The Pomp Podcast - Why Bitcoin Will Crash Like Every Other 4 Year Cycle | Henrik Zeberg

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Henrik Zeberg is the Head Macro Economist at Swiss Block. In this conversation we talk about the macro outlook, K-shaped economy, inflation, a potential big tech bust coming, why the 4-year bitcoin cycle is not going anywhere, and why Henrik believes risk assets may be in trouble. ======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 270,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at: https://pomp.substack.com/======================Check out my NEW show for daily bite-sized breakdowns of the biggest stories in finance, technology, and politics: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://pompdesk.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠======================Bitizenship helps Bitcoin-forward investors gain EU residency and a path to Portuguese citizenship in five years while maintaining exposure to Bitcoin. Their regulated fund qualifies you for the Golden Visa through an operating company focused on Bitcoin-native innovation. Book a free strategy call at https://bitizenship.com/pomp.======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.======================TimeStamps:0:00 - Intro2:14 - Where are we in the macro cycle?10:41 - Are we getting a blow off top in risk assets?13:14 - Historical stock market valuations vs today26:36 - What happens in the next 12 months if we are in a bubble?30:01 - Is bitcoin 4 year cycle different this time?34:33 - Thoughts on where inflation is going38:29 - The framework for being a good investor for the next 10 years42:03 - What does the monetary reset look like?45:54 - How to prepare your investing portfolio

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months we're gonna see the non-farm payrolls getting worse and worse you'll see the blips up and down and then they'll be revised and so on and all of a sudden you'll see the stock market will put in the top it can be at a very high level and you can see the euphoria develop which is i think we're gonna see you think bitcoin go to 160 000 and you'll see people be euphoric and thinking okay i'm a billionaire or a millionaire or how much they will become and and everything is fine but that's actually not fine and it's not fine that the central banks are starting to ease because that they only do late phase and late cycle because they are always late and they can't save it what's going on guys today we got a great episode with henrik zeberg he is the head macro

economist at swiss block and this conversation is an absolute doozy we talk about the macro outlook we talk about the k-shaped economy inflation why he thinks a big tech bus could be right around the corner, why the four-year Bitcoin cycle, it ain't going anywhere, and why Henrik actually believes that people holding risk assets may not do so well in the coming months. This conversation is going to challenge a bunch of thoughts that you have about the market, about where we're going, about Bitcoin, gold, tech stocks, and much more. Make sure you watch the entire thing because he lays out a compelling argument, and I'd love to hear whether you agree with him or not. Here's my conversation with Henrik Zeberg. All right, Henrik, I thought a great place to start

this conversation. There's a lot of people who believe right now we are actually early in a macro cycle, that there's still plenty of room to run. It seems like you think that we are towards the end of a cycle, and actually people should be very cautious right now. What is the difference of opinion, and why do you think that maybe we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning? Well, first of all, because there's absolutely no indication that we are early. I mean, if you look at the one thing, when central banks are starting to ease, that they don't do in the early phase they do that in the late phase they do that because the economy starts to deteriorate if you look at the job numbers we just saw the correction also there

right now uh you don't see that kind of deterioration into an early phase you see that into a late phase if you look if you look at if you look at the consumer confidence you don't see these kind of level into a uh into a recovery so we are nowhere near an early phase and uh again it's the the the pieces of evidence are out there and if you look at it it's uh you also start to see the short-term yields declining uh and we have the topping if the long-term yields which is also not only what we see into a late phase so there's absolutely no no indication of an of an early phase here as i see it so one of the frameworks that i use is there's a natural market cycle and there's an artificial market cycle the natural market cycle is kind of what happens

when you have normal interest rate levels and people are kind of participating in the way that they normally would participate if humans weren't intervening in the market. As you mentioned, we get to a point where the central bank is going to ease and start to manipulate or stimulate the economy. That then kicks us into the artificial market cycle

because they essentially are trying to suppress interest rates. They are trying to stimulate that economic activity. Would it be fair to say that we're at the beginning of the stimulation phase, which could be prolonged? or do you think that actually when the central bank starts cutting in the way that they're talking about that means that the runway for the quote-unquote bull market or that this part of the cycle is still pretty short but you could just look into it this is what they had done before

if you look at 2001 and you look 2007 you saw significant stimulus as coming into the economy you saw n2 actually moving up quite strongly not just in 2007 and 2008 and 2009 but also into those years so if the things were so easy that we could just stimulate the hell out of it and we'll then get an economy that gets going you know why would we then have had the 2001 uh economic crisis not yeah you had a recession and also the the uh the great financial crisis of the 2007-2009 so there's i mean people are just not looking to what is really important here i mean the financial worlds they look to in the to the uh to the financial the financial worlds you know the the the earnings of the nvidia and so on and they look at the liquidity also but the real economy

is about mrs johnson in the us 15.6 percent of the u.s population is not able to put food on the table everybody is hurt by high rates high inflation and we see that job numbers are actually quite poor so when the real cycle turns rolls over then you can forget about liquidity liquidity liquidity can stem up the the tidal wave of the of the economy that is that is rolling over And that is what is happening right now. That is completely different from what we saw in 22, in 23, 24, 25, and also later or earlier, I mean, in terms of any kind of stimulus that's been coming out. This is 2007, where you have a significant structural gapping hole in the economy.

