BTC Sessions - "Four Horsemen Of The Diesel Apocalypse" Are Coming For Europe | Doomberg & Lavish

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Mentor Sessions Ep 097: James Lavish and Doomberg break down the 2026 bond market crisis, Europe's diesel shortage, private credit risk, and Bitcoin as a macro asset.Bond yields near 20-year highs, Europe staring down a diesel shortage, and private credit quietly marking its own books — the plumbing of the global financial system is under real strain, and this conversation maps exactly where the pressure is building.James Lavish and Doomberg join BTC Sessions to connect the dots between the bond market, energy, geopolitics, and Bitcoin. You'll learn why the 10-year yield sitting at ~5% signals a structural regime change rather than a passing inflation scare, how private equity and insurance companies are stuffed with self-marked paper that echoes 2007-2008, and why Doomberg calls Europe's diesel situation the "Four Horsemen of the Diesel Apocalypse." You'll see the case that energy — not currency — is the base layer of every market, why nations are now selling Treasuries to buy fuel, and where Bitcoin fits as the "hot ball of money" hunting for the next asymmetric bet. Both guests also share the disciplined, rules-based approach they use to allocate across gold, cash, and Bitcoin without trying to time the market.⏱️ Timestamps:0:00 - Intro0:43 - Bond yields near 20-year highs and global yield melt-up0:57 - Why the 10-year at 5% is a new regime, not a blip3:28 - The death of the 60/40 portfolio5:38 - Doomberg on Grant Williams, Luke Gromen and fiscal dominance9:03 - Hyperscaler debt crowding out long-dated paper10:16 - Echoes of 2007-2008 in private equity and insurance12:19 - The Treasury default nobody will call a default16:38 - How private credit marks its own book20:16 - Every market has its own purpose and structure25:26 - Trezor Safe 7 self-custody segment29:55 - Money is a promissory note on energy30:16 - Private credit, contagion and the mark-to-market catalyst33:16 - Could real estate seize up the credit chain?37:01 - Diesel, WTI and the Four Horsemen of the Diesel Apocalypse42:43 - Why Europe is uniquely exposed44:08 - Germany's nuclear mistake and the EU's fragility47:47 - Why Germany may leave the EU49:04 - Ukraine, Russia and the energy war51:38 - Why bonds aren't seeing a flight to safety53:23 - Bitcoin as the asset chucked overboard, now bid57:03 - Doomberg's rules-based gold, cash and Bitcoin allocation59:40 - Canada, Greenland, Carney and Trump theater1:05:44 - Where to follow James Lavish🔗 Links & Resources:• James Lavish on X: https://x.com/jameslavish• The Informationist newsletter:https://www.jameslavish.com/• Doomberg on Substack: https://newsletter.doomberg.com/⚡Previous Episode:Zack Shapiro: https://youtu.be/iZ7e0hY0WL8🔔 Subscribe for weekly Bitcoin Podcasts🐦 Follow on X: https://x.com/BTCSessions🐦 Follow on X: https://x.com/theBTCmentor⚡Sovereign Sessions — AI, Privacy, and Bitcoin education: http://youtube.com/@SovereignSessions?sub_confirmation=1⚡ Sponsored by Trezor - Get Your Safe 7 Today: https://affil.trezor.io/aff_c?offer_id=352&aff_id=1088⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB⚡ Sponsored by BITCOIN WELL: Best Place to BUY & SELL BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6💡BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Ben and the BTC Mentor Team: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit btcmentor.io #Bitcoin #BTC #BTCSessions #JamesLavish #Doomberg #BondMarket #FiscalDominance #EnergyCrisis #PrivateCredit #DieselShortage #SoundMoney #InterestRates #Treasuries #MoneyPrinting #Europe

The four horsemen of the diesel apocalypse are staring Europe in a face. They're just wildly susceptible to the winds of the rest of the world. Because they're borrowing, but who are they borrowing from? Wondering about the relationship between, say, like, the energy markets, the credit markets, and then the equity markets. Nobody really believes 5% yield us enough to protect your purchasing power over 30 years. They're realizing that this debt market has gotten to the point where there is really no return. And that's really the structural problem that we're staring at. We are in a new regime.

We're following Japan. And Bitcoin is now well above the 50-week moving average. The whole point of reserve currency is to be in reserve when you need it. The full circle, the full circle, which is all roads lead to printing. All right. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining me again. Very excited to have you guys back once more because we have so much to unpack today.

We got bond yields near 20-year highs. The Fed just hiked rates and they're signaling for more. Bitcoin is ripping on the day. Diesel is at record prices. Russian refineries are getting hit yet. Oil is down. So, James, to kick off the conversation, I want to start with you. The 10-year yield is sitting in about 5% and Bitcoin is now well above the 50-week moving average.

Those feel like completely different stories to me, almost conflicting signals. But maybe there's something I'm missing. So what's your read on the markets? Yeah, I mean, we've been watching global yields kind of melt up here over the last few months. And what I mean by that is the longer-term treasuries and longer-dated global bonds, whether it's here in the United States or it's in the UK or it's in France or it's in Japan, everything's kind of all the yields are moving higher. And I think what's going on here is you've got a little bit of oil and inflation pressures.

That's definitely part of it. But I think the bigger piece and the longer term, a more problematic piece, at least for the central banks and for these governments, is that the buyers are now, they're realizing that this debt market has gotten to the point where there is really no return. And it's beyond that point of return. And so what's happened is that all of these governments have taken on so much debt. And of course, we use the United States as the, as the premier example here for what we're dealing with. But we've got $40 trillion of debt that we're turning over, according to a third of it, every single 12 months. right now and we're adding another 5% to it every year. And so it this is just, it's gotten to the point

where we're longer term treasuries and bonds are demanding more yield. The investors want more yield for not just inflation risk, but for supply and demand risk, meaning the duration risk, meaning they want more yield to compensate them for the high likelihood that there's going to be a deluge of longer dated treasuries coming to the market at some point. Now, as we watch this, though, and I keep glancing over at my screen here, and I can maybe I can share this so it'll be easier for you guys to see exactly what I'm talking about. But, you know, as we're watching this, the key level that we broke here, as you can see, is this downtrend of yields that happened along the ZERP era, where we were just trending lower and lower and lower and lower.

