The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The Looming Baby Boomer Disaster w/ Joseph Barbuto (The Economic Longwave) | The CBP

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIESToday we're joined by friend of the show and former money manager Joseph Barbuto, @theelongwave on X, for a discussion on The Baby Boomers. Where did they lose their way, what will the consequences be as the economy rolls over, and will their children actually inherit the trillions in wealth they've accumulated?#millennials #boomers #inheritance #realestate #investing #Bitcoin #Gold #commodities #longwaveCheck out Joseph's substack here: "The Economic LongWave" | SubstackJoin us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetworkThis show is sponsored by: easyDNS - https://easydns.com EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. With DomainSure and EasyMail, you'll sleep soundly knowing your domain, email and information are private and protected. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for 25% off fees FOR LIFE, and start stacking today.

creating it like a threat. And one of the things that can't be attacked is your self custody Bitcoin. And one of the things that can be attacked is the ETF. Can't be exposed to that. That's my view. It's not a good idea. And by the way, that'll hit MSTR too.

It'll probably get other stuff as well. Friends and enemies, welcome back. Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. Friends and enemies, welcome to the CBP. Wanna be better and formless, it's a lemon Joey. Spots is taking care of right off the top Oh Bitcoin and easy DNS the media is feeding the slop. It doesn't matter what topics discussed quality entertainment and information You can trust

Information you can trust send the guys some value boost them with some stats Bitcoin is the scarcity acid I mean, it's just a fact geopolitical national down to the local Friends and enemies, welcome back. Are you ready to talk about the baby boomers tonight? Joe Barbudo is back, Economic Longwave. The baby boomers, they got it real good, okay? They had it good, they got it good. I want you to think about the run these guys had, okay? Some of them started off life winning a World War, decent, pretty good, okay? Beat Russia in the Summit Series in Canada, not bad, two for two. Went to the moon. Pretty good. You like that. Woodstock, The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Stones. Amazing times. They had the best drugs for sure. I don't know if our guest has anything to say about that. I'm not going to ask him. But meanwhile, the millennials and the Zoomers and I guess Jen Alpha. Is that what they call the kids who are on TikTok all day? I'm not sure, but we are getting the short end of the stick

in a lot of ways, but if you're not my friends, chickens are coming home to roost for our gray haired friends and neighbors. We'll talk about all that stuff. We're happy to have Joe back. First of all, the sponsors, EZDNS, best place for you to buy, host, register all those good things at Domain.

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stage of Bitcoin, the fourth one was a guy with a shaved head and a bull Bitcoin tattoo being put on his scalp. The team is so extreme that I actually asked the guys if that was Francis. I didn't know. I still don't know for sure. There's claims that it's not, but nothing would surprise me. And when you have an extreme team like that, what do you get?

You get a great product. Whether it's the bill system where you can pay your bills with Bitcoin, whether it's the non-custodial features, whether it's the security, whether it's the low fees, all those good things are only possible with the good guys over at Bull, guys and gals at Bull. Use our promo code CBP. I think it's CBP. 25% off your fees for life. Can't beat that. And we know you guys are using it because there's a ton of volume going through there. Joseph, good to see you again. I got to say, not often does a guy message me immediately after being on the show and say, we got to do it again. But when you told me that you wanted to put yourself and your peers in the line of fire, I mean, how could I resist?

It's impossible to say no to that. What's going on, buddy? Good to see you again. Yeah, yeah, great to see you too, man. This is, I think I wanted to address it because there's a lot of, let's blame the baby boomers, right? And I'm one of those who's born, just if you look at the demographics at the peak, just before we started the decline. who's born just if you look at the demographics at the peak,

just before we started the decline. So, you know, is it the baby boomers fault or is this just another cycle or is it the fault of extrapolative economics? Really, you know, we'll get into wherever direction you wanna go, I'm open to it, right? Take shots, whatever, I'll try to answer, defend them or criticize them. But I think the whole thing about why I got involved in this long wave, it was trying to figure out, you know, what happened to me, as I've mentioned many times, but the clarity and what I realize is it's the fault of how we're hardwired is to think whatever is happening or occurring today, we extrapolate that.

And that's why we repeat these bubbles and these social cycles. And what I follow and what I realized when I was looking for a timing model, when I was an investment advisor, actually I discovered that this is a social cycle. We're just repeating history. And I always find that the criticisms of any of the forecasts are always the same. It's just time, it's different,

they won't let it happen, it can't happen, yada, yada, yada. But we just saw what happened with Greece and the United States 10, 15 years ago. And what surprised people like myself who studied history is that we kept going. Australia, China, the three amigos as I call it in Canada just kept rising until we got this blow off in 2022, which is scary. I just think that, and I'll leave it, the majority of baby boomers are ignorant as are most people of what's coming. They think that their asset values are permanent. And this is from my perspective as one boomer to another boomers,

maybe you should think about selling, maybe, cause you're gonna get hurt the most and you will be able to recover. So there's a couple of things I wanna talk about. I've done a bit of research for this show more than I would normally do, I'll be honest with you, because I did want to talk to you about some of the things that people in my generation, I think to your point, Joe,

they hold against the boomers, but I'm not sure they should. I've said on this air many times that there's things you should hate the boomers for, the things they continue to do in the face of evidence that they're destroying the generation after them, the generations after them. Hate them for that. But I think I've also said on the show don't hate them for following what the incentives told them to do, you know, 30

40 years ago, told them to do 10 or 12 years ago and continue honestly to tell them to do now in a lot of ways. The one thing maybe we should start with is you mentioned it there, you know, sell because things are going to get hard. You know, according to some data, this is hard hard data to find, but one in five Canadian baby boomers, so between 55 and 64 years old, have no retirement savings, while half of the baby boomers in the same demo have less than $5,000. The median is about $800,000, but still, those numbers are crazy. So maybe we start with this.