If you look to the housing market, it is at a standstill. You have the home sales, existing home sales that are at lower levels than when the population were 100 million people fewer in the U.S. So this is about the real economy versus what you have, what I call the liquidity thinking that as long as you get liquidity out there, everything will be fine. You can get a eureka moment. And I'm also talking about that you are not at the top yet.

And I see Bitcoin and I see other cryptos moving much higher here. But that's not the same as the real economy. And the real economy is rolling over at this point. And that is the problem. And I think people are not really understanding what this means. There's no indication of an early phase here. And the artificial plot can work for as long as you are in a deflationary environment. Remember, inflation has been reintroduced.

We now have people expecting inflation to go up. So if you're Mrs. Johnson now and you get $100 saving on your mortgage loan or whatever it is because of artificial thing, will you go spend that money immediately? Or would you actually save it for a rainy day having looked at yield rise, rate rise, and you looked at inflation and so on and so forth? I say that the time for the easy launch, free launch from the Fed and whatever is coming to an end. Will they try? Yes, they will. But they are not going to do it. They cannot sustain the tidal wave of the real economy.

And that's the problem. So what you're really describing here is kind of this K-shaped economy, right? you have people who own assets, who have been exposed to the stock market, Bitcoin, gold, et cetera. They've done very well. I think a lot of people think they will continue to do very well. You are talking about kind of this real economy or the lower part of that K, where there's a lot of people who either because they don't have assets or frankly, even if they do have assets, they still are struggling to put food on the table, afford mortgages, do kind of the everyday actions. Now, I think that there is an argument to be made where over the last five years in the

United States economy, we have had three different bear markets. Now, that is a stock market bear market. But during that period, we basically had two pretty catastrophic external shocks to the real economy. The first was COVID, which was, you know, hey, lock everyone at home and basically put the velocity of money down significantly. The second was this whole tariff thing where we saw companies definitely slow hiring. We saw people start to change their consumption patterns. There was a period of time where people were very, very worried. Does it have to be something that is catastrophic, that's external in terms of a pin popping this bubble in a way? Or can it be a slow grind into a market turning over and we end up in some sort of recessionary period,

but there's no one thing to point to that really is the catalyst to get us there? the real recession they don't come with a catalyst like what you described just here so we didn't have a recession when you talked about the tariffs there was not a recession it was a pullback and it was quite clear actually because if you look at the business cycles there were no evidence of a recession at that point and the leading indicators the coins that indicated were simply not you know we can we can uh weak enough to to get to that point which i also pointed out on x at that time if you look then to the situation around covet we actually had a slowdown before that so if you look at kovit the recession was the recession would have come

anyway what happened actually was in 19 sorry 2019 1918 you actually saw how yields were already declining and we had a recession indicator signal from the leading indicators um so that was a different case but what we're looking at is exactly as to say we don't need that kind of thing what was the real big thing back in 2007 in october when the market topped out and then people say, oh yeah, but that was the subprime. Guess what? You didn't have any big catalysts at that point. There wasn't anything in October of 2007. The market just topped out because what happened is that the environment gets so toxic that the consumer starts to spend less. And if you look at it, you'll actually see how the unemployment rate starts to move up, or not just the rate,

but the number of unemployed people starts to move up. You have a lot of leading indicators they're showing that things were actually you know unfolding in a bad bad way you also have the lead from the leading indicators you have uh yield inversions uh all over the place in 2007 uh 2007. so these are the things that you will see before a price is on fall you did not have that one yield inversion into 2022 into terror or into the terror situation so the situation is simply that you know we we don't need that catalyst as you talk about there for having recession um it is the environment that becomes toxic and that becomes a problem for the uh for the economy and all of a sudden the bubble bursts let's talk about uh the investor kind of economy

for a second you know really in these asset prices whether it's stocks bitcoin gold etc um i have seen you talk about this idea of like a blow-off top in risk assets talk through what is a blow-off top in risk assets, and do you think that's what we are setting ourselves up for through the end of this year? If you look at the S&P, just look at where we were in April and how far we have come since then. Look at where we were in 2022 and in October 2022, we were at $3,500. Look at the rate of the move we have seen since then.

