The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Faces Massive Macro Shift As Global Chaos Worsens!
Episode Date: March 30, 2026Bitcoin may be entering its biggest macro shift yet as cracks begin to form across the global financial system. Rising U.S. debt, weakening demand for Treasuries, and over $300 billion in unrealized b...ank losses are signaling growing stress beneath the surface, while geopolitical tensions and the risk of an oil shock add even more uncertainty. At the same time, regulatory confusion in Washington and shifting leadership are creating additional volatility for crypto markets. The big question is whether this environment leads to short-term downside—or sets up the long-term case for Bitcoin as confidence in traditional systems continues to weaken.
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Bitcoin is facing a massive macro shift as global chaos worsens.
I think that everybody agrees that the situation in Iran right now is a bit of a quagmire
and that markets hate uncertainty.
And we have more uncertainty seemingly than ever.
In fact, the uncertainty index for the world is at the highest by many, many multiples.
It's ever been in the history of all time.
We're going to break down everything that's happening in the macro and what it means, of course,
for Bitcoin with Dave, Mike, and James. Let's go.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Macro Monday, where we argue about the infinite
supply of Bitcoin on a daily basis. I've got Dave and James here so far. Mike's like the most
popular commodity analysts on the planet. It's like the Super Bowl with a war in Iran right now.
So every time we have a show, he's like, I just got to jump off for radio for 15 minutes.
So Mike's going to be joining us in a little while, which means it's up to us to do the morning meeting.
I guess this is the morning meeting.
It's too bad because I wonder how he explains how, you know, explains gold and what's going on there.
But, you know, we'll get to it.
I'll leave that.
I'll leave my poking him until he comes back.
I mean, this is interesting, actually.
I'm just going to tell you right now.
I mentioned this before the World Uncertainty Index.
here.
You know, like, I don't know how they measure this, to be honest.
But the World Uncertainty Index just hit $105,000 the highest level in recorded history.
I mean, when you look at COVID, it's been dwarfed.
And this just keeps going up.
I mean, doesn't this single image just kind of tell you everything you need to know about
the confusion in markets right now?
I think that's exactly right.
I mean, like, there are certain things that make sense-ish, you know, it makes sense-ish
that gold and Bitcoin would be going higher.
frankly, the absolute levels make no sense.
And the reason we know that is the only thing,
there's only one thing that's not uncertain.
There's only one thing that's not uncertain.
And that's that when you do it,
when there's massive destruction and disruption,
governments are going to need to print money
to extend the debt that is out in every single, you know,
major economy.
It's the only thing we know.
And so the denominator is going to change.
And that, as a result, should mean that all of the things being equal, that assets that are
denominated in dollars or yen or euros are going to be higher in nominal terms, they don't have
to do a damn thing.
That's the only thing we know, Scott.
So then the sole question is, what do we not know?
Well, lots of stuff.
We don't.
Right?
We don't know what's going to happen with oil prices.
I mean, oils over West Texas is over 100.
Brent said 114 right now.
But if you listen to various people who talk about the, you know, what the importance of the straits and what a protracted closure of the straits would be, it should be at 150 by now.
Right.
That's just truth, right?
You know, that's what people were saying a week ago.
They're saying we'd be at 150 if the straits stay closed and have no prospect of opening.
Well, guess what?
A week later, the straits are still closed.
No prospect of opening, or at least so we're being told.
And so yet oil is more or less where it was last week.
And within that, it proves one point, a point that I make and hammer,
and every one of our listeners should just tattoo this to the inside of your eyeballs if you're trading.
And that is markets move based upon surprise and what is differing from your expectations.
So if your expectations a week ago were the straits were going to be closed and assets weren't going to move that much
because we were waiting to see what happens next,
then don't be surprised when assets don't move that much, right?
If on the other hand, you think,
oh, well, this piece of news that everybody knows
is going to make me rich because I'm going to figure it out first,
that's how come you over-leverage and die when you're wrong.
And so it's all about what is the difference of what people expect.
That's what's my thought this morning.
Well, it's something that's interesting about all this, too,
you know, we've talked about quite a bit about how oil price is rising.
You know, that's the largest input for every single unit of production and
distribution of any product around the world, right?
And that in and of itself drives inflation, puts the Fed in a terrible position because
now they've got an inflation problem at the same time that, you know, you've, you've,
you possibly are going into economic downturn.