Do the boomers really have it as good as people my age think they have it? I think it's a much smaller majority than people think. Let me tell you why. One of the things that surprised me when I started investing in this a long time ago, in your financial planners, like you start looking at the books, you actually see, you have to see their cash flow, their assets in liability. And what became very evident was, oh my God, here it is, everybody's thinking they have this beautiful car, beautiful home, but they were levered. And I left in 2012, so I don't think if I looked and any financial planner was honest with you, they would tell that the leverage is crazy. And the problem is that a lot of baby parents

probably helped out their kids by leveraging and putting their name on it. And they don't realize they're on the hook for this real estate bubble. So did they have it good? Yes, because they were all born. remember Trump, Stallone, I'm just using the names are deleting edge, right? They're born in 50, 46. So, they've only seen an up wave. And they're, and but what happens with this is that if, if you ask them what

they think about investments and savings, it would be radically different from somebody who was born 10 years earlier, like my parents. They were born into poverty in the Great Depression, and they were frugal and lived within their means and never thought of leverage. So it's really that there's a great book if you read The Fourth Turning that explains these generational cycles which are about 21 years and the thinking is always again when you were born and what your experience is you assume and you extrapolate that. Now from a baby boomer's perspective who studied history we just saw And yeah, if you were born in 1946

up until the early 80s, you saw progress with technology. There was no talk about real estate as an investment. It was a place to live and prices stayed within a mean of two to four times zinc. That whole rise in real estate values from 49 to 89 was based on 46 to 89 was based on fundamentals. And in Elliott Wave terms, if you haven't studied, this was the strongest and the real rise in real estate. But basically we were seeing cars, air conditioning, air flight, I mean, going to the moon,

we were seeing technology changing us, right? And that's what drives these long ways too. But something changed in the 90s. And when we had the first bubble that broke, we saw the financialization, right? We saw REITs, we saw the banks get involved. We saw HELUX. We just saw all things that we financialized. And so annulliate wave terms and long wave terms, or the long wave, it's called the monetary wave, is that what drives asset values are not fundamentals, but financialization.

And the blow off came from the lowest interest rates in interest history. So it was a perfect one, two, three, five, I'm 90 to 2022, that whole real estate cycle. Because if you look at the data, the leveraging started in 1946 when modern-day mortgages came into effect and gross debt service ratio was only 26% and it was only males at the time that could afford a home. That's why homes were one and a half to two times income. And then Toronto, they went to 18 in 2022. And you say, how is that mathematically possible?

And all the, I'm gonna say the ignorant comments are population immigration. But if you look at the data, and I presented it to people, population growth has been slowing dramatically. And I posted something today regarding real estate that the birth death cycle will be turning negative. And if it wasn't for the massive immigration, it would have already gone negative. And so far, year to date, it is. So and what people aren't paying attention to is the deaths are grown exponentially.

This is supply. And this is one of the reasons Japan took so long to recover. So I mean, if you want to ignore that reality, I mean, that's a choice, but it's supply. We keep talking about immigration, immigration, immigration, but the workforce is shrinking, the birth deaths is collapsing. And I haven't posted it, but I'll post it maybe tomorrow that if you look at deaths in Canada, and I put an exponential trend line, in 2016,

the actual deaths is growing now exponentially. It's moving away from that and this is going to put supply into the market and to the future and what does this mean? It's just totally will shift real estate as an investment mentality and I think that's going to take at least one or two decades to completely eliminate. I think we're going to see, I mean, the cycles are pointing down to 2027 to 29. Then we should get a rally

and then we get another downturn in real estate prices. Because interest rates are trying to normalize, which is gonna put downward pressure on the ability of people to leverage so They're they're ignorant and i'm as a baby boomer And only aware because of what my experience and I just fell into understanding how things work but to my My own family member and a friend I know very well who's been the mortgage business for 30 years and somebody else who's very wealthy.

I remember in 2022, oh real estate was cracked, but it will never go down. And they don't want to hear the truth. Now I know, but the truth is all three of them should be, should be okay because they don't have leverage. I do know that. But the thing is that they have this belief because they have this, we're hardwired to think linear and they don't see the cycles are now all turning against real estate as an investment. So it's just plain ignorance. And once the panic, we're really gonna see the selling.

One more thing I wanna mention, we're only seeing a deflation in assets in BC and Ontario. Most of the other Canadian markets are still rising, but they're forming their own bubbles. So if it wasn't for that, the Canadian index would have been collapsing by now. And it's really only represented in the United States and the United States, but once the rest of the country follows, I mean, we're seeing a bubble in Halifax, you know, it's been over for 10, 15 years, and now it's, I guess people are moving out to other places.

It looks like Alberta just rolled over. So once that rolls over, it's like every other acid bubble since the tulip mania and ends badly. So okay, for speculators. So, so the question there for me is, if I if I look at the commentary around the wealth disparity between boomers and millennials, right? The millennial generation really are the kids of the boomers, not the Xers, it's us. The kids born in the late 80s, I think I'm probably like an early millennial, I was born in 87, so I don't know exactly where that puts me, but certainly not at the tail end. The thing I always hear Joe is that, you know, while it has been

difficult for millennials to start families, buy homes, all these things, that there's a trillion dollars in wealth just in Canada coming to millennials through, I mean, the generous term I think is wealth transfers, but the term that I would use is death and destruction to the boomers, right? Like, you know, eventually they die or they offer inheritances or trusts come to maturity or whatever. And that wealth goes from that generation to ours. Now, if I'm hearing you right, you're saying that the millennials might be waiting for a promise that's never fulfilled because things

will just get so bad that the money is not there. Do I have that right? Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, either in Elliott wave terms, you look at Toronto prices, or if you look at from the long wave perspective, monetary waves are just phantom wealth. You're not going to hear that from anybody in the investment business. This is why a lot of us left. We just said, well, wait a second, how are we going

to save people? Because the governments are on this fiscal path to insolvency, which means interest rates are going to rise, or at least normalize, and that's going to put downward pressure on real estate, and then people are going to look at investments. And even investments here are super expensive. Listen, it's not just Canada. We're pretty good at seeing the future, but nobody would have seen the real US would have really inflated. And in real terms, their real estate is the most expensive in history.