This is the 60-40 bond equity portfolio or equity bond portfolio that was just the best portfolio that anybody's ever had in their mix because equities were going up. bonds were going up to on the long term because rates were going down. So if you owned longer term treasuries, you were doing great. And then we got into the 2022 era where you had so much money printing and so much inflation that long-term bonds started to, the yield started going up. And it broke this massive trend. And now we're in a new regime.

And that's really the structural problem that we're staring at. We are in a new regime. We're following Japan. Duneberg can talk about this ad nauseum, I'm sure, because there's a lot of energy-related activity there, too. But everybody's turning Japanese in that the central banks and the governments now have a problem with so much debt that they're going to have to, at some point, step in and start buying to keep these rates down.

And we saw the rates kind of gravitating lower here a little bit. And there was some hope that when the Treasury was talking about, hey, we're going to come in and help out the long end on the regular buyback system. It's just not big enough. But we can talk about that more later. And the hope that the Fed raising rates and battling inflation would stop the long end from going up and the Treasury stepping in and saying that we'll manage this to make sure that they don't get out of control, Neither of those has really worked. And long-term yields are still going higher, as you said. The 10-year right now is sitting at 4.97.

It bumped over 5% last week. And I just don't see it going anywhere lower until we get some sort of different outcome from the markets. And right now, this is the way we're headed. Yields are going higher. Duneberg, love to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, sure. first things first is, you know, rates are really hard to understand and model and not what we do for a living. We, of course, observe the markets like everybody else.

And, you know, I read a lot of great stuff and three sort of analysts come to mind. I read Jim Grant's latest edition of Grant's interest rate observer, which I think is a must read for everybody in finance, whether or not you care about interest rates or gold, not the least of which. because Jim is a fantastic writer, and I appreciate the craft. You know, this concept of 30-year bonds being certificates of confiscation. Nobody really believes that 5% yield us enough to protect your purchasing power over 30 years. And who are the marginal buyers of these bonds? As an interesting question. And then Grant Williams, good friend of Duneberg, good personal friend of mine,

who published his monthly things that make you go home over the weekend. Another really fascinating deep dive into Scott Besson's I Am the House, Quip, which was, I think, you know, Grant is, again, another brilliant writer, and writes in his unique way and his way to tell stories is just really amazing. And he points out that there might indeed be a plan. Scott Bessett is not dumb. And the last time phrases like certificates of confiscation were tossed about it just happened to be one of the best times ever to buy long-term debt.

So who knows what the trick, the sleight of hand, the great unveiling will be. And as much as I enjoyed reading that piece, I laughed aloud many times, actually. having said that, I've sort of become skeptical of all 5D chess theories of Trump 47, having observed what has transpired in the Middle East. One hopes that Scott Bessent is a little more sophisticated in his strategy. And then the other guy that I really enjoy reading every week is Luke Roman, Forced for the Trees. and Luke has been pointing out for a very long time. That fiscal dominance is here. The old ways of looking at charts like James just showed no longer apply.

You can't really talk about yields and debt when, you know, debt to GDP is over 100%. And, you know, the deficit financing is 6, 7% of GDP depending on your number and whether or not Trump gets us $5,000 checks to everybody. And so Luke points out that in an era of energy scarcity, you sell treasuries to buy energy. The whole point of reserve currency is to be in reserve when you need it. If emergency break this glass, well, we see Japan and other sort of net energy short holders of U.S. treasuries. I'm wondering whether today's BTOs are. better than tomorrow's interest rate coupon payment.

And so there's a mix of all of those things. The last thing I'd say that we haven't talked about yet, which is tied to the energy trade and geopolitics is of course the crowding out of long-dated paper by the hyperscalers. The wave of debt financing that is being shopped to interest rate, you know, a, you let's call them duration buyers, where you have to match your future obligations in a nominal way. You might be interested in 6, 7 percent yield from a piece of paper because it matches what you'll have to pay to a pensioner someday. But there's a convolution there. It's not just that this wave, this avalanche, this tsunami of long-dated paper is hitting the market,

competing for the marginal buyer for the third. 30-year note, for example. But also that private equity has bought insurance companies. I'm shocked. It's actually legal and that they've been able to penetrate the market as deeply as they have. And they're stuffed them to the gills with their own paper. And so there's a sort of echoes of 2007, 2008, you know, high-risk mortgages are contained. There's no chance of contagion type scenario spooling up here in the back offices of the private equity world.

And a couple of my favorite sayings in finance is a rolling loan gathers no loss. And when you mark your own paper, you tend to round up. And so even though insurance companies are ostensibly amongst the most regulated, you know, entities in the U.S. financial system, once the private equity vultures get in there and they buy up a company and, you know, drive its estate ratios up as it does its dividend recap. caps and takes out its equity injections. Then this paper has to go somewhere, and why, gee, by golly, I have this insurance company in my portfolio just looking for long-dated paper to match its obligations. Let's have it take it off our hands at what would be above market prices, although I'm sure they've paid somebody somewhere to do a proper valuation.

Wink, wink, smile, smile. Lawyers are in the litigation business after all. And so you have this sort of toxic brew, and I don't want to be the one that says, oh, you know, this is the global financial crisis all over again. You know, look at this ghost going bump in the night. But there's an awful lot of smoke around that. We're starting to see some very smart people, write some very compelling essays around it. And who knows, all roads lead to printing, which is why I think Bitcoin's at 86,000 or whatever it is today. And in the long run, nobody's going to default, at least not technically.

In spirit, they are almost guaranteed to default, but not in the classic. We're just not going to miss that coupon with one great exception, possible exception, Black Swan. I had a, you know, when you have an audience as big as ours and people send you tips and ideas and thoughts and suggestions via email and the comments, every once in a while, one of them stands out and somebody pointed out a potential long shot, secondary impact of the war. in the Middle East is that if the Houthis and the Iranians roll up all of the Arab Gulf states, you know, the House of Saad falls and all that stuff. It's a short pot to imagine the U.S.

just cancels all the treasuries they own, which would be a default in the same way that I would argue that the seizing of the Russian assets is a default predominantly by the European Union. I mean, debt was, the debt repayment was promised, and that re-promised payment never came. By my end definition, that is a classic default, and I don't care if you say, It's just frozen or it's only because of the war. I mean, that is a default on a P5 member nuclear superpower. There's a world where you can imagine World War III really breaks out. The U.S. just walks away from all that debt.

