Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - America's K-Shaped Economic Crisis, Unemployment Wave Begins, & Iran War Spiraling

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

On today's episode of All Things Markets, Mike Novogratz and I discuss America's K-shaped economy — asset prices near all-time highs, food banks overwhelmed, and the inequality gap as wide as I've ever seen it in my career. We get into all of it this week — the bond selloff, what's really happening in the Middle East, and why AI is going to be the defining issue of our time. Michael Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Novogratz served on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets from 2012 to 2015. He serves as the Chairman of The Bail Project and has made criminal justice reform a focus of his family’s foundation. Learn more about Galaxy here: https://www.galaxy.com/ Follow Anthony on X: https://x.com/Scaramucci Follow Novo on X: https://x.com/novogratz Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://linktr.ee/anthonyscaramucci Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CG's national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Tax season is the worst. You mean hack season?

Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got TELUS online security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud, so I can stress less during tax season, or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at TELUS.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft.

Conditions apply. Bernie Sanders was out there today saying that Elon Musk has more net worth than the bottom 54% of America. Fifty-four percent, not even 50. 50% of all consumption is done by the top 10%. And so we have this K-shaped economy. It is really good to be rich right now. And you're getting richer and there's great restaurants and that economy still's humming. And on the bottom half of our country, people are suffering. Is that a political risk that you have to factor in to your macroeconomic investing? You could have a Bernie Sanders Mondani revolution. Welcome to all things markets with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

And I'm Mike Novogratz. Novo, we're going to talk about that red suit at some point today. But right now, we are recording this. Did not like that article. We are, how can you wear red? But man, red is down. When I see red on the screen, down. Yeah, we're green, Michael.

Anyway, we are recording this at 430 Eastern Standard Time Thursday, March 19th. Thursday, March 19th, the day where the markets literally, you didn't. didn't think fixed income would sell off as much as it did. I think this was one of the largest sell-offs in short-end, you know, UK rates that I can remember, European rates, U.S. rates, we're now pricing in rate hikes in Europe, 50 basis points or more of rate hikes in Europe, and we're pricing in absolutely no rate cuts in the U.S. But, Michael, I mean, look, I read through the minutes yesterday, and I listened to the Fed chairman's press conference. You know, he's saying three-quarters,

of the inflation is related to tariffs. He's now worried about a potential energy crisis going into the summer. So if you were on the board of government, and by the way, President Trump's own nominations to the board of governors, they agreed with them. I mean, there was no real pushback. Yeah, but listen, we know oil shocks,

supply shocks are transient. It comes and it goes. And you've already got a credit crisis that's brewing, right? Like when credit seizes up, economy's slow. And so you've got you got a lot of body punches that are hitting this economy at the same time. And to think we're going to be raising rates into that is, as I think just strange thinking. Now, because everyone thought like me and was very long the front end, this is a gigantic position unwind. You know, last week I said advice to young traders in correlated risk unwinds get out of everything.

should listen to my own advice I get it because you're hoping you know you don't want to get caught on the other side of it either where all of a sudden the war is ending there's a ceasefire and there's a general agreement about what's going to happen Trump could taco any day he is such a difficult leader to trade around because you know he makes things up he changes his mind

he's funny some days he's he's an ass some days at the end of the day, the market rallied because Benjamin Netanyahu came out and broadly gave the script, the narrative, that we could end the war. We've got all their, you know, weapons grade, uranium, they can't make anymore, we've destroyed all their missiles. All the things for Trump to Taco

Bibi did in a pretty graceful way. Now, he said, well, we've got more stuff to do, but that sets the stage up, I think, for Trump to back out because he kind of lost his own credibility. Bibi doing the tockling for Trump, or at least the canary in the coal mine. I mean, that's what the market read. Late in the day, it's why it rallied back a percent.

We lost 92,000 jobs in February. Are you surprised by that? You know, no. And you saw today Dell met a rumor to be cutting 14,000. Dell, some giant, you know, job cuts. Every CEO in America is looking at Claude and saying, I got to do something, I'm going to get crushed. And that's something, is replaced jobs with agents.

And so I just think that's going to be a story. I mean, what I really think is politics in 2026 and certainly in 28, this is going to be the issue. how do we deal with AI? Just step back for a second. You know, you've got three things happening at once. I don't think we've had anything happen like this since the 1970s. You've got a price shock. You know, you know, and I know you can't just turn the spigot back on.