The cycles, they revert to the mean if actually the overshoot to the downside. And the stock market is the most expensive in history. So it's not that it's just predicated on just Canada, Canadians to Americans. I mean, this is why Buffett and lot of value investors have a huge amount of cash in their portfolio. What I have for my models is a huge amount of cash also. And we look kind of foolish since I've made it public in the past two years, but we've done well because gold and Bitcoin

has done really well. We have that as a defense. And we do have some allocation to the markets. Like with ETFs, I love it. I wish I would have had this choice. I'd go inverse, right? So as the market's correct, it will just switch the model. So we have some market exposure, but we have a lot of cash. And it's just to protect your capital. This is the lesson I learned after getting involved in the business. So it's not just tied to Canada, it's the US. It's a really bad situation. And what I'm concerned about is that we don't have

the Keynesian pump into the downturn. So what are they going to do? They're going to attempt. And the change politically will not come until, I want to pause here, make sure we grasp this. So what are we looking for? We're looking for the financial crisis. So I want to pause here, make sure we grasp this. So what are we looking for? We're looking for the financial crisis.

It's not here yet. There's no deleveraging. Everybody's saying, some of the people are misleading people, saying Canadians are delievering. No, they're not. They're still leveraging. It's slowing dramatically.

I think I sent you one chart of household growth that it peaked in 2022, collapsed in 2023, and it peaked last year and it's slowing dramatically. That's going to be the telltale signs economic winter. So economic winter the signs are shrinking credit growth and also Canadians are delivering. Yeah, that is a chart just so I can keep a track. So look at this closely. You could see that there's the bubble peak in 22, then it collapsed. You see both mortgage and household credit and notice that we're getting lower lows since a year ago.

So I think once the numbers and I think it's going to continue, but because you're getting Toronto and Vancouver getting worse and we're getting froth in the other markets, it's slowing. So a lot of capital speculators went left Toronto and Vancouver and then they went to the other provinces. So once that goes negative, then that's when the deleveraging will start.

And Ray Dalio talks about it in the big debt crisis. He's a big boomer himself and he's trying to help people I think it should be the babe boomer should be listening the most So Yeah, unfortunately, this is part of these cycles. What can we do? We can't stop This is why the repeat because humans is what I've learned This is why it's a social cycle because we're just repeating the mistakes of those who thought they were the ones. Do you not think that it's possible? I mean you said this earlier in the show and I've heard you say this before too that

that the social cycle of the monetary wave, you know, these things are intertwined in a way that a lot of people don't understand understand We repeat things because it's the only understanding we have of certain Environments and when the environment shifts away from that understanding we're caught by surprise and the rug comes out from underneath you now You know the sort of natural response from me I think from a lot of Bitcoiners would be look if I if I look at what I've seen You know maybe to my, over the last 20 years, the response is always the same. The government in the United States specifically did let 08 get away from them a little bit.

But if you invested during that 08 period, you made out like a bandit in nominal terms, and probably also in real terms too compared to inflation. And then again in 2020 terms too compared to inflation. And then again in 2020 and again in 2023. And then because the Federal Reserve is so political and they may say they're not, but they are, even on the way out from the Biden administration, there was a cut from the Federal Reserve that juiced the economy even more.

So now to your point, if we look at data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, or we look at true inflation, or we look at the real estate market over of Labor Statistics, or we look at trueflation, or we look at the real estate market over there, because there are bubbles forming in the United States as well, and there's some froth and some rolling over starting. The thing that seems to me to be the next logical step for these guys is more fiscal stimulus. And so it's another situation where asset holders, boomers, for example, who have been, according to the data irresponsible with the opportunity they were given, they're going

to be the beneficiaries yet again. Why do you think that only things that are, you know, sort of, I don't want to say this is what you think, but it sounds to me like it's at least possible that your view is the things that repeat are often the things that hurt the most. When it seems to me that in the last 20 years, the things that keep repeating are the things that pump the bags the most. So what do you think, you know, in terms of this idea that the next response will just be a bigger mistake than the last one, leading to a bigger income disparity, bigger wealth gap, bigger asset, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me your take there.

This time, we levered from the zero bound and governments are fiscally compromised, and they're not going to get the interest rate. And they're not going to get the interest rate, interest rate fall that they're looking for. Because the secular rise in rates now are, is the demand credit, what's the word I'm looking for? The rise in interest rates moving forward will simply be and the bond market will start to see, well, wait a sec, how are you going to pay us back?

And this is why we're not going to get a normal response. If anything, a bailout will put all levels of government in a fiscal crisis, right? So we're not going to get it. And they're fighting a trend that's leading downward into the late 2020s. You can't fight this. These cycles occur. The most important, in my view, of how I understand things is the monetary wave. The monetary wave is just really simple. For people who haven't heard this in the long wave, the monetary wave is the financialization

of the economy that's helped along with the price of credit falling. This only happened in the 1820s, 1870s, 1830. And when the price of credit is falling, most people don't look at how much debt they're borrowing, but they're looking at their cashflow, how much they can afford. So in 2021, Canadians, Americans, Europeans were looking,

well, look how much debt I can take because the interest rates at zero. There's no historical precedent for this. And there's no historical precedent for governments being in some... In 1929, interest rates were at 6% and governments were running fiscal surpluses. I mean, the whole Keynesian argument, right, in defense of Keynes was you run deficits in bad times and a good time should pay down your debt. Politicians don't want to be the bad guy so they keep running deficits and this is the part where the gold bugs are right. You know, it keeps ambitious, Bob Hoy says, I think it keeps ambitious

politicians in check and people say well you, gold gold standard limits the ability for fiscal response. I said, but here's the problem. The opposite side is that politics politicians will abuse that money. And look at Trump with Powell. And if you don't know, I mean, the market has control of interest rates, not power. You can fire a power.