This is, by definition, the blow-off top. If you look at how fast it's going it is unprecedented compared to what we have seen you know in previous times nasdaq is up 21 22 times since 2009 just think about it we have right now a market capitalization which is a 216 percent compared to 2007 where it was at 109 percent and in 2000 when we had the dot-com which was crazy bubble we were 136 percent 8 1929 we were 89 we are now three times on what we were in 1929 we are almost double what we had in in 2000 which was a crazy bubble so i don't know what people want to see we have a complete crypto market a whole crypto market where a long range of them are jokes but they are valued at extreme levels so people saying where is the

blow-off top well you're sitting right in it and it's i think go even more crazy so i'm talking 7500 on the s&p maybe even more crazy uh but we are getting closer to it and we're getting closer because you're seeing the real economy roll over. There's nothing, nothing remotely close to an early phase here. This is late phase, and you don't see a bubble like this. Look at NVIDIA compared to what you had back in the day, Cisco. Cisco was the greatest bubble in 2000. It is dwarfed by what we see in NVIDIA.

And then people come with the AI narrative and all that. This has come all over again, even on the housing market. If you look at the housing market, the housing index, shiller housing index is showing us that it shows us that we have a bigger bubble that we had in 2007 so that people are telling that this is early i mean just do not look to the facts so i can see how this can go on for such a long time and especially if you look at how you know underwater a lot of people are when it comes to the u.s economy what is it really that should bring them uh you know continue to consume here let's talk about um valuations because i do think that this

is pretty interesting. You mentioned that the stock market is three times higher in terms of the percentage than it was in 1929. I would argue the companies are 100x better than the companies then, both in terms of efficiency, productivity, performance, growth rates, all these different metrics. The companies today are much, much better, and therefore they should be valued at a higher rate they can grow faster they can drive more profits you know thinking of a facebook of an amazon the scale the speed uh of these businesses now i don't think this is related to the u.s economy because all of a sudden what you're saying is all of a sudden that the stock market will be three times as big because of that we have companies that you know just do better

i mean everything is relatively here what is then the top late what will be the top that i mean historically we haven't seen this above 75 to 85 and now we are 226 if you take the crypto market in we are 226 percent so so the historical average is like you know one third of where we where we are now and the tops in 2000 where we also had this narrative of all we have these fantastic companies we are you know moving in on doubling of that size so i just i just don't i just don't get the argument here really because it's always relative to an economy and uh you know well i I think that there's a couple of things that are at play, right? First of all, we have much more concentration because the businesses are better.

Like if you look at the top 10 companies in the U.S. economy, they're probably the 10 best companies ever constructed in human history, right? In terms of what they're able to do with the size of the team, the productivity, the revenue and profit. That doesn't mean we can't be in a bubble. That doesn't mean they can't go down in price. That doesn't mean that they can't be overvalued. Like all the things you're saying, 100% could be true.

But I'm just saying objectively, if you look at what these businesses have been able to do with the technology they have. It is unlike anything that we have seen previously. Now, with that said, I think that there's also this underlying technology component. And I am always trying to balance. I look at the data. I got a lot of smart people that work with us. They show me this data all the time. And I sit there and I say, like, I can see, hey, man, you don't gonna be Albert Einstein to see the chart is higher now than it was in 2001. That don't look good, right? At the same time, I can pick up my phone and I can press a button and Jeff Bezos is going to deliver me something by tonight. Or I can press a button on my phone and food's going to show up

in 20 minutes. Guess what? 1920s, right? You just had the electrification. You had the car coming out. Try to imagine, you could just turn the switch and you could then get light coming in your room or you could jump into something which has four wheels on it and automatically you'd start driving running you know going down the road without having horses in front of it so i imagine did that actually give you that you do we're not in a bubble at that time in 1929 it did not so the promise from a technology is not the same as you cannot have an overvaluation of things so what you're describing there is absolutely true but you have seen this before you could also see it in 2000 In 2000, we saw the internet coming out.

Did that not change the world? Completely, it did. We saw that all these fantastic ideas on how we could actually start to do trade. We could trade online. We could buy stuff online. Changed the world completely. I'm sitting from home working today because of the internet. Did that actually not turn into a bubble as well?

It did. So the technology by itself does not promise returns. It tells you that the world is going to be changed and it is changing, but it's not the same as saying we can now sustain artificial exuberance high levels. And that's what you're suggesting. No, I think there's two different things here. So one is the technology today, everything that you're describing, the internet, all these components, right, was basically technology that was helping from an individual perspective.

And if you go back and you look, how many of the companies were actually driving, you like the Facebook latest earnings report just blew my mind. You have a company that is valued trillions of dollars and is growing 20, 30% year over year. Revenue, profit, right? I mean, not like, hey, my user base is growing, which can be gamed and nonsense, etc. We are now seeing companies that are growing at a rate, given the scale that they have, we've just never seen before. And again, it goes back to, it doesn't mean that there can't be a bubble. It just means that it becomes very difficult. So one input for me in this like framework of trying to figure it out is, okay, we have a scale of company that is able to grow at a rate that we just have never seen

before. Is that mean that it's better or worse, overvalued? Not, not necessarily, but it's just like that as one input. The second thing is we now are seeing the dollar debased at an accelerated rate. So it used to be, you know, if you go back to 1971 to today, it's about 4% debasement annually since 1971. Since 2020, we have now seen the US dollar lose 29% of its purchasing power. So obviously, it is happening faster, which therefore should be pushing these valuations higher. Again, doesn't mean there can't be a bubble. But I try to think through like, there's all these inputs that are different than what we see. If you said the last one, the last one, if you just then go back to the Buffett indicator that

said if you have that that should influence everything in the economy which means that it will be should then you know equal out what's happening on the one side so if you say that everything is growing by four percent because of the dollar debasement well the entire economy should grow by that but because of that but that you're actually seeing this is happening just in a few companies and we have the concentration that we have should start to trigger our minds and say hey maybe something is wrong here and i don't give it i don't quite follow that you know in terms of the the productivity levels here i can tell you the productivity levels of getting electricity electrification back in the 1920s or the assembly lines were quite remarkable

and and it's just because we now like to say oh we can see this now and the the you know the money is flowing in what you have right now is that you have had the largest uh experiment in ever in terms of trying to stimulate through monetary easing this is an experiment yeah and with that you can see obviously that can push things up further and further to a certain to a breaking point but you cannot trade wealth if it was that easy you would simply at some point see that breakdown but until that moment goes you can actually see the things can just explode into you know you know valuations and so on because what happens by the end of the day is that they have been suppressing yields if you suppress yields you'll then see that your cash flow looks

fantastic because what you can get on the secure side in the bonds and so on you don't want to go there because who wants something that yields zero? So you go with the 1% or the 2%, which means you have a fantastic distortion of things. And then the narrative starts. What if we have this new thing coming called crypto or called AI? And then the whole narrative goes. We have seen it over and over and over. You saw it in the 1840s when you saw the railway coming out. I can tell you that was one thing that brought about productivity because now we could actually transport things from one area of the world to the other area of the world in the U.S. as well and in the U.K. But it was still a bubble and it burst. Technology does not guarantee returns.

It tells us that the world can change, but it also tells us that people will try to front run this with all sorts of arguments saying this time is different because this, this and that. We've heard it over and over. It was different in the 1840s. It was different in the 1920s. It was different in 2000. And it's different again now. I just say it's not. And the way that we, back in 2000, when we talked that this is new economy, and it's not about how much you actually earn, it's about how much you spent. That was one thing we also hold on promotion, on marketing, and so on. We just hear those narratives change. But the thing is, deep down, we see that the valuations are at extreme levels. And we have never seen them at these extreme levels here. And this time around,

You not only have a bubble in tech stocks, you have a bubble in the housing market and tech stocks. So this is 2000 and 2007 meeting each other on drugs. that purchases Bitcoin via a local company. That gives you exposure to Bitcoin while qualifying you for the golden visa and citizenship in just five years. Plus, here's what makes this a no-brainer. Bidicenship has the lowest fee structure

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Again, that's bitizenship.com slash Pomp. Go check them out today. So let's back up for a second. I agree, you know, the most dangerous words for this time, it's different. But I also think that there are things that are different, right, in terms of post-1971, obviously the dollar being debased, that's different.

Seeing the QE playbook that central banks roll out whenever there seems to be shakiness in the market or a downturn. That's different. How do you as an investor think through, there are certain things that are different. There are certain inputs that are the exact same. You look at a valuation chart. You look at some sort of a market call. How do you sift through all this information? How do you determine when to acknowledge the things that are different versus just say, hey, look, historic valuation levels, this is what they've been. If we're super elevated from that. We got to be near some sort of top. Human psychology will always be the

same. Human psychology will always be the same. We will always think that this time is different. This time we are wiser. That's the only thing that is really, I mean, that's the basis of everything. And of course, technology changes. And we will see that there will be lifts in the market because of all of that. I'm not discarding that at all. I'm saying AI is going to do the biggest change to the world that we have ever seen i mean ai is going to be fantastic it's going to change productivity levels and so on but the fact is when we look at data when we look at things and from the normal things that we always see the return to i mean people also training us in 2007 oh why why would we have a bubble in this in real estate we don't see that i mean the real estate

can't really drop on a national wide level actually could in the whole world we saw in 2000 the same thing we saw the the dot coms well it's now it's different this time it's about the internet you have to understand that you know the vast majority of these said these companies they do not exist any longer webman pet shop whatever they were called they don't exist they were darlings of the the the wall street back then and uh and and also often of the media they everybody talked about that i think it was 16 or 18 of those the commercials that were in in the super bowl in 2000 they were actually not existing uh a year later so so you know this is the moment where your euphoria is big it's because we have seen all this money coming in and then we

think it can go on forever but if we think that liquidity can drive things why did weimar what republic all of a sudden have you know big inflation and i have you had a uh your crush of their uh the stock markets why is zimbabwe not a thing all of a sudden why are all these countries that have been so you know just pouring money into their economies not doing well because money cannot be printed yes or you get wealth cannot be printed you can print money but you can't print wealth and there's a difference between that there will be an artificial period where you'll see people think this is wealth and it's going to be here forever and people will flock into more and more risky assets until the bubble bursts so this is what we see again

let's say that you are right here right um what do you think plays out over the next 12 to 24 months what walk me through kind of okay we're overvalued we're in a bubble the bubble will pop at some point what happens what is your kind of base case right now so right now we're seeing that the environment has been very um toxic i would say and the toxic is when you look at the real economy which is the consumer talking about again as i said 15.6 percent in a new study shows that you know 15.6 percent of the u.s population is not able to provide to get food on the table which is a severe problem that's bigger than going into the financial crisis which i was at 13 percent when you look at the yield levels that people have the rates that people are paying

right now if you look at the housing market the existing homes sold it is as i said earlier it is at very low levels at 4 million units sold in in in 24 and it's at this point it's a little lower than that and in a population that is now 100 million bigger than when we've you know earlier saw 4 million so things are at a standstill you have you have affordability index it's down the gutter it's lower than in the 1990s it's uh it's when we need to go back to the 1980s where it was really a bad time um you know these are the things this is the real economy and everybody seems to think about what nvidia and you talked about facebook or meta meta and so on these are the things that are being driven by liquidity and that is the big schism here will liquidity by the end

of the day drive it or will it be the real economy and what i'm a proponent of is that the real economy is rolling over that's a hundred percent you know you can look at all the indicators look at the non-farm payrolls revision today that is not a good thing you have had in may you had a standstill almost already in in non-farm payrolls in may june july the same this is not a good thing so the economy is you know and what will happen well at some point you're going to see that there will start to see that the economy is rolling back and that will be on the labor market you start to see negative numbers coming out and what the fed will do is that they will try to stimulate it at some point they will be late and they will see that they cannot do it because by

the end of the day we have to understand the only thing that will help if if is if the the consumer start to spend more? What should they spend if 15.6% can't put food on the table? And why should the companies start to hire people in? They have overcapacity at this point. The capacity utilization in the US right now is at 77%, which normally, when it goes below 80%, you'll see that they start to lay off people. Where should the money come from? Then we say the Fed. Well, as I said, mrs johnson now she saves 100 bucks on the on her mortgage loan will she go out and say okay i'm gonna spend this having seen inflation having seen yields go up having seen maybe her neighbor getting laid off or her husband or whatever and then she says you know what i'm not only going to spend

this one i'm going to borrow an extra hundred dollars and then i'm going to go spend those two putting myself into more debt when she's already more in debt than she's ever been before there's nothing that supports the argument that QE can actually keep supporting an economy and the economic growth, especially when you start to see it really coming into the real part of the economy, which is the consumer, and that we do now. We haven't seen that earlier. I was not one of the guys talking about recession in 22, or 23 for that matter. I said no, not this time, because we still have the cycle still moving higher,

but now it's rolling over. And in the next few months, we're going to see the non-farm payrolls getting worse and worse you'll see the blips up and down and then they'll be revised and so on and all of a sudden you'll see the stock market will put in the top it can be at a very high level and you can see the euphoria develop which is i think we're gonna see you think bitcoin go to 160 000 and you'll see people be euphoric and thinking okay i'm a billionaire or a millionaire how much they will become and and everything is fine but that's actually not fine and it's not fine that the central banks are starting to ease because that they only do late phase and late cycle because they are always late and they can't save it and you saw that in 2001 you see in 2007

we've seen it every time we had late phase late cycle they are late you mentioned bitcoin um if the four-year cycle holds then the market top would be in q4 of this year right about 18 months post having um you have a strong q4 we've seen this time and again um there is an argument that the ETFs, the digital asset treasury companies, all these market changes, the introduction of Wall Street has changed the four-year cycle, that that is no longer going to be a thing. Bitcoin should continue to grind up so you won't get these blow-off tops, but you also won't get the 80%, 85% drawdowns. What do you say to that? This time is different, first of all, which is not so that i don't buy that it's the narrative we hear all the time we hear it again and again

this time is different and then like something comes up and then we see that it's not different the the cycle you know probably holds and i think you know within the next 50 days you could probably see a top of the bitcoin and it could be a much higher level as i said then where we are now but i also see that the business cycle rolling over at this time so that's quite different and i think that what i see technically in bitcoin that this is a massive top you have here this not a cyclical top this is a secular top in bitcoin which means that we are at you can see it's crashing to much much lower levels than most people can understand so this about that this time is different with the etfs and all that take the dot com you know narratives and put it in and put

the digital you know sprinkle on it and you have the narratives of today it's really about the real economy the real economy is rolling over and i cannot emphasize that more when it does that there's no going back the risk assets and and bitcoin is a risk asset will crash so if you're gonna see bitcoin is going to have a you know a very good time for the next few weeks here until the top and you know also with the cycle and then i think it's going to be a really really bad you know asset to hold for um for the next few years and then we'll have to see uh because i can only see down the road that the fed will come in back in again but if you look at it what they have done is as i said before they have reintroduced inflation what why what do i mean about that

if you look at a chart a 10-year yield chart over the next for the last 100 years you can see how the cycle goes up and down and up and down in terms of yields which follows inflation and if you look at it you can actually see momentum wise that it shifts in three phases so from the 20s until the 70s you can actually after the second world war into the 70s you had an inflationary trend. Then Volga came out and you had a deflationary trend. And now we are actually at the bottoming end of this. And we see that we have a significant shift in the momentum. That's why the Jeff Gong blacks and so on are telling us that they're going to short the bond market. Because in the long time frame here, they see that yields will go higher. If that happens,

you are in a completely new setup from what we've seen over the last 5 to 10 years. You are now in an inflationary environment. I mean, just think about what our grandparents would say or our parents would say back in the 70s if you said you know what every time the economy rolls over we'll just just a tiniest bit we'll just sprinkle some liquidity on it a lot of it actually and more and more and everything will be fine you know what they will tell us they will say to us you know how can you do that you'll get inflation why why would you do that then you'll get inflation you'll crush the consumer even more and this is what people do not understand that's really what is different this time is that we have reintroduced inflation with the stimulating into COVID in a

crazy manner when the supply chain was actually breaking down. That was the inverted FOLCO moment, which reintroduces inflation on a secular basis. And in that world, you cannot sprinkle liquidity on everything and just get a better outlook. So I think you're going to see the Fed come in and then they will try to do the same thing again, but they're going to find out that the free lunch is over the free lunch is over now there's inflation that actually will kick up not immediately they may do as this bounce in the market and the euphoria may come out for some time but in the longer time frame i think you're going to see something that is much much worse and that is an economy that is not reacting to stimulus because mrs johnson there she doesn't go she

doesn't go and borrow that hundred dollar extra and that means that the stimulus packages on the qe side will not help they will not be as stimulative and they will not really help to turn the economy. But what we'll see is that the money that starts to be injected will start circulating faster, and that creates inflation. That is why you. What is your base case for where inflation could go? Right now, government numbers are just under 3%, 2.5%, 3%. Something like trueflation has it down around 2%. We obviously were at 9% during COVID. Which kind of the thought process or trajectory for that inflation number but they i mean they are on a decline right now that's that's what happens when you have the leading indicators the coincident indicators so

when the real economy rolls over you'll see then inflation drops as well that's why they're going to drop and they're going to drop a lot because if you look at also inflation and you look into what we had in 2001 2007 and also before that when fed was stepping back in inflation levels were at much much higher levels actually in in 2007 we were at 2.7 percent in september 2007 and then it moved up and the fed started stimulating aggressively and they did that in an inflationary environment right now we are already seeing that the fed has squeezed inflation from at this point on so i think they are so late in this what they do now and that that you're going to see a deflationary face but they're going to come out with their guns blazing and i can tell you they're

want to come out big this time because when they start to face that what they should have seen long ago when they were asked on a fed presser there was one you know intelligent journalist they're actually saying so how why is it that you know the the consumers are not really you know agreeing with you when it comes to you know how great the economy is back you know six months ago and he was saying yeah but it's because of the tariffs and so on this you know kind of thing what you really were saying that the that he didn't understand that the consumer is everything and he needs to understand that when the consumer is bad the economy is going to not feeling well he's in the consumer's going to the economy is going to turn bad that is what we see now the

slow phases of that so i think you'll see inflation uh dropping a lot this um you know the next few months here we don't have an inflationary problem that is so spoken up we have a deflationary pressure that is quite significant look to housing and and to to rental and so on these are the big stuff and i like what stuflation is what they do and then you'll see the fed come out and they reintroduce because you have now a new cyclical or secular bull market in that you've got to see inflation come back up again and it's going to go much much higher the next decade so everything we know about investing that we learned over the last 10-15 years has to be reshuffled and we need to understand that we are now in the late 1940s and we need to look into a world that's going to be

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Head to zappobank.com forward slash pomp to learn more. That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K.com forward slash Pomp. Go check them out at Zappobank.com slash Pomp today. If you were talking to, I don't know, a child and you were to explain, okay, here is the framework that you need for the next 10 years to be a good investor. What does that worldview or that perspective look like? Are there like two or three key principles that you're paying attention? You mentioned higher inflation over the next decade.

You mentioned this idea of the economy not responding to the stimulus that once it did respond to just what are some of those things that you think are kind of critical understandings to be able to navigate what's coming for the next 10 years? I think it's critical that we study and understand what you had to where you had to invest if you were in the 1940s. First of all, we're not going to we still have the big shakeout thing. So we're not really in that the 1950s phase, but but coming that big shakeout that I think we're going to see in the markets and so on. you'll have to study what you should have been investing in in the 1950s when you had an economy that was starting to grow again. But we are not really there. That's why I think the whipsaw effect of what we can see now

is going to be quite difficult to navigate in. I think you're going to see now the blow-off top. Everybody will be a genius because they are long Bitcoin or long something, some crypto. And then they will realize that there is a top to these things and they can actually crash quite a lot. a lot of people will be not so happy about that and you can see yields coming down strongly in the deflationary phase the dollar strengthening to extreme highs i mean i see in that phase the