The Arab Gulf states own or China owns or pick your favorite. And they'll call it something other than what it is, which is a default, in the same way that Nixon closing the gold window was a default. A lot there. Sorry. No, I was like, well, there's a bomb to drop. right, where to begin on that one. So James, I do want to get your reaction and I want to even get your thoughts even on the current escalations in the Middle East because I know we had

the, I think it was the Houthi struck at Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure. And then we also had Ukraine hitting Russia's energy infrastructure. So Dumbar, I'm curious your thoughts on basically refinery impact and downstream effects of that. But even just jumping back for a second, I had no idea about the private equity companies buying insurance companies. And then if I understand correctly, then those insurance companies buying the junk bonds of the PE companies. Because I was trying to figure out when you guys were talking there, like, who is the marginal buyer that will step in for the long-dated treasuries? And why aren't they here yet? Like at 5% if they're not coming in, how high do yields have to go before new buyers kind of step in? So, James,

tons to unpack there. Take it any way you like, sir. I mean, like, 5% is not really a high yield in the historical context of U.S. treasuries, right? So going back in the 80s and we were bump up against 15, 16, 17% in the 10 year. And so 5% is not that big of a deal. But it is a big deal for the Treasury. And the reason it's a big deal is because of the fact that, as Duneberg pointed out, we're running over 100% debt to equity or debt to GDP in, you know, in this regime. And so, man, I agree with Luke. You can't look at charts and charts. trade them. You have to step back and synthesize what's actually going on. So, you know, looking at the yields now and exactly what's going on in the Middle East and with oil and with energy is,

is it a supply problem? You know, is inflation going up because of supply and all? That is, you have to take into context that the rates at the rates at 5, 6, 7 percent, they give the Treasury pause because, again, the Treasury is, their business is to do the bidding of the government, of Congress. Congress is not going to stop spending. We're structurally incapable of doing that for multiple reasons, but primarily because the largest expenditure that they have is Social Security. And if you look at the off-balance debt, the liabilities of the government, then you're talking about over $100 trillion on top of everything. And depending on what models you use and how you're looking at the population, you're talking about an issue that is,

it's not just not going away. It's spooling upwards. Right. So now we've got to go back because you were asking about, what were you saying? Oh, private equity. So the private equity, so here's a problem with the private debt. The private debt, as Duneberg pointed out, is marked to market. And what's the market? Well, the market is either what you believe you could get for it in an open market sale or even in a large private sale. Or the last price that you did, business at that you had an offering at. And so, you know, what you see in private equity often is they will do add-on investments at a certain price and that will mark up the book. So you see how you see private equity funds go out and raise fund two, fund three, fund four. And suddenly you

see that they've got series, you know, series A, series B, series C of the same company along the lines. And those are all marked at cost or marked upwards. And so it's a little bit of, I wouldn't call a shell game. It's just, it's, it's, you know, they're setting the price. They're the marginal buyer at that point that they've gathered investors in order to, in order to hold that price. But one of the things that Duneberg said, that is interesting. And we don't have full transparency on on the private deals is that some of these distressed companies and the distress down. This is different, the hyperscalers, okay, they're not distressed. They do have massive amounts of debt that they're coming to market with that is absolutely competing with the Treasury for.

And you've heard Besant and Warsh kind of nod toward that, that this is something that's out there. They're aware of. I think Worse said that the Fed is aware. aware of that situation. But that's not his problem. It's just something to be aware of. But one of the things that these private equity companies do and that when they do have these portfolio companies that have debt is they'll just say, okay, instead of, instead of marking it down or saying that you defaulted because you tripped a covenant, what we're going to do is we're going to say, well, you can just pay us in kind. And so now you're getting, you know, more equity or more debt in the company in kind in order to just roll that debt forward and not declare that they've tripped

a covenant and not declare that now they're in default. And so it's not in default. It just keeps rolling and you just keep, what was the saying? He said, Timber. Rolling loan gathers no loss. The rolling loan, yeah, there's no loss. And so that's right, there's an old distress, an old distress term, right? I stole that one from Kyle Bass. I don't know where he stole it from. But I don't like to take other people's phrases without attributing. Kyle's well versed in that world.

So, yeah. And so that's kind of what we're staring at. And is it, look, not to, we're not, Dumberg, you know, maybe in his name, we're not sitting here being Dumer's. It's just, hey, you ought to be aware of. of this. And believe you, me, the debt buyers are aware of this. And so that's part of the reason. Most sophisticated players on the board, of course. Yeah. You're not watching what the equity markets are doing. You watch what the debt markets are doing. That will give you clues. Yeah. I'd like to take a side

slip here and go on a bit of a rant because that's an absolutely critically important observation, one that I got into a friendly debate with Nate over Canadian Prepper on his show, who's actually, good enough to have me back on after he sort of threw a bit of a dig our way, which is people often conflate different markets and assume that inefficiencies in one market means all markets are inefficient, for example. So the focus of my debate with Nate was, look, the oil markets are efficient. Like the price on the screen matters. Yes, the war in Iran should have driven oil much higher.

Everybody thought that. We thought that we were wrong. When the oil price is telling us we're wrong, we don't immediately assume that market is being manipulated like so many have done on social media. Why? It's not the stock market. And his counter, when I wasn't on his show, was that, well, look at the Korean stock exchange. It would up 25% in one day.

Nobody could say that's efficient markets. Well, different markets have different purposes, different structures, and different participants. and you have to understand the purpose structure and participant mosaic of each of the markets if you're going to get involved. Then look, the oil market has a different purpose than the stock market, and the bond market has a different purpose than the oil market and the stock market. And they have different structures to serve those purposes, and they have different participants. And so like the oil market exists to ensure a steady supply of oil to refineries at a price

where they can earn a profit refining. That's it. That's the reason the oil market exists. It doesn't exist for speculators. It exists to ensure a steady supply of oil to refineries at a certain price. And so the structure is to serve that purpose. Expiring contracts, settled by delivery a lot of the time. You know, specification of grade and location and delivery time. All these nuances matter in each of the individual hundreds of contracts. that trade across the dozens of grades that matter in the oral world. And the stock market's purpose is not that. The stock market's purpose is to assemble risk capital for enterprises. And so its structure is different. Once a company does an IPO or does an offering, those shares could be immortal. They just could trade forever, assuming no buyback or bankruptcy or whatever.