You've got, you know, you have nowhere to store the oil so they had to stop production in a lot of the Gulf countries. It takes three, six, in some cases, nine weeks to put. it back on. Right? So tell me, tell me what you're thinking. Nat gas prices were up more today than they've ever been in one day in Europe. Qatar lost 17, 18% of their total production capacity.

It'll take four to five years to rebuild that. I read they had spent $25 billion in sustained $20 billion of damage. So they're not feeling good. And so I think this is going to be harder to get through than just turn the pipes back on. And so it's going to make it, again, that will be inflationary. But I think that inflation shock, which, you know, Europe might react to and the U.S. might not. We'll see. Madame Magarde was pretty crisp today.

I thought she was right down the middle and then someone leaked an article, oh, they might hike. Again, does this stuff translate into wage expectations and into the inflation cycle, or is it just, oh shit, gasoline got more expensive, it'll go down in six months and right now? Because those are really demand destruction things, right? If your gas prices go up, you're spending less at the supermarket. And so I don't see this as inflation, as the kind of inflation that the Fed should react to.

Okay. All right. So then that makes the case that the short race will rally again, if and when this thing ends. And hopefully this is weeks and not months. But let's go to your and my or at least one of our favorite assets. That's Bitcoin. Bitcoin looked like at the start of this, it was decoupling a little. It rallied from 67, 68 up into the 76,000.

Well, it felt good. It felt good. But you're now back to probably you are my favorite number 69,000, although Elon Musk is 69-420. But, you know, what happened there? And do you think Bitcoin will decouple? Do you think that there's a structural ship going on? Or is it pretty much to say that the bad news about this is I would say that the major reason Bitcoin rallied so impressively was that Michael Saylor was back in the saddle. and he was selling Microsoft shares to buy Bitcoin

because they're trading at a premium to his NAV. He was also selling his perpetual preferred STRC, 11 and a quarter percent. He was selling a lot of it. And so what's that doing? That's leveraging up micro strategy. And he's willing to do that at 11% a year because he thinks Bitcoin's going to grow more than 11% a year. And people trust that he,

he's not going bankrupt. You know, he set a lot of dollar reserve to pay for his dollar coupons that he has. And so he's got this machine going, this fixed income machine plus the equity machine. And that was buying most of the Bitcoin, which was driving other people into the market. When that stops because the market starts coming down for other reasons and he's not as aggressive, the natural buyer of Bitcoin, i.e. him. And again, it's not Michael Saylor himself buying the Bitcoin. It is, there's a giant retail base in America that has taking their crypto exposure through micro strategy.

You know, he's about half and all the other ETFs are the other half. So I bit, you know, all of them. He had put them together. And retail was buying. And all of a sudden, this, the last two days, people got scared and you know all of a sudden you had a nice run from 60 to 76 and profitating comes out this will be a really interesting area if we can hold this 68 69 and and grind back up i think then it'll go to 80 but it's going to be correlated a little bit with the rest of the market so we think about

gold got destroyed today silver got destroyed today today was a day where people who had positions had to get out of them. Dollar yen sold off, Euro rallyed. It was get out of what you were in. The risk managers at the big pod shops had their big stick and they were smacking people on the hands. You know, Michael, asset prices are still pretty high. You know, they're near all-time highs, despite the current correction going on as a result of the war. Yeah, stocks don't go down. Stocks don't go down. And this is also near and dear to you because I know all the work that you do in New York, Robin Hood, charity work, et cetera. You know, food bank usage in the United States, not even just here in New York City. I'm talking about the 50 states. The food bank uses at the all time high, Michael. So you have

high asset prices and food uses at an all time high, which is the definition of a egg. I mean, Bernie Sanders was out there today saying that Elon Musk has more net worth than the bottom 54% of America. Fifty-four percent, not even 50. And it's now- There's some political and systemic risk. 50% of all consumption is done by the top 10%. And so we have this case-shaped economy. It is really good to be rich right now. And you're getting richer and there's great restaurants and that economy still's

humming. And on the bottom half of our country, people are suffering. But, you know, I guess the question is, is that a political risk that you have to factor in to your macroeconomic investing in your decision making? It's a huge risk. You could have a Bernie Sanders Mondani revolution. It's coming. I mean, you saw Washington State pass the 10% tax.

California's messing with one. I don't think it'll pass, but like there I chased out, five or six of the richest guys in the state. I keep trying to tell the blue state mayors and governors that tax should be done at a federal level, not at a state level. Otherwise, you're just going to chase your people away. But, and Ray Dalio is talking about this a lot. When the inequality gets this wide, you have wealth taxes or you have some seizure of people's, you know, earnings and wealth.

And so there's going to be some form of tax revolution that comes. What you're hoping, a good centrist Democrat, is that we get rational policy that doesn't, you know, raise taxes just to blow up governments where we're wasting money. but we're going to need more, and I think Lloyd said this on your show when you're on Bill Maher, like you're going to need more redistribution. Can you do that gracefully? Can you do that with dignity? Yeah. That's why, you know, I'm looking at the history.

Teddy Roosevelt basically went to the robber baron and said, knock it off. We did a little bit of trust busting at that time to make things a little flatter. You know, Rockefeller had two and a half percent of the GDP in terms of his net worth. that was probably too much in terms of the concentration. Again, all this is happening, Michael. And let me give you these numbers from China. The industrial overcapacity is at the highest level that it has been since 2008. And therefore, they're flooding the global markets with cheap goods away from the United States because of the tariffs.

I guess, you know, what do you say there? I mean, would you recommend that? we accepted some of those good relaxation on the tariffs during a time of war or you know where do you go because I'm fairly certain that the average American is looking at their paycheck is saying okay more of it's going to gas more of it's going into tax increase let's be really honest tariffs were a are a form of a consumption tax right yeah it's a but it's a regressive tax agree I agree I agree and so Trump was like, I can do away with the income tax replaced with tariffs, that's a regressive

tax. We need progressive taxes and we need them to be done fairly. And the problem with our tax code is there's nothing fair about it. When I mean that, if you're in the top tax bracket, everyone should roughly pay the 35 or 40 percent or whatever we decide is a fair amount, not some guys pay in none because they're depreciating their real estate or they're appreciating and they're their CAPEX fast, or there's so many ways to get around tax that you can have a table of 10 guys that all make $10 million a year, and the disparity on what they make paying taxes can go from 5% to 50%. Like, that's crazy.

We need a simpler tax code because we're going to need to tax people more, and we're going to need to give it, distribute it in a way that doesn't steal, people's dignities, where you're calling them welfare queens. In essence, you should just because you're an American citizen benefit from the infrastructure that's been built up in America. And so, you know, if you're in Norway, they've got that sovereign wealth fund that gives everyone some money because they have the oil. We have natural resources. We have intellectual resources. We have the reserve currency. And so you could actually tell a story where that UBI or that government assistance. And it's not like we don't do it now. We just do it really inefficiently, right?

We're 41% or something of GDP is government spending. That's higher than China, by the way. We're going to think China's a socialist and we're capitalists. We're about 41, 42% of total spending is done by state, local, and federal government. In China, that number's 35%. Let's switch topics. I want to go to AI for a second. And I'm going to read you this stat, which you know well, which I still find staggering. But, in this, India's revenues went from $27 billion in 2022 to $216 billion in 2025. Market capitalization peaked to $5 trillion. They're now forecasting, and this is from Jensen himself, the CEO,

Jensen Wang is saying that they're forecasting $1 trillion in ship demand backlog. So they're doubling down on their inference trips. They're acquiring talent. they just did the Grock deal. What do you make of all that, Michael? Is that a $10 trillion company in five years? You know, it's tempted to get short to stock market because there's so much going on.

And, you know, the P on the overall market looked expensive. And then you start looking at companies like Navidia. And, you know, one of my buddies was looking at it and said, geez, if you look at their 27 earnings, it's only trading 10 times. 27. Their earnings are growing so fast. Anthropic might have the first. have the fastest growing company in the history of the planet.

Right. And so I just know this is such a big story that it will end in a bubble, but this isn't the bubble. Like the bubble for the biggest story in our lifetime is going to be something stupid. And so maybe it's 10 trillion in the video. But that's how bubbles end when things, not 27 times next 10 times 27. earnings, but when you're at 40 times, you know. And so, but this dislocation of other businesses, you know, no one feels safe. I'm sure you could get two kids in your office and tell them, guys, spend the weekend and make me my own Spotify. And instead of paying $9.99 for Spotify,

you're going to get it for free and they're going to do it. They're going to have, you know, Claude go in there and create their own version. Yeah. And you can download the free stuff off of YouTube or you've got a YouTube premium subscription and you've got your Spotify. And it's as, as good as Spotify.

So if you're a Spotify, though, what do you do? It's really tough. It's really tough. I think there's going to be a lot of lawsuits that are going to come out. We had a funny story. There was a app. that pretty simple app, but it was like $9.99.

And this guy working for me texted them. He said, hey, will you change this, this and this? And like, who do you think you are, buddy? And so he just, you know, used the, the clawed whatever version he was using and took their app, recreated it, made his changes. And you literally can't tell the difference. And he said, I saved $9.99.

Like, think of that a million times. And so I think intellectual property. right how there was a there was a venture fund that just raised 250 million dollars just to do that and i i think we're going to see a whole legal you know a legal's uh pushback uh on these SaaS businesses feeling like their people are just stealing their their IP one of the things that i've learned from you among many things and i think this is probably true of the best macro traders out there is getting something wrong and surviving the hit and, you know, getting yourself back on your feet. I mean, obviously you're making a get.

You talk about short rates today. Got it wrong. You're recalibrating. When you're looking at the war, you and I said last week, and by the way, I agreed with you that the war would be over, that this was sort of a one week, a 10-day, 15-day war. we're now into the 21st day or 22nd day of the war. Have you made any adjustments to your book as a result of that? Do you think that the war is going to end soon?

You know, when Israel blew up... Wait a minute, we're in an escalation trap right now. When Israel blew up Iran's big natural gas field, it pissed Iran off. And they came back and they attacked seven different countries the next day, including blowing up Qatar's jewel. not small beans, big beans. And that was a game changer.

That really was a game changer. Because until then you thought maybe you could, you could see this de-escalating, right? And, you know, it's funny. Then Trump said, I didn't know they were going to do it. They just were angry. And, you know, he got to blow hard about, you know, these guys are so well-coordinated.

you know, to the credit, I spoke to someone deep in the, in the, uh, in the war room. And he said, never before has he seen better coordination, not just between the U.S. and Israel, but Saudi Qatar and UAE. You know, they are tracking every missile deciding in live time who shoots it down from ships and planes and, you know, on-land bases. The guy said it's literally breathtaking to see that this is the first fully electronic war we've ever seen. Target acquisition, tracking people, the whole thing is electronic. It's kind of fascinating and scary as shit, quite frankly. You know, but what's also scary is that Iran is still firing off $20,000 drones, Mike, and they're still shooting missiles and they just took out a portion of that LNG hub. You know,

last night, you know. So, so, I mean, you know, they have less, they have less rocket launchers, they have less missile launchers, they have less of everything. But they're not dead. They still have drones. And, you know, they don't really have a great technology yet for that Shaheed drone to knock them down. Ukraine seems to have gotten really good at it, just from what I read. But, and so, listen, I think from a execution perspective, The big, how did this happen was there wasn't a real articulated plan for, you know, what would you do if they try to shut down the straightover moose? And everything else was planned for literally to the T it looked like.

And so that's what we're all suffering with. But Mike, you've got 2,200 Marines heading for the straight. And you have the Marine Expeditionary Force. The president said today that he's not going to deploy. them, but doesn't that lengthen the war if we put boots on the ground? Listen, if we try to take, what is that, Carg Island, yeah, that's a whole different game. Then, then this is a multi-month, month from here. I think, I'm hoping that that's a bluff.

But it might not be, listen, this could, you know, we have, like I said, we have a very difficult president to figure out because he changes his mind. you know him better than I do. He doesn't do pain well. And let me tell you, the markets are in pain. His donors are in pain. But his biggest backers, right, Saudi, Abu Dhabi, Qatar. These guys have given him so much money and support.

