Prof G Markets - The Rate Hikes Are Coming

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson assess the U.S. macroeconomic picture and whether they think Kevin Warsh will raise interest rates in response. Ed also explains why he believes we need to start reckoning with the possibility of “forever inflation.” Then, they run through some of the biggest recent AI headlines, including a viral post warning about the existential risks of AI. Finally, they discuss the iPhone Duo and what’s next for Apple as John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel  Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is number 95. That's the percentage of finance students who identify is straight. The most of any college major, true story. My ex-wife decided we should have an open relationship and the rules where we could have sex with anybody and we would never see each other again. How are you, Ed? Doing very well.

How are you? I'm doing well. It's a beautiful day here in London. I'm unfortunately heading out again on Sunday to the West Coast for my first regents meeting, I'm excited about. Yeah, maybe explain a little bit the situation there. Oh, Ed, I don't like to talk about that stuff.

I wish you hadn't brought it up. I wish you hadn't brought it up. Now we're talking about all kinds of interesting stuff. Well, what are the regions? What is that? The regions are the board of directors that oversee the University of California. And what I didn't realize, and most people don't realize, is that it's a $54 billion enterprise, and about $35 billion of it is the hospital system.

Basically, the University of California could be fairly called a hospital. system or health care system that offers classes. I did not know that. I did not know that either. It's also the greatest economic elevator in history, which is why I'm excited to be on. Takes more people from the lowest quintile to the top quintile, I think, than, well, maybe Cal State. But it's, you know, he's saved my ass, said. Are there any other famous people on that board? Who's the company? Not famous, but much more credible. Well, the governor is on the board, the lieutenant Governor Aleni Sucopoulos, it's kind of a full circle moment. My friend Aleni and I were friends in business school, and she's on the board as lieutenant and governor. But it's a bunch of very

impressive people who, quite frankly, are just more credentialed and substantive. Although I am pissed off. Let's bring this back to me. All the media was Governor Newsome appoints podcaster to Board of UC Regents. Would you describe me as a podcaster? That kind of upset me. What would you prefer to be known as, Professor? Well, I don't know. I've done a few other things other than podcasting. I know. You've done a lot of things, but that is what you are right now. I would say I'm an academic and an entrepreneur, but anyways, but you ask who else is on the board. It's a bunch of, it's people from the finance industry. It's everyone from the vice chairman of UTA, one of the largest CalN agencies to business people, to health care professionals, and a lot of

the chancellors. I mean, they're technically the CEOs, the chancellors, so they're not on the board. their report into the board, but it is an enormous board. I think it's 24 or 26 people. Anyways, I'm headed out to UCLA for my first, my first regents meeting. What are you doing this weekend? This weekend, let's see. It's my girlfriend's birthday, or it was yesterday. So we had dinner, but then we're going to celebrate with friends, which will be very fun.

We'll have a little party. And then I go to another wedding. It's probably like my hundredth wedding of the year, it feels like. So I'm being serious here. You know what the best gift you can give anyone for their wedding is? What's up? Get ridiculously fucked up and have an amazing time, a visible, amazing time at their wedding. That's all they want.

They want a total party. When you go to someone's wedding, the best gift you can give them is to dance, be social, just have an amazing. That is all the bride and groom want. They want to have the best party. They want to be talking about what an epic party it was. for years. And the best thing you can do for the bride and groom is just have an amazing time. Yeah, that's right. Collaborative effort. Totally agree. We've got to host a party sometimes,

Scott. You and I think we know what we're doing. See, the problem is I don't like to hang out with you guys because I'm worried you'll be disappointed and nobody needs to see me having a good time. So, yeah. Do you notice how Catherine and I, at a very distinct early hour, peace out. Yeah, I have noticed that. At every event, yeah. I think you're too worried about it, though, my personal take. But who knows? Maybe...

Well, you haven't seen me fucked out bad. Yeah, I don't know. You don't know where the devil goes to drink that holy water. Anyways, should we talk about AI? Yeah, we've got a lot to talk about. We've got to talk about AI. We've got to talk about oil, inflation, interest rates, the Federal Reserve. We've got to talk about Apple, John Turner, say, foldable,

iPhone. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get into it. Now there's the time to fly. I hope you have plenty of the war at all. The war with Iran has entered its seventh month, and the conflict is escalating yet again. Last week, oil hit $107 per barrel for the first time since May. Spike came after the U.S. destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted strikes on a Navy warship. Meanwhile, concerns about persistent inflation fueled a global bond sell-off,

the U.S. 30-year yield reached its highest level since 2007. So, Scott, we always have to talk about this because it really is what's driving the markets. I mean, oil, Brent crude, breaching $105. We had Labor Day gas prices

at their highest levels in American history, diesel prices have hit a record high. That impacts the rest of the economy because diesel is essential for freight and fertilizer and much more. Here are some price increases that we have seen since the start of the war. Corn prices are up 16%. Wheat prices are up 23% cotton, 32% rice, 49% diesel, 57%. So prices are rising everywhere. We're getting better signals as to what the inflation picture actually is, but that is now being priced in because we're seeing that bond yields are rising even further despite Scott Besson's attempts to suppress them.

Your thoughts on the macro picture, oil, inflation, are now rising yields. Countries don't cease to exist because they're invaded. They cease to exist because they go broke. And the way they go broke is through inflation where their purchasing power just falls and they can no longer borrow money and they essentially enter into this kind of downward spiral.

and the inflation in the United States is pretty dramatic. It's a 40% cumulative price increase since January of 2020. That's crazy. I mean, that was when COVID started. The majority of Americans have not seen a 40% increase in their earnings and their wages to compensate. So essentially, this is a decline in the standard of living for the majority of Americans. Or the consumer American households have taken a pay cut that they did not vote for. Their bankruptcy number is the real-tale. Corporate bankruptcies up 12%, which is the greatest

and over a decade. And it's concentrated across small and medium-sized businesses, which don't have the ability to hedge floating rate debt. They're kind of the shock absorbers for inflation or monetary policy, and they've been, you know, the chassis has been broken, if you will, or it's just snapped. Whenever you have something like this, you do have winners and losers. This arguably is a transfer of wealth from people at the pump to homeowners in Odessa, Texas that have seen their home prices up 77 percent, Exxon, Saudi Aramco, Chevron. There are a lot of Americans making a lot of money off of higher energy prices. We are a net exporter of energy and the largest producer, but it again, transfer of wealth from everyone at the pump, and almost every product incurs a

price increase because it came to you using diesel fuel. Right? So you have, again, you have wealth transfer from diesel-dependent families, school buses, drive-thrus to landowners sitting on the Permian Basin. And Trump trading oil stocks while overseeing the policy, you know, it's gone from a conflict of interest to a business model. He's got, I think, a register almost $5 million in gains during a war. He's prosecuting incompetently. And then he just puts out a thing saying he doesn't actually care about the money is making or price increases. So this is what is this? This is a regressive tax dressed up as a foreign policy story. It'll be very interesting to see if Warsh decides to go for the kind of profile and courage and say, I'm immune, I cannot be replaced and tries to or does in fact raise rates. but a $100 oil has all sorts of unintended consequences.