They can hire anybody they want. And the market has control of interest rates, not power. They can fire power. They can hire anybody they want, and the market will not listen to them. If the market feels risk in the capital, then interest rates will rise. And another point, look, the long wave, the up wave of the Condraitha cycle, the complete cycle, the up wave is rising real demand. We had rise in interest rates from 1946 until 81, and we had the strongest economic growth in history

in Canada and the US, rising rates. It kept the bubble in check and the economy was focused on innovation and real economic growth. Falling interest rates is a sign of slowing credit demand. And I've proven that if you look at credit growth, peaked in Canada in the 1970s, a double digit, 20%. And this last bubble zero, we barely topped 7% and now it's fallen to three.

So falling interest rates is a sign of a weakening economy, but people leverage. And this is why all this we call it, you know, phantom wealth, it's in time, it will all correct. And that sounds extreme and unbelievable. And, oh, well, I get every day I'll get people tell me about you're wrong, and this and that, and they'll print and they'll and they'll, they'll allow 100 people, a million people in per year. You know, well, we saw the mistakes. You have to give the economy the ability to absorb it. But when I show them the reality of population growth is still slowing, I think it's always taken back. I'm not trying to say I'm right. I'm just trying to dispel the myths because the more we misallocate capital into real estate, the worse it becomes because how, how do we fix the other side? And this is the thing is I'm trying to figure out how do we fix it? We don't have the monetary bullets. We don't have the fiscal fiscal room, how many bank mergers will occur? How many banks will be left after all this? Half of them, maybe? I don't know. So what do you say to boomers who want to get out of this? I mean, it sounds to me, and I think I'm framing this correctly, that even if they wanted to fix

their situation or remedy their situation somehow, because because the nature of the way the market has evolved, naturally or unnaturally over the last 30 years, they're in a position now where they have caught the bottom end of this monetary wave for the sort of beginning of the decline and they're, as the kids say, they're cooked. So if you're a boomer, I know, I'm looking at some data here. More and more boomers are working into their 60s. They're saying, of course, that it's because they're healthy and enjoy it. But I think anyone would tell you that the reason they work is to make money.

Otherwise, they just call it volunteering. And, you know, when I look at that data, I see it as sort of already something starting to play out. I also think it's unfair that the Zoomers and the younger crowd blame immigrants for taking low wage jobs. While that is true, Joe, I still see a lot of pensioners at the deli when I go to the grocery store, bagging groceries, they're working on different things, you know, painting stuff around the city. They're staying a lot longer in good jobs that would normally have turned over to younger people by now. And so if you're a boomer, let's say you know, you

have a job or you don't have a job, I don't know, what do you do? Because you can't sell in downsides. There's nowhere to go and no one to buy your house. So what's the plan? Like what do you recommend people do in their situation now? Oh, I just think it's just like, just like myself, I think the, again, and this is not conventional thinking, but the, if you look at the, the workforce age is still shrinking, even though we had all these immigrants. And. And I'm not fearful of AI. I think it's pretty clear that AI robotics is part of the solution. There's going to be a shortage of workers.

This has never happened in history. You know, when I first entered the workforce in my early 20s, we had almost 20 percent unemployment for youth. And that was simply there were so many of us, baby boomers coming into the workforce. So it was hard to find a job. I didn't understand it then as they do now. Immigration is cyclical and it'll probably go off a cliff

and shrink. I think the population could shrink for a year or two years as we get into economic winter. And we're going to need people to keep working. Remember, productivity is what gives us our standard living, not immigrants. It was the technological boom. You know, last one was automobiles and oil and aeronautics. I mean, it's just changed our world, you know.

And now it's the information revolution that is still ongoing. It's the productivity and we have to have an innovation economy. I've said, I think you heard me at the conference, that the fifth wave is totally decentralized, right? And that's exciting because all the technologies are empowering the individual, just like the internet, cell phones, now AI.

AI empowers the individual. The governments are losing power because centralization is sclerotic. I mean, what's the only benefit for Canadians is the sick care system, and that's not sustainable. It won't be around as it is now in 10 years. Thankfully, we have this biotech revolution that's changing. It's already changing people's lives, but it's too expensive. And the cost, once it's down to $2,000 or $3,000, then that's a game changer. That really switches the health care, silk care model.

So I think they're going to work and we're going to need them. And as I said, this is, but understanding history, you're going to see immigration collapse and you're going to see the workforce continue to shrink. So we're going to need robotics and the seniors to work. Because there's going to be a shortage. I mean, the reality is that a lot of the immigrants are taking low wage jobs and most Canadians don't want to do that job. But I think most people my age can find a job. You know, my own wife's interesting is even though with immigration boom in the West, whatever, she's, she's

at the short supply around the world. They can't find, and there's so much competition for her to work in different districts. So the economy is already changing. Just the two sectors I know will shrink is really the fire sector dramatically. And I've already read some people are leaving the business. And the size of government that will change because as it becomes decentralized. So those are the two areas where you're going to see shrink, but you're seeing the growth is, and the reason that the fire sector after this rolls over is

going to shrink is that what is their product, right? Credit, and their product became cheaper for 40 years, and we had the blow off in private debt record levels and house prices. Well, when you're going to reverse that or you can't borrow from the future anymore, then that's going to change and that's why that sector is going to shrink dramatically. And I think the banks and the investment firms are going to split up again because this is what's keeping this thing longer than history. So in terms of work, sorry I didn't mean to go on there, but I think I'm of the belief, even though I'm bearish, I think this century it's the end of capitalism because

this information revolution at the end of the century, Kurzweil believes in 75 years we'll develop the replicator. And if you look at the converging technologies, there won't be a need. And with the shrinking populations in the developed world, that will only lead to a shortage of workers. will only lead to a shortage of workers. And when the population shrinks, if you look at, and that means it's the empowerment of the individual. So this is the other theme of why I say it's the rise in the individual and decentralization. Now, in between that time, could be massive unemployment, double digits, 10% plus collectively. But I think there will be a shortage.