And so by raising rates, it doesn't really help the, you know,
you don't need to create demand destruction.
Oil rising in and of itself is going to create demand destruction.
And that's kind of now what we're seeing in the market today is,
oh, well, this conflict is going to be so bad.
And the oil prices rising like this is so bad,
it's going to create demand destruction around the world.
So now you're you're seeing rates react the other way saying, well, it's got now we're over the ski tips that a little bit of rise in energy pricing is bad for prices.
But a massive rise and prolonged rise is bad for demand.
And that's demand destruction.
That's kind of what the market's telling you today.
And quite honestly, you know, nobody knows anything.
I mean, we'll get a new tweet in the next three hours and we'll, and we'll, and we'll,
see where we're headed.
And then we'll get another tweet in five hours and we'll be in another direction.
So there's no making sense of it.
And that's just reality at this point.
And if you think that you're geopolitically, you're geopolitical expert enough to understand what's
going on in the streets, I mean, well, God bless you because I'm not smart enough.
There's not one of those.
This situation is so complex.
What's that?
There's not a person on the planet who can make that claim right now, as you,
said because the situation is so fluid. I mean, I don't even want to dive into the politics. And James,
I actually want to dive in your newsletter. But, you know, President Trump says the U.S.
is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations
in Iran. Right. So right. Meta's word. Maybe that's true. Obviously, then Iran says we didn't even
come to the table in Pakistan, right? I don't know who's telling the truth. But in the same statement
says, you know, we're going to blow up and completely obliterate all their electric generating platforms
loyal wells, cargo island, possibly all these solidization plants if we don't come to a deal.
Right? And I think if you look at the evidence separately, it's very unlikely with Iran's demands and our demands that there's a deal to be made in the short term.
So, you know, which one of those scenarios, I guess, is more likely. Once again, you can see why the uncertainty index is where it is.
But I want to go back to Dave. You said, obviously, that the only thing we know is that they're going to print a hell of a lot more money. I think we all generally agree on that.
But interestingly, you know, James, you wrote about this, this weekend, absolutely amazing newsletter. But your inspired chart here was, you know.
I inspired myself.
Yeah.
You inspired yourself this time.
That was great.
But Fed Fund great.
Right.
So, like, listen, we had the Trump administration
pulling out all the stops to try to force Powell's hand to cut rates.
Right.
And our base case pre-war was that once Warsh, first we didn't even know it would be Warsh.
But whoever came in and then that person was named Warsh would largely be a puppet who would,
you know, bend to the will of the administration and would cut rates.
Nobody's expecting that.
anymore, right? And this isn't the form of money printing maybe that we'd be looking for in a
fiscally dominated environment, but it's not going to come from the Fed right now. No. And that's,
you know, the problem is that one chart right there just shows the flip of the rates. So that was
upside down just two weeks ago. And now you had the Fed come out and kind of blink and say,
wait, we will not really, not blink. They kind of came out in stonewalled and said, we're
we're not going to touch rates and we don't know when we're going to touch them again and the entire
market said oh god they're worried about oil prices oil prices drive you know the prices of goods up
so are they going to raise rates and now you've got a you know basically a 30-something percent chance of
a rate raise it's down this morning but you know that's just two weeks it flips but okay that's
great and and that everybody can get it kind of a sense that oh well interest rates going up that's
great for the economy right but then you've got just imagine just imagine being this new treasury
secretary scott besent and he was highly critical of janet yellen as he was coming into office as
was i and other people that she didn't term out the debt and what do i mean by that what i mean
is she had a chance to take the all this debt that was maturing
while she was the Treasury Secretary and term it out, meaning issue longer and longer
dated debt, 10 year, 20 year, 30 year debt, and lock in basically ZERP, just of 1 or 2%
rates for 10, 20, 30 years.
And did she do that?
No.
She issued T bills.
And then so you say, and right after the historical, you say, and right after the historical
historic almost $6 trillion of printing that they did, which was going to obviously cause
inflation.
You'd say, well, they didn't know that.
And, you know, she didn't know that that was going to happen when they printed the money.
And the answer is yes, she did.
She was the chair of the Fed herself.
She knows how this all works.
