BTC Sessions - "There's Never Just One Cockroach" Credit Crisis Incoming | Richard Dias

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Mentor Sessions Ep. 058: Private Credit Breakdown, US Economic Risk, Canada Collapsing, Bitcoin vs CBDC | Richard Dias$1.8 trillion in private credit — and the cracks are already showing. Richard Dias, macro strategist and co-host of the Loonie Hour, lays out exactly why the next financial shock may already be in motion.Rich breaks down how decades of easy money built a private credit empire — and why rising rates, fund gating, and hidden markdowns signal the unraveling has begun. You'll learn why this rhymes with 2008 but hits differently, what central banks will likely do when it blows, and why Bitcoin may be the only credible exit from a system built on valuation lies.🔔 Subscribe for weekly Bitcoin Podcasts and Tutorials https://www.youtube.com/@BTCSessions⏱️ Timestamps:0:00 - Intro & The Private Credit Warning4:30 - What Is Private Credit & Why It Grew So Fast14:15 - Blackstone, KKR, Apollo: How the Empires Were Built26:40 - Fund Gating, Markdowns & Early Warning Signs41:00 - Is This Worse Than 2008?55:20 - Central Banks: Will They Bail Everyone Out?1:08:45 - AI, Rate Shocks & the Perfect Storm1:22:10 - Contagion Risk: Banks, Pensions & Your Savings1:33:30 - Gold, Bitcoin & Protecting Your Wealth1:40:00 - The CBDC Threat & Why It's the Bigger Risk🔗 Links & Resources→ Follow Richard Dias on X: @RichardDias_CFA→ Follow Richard Dias on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IceCapAssetManagement→ Ice Cap Management: https://icecapassetmanagement.com/→ Loonie Hour Podcast: https://thelooniehour.ca/⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB🔒 Lockdown your Bitcoin with the BEST gear on the market from Coinkite. Get the 5% Off the COLDCARD visit: https://qrco.de/bfiDBV🛡️ Bury Your Bitcoin Secrets Deep: The ultimate underground vault for seed phrases and hardware—rugged, weatherproof, and built to vanish. Grab 10% off Dirty Man Safe with code BTCSESSIONS at https://dirtymansafe.com 🏠 Unlock Home Equity for Bitcoin: Convert your home's future value into BTC without loans, payments, or interest—stay in control and grow your stack tax-free. Start at https://joinhorizon.com/?ref=BTCSESSIONS💡BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Gary, or Ben at Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit btcmentor.io Previous Episodes with Matt Hill: https://youtu.be/Dv1-JfjxuAYFollow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor• Gary: @GaryLeeNYC#Bitcoin #CBDC #BTCSessions #BitcoinPodcast #privatecredit #richarddias #macro #looniehour #bitcoininvestment #creditmarkets #marketanalysis

private credit markets and what sort of issues are they having? There's always, there's never just one cockroach. I think it's still just getting started. It could be that a lot of these like funds just go to zero. That sounds an awful lot like the 2008 financial crisis. I still think that there's more pain to come. Central banks react. Will they provide liquidity to bail these people out?

My view, yes. I just don't see an alternative outside Bitcoin maybe. But central bank digital currency is a tyrannical, highly undemocratic, nasty, nasty thing that we should avoid in all costs. So that to me is, I think, the much bigger risk. That's Richard Diaz, macro strategist, co-hosted the Lune Hour and one of the sharpest voices decoding the fault lines beneath the global credit markets right now.

He spent decades mapping out the hidden architecture of the financial system and what he sees today has he concerned. In this episode, we discuss how a $1.8 trillion private credit sector is teetering on valuation lies. When they do get marked to market, you know, you're trading at a net asset value of 100, 100, 100, and it could go from 100 to 80 or 20. He leaves out exactly why bailouts. are already written in. Will governments change the rules to bail these people out, probably?

Andy covers the endgame for all this debt and desperation. The central bankers have already told us what they want to do. Bitcoin is a mega, mega, mega option value on that. And this is why I'm really worried they're going to outlaw it, because it is a safety valve to that tyranny. Plus he gives us his overall view of the U.S. and Canadian economy, the massive differences between the two, and he gives us some key indicators to watch out for.

Good morning, Rich. Thank you so much for joining us again. Very excited to have this conversation because there is a ton of stuff going on in global macro and global markets. And I need your expertise to pull this apart. So even I want to talk about like even the impacts of the Iran war. I want to talk about what you're seeing in the labor data. But just to start, there's been a ton of stuff I've seen on Zero Hedge and going around about the private credit markets. For anyone that might not be familiar, can you give us a quick overview of what exactly we're referring to when we talk about the private credit markets and what sort of issues are they having? what risk does this have and how does this maybe impact the U.S. and Canada?

Sure. I mean, there's different types of loans and bonds. So this is like very, you know, very simplistic. But and there's people who pool their capital together to lend it to individuals and companies, not individuals, excuse me, companies. And because of, I mean, a little mini history lesson, because that was all this like quantitative easing that suppressed the yield curve. and individuals and pensions and hedge funds or whatever were basically desperate to seek greater yields, you know, greater return on their investment because the overall yield curve was held down.

They went further and further out the risk curve. And what that means is that less and less reliable borrowers were basically treated as more reliable borrowers, if that makes sense. I mean, this is very, very simplistic overview, but it's an important sort of contextual piece. As what, so, and then there are companies that are, you might be familiar with, I'm not sure if I can say the names, but, you know, Aries, KKR, Blackstone, Blue Al, that sort of, you know, collected this capital and then made investments.

And some of these investments were really good and some of these investments were not so good. But as interest rates rose and are going, in my view, going to continue to rise because of beyond and sustain all amounts of debt and inflationary, inflationary, you know, like lack of productivity, which is inflationary, et cetera, et cetera. You have a situation where, you know, eventually you have to pay the Piper.

And so that's like sort of, and so what we view is that this has been building for a long time. I think the last six months has really seen all of these sort of, this malinvestment sort of come to the fore. But it's been exacerbated by things like the AI impact on software as a service. So in the past, just as a simple example,

a lot of these private credit companies would have had something like a 5% or 10% exposure to tech. But naturally, as, you know, tech started to eat the world, it became extremely attractive for some of these companies that otherwise would have had a small exposure to tech to sort of, you know, stick their hand just further out the credit sphere. And what's fascinating is that you sort of have a confluence of a bunch of sort of different things all happening at the same time, which is one, higher interest rates, which puts pressure on the valuations of these companies.

If you lower interest rates, then asset prices go higher. That's basically the underpinning of why they did quantitative easing in the first place. But also you have these tech valuations, in part because some of these companies were fantastic, huge margins, big moats. And so this private equity guys and private credit guys seemed really, really smart because the valuation just kept going higher and higher as people just piled into these companies. Some of them, again, were revolutionary, changed the world, make incredible amounts of money. And so for a while, these private equity and private credit companies did really, really well.

But then you have a situation where, like I said, interest rates rose. And then you have what I think is really fascinating. you have the catalyst, which was you have basically AI put a poke a real hole in this idea that these tech companies were basically unimpeachable. So now you're seeing, so like I said, there's never just one thing, and you always sort of ex post decide what the catalyst was for a, you know, for the popping of the bubble. And so that's what me as a global strategist, you know, it's always. You're always like looking back in the rear of the mirror going, oh, yeah, yeah, that was the catalyst.

But the truth, so the catalyst this time was, you know, the AI basically putting at risk all these companies that have been dominant and generating incredible amounts of money for years and years and years and years. The truth is that, you know, a year ago at this time, there had already been some grumblings about private credit. You know, the leverage that they were taking on was a bit too much. the returns that they were getting wasn't quite up to snuff. Like I said, issues with rising interest rates, the leverage component. And, you know, there's just never just one cockroach. But what's really cool about what's happening now, cool, that's maybe the wrong word, but what's really interesting about what's happening right now is you're really starting to get all the big names.

So, you know, Blackstone and BlackRock. I saw gated a fund. Yeah, I think one of them got written down to zero. So they're gating the funds. they're halting redemptions and to me that is um and and some of the traded companies that um that sort of on the on the you know the u.s. equity markets and other countries are down 40 50 60 percent from the highs um which is and then not to mention that a lot of these funds um they're not marked to market um so you won't see so and they when they do get marked to market you know you're trading

at a net asset value of 100 100 100 and then within it. and it could go from 100 to 80 or 20 or 40 or, you know what I mean? And so there's a, and so what that does is it, it's the, you know, it does not instill confidence in investors. And so, and like I said, there's always, there's never just one cockroach. And so, yeah, it's, it's, I think it's really interesting. I think if you had been paying attention, you would have known something was up. in many ways, I think it's still just getting started. And why I would say that is, you know, if you look at something like, something that, so like credit spreads are still relatively tight.

And so for a while people, because, like I said to you, because interest rates were artificially kept down despite high interest rates, sorry, high inflation and high debts, people went further and further out the risk curve. And also as a function of that, they changed the way debt and debt and loans were issued. And so part of the reason why credit spreads are actually so low and have been so compressed is because instead of normally in a really healthy corporate credit market, you might just issue high yield or junk bonds in that thing. But a lot of these credit funds were basically replacing that flow. And so there wasn't enough high yield corporate bonds. bonds to meet the demand of those regular institutional investors.

And so supply and demand, not enough supply, steady demand. And so that compressed the credit spreads of an entire swat of sort of high yield or, you know, they used to call junk bonds. And so that's one of the reasons why credit spreads have been, in my view, artificially compressed. And so, but, you know, eventually, eventually, in my view, it does. was unwind and you're starting to see rising credit spreads. After years of them being super, super low, they're now, I think we're up 168 base points on

the U. I'm trying to dig up the chart quickly. Oh yeah, here we go. Yeah. So, you know, in this over the summer, I'm sorry, over the last summer, by the end of the last summer was basically 6% and now we're in sevens and, you know, who knows what will happen. But yeah, it's just a fascinating market. I mean, to me, it's just a legacy of quantitative easing, all the alphabet soup to control the

yield curve. The risk just gets pushed out, but eventually, you know, you can't, you can't fool everybody all the time. You know, eventually the weakness does sort of escape. Interesting. Okay. So I want to do that apart a little bit more. So if this continues to get worse and continues to unwind, in your view, what are sort of like the tail risk that might be a play here? How might this spill over into other markets?