The Bitcoin markets serves a different purpose. And so to do the debt markets. And so once you understand that every market on your screen has its own unique purpose, structure, and participants. Then and only then can you properly interpret the information those markets are trying to give you. And I would argue the same goes with the bond markets. Look, I don't think that it behooves anybody to look at the 10-year yield and say, oh, you know, the market is wildly mispricing that.

I mean, that's one of the most sophisticated liquid deepest markets in the world. And it is meaningful. It's telling you something. And I would treat it with great respect. much, much different than a penny stock going bananas on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. Those are two wildly different markets that tell you different pieces of information that really matter. And so, anyway, side rant over.

The only thing that I would add on the private equity stuff is to get a little more cynical if you want. Like, it's just the three of us, right? There's no shortage of I buy your deal if you buy mine, chip shot marketing going around in the private equity world. Chip shot marking, I should say, I want to raise a certain amount of money at a new valuation. You take my deal. When you come out to the market, I'll take yours. And we'll be, quote, arm's length, private investors that justify a new mark where everybody gets the benefit of an ever appreciating net asset value booked. charge fees against.

Mark my book. I'll mark yours. Exactly. And this happens in the venture capital world. And some of these deals, look, it must be said, money begets its own momentum. I do a lot of private investing. One of my good friends who's battle-hardened in the BC world, you know, the serial founder, is, it likes to say that all the deals are undersubscribed except for the ones that are oversubscribed.

And the whole trick of being a successful venture investor is deal flow. because money begets its own momentum. This is the entire soft bank strategy. I'm going to pick a shell, a startup, and give them an overwhelming amount of money. They're going to buy market share and a loss, and then they'll raise price when everyone's out of business. That's what Uber did.

That's what SoftBank does. It works. And so there is a world where extend and pretend goes on long enough, and one of those companies, you know, hits the jackpot and justifies the whole thing. So again, the private world is just, elbows up. I mean, this is not, the SEC is not regulating the private markets in the way that

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No, I largely agree. And one of the things I was like to remind people is like, look, I've got a bunch of back chats and group chats. I'm sure you guys have a bunch of back chats and group chats. All these people have back chats and group chats. And you know there's information going back and forth there that will never see the light of day, that would maybe be helpful if you were aware of it. I do want to drill down a little bit on the private credit for a second there. But before I do, Duneberg, I just wanted a quick follow-up. When you were going through the different markets there, I kind of had a thought and tell me if I'm way off base. It's definitely an oversimplification. But I'm wondering about the relationship between, say, like, the energy markets, the credit

markets, and then the equity markets. And what immediately kind of popped to mind for me was this idea that, like, logic is the basis of math and math is the basis of physics. Like one kind of feeds on the other that kind of build up from there. Is there a similar sort of relationship? Like, I feel like the energy would be critical for credit and then credit would be critical for equity. But perhaps I'm way oversimplified. No, look, energy is life. I'm in the middle of writing this book. God bless the publisher and so on, but about 25,000 words into this thing. And energy is life and currencies exist to efficiently shuttle energy between people who can afford to buy it and people who can help produce it. And this is what I mean when I say,

Luke's hypothesis that people are selling treasures to buy energy makes total sense to me because you can't eat treasures, right? I mean, you can't heat your home with treasures. Ultimately, when you just look at sort of the grand bargain with the Saudis after Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, it was that the U.S. would keep the dollar as good as gold for oil. it would manage its fiscal house and its discipline in a way that the oil exporting nations of the world could park their excess profits, recycle their excess profits into U.S. dollar denominated assets and would be assured that the spending power of those assets would

be mostly preserved. And also if your current account is such that you're accumulating excess reserves, those reserves would be money good to buy oil. And so that that relationship really broke down in the global financial crisis. And that's where Luke's work kind of picks up with the whole Chinese reaction to the GFC. And it's opening of the gold window, Russia is selling its treasuries, World War III starting in 2014, all the stuff that we've talked about in various podcast appearances in our writing. So yeah, for sure, the purpose of currency. the purpose of all the other markets is to ensure energy gets to where it needs to go,

whether that energy is in the form of compute or corn or soybeans or diesel or gasoline or plastics or lumber or nails. These are all basically battles against the forces of entropy. Those things don't spontaneously appear. They need to be manufactured. They need to, you need to lean into the current ventropy that is creating an ever higher degree of disorder in the universe in order to temporarily impose order on your local environment. That's a fancy scientific way of saying, yeah, money is just, money is a promissory note on energy. Very interesting. James, I want to drill down a little bit on private credit and just kind of get your feelings. I will come back to Bitcoin a bit more later as well.

but the idea of possible problems in private credit has been like a recurring thing that keeps coming up with different guests, all kind of seeing the same sort of thing. And using it also as like an explanation for it being on insurance and pensions, kind of balance sheet and why they're not maybe going out and buying more treasuries right now and yields are kind of slipping up. I'm curious, just your view on private credit markets if you do have any concerns with everything that we're talking about. And then also, if it was going to be marked to market at some point in time, I can't figure out the catalyst or reason why it would be. Like, why, what situation would cause an issue where they actually have to mark the stuff to market? Well, I mean, they have to mark to market. It's just under the accounting rules, you know, so that they do have to do that.