And it does seem increasingly like he will raise rates. I mean, if we just look at the odds of a September rate hike, which we will get the answer to this week, it is now up to 65% on Kalshi. Go back to June, the odds of that happening were 15%. And then, of course, we're seeing it reflected in yields, which are, I mean, the rise, in yields this week and the week before, and the week before that, is stunning. I mean,

the bond markets are literally screaming right now. The 30-year yield hit 5.35%, which is the highest level since 2007, and the 10-year has breached 4.9%. And this is all despite the fact that Bessent is tripling or did triple the bond buyback program to $6 billion. He's done all the, made all these efforts to try to get yields down, didn't work. Bond investors said, no, this still isn't working for us. And I think they're paying attention to multiple things. Of course, the oil, the length of the Iran war, but probably most important is this unsustainable debt that we clearly are showing no signs of even caring about or taking seriously. National debt surpassed $40 trillion. Our fiscal deficit this year under Trump is on track for $2 trillion. We now pay $1.25 trillion in

interest payments more than we spend on national defense. That's expected to double as a percentage of our federal revenue over the next decade. So eventually we're going to be spending more on interest than anything else. I think that is what investors, the bond investors, are so worried about and rightly so. And then in the middle of that, Trump at his Trump of Palooza, this midterm convention, which no one really tuned into and which they were giving out free tickets for people to attend, he says, in fact, I've got a clip. I'll just play a few. This is what he says. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history we've never had anything like what's happening,

but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. $5,000 to every U.S. adult, a bribe to vote Republican at the midterms, which would cost the United States $1.35 trillion dollars, which we would add onto our existing $2 trillion deficit. This is just, I don't have the force for it. Well, let's go. Let's talk about need and let's talk about the math. If there's a group of Americans the need a one-time payment, it's not adult Americans, 10% of which live in poverty. It's kids under the age of 18, which are excluded from his proposed program, who 15% of which live in poverty. And quite frankly, it's just unacceptable that one in seven kids

and one in five households have food insecure kids. That's just not acceptable in the world's wealthiest country and history. So first off, he's placing the need in the wrong place. Now, having said, this is just fucking stupid and it's never going to happen because of the math. $1.4 trillion, obviously no plan whatsoever to pay for it. So it would be, if it were to get through, which it won't, it would be deficit spending. So this is what this is. This is the equivalent of the government saying to you, say you decide to get married in the next year and have a kid,

this is the government giving you a credit card that's preloaded with $5,000. But if you spend $1, should you decide to accept this credit card, when your kid is 18, he or she is saddled with $13,000 in non-negotiable, non-dischargeable debt that stays with them the rest of their lives, regardless of whether you die or not. Would you accept that credit card? Now, smart people would say no. Unfortunately, I think the American public, who we all like to think is super smart and honorable and nice, has been really stupid around our deficits. At some point, the American public needs to take responsibility for electing leaders, Democrats and Republicans, who have been fiscally reckless and irresponsible. George Washington to George Bush, $7 trillion in deficits. George Bush to Trump, too, another $33 trillion in deficits. The Democrats have been better or less bad, I should say, than the Republicans. On average, Republicans have added 2.8% of GDP per year to the debt, and Democrats have added 2.1%. So they're less bad. But voters keep voting for the guy with the bumper sticker that says the following, we can go to war while cutting your taxes.

And it has become standard operating procedure that the only thing that passes for bipartisan cooperation is, wait, we want to cut taxes. Wait, we want to spend more, said Republicans and Democrats respectively. I know, let's do both and have future generations pay this off. So while this idea is ridiculous, irresponsible, if I can't intimidate you into not coming to the polls, if you're non-white and I scare you with eyes to the polls, I'm going to try and bribe you with a payment if we win. While that is ridiculous and will not happen, the thing that bums me out the most at

is the American public keeps signing up for this shit. And even on the Democratic side, there isn't a single Democratic candidate for president. Rahm Emanuel's sort of nibbling around the edges, but not really, who has actually had the stones to put up a chart, a pie chart, present something resembling a presentation with graphs that says, okay, we spend $7 trillion, we take in $5 trillion, this is how over eight years we are going to begin to address it. Nobody wants to say to a public, I'm sorry, you can't have Dr. Pepper and swizzlers, I'm trying to

think of what is the worst candy in the world, and not have dinner and stay up until 2 a.m. snapping with your friends and you don't have to go to school tomorrow. No one is having anything resembling an adult conversation with the children that are the American voting public right now. No, what Democratic candidate for president has even dared to outline a policy that says, all right, we're doing a way, we're going to level up capital gains with ordinary income, we're going to fund the IRS and go after that $750 billion in tax gains. we are going to eliminate 40 to 60 percent of the $2.5 trillion in loopholes and givebacks that largely benefit corporations and wealthy individuals, and we are going to lower Medicaid

eligibility by two years every year for 10 years as a means of getting more purchasing power and bringing down our health care costs. And we're going to means test Social Security. And within eight years, the deficit is going to grow less fast than GDP growth. There is a reasonable path here. There is, we have, fuck this up, we can unfuck it. Not that long ago, during Clinton and Gore, we were taking in more money than we're spending. This is possible. But again, leaders and elected leaders and candidates respond to a populace. So just as Michelle Obama said, when asked about running for president, the American public isn't ready for a female president, it doesn't appear that the

American public is ready for an adult conversation around responsible fiscal management. At the same time, though, in defense of the American public, they have been lied to by, largely by Republicans. I mean, there is this idea that the Republicans are fiscally conservative. And in a lot of cases, that is part of their platform. It was part of Trump's platform that he wanted to be fiscally conservative. He was going to get spending under control. He was going to balance the budget. As I always say, that was the statement that received the largest applause in his congressional address last year. And he did the exact opposite. So to be fair to the American people, they were told a lie. Now, where I start to blame the American people is when they continue to eat up those lies and continue to believe that Trump is this guy who he says he is. He clearly isn't. He has lied too many times.