Is there a risk of contagion? What else is kind of impacted by this? And secondly, I just want to tie into, because I don't know, for these kind of private credit vehicles, Are they getting a lot of money coming in from passive flows? And the thing that I'm thinking about is that if we see a problem with employment, which might lower passive flows without further exacerbate this issue, are those kind of like separate issues? They don't really overlap all that much.

So I'll answer the last question first, then you'll have to repeat the other ones. So I don't think, not as much, not as much. I mean, there are, of course, ETFs that cover private credit, but in general, that's much more an institutional thing. We are an asset. I work for ice cap asset management. We have a pool of capital.

We do get solicited by some of these private credit funds. We would never, ever invested in them because of the risks that I think, or not never, never, but certainly not at this juncture in the cycle. And so there are lots of asset managers that have this on their books. I'm sure that there are some wealthier people who have been solicited. And, you know, when they saw the yields and saw the returns, you know, they were attracted to that. But in general, you said passive, passive.

No, I don't think that when you think of when I think of passive, I think of, you know, Joe six pack just allocating a little bit of his money every month to sort of an ETF structure. And I don't know, but my guess is that it wouldn't be the same. You talked about credit contagion. Yeah. Or contagion. Yeah. So that to me is, I think, the bunch bigger risk. You can already start to see that.

you know, if you, if your people are interested or if they have, you know, you know, a basic sort of charting software at home, you could plot sort of software ETFs with a bunch of the names that I've mentioned and you can see them moving together. And that's because these software companies that, like I said, had big moats, big margins and big profits. People are starting to change their discount rate on those future cash flows, which affects the valuations and who owns a lot of that stuff. It's these private credit companies like Ares and KKR, Blackstone, Blue Owl and Apollo and whatever. And it's not, to me, it's, it's, it's quite natural that

those stocks would move together. You know, correlation is not causation, but there's obviously a message there. The other contagion element is you're going to, you're starting to finally see spill over into to other high yield products. So again, to support that claim, you could see something like, YG is a high yield corporate bond. It's very, very straightforward stuff. Now, you're starting to see that start to drop off. Now the counter argument was like, well, maybe that's because of the war in Iran.

And maybe that's true. But to me, the contagion is people are worried, people will, the worry is going to grow until, there's sort of an understanding of how much crap they have on their books, fundamentally. And if banks also might start to call in their loans, right? So these private credit will take some cash, lever it up, and then allocate it. They get, obviously, some of that money from, they might get that leverage from institutions or banks or whatever. And if people start to worry about, you know, the ability of those private credit vehicles to repay their loans, then they will pull in.

That's just natural in any cycle at any time. And so I think you're starting to see that. And there's grumblings of bigger banks starting to pull their loans or at least like increase the covenants and warrants and all this like, you know, increase them. The hurdles to get to, you know, to keep that loan getting rolled over. I don't think I'm saying anything that's like particularly like, you know, yeah. Like these are not heroic assumptions. I just think this is the start.

Now, the question is, you know, how will, you know, central banks react? Will they provide liquidity to bail these people out? My view, yes. Will governments change the rules to bail these people out? Probably, you know what I mean? It's the same story we've seen before, whether it's 2008, you know, 2020. But I still think that there's more pain to come. But we'll see.

I mean, that's like a big call, right? We don't know. Some of these companies that we thought were totally the software as a service companies, they've stopped falling. You know, after, you know, after falling 60% they've stopped. So maybe that was it. Maybe that was the haircut they needed. The market will recalibrate.

People will be marked to market. There will be some haircuts for sure. But maybe it's not like an apocalyptic scenario. Some people have outlined. It's interesting. I also, I would wonder to if, if lenders are basically tightening up a little bit and, what do you say, being risk averse to giving out new loans or even pulling stuff back or rolling stuff over,

I would think that that would affect more than just specifically like private credit. Like I think it would be kind of more across the board if we're trying to de-risk their position, which would then, in my mind, choke off new dollars entering

that are needed to prop everything else back up. So I could almost see like, if it oversimplified, I hate the engine analogy, it might kind of start to seize up liquidity of available credit. It absolutely will. That's why I mentioned to you

the central banks might jump in. Stupid. So the, I mean, banking is pro-cyclical. Like it's, you know, like when things are going well, banks add liquidity and loosen credit conditions, which accelerates more lending and more investment,

which increases returns, which encourages banks to add liquidity and loosen credit conditions, which then, you know what I mean? So, and then the opposite is true. So when things start to go bad, banks don't go, oh, no, no, we'll just give them even more. They go, no, no, we're going to pull back, which then accelerates the,

contraction and liquidity to the downside. Yeah. I mean, again, I don't think this is particularly like, that's, you know, that's like a pretty rudimentary and maybe simplistic view of the credit cycle, but that we've seen that for decades and decades and decades of decades. So I just think that that's what, and so the question is, is it going to spill over into other parts of the banking, other parts of the economy? I mean, maybe, I mean, just mortgage lending, for example, has already, is not,

so great. I mean, in the U.S., I know that, like, say, home sales are basically an all-time low. I mean, depending on what indicator you look at, and of course, depending on what jurisdiction, but extremely, extremely low, extremely not poor, but just very, very weak. I mean, Canada, we know that lending is obviously starting to fall significantly because house prices aren't going up. And so, yeah, I mean, I think the thing to look out for to see is how central bankers will react. You know, I know that there was, I know that Tiff Macleman, Canada started to like, he actually put it in one of his speeches.

He was talking about how private credit is becoming an issue. And so that to me is like another crumb on the path. I know that I feel, I can't remember which central banker in the U.S. like basically said, oh, yeah, we're starting to look at this. So I think that there's still a few more innings left to play out. Have you spoken to Carolyn Rogers about the kid? I bumped into her in the airport. Did you hear about that?

I did. That's amazing. For anyone who's not aware, please give them the quick rundown. I think, Gary, I want to see if you have any questions. Yeah, so Carolyn Rogers is the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, who I'm a huge fan of because she wrote, in my view, a seminal paper on Canada's productivity emergency in March of 2024, you know, before Orange Man Bad came into power and signaling basically that Canada wasn't really big,

trouble, that we have massive issues with productivity growth, and we are in basically structural decline as a function of that. And it's sort of, it's the joke on the Looney Hour that I have a crush on her. And so I actually, you know, they say never meet your heroes, but I was in the Vancouver airport a couple weeks ago. And I like walked, I like saw her. And listen, only losers like me read central bank papers and know who these people are. And so I like walked up to her and she was like, probably has never been recognized ever, basically. And so I was like, hi, Carolyn, you're Carolyn Rogers. And she was like, who the fuck are you, basically?

Pardon my French. And I, like, asked her, I was like, oh. And then once I, like, told her, like, I'd read her paper and her colleague's paper, which came out in November, December, also about productivity growth in Canada. She was like, oh, okay, this guy's a weirdo, but all of a sudden knows what he's talking about a little bit anyway. And I took a selfie with her. And then she was just like, okay, you know, she pretended what was funny.

Actually, sorry, just one more. She sort of pretended not to know who I was. Not that I'm like particularly famous. But like, you know what I mean? Like we have the Looney Hour. It has quite a big reach in Canada. It is the largest Canadian macro podcast far. And she like, I was like, oh, I'm Richard Diaz from the Looney Hour.

And I'm like, and she's like, oh, I think I've heard of it. And then she like immediately caught herself and like pretended to like not know who what it was. You know what I mean? Because we've been extremely critical of the Central Bank of Canada. for basically screwing over generation of people. Not unique to Canada, by the way, but just our focus is Canada.

And for being extremely, for not having any independence, for lying about inflation being transitory, all this stuff. So anyway, there you go. That's the story about Carolyn Rogers. I absolutely love it.

Speaking of meeting your heroes, I'll get to actually meet Gary in person for the first time coming here in Las Vegas. Ever? Seriously? Ever? We've never met in person before. So it'll be our first time actually meeting in person.

Very excited for it. Gary, do you have any... I've only met Nathan in my dreams. That's cute. Well, it's funny you should say that because when we started the Looney Hour, I'd never met Steve in person. And so we had done like 60 or 70 episodes. I mean, it was COVID, obviously, and all the rest of that bullshit. But we had never, I mean, he lives in Vancouver and whatever.

And I was living in Halifax at the time. And we, and yeah, and so we had never met. So our first Looney Hour live event was the first time we had ever met. And you know my, yeah, and it was, it was funny. Because you feel like you know the guy. And then you're like, wow, you're way shorter than I thought you were. I was very similar. I think this is going to, I think this is episode 57 and we got a few more to pump out.

So we'll be at like 60 by the time we meet. Yeah, that's amazing. And I hear that Gary is much taller than I think he is. So Gary, do you have any quick questions before I pivot a little bit to the Fed and housing as well? Yes. Well, first of all, congratulations, Canada on the silver medal. Oh, yeah. Good job, gentlemen. You mentioned that you could foresee bank bailouts, well, like bank bailouts

because it's private credit, you know, getting bailed out. And I'm sure there's going to be people listening to this. Maybe everybody gets it and I'm just the only one who's ignorant who think, wait a minute, that sounds an awful lot like the 2008 financial crisis. So could you kind of just give a little summary of how this might play out similarly or differently? How big is the market? for private credit, how much of an impact that might have? And explain to people what is similar, what is different, why there should be some alarms and maybe why there shouldn't be. So I don't know how big the private credit.

And my boss, Keith, would be really annoyed with me for not having that number to hand. So forgive me. I think that's something you probably just grok. I think it's $1.5 trillion. If you're talking about the total market. I want to say $1.8, but I don't like, I'm not going to bullshit you or anybody else, frankly. Thank you.