And I think this robotics and AI and 3D printing is part of the solution. Where does this leave something like the currencies? Talking to everyone from my own father to people who have done well in your demographic show over the years about the importance of defending the value of the Canadian dollar on the global currency market. Even if we get all this stuff right, even if we do well with AI and these things come to pass, ultimately people who are relying, for example, on old age security and pensions and things of

this nature rely on the dollar. We're, as you mentioned now, a nation of consumers as opposed to a nation of producers and as a result, most of our stuff comes from the global market, which is priced obviously in USD and so our currency weakness at the moment, if you know, 72 cents, 73 cents, whatever it is, against the dollar has increased the cost for us significantly. These things are being reported in the newspapers as elbows up, people are not going to the United States anymore, when in the reality of the situation the true sort of framing should be we can't afford to go to the States, we're going to marine land instead or something. What do you make of the people in the older demos that are on old

age security? What is going to be left for them? It's one thing to say healthcare because you know eventually everyone ends up in the healthcare system. You may only go through that ringer once, you know, God rest your soul after that I guess, but everyone is going to take that money from the pension for some time, from their corporate pension for some time, old age security for some time. What becomes of these people? What becomes of these programs? Oh, I think that's, this is why they're trying to introduce income to replace all the pensions and so forth. Right? To get rid of the welfare. I mean, what you do is, you know, but when you bring in a, I think the plan should be guaranteed basic income replaces all the welfare and retirement,

so forth, and people are guaranteed a basic, you know, the problem is the politicians are going to abuse it. That's the concern. You get rid of everything else, and then you tax back those people who don't need it. Right? You just make sure that they, I think there's going to be some kind of social safety that there has to be to get through this, because the solution is that they're not going to do is they need to write down the debt. And you're going to, and I get pushed back on my feed, well, you know, they took out this law and they should be responsible. I said, OK, if you just bail out the banks and not the public, you're going to do a million people what? How many people lost their homes in the US?

10, 12 million? Something like that. Over 1 10th? Yeah. So 1 million people losing their homes. What do you think? That won't cause a revolution? And right in the streets.

So yeah, restructure the debt, keep them in the home, just structure to the percentage of the loan. The banks won't like it, but I don't know. Do we bail out the banks or we bail out the public or a little bit of both? And I think you have to do a little bit of both. People, whether you with it or not or agree with it or not, that's understandable. But how do you fix it? You can't print. This is where I'm fundamentally different. You can't print within a credit bubble. Printing, you know, it says, well, they're going to print like Argentina. Yeah, but remember Argentina interest rates went to 50, 70%. What would that do to the mortgage market?

Was it good or bad? Was it good or bad for the mortgage market? Can you help me out there? It just would collapse it. And this is where it's just as ridiculous. And I just want to just go on podcasts and be the guy says, no, hyperinflation is impossible in a credit-based economy where everybody's leveraged to real estate. They forget that part. Or it's the other argument,

the immigration, immigration, what about the deaths? So I'm going to post the latest data. I have one projecting from, I've got data going back as far as possible because I'm a student of long waves. But if you go to the future, the thing is there's an exponential growth in deaths that is supply. And demographics is part of the picture. You can't always just focus on immigration. And even somebody posted something with grok and they said well it's immigrant okay immigration is cyclical i guarantee it's going to go zero and deaths you can't stop and it's grown exponentially and it doesn't peak until 2050 so uh there's your supply but that's okay because then real estate would be seen as a place to live and not an investment vehicle. Maybe those people who

fix up places and bring it back to its nominal value will make money in real estate, but I just don't see the price appreciation. So this hyperinflation printing is impossible within a credit-based economy dependent on record low interest rates, which the central banks don't control. And the other thing is the, as I said before, is this don't forget about the exponential debate. Boomer is dying off. There are now 77 starting. So, you know, this is the point and this is why, and I'll post it tomorrow, this is why it's running away from the exponential growth curve. And this is supply.

And this is, they had all these models about projecting where prices were gonna go. They're incorrect demographics. And Dent is the one who brought this up because he not only saw the collapse of the middle of estate in Japan, but it didn't recover and took so long and it was the demographics because all the supply

was coming on. So what people are doing is migrating to, you know, and I think this is why you're going to resumption after 21 year bear market of real estate prices. Okay, that I mean, this, this is all great that That leads me to sort of a natural next question. And we saw this recently, obviously in Canada, we had an election here, a surprise liberal, you know, I don't want to say landslide, but obviously, but you know, compared to where they were three months before the election, a rebound in victory like has not been seen in a modern democracy in some time. And a lot of people point to the gaps, Joe, between the needs and wants of the boomers

who are very politically active, very politically engaged, and in my opinion, low information, when compared to their counterparts in the younger demographics. The Twitter sphere guys, the Bitcoin guys, even the fire guys in their 30s and 40s and 50s who look at things and go, there's a problem here. We can't keep doing this.

