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- [00:01]
A
Bitcoin is facing a massive macro shift as global chaos worsens. I think that everybody agrees that the situation in Iran right now is a bit of a quagmire and that markets hate uncertainty. And we have more uncertainty, seemingly than ever. In fact, the uncertainty index for the world is at the highest, by many, many multiples it's ever been in the history of all time. We're going to break down everything that's happening in the macro and what it means, of course, for bitcoin with Dave, Mike and James. Let's go, let's go.
- [00:47]
B
Let's dope.
- [00:48]
A
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Macro Monday, where we argue about the infinite supply of bitcoin on a daily basis. I've got Dave and James here. So far, Mike's, Mike's like the most popular commodity analyst on the planet. It's like the super bowl with award Iran right now. So every time we have a show, he's like, I just got to jump off for radio for 15 minutes. So Mike's going to be joining us in a little while, which means it's up to us to do the morning meeting. I guess this is the morning meeting.
- [01:20]
C
You know, it's too bad because I wonder how he explains how, you know, explains gold and, and, and what's going on there. But, you know, we'll get to it. We'll leave, I'll leave that. I'll leave my poking him until he, until he comes back.
- [01:34]
A
I mean, this is interesting, actually. I'm just going to tell you right now. I mentioned this before, the World Uncertainty Index here, you know, like, I don't know how they measure this, to be honest, but the World Uncertainty index just hit 105,000, the highest level in recorded history. I mean, when you look at Covid, it's been dwarfed. And this just keeps going up. I mean, doesn't this single image just kind of tell you everything you need to know about the confusion in markets right now?
- [01:57]
C
I think that's exactly right. I mean, like, there are certain things that make sense, ish. You know, it makes sense, ish that gold and bitcoin would be going higher. Frankly, the absolute levels make no sense. And the reason we know that is the only thing. There's only one thing that's not uncertain. There's only one thing that's not uncertain, and that's that when you do it, when there's massive destruction and disruption, governments are going to need to print money to extend the debt that is out in every single, you know, major economy. It's the only thing we know. And so the denominator is going to change. And, and that as a result should mean that all of the things being equal, that assets that are denominated in dollars or yen or euros are going to be higher in nominal terms. They don't have to do a damn thing. That's the only thing we know. Scott so then the sole question is what, what, what do we not know? Well, lots of stuff we don't, right. We don't know what's going to happen with oil prices. I mean, oil's over, West Texas is over 100, Brent's at 114 right now. But if you listen to various people who talk about the, you know, what the importance of the straits and what a protracted closure of the straits would be, it should be at 150 by now, right? That's just truth, right? You know, that's what people were saying a week ago. They're saying we'd be at 150 if the Straits stay closed and have no prospect of opening. Well, guess what? A week later, the state straits are still closed, no prospect of opening, or at least so we're being told. And so yet oil is more or less where it was last week. And within that, it proves one point, a point that I make and hammer and every one of our listeners should just tattoo this to the inside of your eyeballs if you're trading, and that is markets move based upon surprise and what is differing from your expectations. So if your expectations a week ago were the straits are going to be closed and, and assets weren't going to move that much because we were waiting to see what happens next, then don't be surprised when assets don't move that much, right? If on the other hand, you think, oh well, this piece of news that everybody knows is going to make me rich because I'm going to figure it out first. That's how come you over leverage and die when you're wrong. And so it's all about what is the difference of what people expect. That's my thought this morning.
- [04:28]
D
Well, it's something, you know, something that's interesting about all this too is, you know, we've talked about quite a bit about how oil price is rising. You know, that's the largest input for every single unit of production and, and distribution of, of any product around the world, right? And that, that in and of itself drives inflation, puts the Fed in a terrible position because now they've got an inflation problem at the same time that, you know, you possibly are going into economic downturn. And so by raising rates, it doesn't really help the, you know, it's you, you don't need to create demand destruction. Oil rising in and of itself is going to create demand destruction. That's, and that's kind of now what we're seeing in the market today is oh well this, this conflict is going to be so bad and the oil prices rising like this is so bad it's going to create demand destruction around world. So now you're, you're seeing rates react the other way saying, well it's got, now we're over the ski tips that a little bit of rise in, in energy pricing is bad for prices, but a massive rise and prolonged rise is bad for demand. And that's demand destruction. That's, that's kind of what the market's telling you today. And quite honestly, you know, nobody knows anything. I mean we, we'll get a new tweet in the next three hours and we'll, and we'll see where, where we're headed and then we'll get another tweet in five hours and, and we'll be in another direction. So there's, there's no making sense of it. That's just reality at this point. And if you think that you're geopolitically, you're geopolitical expert enough to understand what's going on in the straits, I mean, well, God bless you because I, I'm not smart enough. There's not a, there's not one of those so complex. What's that?
- [06:26]
A
There's not a person on the planet who can make that claim right now, as you said, because the situation is so fluid. I mean, I don't even want to dive into the politics and James, I actually want to dive into your newsletter. But you know, President Trump says the US Is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. Right. So right as word, maybe that's true. Obviously then Iran says we didn't even come to the table in Pakistan. Right. I don't know who's telling the truth. So, but in the same statement says, you know, we're going to blow up and completely obliterate all their electric generating platforms, oil wells, car guy lid and possibly all desalination plants if we don't come to a deal. Right. And I think if you look at the evidence separately, it's very unlikely with Iran's demands and our demands that there's a deal to be made in the short term. So you know, which one of those scenarios I guess is more likely? Once again, you can see why the uncertainty index is where it is. But I want to go back to Dave. You said obviously that the only thing we know is that they're going to print a hell of a lot more money. I think we all generally agree on that. But interestingly, you know, James, you wrote about this this weekend. Absolutely amazing newsletter. But your inspired chart here was, you
- [07:28]
D
know, I inspired myself.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah, you inspired yourself this time. That was great. But Fed fundraise, right? So like listen, we had the Trump administration pulling out all the stops to try to force Powell's hand to cut rates, right? And our base case pre war, was that once warsh, first we didn't even know it would be warsh, but whoever came in and then that person was named war would largely be a puppet who would, you know, bend to the will of the administration and would cut rates. Nobody's expecting that anymore, Right. And this isn't the form of money printing maybe that we'd be looking for in a fiscally dominated environment. But it's not going to come from the Fed right now.