I don't want, if I don't know something, I just say, I don't know. My guess was 1.8. Keep in mind, the U.S. economy is about 30. Canada's economies are probably a little more, probably 32 now. Canada's economy is about a tenth of that, so let's say 3.2. You know, just to keep things in mind, the mortgage market at its peak was probably 100% of GDP. GDP was smaller back then, but you get the idea. So 1.8 trillion isn't as big.

but that doesn't mean it can't have enormous impact. You know what I mean? So that's really important. What are the differences? I think the leverage play is different. So you, you know, I don't think you have the Jenga tower of CDS products and credit derivatives and CDOs and all this shit. Remember the big short? Yeah.

It just strikes me that it's just a different. And it's just different. You just don't have the, you know, all those like the stack on stack on stack of leverage on top of leverage. Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely leverage clue. That's what it's called private credit. So there's obviously a massive amount of leverage related to that. I think that there's different views.

I think my boss would say that this is much, much bigger than the housing market. I don't agree. Although, to be fair to him, he was way early on this. So I'm, you know, it's not to dismiss his view at all. I think he was so early on this and he's been banging the drum and banging the drum and he's been proven to be right. And he's older than me, so I've got a lot to learn from him. I just think it's different in the way that it might impact.

I think it can hurt specific industries. But I also think what's also is the feedback loop is different. And so, you know, and so I think the private credit started to get really weak when there was some doubts about the veracity of these future, these cash flows related to these, these markets, these stock, these equity businesses, sorry, these software companies. Whereas in the, you know, in the past, you had contraction and credit lead to weakness in the equity market. There was some weakness in these sectors that affected the credit. And so that's sort of what's getting this flywheel going. So yeah, those are the two. I think size is different. I think the amount of leverage is

different. I think that the sort of interaction with the equity market, I think, is a bit different. What I think might be worse is unlike a house where, you know, when you lend on the house, there might be some negative equity, but at least the house is worth something. There might be some intrinsic value there, blah, blah, blah. It could be that a lot of these like funds just go to zero. Big fat goose egg. Right? No one wants the software or needs it. So, do you know what I mean? And so and so a lot of and and what's also so I think that's kind of different and and not exciting again I get I find this world fascinating so people always think like rich you seem so blasé but I just I don't know to me it just titillates me I find it very interesting and then I also think um I think that

there's just a lot more um in the past I think that they were reluctant to um intervene and I think that for better for worse, probably worse, that there'll be much, much quicker to intervene with and provide liquidity. So I don't know if I answered your question that well. Yeah, it sort of did. Thank you. Yeah, Nathan, you're going to say. Coin kite has been in the game for years, creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin.

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value. Everything is hosted in the U.S., powered by hydro, and mining equipment may qualify for 100% year-one bonus depreciation. Learn more at abundant mines.com slash sessions. I was saying, speaking of intervening there, too, I want to ask you about the Fed buybacks right now. The Treasury buybacks, we keep going. I think I saw $18 billion. Oh, I don't know anything about that, I'm afraid. The stuff I look at the Fed, what I look at the Fed is I look at reserves. So something called the SOFA, the fund spread. You look at like bank reserves relative to GDP, the reverse repo, Treasury general account, the Fed balance sheet, and where you're starting to see. So a year ago,

the worry was, I'm not sure if this is it relates to your question, but I think it relates to liquidity and the Fed, and it is important, especially in the, so a year ago there was some worries that the bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve balances, were too quote unquote low. And that like that threshold is a purely theoretical value, right? Like people say it's 10%, but that in my view, that's totally arbitrary. Why is it 9.8 or 10.2 or 11? Why is inflation targeted at 2% exactly?

Right. So in a way it's arbitrary, but in a way it's decidedly not. Like those bank reserves provide basically the liquidity for lending. And if they fall too low relative to the size of economy, it stands to reason that that would be sort of less quote unquote liquidity in the system. And you sort of saw the, you saw that happening, which is that the sofa spread started to jump relative to the Fed Fund spread. And so that, you know, that's basically effectively what that number or that that tells you is that banks are in inverted commas a little bit more and more scary. to lend to their colleagues, to their counterparts. And what you want, ultimately, is that spread basically to sort of be negative, let's say.

Or very, very, very, very close to zero, I think is more. And so what happened, and so what there was some grumbling, like six months ago, people were like, oh, the bank reserve balance got too low relative to this quote, this threshold. And again, that 10% number is highly a theoretical and be, arbitrary. But nevertheless, you actually saw a reaction from the central bank of the U.S. to say, we're going to start expanding the Federal Reserve balance sheet. And indeed, they have. And you can see they started, I think, at the end of last year, they telegraphed it. So, like, in the fall, they said, we think, we see this as a problem for bank liquidity. And, and sort of gumming up the network, we're going to take,

action and indeed they have and you can start and you can see that the federal reserve balances are starting to rise they're at like a six month high now and the fed balance sheet um is starting to rise so there yeah so that then to me it's it's and indeed the sofer fed fund spread has come down significantly it was at about 10 it was running around 10 basis points which i know doesn't sound like a lot but now it's at one basis point yeah so that i don't know if that answers your question again And that's not my area of expertise. Neither is private credit. So if I fuck the idea of that, please forgive me. I'm much more Canada analyst than I am a U.S. now these days. But that's how I understand it. And you can see, like if you literally just go and see the Fed Fund balance sheet,

that's sorry, Fed Fund, yeah, Federal Reserve balance sheet. And you look at just like Treasuries as the line item, you can start to see that it's starting to rise. We're at like $4.3 trillion right now. And federal reserve balances around $3 trillion. And they're creeping back up to this minimum threshold of, um, whatever 10% of 32 trillion is. You know what I mean? So it is and the end, like I said, the spreads are coming in. So they, they knew, they saw that there was an issue. And to their credit, um, they were proactive.

God help us. Central Bank that's proactive. That absolutely never happens. I don't believe it. Okay. Before we dive into Canada, then I want to tease out a little bit more. Just get, we'll get, what's your overall kind of sense of the US economy right now? Any thoughts on labor or the impact on energy markets from the war in Iran?

Do you have, being again, it's a big neighbor to the south, what are your concerns or maybe optimism about the U.S. at the moment? And then let's pivot to Canada afterwards because the Canadian labor data, there's a lot of other data, looks like absolute shit. Yeah. So, I mean, I think actually the U.S. was actually doing much better than people would ever dare admit. And like the way I would, again, this is before a massive spike in oil prices. and a relatively modest increase in gasoline prices and diesel prices and the crack spread and all this stuff. But if you looked at things like the recession models from New York Federal Reserve, they were sort of in no recession territory.

If you looked at the Atlanta Fed GDP now cast, which is where they basically cram all of the available data for a particular, for a discreet time, let's say a quarter or a month or whatever, and then they basically pump out their forecast for GDP growth. It was actually really relatively high, the one from New York, all the central banks, the bank branches compete to have like the best forecast and stuff. And I think that's good actually. You have a bunch of nerds basically trying to duke it out to see who has the best models. But so the New York Fed was like 2.2%, which is really, I think, okay.

The Atlanta Fed at one point was almost four point was almost five percent. It's obviously come down as more data gets inputted into their models. Then you had the PMIs in the US, the manufacturing PMI. I know that the US is more services based, but manufacturing PMI is still extremely important. And you had at the end of last year, you had a pop in both production, employment, new orders, etc. Then you look at the Chicago PMI that was also doing like, Again, after like basically three or four years of not, of being below 50, it was actually, it sort of popped towards the end of last year. You know, you look at manufacturing, everybody obsesses about manufacturing employment, which is on a steady decline.

But if you look at real manufacturing output in America, it's actually making new highs and like the trend is very, very clear. There's obviously weakness with respect to housing in the US. But the thing is, I read this statistic. I think you can find it on Bloomberg that like 10% of the households in America can are like or account for 50% of the consumption. And those 10% what do they own? They own equities, which are basically were at all time highs. And they own their and their houses are worth a lot of money.

And so and they're generating lots of income. So the consumption piece wasn't as weak as I think people thought, despite the fact that consumer confidence is very, very low. You know what I mean? So you have this dichotomy. And actually, ironically, Jerome Powell before, I think one of the most recent press conferences that he did, he said growth is actually okay. And we're not going to cut interest rates. And he went on and on and on about productivity growth. And, you know, so I get, you know, like people like me get hard for productivity growth, but so does Jerome Powell and so does the Fed. And so they know that ultimately that's the only way to improve this is the standard of living of people. And he just went like, and indeed the numbers are very clear. U.S. productivity growth is actually really solid. Add to that, the improvements in earnings expectations. So it's just nowhere near as like bad as, had you asked me, you know, six a year ago,

if I thought the U.S. was in trouble, I would have said yes. And the data is very clear. Now, fast forward to two weeks ago. And you're, that might have some spillover effects clearly because energy is in it, critical input to everything, despite what the communists in Europe might think. And so, and so that's, but, you know, again, things are different. It's, you know, it's not 2008 where you had global oil consumption as a percentage of GDP in the tens and 12 percent, now are in the sixes, right?

Like, for all of my love of fossil fuels and crude oil, you know, GDP has decoupled from oil, for a long, and oil consumption for a long time, right? Like oil consumption in the United States has been 20 million barrels a day for 20 years. And GDP's obviously gone like that, even in real terms. So, you know what I mean? So it is just a different world. But yeah, so in general, I just thought the U.S. was doing okay. And yeah, I mean, and so yes, I understand that the labor market is obviously under a lot of pressure. But what I think people forget is that the federal government has cut loads and loads of jobs. There isn't mass immigration, which obviously puts downward pressure on labor force growth since what's exactly what's happening in

Canada. Yeah. Yeah. So I just think it was just, it was, and like don't take my word for it. Just if you just go GDP now cast. Just curious actually what it is right now for the GDP Atlanta. I haven't looked at it in a couple of days. I don't know if this is, I'm allowed to do this on the podcast, but.

