher
hey, Kara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to south by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13th through the 15th for live tapings of today explained Teffy Talks, Prof. G Markets, and of course your two favorite podcasts, Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. The stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marques Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu and Robin Arzon. It's all part of the Vox Media Podcast stage at south by Southwest, presented by Odoo. Visit voxmedia.comsxsw to pre register and get your special discount on your innovation badge. That's voxmedia.comsxsw to register. Really you should register. We sell out and we hope to see. See you there.
- [17:33]
Narrator or Interviewer
Ambassador Rahm Emanuel served as President Obama's chief of staff, an administration that had to deal with its fair share of global conflicts. He dealt directly with Israel's prime minister and thought plenty about the threat from Iran. But Emanuel told me that the pace of action from this president in the Middle east is giving him whiplash.
- [17:52]
Podcast Guest or Commentator
In 15 months, this president has taken military action against eight countries just in 15. Now we got three more years to go. In 15 months, Iran twice. But you have Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Venezuela. I'm losing Nigeria today explained in your
- [18:13]
Narrator or Interviewer
feed every weekday and on Saturdays too.
- [18:18]
Jonathan Kanter
Foreign.
- [18:24]
Ed Elson
We're back with Prof. G Markets. After just one week in court, one of the biggest antitrust cases in decades is nearing a resolution. On Monday, the Justice Department announced a settlement with Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the sweeping monopoly case filed in 2024. The DOJ, along with 40 state attorneys general, argued that Live Nation legally dominates the market for live events. One proposed remedy was to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Now, under the proposed settlement, Live Nation will pay damages to states and change how it structures ticketing deals with venues. But the case is not over yet. Only 10 states have signed onto the settlement, while others are expected to keep fighting. Plus, the terms of the agreement must be approved by a federal judge. Still, shares of Live Nation rose 6% following the news. Joining us to discuss this case, we're speaking with Jonathan Kanter, former assistant attorney general for the Antitrust division of the U.S. department of Justice. He's also the man who originally filed this case. Jonathan, thank you for joining us. I want to get right into this because this is a case that you have been talking a lot about. I remember when we last spoke, I said, what is the most important antitrust case that no one is talking about? And you said, this is it, because this is something that really affects consumers. Consumers really have a stake in this because consumers, they know that the price of tickets for live events have gone up significantly over the past few years, and it's because of this monopoly dynamic. And now they're settling. This, to me, seems like a win for Live Nation, but tell us your thoughts. What do you make of what's happened here?
- [20:08]
Jonathan Kanter
Sure, it is a win for Live Nation, and it's disappointing to the extent that this is ultimately the settlement that gets approved by the court. But as you indicated, Ed, we have a situation where you have maybe as many as 30 state attorneys general as of today, I think 27, who are not going to settle, and they want to continue trying this case. And so I'm encouraged by the willingness of the state's bipartisan group of states to fight for what they believe is right. Also, to your point, this is probably the most popular antitrust case in history. It is widely regarded as beneficial to an issue that affects so many consumers and performers on an issue that they care deeply about, which is live music. And in an era where affordability is top of mind for pretty much anyone, it strikes me as politically deficient or political suicide to settle a case like this. Let's put it this way. Breaking up Live Nation Ticketmaster is more popular in this country than breaking up Iran.
- [21:13]
Ed Elson
That is definitely true. Just in terms of what antitrust officials have said here, I'm trying to understand why they have settled here, because as you say, this is not a popular move. People are not going to like this. I don't like it. I don't see why. I mean, if the option was to break this company up and now they've decided to settle and that's good for good for Live Nation, that doesn't seem great for consumers. And then the question becomes, like, why did they settle? And perhaps it's because there was some lobbying happening here. I mean, Gail Slater, who was the antitrust chief before she was just dismissed, she was ousted. Like, why are we settling with Live Nation if it's so unpopular?
- [21:58]
Jonathan Kanter
There are a whole host of questions that have to get answered here and that hopefully will get answered. But the fact of the matter is, the DOJ started the trial, and after four days, the case was going extremely well. By all accounts, DOJ was doing an extremely good job in court and was on a trajectory to have a big victory if they finished the trial to its end. And that was an extraordinary case with an opportunity for an extraordinary result. And when you're winning, you don't pull the plug. It's not how that works, especially when you don't get the remedy that you asked for when you filed the case, which in this instance was a Breakup. So it's quite unclear and raises a lot of questions about when and why and how and who. And hopefully we'll get answers to those questions because under something a little known statute called the Tunney act, antitrust settlements like this one have to get approved and investigated by the court. And so in this instance, the judge in New York will have the opportunity to interrogate the settlement and actually get discovery from the Department of Justice and Live Nation and others about what was said to whom, what was promised is in exchange for this deal.
- [23:07]
Ed Elson
Just in terms of what it looks like to me, I mean, we had Gail Slater in, who you and I discussed was actually someone who was going to be pretty tough on antitrust. It was quite a good pick. If you are pro antitrust, which you are, and I think we are on this show as well. So it looks like what happened is, is that she was working on this. We also learned that there was a lot of lobbying happening where people from Live Nation, also from Hewlett, Packer and Juniper, they would go to the DOJ and they would try to create these affiliations with the doj. And if they got any pushback, what we'd see was Pam Bondi or someone higher up in the administration would say to Gail Slater, hey, get out of the way here, because you're being too harsh on these companies. And we have a relationship with these companies, which is, in one sense, lobbying. And some would also characterize that as some level of corruption. That's certainly a genuine question. Then Gail Slater gets ousted. Then this case that seems to have a lot of momentum, suddenly the plug is pulled. Why did that happen? Who knows? My question to you, it appears that this was a result of lobbying and some level of, honestly, corruption, or maybe that word is too harsh. Is there any evidence that isn't what happened here?
- [24:29]
Jonathan Kanter
There's a lot of smoke. And in terms of the lobbying, they reportedly hired Kellyanne Conway to argue on their behalf and engaged in a whole lobbying campaign and cozing up to the administration. And so there is a lot of smoke whether there's a fire or whether something inappropriate was done. Only time will tell. Hopefully time will let us know for sure. But that's why we have the Tunney act, which was enacted when Nixon, Richard Nixon, actually cut a deal to settle an antitrust case because of promise for political donations. And so the act was created after that to make sure that settlements were actually in the public interest and done for the right reasons. So hopefully we're gonna get some answers to those questions. But right now there's a lot of smoke and a lot of concern because they had this great case, they were in trial, they were doing a great job, and they were on trajectory to get a very, very big outcome. And now they're settling on the cheap.
- [25:30]
Ed Elson
John Newman, who's a former senior antitrust official, he said, quote, you really couldn't send a clearer message that antitrust is dead at the federal level than settling this particular case. Do you agree with him?
- [25:43]
Jonathan Kanter
Certainly feels that way today when you have 27 state attorneys general from all sides of the political continuum filing a motion in court saying that they were not only cut out of the discussions, but don't think that the settlement is sufficient and want to go ahead and litigate. That paints a picture that antitrust is alive and well at the states, the laboratories of democracy, and not doing so well at the federal level.
- [26:08]
Ed Elson
All right. Jonathan Kanter, former assistant attorney General for the Antitrust division of the U.S. department of Justice. Jonathan, thank you. This seems like a story that is not getting enough attention, maybe for real reasons, but it's certainly something we want to keep tracking.
- [26:23]
Jonathan Kanter
Thanks, as always. Great to be with you.
- [26:30]
Ed Elson
If you listened to yesterday's episode with me and Scott, you might have noticed it sounded a little bit out of dipped. And you would be correct. We recorded that episode just before the weekend when markets still hadn't priced in the possibility that this war could get out of control. Oil prices were nowhere near as high as they reached over the weekend, and the stock market at the time was still pretty stable. And that was the debate that Scott and I were having. I believed that markets were underreacting to what was happening in Iran. Scott believed that the markets were roughly getting it right, that the region was perhaps more stable now that we had taken out the ayatollah versus less stable. I disagreed. And that was the conversation you heard. Well, over the weekend, everything changed. Israel carried out more airstrikes. They hit several oil facilities. Iran tried to retaliate, and then they announced their new supreme leader, who was, wait for it, Khamenei's son, which essentially means that this war is far from over. It's probably going to get worse. And so markets finally reacted. Oil hit $119 per barrel. Stocks fell nearly 2%, erasing $6 trillion in value globally. Now, it's possible that the markets are now overreacting and indeed, the price of oil came back down again. But I would argue that this reaction is actually appropriate. I mean, last week, investors were unwilling to acknowledge how bad this could really get they were unwilling to recognize how clumsy this operation really was. And now they are starting to have to contend with reality a bit. And they're pricing in what is probably a more accurate reflection of the instability that we are about to face. The question then becomes are they pricing in all of it or are they still putting their blinders on? Now, I'm not totally sure, but I would argue there are plenty of questions that the market and investors still haven't answered here. They're beginning to answer the oil question, which is what happens if the Strait of Hormuz continues to be affected? But there are plenty of other questions here. What happens to American consumers if the price of gas hits for even $5 a gallon? What if that causes inflation to rise back up above 3%? What happens if the Fed then decides to raise rates because of inflation, but then we're dealing with the double whammy of a worsening labor market and higher prices? In other words, what happens if this leads to stagflation? And then what happens if the stagflation creates a recession or perhaps even a depression? What happens if the war is isn't contained as they promised? And if it escalates beyond the region? What happens if China gets roped in and they decide to, say, support Iran? Or if they decide to strike Taiwan while we're all distracted? What happens if Russia strikes NATO for all the same reasons? And what if this leads to a nuclear detonation? And to be clear, that's not likely. But it is possible. According to the prediction markets last week, the odds of that happening in 2026 were 24%. Now, we could argue that the prediction markets bet is a stupid they're misinformed. They don't know what they're talking about. Maybe that's true, but let's also remember that we are the same people that have pointed out that over the medium and the long term, the prediction markets have tended to be pretty accurate. So what is it? Are they dumb or are they smart? What do we think? These are the questions we have to start taking very seriously. It's not enough to just trust that America's going to work it all out, or that the government's going to work it all out, or the president or Wall Street. If we want to understand our situation, it is on us to understand it. It is our job to look at this issue from every angle and to figure out what it actually means for us, how it might affect our lives. That is what we will be doing on this show over the next several weeks. Tomorrow we will have a panel where we will discuss these issues. We'll probably have more discussions after that. And I have also just written an article on what has happened in Iran, which you can read on my substack right now. But let's be very clear. This is big. And fortunately for my sanity, the markets are finally agreeing. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. And also producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Profit Markets from Profit Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.