But what we were saying is that sometimes they can kind of set what that market price will be. Yes, I guess the better phrase would be. Let me have a crack at it because I think I know what you're asking. The scenario in which the cascading series of bad marks would lead to. too contagion is, oh, I don't know, a bunch of boomers decide they want to cash in their whole life insurance policies at the same time. And these private equity owned insurance companies need to go and sell these loans on the open market to raise funds to meet those redemptions. Because they mismatch their duration with their obligations. Right. And so you have to

sell these loans to raise funds to pay out, you know, because they make assumptions about how many people are going to cash in their whole life insurance policies early and all this other stuff or natural disastrous hit and, you know, these insurance companies. Right. And so anytime there's a large outfall that necessitates asset sales, then you get into what happened in the financial crisis, right, which is, look, the whole concept of valuation is a deeply philosophical one. It's either what you could get in an open sale, as James said, or the present value of

expected future payments corrected for probability of default. And so the latter is a judgment call. And as long as you don't have to compare that judgment. Made on an Excel spreadsheet. Made on an Excel spreadsheet. And so the banks are struggling with this now. Porter Stansberry's out what a call along Bank of America. You know, they went super long all these treasuries when interest rates were rock

bottom. And then, you know, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and all of this, you know, that chart that James just showed has manifested in market market losses. on an order of hundreds of billions on all these too big to fail banks. And the Fed stepped in and said, here's your fake mark. You could hold these on your balance sheet

without recognizing the loss. And Porter's point is if you recognize that loss, the shareholder equity would be wiped out. That only matters if people run to the bank and start pulling their funds out, of course. And one needs to be very careful when talking about banks because you don't want to be accused

of precipitating such a run, which is actually illegal and a felony. And we're certainly not implying that anybody should run to the bank and empty their bank accounts here. But anyway, yeah, this marked-to-mark, this concept of valuation is, it's funny because it is at the beating heart central core of all of modern finance. And yet it is still nebulous in a way. James, anything missed there? No, I think that's the point of what you were saying, I guess, is the, what precipitates the need for finding the action. value in the market and that's it and so could that begin a cascading event sure of course it can

as we saw in 2007 2008 you know we saw it mildly in the the world com era but you know we really had we had massive contagion back in the great financial crisis and that was the problem um so again i don't see this directly on the horizon but a black swan could cause it of course that's that's that's the way these things work. I'm curious, James even just quickly. Just running through this in my head, and I don't know if it actually lands, if real estate could again be involved. So what I was thinking about is that we have the boomer generation

that needs to access some of their capital. But because the treasury yields are so high, maybe refinancing on the house or selling and downsizing, like your mortgage is going to be higher than it was if you locked in back in, like, what was it, like, 20, 21 or so. And so if real estate might be kind of seizing up or less is moving, if they might go to sell other assets, which then might realize these, you might have to actually sell

these, this private credit? Possibly. I mean, the real estate market's locked up because of that, the barbell of rates that are out there. You know, you've got the sub three percent, uh, rates that, that, um, older buyers are sitting on. And you've got the new rates are being said at the high six, low sevens. And so that's, that's kind of, uh, that's why it's locked up mostly. Um, but there's a lot of equity in those houses. Because between the time that people bought those houses and put them on a two or three percent mortgage, the Fed printed over $5 trillion, and all the houses are worth far more than the equity in them. The problem that we had in 2008 crisis was that you had, you know, waitresses who were

an hourly wage that had four or five mortgages. And so as soon as the – and they were at variable rates, you know. And so as soon as the market started to get hit, they were they were upside down their equity. But that's not the case here. I just don't see, I don't see a housing crisis the way that it manifested in 2008. It's just not the it's not we're structurally in a much different place here. And so that's one thing. But no, I think, but the private credit, if we did have a cascading effect there,

it could it likely would affect all markets you know that would that would create a correlation to one event where it doesn't matter what year is in your portfolio it's going down not because it should go down and this is where the inefficiency of markets comes in that that we were talking about the beginning of the show is that the if the inefficiency of markets comes in when you have to sell something not not not because you want to but you are required to in order to raise cash to meet margin calls. And so, and that will happen in a correlation to one event. We've seen it all our lives. I mean, I've seen it a hundred year events. I think I've seen seven or eight of them in my 30 year career. So, but that produces the opportunity that you're

looking for. So when you have gold go down 30% because of some correlation to one event, when it's this thing, one thing that you ought to own, then that's likely the spot where you want to be taking advantage of. I completely agree. Duberg, unless there's anything else that we missed on that topic, I do want to pivot to energy right now because I've seen that we got, I think WTI is about 95. Brent crude, I think I saw about $100. And diesel being very interesting at about $6.50, which I think is they have huge knock-on

effects. Plus there's some of the Russian refineries getting taken on some of their infrastructure problems. The last time we talked, you actually brought up, and that was back in June, that you expected prices to be weighed down. But that was on the caveat that the ceasefire held, which it didn't. That all fell apart. So the conditions were gone. So what currently has your attention in the energy markets? Obviously, you hit the big one with diesel.

I want to correct something you said during the opening intro, which is a common misconception. You said, you know, Russia refineries were attacked overnight and yet oil was down, as though that should be. surprising. The only customer of oil are refinery owners. And so let's just run the hypothetical. If you took out every refinery in the world, the price of oil would go negative. Because in the absence of a refinery, oil is both not only worthless, but it's toxic goo that's hard to store. And so take out a bunch of refineries, well, diesel goes up and oil goes down. Like the oil is worthless until a refinery bequeaths it with value. And so even oil sitting in inventory somewhere has value in the sense that it is an expected

value, a probability that a refinery eventually buys it at a certain price. That probability might be high. That price might be variable. But if there's no refineries, there's no need for oil. And so are we surprised that diesel is going higher and crude oil prices are going lower, all things being equal when refiners are getting blown up left and right in Russia? No. And that's a misconception. Big black plumes of smoke aren't always bullish for oil. It depends on what's burning.

And so we're writing a piece on diesel light. It was joking that it was up overnight, writing it and that we hope the headlines don't overwhelm it. Europe's in a real bad spot, man. All roads lead to, you know, I think the social preview of the piece. as it stood when I sent it to the editor was heads, nobody wins, tails Europe loses. The four horsemen of the diesel apocalypse are staring Europe in the face. One, Trump looks likely to succumb to the pressure to limit diesel exports that would crush global prices for diesel in a way that few in Europe are prepared for. you have this Lindsay Graham sanctions bill that was signed into law by Trump,

which automatically essentially forces his hand to put significant sanctions on, oh, I don't know, China and India, who happened to be, oh, I don't know, very large marginal refiners of crude and exporters today. Well, India, you know, 60% of the diesel that went through the Red Sea to Europe in August came from India. if India stops buying Russian crude and stops exporting diesel, that hurts Europe above all else. You go up and down the list of potential events. You have the risk of escalation, of course, in the Middle East as well.