Can't keep doing this with economic policy. Can't keep doing this with printing. We can't have a prime minister that wants to separate operational and investment and pretend only balancing one is the only thing that matters. The question then becomes, you said and investment and pretend that only balancing one is the only thing that matters. The question then becomes, you know, you said that capitalism is going to die this century. I think democracy has failed.

That's my personal view. It's failed as a political system and a social cohesion method. I suspect that many people my age feel the same way and you see this in things like quiet quitting, opting out, no one starting families, no one dating, rise in drugs and substance abuse, decreases in social spending and social engagement. Where do you come down on this? What does the long wave say about these staple pillar social and political systems that really have they really did bring us from the Stone Age to the Modern Age you know on the back of

democracy and open debate we we did all this and it seems now that you know as you kind of mentioned earlier touched on earlier at some point everyone realizes they can vote themselves a little bit of someone else's money and the game ends where are we on stuff like democracies and just generally political systems is they can vote themselves a little bit of someone else's money and the game ends. Where are we on stuff like democracies and just generally political systems around the world starting to fray? Oh, that's a great question. And yeah, this is very clear on the long wave.

So what's coming to an end is centralization in all the systems. So it's a reset. It's not only a monetary reset, but it's just a way of conducting business. So we're seeing the end because it's really clear if you've seen, I think you've seen the chart and post of it, but if you're GDP per capita, you know, has gone nowhere since Trudeau came into power, when Trudeau came into power when Trudeau came into power and the only thing that masked Economic growth was the housing bubble. So people were thinking that they're wealthy Now once that unwinds that will cause the revolution. So

We're seeing the end of central power. That's that's clear and We're seeing the the rampant the economic ramifications where we're seeing now Alberta wanted to separate. And Quebec, I mean, Quebec, who's the beneficiary of the tax revenue from Alberta, who's not represented legally, the system has to change. But this is what happens. It will go till it can't and then it collapses and that's what we're going through.

So yes, I agree. And obviously we can see that the elected officials are not working in the best interest of the collective or for Canadians. How did we get to a point where we can run permit twin deficits. Remember Japan was running twin surpluses in 89 and their government was able to soften the blow so to speak but now their end game is coming and interest rates are rising. So it's really clear. So the progression is clear.

First, track to educate some people. Sure. Previous credit bubbles in 1873 and 1834 were technology bubbles that burst and that caused economic winters. This time, it's a private debt bubble in real estate that's going to cause economic winter. This is where the leverage is.

Here's the thing though, those technologies were productive. And this is where I changed my view about economics because after what happened to me, I learned from value investors where to allocate capital. And one of the things which was interesting was I looked at bubbles as dangerous, but I saw technology bubbles

as a sign of a revolution to come. So if you look at that was the canalia in 1830 and 1870 it was electric and steel. I mean these innovations were disrupted to the economy. In 29 it was automobiles and oil and these were radio. These are technologies that were disruptive in a positive way and it changed it. So when you see these AI bubbles or 3d printing bubbles or solar bubbles From a long way perspective. They're dangers and it's best that you don't participate them, but you benefit from these technologies So this is how it was easy because when I studied long ways, I was like, oh, you know, like where's the fifth wave and When the sovereign individual came out, Bitcoin wasn't around,

the 3D printing wasn't around, the internet was just evolving, cell phones were still pretty crude. So it was precedent in seeing that, yeah, we're going toward this. And then as we saw more and more things, and look at all the technology bubbles, AI, robotics, 3D printing, what's the quantum computers. I mean, take a look at these are individual about technology, the most important, and stem cell revolution. These are all in power in the individual.

Again, so what's the need for those big, bureaucratic central power? And they know they're losing power. So they came out with a central bank digital currency and they're trying to retain the power, but it's breaking apart because Alberta wants to go this way and Quebec might wanna go this way. And the individuals are being,

the millennials have been shortchanged. And my nephews are millennials, and they're two young guys, and they can't afford to buy a place, and they're frustrated. And I've let them know, like, look, history is, just be patient,

and you'll get that home for 10 cents on the dollar I guarantee that And people think i'm nuts again again. I've heard the arguments, but I've looked at every bubble since tulip mania and they all reverse or they over overshoot and and you'll be able to find bargains Right and remember real estate bubbles are always the most dangerous again for your audience We you had the stock market collapse 29 to 32. But the reason for the severity of the downturn was the real

estate bubble. And it was the leverage in real estate. It wasn't the stock market. Very few people have assets in the stock market. And it could drop 90%. It could disrupt the economy a little bit, like in 2000, but it'll continue to power. But it's real estate. And for some reason, we can't stop social, the public from leaving in what will be guaranteed a disruptive to the economy.

I'm dumbfounded with this information revolution that is a million times bigger than the printing press, which was revolutionary in terms of accelerated human knowledge and empowerment, right? To the detriment of the church back in the 1500s. Now it's a detriment of governments. That's why they're trying to control it, because they're losing power. So the good news is that it's I believe that a direct democracy will come out of this and and we're going to validate and find ways. I mean you know

allowing 16 year olds to all about sustaining power. I mean come on. So that's why I'm not so harsh. I know how bad it is. And I'm, you know, people say, oh, they designed this is on purpose. No, they didn't. They just are greedy like everybody else. And they just went on further and they're gonna lose power. And everything that's happening has happened before,

just on a bigger scale for Canada. That's all. Look, Alberta, it could be a manufacturing powerhouse and if you get the politics right, because they have the resources and the technology is there. some vertical, horizontal greens that can be done, I mean, producing food and that is disruptive and that's actually really good, it's more efficient. So there's so much coming down the pipeline. So that's the good news. So I believe it's the end of socialism, economics.