- [08:07]
D
No liquidity. And that's, you know, the problem is that one chart right there just shows the flip of, of the rates. So that was upside down just two weeks ago. And now you had the Fed come out and kind of blink and say, wait, we will not really not blink. They kind of came out and stonewalled and said we're not gonna, we're not gonna touch rates and we don't know when we're gonna touch them again. And the entire market said, oh God, they're worried about oil prices. Oil prices drive, you know, the prices of goods up. So are they going to raise rates? And now you've got a, you know, basically a 30 something percent chance of, of a rate raise. It's down this morning, but you know, that's just two weeks. It flips, but okay, that's great. And, and that everybody can get a kind of a sense that, oh well, interest rates going up, that's not great for the, the economy. Right? But then you've got, just imagine, just imagine being this new Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, and he was highly critical of Janet Yellen as he was coming into office, as was I and other people that she didn't term out the debt. And what, what do I mean by that? What I mean is she had a chance to take the, the, all this debt that was maturing while she was the Treasury Secretary and term it out, meaning Issue longer and longer dated debt, 10 year, 20 year, 30 year debt and lock in basically Zerp just a, a 1 or 2% rates for 10, 20, 30 years. And did she do that? No, she, she issued t bills. And then so you say, and in right after the historic almost six trillion dollar printing that they did, which was going to obviously cause inflation, you'd say, well, they didn't know that. And you know, she didn't know that that was going to happen when they printed the money. And the answer is yes, she did. She was, she was the chair of the Fed herself. She knows how this all works. You know, it wasn't like, oh well, you know, you're going to be a, a backseat driver here. And you know, what's that?
- [10:25]
A
My 11 year old knows how that works. She came home one day from school, she was like, they give us these bucks at school that are for rewards for things, but they just keep making more of them and giving to us, right?
- [10:35]
D
So they're not worth anything, right? So you need more of them to get anything you want. You need more stickers to get the, the, you know, the extra snack at, at, you know, playtime. But they, so, but the thing is, and here's, here's where Scott then comes into office. They had been lowering rates, right, like started lowering rates right at the election. And then he, he's like, well, we're gonna, we're gonna term out this debt like Janet should have, but he hasn't gotten the chance because rates have stayed above, you know, the, the long term has stayed basically above 4% this whole time. And now it's, it's creeping back toward 5%. And if you're Scott percent watching all this, what are you thinking? You're like, this is impossible. I mean, I'm not, I mean I've got, not just the, then you've got the wall of, of debt that's coming, that's, that's maturing this year. So I've got a little chart there if you want to bring that back up, Scott. And if you've got the, the paid version of. But you know, there's a wall of debt that is coming due. Okay, just, it's the next chart, I think. And, and so it's 9.7 trillion right there. It's $9.7 trillion. That, that is maturing this year in US treasuries. And that's, you know, that's, that's the, that doesn't include intra government treasury. So this is just the US public side. This is showing you about $30 trillion of debt, but there's 9 trillion more that doesn't show up on, in these charts. But so that's coming due. And then on top of it, don't forget because we're so good at managing money here in the United States that we also have a 2 trillion dollar deficit that we're running on top of this. Plus you've got the debt that's coming due next year, 2027. So when you add, just looking at this year alone though, with Trump wanting to spend another looks like 5 or $600 billion on defense this year, you're talking about a total of 12, 12 trillion dollars that they have to refinance this year. 12 trillion. And that's a third at this point.
- [12:50]
C
Yeah.
- [12:51]
D
And so you're now you're talking about with, with every half a percent of rise in interest rates, you're talking about $100 billion more of interest that you're going to be paying on this debt. I mean, this is just, it's a problem that's not going away. This is why, you know, Lynn Alden posts almost weekly that nothing stops his train. Like this is like there is please, if you have some, if you can figure it out and you tell, you tell me how we're going to stop this, throw it in the comments here and, and let's give Scott some ideas because I don't have any.
- [13:29]
A
There's always debt is a public good. You know, the modern monetary theory is that's not really a debt to anyone. So, you know, it's a right, yeah, it's, it's fine.
- [13:40]
D
But, but getting to your point of the, of the, you know, the extra stickers at, at playtime, we're, what do you do now? You've got, you've got this debt that if, if you do, if we do have prolonged high rates. What, what is the answer? The answer is obvious. It's where everybody's been talking about this in Japan for decades. You know, they've been doing this. It, it go every, we're, we're turning Japanese, meaning we're going to yield curve control. And it's not an, it's not an if. It's just a matter of when and how, how they do it and how obvious it is. What Ackerman acronym do they put on it? You know, what's, what fancy title do they put on it? But they're going to be out there buying bonds to keep that long rate from going higher. Yeah, that's, that's our look at the annual interest payments. That's because, you know, Janet didn't turn out term out the debt and we're running deficits on top of it. It's not all her fault, but we're running. So remember, the Treasury's just doing the bit of, of our, you know, defunct Congress, but that's, that's where we are. So is this doom and gloom? No, this is telling you exactly what we've been saying all along is that you better own some assets in this. You know, you have to own things like gold and bitcoin that can't just be printed and inflated away. You know, you've got to, you've got to own something that, and you don't want to be holding long term. You don't want to be holding long term treasuries because you're going to lose on that, you know, on that trade on a negative real return.
- [15:15]
A
Guys, I found, I found it.
- [15:17]
D
Yeah, let's see.
- [15:19]
A
Seriously, Senator Warren.
- [15:20]
D
Oh, there it is. Yeah, yeah, we just attack the rich people.
- [15:24]
A
More than 50 members of Congress are joining me. It's time for the government to start working for American families. Not just the altar is, I mean, it's just pennies, guys. It is.
- [15:35]
C
All I could say, Scott, is everyone should go reread or read Atlas Shrugged. And when you read that book and you understand and for those who, who have never read it, it, it's Ayn Rand's tour de force, effectively. It's.
- [15:49]
A
It's about a world better if we're being real. But yeah, I think.
- [15:53]
C
Well, but I mean it. But as a novel. Yeah, but Atlas Shrugged is the kind of thing that makes you angry when you're reading it because you see, and, and it's obvious that people like Elizabeth Warren, although in the book the character is called Wesley Mooch, but it could literally be Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a. They would literally be in the book. And she chronicles how their constant stupidity effectively destroys innovation, destroys the people who were making the economic output and the country completely falls into total disrepair. And of course in that book there's this thing called G where all the smart people move. Modern day Galt's Gulch is that people move to other places and, or potentially use bitcoin and, or whatever. But it is amazing. Amazing how you could be as dumb as Elizabeth Warren's policy proposal. So let's just understand that. Just do the math.
- [16:49]
A
They never pass anyways.
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C
No, it'll never pass and it's not constitutional. But it doesn't matter the fact that the person who literally was the most important person in the previous administration in the conduct of economic policy is proposing to tax 2% a year on pretty much any business. Because $50 million is any business. Right. You know, do you, do you understand that in the. First of all, it's your wealth.
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D
It's a share of wealth.
- [17:22]
A
On every penny, you own over 50 million.