Pull it up. Yeah. So it's, yeah, even so it's up to yeah, 2.7% for Q1. So you know what I mean? That's the Atlanta. And so if there's a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not this is going to cause a recession in the United States, I just think the data is pretty clear. I think the U.S. is doing pretty okay. Very interesting.

Quick question then, Gary, I'll let you ask this dirty Kentucky question about your country. Have you taken a look at the energy futures markets? Is there anything in the price or data that gives you any insight, at least what the market is pricing in terms of the Iran conflict? Yeah. So I think that what's important to note is that a lot of these futures conflicts, contract go out forever. So I think if you, you know, they probably go out 10 years. But the truth is there's not enough, there's nowhere near enough liquidity passed like two.

Like, you know, and even then, you know, people who know much, much more about trading commodity futures will tell you, well, maybe it's only six months that matter or whatever. And so I'm, you know, I'm load to like, wade into waters I don't know too much about. I think, you know, hopefully I didn't make too many mistakes in the private credit story. But so, but I think like what's clear is that like the front end of that curve is clearly spiked. So you know, crude oil and the NYMEX is like whatever it is, almost $100, 97 or $96, whatever it is. Two months ago is at 60.

And so that's a huge jump. And then if you look at a year, I'm just looking at the chart, I have the chart in front of me, you know, a year from now. So the end of 2020, sorry, at the beginning of 2027, we're at $75. So you could make the case that there's still some optimism in. in that futures market around how quickly this will end. Very interesting. Gary? Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, I don't know if you made a mistake or not,

but you have a nice authoritative voice in the ring glasses. So I believed everything you said. Well, you know, it's just, it's, oh, it's a lot to key. It's like a lot of moving parts, right? And there's some stories that just know much better than other. Well, I want to ask you a question. You talked about the, you know, the Chicago Fed and the Atlanta Fed and all that. And, you know, they have different numbers that are coming out with.

correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I understand, these numbers they're putting out with employment, GDP, inflation seem to be coming out later and later and they get revised more and more. Am I correct in that or is that just only the last couple months? Yeah. So I think what you're referring to is the revisions with respect to the labor market that were enormous. And it was, I think, I think if I remember correctly, they're basically just like pulled one million jobs off the shelf.

Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, I mean, that, that, that, and inflation, it just seems like there's, it seems to be getting revised. And the numbers are. So like, you have to remember, I, I'm, I'm always going to defend these, these statistics houses. Because I think they're flawed. Yeah, but, yeah. So, so I think we, what people like make, I think it's a contradictory mistake, which is like, they hold these they say these things are like not as they're like oh these like the inflation's

bullshit and then when they then when they say oh yeah you're you're right we did make a mistake we're going to revise them then they hold the they hold the stats houses in contempt for revising numbers but when they put them out and people say oh that's bullshit you know what I mean you either like you either need to trust people when they say okay we've looked at our models and we've made adjustments which to me should be commended, right? Very few people in positions of authority ever say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

Here are the new numbers. I think we should encourage that kind of behavior. But the other thing is, like, yes, they're flawed. Yes, there are mistakes in them. Yes, I think inflation is massively understated. I think the obsession with CPI totally ignores the fact that really what the issue has been an asset price inflation, which has created all kinds of issues in our.

society. But it's for us as analysts to sort of go into these, to assess these problems with eyes wide open. Like, we get that they're flawed. We get that they're revised. But that's why you don't just look at one number. You look at dozens of different numbers and you cross-reference and you use your own common sense and no, no, you know what I mean? Like, I think meat prices are way higher than what it says on the, on the, on the, sort of on the CPI website. Here's a perfect example. In Canada, CPI rent component in the Canadian inflation print is at 4%, right, at 4%. That's bullshit. That is unequivocally not true. Virtually every other market-based rental price indicator is saying that rents in Canada are down negative 5, 6, 7, 8, 9% year on year.

So I know that as an analyst. So when I see the official print, I don't get angry. I just go, okay, there's clearly an issue with that one line item. However, you know, that's a function of the way that they model it, the way that it's lagging information. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not gospel. It's not, you know, it's, to me, it's a, it's a way of like anchoring your discussion. And then it's for you, I think, as a thinker, as an analyst, to then go, well, does this really make sense? Why or why not? Blah, blah, blah. And so, yes, I'm critical of it. But I'm also, I, I, I, I don't have much patience for people saying, all these numbers are wrong. It's like, well, like you, like people who are critical, people who are critical of GDP, I think, are very annoying.

Because fine, you go do a better job. Like, you think it's so easy to count the entire productive output of a 40 or like a 350 million person economy. Like, submit your better version of the thing. And so I think generally the people who work. on these statistics, I think, are nerds who live in their mom's basin and who genuinely only care about getting the number right. They get it wrong a lot. And I think it's for you, for me, as an analyst, to just look at that data with eyes wide open. And sometimes, you know, they're right. I think the vast majority of the time that they are right. And I think, but they are wrong.

And you shouldn't and you should be skeptical. And I think that, but that's why you have, of, for example, competing now forecasts by different central banks. That's why there's the Atlanta Fed does a CPI, and so does the New York Fed. There's different measures of financial conditions. And that's why you look at small business confidence. That's why you look at services and manufacturing. That's what you compare and contrast. And I think it's this like yeah.

So that's why I like you know what I mean. I get a little defensive of these places because it's not for them to, yes, it's their goal is to put out perfect information. But that's dumb. They're never going to put out perfect information. It's hard. It's complicated. Right.

So it's for us to be like they're taught like, you know, when it's, don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm extremely critical of, you know, central bankers who tell us, you know, inflation is transitory. And when I saw that inflation. was like 4%, obviously it's way, way higher than that. But what I think what matters is like turning points matter and directions matter, right? Had they been telling me that inflation was going down in the middle of COVID, then I would have been like, okay, this is fucked.

What they were saying is inflation's going up, but those things are lagging indicators. You know, their modeling is imperfect. Their sampling is imperfect. They don't account a lot of the time they don't account for substitution effects or sample bias. And so it's for me as an analyst to just have all of those sort of critiques in my own mind. But what I find very kind of, what I find very useless is people criticize and then provide no alternative. No, it's fair. And I think you're 100% right, obviously, on being able to try to measure all of this.

I mean, Hayek himself talked about the knowledge problem. Like how do you even conceive of all of this? It's just so, so difficult. I guess it would, you know, you said you believe the people doing this are kind of, you know, sincere nerds in their mother's basement trying to do that. And you, you may be right. I guess it does beg the question, though, how much, how much input do their political bosses have on the data going in? Because those people may be trying to accurately crunch the data that they are given, but are the political bosses saying, well, I want you to look at this piece of data, but not this piece of data. I want you to emphasize this piece of data and not that piece of data. I'll concede to you that that's a bigger problem today than it ever has been, right? Like a perfect example is crime statistics in Europe. Right? They're basically just like everybody knows where the crime is coming from and who's doing it,

but they refuse to publish those crimes. I think when it comes to... Dirty Germans. I think when it's highly politically charged information, I think that, yes, there is a risk for sure. What I also think is important to note is that there's a bunch of, like, for every, so yes, there's like domestic statistics houses, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the U.S. There's obviously all of these different central banks that have their own models and estimates involved, but there's also third party companies that you can look at that are profit motivated, whether it's, you know, I mean, refinitive data stream or Thompson Reuters. I get Thompson is politically captured.

But they also have a, you know, they're selling reliability to both investors and clients. And I would submit that anybody who's worried about what inflation is or, you know, employment is, there's loads and there's like loads of third party, whether it's ADP is a perfect example, right? So ADP is a third party. It's a private company that basically sells information on the labor market to its clients. And if they're politically captured, it might work one cycle, but that's a shitty business model, basically. And so, yeah, I mean, do I think it's more of a risk today than it was, let's say, 10, 15 years ago before all these woke idiots took over? 100%. Do I think that problem is a bit overstated?

Yeah, I think, for example, PMI, you know, the purchasing managers index out of Arizona. I mean, that's a third party that they're, they haven't, I don't think they're interested in, you know, supporting one party. is a gender or the other. I don't know. I think they're interested in selling a service to their clients and generating returns for their investors. And I think as soon as it gets out that while they're lying about the manufacturing output, I think that that's it.

That's over. And some of these businesses are extraordinarily lucrative. And all they need to do is just tell the truth as they see it. And as soon as it gets out that they're lying, it's over. And somebody else will do it. So to answer your question, yeah, I think it's a big. problem for sure but i also think now more than ever are their third party um there's other people who sort of replicate and challenge and that's i think again that's one of our responsibilities as a macro

strategist is to be like these people are saying it's going up and these other people are saying going down why why not you know um i'm i i like to me in canada i think like you guys have had finally you're like reckoning and you guys are moving i think in a better direction when it comes to all this um i'm trying not to get in trouble uh anyways let's just say let's just say we are still going down a dark path um but i think that um yeah i just i yeah so that's i know i'm waffling a bit because i might my my i'm always going to defend these statistics house i've just been playing with the data for too long um through different cycles and yeah, I don't know if that was a good answer.

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and more. Rugged, weather-resistant, and built to disappear, Dirty Man Safe as a last, fail safe to your Bitcoin security model. Head to Dirtymansafe.com and use code BTC sessions for 10% off. Well, Rich, even to your point, man, like I think it hits on something kind of like a level sort of above it in the sense that like why are people getting so mad at the statistics houses, whether they be like government like facilities, like the Fed or if it's like a private institution is because it matters more than ever and it shouldn't fucking matter. Meaning that like quality of life has degraded so much.

affordability is great so much, that people are like fixated on this information where historically it's like they don't care, right? They got better things to do. They're not going to go look at the nerd stats, right? In the same way that that politics, because it's such controlling just a huge vast, we'd say input of wealth and money into the economy as well as it's so restrictive on what you might be able to do in your daily life and kind of the culture of the country that we really shouldn't if it was functioning a little bit better, and I don't think it functions at all as an anarchist, but if it was functioning a little bit better, people wouldn't really care who their local MP was or who the party in charge was.