dollar hitting 117 on the dixie uh 120 even um so so it can be it'll be very a lot of headwind and then you'll see the fed coming in trying to crush the dollar and they will be very very very successful and then you'll see it'll be completely different so it depends on where you're on these phases and the the first phase the first inflationary phase is not going to be you know years that's what i'm talking about i'm talking about six nine months but it's going to be severe but the next phase when they come in they'll step in and the stagflationary part which is when inflation starts to move up and the stimulus is not sorry when inflation starts to move up and and uh stimulus doesn't really work well that is the phase which will be very

difficult for a lot of people and the only thing you can will you know that really will do well there is is hot assets it's uh it's commodities it's uh gold and silver at that point uh which may not do so well in the deflationary phase and then we need to see what happens after because i cannot see how this ends without a monetary reset at some point where they simply you know clean up this mess that we have right now in terms of you know money printing crypto all over the place and speculation about you know what will be the next foundation for the global finance system financial system and so on you know it will not just be left up in the air it cannot because by the end of the day we need a sound monetary system to build things on 1944 was the turning point after

the second world war that was you know ballooning and so on we needed a stable foundation the us came out said hey you know we have half the production of the world we have half the uh the the gold reserves hi uh you know you you will be able to um take our you know dollar bills and you can transfer them into or convert them into gold any day you want uh that was the stability That was what the world was looking for. So we could use that to trade and to go forward. That kind of cleanup is needed before we really see the world starting to grow in a real manner again. Because what we've seen over the last many years are stimulated growth.

Now, let's pump money into it. Stock prices goes up. What's not to like? Well, look at the consumer. They don't like it. And that's the real problem. You mentioned a monetary reset. And I do think it's pretty interesting.

you know there's been multiple times throughout uh society both globally and domestically um there's obviously brent woods and you know many of the things that kind of bitcoin and gold community talk about but there's also a time in america uh well before that where pretty much anyone running around with a money printer created their own currency and there was you know local currency state currencies or as um you know private illegal currency i mean just there it was chaos yeah kind of sounds like crypto a little bit right like there's an element of like not a little a lot i think yes yeah like anyone can create a coin right and so like it was you know all this stuff going on we eventually figured it out and there's plenty of critiques

of the system but i do think that everyone kind of like got on the same page and was like all right like the dollar is the national currency it's illegal to create one that competes with it inside you know the united states here's how the dollar is going to interact with on a global basis these other national currencies whatever what does the monetary reset that you see look like going forward or like if you were in charge what would that be well first of all we need to stabilize we we cannot have a system where where if you know the the basic of all of this would be we need trade to get uh you know to start working again we need to have trade amongst you know trading partners of the world we need to have a stable

functioning uh currency system that the people trust and will you know hold because they know it's not just going to be printed into infinity um and and so there needs to be some you know checks and balances on that that we have completely and i agree with you since 1971 it just you know completely left that off and i think we could maybe see even a worse uh situation if you know we get now a close connect between the u.s administration and the fed chairman and there's not this disconnect between it which could be in the air and coming into next year um so we need clean it up completely agree with that and the thing i would say would be deep down it would be about gold and i think that is the reason why you see the asian economists of the world you know

they they buy it up bigger right now they they understand where this is heading to they at some point will have to say show me yours and i'll show you mine and then we'll look at you whose pile is the biggest and they will you know agree on some kind of system that where where gold will be kind of a backing into it maybe in terms of how you know the leverage or how much the the weight of certain countries should be because nobody actually likes the apart from us in the western world we've been thriving on the u.s hegemony but but the rest of the world the british countries and so on they don't like it uh and uh and it's also been misused i could from their point of view i mean we have been benefiting it from here in denmark so i'm not complaining but but it's um

but but it has been misused we have to be honest about that and that's why i think you're going to see if we're going to bind up the you know collect or combine the world uh you you will see the sea it reset which has a digital component to it and then gold down beneath and then the checks and balances in terms of how we trade with each other will be the digital part but there will be gold actually showing how much is your currency then you know a part of that of that scale and then you'll see that there'll be a new global reserve currency that you know has this this will be a basket of something i think that is the that's the future and it will have a digital component the component because that will be the way where you can start working trading with people in

foreign countries without being too you know when it's not so difficult any longer you just you know the checks and balances of who owns what and where the dollar went and did not go will all be in the in the letter in the bit in the blockchain and and i think that is what we need to get to that is that that is the the real end scenario of this that when we have that then we can see things are starting to grow again after the Bretton Woods and we had a stable monetary system because we definitely do not have a stable currency system at this point. The last thing I want to talk to you about is either your portfolio or like a model portfolio. There's a lot of volatility and uncertainty that seems to be coming. It's hard to navigate because there's assets, there's