At a certain point, you need to be keeping track of these things and keeping score and recognizing, okay, this guy is talking out of his ass with every single speech he gives. I'm not buying it anymore. So to anyone who still believes that Trump is the fiscal conservative or who still believes that the Republicans are the fiscal conservatives, to those people, I now do blame you. I blame you now. I don't blame you from before because I understand that you were lied to

and that we had this little bit of a sci-up that was negotiated and figured out by the Republican Party and then by Trump. But at this point, the evidence is very, very clear. And if you want the example, if you want the example of people, realizing this, then yes, take a look at the bond markets, take a look at U.S. Treasuries, which, by the way, long-dated U.S. Treasuries have now posted their worst decade in more than 100 years. And if we look at the inflationary debt spiral, which is clearly getting out of control, we look at the Fed's target, which is 2% inflation. That's what they've been saying that they're trying to get to.

We have been trying to get to that target now for five and a half years. We have been above target. That is the longest continuous stretch of more than 2% inflation in 40 years. The amount of time that we have not been at the Fed's target of 2% is equal to 5% of the time that the Fed has ever existed. You look at 10 years ago, inflation was 1.3%. Now we're at around 4. And we'll see how it plays out over the next few months now that oil is rising too. But I think that one thing that we can, in terms of takeaway, is like, what do we do about this? Obviously, we know what the government needs to do about it. But on an individual level, I think it is time to start reckoning with this possibility of forever inflation. Just we're going to see three, four, five percent inflation in the

United States for a sustained period of time, possibly forever, because it's not just the problems we're seeing now, but we're looking at leadership's response to those problems, and they don't seem to really care. They seem to think that the way we're going to get out of this debt spiral is to is to spend our way out of it, to spend all the money on the bond buybacks to get the yields down, which, of course, over the long term, makes the problem even worse. And so when I think about what that means as an investor, on the one, I mean, one takeaway, bond investing is in a lot of ways dying, because if you have this level of inflation, I mean, yields are going to have to rise a huge amount for bonds to be worth it, because the amount of inflation that we're going to

see is going to be eating into the value of every interest payment that you get back on those bonds. So bond investing, as we know it, I think the game has changed. Honestly, I think the only solution here, you have to invest more aggressively in stocks than ever before, because your purchasing power is going down and the only asset class that is actually being rewarded. is equities. And of course, I get worried about bubbles in that scenario, but I don't see, I don't see how there's any other choice for investors. I would push back a little bit, and that is a lot of people are actually looking at the debt markets because for the first time they feel like they're being rewarded for the risks they're taking. And that is, you are getting,

you are getting not serious money, but if you can buy a corporate bond that looks very healthy, including, you know, and get a six, seven, eight percent return, you know, that's not bad. And keep in mind, the debt, so it's almost like my investment strategy right now is not to get rich, it's to not get poor. The way you don't get rich, you know, you're not get rich, but you don't get poor, is with bonds, because bonds typically credit has real teeth. They're not as volatile, typically. And with a company like Apple, unless shit gets really real at Apple,

like unimaginably real. It's hard to imagine they would not have the assets and the cash flow to pay the interest on their bonds. Right. So I do think, and by the way, I have never been a big debt investor. I don't understand it. I've never been interested in it. I've always deluded myself into thinking I can outperform what feel like fairly paltry returns. But I do think still a mixed portfolio of stocks and bonds makes sense. Just going back to the markets, we said that there's always a transfer of wealth and winners and losers. Some of the winners, with 100 plus dollar oil, shells up 27%, ExxonMobil, 34%, Chevron 37.

Norway's Equinoor is up 84%. They supply 30% of all the natural gas consumed in the EU. Home sellers, okay, home prices, as we talked about, up 2% nationally, up 77% in Odessa, Texas. And then railroads, which are much more efficient from an energy standpoint. Canadian Pacific, Kansas City plus 21%, Union Pacific, 23%, CSX of 34%.

So a transfer wealth from consumers who have to pay higher prices at the grocery store and at the pump. And whose wages are now trending negative because the wage growth is being outpaced by the inflation. Just to your point, consumers, but also earners, people who are making that money, making their living through income. Here's a stat I just never, I never contemplated. 15 to 30% of grocery costs are diesel fuel.

Groceries are heavy, and the vehicle that brought them there is powered by diesel fuel. 90% of the nation's school buses run on diesel, and 40% of the school districts are consolidating their bus routes, and 20% are limiting non-required trips, including field trips. Think about this. $100 oil is going to start reducing the number of field trips that kids take. Drive-thrus. A $1 increase in gas prices means roughly six fewer customers per day at the average drive-thru. That might not sound like a lot, but for a location averaging 300 transactions a day,

that's about $22,000 in lost annual sales in some energy costs. And something else I found was just fascinating. There's now, I just saw a huge investment in data centers in Finland. And the impetus was that Finland has its own sources of renewable energy and it's cold. So whereas the AI market used to be chasing GPUs, it's now chasing climate. So people have said just for a long time that if you want to understand the world and geopolitics and economics and how societies, you know, rise and fall, it kind of comes down to energy.

Some people are making, making, or putting forward the thesis that now it's coming down to compute, which is the new energy, but it's still, you still need the energy for the compute. So, but you're,

the inflation here, I think it's going to be fascinating to see what Warsh does. What is your bet? Do you think by the end of the year, interest rates, he increases interest rates? Yeah, 100% by the end of the year,

is my view. And I've said that, on this, I mean, I said it in June that I thought it was inevitable, and I think I've, we'll see if I got it right, but I think I'm going to have gotten it right. And that was back when people were saying that it was basically a coin toss as to whether we would see rates. I mean, think back to the beginning of the year when the markets are pricing in rate cuts. And remember, those were the conversations you and I were having was what it means to be in a lower interest rate environment. That was what we were sort of, what investors were all expecting. It's just remarkable how quickly things have flipped and how bad things have gotten on the inflation front. And I do, just to your debt point, I think it's true what you're saying. I think that, you know, what we are seeing now is that the debt markets are actually rewarding investors for the risk that they're taking on when they're buying these bonds. But I just think it's very important to think in your calculation about what inflation might look like and the extent to which it will each. into your yield, eat into your returns, and how sustained you think this inflation will really be?