So I think it gets hypercharged just because things are getting so shitty for people or they feel like things are out of reach. You look, I gave a comment there. Yeah, well, I just, you just reminded me of two perfect examples of how I think that there's a, there must be a distinction between the political animals that I think are purposefully manipulating the message of these otherwise independent statistics houses. And there's two examples. One is in Canada, I know the data better in Canada, so let me just use that example.

And I think Canada is far more captured by all this political bullshit than the U.S. is, believe it or not. One is GDP per capita. So GDP per capita in Canada has been stagnant for eight years. I remember being 18 years old. And when I was a kid doing honors econ and McGill, what economists cared about was international development, improving the standard of living of the third world. They didn't give a shit about climate change. or diversity, equity, inclusion.

Every single major class that I had was under the umbrella of how do we improve the lives of everyday people in Africa, just as an example. And the way that we did that analysis fundamentally was the way to improve the lives of women and children and working class people in Africa, again, I know it's not one country, but whatever, was GDP per capita. Okay? Everything was about it. Because the previous 60 years, remember, so I graduated in 2008, the previous 50 years, it was unequivocal.

You improve GDP per capita and everything else improves, whether it's the environment, whether it's birth defects, whether it's reading comprehension, whether it's crime, whatever. Fast forward to today, Canada's GDP per capita is stagnant, which is exactly what the data says, very clear. and you have every media outlet in Canada bending over backwards to convince Canadians that GDP per capita does not matter. Okay. Oh. Okay. So to me, the data has been demonstrable. The statistics Canada hasn't fucked with the numbers.

The numbers are horrible. The numbers are literally horrible. From 1995 to 2015, GDP per capita in Canada rose lockstep with America. Literally. Point for point. for 20 years. Now, you guys were above. You guys have always been a bit rich,

not always been a bit richer for the last, let's say, 100 years you guys been basically bit richer, but fuck me, the growth in real GDP per capita from 1995 to 2015 was almost literally within one or two,

20 basis points of one another. That's, to me, is a solid thing. In 2015, Canada's went basically flatlined and America's kept going up. What happened in 2015, Rich? There was an oil, recession and then Justin Trudeau destroyed our country. But so, but like what I'm saying to you is the

interpretation of that is what got screwed. So now you have the Globe and Mail, CBC, the Walrus, which is like a magazine in Canada, McLean's magazine, which used to be a reputable magazine that's totally dog shit. You know, like all these interpretations going, oh, no, no, no, GDP per capita misses all these issues. A couple of months ago, there was an article, a week ago there was an article saying Alabama is richer than Canada. And all the Canadian media got their pennies in a twist because they're like, oh, you can't compare Alabama to Canada. Yes, you can.

Canada's GDP per capita is now lower than it is in Alabama, which Canadians always thought was a backwater. And because we have an inflated, we have an inflated sense of ourselves. We're offended that some kind of redneck state, right or wrong, this is the perception of Canadians, has a higher living. standard than Canada. So that is like, so to me, you're back to your point, like, are these statistics being manipulated? I don't believe they are.

I think the interpretation of them is highly politically charged. You know, for example, China continues to build coal, fire, power plants. The U.S. emissions peaked in 2008. Canada's emissions peaked in 2007. The European emissions peaked in 1979. And all we hear about is how we need to have net zero in the West, net zero in the West, net zero in the West. The reality is that it doesn't matter what the West does. We can all go to net zero tomorrow.

China and India and the rest of the emerging world is what is driving the rise in global missions. That's the data. That is the clear data on the UN website, on In Our World and Data, which is an amazing website, by the way, check it out. But yet the interpretation is wildly, unhinged from, in my view, the reality of that data. If you care about climate change, then we should be banging the drama of why China continues to build record number of coal fire power plants. Record.

Like if you go to this website called carbonbrief.org, they basically approved 161 gigawatts of new coal fire power plants. So, and then the other one I want to say was immigration. So in May of 2025, the Bank of Canada came out and wrote a 401. page paper on how immigration, wildly unhinged immigration into Canada, was a much different than in the past and has affected productivity, which of course you can't say in Canada because that makes you, you know, whatever part of the Third Reich and all this stuff. But the Bank of Canada wrote a paper expressly saying immigration to Canada is different than in the past.

it's lower skilled, lower wages, less experienced from different countries, and the impact has been less productivity and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They had 25 charts. It was 42 pages long. It was written by five PhDs in economics. No one ever talked about that in the media. But the Bank of Canada, think about how crazy that is. The Bank of Canada wrote a paper and published on their website talking about how our immigration

system has screwed Canada's productivity over. And so to me, it's like, your question is like, are these people co-opted? I think if they really were co-opted, they would have never written a paper about the most highly charged subject you could possibly think of and published it on their website. It's still there. I mean, I downloaded it just in case they delete it. But you know what I mean? And so that's why I, to me, it's not, again, I know maybe I sound like a homer or whatever and like maybe a patsy or maybe worse when I defend these things. statistics houses, but I've just read too many papers, you know, like Carolyn Rogers wrote this

paper in March of 2024. The paper was called, time to break the glass, productivity, emergency, blah, blah, blah. She's a central banker basically telling Canadian's that our economy's fucked and we need to change the direction of our economy. And then, and so does the CBC talk about this? And CBC, by the way, is our state's propaganda arm, uh, propaganda arm, uh, national broadcaster. Did the CBC talk about this? No. You know what I mean?

And here's another example. So here's another perfect. Now you got me going. This is another perfect example. So the Bank of Canada publishes their views on the impact of tariffs. So tariffs because of Kuzma, which is the Canadian, well, the North American free trade agreement, but just updated. Because of Kuna, 90% of all the goods traded between the United States and Canada are tariff-free. So before Donald Trump got involved, the average tariff was 0.1%.

That's the weighted average tariff between the U.S. and Canada. There's thousands and thousands of products that go back and forth. The U.S. was charging Canada, 0.1%. The Bank of Canada's assumption for their monetary policy report was 5.8%. What? Right? So to me, instead of saying Donald Trump is, a dickhead and protectionism is bad, which may or may not be true, the reality is,

because of Kuzma, it doesn't matter, it almost doesn't matter what he does. Now, don't get me wrong, there's loads of industries that in Canada are getting absolutely caved in because of U.S.'s protectionism. But the weighted average is also important to that conversation. So two things should have been reported, which is one, there are some three or four, or five, or six or ten industries that are getting absolutely caved in, and they are very, vital to the Canadian economy, autos. However, because of this free trade agreement, which is coming up for renewal in June, the weighted average, according to the Bank of Canada's own calculations, is 5.8%, which is still lower than every other country in the world. Right? So, like, to me,

your point is well-founded, which is clearly there's, there is like a wave of politics that's being, that's like putting it to creep into all these institutions, which I reject. But I still think that if you look for it, the data is there. The data, like, it's literally all. If they publish, it was there that you just like go and look. Oh, okay. 5.8%. You're like, oh, fuck, that's actually not that bad.

Not only is it not bad. How is it compared to interprovincial, by the way? So, oh, yeah. So that's another, I mean, that's another thing, right? So there's different estimate that interprovincial is very, very difficult because a lot of the trade barriers are not tariffs. So when you're buying Okanagan Red and you live in Quebec, there won't be like an explicit tariff on that bottle of wine. Okanagan for American listeners is a region in the interior of British Columbia that produces lots of beautiful wine. Although I only drink wine from Europe because I'm not a chaglodite.

But there's all kinds of like non-tariff trade barriers. So like if you're a plumber in Alberta, can you go work in Saskatchewan? You may or may not. Maybe that's a bad example, but you know you get the idea. That's not an explicit tariff, but if you build a house there, does it count? And then so we have these things called non-tariff trade barriers, which, by the way, for all the people bloviating about U.S. putting tariffs on other countries, go Google non-tariff trade barriers between U.S. and Europe.

And it's incredible. Like, everyone in the world loves tariffs. When the U.S. increases its tariffs, the U.S. is the bad guy. And these non-tariff trade barriers are really key. And so basically nerds and PhDs will try to model out what non-tariff trade barriers in effect mean in terms of percentage points. Sorry, that's a long-winded answer to say 10 and 20%. Really tough.

So the IMF had an estimate that was 19, 20%, and then recently they've updated their data and it's like 10 to 12. Still very high. Still a massive, massive, massive problem. Because think about how crazy it is. like you're literally like, I don't know if you people understand Ottawa Gatineau, which is like Ontario and Quebec, there's a river, there's a bridge, you know, there should not be any trade barriers between this country, that province and another province in the same country,

but you can't buy alcohol and sell it in one. It's a joke. And so again, instead of focusing on sort of all the things that we can do as a country to improve our own economy, we blame Donald Trump, which is fine. I think protectionism is stupid, especially in North America. But nevertheless, like, that's to me where the issue is. The issue is not with the data itself. It's the interpretation of the data.

And, for example, you know, our propaganda arm, the CBC that just won't talk about, like, literally, in the BOC paper, it says, here's what it was on January, 2025, 0.1. Here's what it is in January 26, 5.8. Again, I think it's dumb that the U.S. put tariffs on Canada at all, but nevertheless, the number is still lower than every other country in the world because of Kuzma. And instead of saying that, when you ask a random Canadian on the street, what do you think the tariffs are, what do you think American tariffs are on Canadian goods? They'll tell you 35%. And that's not the fault of the Bank of Canada. That's the fault of, or statistics Canada. That's the fault of the politicians and the CBC and the rest of the media of them.

makes sense. It does. And Richard, it sounds like you could go off on this. Sorry, sorry. I went on him. No, no, no, no. It's fine. I do want to, if I may, just pull us a little bit back, kind of 30,000 foot view. Please do. You talked before about, I mean, we have to tackle. There's a big subject. Obviously, the Iran war. We touched on it briefly before. And, you know, kind of 30,000 foot view, we were talking about how oil obviously is going up and it's being priced in a bit, but maybe not as high as some people might think, given the situation. Let's say this all ends relatively quickly a few weeks, a couple months. I think some would argue, myself included, that there are going to be effects beyond just the war ending

that last, including the petro dollar, what happens to the GCC countries, who basically made a deal. It's like, hey, we'll price it in dollars as long as you protect us, America, and then America's not protecting them. So I guess the two questions I would ask you is, What do you think is maybe an economic prediction that's being very overblown about this long term? And what do you think an economic prediction is that might be undersold long term as a result of this war? Yeah, I think that I'm starting to see grumblings like, oh, this is why we need to move away from fossil fuels, blah, blah, blah. That's never going to happen. People just do not.