They're angry as hell. And so the real question is, does he have the two to three months stomach that Israel and the U.S. needs to really finish off this regime? And listen, there, you know, there was a young wrestler today who got hung, 19-year-old Iranian National Champ. I don't know him personally, but my guys know him. You know, he was in our world as wrestlers, a tough son of a gun. And, you know, he went to one of the protests,

and then they falsely accused him of murdering somebody, and they hung him in the town square with no real trial. It's a shitty freaking regime. And Israel feels it's existential to their existence, so they want it. They're praying that Trump gives them, the next two months. And, well, it's just a question of the price of oil. So, so as you and I are talking, obviously oil peaked at 117 earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech

in a press conference and we backed off into the mid-90s. So you think he's trying to create an off-ramp for the president? I think that's that's at least a scenario I'm giving some probability to because the president couldn't do it after his last few, you know, he's lost his credibility a little bit, been all over the place. Net Yahoo comes in seriously. The president can say say the same thing. And again, what I'm trying to figure out is what the off-brant looks like.

Do we just pick up and go home and say, would Iran be happy with that? I just want to go to you get a trade wrong. You're recalibrating and you're, you're rethinking about where you need to go in the future. And I want you to tie it into the war situation. And your earlier comments about it's hard to trade President Trump because of the sometimes capricious nature of his decision making. You know, let's use short rates because it's a good example. So the Fed went from having priced

in two thirds of one rate cut by the end of the year thinking Warsh gets in he's going to cut rates, he's been pretty adamant that he would, to now pricing and none. And so you look at the two years that almost got to like $3.95, I think was the high yield, 4%. That's probably the first target, unless really things go haywire. And so if you've gotten out, you can kind of get back in here, or you can scale in here or watch pretty closely for things to change. But if you were stayed in the whole time, you've suffered a tremendous amount of P&L loss in pain. Most of that pain, I think, has happen. There might be one or two days left. Same thing in Europe. You're pricing in, you know, 60 basis points of rate cuts, rate hikes in Europe. I just don't see it in the long run.

They could have hike rates, you know, in June they could hike 25. But if they do, they'll be reversing by the end of the year. Unless something happens in this world that I don't see. And so the greatest lesson any trader learns is to stop out before they're in so much pain that they can barely take their eye off the screen, right? So everyone's getting wiped out today. If you had had stop losses in, and depending on the size of your book, the smaller book, the easier it is to trade with tight stops.

If you're Bridgewater, you can't really trade with tight stops. You know, if you have a giant position, you know, you can get out and then get back in and reset. I had an expression, and maybe the smartest, this thing I'll say all day is charts don't lie, people do. And you look at the two-year chart about five days ago, it broke out of a big support level that had been holding it in. And any technical trader, any trader, investors should say,

hey, there's something happening here that doesn't jive with my fundamental understanding. And so when my fundamentals and the technicals don't match, I shouldn't have a position. And so discipline said, cut it all. because it's the front end and it's fundamental, often you can make the mistake of saying, yeah, I'll just keep some of it here

and start adding to it because I really believe in it. Screw your belief system. Trust the chart. Now you can come back in with your belief system now that it has moved three standard deviations and destroyed everybody. And again, that's just,

it's funny, you get really good at this and then you still make mistakes. But it's the charts don't lie and the charts broke. All right. I appreciate you and we'll be back next week with more. And I'm just going to leave you with his last thought, which I thought was one of the funnier things about Donald Trump.

He said, well, yeah, we surprised him. Then he turned to the Japanese prime ministers of all. You didn't tell me what was going to happen on Pearl Harbor. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay. Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right?

He said, Eskabe. Do you believe in surprise? I think much more so than us. And we had a surprise him. And we did. I mean, do you love this guy or what? I mean, I can't even believe that he's doing it. And his poor woman was like frozen in the seat.

Like in some ways, maybe the biggest social gaffe in diplomatic history. And the other, you know, my grandfather said that when I was being, you know, confirmation. You're Catholic. You get your confirmation. My grandfather was my confirmation specialist, and he was an old Italian guy. He was my step-grandfather. And the guy, Japanese guy, and turns around and says, peace be with you. And he shook his hand.

He whispered to me, if you want a peace, why just start the war? You know, that kind of humor. I was a 10-year-old, 12-year-old kid. I thought it was really funny. If you were Japanese, it probably wasn't funny. I just think it's a very archie bunker of him. But anyway, all right. Great to have you on.

And we'll be back next week with All Things Markets. Be good.