- [17:24]
C
That's what I'm saying. So anyway, any family business will be, you know, any business. All of a sudden you're going to be selling 2% of your holdings every single year. Who's going to buy it? What happens? Do people start creating and taking risks? All you have to do is start to understand, first of all, every time a wealth tax has been tried, it's failed. But all you have to do is start doing his math in a decade. And she talks about settling this money over a decade because of compounding, it's actually more than 20%. Taking 20% of the wealth of people will effectively bring that wealth down dramatically. Most economic models have it as more than double the impact. You're talking about a 40% catastrophic loss of GDP. That, that, I mean, the numbers are just historically bad. And by the way, the amount of money that she's talking about isn't enough to even, even in 10 years of. It doesn't close one full year of budget. I mean, it's just, it. The numbers are just stupid. And yet she publishes it. And, and it's relying upon people like,
- [18:37]
D
look, it's all performative. Like, all this stuff is just like you. The stuff that's coming out of D.C. now. You can't listen to anything anymore. It's just all, it's just all a big, you know, show. And like, it's, there's no, there's no truth that comes out of D.C. anymore. Like, not. There's none.
- [18:54]
C
It is. And it's all because. And now. And that's before AI is dominating everybody's life and how they consume news. So you're going to have AI channels effectively. I think that, you know, the, the movie idiocracy. I mean, I always thought it was a funny movie. I never thought it was meant to be a documentary, but it certainly feels like it. And it, it, you know, the average human is just not thinking for themselves. And they're, they're, you know, they'll accept things at face value. And that is enormously problematic if you think about it. What does that mean? You know, like, it's like the dumbest and, and the politicians used to be constrained, like the thought that the Democrats could say that the SAVE act is bad. This is this political voting act and because, but we, we agree with, with voter id, but we don't agree with that. And then there was a vote on an amendment and they're going to do another one where they all voted against just nothing else other than pure voter id. Yeah. And expect it. And no, and not, not just expect, but no. That the people who vote for them won't hold them accountable. The fact that Trump could say to help Scott out here, because I know this has been a big thing, no new wars and he goes to war and he expects no one will hold him accountable. Our politicians don't think that people care anymore about what they do because there's an echo chamber among their voters. And it's.
- [20:19]
D
Yeah, but David, it just becomes tribal. You've got this very strong left support and you get the very strong right support and it just becomes tribal. It doesn't matter what your team says. They're going to be, they're going to be right. And I don't care stuff about the voter I.D. like, it's just, it's not truth. They know it's not truth, but they don't, they can't even, all they care is that their team wins. It doesn't matter. And that's where we are now. And that's. So we just have to, we have to take DC at performative value, not face value. It's just, it's an act. They're up on stage, they're waving their arms around. And so this idiocy that comes out of, you know, Warren's office, that they post this thing about let's tax people's wealth, like, it's just, it's gonna, it's gonna get her votes and that's all she cares about. It's just gonna get her vote.
- [21:15]
A
All these ideas, right. We have the California billionaire tax. She basically saw that and saw how much press it got and just ran with it. But we've also, even Yellen in the last administration was floating unrealized capital gains. Right. Which is a. Yeah.
- [21:30]
D
What it comes down to, what it comes down to, Scott, is that they all understand that we have a K shaped economy, that people are really upset that the billionaires and millionaires are, they're running this economy because they're the ones spending 80% of services and goods. And the top 10%, whatever that crazy statistic was, the top 10% are, are spending like two thirds or more of whatever people feel that they see it they're like all the prices are going up because the boomers and they have all the money and all and they're frustrated and they want, they want, they want theirs and they, so they're like, they're playing on that simple concept that, you know, the economy is, is K shaped. You've got super wealthy people who are doing very well. You've got, you know, the middle class and lower class demographics that are not doing well. And why is that? It's because of everything we just talked about the beginning of the show. It's about the Cantillon Effect. It's about, you know, people. So I have people calling me this week and asking, you know, they're not in finance, not investing, they're like, how do I get into this? These new IPOs I want to get to SpaceX everything. It's like you don't understand, like you are the exit liquidity. Like the gains have already been made and they're going to then package it up and sell it to the street. That doesn't mean that these things can't go up in the market because of irrational exuberance. But like the Cantilon effect is real. If you're close to Spigot, you're getting the benefit of that. And they, and people inherently know that. And so they're never going to admit that. They're just going to do this more. They're going to have this act on stage and they're going to do the, you know, the performative stuff. They're going to say we need to tax the rich. We need tax the rich. Oh, it's not because of the Fed and Congress overspending and fiscal stimulus and fiscal dominance and fiscal stimulus. It's not because of that. It's because rich people bad.
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A
Yeah. Trickle down economics don't actually work. We've known that for a very, very long time. Dave, I'm surprised you haven't done this yet.
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C
I mean, it's true. I mean, look, trickle down economics does
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A
work, but that's what they're doing.
- [23:41]
C
All they want to do is distract. I mean, look, this weekend we saw it, right? So what is the ultimate irony, the ultimate irony of a no Kings protest of 8 million people, many of them in fact at most protests, they were all former 60s hippies who protested Vietnam and are trying to relive their glory days. You know, some of the interviews of these people were, were just, I mean, off the charts funny, but not in, you know, in a, in an ironic sense because they have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on? But what's the ultimate irony of a no Kings index? No Kings rally. The no Kings rally is to fight against the government that supposedly is all powerful and taking away your rights. Yet what is the policy prescription from the organizers? More government is much more government, much less rights. So I posted something that got a little bit of, got a lot of people a little bit annoyed. But it's okay. It's true. I said, I wonder what percentage of the people that know Kings rally would willingly vote for Obama to be president for life. And I'm betting that number is very high. And the irony is just is incredible. People say they want X, but they don't want X, they want Y. What do they want? They basically want a return to normalcy in an uncertain world. And, and what is normal about a world, especially if you're, if you're older, where everything is being done by computers, right? Everything is being done by agents. You're being told you don't read a novel anymore. You go on AI and say what does what.
- [25:13]
B
What.
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C
What is the point of Slaughterhouse 5? Instead of reading Slaughterhouse 5 and, and experiencing Vonnegut. You know, it's like that is what our society is coming to. And when you do that, then the people who control the AI are the ones who are going to control how you think. And so if you want to understand how important, you know, it is that there is that AI is not dominated and controlled by a few key voices, you end up. And you also understand that it's almost certain to happen. It is extremely dangerous because, you know, rallying against. If this is a rally against. We shouldn't go to war. Okay, I could get that. But then you get the flags that are out there are hammer and sickle flags, literally and Kathia flags and pro and, and the, the one Kafir wearing and, and Iran flags. I mean, you know, you're really supporting, but yeah, that.