timing, but there's also kind of these unknown potential levers that can get pulled from politicians and central bankers. And you know that they have the tool in their toolbox, but you don't know when they're going to use them or how severely they're going to use them. And so, you know, COVID was a great example, like two emergency rate cuts down to zero, game board changed real fast and you had to figure out, you know, what you were doing. How are you positioning or talking to people about positioning their portfolio to be prepared to kind of navigate some of this, knowing that it will change through the scenarios,

but like, what does it look like today? So there's one thing, what I do myself, I know how I personally handle my own funds and then also how we talk to clients and what we say. And also, again, what people that has bigger fortunes, like, you know, Warren Buffett, he does it, you know, he's been pulling his money out and he's in a record, you know, cash position,

you know, compared to his assets. So I think it depends on, you know, how risk adverse you are. And I would say that navigating, as I said, in this whipsaw kind of environment where you can get first a blow off top and deflationary bust and the Fed comes in and all these deflation maybe also, you know, it'll be so difficult. So there may be some will say, well, you know, I want to ride it out. What should I do? Then probably if you ask me that, which one, which, you know, should I just buy now? Hold on to, I will say gold. even though I think gold has had a big pullback in a deflationary bust.

But in the five centennious timeframe, I'm not, I wouldn't be worried. It would be gold. And you could just look at the SPX versus gold, actually. It's now breaking down. We've only seen four times in history, 1929, 1971, and 2000. And now it does it again. But that's for another day. So you have these, but there will be less.

sometimes you know just having cash would also be good and just having is just having a zero on your minus the inflation of course so you know it will be uh deflated away to a certain degree but but just having cash could be a good situation for some people so it depends on their risk you know risk appetite there mine personally well i have a lot of risk assets here because i think i will still be able to pull it out in a you know a good time i don't think we have the top no anywhere near the top here i've seen time wise closing in but the final phase of it can be so steep that most people will not you know really understand how steve it can be um so i i think i'll be selling into that other people may find it right to to take the chips off the table now

um would i be in any kind of anything that is related to crypto absolutely not absolutely not I mean, Bitcoin has crashed four times by more than 73%, while Nasdaq was down 18%, 20%, 25%, 30%. Bitcoin was just crushed. If I see a tech bubble, and there is a clear tech bubble here, and we're going to see the Nasdaq declining by 85%, just like what we saw in 2001, and this bubble is bigger, I wouldn't be in that. So I think people would need to be careful here in terms of what they see with Bitcoin. And if you look at the long-term chart also, you can see that there's a clear divergence on the weekly, which tells us that a bigger top is coming for Bitcoin.

Not here. I think it's going much higher. So it will be a difficult landscape to navigate in. One asset would be gold if you had to hold it on through it all. If not, well, some cash would be good as well. And maybe even hold the dollar. i might personally i'll be going long on the dollar as much as i can and when i see i think the top is in because i think there is a you know shortest of dollars the moment you start to see deflationary bus going and the restructuring processes and so on will simply demand dollars

to get settled so that will send the dollar up strongly and uh and then after that well it'll be commodities and and gold and and silver and you know the likes because it's uh it's it will be in in a time of stagflation where you see these out-assets will start to perform really well. What would have to be true for you to change your mind? And you say, you know what?

I thought this was going to happen. I thought this, you know, kind of correction was going to happen. I don't think that anymore. Is there anything that, like one thing you could point to or is it just a collection of data points that would all have to improve?

I have a, yeah, I have my, the business target model that I have It's not just based on one thing. So that would be the weakness of anything. If it was dependent on one thing, then everything would collapse. So it's dependent on quite a set of things that we need to change. First of all, you need to see that the yield levels, the rates are coming down quite strongly because people simply cannot afford the yield levels that we have right now.

At the same time, we cannot see that businesses start to lay off people. so if we can really get the soft landing which we by no means have at this point because in the unemployment numbers are still rising nice and steadily i'm not talking the ratio because there are the rate because that is also inflict affected by the um the sorry the job market's participation but if you're looking at a number of people unemployed it's moving up nice and steadily and that could stop and we could see the yields coming down then i would say okay this this may be different um then i would think also we would need a healthy pullback in the in the stock market still because i don't think we are anywhere near we haven't seen anything that is healthy at this

point we have seen extreme rallies so a healthy pullback and um well then maybe but it's really about down to the real consumer uh to get them back in the game to see the to see the housing market starts to actually accelerate or just you know move up from the gutter affordability moving up then things could change but i just don't see see how that can happen without a bigger bust and i actually think we are already the titanic has hit the iceberg there's not much to be done at this point i think that's a great place to leave it the titanic has already hit the iceberg if you don't know what happens go watch the movie uh henrik thank you so much for uh for your time where can we send people to find you and find swiss block as well well go to at henry

Sieberg on X or to SwissBlock.net. You can also find us there and yeah, reach out if there's any suggestions. I always like a good chat or a good conversation with if you have your, if there are good arguments. So thank you for today as well also. Absolutely. I think that you're going to be requested to come back with the thoughts and insights you brought today. So I appreciate it very much and we'll definitely do it again in in the future. Thank you.