Capitalism has one big long way to go. And this will be the blow off and this will be the biggest disruptor of our lives. And I don't know what does it look like? I mean, think of the replicator going off of here, but how do you introduce the replicator? The first person to get one is like, you know, miles and miles ahead of the 10th person to get one. That's what makes the introduction of these technologies so difficult. There's a, you know, a cantillon effect, but not for money, for tech. And the gap between it's not like having the first, you know, the first edition of Lotus on your laptop from 1994. Okay. It's not like that anymore. It's the first guy to get the AI model that can build him something. It's, it's, it, the gap is so big now. So it's not like a replicator or, or some of the biotechs you're talking about. It's a dangerous thing to introduce because it will drive the people who don't have it to madness so quickly. Yeah. I don't know how you restructure the, the, the, um, the public around that. I mean,

because the thing is, which is, uh, there's a great book called super abundance by Gail Pooley and, uh, um, one thing I, we, you know, I read in the book and I was thinking about it and I didn't realize the replicate ourselves too big issues. It becomes the world becomes abundant. We have access to everything. So it changes. Maybe this is then we go into the age of enlightenment where we focus on ourselves and, and families and you know, there won't need to be more than two kids, but you just have a life of purpose, spiritual growth. I don't know what it looks like 100 years from now, it won't be around for it. But it also solves the pollution problem. Because if you can replicate and just create things for matter in numbers, you can also then take care of the matter that we don't need and turn it back into nature. So it solves a lot of issues, but it disrupts those in power and it

takes power away from powerful elite countries and so forth. So that model is coming to an end. To me it's just obvious when you see Trump and Carney and this European Union, they're forcing it on us and the people are pushing back and it's not going to work. So it's going to fail. That's the good news. You don't have to force people to use AI or computer or, you know, this thing because it benefits them. So that's why if you want to get away from the darkness, sometimes I know I'm guilty of it, you want to focus on the good, focus on the technology that will be disruptive. And the simple model is the one that its marginal cost is falling faster than incomes.

That means it will be adopted by the by the public. So this was $25,000. And now this is the latest, and it's only 1000 or $2,000. Of course, and almost any person can find a way to finance it or purchase it. And that's where we're headed. That's the good news. So this whole thing needs to collapse, but it will go in stages. And the key is, Joe, is real estate and watching its final peak. And that's now happening in the US, by the way. Now their real estate cycles peak. So the US was the last to roll over.

Now it's rolling over. And that means we're going to have some severe crisis. The governments can't bail out the financial sector this time. We had a couple of weeks ago, Stockwell Day, you know, you must know him. Sorry, you're breaking up, Joey. Do you know Stockwell Day? Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. So he was on the show about two weeks back.

And we were talking about exactly what you just mentioned there, this control that's slipping from centralized powers. He called it Ottawa, Laurentian elites. You're calling it centralized democratic powers and centralized technologies. Everyone, whether you're a politician by stripe, a money manager by stripe, a money manager by stripe, a

realtor by stripe, Bitcoiner by stripe, no matter how many different silos you come you go into and talk to people in, everyone has this view of the Leviathan can't keep everyone in line anymore, it's too hard. And so now I think you know in my view what we're seeing is the Leviathan trying to, this is Hobbes' Leviathan, okay, there's no like, you know, giant military machine, but the Leviathan really is trying to take the biggest players out of the public eye

and make examples of them. We've seen this with guys like Trump. If you frame control retention and the chilling effect around what's happened to Trump in the last eight years, I guess, nine years, makes a lot more sense. This guy is an agent of chaos. They may agree with some things, disagree with some things, but at the end of the day, him having a seat at the table is a loss of control. The European Union, same thing, countries who go against the immigration policy,

who don't want to pay for pollution, who don't want to... That's a loss of control. They have to be made an example of. It has to be a giant fine. It has to be financial repercussions, economic sanctions. Russia doesn't want to play ball with NATO expanding to the Ukrainian border, well then you need to be invaded. You know, like you're not gonna do that, we're gonna sanction you, we're gonna take you off swift. Everything is about control and the sooner people realize that there is no shadowy figure

pulling the strings, that the man behind the curtain truly does not exist and everything you see around you from the municipal level to the federal and provincial levels to the super national level, is all just, I don't want to lose my grasp on the control that I have on the outcomes that benefit me. It's really that simple. And the long wave, like you always say, is the end of that control, whether they like it or not. So maybe the last thing we'll ask you here, Joe, things are coming, they're turning over,

they're finishing out the United States real estate market. You know, I think last time we were on, I said, what should people be looking for in terms of signposts? Maybe this time, Joe, we'll talk about, you know, if you're someone my age, you know, we talked a bit about the boomers earlier. If you're a millennial who doesn't have a house yet, you're a zoomer who doesn't have a house yet, we have a young audience.

Um, give, give them some hope, give them some things to look for some ways to, um, stay sane over the next 10, 15 years when, when it seems like things are getting more and more hopeless, you know, it's a darkest the dawn as they say. Give me some white pills here. Yeah, okay, great. Okay, so about real estate, I'll tell you, the audience, what I tell my nephews. So should I buy or rent? Rent. Prices are going to fall, will fall. Now, by the way, if you own a place and it's paid for, I wouldn't suggest selling it because we don't know what's going to happen to the currency. So you don't want, you want to own it, but just know it's going to be worth a lot less in the future. If you're okay with it.

Okay, if you're somebody out. Rent. Why? Real estate prices will fall and over time it's going to cause the fall and rent prices and you'll be able to rent at a cheaper price and you won't be owning an asset that's losing its value. You can sleep at night because the deleveraging will be most. I've said over and over again, deleverage, deleverage, de-leverage, de-leverage. Before the economy does, because once it does, it will force a lot of businesses and governments to de-leverage. The second thing is to focus on building a community, some kind of community. What I mean by that is where you can support each other and get you through this difficult time because you need to focus on what you can control. And the long wave is out of our control. It's a social cycle and it's just reflective human nature and the different aspects of it. It's not a fixed cycle.