I think at the very least, and a lot of other commentators have talked about this, and investors have talked about this. At the very least, it does call into question the 60-40 portfolio of 40% bonds, because at least in the past decade, that portfolio structure has not been rewarded at all, even on a risk-adjusted basis. But I do take your point. It's like, okay, well, yields are rising now. So is it worth it? And perhaps it is. I think we'd probably want to see yields rise even further to reflect the level of inflation that we might be seeing over the next few years. It's fascinating stuff and we'll see what Kevin Walsh does this week. It'll be interesting. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend

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We're back with Profi Markets. As we head into the fall, we have two blockbuster IPOs on the horizon, Open AI and Anthropic. Both companies are reportedly preparing to go public, and they could be the largest IPOs ever. But before either company even hits the public markets, there is plenty of news that is shaping the discourse around them. So, Scott, we are going to go through some of the biggest headlines from the past couple of weeks in AI, and we'll discuss what they mean for the company. and the narratives that they are now contending with as they prepare to go public. And the first headline that we clearly have to talk about is this tweet from a now former

Anthropic researcher who tweeted about how he resigned from the company. He said, I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at both Open AI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. He went on to say that the people building AI believe that it could, quote, kill us all by the end of the decade. That was an extremely viral tweet that got more than 100 million views on Twitter or on X. But it was then endorsed by a current anthropic researcher, this guy, Evan Huberinger, I don't know how to pronounce it,

but he is the alignment science lead. And he said, quote, Jacob is correct. We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is a greater than 10% chance within the next decade. Jacob Coxon, the guy who put this tweet out originally then did kind of a media tour. He went on CNN. He went on Fox. He went on all of these different outlets.

Let's just listen to what he said to Anderson Cooper on CNN last week. What's just crazy is to look at the rate of progress. And there is a very real possibility that in the immediate future, these are years that, like, next year, the year after, recursive self-improvement will happen and we'll enter the phase of Evans post where he argues that there's a chance we could all die like that that is coming soon we could all die apparently Scott your reactions well we need to bifurcate or separate the existential risk of AI or threat to humanity and the IPO or the financials the I'm so exhausted by all of this said. If, in fact, you were to believe that this was more powerful, the nuclear bombs were more dangerous, and there was a greater than 10% chance of a wipe out of humanity, all right, let's take them at their word.

We wouldn't let Oppenheimer form an LLC raise money from Andrews and Horowitz and go public. We wouldn't let Oppenheimer reach out to bankers from JP Morgan. So, okay, UN, government needs to take control of these companies and put in place massive regulation and have all sorts of safety checks. I still don't understand why we wouldn't have, at a minimum, have, and this is a failure of the Trump administration. And I do believe the companies are earnest saying they do want some form of regulation. They can help set rules such that it isn't an out-of-control race to the bottom or to some sort of existential threat. having said that, I do not buy it. And that is the following. Adams don't decide to run into each other and release energy and create, set the atmosphere ablaze on their own. Someone decides to build the bomb. Someone decides to drop it. Someone decides how to detonate it. And for me, it all comes back to an incentives and a fraternity. Now, what do I mean by that?

In college, I was president of the interfraternity council, king of the jarheads. And during rush week, the local community said, we have to do something around noise. The music is playing until 1.2 a.m. You have to stop it at midnight. And I said, there's nothing I can do. I can't go to each of these fraternities. They're just going to ignore me if I ask them to turn off the music. And so we met with UCPD, and UCPD said, I have an idea. And I said, what is it? And I said, we're not going to tell you.

You'll just learn about it. And the next night, a rush week at 12.1 a.m., they went to all the houses that were still playing music, and they arrested the president of the fraternity and put him in jail for the night. And what do you know? The next night, at midnight, it was dead quiet. There is always a wizard behind the curtain.

And what the media gets wrong and what these companies are doing in their leadership is absolving them of any responsibility. by claiming these things are sentient. If you said to Sam Altman, you are liable for anything these things do, and you started putting these people in jail, if in fact they started stealing IP or doing anything that causes harm, I would bet they'll figure out a way to plant narcs and detectives as some of these bots hanging out by the water cooler trying to come up with different ways to hack companies. If these things can be trained.

to jump, jump the lab and go and find ways to hack into other organizations, they can be trained to narc on each other and alert the humans when things are getting spicy. And so this notion somehow that they're sent in and that there isn't a wizard behind the curtain, which in my view there always is, and a lot of philosophers will disagree with me. But my view is, the moment you create incentives that say you're responsible. There was a woman who was a gay activist in San Francisco who was mauled and killed by two vicious pit bulls that were off leash, and the owner of those dogs was convicted of manslaughter. We are now holding parents liable if they have semi-automatic rifles in the household and a minor who has been diagnosed with mental illness and they do not

secure those weapons. And what do you know, people now keep their pit bulls on leashes, By the way, Pipples are actually get a bad reputation. They're actually a very lovely, friendly dog. And I think people are finally or hopefully starting to get serious, and there are a lot of responsible gun owners, but there need to be more that if you are not a responsible gun owner and someone in your house kills someone, you are responsible. I believe this whole notion that they're sentient,

the D.C.S. don't have control is nothing, but continuing excuses for them to run unfettered, be totally focused on shareholder, growth with absolutely no admission, no adherence, no tethering to any social responsibility. I also don't buy it. I think that we've heard this kind of thing many times before. We've heard it from Sam Altman. We've heard it from Dario Amadeh. There was that viral blog post, something big is happening at the beginning of the year, which said that we were going to see an apocalypse, not in human civilization, but in basically the job market, that everyone was going to

lose their jobs imminently. And then that was sort of the beginning of the the SaaS apocalypse, and we had that crisis, which unfolded. There has been statements from Dario Amadei saying that there was a 25% chance of civilizational destruction. And every time they say this stuff, and then eventually it gets walked back as we start to realize, okay, that seemed like a little bit hyperbolic, didn't really make sense. And they were kind of stoking some panic and some fear and creating a lot of buzz and headlines around their technology.