- [26:05]
D
Like this. Yeah. I mean people don't want to think for themselves. They just want to be told what to support. But that's my point in my bio today. You know, it's, it's just.
- [26:14]
A
Yeah. I mean it's virtue critical.
- [26:16]
D
We have lost the, the, the art of critical thinking. It's gone. Like we people don't critically think and a lot of it's due to this. You know, they're just told what to think all day long. We are not meant to take in that much information, synthesize it all day, every day. I'll tell you the biggest challenge as an investor now. And this actually is something important for all of us. The biggest challenge for me every single day is to look at all the news and everything that I'm getting, but just bombarded with. And to filter out the noise. It used to be pretty easy. You walk in, you have your Bloomberg terminal, you see what the headlines are. You can filter out what's noise and what's not and you can get to work.
- [26:57]
A
Now it's like Tom brokaw told you 30 minutes a day and you didn't have 24 7, 365 access to, quote, unquote, breaking news.
- [27:04]
D
Right.
- [27:05]
C
Yeah.
- [27:05]
D
You're not supposed to have that 24 7. Like, and like every 10 minutes is something new. Like every three minutes it's something new that. Something big. You know, it's like. But most of it's noise. Like, if you're an investor and you could just. What. The most important thing to do is to get. Filter out the noise and get the first principle on everything. You know, that's. And that's difficult. More difficult today than it's ever been in my opinion, as an investor.
- [27:36]
A
But, yeah, I can't wait till Mike gets here so that we can talk about oil. But I think we should probably. Well, there's so many things we could go through. There's a lot of actually just like continuing to see negative news across any metric that you can look for that should be giving us signals of things being bad. But markets aren't even down that bad. I don't know if you guys saw this one breaking. UBS has stopped withdrawals from its nearly 500 million real estate fund for up to three years. So this is real estate. Blue Owl, BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo, UBS. Most of those being private credit funds, obviously. I mean, yeah, that's not gonna slow down. Boogeyman. I can't tell because, yeah, they're just
- [28:17]
D
going to continue to try to, you know, allow the gates to work the way they're supposed to, which is to, to protect a run on the bank, you know, and force them to sell illiquid assets. But again, I wrote all about that and the matchup and the mismatch and some of these funds of the duration of the fund and the duration of the investment. But, you know, the problem is they keep upping these investments and, and pushing them back out further because they, you know, they're, they're not liquid yet and they want to. They're, they're, they're creating. I, I don't want to say false, but they're they're creating creative, you know, marks on these things to make sure that they don't trip covenants that can just keep going, keep kicking it down the road and hope that it works out so that, but that's, we're going to continue to see that. But that's not something that worries me as much as what's going on in Iran. And, and the whole energy issue we have here, that is so complex and volatile that, that worries me more than, than private credit right now by far.
- [29:29]
B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, U.S. government officials and Wall street analysts are starting to consider the prospect that oil prices might surge to an unprecedented $200 a barrel.
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D
Welcome demand destruction. I mean, that, that'd be it right there.
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C
Hey, so Mike, so why is oil not at 150?
- [29:45]
B
There you go. Here's one example. U.S. natural gas, the number one measure of heat, electricity and fertilizer in this country, is down 22% in the year. And January was up 100%. It did the same thing in 2022. It spiked to 10 and it was down to 2. It's exactly what happened in energy. It rinse and repeat. And I think the key theme is crude oil. All commodities are their own worst enemies. We learned that in cryptos. When they go up too much, crude oil specifically, it'll bring on global recessions, pump up that supply, curtail demand, and rinse and repeat and go over. And you're seeing that industrial metals like copper made a new low in the year recently. Silver peaked from a decent high, up 63%. It's all tilting over and crude oil is just bringing things down. So I look at it going forward, skating to where the puck is going. Just look at that December crude oil futures actually ticking down on the day for a little while. It's $77 a barrel. It has to ride a significant wall to get to 100 by the midterms, which is going to be front month right before the midterms and going back down the 50 is normal. What does Mr. Trump need? I think you know that front, the crude contract you see right now at 101, by the time we get the midterms is more likely to be 50. And that's just looking forward to where the puck's going.
- [30:59]
A
So $200 oil. Are we now in the realm of hyperbole?
- [31:04]
B
So I'm glad you went there, Scott. Remember $200,000 bitcoin a year ago and remember 7 to 10,000 gold just a few months ago? I've been in calls last week. I Just saw one from Acquirer this morning. Looked for $200. Crude oil. Yeah. That could happen in the short term if you want a global depression, which would mean severe deflationary forces. It always starts with inflation and deflation. But that's peak signs when you see that. Like I said, we saw it in cryptos last year, we saw in gold and silver just a few months ago, and now we're seeing a crude oil. It's crude oil's turn. But that pump, then the pump, then dump. Trend is consistent. Like I mentioned, natural gas was up 100%. Now it's down. Copper was up 15%. Now it's down. Silver was up 63%. Now it's down. Bitcoin was up 10% or so. Now it's down. You see the trend by the end of the year. To me, this stuff's just getting started.
- [31:57]
C
I mean, okay, so, so let's, let's unpack. We have a geopolitical situation where we can't get oil from the places that produce it to the places that want it. We got that. That. I understand that is. That is the core problem. The. We have people at the fed, we got 20,000 of them that could be replaced by a bunch of monkeys smacking, smacking on keyboards and throwing darts. In terms of economic forecasting, okay, that's something we kind of know. It's something the administration sort of knows as well. We'll see whether the Senate will be able to approve a new Federal Reserve chair. And I think the market thinks that they won't. And that's one of the reasons why the dot plot is the way that it is. No one's talking about it, but the truth is, is Thune's going to have to grow a pair of balls, and they may end up having to use a recess appointment the first time. And they've basically been blocking for. People who are paying attention don't understand how bad it is in D.C. they have there, there are, there's an enormous number of unappointed people throughout the administration, and this is the first time in decades that the Senate hasn't allowed recess appointments to go through. And so, you know, frankly, Thune, I can't believe he's still the leader. You know, I publicly, I cannot imagine how he, he has kept his job doing that. I mean, forget all the other stuff. I mean, I'm not talking about the legislative stuff. I mean, legislative stuff. There's as, as James said earlier, it's performative theater. So the real question is, are we going to Get a new Federal Reserve chair. That, that's a real, actual question. At the same time, we have the Federal Reserve making the, I mean they're, they would fail if I were teaching an economics class.
- [33:40]
D
Before, before you continue, Dave, it was interesting that Powell said himself he will stay on as long as he needs to.
- [33:48]
C
I heard.
- [33:48]
D
Why would he say I will stay on as long as I need to unless your term is up? Like, why would you say that?