This long wave is a lot of people being in economic winter for 20, 25 years. But the thing is, when the criticisms came, I criticized it and I said, well, wait a sec, are they wrong or this just has gone on longer? And then it was easy to figure out that they've extended it because they financialize it. And capitalism morphed into creditism. So the thing is, focus on what you can do and build a community. Where's the growth? Look at the industries.

Again, on the other side, we're going to have a shortage of work, and we're going to have to go through robotics and AI. I'm not fearful of it. That's where the productivity is gonna come from. And it'll be decentralized. So if you're looking at a business, probably wait, because you'll be able to buy places, they're cheap. And I think when the prices fall in factories and all that,

to house and produce goods, services locally will be the trend nationally. That will be the national trend. And that will lay the groundwork for the next boom into the future. The third aspect is, you know, how do you deal with the stress, with the change, right? And again, it's always still focusing on what you can control. You can't control the stupidity authority cycle that is going to peak soon. They're going to lose power. The public will not take this.

But you know what? It's just created destruction, as Sean Peter said, right? It works and it doesn't work simply because things change and technology is the biggest disruptor to this whole thing. And that's why when we saw the internet and the growth from the 90s, we knew at that point that it was gonna massively disrupt and it has, and now robotics and AI.

Man, like I'm always been an early adopter. This AI, you've got to get on board. It's disruptive, but it's OK. It's a productivity hat. And I just want to pass on what I've learned. Build your own. It is that use the paid services, but teach it. And teach it what you want.

And be careful. It does make errors, but I'm teaching it and it's putting out great stuff for me. And it's taking, you know, what would take me. years to get all the data. And I said, okay, find me all the data on Toronto Real Estate going back as far as possible. And I found all the data and I checked the sources and all that and it's a productivity hat that's off the roof. So get involved and it's really to survive and prosper during economic renter.

And I used the Kennedy's as a very powerful family. And that simply was because Joseph Kennedy saw the Great Depression coming and he actually tripled his net worth during the Great Depression, where most people lost their net worth. So if you know what to do, you can do well. A word of warning,

don't go around flashing your wealth and bragging. I learned that the hard way when I first called the first bubble in 2000 and I was ecstatic that after losing everything in 89, I saw the bubble and my clients said, well, my business, and all the advisors were jealous and envious. So in 2008, 2012 came along and said, yeah, things are really bad,

man. Oh, my clients, whatever. And I was doing the fabulously well, right? You know, there's just, human nature doesn't change. So I advise my wealthy clients to, hey, get a cheap car. Don't start flashing your wealth and whatever you did well. The few that are included, we're going to be the early ones that are aware of what's coming. And when the masses awake to what you and I understand, it'll be too late for them. They'll be panicking and they'll be trying to salvage what's left of the system. And that system, you know, politics will be the last thing to change in the end. But, you know, it's great news.

I mean, if you're young, you're going to see the most technological revolution in history. And if you take care of your health and look at stem cells and longevity, you know, you could be, your generation probably will be around to see this replicator. And wow, you know, that's a game changer to structure and society. I don't know how they do that, how you introduce that. But that's another point. You know, Joe, I always like having you on. You're welcome, of course, anytime you like. And for people who are listening for the first time to Joe tonight, you can find him at the

Econ Longwave on Twitter. But what else are you up to these days, Joe? Give people a few places they can read you, see you, hear you. The floor is all yours, buddy. Yeah, really. Because one of the things I have discovered this thing, you want to share, you just don't want to benefit yourself for the for wealthy, but I've made it so the average person, I have a sub stack account. And that sub stack account that's been growing, and it's really taken off now. And it's really to help people allocate capital. So people want to know what to do, including financial advisors, because these balance funds. So it's a combination

of what to do with the capital. That is it. And it's a model. And you work with your advisor, and the model's done extremely well, even though since its launch two years ago, it's 50% cash. That I can't tell people and it changes so what to do with the capital I'm not an advisor anymore. So it has to be general but That's where they can get the information from me It's it's to help them with Twitter and I think I might start doing videos again Just short ones just to educate people from a long-wave perspective because I know our audience, Joey, will be growing exponentially once the financial crisis hits. Then a lot of people will be coming out. But the most important thing, I want to leave it with people here, the long wave just gives you

the framework of what's happening. The crisis is not an accident. It wasn't preordained, whatever. It's just repeating. And unfortunately, Kondratov died for his suggestion that capitalism is going to come back bigger and stronger. That was his penalty. And he was a communist economist. So that's good news for the future. And yeah, subsec, if you want on Twitter, contact me and do it. Joey, I'd love it because

you're aware. And it's hard to educate an interviewer or talk to somebody where you got to start from the beginning, because the long wave is not an easy subject to articulate. Let me tell you that. You know, for people who haven't read Joe's stuff, I highly recommend it. The econ long wave on Twitter is a great place to start. The long con de con de trias long wave theory. I think it's got it goes by another name too, right? Joe, what is the other name it goes by? Well, it's the the kindred of cycle. Condraiteiv cycle. Condrativ cycle. There we go. Yeah. Condrativ. It's after Nikolai Condrativ. So

the reason why we mentioned his name is just in honor of him discovering, looking at the capitalist system that was over there, but he was living in communism and he, he came up with this thesis and it blew our mind because he realized it's a social cycle, but we call it the economic long wave to simplify it. So, Kondratyev, but it's just an honor of him, of his work as he was shocked by the gulags of Stalin. Capitalism will come back bigger and stronger after its collapse. He did forecast a collapse, but his greatest call was capitalism will come back bigger and stronger after its collapse. He

did forecast a collapse, but his greatest call was actually would come back stronger. And he was right. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Okay. I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. People who are listening, watching, thank you so much. Don't forget to like, subscribe, all that good stuff and we'll see you next time.