And then eventually they say, yeah, like that wasn't exactly right. But still, you know, there are these caveats. and these nuances, et cetera. So I've heard the story over and over again. And so when I see this tweet, I'm like, yeah, and it's another guy saying that AI is going to kill us all. And yeah, it's another guy who works for one of these companies or did work for one of these companies.

At the same time, though, as you point out, it would be very stupid if we were to not take it seriously because if we're wrong, then we're risking the lives of millions of people. So we kind of have to take it seriously. I think the thing that kind of pisses me off, it's one thing for a former anthropic employee to come out and say this and basically be the whistleblower. It's another thing for a current anthropic employee, the alignment science lead to come out and say, yeah, this is true.

And yeah, we all think this within the company. We all think there's a 10% chance that our technology is going to destroy the world, destroy civilization. That to me is a corporate communication. That is a message coming from within the company. by a representative of the company saying, hey, we're very worried about this technology. And if that's true, then we need to, we have to take it seriously. It's not just a tweet by a random tech bro who's saying something online. That is something for the company, which means that now we need to investigate the company.

Now we need to hand the company a subpoena and tell them, okay, you think that you're going to destroy America, show us the documentation, show us the evidence, give us everything available at your disposal to walk us through exactly what the problem is. And if we find out that they were just being alarmist or not being alarmist, but bullshitting us and being hyperbolic and perhaps trying to get everyone hyped or worried about this technology such that they can have a very, very explosive IPO, maybe even dry out the stock price, well, then we need to start talking about different issues like securities fraud. We need to talk about issues about public deception because then you're misleading the public and it is material public information and that stuff matters. But this business of just like, oh, just listen to us. We know what's best because we're the AI guys. And this stuff is really scary.

And then expect that we're not going to take it any further, that we're not going to investigate them, that we're not going to use the federal government to actually understand what exactly their claims are, bring them in front of Congress, have a congressional testimony, testify, et cetera. That's where I start to get lost on this issue. So I'd rather us either not take it seriously or we take it. fully seriously, and we actually start to investigate these people. That is my take on the situation. Well, the question I would have is, let's say, let's imagine the CEO of Boeing saying that there's a 10% chance that any 737 max will crash. What would we do? This is a company offering a product,

and what if one of their lead engineers said, yeah, there's about a 10% chance these planes are going to crash? The FAA would say, okay, ground all planes. ground. But the difference here is, but wait, this might be a $2 trillion IPO, and they're claiming, if you don't let our thoroughbreds run free, China's going to surpass us. The China's going to build our Airbus is going to build a better plane that creates more shareholder value. As far as I can tell, we have decided to ignore these existential risks because they might be worth $2 trillion. And because there's absolutely no regulation, or it appears to me, nobody within the Trump administration actually has the domain expertise to even begin to talk about thoughtful right.

I mean, why on earth wouldn't we have a kind of a blue ribbon panel that there's a 90-day waiting period for any new product? It takes a drug to get a decade to get through the FDA. Why wouldn't we have a 90-day waiting period where some of the most talented people in the world bang the shit out of the new model and test it and ask it to create a bioweapon and see if it coordinate, I mean, just do all sorts of shit before letting anything into the marketplace. I mean, that, to me, just seems like step one. Well, the argument that a lot of the, a lot of people make is

because we need to get, we need to beat China. Right. We can't put these regulations on AI because then China's going to run ahead of us and then China's going to take over the world, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think it's necessarily a bad argument. The thing that they're forgetting, though, is that China has some of the strictest AI regulations in the world, It's 100 times stricter than ours.

I mean, they have restrictions on all forms of AI generated content and information. You have to register before you create it. They have labeling requirements. They have ID laws on who can actually use deep fake software and what can be produced. They have very strict child protection laws against virtual relationships, something we talk about all the time. They're doing a lot to regulate AI, to restrict AI, and to protect its people from the harmful consequences. AI. And by the way, it shows in the polling because 33% of Americans say they're not excited about AI, and 83% of Chinese say they are excited about AI. So there's a completely different

vibe when it comes to AI over in China. And I think it's because they are strict and aggressive when it comes to regulation. But we've decided that that is a reason why we cannot do it, because we're so afraid of the Chinese, despite the fact that they're doing exactly what we're advocating for right here. That would be tantamount to Ford and General Motors saying you should not regulate us or force us to have airbags because it's going to make us less competitive against Chinese companies that aren't forced to have airbags. That's exactly right. No, we're going to have regulation. And by the way, American automobile companies made those arguments around emission standards. They said, okay, so European and Asian companies aren't going to have emission standards. They're going to

pull out way ahead of us. They're going to be able to offer a better product for a lower price. says this whole catastrophizing, I don't know how seriously to take it. I'm very skeptical of it. One of the things I still hold to is the shit you're most worried about does not happen. It's the shit you're not expecting, plane slamming into a skyscraper or a virus jumping the lab. It's the things you're not expecting to get you. And that's what leads me to believe that AI becoming sentient and turning us all into paper clips or data centers ruining the quality of life in America, I just don't buy it because I find whenever there's hysteria or worry about something, that means it's not going to happen because it means you start preparing for it and looking

out for it and you're just incredibly paranoid about it. And it just, you know, it doesn't happen. So I find all of this, to your point, though, they should basically sit these guys down and say, all right, Anthropic, oh, you're not going public unless you tell us, A, what is going on here. What the fuck is your employee saying? Why you think this might end humanity? And if it is, we're going to, you need to work with us. But congratulations. You've convinced us that there's a 10% chance you're going to end humanity.

By the way, can I get in your friends and family share purchase program? I mean, this literally is sort of, we've decided we monetize health care in the United States. We monetize loneliness. and now I've said, I know, let's monetize the end of the species. Let's make the threat of the end of the species sound so dramatic that it connotes power of this technology and creates a hunger to invest. Or if that's not true, then they need to explain why it's not true.

They need to give us an explanation, and the responsibility lies with Anthropic, which means that the responsibility lies with Dario Amadeh. He has to say something. The ball is in his court right now. They think that the ball is in our court. Like, we need to react to what his employee said and we need to do something. No, he needs to explain what his employee said.