And if you start blowing up those assets in a way that makes them practically impossible to come back online. I mean, everywhere you look, you just have real challenges. But then, you know, for countries that don't make enough of their own stuff, you know, they're really in a bad spot. And the last thing we would say is, you know, of the four, forcimen, I've covered three, the fourth is that when you run global refineries at 97, 98, or I saw a report that India was running theirs at 108% of nameplate capacity,

These are wildly complicated, sophisticated chemical plants that handle explosive material at extremely high pressures and temperatures day in and day out that need maintenance, that need downtime, that need turnarounds. And you put them off because you're getting generational profits and eventually one of them goes boom. It doesn't need to be a cyber attack. It doesn't need to be, you know, sabotage. We saw one in the Midwest go out last week, you know, the Joliet refinery that I'm sure nobody had a, ever heard of before. Suddenly, it's the reason why diesel in the Midwest reaches 675 a gallon I saw on one of the boards I drove five this weekend. So a refinery goes out in the Midwest. That hurts Europe because it increases the chance that Trump toggles exports. And so the thing

about these four threads is they're synergistic. One happening increases the likelihood of the others. you know, if Trump begins to limit diesel exports and diesel prices explode, does that not emboldened the Houthis? Of course it does. You know, does that make India question whether it shouldn't be stockpiling that diesel instead of exporting it? Of course it does. Does that mean the rest of the world's refineries run harder and hotter and blow up sometimes at a slightly higher rate than before? Yes, it does. So these four trans and the thing about Europe is that it's just amazing, is that this.

The 27 members of the European Union burn, consume, refine 11 million barrels of oil a year, and they only produce like 300,000. So they're just wildly susceptible to the whims of the rest of the world. And yet funding, providing targeting for cheering on the destruction of Russian refineries, even though none of these leaders have a mandate to lead, look at Frederick Mertz over the weekend. less than 5% and he's up there saying he's not going to resign when the party that has got like 37, 38, 45% of the polls clearly wants to not go to war with Russia. And he thinks he has a mandate to lead his country back into war with Russia again for

the third time as though the first two times weren't bad enough for Germany. I don't know. It's just bizarre, bizarre times. And I fear for our European friends and subscribers and colleagues, it's bad time in Europe. And boy, the propaganda last point is just thick. I mean, the thicket of gearing up for war as if anybody in Europe really wants to go to war with Russia, at least no sane person. Anyway, is what it is. It seems like the die has been cast.

Maybe I'm watching too much Canadian prep or World War III updates. But, you know, this situation in the diesel markets is. And look, I mean, the U.S. and Canada draw a surplus. around it will be just fine. But boy, Europe is just screwed. There's no other way to say it. And by the way, that's even before we talk about natural gas. Well, I mean, how many plants?

The Germany closed, what, six nuclear plants? Oh, sure. Yeah, sure. Well, they had the world's... Catastrophic mistake. They had one of the world's most sophisticated, best-performing fleet of nuclear reactors. Forget about the last six.

They just shut them down. Shut them all down. after Fukushima. This is the ugly legacy of Engel Merkel. A physicist, by the way, shocking way. Anyway, here we are. They've created their own problems. They've created their own problems, right.

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no it's absolutely insane i think i saw uh micron coming out and talking about like energy crisis or problems on the horizon here too i don't understand how they could possibly have an appetite for war I'm curious your reflections on just the overall energy markets. And also I'm thinking about diesel as like an input for the economy. Like I don't think Europe's doing great, but if they can't get diesel too, that just seems like even not even on the, let's say the conflict side. Like everything's just going to kind of grind to a halt. You're heading into winter with a shortage of fuel and energy.

Just think about that. For all of the nonsense that they spew daily about global warming, and now with AI and with, you know, the need to control social media. And now they're rolling out the digital euro, all this stuff. They're focused on all this stuff and scaring their citizens into compliance on every front. And they're going to kill more people this winter than any, all those things combined for the last 10 years, last 20 years. You know, there's just that it's, um, um, unconscionable what the, the leaders are doing out there. And I wrote about, and we haven't even talked about Dune.

We're about the entirety of Europe owing the Germany on Target 2. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And that, you know, I said this three years ago. I think I wrote, I wrote a piece about. One of the great sucker jobs of all time. I mean.

Right. Yeah. So the entirety of Europe is, um, owes the, you know, the, EU basically because they're borrowing, but who are they borrowing from? Germany. So EU owes Germany. And at some point, I wrote this years ago, at some point in the not too distant future, Germany's going to up and leave the EU. They're going to say enough's enough. They will have leaders elected that will do it. And we're seeing the beginnings of that now where they're saying enough's enough. We're not going to carry the rest of Europe anymore. And but what, what,

Ironically, what's pushing them to those decisions are the mistakes they made themselves. Those catastrophic energy decisions that they made themselves is pushing them towards that. And let's not even talk about mark to market on that stuff. Yeah, exactly. Hundreds of billions of dollars are owed to Germany. And they just, you know. I think tension there with Poland as well, too, even from immigration, that I don't expect the EU to be long for this world. I can't see how it can stay together when you have such.

disparate cultures in bad times. Just look what happened last night, or that was a lot over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday. Ukraine sent 1,600 drones and a few missiles try to overwhelm Russia's air defense. Okay. Almost all of them got shot down. A few got through, did some damage, flumes with smoke, that's fine. What do you think Russia's going to do now? Yeah.

Like, Kirkblash, to utterly destroy all aspects of Ukraine's energy. Listen, by the way, I've said consistently when this started two years ago, war crimes. These are war crimes on both sides. You don't attack largely civilian energy infrastructure. But the concept of war crime is kind of cute now. I mean, please, nobody cares. All wars are war crimes in our view anyway. So I suppose at least ripping away the pretense of it is probably a good thing in the long run.

But like, so just look at the sequence of events in the last three months. Ukraine launches drone attacks on. Russian grain cargoes in the Sea of Azov. Okay, great. You know, media victory. Get the spin cycle. The British tell us that Ukraine's winning. The British tell us that Putin has cancer

and that his arm is twitching in a weird way. And look at how paranoid he is. You know, what British propaganda is the worst. And then Russia says, okay, they close the Black Sea. They destroy the port of Odessa just before harvest, devastating the Ukrainian economy. All right. Ukraine's attacking Russia's refineries.