- [33:53]
C
He's saying because they know the Democrats are likely to block. He's been told that they're likely to block Warsh or anyone else that Trump appoints. So in order to keep the government frozen, how does that work though?
- [34:07]
A
I mean, if you're done, you have to have someone in the job.
- [34:10]
C
The Federal Reserve is. There is no accountability in the Federal Reserve. It's a private freaking corporation that the only thing that, that, that in a properly functioning government they can do is nominate and, or replace the head. There is very little accountability in the Fed. The only good news about this is if it does play out the way it was, way it looks, the calls for ending the Fed and restructuring the Fed will get much, much bigger because, you know, pe. But, but then again, people are going to be told by their favorite AI or news media not to care because everything's okay here. So it's sort of like that meme with the dog in the fire. It's like, don't worry about it, everything is fine. But the point that I was making is as long as the Federal Reserve has this notion that an oil shock means inflation and inflation, ooh, must pull rate hike lever. Which is dumb, you'll get double demand destruction. And that would ensure a absolute. If you think that inflation is bad for the midterms, what's inflation with a misery index that spikes because we decide to raise rates and hike unemployment. I mean, the honest truth is we know what that means. I'm not saying that's what's going on. I'm saying that there are people talking about that's what we should do. And that is absolutely important. The fact that oil price rises going up is bad for the economy. It is bad for demand destruction. It causes inflation in pass throughs of goods, but it doesn't cause people to demand higher wages when their companies have lower profit margins. Or they can demand it, but they won't get it. Right. In order to get wage inflation, you need to have the ability to pay the wage inflation right. And that's not very good right now. Right now. What happens when you Demand higher wages is you get replaced by AI. Right. So it's very interesting and it's a totally different dynamic than in the 70s. But the reason that I went on this rant was because, look, the notion that all these markets are interconnected, I think we should pull it on the string. I joke when I heard you weren't going to be here, that I really want to ask you about gold because I told you my view on gold is that equilibrium is 5,000. My view is that 4,500 will turn into support. It's going to stay around these range. Your view was that all these assets are going to roll over and gold made a multi decade high or whatever it was. I'm curious what you think now. Do you think that there's enough, that there's fundamental strength there or do you think that it's still likely to roll over and go back towards 3,000?
- [36:44]
B
Yeah, it's over. The rally to me it's similar. So I'll put it in context. I think the significant rally we had in bitcoin for over a decade is over. I think the significant rally we had in metals, which I've been on top of forever, is over. And they're going to languish forever, particularly gold. It going to languish between 3,000 and 5,000, potentially for a decade. That's just the way it always does. It got so extreme, so severe. I just look at it versus a basket of US Treasuries just a few months ago. Gold was the highest since 1982. U.S. treasuries are lowest. That's my bias towards Treasuries just getting started. And then you look at other things like you have to go back. Oh, historically you take the S&P 500 total return divided by gold. It always goes up. Except it stopped going up since 1997 because gold took off. That's just too long. It's a stupid rock and I hate the rock. I loved it when it was going up, but now it's time to say, yeah, it's done. That. That rally is done. And the calls and the questions, I love it. It's the questions I get. It was in February. Usually you get a ding. I remember there was a few, few crypto chats I was on last year. I'm like, everybody was so bullish. I'm like, okay, so I just remember these things. I was on a gold webinar in Hong Kong in February. Same thing. It was just so bullish. Mike sold to you. But it's also the extremes that happen in gold? Remember, gold warned us last year was the best year since 1979, best year ever, absent inflation. So it warned us what was happening. It's done its duty, it served its purpose as a safe haven, store value. But now what's happened? 180 day volatile and gold has shifted to 2.5 times the S&P 500, maybe 2.4 times. It only happens a few times in history. When it does it, it shifts over to a highly speculative risk asset, puts in a peak. That's what we've done. So something might have to change. But here's a key thing to think about. Forward as we get to midterms. It's a scenario I don't see what helps, what stops. It's all about getting to midterms and what's happening in the Gulf. Obviously if the Gulf stays closed and this gets worse and we hear get up in the morning, hear the word fallout or something, yes, that's good for gold, but gold already priced a lot of that in. It's just what normally happens. This thing should be cleaned up, at least worked out and then we rinse and repeat. There's really no reason for gold anymore. To me the key thing now is the problem with the stock market. All that volatility and gold which was just look at one key fact. 60 day volatility and gold this year was up about 60 to 70%. 60 day volatility on the, and and crude oil is up about 150%. 60 day volatility on the S&P 500 flat. That's my problem. Everything's trick, load trickling over and if stock market goes down, everything goes over and that goes down to me. Bitcoin warned us.
- [39:24]
C
So let's just forget bitcoin for a heartbeat, just talk about the stock market. Most people when they invest in the stock market are not talking about trading now. But most people when they invest in the stock market are looking at forward PEs and growth rates over years, if not longer. And most people who are invested in the stock market look at this and look at what's going on in the Gulf and look at all this stuff and say, okay, well we don't know what's going to happen at the other end. So but is this really going to affect multiple years of earnings of most of our companies and what are the, what are the expectations and how much are moving? And when you look at the S and P and you look at analysts, I mean you have the data. I'm going to bet that Analysts forward expectation of earnings haven't really moved very much. And if that's the case, then why should the volatility in the S and P be high? The volatility on oil is high because people have no focus, freaking clue whether you know, where it's going to come from, how it's going to get where it needs to go. I understand that volatility on gold is really high because we have, we've had central bank buying and we've had private wealth buying and a lot of that private wealth now needs to get more liquid. And so there's a whole, a whole wall of selling that occurred as people tried to relique. So we kind of understand, you know, where the volatility is coming from in the commodities. You know, leave bitcoin and, and out of it because bitcoin's volatility has been, I mean, I don't know, it's been lurching into a range and then staying in a range and we're still at the same price that, you know, if we talked about bitcoin price, I think the last three weeks we've been within a thousand dollars of, of, of of, you know, every week, you know, of where it is during the show. You know, it's, it just hasn't really moved out all that much. But, but gold is moving a lot more and you know, look, I think you're right. I think that there's a shit ton of complacency in the market, in the stock market. But until analysts and people start making major changes, it's really about the new shiny object. If you want to know what I think, Pops, the, that creates the volatility in the stock market. It's if, if, if the wave of IPOs, which won't happen by the way, if the, if the straits are still closed, but if the wave of IPOs materializes and you have multiple trillion dollars of new companies coming in, that money has to come from old companies.
- [41:39]
A
These.
- [41:39]
C
And we saw this pretty much every time an IPO wave crests. It is, is generally a market top. I mean we've seen this many, many times before. So. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm just curious. I mean, you know, what do you think about that? I mean, you know, SpaceX is, is very interesting one for a lot of reasons. But it's not just them. It's Xai. It's obviously anthropic. It's open AI, you know, these, these are four monster IPOs. They're not small.
- [42:13]
A
I don't think the Money is going to come for those.
- [42:15]
C
What'd you say Scott?
- [42:17]
A
Yeah, I agree. I mean those are top. I, I would argue that a high percentage chance that those are at least temporary market tops for quite a while when those.
- [42:25]
C
Yeah, well I, I, I, that is a high percentage chance they don't actually happen this year because things people don't IPO and, and, and go on road shows and go for going around the world looking to private wealth funds when the world's at war, it just doesn't tend to happen.
- [42:42]
D
So what's interesting though something, something that's interesting though is that Mike, what you said about gold, look we do have to recognize that that gold it did bottom out for, for at least the moment about 27 off its highs. You know it was up at 5600, came all the way down to 4 100. So that's a pretty big move, you know. And so that's not something that is to just dismiss. That's number one. Number two is look, if you believe that gold is gonna go back to what did you say 2500, 3000 something somewhere around there.
- [43:20]
B
3000.
- [43:21]
D
Okay, well you know you're talking about then it's going to be down, you know, roughly 30% from here that you're assuming then over the next 10 years then it will not react to either we will not be printing money or it will not react to it. Right. So I don't, and I, so that's where I just can't reconcile that I can't reconcile we're not going to print or it's not going to react to it.
- [43:50]
B
So you're telling me it's different this time that.
- [43:53]
D
No, I'm not saying it's different this time. I'm saying that it's going to be, you know, we will print. I'm saying is that we've done this now twice in a row and we're. What do you think is going to happen the third time when we have a recession?
- [44:07]
B
I said like for gold to stay up here it has to be different this time. Never in the history of gold has it rally at such a velocity. Get the most expensive versus commodities get the most expensive versus most other indices and other entities and stay up. It just doesn't happen. It's got to have a good reason and versus itself. And what you say about the print. Yeah it, we all, it's, that's a known knowns. We all get the print. The big print. We had the big print in 20, 20, 21 may point out that's when bitcoin's outperformance stopped. I keep pointing that out. It's over that big prints happen now we might get a big print like we did in China. And what, where's what's happening in China? 1.81 is a 10110 their 10 year old deal. That's what we're going in this country. The bottom line is for any risk asset, all of them. I kept pointing this last year when people saying how bullish they were copper. I'm like okay, so you're bullish the stock market like if it's the same chart now, even gold, it's the same chart as the stock market. That's my point is you have to be bulls in stock market. And just I get what Dave says, but that's all stuff that we all know know and it's the bottom line is when you get a trigger like this. We had a world that was very much we first saw consumer sentiment was already getting hammered before this event happened. We had a world facing unprecedented tariffs in the US and pretty significant deflation from China because China couldn't export as much the US and more so exporting the rest of the world, mostly Europe. Oh by the way, there's an oxymoron of them supporting the war in their custom. Now we have this flip the switch and we hit all the signals that we have a switch to cut off consumer sentiment to say hey honey, we're going to stop spending for a while. By the way, AI might be taking my job. And the key theme I think we'll be thinking about is look a few months from now, what's the data from now going to look like? Even if we wake up tomorrow and the Hormuz is closed right away, that means crude oil goes to 50 bond 10 year note yields drop below 4%. Yeah. Stock market rallies and then rinse and repeat and roll over and say oh, we've had a spike in energy, we've had a spike in, in food costs. We've had major flip in consumer sentiment. This is the trigger. This is 9 11, 2008 and 2022 all in one. And the stock market's most expensive in history. So to me this is just getting started. And bitcoin and gold warned us, just
- [46:06]
A
for clarification, you say that they're the same chart and I think there's an argument for that. But stocks are down what s and P? 9 to 10%. I think from all time high gold's down 25%. That would imply that gold is high beta to the stock market.
- [46:21]
B
So it's a simple rule of. And Dave can show us when you have an asset that trades 2.5 times beta, when beta goes down, typically high volatility assets go down more. That's the problem with gold. Now it's switched.
- [46:35]
A
Right?
- [46:36]
B
That's my point. It did. It did. So that's what it did. That's why last year was a shocker. Obviously some of us were bullish gold. I never expected to perform that well. It was wonderful to just hang on and lay out and watch it happen. But now that has happened. Markets mean things, they do things and they tell us stuff. It told us what was happening. That's. It makes sense now. But the thing is it's made its run it front run front ran this. It's done. It just, it's, it's, it's already had its store value warning rally and history says when it gets this expensive versus any kind of moving average long term, you're supposed to take profits. And so that's my focus. It's still gold, I think is just, you know, I remember of course I got beat up on a lot of that for bitcoin last year. I love getting beat up on these things because if everybody agrees, I'm usually wrong. And that's the key thing. When I was on a call last week and people are calling to my call, some internal for 200 crude oil and $8 gasoline US, I'm like, okay, that's a global depression, which means gasoline eventually go drop down to two bucks. It's just the way things work.
- [47:37]
C
Well there's. It's true because of the price elasticity and the technological advances that allow us to extract. Sorry, I'm staring at the visual. Capitalist Global government debt hits 111 trillion in 2025 and it's accelerating again. Now I just have an enormous problem with analysis that ignores the fact that the US government deficit went from under 5 trillion to pushing 40 this year. And thinking that that has no impact upon assets that are denominated in dollars, I just can't do, I can't. You need to normalize those things. And if you think eight. So if you take gold going back to wherever and say 8% growth in, you know, is baked in the cake for an asset, literally, that's what you think. Then it's a question of baseline. So you do the math and you say, okay, gold peaked at 1900 and went back down to 1100. It did do that and we've all seen it. Gold is One of those assets that its volatility is. What's the word I'm looking for is volatile, I guess is probably the volatility of its volatility is very high. Gold could be a very low volume asset for a very long period of time and then immediately change as people start moving into it. It's been a manipulated market for years. If you listen to GADA and the World Gold Council. And I think there's a lot to what they say. And so I look at gold and it's really a question of just as a divisor of monetary policy, if you take technological ability to impact purchasing power out gold is more or less where it should be. It's not far off of it. And it was way cheap before that because. And there were a lot of people who would have said that. You know, it's probably the only thing I agree with Peter Schiff about.
- [49:37]
A
I mean, everybody was sitting, all of us on this show multiple times when gold was 2000 or just around 2000. We said it breaks 2000, it's going right to 3000.
- [49:47]
C
And I said, I thought that where its value is much higher. But whether it will be allowed to get there is the question. It's just they, they lost the ability to do anything about it. And part of it is, is not that they lost the ability, is that they realize people don't really give a crap. I mean, Alan Greenspan used to obsess over the price of gold when he was setting monetary policy. Jerome Powell couldn't give a rat's ass.
- [50:10]
A
No, not even on the radar.
- [50:11]
C
And that's a big difference.
- [50:13]
A
We keep talking about oil, but I mean, you see these headlines, right? Obviously this was a little while ago, but Trump draws bipartisan backlash for easing oil sanctions on Russia and Iran. Kind of the antithesis of the intended effect, I would say. None of you guys just saw this. Trump administration waives gasoline regulations to address surging fuel prices. Now you can get crappier gasoline at the pump.
- [50:35]
C
What regulation was that? I'm curious.
- [50:38]
A
E15 restricted in about half the US during the summer months due to regulations to prevent air pollution.
- [50:45]
B
So we got to address this. This is a key thing. I've been at a few aggregators, agriculture conferences in the last few months. The number one thing is there's a glut. We have a massive supply of soybeans out of Brazil. They haven't stopped another record 180 million metric tons pushing the US out of the market. We have a pretty significant oversupply in corn in this country, another good crop, it's just caused superabundance. And there's two potential things we can do in the US to get prices higher. Number one, a drought. You can't predict, maybe exports, which are kind of tough, and biofuels. So that's the shift. E15 is part of that shift to more and more biofuels. 15% of our unleaded gas now is coming from almost 15% from ethanol. We're exporting a lot of it. We got a surplus on it in the past. Typically it took maybe one bushel of corn for one gallon, two gallons of ethanol. Now we get three. It said technology that Dave pointed out. So there's one solution there, that by switching to biofluids, we're going to add that glut of crude oil, liquid fuels in this country. Right now with Canada, we have a surplus running near a surplus of 8 million barrels a day of crude oil and liquid fuels. Just a few years ago, that was a deficit. What's just happened? Spiked, rinse and repeat, increase that surplus. That's what's happening in North America, the Western hemisphere, and the whole space has become a massive surplus. Yes, there's this pretty significant cut, you know, in, in the Middle east, but all that, maybe they say 20% at oil, okay, maybe it ends up 10% as we find work, workarounds. That's China problem, that's Europe problem. They're already having problems. In the North America, we have a glut which just terms of. You see that in the futures curve, you can go back in natural gas and corn and soybeans and crude oil, you can go out two to three years. And if you're, if you worry about inflation, you can buy those futures at zero, cheaper than they are. And then front contract, no cost to carry, and basically there's no storage cost. That's just. Why is that? Because the whole market is looking forward. So there's your big trade. If you're right and if crude oil stays up. The problem is the whole market sees this tilting towards a deflation. The problem is, look at that futures curve. It's telling you where things are going. And we've got a pretty significant supply of energy in this country. Country.
- [52:53]
C
I mean, that's true. We just can't get. It's just the problem is the, the people who don't have a significant supply can't get it. That's the issue. I mean, it is. It is, yes.
- [53:06]
B
So what does that mean for them? It means, it means depression. Prices spike for Them. But from a US centric standpoint, I mean, Trump's got all the cards in this case.
- [53:14]
C
Yeah, well, I mean, there's truth there. I mean, look, it's, that's probably partially why the markets are holding in the way they are. I mean, it's like we're here again. And if you told me, I don't know, before the war started that oil would be over 100 and people would be talking about it doubling again and all this other stuff, where would the S and P be? I probably wouldn't have answered. Pushing up towards 6400. And it was at 6400 a few minutes ago. Right. And it's still green on the day if basically flat. You know, you wouldn't say that, but people are getting, it's the old expression, people getting numb to it. I mean, we've seen this before in wars and these things. People get numb to it and they start saying, okay, what's next? Except for, in this case, the risks are much larger than most people would have thought. I mean, in previous wars it was, oh, what would happen, oh my God, if the Straits of Hormuz got closed.
- [54:08]
B
But you know what they're getting numb to too, is President Trump all over CNN this week and where these anti king protests. So to me this is a classic sh. Human nature, political sentiment. With markets at record highs, it's. And the signal I got in 2007 was way early and certainly in 2001 when 9, 11 hit. But this is all combined and the thing is it's all about stocks now. They got to stay up or everything goes down. And you know, cryptos warned us now Gold warned us. And I just say heed the warning, stay out of the market and stick with Treasuries and look for opportunities. I don't think anything near. We've reached decent discounts yet in markets you're should be looking to buy stuff.
- [54:46]
C
Well, I mean, we, we disagree in
- [54:49]
D
a couple because Goldman definitely disagrees with you. Goldman just said that they're seeing signs of capitulation.
- [54:55]
B
Oh, I love it. I, I made a good money trading them in 2007 and 8 and 2. But typically it's one analyst at Goldman with respect for the firm.
- [55:07]
C
Yeah,
- [55:10]
D
they're basically saying that they're, they, they're seeing such heavy short sales by hedge funds and just complete sellouts that they feel like they're getting to the point of capitulation.
- [55:25]
B
Let's piggyback on that. Right now we have Vix at 30% and 180 day volatility running around 12%. It's a fraction of the Vix. So people are hedging when they should be selling. You know how that works. Hedging can be really difficult, particularly in bear markets. That's the unique thing about bitcoin. It's been a very orderly bear market. But just hedging. I know a lot of ways to lose money in options, direct strategies and hedging. I've done those.
- [55:47]
D
Yeah.
- [55:49]
C
The one thing I want to get
- [55:51]
D
here, you can see this. I don't know if you can see this.
- [55:54]
A
Yeah, I'm looking.
- [55:56]
D
Let me see. Does that come up?
- [56:01]
A
There it is. Go ahead.
- [56:03]
D
Yeah, this is, this is what they're seeing. They're seeing that, you know, we're, we're getting near lows of, of the, the buying versus selling. You know, it's. The net buying is, is, is two and a half times lower than the, the net selling is two and a half times more than the buying. So.
- [56:23]
B
Right. You got to take that back to 2006.
- [56:27]
D
Yeah, that's fair.
- [56:28]
B
Absolutely.
- [56:30]
D
2020 wasn't something to sniff at.
- [56:33]
B
Oh no, it wasn't. But it was, it was human created somewhat artificial. And the stock market cap to GDP has almost doubled since then. I get it. And so. Good point. I think that's what happens. What's. We've been happy, we've been in a bear market in cryptos for less than a year now that everybody keeps trying to buy dips. That's what's perfect in bear markets. They don't bottom till people capitulate. I still haven't heard that word yet. Healthy correction. Partly because maybe because people have said it. Maybe that's the first sign of it. You got to hear that, that it's just this is obviously I'm calling for a paradigm shift. And gold warned us, crypto's warned us. And now that's crude oil spike and even debut said in this event, it's unprecedented closure. Straight up hormones, man. To me, we got a perfect catalyst for things I've been looking for for too long.
- [57:20]
C
Yeah. I just think that the people who understand what's going on, the need to continue to pump up financial assets is greater now and it creates even more likelihood of it. You know, as I said, that denominator is what I focused on. I've said it before. I'm not going to repeat it. It's been every week for the last three or four weeks. I think Bitcoin bottomed at 60. I think we're sitting in this range, not much is going to happen. 10:10 took a ton of leverage out. I haven't heard a damn person. There's not even a squeak. You don't even hear people talking about buy the dips and crypto. Forget bitcoin. Non, non bitcoin crypto is, has been horrendous. I mean ethereum. If it wasn't for bit mine buying it, who knows where it would be. My guess is around 1,000, maybe 800, maybe 600. I don't know. It would be a lot lower. And if Microstrategy wasn't buying bitcoin, it'd probably be at 40 or 50. That's a very big difference. Right? One would be a significant drop. One I'm talking literally 50%, 60% low, lower. So it's important and we look at this and we have to understand what does this mean? Well, Bitcoin was literally built, literally built for financial crises and top heavy manipulated economies, which is exactly what's happening in real time now. Whether or not people will believe it or not is an interesting question. I guess we'll find out. Gold is something different. Stock markets with AI are being driven to even more extremes. I mean this K shaped economy stuff is non trivial. It is real. It is real because we've had three, four decades of policy that has prioritized asset inflation instead of consumer inflation in order to mask what's going on in monetary and fiscal policy. And it's accelerating. And so to expect that, that to reverse is hard. In nominal terms, in real terms. I think you're right Mike. That's the difference. It's like it's all the difference. The difference between you and I is mostly real versus nominal. Like I look at a day like today and everyone is like, you know, the markets aren't really doing much. The treasury market we know and there are a lot of people who said this and I was trying to get James to talk about it before that. A line in the sand is four and a half. I think the real line in the sand is 5. But whatever yields down 8 basis points today.
- [59:48]
B
Well it's not on good news.
- [59:50]
C
Oil prices are higher and the yield, but it's, but every single market.
- [59:54]
D
Yeah, but it's because it's because oil prices have gotten, and the fear of oil prices staying high has gotten people to the other side, which is, which is for Mike's point, which is demand destruction, you know, and, and that will ultimately cause everything, all prices to collapse. And that, that's, that's the fear there that you're seeing today. So now it's got, you've gotten so far that oh now oil is going to be so bad, the price of oil is going to be so bad it's going to stress economies out so, so greatly that you're going to have demand destruction. You know, that's what you're saying.
- [60:27]
C
If that's true, then why the bonds today?
- [60:30]
D
Unless you think something different. Mike?
- [60:32]
B
Well, it's a key thing that happened last week is that long bond got up to 5% at the same time WTI crude oil is up at a hundred dollars. That's to me key resistance. Crude oil can keep going up and the higher it goes, the more like it's going to go down hard. But I'm looking at the long bond still and yeah, I've been wrong. We've lost a lot less than everything else this year. But still think that the long bond is going to be the place to go. I think just like corn. I expect corn to be more likely at 4 than 5 by the near. I expect that long bond by the end there to be more likely at 4 or lower than at 5. 5 is a global, is a recession. Lose, lose situation. 4 is normal in a normal deflationary environment. Simple little thing, 180 day volatility in S&P 500. Just recovering from a 10 year low. Not, not complicated. What it takes to do that, I'll let you guys figure that out. But to me the difference between you and me Dave is I take the lessons of Charlie D and market wizards. All that matters to me is where that price on the statement. Whether it's, it's the number on my statement, that's all that matters.
- [61:28]
C
None of those guys lived in a world with 8 to 10% growth in budget deficits in peacetime. We, we had a cyclical economy. We had a balanced budget under Clinton. Right.
- [61:40]
D
You know, 120 plus debt to GDP. The, the, the, the unfunded liabilities like that, it's mind blowing how, how large
- [61:54]
A
these deficits are and they're not going in the other direction.
- [61:59]
C
Right, well, but that, that matters, right? You know, it's not. This time is different. I hate this time is different. This time is different. No, it's, it's this epoch, this era that we've been in for the last 20 some odd years of deficits exploding to, I mean $40 trillion is a huge number. It is actually however not even close to accurate because it's ignoring unfunded liabilities. It's not even and if you put the. And if you look at the whole thing, I mean it. Which makes it probably closer to 2tr to 200. And that is just. Those are numbers that are so big that people's minds explode when they think about it. And so all of that matters. Everything else you're saying, Mike, is true. And that's why you expect certain things like, like corn. I mean, we produce way more corn than we should. We're using it as fuel is idiotic. It's been idiotic. But Iowa being very important to presidential elections, neither party's willing to screw with it.
- [62:53]
B
We're running out of time. But I got to mess with you a little bit there, Dave. Before the invention of the Model T, most of us farmlands are used for one thing. Transport, transportation, fuel for Ford horse feed. Now we're just switching basket back a little. It's not idiotic. It's like. But it's, it's. That's from Uval Noah Herrera. I think it was 21 lessons of 21st century. One of my favorite authors. But that's the key thing I love. I pointed out in the corn belt because it's the key thing that's we have to do something. It's here that we're writing checks for farmers not to produce. I used to have one of those farms and I used that for a little while. Or do what farmers want, just find sources of demand. And right now it's just an obvious one. One.
- [63:29]
A
Well, I think we ran out of time.
- [63:32]
C
I know.
- [63:33]
A
Five. We could have done this forever.
- [63:34]
D
Oil.
- [63:35]
A
Now we just need to call it Oil Mondays. We had smelting town hall. Dave, thank you. Now we need a metal show and an oil show for. For us to focus. I think the.
- [63:46]
D
The dumb rock Monday. It'll be Dumbrock Monday.
- [63:49]
A
Boomer rocks, as Mike calls them. Mike, you missed the beginning when we were talking about the Global Uncertainty Index being at all time highs. And I think it's the best bookmark is we could talk through these things. The bottom line is nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow. So it's just a very hard time, I think, to handicap what's going to happen to any asset class, much less markets and the economy in general. All right, guys, that's all we got for you today, thanks to Dave, Mike and James. Mike, you're going to have to stop getting so popular so we can get you for a full hour, man.
- [64:18]
B
It's all about oil. That'll stop. That'll stop.
- [64:22]
A
All right, guys. Dave, I'll see you in about 10 minutes on crypto Town Hall. Everybody else will see us tomorrow or next week. Bye. Let's do.