He needs to do something about it. I doubt he will, because he hasn't really been doing any media recently, and I think it's because he's been sort of not doing a very good job. I think that Anthropic is sort of seeding ground when it comes to the public perception of the company. But this guy works for Anthropic. He's said something that is extremely influential. extremely insane, in my view.

It's unanthropic now to explain exactly what he means. And if the guy was making shit up, well, then maybe they need to fire the guy. Or maybe they need to adjust the way that they deal with corporate communications. But you can't have these AI researchers going around on Twitter saying these ridiculous things, or if they're not ridiculous, saying these extremely inflammatory things about what the company is doing and how it might literally end civilization. It's just, it's getting out of control. Going on to some other AI news, we learned in Dealbook last week that Open AI is projecting

to spend $750 billion in compute through 2030. We didn't get much new context other than the fact that the number used to be closer to $1.4 trillion. We didn't have a real timeline for what that would be. But the point being, it appears maybe Open AI is bringing down their compute spending, which I think is honestly a really good sign for the business. because, as we know, AI so far is incredibly unprofitable, at least on the frontier end of things. Open AI said that their Q2 revenue grew to $6.7 billion, which disappointed investors actually

because the quarter over quarter growth was only 18%. And in the AI world, these people want like triple-digit growth every quarter, but their operating loss widened from $9.3 billion in Q1 to $12.3 billion in Q2. So these are incredibly unprofitable businesses. Anthropic is saying that they have hit adjusted operating profitability, which is a good sign, but personally I don't really believe it. It's not really clear what adjustments they're making,

and my instinct would be that it is kind of BS accounting, but we will find out when the S-1 is released, which I'm hearing is going to be very, very soon. And I think that that document is really going to be the pivotal moment in the AI story, we will finally see what the economics of AI actually look like. And that will be sort of the watershed moment, I think. So that's where we are in the AI business landscape. Scott, do you have any thoughts on the Anthropic S-1, what we might see,

the profitability of AI from the data that we are aware of, the AI business at large? For better or for worse, and I get wrong a lot, but I usually have a view where I think I'm mostly right and mostly understand what's going on. As it relates to the revenue numbers, the IPO, and the shareholder value increases, I look at the existential threat posed by these things. I look at the CAPEX, which is so extraordinary that the numbers I've heard is so far, the total revenue of AI is about 150 to 200 billion.

They're spending, and their CAPEX means it needs to get to $2.5 trillion, which is bigger than all the revenues are greater than all the revenues of tech. And I think, okay, this is like every other tech. It's exciting that technology will persevere. It will result in incredible productivity and incredible companies, similar to railroads, the electric grid, the internet, we're going to have an enormous correction down. I can make an argument for that narrative. And then I hear that OpenAI in seven months has increased its ARR from $9 billion to $65 billion. I mean, that's just extraordinary. And when you hear them say that actually on, you know, quote-to-quote adjusted EBITDA, when you think about the gross margins they have, you think, wow, maybe this, maybe it could be worth $10 trillion.

Depending on what day you talk to me, I'm more because I think I have more biased towards being a bear and a bit more glass half-empty kind of guy. I'm more the, this is, this looks more like the railroads and the Internet, and that is the technology will survive these valuations. But these valuations are going to have real volatility, which is Latin for there's going to be an enormous. correction. But then you do hear that I have friends who have nested in these companies who have access to their numbers, and they've said, the numbers are just absolutely staggering and show no slow. When I say the numbers, the revenue numbers. They always focus on the revenue. Are staggering and show no signs of slowing. So I think the S-1's going to be fascinating. What will be interesting about the S-1, though, is that you can bet that the S-1 will have been

battle-tested a million times. And what I mean by that is they will have uploaded the S-1 to every LLM and say, please distill this, and they're going to write the S-1 to make sure that when AI distills it down to a series of bullet points, it reflects well on the valuation. So it's no matter, you know, I'm, I'm mainly think, well, once the anthropic valuation gets out, I'm going to clot and I'm saying, is this a good or a bad idea? Please summarize this 400-page S-1. You can bet that that distillation has been run a couple thousand sometimes every which way but loose by the folks that good the folks at Anthropic. So I, anyway, I'm, regardless, I am fascinated to see the S-1 here.

For me, it's going to be a lot of analysis around what the gross margins are, because WeWork was growing really fast, but the faster grew, the more money it lost. And is there a tipping point where cap-backs costs begin to come down, the gross margins go up because they have so much pricing power, and they're selling so much into business, which tends to be more price inelastic, And once these things go profitable, if they maintain anything resembling the growth rates they have, they're going to be the most profitable companies in history within a few years. There's a scenario where that is viable.

I mean, so far, the arguments that I've heard from, I guess, the bears, the arguments that I've heard about why the AI economics don't make sense have been very, very justified, backed up and compelling, particularly the arguments made by that Ed Zittran has been making. The arguments that I've heard as to why the AI economics do make sense have been, in my view, not very compelling at all. Usually it's just a talks about ARR that is growing into the future, but not actually acknowledging the elephant in the room, which is that they're paying more to get that revenue,

and it's growing every day. I mean, the losses continue to expand. I also hear people say, no, but Anthropic has figured it out. to me, I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it when I see in the S-1 that the economics actually do make sense, the unit economics, of being a frontier AI lab. But so far, I haven't seen any evidence of that.

And I would have thought that if people really wanted to put the bears to bed on this and to end this profitability question, if Anthropics supposedly does have operating profitability or adjusted operating profitability, then why wouldn't they just show it to us? Why wouldn't we actually see it? why wouldn't those investors just say, yeah, this is what they've got.

I mean, they seem to be very happy to gloat about these other numbers, but they're very silent, hush, hush about certain other numbers. So to me, I think this profitability question is enormous. So far, I believe that neither company is even close to profitable. That's my puzzle belief we don't really know, and we'll have to see when we get that S-1. The only thing we do know about the S-1, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that Anthropic is going to tell investors that their total addressable market is $30 trillion,

which would be higher than SpaceX's total addressable market claim of $28.5 trillion, which they said was the largest in, quote, human history. $30 trillion, that would be roughly equal to the GDP of America. That makes me think that what we might say, see in this S-1 is a lot of massaging of numbers and frankly, a lot of BS. And it's disappointing because I actually want to like this company. I think that compared to Open AI, they have executed AI quite well from the business side and from the technology side. But then I hear the stuff like that. I'm like, can we give it a rest with the pumping and the BS? Can we just state truthfully

what actually is going on with these businesses? But we We'll see. We'll see when it comes out. Hopefully it comes out soon. We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profgmarkets.com. Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on fashion neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on fashion neurosis, I welcome Anthony Vacarello. Let's text was kind of fetish for me. It's true that, yeah, I'm starting to have fun at Salon when I understand that you can twist things that seems classic. It took me a while to understand the code of San Laurent.