What is that the quote that I'm going to garble? you know, the greatest trick the magician ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist. Oh, sorry, the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. Yeah, that's what fossil fuels. To me, that's what I think fossil fuels. Like, people take fossil fuels for granted in a way that just drives me crazy. Yes. Like Alex Kudstein, fossil future.

I mean, I've read that book. It was way too long. All these books are way too long. But it was good, but it way too long. Okay. Just like, all these books should be like 100 pages. Anyway. He's right, of course.

You know, it's 81 or 2% of our primary global energy consumption. The relative number is falling, but the absolute number is rising. And we haven't even touched on like two thirds of the world being poor and wanting fridges and microwaves and air conditioning. God forgive. Yes, please let me keep the light on. operating room while I'm doing surgery. That would be nice. So like, yes, is solar going to be more important? Sure. Is wind a thing? Yes, again, because we insist on not building nuclear power, which is again, completely insane. Had we been spending the last 50 years building nuclear reactors,

I might, I would absolutely change my mind on fossil fuels. You wouldn't need coal. You wouldn't need natural gas. You have a bunch of nuclear reactors everywhere. And that would have been, that would provide the base load power in order to produce all the shit that we need, steel, chemicals, on and on and on. So that's the thing I think that is like being undersold. This idea that this is going to somehow encourage the world to move away from fossil fuels is total bullshit. I think the thing that's undersold, I think is the impact it will have near term on the food

supply and the prices of food. Just like so much of, again, because natural gas is so vital to the creation of nitrates and ammonia and all this other shit that I was screw. up and don't get right, but basically fertilizer and our food supply, I think you could very well have a spike that if it keeps going longer, then I think you just inevitably there will be a spike in food prices. That's just the way she goes. And if you look, and that's a corollary, you could look at 2022 where obviously natural gas

spiked urea. I always screw this up, ammonium nitrates and other fertilizers went up, and then agricultural food prices went up just in lockstep with them. That's the bottom line. You know, the reality is, is despite all of the prognostications to the contrary, crop yields have been rising everywhere for the last 60 years. Like everybody forgets about the famine in the 60s and 70s. We don't ever hear about, read about famine anymore. And the reason that's true is because crop yields everywhere have been going up like this. And the reason they've been going up is because we're We use nitrogen and we fix nitrogen in the soil and we just use a lot more fertilizer,

which is great if you believe humans are good. I still like most humans. And so I think it's good. We have more of them. And so if you believe that that's true, so that's why it's so, so important that those nitrogen prices basically stay low and fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. I think the other thing that's also really interesting, the thing I think that people are not discounting is like this actually, ironically, I think this actually might sew. the seeds for the end of the green movement because what people will realize is all these countries that have been insisting on not creating their energy supply and and being self-sufficient

will all of a sudden say okay screw that if if if war if world war three is going to continue on there's going to be more volatility and the end of the international order and all those other BS then countries are going to say screw it we are going to make sure that we're not going to be And ironically, that will increase the supply and actually probably kill the price of oil going forward. Right? Because you can already see it. Like now you're starting to see like the Overton window turn in the UK. So UK has been like pot committed to net zero, which is completely insane, even though they have the North Sea.

And so even in the UK, you're starting to see the BBC and all these talking heads starting to float the idea that we should start getting, they should start, why aren't we exploiting the North Sea oil? No, no, no, no. And so what you might see is countries that even in Canada, right? Even Canadians are like, oh, I guess we should build a pipeline. You know, like, oh, maybe we should exploit. Really? I mean, just completely insane. And so in an ironic way, I think you might actually see all the supply come online,

which actually might actually hurt the price of all going for it. But that's like sort of a secondary effect. I think, I don't know. Who knows? But that's my view. I don't know. Did you have a different angle that I should have attacked that question? No, no, not necessarily.

I was just generally curious to hear like a couple of things, you know, that you thought people were sort of overvaluing or undervaluing. I mean, I don't know. I think the dollar is still going to be around for quite a while. I wonder what impact you think this has on the dollar globally. Yeah, I mean, I think people just like, people are, I think that the, it's not that I think that I love the dollar. I just don't see an alternative outside Bitcoin maybe. But you know what I mean? Like outside like in the mainstream, I'd say.

You know, this idea that we're all going to get. get on like the Chinese yuan it's like they don't have they don't have an open capital account like they don't have judiciaries that are not political like you talk about politically charged i mean fucking hell like right i mean like for all of the misgivings that you might have america like they still have decent regulations and they still have laws well i don't know about in the social aspect i think that they've been co-opted but certainly in corporate law they still adjudicate pretty fairly. You know what I mean?

And so you need to deal with like, yeah, that's so that until you have an alternative that's not run by the CCP, I think the U.S. dollar's not going anywhere. Also, it's backed by 10 aircraft carriers and 20 Ohio class submarines and 5,000 nukes and on on and on. And so I think that the end of the dollar thing is highly, highly premature, not to mention just basic numbers, like all the trade that's enacted that, FX, reserves, blah, blah, blah.

Well, you mentioned Bitcoin. So this is a Bitcoin podcast. I don't know if you saw River, the Bitcoin Exchange put out a little study recently where they kind of over the last, I think since 2020, they were looking at kind of giant political. issues, you know, that things that would pop up like COVID or war, you know, really, really big deals. And they were looking at what happened to the price of Bitcoin within like the 60 day window following each of these big things. And compare it to pretty much every other investment, the price was going up. They would argue is that, hey, it's showing that it is a kind of safe haven when things are going really bad. Like that would be their argument. I couldn't tell you what the specific data, you know, which they decided this was, they're going to declare. is a big political event and this wasn't a big political event.

I mean, you know, you can cherry pick the numbers all you want. What would you say to that argument? I just, you know, at the risk of getting lots of Bitcoin hate, I still think it's the dollar and treasuries. I think at the end of the day, you need that dollar liquidity. And so even, for example, I mean, perfect examples like gold. Everybody thinks gold is World War III. You want to own gold.

You want to own dollars and treasuries. liquidity is king when people are freaking out. I think maybe we're for in year five. Like, you know, if we have a, I mean, I love Terminator as a film. If we have the singularity. Dude, it's coming. And the robots take over. Then yes, having a gold coin will probably be useful in that scenario.

But until we get that, I think you, and it showed you like gold fell or silver fell, Bitcoin fell. And what went up was the dollar and it was the dollar. because it's a source of liquidity that just is unmatched. And I think ultimately when you have those, especially, it's funny they said that use such a short-term time frame because in those 60 days, what really, really matters is liquidity. If we do generally have some apocalyptic world, then maybe Bitcoin will work and gold

and whatever. But certainly in that tiny, in that as short a window as you've described, what matters is just liquidity. A bunch of people are just trying to cover their investments. There's all kinds of behavior elements to it. It may not even be logical in the investors and many of the listeners in the minds of many your listeners. You're like, oh, but what happens to this?

It's like, just a bunch of portfolio managers just trying to come and make sure they get their bonuses paid. Do you know what I mean? There's so much of so much about the market is just people just trying to survive and not get fired from their extremely lucrative jobs. And if, and you're not going to take positions. You're not going to stick your head above the parapet. You're not going to be that guy who's like, well,

I own Bitcoin in my portfolio. You're just going to be like, no, I'm going to buy treasuries. Easy. You know, and then you just sell anything that you've done really well on. And they just buy treasuries. And what a treasury is treasured is just a dollar. So that's the part, I think there's a lot more behavior elements that people don't like to kind of admit that are boring, shitty answers.

But I think genuinely, that's my answer. I think if you're worried about what's going to happen, you just buy the dollar. and then you and then you're like okay have my protected my bonus yes are my kids still going to private school yes then then you then you then you've reassessed the situation fair out of curiosity on that now then too rich do you have any thoughts on maybe like a medium or long-term outlook for bitcoin and you can group in kind of whatever category you like whatever makes sense to you whether or not if you look at it as kind of like a high-risk tech play if you look at it as getting a little bit of the debasement trade i'm not sure what makes the

sense for you. But where do you maybe group Bitcoin in terms of thinking? And then what is your outlook for that kind of group going forward? Sure. I think what I think, so one of the worries I really have is that we are now at the end of a debt super cycle and that interest rates are going to go up. But because governments, mostly in the West, do not have the testicular fortitude to tell people specifically baby boomers that they cannot have their cake and eat it too, they're going to inflate their way out of this. And if they can't, they're implicitly going to try to create some kind of alternative

to be able to write down these bonds. That's why people have floated the idea. That's why digital ID is getting floated. That's why central bank digital currencies are getting floated. And those are to me the next step on the road to tyranny. And people might think I'm exaggerating, but. Not on this show. And so to me, like central bank digital currency is,

is a tyrannical, highly undemocratic, nasty, nasty thing that we should avoid in all costs. And to me, Bitcoin is like your option value on that. Because that's the way I sort of see it. Like if you genuinely think that that's where you're going and you want to opt out of that tyranny, then Bitcoin is the way that you would do that. That would be, that's the way I see it. And that's why I'm really grateful it exists. Because what it does also is if it, if that is.