Sure, that hurts Europe more than anybody. They could just swap the crude with China and get refined products in return. And, yeah, we'll just destroy all of your energy infrastructure. I wouldn't be shocked to see a sustained attack on the 17 bridges that cross the neighbor now, basically creating a giant cauldron in eastern Ukraine of what's left of the Ukrainian army. There's just no scenario. Again, I know it's like annoys people when some people when we say this, but a war is lost when it can't be won. There's just no world in which that Ukraine is going to defeat Russia.

I'm sorry, they're just dizzy. Blowing up refineries is not going to defeat Russia. It's not going to bring Putin to the negotiating table. Well, by the way, when you hear when you hear Kayakales say negotiating table, what she means is capitulate. It's just not going to happen. They'll use their nukes before they capitulate. So with the U.S. Why do they have 6,000 nukes?

So they can capitulate to Kayakales? Give me a break. Sorry, go ahead, James. No, so that brings us full circle back to what we're talking about at the beginning is the bonds. And, you know, if you can see my screen here, can you see the Bloomberg? The global bonds over the last year, you know, typically in periods of conflict, even if started by the U.S., there's been a rush to U.S. treasuries as a flight to safety. but we're not seeing that. If you look at this blue dot is where we are now on yields.

And compared to where we were a year ago, and we're all the way down the line, every single developed Western country, basically, is that the yields have been pushed higher, including the U.S., and the U.S. is 82% higher year or year, the yields versus some others. what's the one that's negative? So this is the interesting, you know, and it's not because people are rushing to buy, you know, Chinese bonds, but that's the, that has to do with economic issues. It's backed by gold.

It's back by gold. Roman argues. I mean, that's fair. That's exactly fair. So, and isn't that interesting, though? And so this is what we've been. The other one that jumps out, of course, is Argentina, but that's because Besson gave them a bailout. But anyway.

Right. Besson gave them the bail out. Right. well, a loan, right? So, rolling one, yeah. Right, another rolling loan. So, but yeah, so that's, that's what's interesting about, about where we are now with this is, you know, I don't see these, the yields and energy prices and gold prices and Bitcoin,

it's all entangled. Now, Bitcoin is not acting like a flight to. safety, I don't believe. That's not what's happening here. And you asked about that earlier in the show, we never really got to it. But Bitcoin is acting like the asset that was chucked overboard in the last fall and going into this year. And now what we've talked about last time was the hot ball of money is chasing the next opportunity. And well, Bitcoin looks a lot better than some of the things that are trading at all-time highs now, especially in the backdrop of everything in the global conflict and yields rising and now just the sheer amount of borrowing that's going on with the AI companies.

And man, next time we'll have to dig into this one, which is the AI rush to being, I guess, being regulated by the United States and other. Very suspicious. Pretty suspicious, the way that's all kind of unfolded here. And so there's an unease with the books that people are not seeing behind the scenes here with OpenAI and Anthropic. And so, and that's all feeding into this. You know, Bitcoin jumping $5,000 overnight.

it's not atypical for this asset. And the reason for that is long ago, there just wasn't liquidity. And you get into a market and overnight, and then there's not the same liquidity in different times of the day. This thing trades 24-7. Now it's more that there's almost fake liquidity at certain price points. So you saw a massive amount of leveraged Bitcoin bet. at certain points that are short, you know, the perps, the perpetual futures sitting on a price and that would that price was somewhere around 81, 82,000 and sitting there and sitting there,

and you look at the chart, it tried to break through like 10 or 11 times over the last few weeks. And once it does break through, then there's an air pocket that's created and it moves to the next level until you find that perpetual short level there. and it just kind of trades in those bands for a while and then it jumps out. So that's kind of what's happening here. But it doesn't shock me that Bitcoin is rising at this time, even though you had the Clarity Act was declared dead for all intents and purposes. And you've got you had the hacks that were having with Coal Card.

You've got the Fed raising rates. all these things that in the treasury saying they're going to keep yields in place and all these things are kind of negative for Bitcoin unless of course they're printing money on the backside of anything we're talking about. So which appears all the way back down to the full circle of the first circle, which is all roads lead to printing. And that's that's being sniffed out by certain assets. It was sniffed out by gold a number of weeks ago.

Then you had the yield traders kind of sit on it with the rise in short-term rates, but that's not going to hold in my opinion either. So both those ads are going much higher. Doonberg, any thoughts there? You know, from your lips to my wallet, what can I say? I'm about as, yeah, I do think that, you know, the specifics of the transition are always interesting. But ultimately, I think, you know, if you take a step back and take a multi-year, decade-long horizon, you know, I've tried to be very disciplined in my own personal allocations.

And I do think that one of the things about making it over time is just having a set of rules that you emotionally are able to follow without breaking them during times of panic. broadly speaking, the mistakes I've made historically have come when I haven't followed the set of rules that I lay out for myself. So if you're a firm in your conviction, I think what matters most is an ability to hold true to that conviction. So I've put all of my gold buying on autopilot, for example, and I have my three legs of my personal portfolio, which is I exist in the Fiat world. I save by buying real assets and I invest privately. And, you know, there are cycles to all these things. And the private market prices get out of hand.

I'm always happy to have things to sell. And if gold prices get lower, my dollar cost average over my lifetime is going to be a hedge. And so, you know, like so, like just as an example, I have basically all of my retirement accounts in gold because I'm still relatively young. And I don't plan to be accessing my retirement any decade. gauge soon, but I also make sure to buy a certain amount of physical every month, like clockwork as a form of savings. And so whatever the price of gold is that month, you know, my gold eagle costs more or cost less, but it arrives nonetheless and stack it up, you know.