And that San Loren was mostly... with scott with the good taste and bad taste. And that latex collection was like very like a deliverance to me to be able to explore things that was not able to do it before. Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you.

They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyles of priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids?

I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new, bold ideas. in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher, Rachel Jamfaza, joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction.

It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying, like, young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. You've DM'd me at 2 a.m. asking if you should panic about your 401k. You've paid an advisor $1,000 for one question. you've Googled, what is a rollover for the 10th time and still aren't sure? On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm revealing my biggest secret.

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On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, you're not going to want to miss this. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. We're back with Profi Markets. A new era is underway at Apple. John Ternis has officially taken over as CEO. and last week he introduced Apple's latest major product, the foldable iPhone. It is the biggest change to the phone in nearly a decade and one of the first major signals of what Apple might look like under John Turner.

So as he takes the reins, let's take a look at what is next for Apple, and it starts with the foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. Scott, this device costs $2,000 at the low end, $3,000, more than $3,000 at the high end. It is the size of a passport. It's 80% larger than the iPhone 18. What do you make of the iPhone doer? I like it because some people call it multitasking, but I like to think of it as ignoring two responsibilities at once. I like the idea that I can scroll and ignore my emails at the same time. By the way, I don't even check my emails anymore. I've noticed. You've got to call you to get your attention. Yeah. So even texting, it's a fucking Charles Schumer.

calls me with one more urgent request for $5. I'm going to have had it. Look, I don't, so right now it's super interesting. It's a niche market. Your point's the right one. This has nothing to do with Ternus. Maybe he was involved in it, but anything that happens for the next 12 or 18 months

is basically remnant decisions made by Cook. This is exciting. I think that this was good of Cook. I think it shows his responsibility as a leader. I mean, just think about the ego. He might have, he could have easily negotiated. I want to be around. I want to announce this and leave in a blaze of glory, right? But he said, no, it's more important for the company to have a new innovative product under the auspices of a new exciting announcement about a new CEO. So the first thing I thought

about was this speaks well to Cook's ego. I think most CEOs would have wanted to stick around and made this their swan song, because I do think it's an exciting product. One of my colleagues at NYU Stern, a guy named Peter Golder, who's now at the Tuck School, had this. this really, really what I felt was a remarkable insight. And it changed the way I've thought about the term innovation, which is overused. Innovators almost always lose money. And that is the true innovator, the one that's first, ends up with mud on their face and arrows in their back. And Apple was not first in MP3s.

They were not first in laptops. They were not first in touchscreen. They were certainly not first in smartphones. Photable phones have been out for seven years. It's a niche market. But what Apple typically does is they are the world's best. most profitable second mouse in history. And that is they wait, they watch, they learn,

and they come in and they make something more elegant, more utile, more aspirational, and people weigh in and did do what I tried to do last night. I tried to buy one, and I was all pissed off and thought it was sold out, and then someone reminded me they're not available. You can't buy them for another two weeks. But that didn't stop me from spending an hour on the Apple side

thinking I could figure out how to order one. I think this product, I think Samsung is just going to be so pissed off because I think Apple is going to come in and sell more foldable phones in the first 60 days that have been sold in the last seven years across the entire market. I told you in the editorial call, I want you and Claire and Mia to do sort of a no mercy, no malice product review. But the way I see it is, everyone is saying $2,000, this is too expensive.

The way I see it is it's less expensive than your iPhone and your iPhone, and your laptop. And I think the vision of this thing is that it combines the two. It obviates the need for both. That with one of these, you'll no longer need your laptop. And so I think it could be, I think Apple does just such an amazing job with hardware. I think this could be a hit for them. I also think it signals innovation. So I, you know, if I had to bet I'm not, I'm not a product review person I was saying on Pivot with Carrots. Too bad that Walt isn't still active. It'd be very I'd be very curious to get a true product review from somebody more thoughtful to me about hardware. But I think this is a, I think it's an interesting move.

I think, and my bet is just as I was, I was a way more bearish. I mean, I thought the mixed reality headset was just, which is fucking ridiculous. And we got that one right. I am cautiously optimistic about this one. Your thoughts? Yeah, I'm less optimistic. I just think it looked, I think it's too large and too cumbersome, and I don't, I mean, they've called it the most, they've called it, quote, the most transformational iPhone experience since the original. It feels as if they're trying to present this as like, this is the Apple future, and I just don't find it cool or compelling enough. Having said that, though, I have been publicly kind of bearish on Apple for a while. Last year, I said I thought that the sort of, stock was going to have a sluggish outlook and potentially even go down. And that isn't what we've

seen. Apple has been the outperformer of big tech, up 19% year to date, up 40% over the past year. And, you know, I have been wrong about this so far. But I mean, I've told you this before. I look at their growth prospects and their technological innovation. I don't find it that impressive. And when you look at this company trading at 36 times earning, and I look at, compared to the S&P at around 26. Yes, they are spending less money on CAPEX, significantly less, $11 billion compared to, say, alphabet spending more than $200 billion on CAPEX

because they are joining the AI race. You know, that's good, but it's like, okay, well, what else are you building? What are you taking those savings and doing with? What are you doing with those savings that you are collecting in that war chest that you are building by not joining the AI race. And if you're building a foldable iPhone, I'm not impressed.

I would be more bullish, actually, on building a data center than selling a foldable iPhone, especially considering, as you point out, this has been done for a long time. Samsung did it. Motorola did it. I think Google did one as well.