And this is why I'm really worried they're going to outlaw it because it is a safety valve to that tyranny. Because central bank digital currencies are terrifying. Like, right? You can basic. And again, don't take my word for it. Just go on the website, the Bank of International Settlements, and watch the videos that they literally produce. And they go, we want to control where your money is spent and where it's spent. Like, central bank digital.

Like, literally, that's what they like. It's so crazy that they, like, actually told you what they were going to, what they're like, one of the gentlemen in a press conference, like, why do you want to do this? Well, we want to control where the money is spent and how it's spent. And so to me, Bitcoin is a mega, mega, mega option value on that to me. That, that's the way I see it. I'm really worried that ultimately that they'll see that too and, and curtail it. I think that that you're already starting to see grumblings about that in the Netherlands.

part of the reason why they want to do this this un... Unrealized capital gains, I think, is because of that stuff. They want to bring it back in. They want to tax it. They want... I mean, this is what's so dangerous about inflation. This is what's so dangerous about forever deficits. It's ultimately it's...

Yeah, your governments are basically not accountable to the citizens. And so Bitcoin is opting out of that. And so if you're, I'm really frankly surprised it's gotten this far. Like what China did, which was like banned Bitcoin, whether it's real or unreal or whatever. I don't know how effective the ban is. But my point is the fact that China went right in and banned it and just said, fuck you, we're not doing this. To me is exactly what I thought America and the rest of the West was going to do. They had their chance.

They would have had to have killed it in the crib. It's gone too far now. Yeah. So that's what I mean. And so that's why as a philosophical like thought experiment, I love. I love it. I love it because they, I mean, they banned gold in 1933. Yep. Or not banned.

Excuse me. They banned the holding of more than like an ounce of gold in 1933 or whatever. Maybe I'm screwing that up. Which is why self-custody your Bitcoin. Don't leave it on an exchange or an ETF. Yeah. So that's a cold wallet, which Nathan said he's going to help me do. That's right.

And I'm ready to do it. I got one in your hand. Now it's not $120 or $120,000 or whatever it is. It's affordable. we should stack that thing with as many as we possibly can. I just, I love, like, I'm not an anarchist. What did you just? Libertarian, Ancamp, yeah.

What? Libertarian anarchical capitalists. So you think like Mises, Rothbard, that sort of vein. I do like Mises. Maybe about a degree away from that. Yeah, and I'm probably almost there. I'm a degree away from that. But I guess for me, my skepticism is growing by the day.

Yeah. You know, like in Canada, they want to raise taxes on everything. revenue is not the problem. Canada's revenue, we generate lots and lots of revenue. It's the idea that you can't. They can't cut spending. Spending productivity. And productivity is shit, which means inflation is going to go up.

And so you either own a house, and if you missed that boat for whatever reason, I did, because of, you know, life just didn't have it in for me. I didn't buy a house and when I should have and blah, blah, blah. The one way that you... Parting too hard traveling Europe like a bachelor? No, I wasn't quite. quite that, but anyway, the question remains, like, how do you opt out? How do you protect yourself from the inevitable quantitative easing that's going to come down the road to basically

there's too much government debt in the world and there's zero political appetite to wind that down? And so because governments are unable or unwilling to tell people the truth that we've spent too much money, the money's been badly allocated. Again, if we'd spent 100% of debt to GDP on building nuclear power plants, you know, then it wouldn't be an issue, but the money's frittered away. And so, you know, we don't have high speed rail. We don't have infrastructure. We don't have ports and rail and this and that.

We have all these bullshit programs that don't add anything long term to productivity growth. And so ultimately, you're going to have more inflation. You're going to have more quantitative easing. You're going to have this. You're going to have to deal with all these debts. Again, I'm not allowed to give investment. because I work for portfolio manager and get myself in trouble, but I just think that there's It's dangerous. I think we are at the end of a

Interest Rate cycle, which started 1960, went up in 1982, went down for 40 years, and that's why everybody in Toronto thinks they're an investing genius And now we're at the end of this we've reached a situation where interest rates are going up There's too much debt and all that debt needs to be refinanced at higher interest rates which is going to gobble up more and more government revenue. And so the way they're going to deal with that is, I think, governments are just going to have to control the yield curve, which is going to put more pressure on asset prices. I think, yeah.

I think, you know, to me, it's very clear. Again, what they should do is say, everybody, we've spent too much money, and we're going to have to cut all these programs, and we're going to have to take a massive hit in order to recalibrate, our spending. And also a politician should tell the truth.

Yeah. But no one will get elected on that, right? In Canada, the closest thing you have is the Blue Party. And, you know, even they can't really say that, you know. Yeah. In America, you guys, you have a social security nightmare. And the Republicans who are ostensibly supposed to be fiscally responsible or running a 6% budget deficit.

No, they're garbage. They just talk a good game. game. Right. So they had, they had the House and they had the presidency and the Senate, and even they couldn't be fiscally responsible. Because God love Trump, the guy's running a six or seven, whatever, five or six percent of budget deficit at full employment, which is insane. So even they couldn't do it. So what, if they couldn't do it, what hope does any party anywhere in the world have? So which tells you, I think, where we're going. How does the Looney survive this? Because I don't actually, see a way that it does? Oil, we have a trust fund. Canada is a trust fund baby. That's,

you know, I went to pretty fancy school as a kid. My parents were immigrants to this country, and it was their dream to send me to fancy school. And in that school, I was exposed to two types of rich kids. You have two, one type of rich kid has a chip on their shoulder and is like, does everything in their power to, like, outperform their parents. And, you know, just is like, you know, I'm never going to let my money to find me and do my own thing. And, They're going to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, and they work as hard as any son of an immigrant as ever worked. And the other type of rich kid is freaking useless

and spends his winters doing blow in the Alps and contributes absolutely nothing, Justin Trudeau. And to me, Canada is the latter. Right? The reason we don't need productivity growth or need to invest anything is because we've got big daddy Trump who's going to protect us of China invades, and we've got 168 billion barrels of oil in the ground that in effect acts as our trust fund and our shock absorber.

And you can even see. So oil's up 40, 50 bucks. Guess whose currency is outperforming almost every currency in the world barring the U.S. dollar? Canadian dollar. So, you know, and so we never really have to face, we've never really had to face the consequences of our stupid actions. right and that's a classic trust fund baby right you you you you smash your daddy's Porsche you get bailed out you get a new car you flunk out of school we buy off the teacher you get your degree you aren't good at interviewing don't worry we'll get you an investment banking job

in in new york and that's Canada and so i i know it doesn't sound like it but i'm an extremely extremely patriotic and proud Canadian but we need to confront the fact that we have not increased our, we've not increased our refining capacity in 40 years. We haven't built the, you know, we, we don't build nuclear power plants. There's no hydroelectric dam. We don't have high speed rail. I think I saw like manufacturing capital is like some, some measure, like just declining, just straight line down. So it's called capital shallowing. So like the way that you improve productivity growth or labor labor force productivity growth is you need to give individuals more capital, machinery, plant and equipment, intellectual property product, software, research and development, blah, blah,

capital in all of its forms to your labor force. So labor force plus capital equals productivity, right? In very simple, straightforward terms. And so what Canada has had for the last 10 years or 15, 10 years is something called capital shallowing. So we have less and less dollars of CAPEX per employee. So in the U.S., for example, you've had capital deepening, which is you have more and more CAPX per person, which improves your labor force productivity growth and

labor force productivity growth is the only sustainable long-term way to improve the lives of individuals, which is the only thing I really care about. Working class individuals at that. And so we don't do that in Canada. And so it's just amazing. And instead we imported millions of people who are low-skilled, low wage, blah, blah, blah. So like, yeah, I mean, so, but you're back to the question. Like, how does the dollar do in this scenario?

I think the dollar is going to be fine, right? It's like, we've got the world's largest potash. We have some of the world's largest freshwater reserves. We got lots of gold. You know, we've got every mineral under the sun that we need. We have a trust fund that is like in the ground. And it doesn't matter how badly our politicians screwed up. What if they screwed up so badly they lose the trust fund?

I mean, it's still there. Like we have, you know, like there's a silliness going around saying, oh, Canada has no oil reserves. No, no, no, no. I'm talking. You've got the potential of. Carney getting a majority. Yeah. Right is there's going to be a referendum question on Alberta independence.

Yeah. I don't, I don't buy it. I don't buy it. Why don't, okay, here's an option. Why don't we just invade them and take, you know, I'm just, no, I'm kidding. But I just, I think that that's a lot of like, I think ultimately, you know, there's a guy I really respect. His name's Dumeberg, and he's not always right about things.

But I think he's a great follow on, on, on Substack. And he's been a guest of our Luny Hour podcast a few times. And he said, you know, it'll be just used as an excuse to create some grand bargain with with, I don't disagree. And I find it disappointing. And I think it would really come down to the sentiment. I think you're right. The most likely is that there'll be some sort of offer. Pipeline, I don't know if they can even do a change to equalization payments.

There'll be something. We'll get a little bit more Quebec treatment. We'll be a little bit more of the kid yelling at the table and we'll get the good stuff. I think that's most like that. I love that. And I, in that disappoint. me because I want the independence side. But I think he's more likely, I think

his option, the path he lays forward is more probable but I don't have it as a zero chance and I'll try everything I can to try and push it over the finish line that I would rather go the complete independence row. Yeah, I mean, listen, I would be, I think it would be sad just like, you know, I don't think it would be good for Quebec to leave Canada. I think if Canada just stopped

doing, like it's so blindingly obvious what we need to do. Yeah. And you just need this group of politicians to get out of the way, right? The Malthusians, the climate cult, um, you know, the woke idiots who run Canada need to just step aside and allow people who want to improve the, every, the lives of everyday working people to just do it. Um, like I said, you know, like Canada used to grow lockstep with America. This is this idea that we are like permanently impaired in terms of growth and productivity. is a very new phenomenon.

And it's a function of the decision making and the policies that have been foisted upon us. And I guess I'm just an optimist. I think that you can turn countries around. You just can't. Greece was turned around. Germany, which used to be great was actually, remember Germany was actually the sick man of Europe. Then it became good. Then it became now it's the sick man of Europe again.

And I have to believe that Germany can turn itself around. I believe it can. I think it's like a generational issue, though. like I almost don't think it's possible. Like, in the short term, in the way before the case, I feel like the boomers have held on to the positions and they never let Gen X kind of get in there.

And Gen X feels like they're kind of getting skipped over. But I think, and I'm not sure where the men and theills would maybe kind of sit on these, but I think we're basically waiting for like a major rotation in terms of positions of power before the, you say, the Overton window will shift enough to be like, hey, maybe we should actually use and sell our resources so we can have a high standard of living,

like the Scandinavian countries, like Norway, or maybe we can turn this place into Dubai and have a wonderful, like, vast oil resources just power everything. I mean, I, dude, you talk about fighting for independence. I'm fighting for that every day. I mean,

you know, I mean, you know, like Justin Trudeau saying there's no business case for natural gas. I mean, for all the blame that he was given for saying that, it was a cabinet behind him. Justin Trude has never had an original thought in his life.

So, like, there was a bunch of people sat in a room and said, this is what we should say. And so all those people need to go, every single one of them, you know, by by screwing with one of the best immigration systems ever, which only allowed high-skilled, high-wage people who ironically would keep the wages on the high-end compressed and would actually have lifted the low-end wages, right, supply demand. and they went and screwed that and basically imported low-skilled, low-wage labor, which is the most regressive immigration policy I think you could have ever of designed, right? There's progressive, regressive. Yeah, I think, you know, you're seeing the end of that. I think you're right.

I think there just needs to be a change in philosophy. I don't see that on the horizon. And that's like one of the, you know, it's really disappointing. One of the reasons I really detest your guy, Gary, is because he stuck his nose in our politics and blew up everything. every boomer's brain. Dude, I have a lot of reasons to detest our guy. I'm just saying that one thing.

I know. I know. I saw somebody put a poll on Twitter today. They said it was like of the four 20th century presidents, Bush Jr., Obama, Biden, and Trump rate which one was the best or the least worst. And I have to tell you, I sat there and I honestly couldn't give an actual answer. I really couldn't think of which was the worst or the least worst. I just couldn't.

I don't know. I can't give up, Nathan. I can't give up. I can't give up. It's not in me to give up. And I'm going to keep trying to bang the drum for productivity growth and capital investment and for Canada to unscrew itself. Because we really do have like everything we need.

We've got the military industrial complex. of the United States to defend us and we've got oil and the safety of and we can exchange that and have that partnership be extremely lucrative

for the next 200 years. Is that in some way kind of like delaying? I almost feel like Canada has to bottom out and we're not there yet before we'll actually start to see

a political or public will to sort of change. And I almost feel like you're right like the trust family we've been protected from our own consequences for so long.

long. I can't see like we're at, Rich, we're at the point where like property titles are under question. I mean, don't even. I mean, now I'm going to get myself into trouble. Let's just say I don't agree with that. Yes. So you don't have property rights potentially, right? It's insane. It's insane. Come on. Think about it. Like, they're kicking people like it's fine to like, yeah. I didn't want to get myself in trouble. I'm just thinking, let's just say. I said that not rich. I just think, everything I look at, not everything, most things that I look at

when it comes to Canada is like, how do you improve the lives of working class people? That's it. And like, are the decisions? Like, and I don't mean handouts, do not improve the lives of working class people as we, as been demonstrated by COVID, okay? The only way to improve the lives of working class people

is to improve productivity growth. That's it. You need to get more output for the same amount of input. And everything I ask, whenever there's like a decision and announcement, I'm like, does this help improve working class people? And just time and time and time again, the answer is no. This Aboriginal land title thing, no. The carbon tax that's coming out in April, no. Importing millions of low skill, low wage workers to Canada? No. Banning pipelines. No. Banning natural. gas, no. Like, increasing the length of approving a mine. No. It just goes on and on and on and on. And I just, eventually you're right, Nathan, there will be a reckoning. I think the fact that we have a trust fund delays that reckoning.

Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, man. I just, I can't give up. I'm just going to keep pushing for, like, yeah, infrastructure. Why is that so complicated? Well, even just thinking about it, like, there's, we don't have consensus in Canada that property rights are good or that if you work hard, you should be rewarded, right? Like, yeah. And it's you, we, there's no, there's no recovering unless we can at least get back on that train to some extent. So I, so where I disagree, I think that there's a real anger swelling. And so you and I think we're, maybe I'm contradicting myself. Because in one hand, I said, you know, we're too soft and we don't take things seriously.

And then the other hand, I think that there's a real, here's a, here's a, here's an optimistic data point for you. Which will support the, we'll support the thing, poverty rights and stuff, which is, you know, they polled, you know, they do polling by age. Yeah. And like 40% of kids on the age of 29 want to vote for the blue guys. Yeah. Yeah. And that, to me, that is, and that it is an indictment on our country, right? Like, young people should not want to vote for a conservative party.

That this should not exist. Generally speaking, yeah. Right? You're supposed to be dumb. When you're supposed to be left wing when you're young and right. Liberal. And like in some ways that's kind of a plot. Like, you know, that's like, you know, it's a silly, you know, apocryful thing.

It's not, is that right? Is it wrong? But on another and another more kind of visceral way, it makes sense, right? When you're young, you should think you should vote for all these dumb ideas that you know you're not going to, they're not going to work. Let's just give everybody a house. Right. And so, but so to me, what you're seeing is it, there's a, there's a general. generation of people who have been forsaken, right?

And they're angry. They are much angrier than I think we give them credit for. And I think, and what's amazing is the boomers in Canada overwhelmingly vote for the red guys, which is the status quo, which is ironic, right? Because they think they're being progressive, but they're decidedly not, right? All they're doing is deciding to keep the moat around their capital. Yep. And so to me, that's just a fascinating.

and that gives me hope. It gives me hope that there will be some philosophical, structural change. But I don't know, man. It's just, I think, I don't know. I was feeling good this morning and then you guys. And somehow you've like made me feel sad about everything. Okay, let me pump you back up. Well, you know, I'll give you this one, right?

And this is, and I heard this from a friend of mine, Ben, I thought it was quite delightful, that he was, he was having a meeting with someone and they were talking about, like, property rights and these things, too. And they were talking about garnishing wages. and you just went, you know, you can't garnish a Bitcoin wallet. The guy kind of went, oh, yeah, I guess you're right. So even if we don't get property rights back by law, there are ways that maybe we can enforce them by code,

which is always at least an optimistic view, going back to the option to opt out. I don't know if I have, I don't think I have any, you know what? I do have one thing optimistic. We're going to be hanging out soon, at least recently, so that'd be fantastic. I'll get the CEO when you're coming by to visit. You've got sold out two events here, which is phenomenal.

Hopefully you plan some more. Rich, is there anything you want to leave people? to pay attention to. That they should be watching and the coming, we'll say coming months here. Yeah. And then let's lay out

everywhere that they can come check out your stuff, the looney hour ice cap, the works. So yeah, I think the thing that to pay attention to is how we started the conversation, which was really the private credit stuff.

You know what? Hopefully I don't get in trouble for naming the actual names of the companies, but I think that those are the ones that you really want to check out. I think you want to check out the high old corporate bond market. I think that's the other thing

that you just like keep a close eye on that. Natural gas. and nitrate prices, that data is readily available. I also think you want to check out inflation expectations. So there's like the Michigan. So that's for the U.S. for U.S. audience. There's like Michigan sentiment, inflation expectations.

You definitely want to check out this Atlanta now Fed stuff because you can start to see that if, if people are starting to worry about the input costs to all this manufacturing, which was having a resurgence, you know, input costs are really, really important there. in Europe, I think you really, really want to pay attention to what's going on with the AFD for Germany. So that's the right-wing party. That's really anti-EU.

There's a groundswell of anger in that country that I think we haven't seen in a long, long time. And the EU is trying their best to squash opposition. And I think that that's fascinating. Just really, just like, yeah, to me, that's like a really, really fascinating. The other thing in, I would keep an eye on the elections in South America. Oh, yeah. If we're doing a little world tour, you know, you got Chile, you had an Argentina, you got, I mean, obviously, Maduro, you got the deton in Cuba.

All of a sudden, the Cubans want to start negotiating with the U.S., which is amazing. Like, not amazing in a good or bad way, just like, wow. It's a huge change. I think those conduct. So that's interesting. I think in Canada, you've got to keep it on Kuzma. I think Canadians are sleeping on that. Excuse me.

And, yeah, from equity markets and, yeah, I think that's it. I mean, really just the keep, oh, yeah, and then obviously the price of oil. Yep. I think it's just like, that's obviously very important. And Bitcoin, which just seems to be bottoming. I agree. Famous last words. But I am in the camp that like six months from now,

I think we're back to over six figures of U.S. and back to near all-time highs. I think this is temporary. I can't share that. But I do know that I'm, I think I'm somewhat of a contrarian indicator because I got invited to the Bitcoin conference in Montreal at the exact top of the market.

Yes. So how about that? The next time I get invited to another Bitcoin conference, that's when you know you got to get out. I'm just joking. Tweet it out. That's the top. That's the tippy old top.

Rich, tell everybody where they can follow you. Find your stuff. Check it out. Yeah, so it's Richard Diaz underscore CFA on Twitter. I refuse to call it X. X's stupid name. Yeah, Richard Diaz underscore CFA on Twitter. I do a weekly for the Canadian listeners and maybe some of the American ones.

I do a weekly video on the Canadian economy. And it's called the Ice Cap Canadian Market Wrap. Then you can take. check out on the Looney Hour. We have a once a week podcast, it's about an hour long, and we talk all things, not just Canada, but we talk all things, mostly Canada, but we definitely branch out. And yeah, that's it. And then I work at ICE cap asset management, if that's your thing. If you're looking for a more conservative, longer term investment manager to preserve your capital, that's definitely us.

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