And so as long as you have that sort of mindset, you don't randomly try to time the market and you just sort of wait. So if you firmly believe that Bitcoin's going to a million someday, I mean, you're certainly entitled to believe that. I'm sure many people listening to this do. I'm not criticizing it, but if you firmly believe that, then, you know, dips are opportunities and strengths, you know, bouts of strength like this, maybe an opportunity to trade around it, as long as you keep your rules and you're sort of your head about it, you'll be fine in the long run. I love it. There is another thing that I do want to touch on with you guys because I'm just too curious your view and it seems

all fit together. So we talked about the struggles that Europe has ahead. And I can tell you that things in Canada, not so great, but it looks like we're looking to make a new partner with Europe of all people, because making a great trade relationship with the giant economy to the south of us, apparently just doesn't make sense for most people. So I'm curiously if any thoughts on basically what's going on with Canada and the attempt at like associate member with regards to EU and its relationship with the U.S. and tying into that Greenland as well, because now we kind of talked about encircling a little bit earlier. I kind of have America on all sides right now, but still we're trying to make friends with Europe.

Yeah, I mean, I am pretty cynical on this subject. We long ago saw Carney coming, and we believe we have an operating mental model that this entire theater is little more than justification to overrun Canadian carbon nonsense and to get the necessary pipelines and egress built to on-stick Alberta. And, you know, Orange Man Bad is a great foil. all cultures need an enemy to rally against. And I think the whole Carnegie Trump relationship is far different than is being portrayed. And, you know, is it more likely or less likely that pipelines from Alberta to say, oh, I don't know, the St. Lawrence River are going to get built? Of course, it's more likely.

And so, you know, colorist skeptical. There's no universe in which Canada is going to gang up on the U.S. with the EU. Please, these countries are so intertwined. You know, I happen to know many Canadians. I was speaking at a Canadian conference a couple of weeks ago. You know, midstream assets are immortal. Just get them built. Build the gas pipelines and the oil pipelines over the Rockies and build the oil pipeline, you know,

to the St. Lawrence and beyond. And who cares what the Irving State in New Brunswick? It's time to build the pipelines. and pick your favorite, you know, issue du jour. But the Canada had gone so far down the road of climate nonsense that it took a Richard Nixon opening up China, you know, a staunch anti-communist. It took a Mark Carney from W.EF fame with all of the climate sort of work he had done in his past to stare down the nonsense and say, okay, we have a greater enemy. Trump is a bigger enemy than even climate change itself. And so, you know, we have to plug our nose and build these pipelines.

And I view all of this as theater through that lens, including the Alberta separatist movement, all this stuff we've been writing about for years. You can go back and see. We wrote a piece in December 2024 that predicted Carney called Alberta Clipper. And we wrote a piece in April of 25 called The Fix Is In. You know, we just wrote a piece recently, you know, where we mockingly said, can we get some support for the job? John and McDonald's the molecular highway now, which is what they'll name the oil pipeline that connects Alberta to the east. I don't know. I'm very, very cynical on all this theater. Trump and Carney have way more value to be had by sinking with each other. And they both

serve an important political purpose to those politicians at this moment. And in the end, when all the dust settles, Alberta will be on stock in Canada and the U.S. will still have. one of the largest peer-to-peer trading relationships on earth. Last thing I would say, which is what I told the Canadian audience, you know, Trump is temporary, politically. We're all temporarily, sort of physiologically. But politically, Trump is temporary. That cuts both ways.

Don't say, do act in ways that you might regret, depending on who replaces them. And also recognize that we have a closing window of opportunity to take advantage of the things that Trump opens up from a midstream infrastructure perspective. And so, you know, play your cards carefully. Whiplash is real. I'm old enough to remember when Biden was mandating 30 kikovots of offshore wind.

And the next thing you know, billions of dollars of equity capital were wiped out at the signature of a pen of Trump on day one of January 20th of 2025 or 24, sorry. And so, no, I guess he's 25. Yeah. Geez, boy, time doesn't, anyway. On his first day in office, Trump wiped out all that equity. You get what I'm saying. And so, you know, one of the big challenges that you have this closing window of Trump could close as soon as November, depending on how those things go.

And so, you know, one needs to be very careful. How the things you do say and, you know, act upon age over time takes a bit more wisdom than emotional impulse. might instigate you to do, and we say that to our Canadian friends as well, you know, just go back and watch Tom Broca's wonderful documentary about Gander Newfoundland on 9-11, and you tell me whether these two countries are going to go to war with each other. They're not. Let's not get crazy. 100%.

James? I would just, I would echo what Duneberg is saying here, and I would actually say that he's not being cynical. He's just using first principles thinking. Of course, they're not going to war. They're not going to battle each other and be foes. Canada and the United States are far too intertwined. And the thought of Canada being the, you know, aligning perfectly with Europe against the United States is just, it's just laughable.

Yeah, but look, if the Marines land in Toronto, I'll be the first to admit I was dead wrong. If the Marines just take, just land in Toronto in Y Y Y, YZ, it's just going to be over. There's nothing to, there's nothing to hold them back. They're here. Toronto would just be happy to win some sort of hockey championship. It doesn't even have to be the Stanley Cup. The American flag hanging from the CN Tower, but I wouldn't imagine that would be. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it.

Gentlemen, this is fantastic as always. James, where can people go to follow you and your work? Yeah, so obviously I'm on. Twitter at James Lavish. And I have a newsletter called The Informationist, if you don't know, it's on Substack. And it just takes one of these financial subjects that we talk about every single week and breaks it down simply. So for everybody who was supposed to be taught these economic and macroeconomic ideas and the conflicts that we're talking about and never were in high school, college, or even with an MBA,

that newsletter is for you. Beautiful, love it. Duneberg, where can I go and find that diesel piece that's about to come out? Duneberg.com, probably Wednesday morning, if not tomorrow, depending on perceived headline risk of the team. I will say that writing on a four-day editorial cycle with Trump is challenging.

But it is what it is. We're happy to do it. Dumberg.com is where everything is. we ejected a squatter from there to make it easy for people. You know, in the marketing world, they say, you've got to make it easy for people to pay you. And juneberg.com is about as easy as it gets. Yeah, and mine is james lavish.com. And of course, if you're, if you are interested in investing in Bitcoin Adjacent opportunities,

I'm co-managing partner of the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, and you can find us there. It's just wwwbiboy Bitcoin Opportunity. Fund. You can get in touch with us and we can talk about whether it would be appropriate for you. If you enjoyed this episode with Duneberg and James Lavish, hit that like button. It really does help us out and check out the previous episode with Zach Shapiro.