I mean, people have been doing the foldable phone. It's a thing that exists. And it hasn't really taken the world by storm. I think it's been like a mildly successful product. So I'd want to see more from Apple. I'd want to see something that really blows me away. And to be honest, this doesn't really do it for me. Well, I don't know if you heard, but John Turnus speculates that there's an 11% chance

that the folding phone will destroy humanity. That would be interesting. That would get my attention. That'd make you sit up and buy more stock. Yeah, exactly. I want to hear how you're going to crush. society and ruin the world. Yeah, that's what real leadership is. Tell us how you're going to end humanity. Exactly. Do they make that dress for a man? Yeah, I don't. It's a strangely accurate statement

that you're making. Apple feels like a Disney film compared to this fucking AI shit right now. It's like, oh, we're going to end humanity. Oh, it's a foldable phone. I'll buy a foldable phone. Actually, as I think about it, I'm hoping it will. I like the idea of watching friends and neighbors and euphoria and Sydney Sweeney on two screens while pretending I'm taking pictures of my kids versus a one in 10 chance that humanity ends. That's Apple's future. Well, on that point, John Ternis, this is the beginning of his tenure. We don't really know that much about him.

He hasn't spoken publicly very much, so I think it's hard for anyone to tell really who he is or what he's going for, but, you know, it's early days. But he's taken over a $4.7 trillion company. He's leading the second most valuable company in the world. He has some very big shoes to fill following Tim Cook, who was arguably the greatest operator CEO in American history. And then before him, Steve Jobs, who was arguably the greatest visionary in, I would say maybe modern American history. On that note, let's just take a look at some of Apple's most iconic moments from their CEOs over the past several decades. Here is a little compilation that we're going to play. So, iPod, a thousand songs in your pockets. There's been

nothing like this before. And I don't think there's another company that could do this. What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use. This is what iPhone is. Okay? So we're going to reinvent the phone. What would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up? Well, this is the result. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever created. It is our new MacBook Air, and we think it's the future of notebooks. We have one more thing. Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. We set out to make the best watch in the world. John Turnus has a lot to live up to, Scott. What do you think his legacy will be? Will he make up? Will he live up to the legacy of his

predecessors? Oh, you know, I don't know, but the odds are no. And I'd be. I'd be. because he's filling the biggest shoes that were filled by the biggest shoes in history, two people. So Steve Jobs sort of changed the world, kind of defined this era of the idolatry of innovators. Tim Cook added more shareholder value to a company than any CEO in history. When he took over Apple, I think it was a $350 billion market company. Now it's, what, $4 or $5 trillion? So I think he's sort of neck and neck with Jensen for who's added the most shareholder value. He also just acquitted himself really well. You just knew. that you weren't going to find Tim Cook in the Epstein files. He just wasn't that, he just, he was

restrained, he was dignified, he did not shitpost or criticize other people. I think he fucked up at the end being a little too obsequious to Trump, but, you know, the 34, the 34 frames of the 35 millimeter film here of Tim Cook is unprecedented. So it's just unlikely that you have what, who is largely that's considered the greatest innovator in history, then you have the person who's out of the most shareholder value in history, that you hit a trifecta with a third CEO who's able to do anything resembling the first two. It's something, just taking it to private investments, I was reviewing my private investments.

I haven't made much money in the last two years. And a lot of my privates have just, I've just not done well. And what I have determined, I was trying to go through, it is very rare to that a founder, hits two wins in a row. I have yet to invest in a guy who had a big win and then his next company. He's able to raise a lot of money for his next company

and almost always never works. So many moons have to line up for the kind of shareholder gains and the kind of success you need for success in technology. Just the likelihood it goes from $300 billion and then continues to roll from there, I just statistically think the deck is a bit stacked against him.

But having said that, he's sitting on top of what is the world's greatest consumer brand in the world. I would argue MIT and Stanford are the greatest consumer brands in the world, but in terms of what people would qualify as a true consumer brand, it is, in my view, unprecedented. What Apple has done, and people get it wrong, I say it's a tech product, it's not, it's a luxury product. in that as iOS identifies you or signals that you're one of the billion most worthwhile or worthy mates in the world. If you're carrying an Android phone, it means things haven't panned out for you and that your DNA should probably, that branch should probably end, you should probably not be allowed to reproduce.

iPhone says, I'm creative, I'm so good at what I do, I make enough money to spend three months of the average Turkish household salary on iOS. You can basically get an Android phone for free. This product is wildly overpriced. But the brand itself, iOS, sends such a strong signal. I think they're going to sell a lot of these things for pure signaling. I think a lot of people are going to be excited to be a dinner and fold out their new Apple phone and have everyone go, ooh, you're creative, you're an innovator, and you clearly have $2,000 in disposable income to drop on a foldable phone.

but going to Ternus, his legacy, this is a company that has an incredible bench. I am sure he's a talented guy. I'd be shocked if he didn't acquit himself well. The likelihood, if you look back in history of the most valuable companies at that moment, they very rarely go more than one or two decades. General Electric was the most valuable company. Walmart was the most valuable company. Saudi Aramco for a while was the most valuable.

It is very rare that you stay at the top of the heap for very long. All right. Let's take a look at the week ahead. All eyes will be on Kevin Walsh as he delivers his next interest rate decision on Wednesday on Kalshi. The odds that he will raise rates are currently above 60%. Scott, any predictions? I think he's going to raise. We'll see. I think I've heard some weird brumblings about him personally, but I come back to it's a 12-year appointment. There's not a lot that Trump can do. Trump will be bad shit furious, but I don't see what he can do. And this would be a profile and courage moment. I'm worried about inflation. Oil's over $100.

I'm going to raise rates a quarter of a point. I think he would be hugely lauded in the marketplace if he raised rates. And I think his ego and the Kevlar of a 12-year appointment, what did Chairman Powell prove to us? that as angry as Trump is, as powerful as he is, he can't remove the Fed chairman. So I'm going to say, I think he raises. I was going to do the same. I think he raises. I'm honestly very tentative about it because I also think this guy likes to surprise people. I think if not this month, then the next one.

But I feel very confident that it happens in 2027. I mean, I think the thing, I mean, the midterms are obviously a big, a big question mark. the extent to which there's going to be a relationship between the two. But if he is a independent Fed Chair, if he truly cares about Fed independence, if he truly cares about interest rate policy, monetary policy, as much as he says he does, then I think the only answer here is Ray's. So, I'm going to tentatively say I think so too. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Chris Nodonohue and Mia Sovereo.

Jake McPherson is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Profugee Markets from ProfitG Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets.