Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The End of The US Dollar, Globalization Failed, Jamie Dimon Sued By Trump, The Future of AI

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

In this episode, my good friend Michael Novogratz and I break down why the global monetary order is under real stress, from a weakening dollar and exploding gold prices to the deeper political and social consequences of currencies losing trust. Drawing on my trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, history, and current markets, we explain why this moment matters for everyone — not just investors — and what happens when money stops being a reliable store of value. 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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And you can look at Weimar Germany or Venezuela, even places like Nigeria recently, which is doing well in some parts of it, but their currency gets weaker and weaker. It just makes it more and more difficult for the average person to have any confidence about their future. This Iranian revolution isn't happening because the United States wants it to. It's happening because their currency got to live in hell kicked out of it. And shopkeepers said, I worked my whole life for this shop to feed my kids and my grandkids and have a future. And it just went evaporated.

And so FU to the government. F you to the IACOLUS. It's super scary because your currency should be a store of value. And we don't have it as a store of value anymore. People have to get rid of the currency pretty quickly if they want to have some semblance. of savings. Welcome to All Things Markets. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. And I'm a red-looking Mike Novogratz. All right, Mike, you're in Europe right now. You're on your way to Asia. So I'm just back from Davos. Lots of discuss. We got to start with Davos. All right. So let's start with Davos.

I'm going to give you three points and get you to react to them. You weren't there. I was there. So I may be too biased. But they sort of felt like Ray Dalio's messaging was underreport. And what was Ray Dalio's messaging? He basically is saying that fiat currency and debt are losing their roles as trusted stores of value. If you go to truflation.com as an example, the dollar is down since January of 2020, approximately 31%. And he feels like we're heading into a debt super cycle where we're going to be borrowing money to pay the interest on the money and printing money. And that's what we're going to be borrowing money. And that's, why he feels so strongly about gold, Bitcoin, and other assets. So let's start there, because I felt like that was underreported, Mike, and people are indifferent to this. What do you think is going on? I think that is a great place to start. Listen, I think to raise point, you have to add Mark Carney's speech very broadly said, hey, the old order is dead and there's a new world order that it's going to emerge. Add it with Pierce Stommer's

comments, you know, the UK Prime Minister who broadly said, you just can't trust treaties and deals and arrangements anymore. You just can't trust the United States. Right. You added to those two things and literally, is that a Trump centric thing though, Michael? It is a Trump centric thing. Yeah. And when you add it, when you add that extra fuel to the fire, you know, I actually was sitting there and I bought a ton of calls on the euro, um, and bought. more Aussie. I just said, oh my goodness, here the start of the dollar unwind, accelerate. Acceleration happens. And yesterday, the United States actually came in on behalf of the Bank of Japan and what's called, they checked, checked currency rates. They didn't sell any dollars,

but they called the dealers and said, hey, where would you be for? That means they're either they're going to prepare it to sell dollars for the bank of Japan because the yen keeps weakening or for themselves, most likely for the bank in Japan. But it's signifying they're okay with the stronger yen, a weaker dollar. And we had one of the biggest down days in the dollar that I can remember in years. I looked like, you know, I was short dollar. And every time I looked at my little P&L meter on my phone, my smile got bigger and bigger. Gold, of course, continues its move. right at 5,000 at this point. Silver's at 100.

And so we're having this acceleration of that thesis that Ray had. What's interesting is, while rates have sold off some, right, the U.S. 10-year rate has sold off. And, you know, full disclosure, I'm short that. I expect rates to go higher. They haven't started kind of selling off with any kind of pace. that would get you really worried. But I think we're in that.

That's the narrative that happened last year. And if you were a trader, like just stayed in those trades. You know, Ray Delio is no longer at Bridgewater, but his old shop had those trades on and they were the best performing macro fund last year at up 35% or something like that. And I think that's this year's thesis as well. Right. So we have to be worried, okay, concomitant to his remarks.

because I picked out a few things that I wanted to speak to you about this morning from Davos. Brian Armstrong, somebody you and I know very well, CEO of Coinbase. He says, you know, we're seeing the birth of a new monetary system. He said that the Bitcoin standard is coming. Okay, so you've got Ray Dalio saying the, the, you're back at the Wolf of a Wolf of his lips to God's ears, damn. But Michael, what does that mean, though, for the average person? Okay, it's going to be good for you or me because we're long Bitcoin and we believe in what's going on and we actually see the tea leaves in terms of the destruction of the value of the dollar.

What does it mean for the average person? All right. So let me be really, really clear. The Bitcoin, right, is a technology platform. But really the value of Bitcoin isn't the technology platform. It's the narrative. It's I believe this is a store of value. I believe this is digital gold. And if I believe it and Anthony believes it and Ray Dalio believes it and Larry Fink believes it and people all of the world believe it, then it is. Gold's got a 3,000, 5,000 year history. Bitcoin has a 2009 to whatever we are 15, 16 year history.

It has not performed the way we wanted to, the way we would have thought it would have alongside of gold in the the last year. And Brian is thinking and saying, you know, CZ, the, I don't know, the 20th richest man in the world, the biggest player in crypto by a long shot, the CEO of Binance, he came out and said, hey, we're getting ready for a Bitcoin super cycle. So him and Brian are. What is a Bitcoin super cycle? Tell our viewers and listeners, what I think a Bitcoin super cycle would mean we go from 89,000, where we are today to 200,000, 250,000, where the entire mindset, shifts again and we start printing it out. And what would catalyze that other than CZ's comments?

I think the only things that would cataly is that is, A, the U.S. has to pass the Clarity Act. We can get to that in a second. Yeah. Because I've got some updated thoughts. B, Trump picks a Fed governor, whoever it is, Warsh or Reader who seem to be the two favorites, who are both Wall Street guys that we know well, who have. been conservative who changed their tune and cut rates to 2% even though everything in the market is saying, you know, cutting rates when gold is going to gaping up every day is generally not

what you want to do. Cutting rates when your currency is weakening every day is generally not what you want to do. And so if we're cutting rates into this because the boss man wants to, or because they believe, they believe something that I don't, it's going to accelerate gold and maybe Bitcoin then becomes the big catch-up trade. So let's go to the Clarity Act. We were very sanguine on the Clarity Act passing. It feels like the Clarity Act is moving with Rick Reeder. You know, it was down and now Rick Reader's at 58%.

And now you told me yesterday, you're at 66% or two-thirds likely that the Clarity Act. Tell us why. Listen, last week when I was on, I had been in D.C. I had done a lot of work. And it felt pretty good. There were a few smaller issues, mostly around the interest on banks, a interest on stable coins with banks that I thought would get worked out in a compromise. Brian Armstrong, who has, you know, he's the big dog in the room in the U.S. He basically said, no, no, we're not, we're not going to compromise. on the stable coin interest piece of this.

And that alongside a huge effort of lobbying by the banks, just put it on hold. The way the Senate rules and process works, the Senate Banking Committee, who had been in the lead of getting this done, said, too much heat, we're going to go pens down, we're going to deal with some other issues and come back to this. And in essence,

pitched the rugby ball to Cory Booker and Senator Bozeman from Arkansas, the Republican, in the Ag Committee, who has a piece to lead on this right now. And so all eyes on the Ag Committee, I've spoken to many senators on that committee since. Democrats and Republicans. In this case, on the ad committee, just Democrats. Okay. But my other context, indeed, at both the White House and the Treasury are in touch with the Republicans nonstop. And our consultant is playing both sides. Our lobbyist. And it went from really disappointing, and oh, shit, this is not going to happen to, hey, we see light all of a sudden. And so, again, this stuff is very emotional. I want to stress, the problem you have is a lot of these senators,

They have a lot of issues to think about from Venezuela to Iran and the budget and should we keep the government open and the knowledge around the more minute issues around pieces of the Clarity Act just isn't there. And so as hard as it was to get the banking committee up to speed on everything, the Ag Committee isn't nearly as up to speed

on some of these issues. And so there's a big education game going on right now. And I don't say this to kind of demean senators' intelligence by any stretch. It is a hard job to have knowledge about a lot of stuff. And crypto is a complicated one, right? Most of the bank CEOs didn't get it for years. They're like, oh, no, hocus, focus, right?

Now they're all focused on it. I think it's going to probably still happen because both sides needed to happen. The Dems needed to happen because they don't want this to be a police. political issue. But I tell you, with every week that ice gets worse or the perception of us being an isolationist versus what we had traditionally been, right, leaving the world order, that's not a democratic desire. It gets harder for Democrats to say, hey, we're supporting Trump. And they feel like crypto supporting Trump. And so that's the behind the actual issues energy. But I think both benefit from getting this done, so I think it will get done.

Michael, in addition to all of that, okay, and that would be very good for Bitcoin. And maybe the world does need a new currency standard, given everything that's going on. I think it's going to be very disruptive if that happens. Oh, let me tell you, I said, Anthony, over and over, I don't want Bitcoin out a million anytime soon. Right. Because that means we have lost control of our financial system. And that means we start losing civil society. And what does that mean?

If you go to any country that's experienced hyper deflation, corruption goes up, violence goes up, you literally see the fabric of what you're so used to start breaking down. And you can look at Weimar Germany or Venezuela or even places like Nigeria recently, which is doing well in some parts of it. But their currency gets weaker and weaker. and it just makes it more and more difficult for the average person, man, woman, you know, young, old to have any confidence about their future. You work your whole life. I mean, that's why this Iranian revolution isn't happening because the United States wants it to. It's happening because their currency got to live in hell kicked out of it.

And shopkeepers said, I've worked my whole life for this shop to feed my kids and my grandkids and have a future. And it just, what, evaporated. And so FU to the government, F you to the Ayatollahs. Yeah. Right. That's why the revolution has happened. Listen, it's super, it's super scary because your currency should be a store of value.

And we don't have it as a store of value anymore. People have to get rid of the currency pretty quickly if they want to have some semblance of saving. So that's a scary thing. But I want to go to Howard Lutnik for a second. Secretary of Commerce, again, I pick these out to address with you, this morning. And this is basically his central quote, quote, globalization has failed the West and the United States. But Michael, when you look at the statistics, that is actually not true. Globalization has done more for the West, lifted billions of people out of poverty, better distribution,

lower cost manufacturing. I could list off statistic after statistic. But the culture war that's running, pitting each of us against each other in social media, is suggesting that the globalization is dead. What say you? Globalization dead? Larry Think doesn't think so. I'm just wondering why Howard is so locked in on this. Well, to start with, I would say there's no country that's done better in the last 15, 20 years than the United States.

Our stock markets on the high, our percentage GDP, global percentage of GDP is. on the high are. Yeah, and just to interrupt you for a second, in the last five years, our percentage of global GDP went from 24 to 26.2. Okay, so that is an extraordinary increase. Moreover, coming out of COVID, we've grown our economy faster and better

than any other place, and we're almost double the European economy now. So go ahead. We were, it looked like 20 years ago, we were kind of, it was Europe, and we put all year, grew up together. They were roughly the size of the U.S. economy, and now we're almost double that. And so America has been winning, period. Now, where Howard is right is globalization failed

the working class and the middle class in the West, both in the UK and in the U.S. and in most Western places. In that first, was really noticed here in the UK with Brexit. 2015. We were like, how in the hell? What? What? And of course, it was the young people that voted for it. The old people, no, the young people didn't vote at that point, I remember. But there was a whole controversy that did enough people care. Did they understand it? Did they vote? But that was an emotional response to globalization. And then we got Trump the first time. And so what has failed in the West is the political and business class, understanding that when the world shifted and the winds were all coming to the top,

how do you redistribute those in an effective and in an ethical way, right? In some ways, you can say the billionaire class has failed the West. And I'm not blaming and saying, oh, boo-hoo for the billionaires. I'm saying, you got such a good gig. It's working so well for your families, your companies, and your companies. country be smart enough to understand that if you take let it get too greedy you let it go too far you break the system and that's where we're at and that's why you know mandami and aOC have such gravitas when they speak to people because they're speaking to exactly what trump is speaking to on the

other side and what howard ironically is saying you failed yeah you failed the working class it's rich to say that when your company and your and your group is benefiting more than anyone. So, I mean, again, I just want it because this is a show on macroeconomics, show on business and so forth. They want to give these stats to everybody so that they know. Since 1990, the United States, GDP per capita plus 68%. Real wages plus 34%. infant mortality down 42 percent life expectancy we've added four years to life expectancy non-farm employment plus 46 percent we added 50 million jobs median household wealth plus

128 and believe it or not our industrial capacity in the last 35 years plus 76 percent so when Howard is saying that globalization has failed i understand the angst and i do understand that half of the country is struggling, Michael. I'm not suggesting that. But I'm just wondering if this is a need for improvement as opposed to blowing up the whole system. So, yeah, I would, you know, that would be my political, you know, backing to say, okay, how do you take the good and adjust? Right. And it's interesting.

The, you know, we're in this really awkward, or not awkward, confusing. period. American excellence is flexing in some ways with all the big innovations in AI coming out of Silicon Valley. You think about it. China's got its own piece, but we're dominating AI at this point, right? And AI is going to be the dominant theme of how the world changes. And so, like, we have four companies over four trillion dollars. I believe. China doesn't even have its first trillion-dollar company. It's one reason I actually own a bunch of Alibaba. And Tencent. I just think that doesn't intuitively make sense to me. But our stock market is dominating. And so you have this American excellence piece. And at the same time, we are saying, no, we don't want to be part of the global society in the way the rules used to be played.

right Trump and Howard and they believe hey we got a bad deal I'm like we got a good deal they think we got a bad deal because we have big trade deficits Trump constantly says my God look at all this all this stuff we're buying from you guys I was like yeah we're buying it with IOUs $39 trillion of IOUs that that same group of people were funding for us and so we're in a very dangerous place saying hey you guys are stealing our money you guys are on us and they're going to say, give us our IOUs back. You owe us $39 trillion. And so I think it's a dangerous game we're playing. You know, Scott Bessett knows the game. Rick Reeder knows the game. Kevin Worse knows the game. And so they think they can play it and win it. The market right now is not giving them that report card when you look at the price of gold. and the acceleration of the price of gold is saying, hey, these guys are starting to lose this game.

That's the only way you can look at it. Bitcoin on a relative basis, the last six months, is down 45% relative to gold. You know, it's up three times since the Sandbankman-free debacle, Bitcoin. And obviously, if you looked at it, if you looked at it over a two-year period, it's outperforming. I'm not trying to cherry-pick time periods. But what would you say to Galaxy investors, Bitcoin investors, about the three and a half months of treading water while other currency debasement assets are going up? You know, I think Brian Armstrong did something that was really smart and really important this week. It didn't get reported because there was so much else being reported.

He said, hey, we're setting up an institute to focus to both on the understanding of how quantum would impact Bitcoin to make sure it doesn't impact Bitcoin and the education around that issue. The single largest issue facing a lot of the old Bitcoin whales is people are worried about quantum computing coming in and wrecking the whole Bitcoin system. And their narrative is this AI is getting so damn. smart. He had Novograts and his friends can never figure out quantum. But maybe superbrain can figure out quantum. And that would be the end of the Bitcoin ecosystem. And that narrative is picked up. And that is the narrative that's getting a lot of the big giant whales to say, let me just take some chips off the table. And so at the same time, Bitcoin's being adopted by guys like Larry think and all their clients and now Morgan Stanley.

you have this distribution coming from people that are worried about quantum. It was interesting. Someone literally minutes before Brian's announcement came out to me and said, God, Michael Saylor was more Bitcoin than anyone on the planet. He should launch and put a bunch of money into this. And I was like, ooh, Brian beat him to the punch. I think you're going to see a lot of talk from the Bitcoin community about, guys, this is a lark.

It's not going to ruin Bitcoin. And while you're getting quantum, you're going to get quantum resistant as well. And the Bitcoin community has a huge vested interest in voting for those changes. Right. What you would have to do is you'd have to change the Bitcoin code. Right. It is hard to change the Bitcoin code because you have to get agreement amongst all these very religious, you know, keepers of the flame, if you would.

I just think faced with an existential crisis, they'll make those changes. Okay, so you're not super worried about it, but you think there is a group of people that are worried about that's causing some selling right now. Yeah, this is the only thing I can come up with that explains how poorly Bitcoin has done in the last four months relative to gold is we crossed 100,000. That felt like we won the marathon.

I gave people the, the right in essence in their mind to say, hey, let me take some chips off the table so I can buy a boat or buy a sports team or buy a house or buy something. And then Quantum picked up and that was like, yeah, well, it's been a good run. Maybe, maybe.

And so I think you're seeing people take ships off the table. Most of those are from big old stacks. I don't want to undersell or under explain how hard it is to own something and hold it for 15, 16, 17, 18 years. You know, there's all this every once you see on Twitter. Bill Gates would have been the first trillionaire if Warren Buffett never convinced them to sell any Microsoft. And that's true.

Right. The great fortunes of the world are made in trend. And people have made great fortunes in Bitcoin in trend. why they deserve all the praise from every speculator that you can come up with is because the market was liquid enough for them to sell the whole time. We're going to see an equal fortune in SpaceX owners when it goes public, right, made that you saw on Bitcoin holders. If SpaceX gets to $1.5 trillion, which they're talking about and then goes up, you're going to have created $2 trillion wealth. but as a SpaceX holder, it's really hard to sell it.

You're kind of stuck in it. You know, now there's some liquidity in it in the secondary, but there wasn't from the first 10 years I was in it. It was just in the back of your portfolio. I didn't think about it because you couldn't. But Bitcoin, you could look at the price every day. And so I give so much credit

to the hoddlers because it was a religious idea, right? They bought into Bitcoin not because of speculation, because of fundamental belief system. And that's changing a little bit. Something cracked in that. And we need to see, for Brian Armstrong to be right, for CZ to be right, we need to see that selling stop.

Because without that selling, we'd already been at $200,000. Yeah, I mean, Rao Paul, others say, you know, you're $160,000 based on the valuation relative to gold. And so we'll see if they're done catalyze. Before I let you go, I want to address one other thing that happened at Davos. Somebody you and I know very well. I also had the chance to talk to him privately at Davos is J.P. Morgan Shea's CEO, Jamie Diamond. He's being sued by Donald Trump for not banking him.

So he's suing J.P. Morgan, but he's also suing Jamie Diamond. The senior editor from the economist was asking Jamie about the chilling effect that Trump has had on CEOs. If you say something negative about Trump, he comes at you with a tariff, as he's now going to impose on Mark Carney, 100% tariff on Mark Carney. If he teams up with the Chinese, that's today's missive. And Jamie, you said something about me I didn't like. I'm bringing a lawsuit against you for $5 billion. Would your reaction to this as a macro investor in terms of what the U.S. president is doing in terms of breaking norms? Listen, I think Jamie has probably been the CEO of large companies that has walked the line and kept his integrity, yet not been inflammatory.

Right. He stays very sober and very measured. And he's very honest. He says, hey, I don't think this is great. Right. So if I put the Jamie skeleton on myself, I would say, Anthony, of course it's not great when the president of the United States sues the number one guy in finance over something that happened eight years ago

that he will lose the lawsuit in. Right. You know, it's a mob boss routine, right? I'm suing Jerome Powell because when Rick Reeder takes the job, I'll kick your ass in if you don't do what I say. I'm assuming Jamie to really freak out everybody else in the room and all the public boards, all the corporate public boards. As Jamie would say, no one thinks that's good for confidence in business, period, end of story.

The other side would say, come on, guys, Trump is performative, you know that, it's kind of who he is, we've gotten used to it, he doesn't really mean it, it's all for negotiation tactics, art of the deal, right? Like, there is a bizarrely other side to this. And that side believes it. That's why Trump continues to get support from people he does. He's had a lot of successes, right? I mean, we're going to see how Venezuela and Iran play out, but these could be two giant successes if they play out the way. We all hope they do. And listen, and I want to be fair, Cuba too. You know, You know, Cuba, that island has got a very, very well-educated, hardworking group of people that have been suppressed for 60 years by a repressive authoritarian government. Yeah, I think Cuba's a little of our own making in that Cuba was headed the right direction and, you know, Obama went down there.

If you had just let that momentum and pulled away from sanctions and blockades on Cuba, Cuba would have matured on the road and made their own decisions. And this is a Marco Rubio play. He, this is how he got his political muscle from the, from the Republican, you know, conservative Cubans in Florida. That's where all the money that the U.S. was spending on Cuba was going to, right? Democracy reform was really supporting Marco and his team down there. And having just been to Cuba four months ago, let me tell you, across the entire place. And I talked to tons of people. And, you know, they were more the commercial people because they owned the whole.

hotels, they own the restaurants. There wasn't a whole lot of support for Marco or his actions. And so now, I mean, it almost felt mean-spirited what we were doing to. It was a one-man's political vendetta. Like, there are plenty of countries that didn't have politics we agreed with that we did an embargo and changed the rules on right after we told them, hey, it's not going to be okay, right? Obama goes down there and like the standard of living started picking up and now It's going right down the toilet again. And now we're going to blockade them and try to crush their economy. Like what we're learning in Iran is revolutions, domestic revolutions,

happened because the people want them to happen, not because we want them to happen. And so it's pressure. I find Cuba frustrating because it's a small little place. They're lovely people. They're smart. You know, we should let them alone. I've been down there too. I mean, you know, if we're going to be a good neighbor, like Franklin Roosevelt once said,

we should have a good neighbor policy for them. We can't have a 60-year grudge against the country. We've got a couple minutes left, Michael. I want to go to the economic dashboard. So rates, you see the price of gold. Rates are going lower, yes or no? You know, rates are really complicated because, you know, you would have thought what happened with the dollar and gold, right?

The dollar weakening and gold weakening is inflationary. There's no other way to look at it. When the dollar weakens, we pay more for the shit that we import. We import a lot of stuff, right? What about AI bubble? Yes or no? You know, there's been more talk around Open AI in its future. And we've got to keep our eyes on that.

Like, look at the price, the stock price in the video as kind of the indicator. It's trading fine. It's still a four plus trillion dollar company. I'd say no, yes. Listen, we're in some stage of an AI bubble. I don't think we're at the end. All right. Elon Musk is a very articulate guy.

He was interviewed on stage in Davos, explained how he's going to put the data centers and more or less free energy up in the air. Okay, you've just built a data center on the ground. What do you say to Elon Musk? What do you think about that vision? Is that going to work? Listen, I,

I hope he succeeds. And you've been a fool to short Elon in any of his visions to date. Elon gets a lot of value for being a visionary in his stock. Right. His stocks trade at much, much, much higher multiples than they would as just companies. They're part crypto. There's an disturbing cult around him. But none of that's going to happen in the next five.

years. All right, so you're on the road. You're going to be back to us next week. We're going to learn from what's going on in Asia and Europe. Well, what are three things you're looking at right now before I let you go that you're excited about? I think, you know, I was only in the office for part of the day on Friday and I was kicking myself. And the whole time I was in media I was like just holding my phone and looking at currencies. I think Friday was a stunningly important day. It felt like something big is happening in the currency markets. It felt like the start of the big dollar down leg. And people don't have that trade on to the size they would. It's one of these big shifts. People were combining. Like we'll see, and this is why I'm going to Japan. I wasn't

really originally going to go to Japan. You know, Japan is in a really tricky place because they lost control of their long end. Right. And so, the insurance companies become almost insolvent at one point, and their currency is weakening. And so if you're losing control over the long end rates, you would normally raise short-term rates. So it's baggage, and that would hopefully make your currency strengthens. And so the play would be raise short-term rates and intervene at the same time.

Right. That's a really weakening of the dollar. that's taking liquidity out of a system. And so understanding what Japan does is important. But is this going to be some coordinated? Listen, Trump has always said, and I think Besson articulates this well, the Treasury Secretary of course has to be for a strong dollar over time, but there's cyclicality within that and we were too strong.

And so I think Scott and more importantly, Trump would like a weaker dollar to help on our trade deficit. But a weaker dollar implies weakness. You know, so I'll never forget my first experience with currencies. I was a Princeton freshman and I went over to Germany. My dad had been reassigned to Heidelberg. And, you know, we were a very middle class family and we always drove a four. Ford Station wagon or a Volkswagen rabbit as the second family

car. And we didn't have the Euro back then. We had the Deutsche Mark. And you could get three and a half Deutsche marks for one dollar. It was the the weakest the dollar had been. I'm sorry, the strongest the dollar

had been, I'm getting these backwards. And I remember, so we bought a Mercedes. That was a used Mercedes and it was a diesel station wagon Mercedes, but damn it was a Mercedes. The Notre Dameats family had its first Mercedes and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves because in our neighborhood owning Mercedes was like what doctors and dentists had.

And I remember asking the guy, he says, hey, people like Ronald Reagan, they invest in Ronald Reagan. The dollar was strong because of Ronald Reagan. And that was a perception. It was the first perception I had is the reserve currency, the projection of strength. What gets people to want to invest in you is stability, is straight, it's integrity, it's all these intangibles. And those all showed up in Reagan. And, you know, so if you're the president when the dollar gets the living crap kicked

out of it, it's sending a message that people don't want to invest in your leadership. And so it's a very interesting thing, cyclicality versus trend. we would be crazy to risk the reserve currency status of the United States, period, end of story. It is. And that's what's at stake right here. I think it's a great way to end this. I wish you a safe journey. And we'll be back next week with the All Things Markets.

And I don't know. I'm bullish for some reason, Michael. I feel like there's some good things coming. So we'll see what happens. I listen, just to be very clear, full disclosure, I bought a lot of 7,000 calls on the S&P. Again, your currency weakens, your stock market does better. I think we could have another big leg up in stocks.

Yeah, let's see. But it's nervous. Safe trip. Safe journey. Thanks again, guys, everybody. 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?

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