You know, it wasn't like, oh, well, you know, you're going to be a backseat driver here.
And, you know, I said 20 and all that.
What's that?
My 11-year-old knows how that works.
She came on one day from school.
She was like, they give us these bucks at school that are for rewards for things,
but they just keep making more of them and giving to us.
Right.
So they're not worth anything.
Right.
So you need more of them to get anything you want.
You need more stickers to get the, you know, the extra snack at, you know, playtime.
But the thing is, here's where Scott then comes into office.
They had been lowering rates, right?
Like started lowering rates right at the election.
And then he's like, well, we're going to, we're going to term out this debt like Janet should have.
But he hasn't gotten the chance because rates have stayed above, you know, the long term,
stayed basically above 4% this whole time.
And now it's, it's creeping back toward 5%.
And if you're Scott percent watching all this, what are you thinking?
You're like, this is impossible.
I mean, I'm not, I mean, I've got not just the.
Then you've got the wall of debt that's coming, that's, that's maturing this year.
So I've got a little chart there, if you want to bring that back up, Scott.
And if you've got the paid version up, but, you know, there's a wall of debt that is coming due.
Okay, just that it's the next chart, I think.
And, and so it's $9.7 trillion right there.
It's $9.7 trillion that, that is maturing this year in U.S.
treasuries and that's you know that's that's the that doesn't include intergovernment treasuries so this is
just the uh u.s public side this is showing you about 30 trillion dollars of debt but there's nine
trillion more that doesn't show up on in these uh charts but so that's coming due and then on top of
it don't forget because we're so good at managing money here in the united states that we also have a
two trillion dollar deficit that we're running on top of this
plus you've got the debt that's coming to do next year, 2027.
So when you add just looking at this year alone, though,
with Trump wanting to spend another,
looks like $500 or $600 billion on defense this year,
you're talking about a total of $12 trillion that they have to refinance this year.
12 trillion.
And that's a third at this point.
Yeah.
And so now you're talking about with every,
half a percent of rise in interest rates, you're talking about $100 billion more of interest that
you're going to be paying on this debt. I mean, this is just, it's a problem that's not going away.
This is why, you know, Lynn Alden posts almost weekly that nothing stops his train. Like,
this is, like, there is, please, if you have, if you can figure it out and you tell, you tell me how we're
going to stop this. Throw it in the comments here. And let's give Scott some ideas because I don't have any.
There's a public good. You know, the modern monetary theory is that's not really a debt to anyone.
So, you know, it's right. Right. Yeah, it's fine. But get into your point of the, of the, of the, you know, the extra stickers at playtime.
What do you do now? You've got, you've got this debt that if you do, if you do, if we do, if we
do have prolonged high rates. What is the answer? The answer is obvious. It's where everybody's
been talking about this in Japan for decades. You know, they've been doing this. We're turning
Japanese, meaning we're going to yield curve control. And it's not an if. It's just a matter of
when and how they do it and how obvious it is. What acronym do they put on it? You know,
what fancy title do they put on it? But they're going to be out there buying bonds to
keep that long rate from going higher.
Yeah, that's, that's our, that's, that's, look at the annual interest payments.
That's because, you know, Janet didn't turn out, turn out the debt and we're running deficits
on top of it.
It's not all her fault, but we're running.
So remember, the treasurer's just doing the bit of our, you know, defunct Congress,
but that's, that's where we are.
So is this doom and gloom?
No, this is telling you exactly what we've been saying all along.
is that you better own some assets in this.
You know, you have to own things like gold and Bitcoin
that can't just be printed and inflated away.
You know, you've got to, you've got to own something that,
and you don't want to be holding long term.
You don't want to be holding long term treasuries
because you're going to lose on that, you know, on that trade
on a negative real return.
Guys, I found it.
Yeah, let's see.
Seriously, Senator Warren.
Oh, there it is.
Yeah.
We just get back to rich people.
For the 50 members of Congress are joining me.
It's time for the government to start working for American families, not just the alterits.
I mean, it's just pennies, guys.
It is all I could say, Scott, is everyone should go reread or read Atlas shrugged.
And when you read that book and you understand, and for those who have never read it,
it's Ayn Rand's Tour de Force.
Effectively, it's about a world.
I like a town head better.
for being real, but yeah, I think, yeah.
Well, but as a novel, yeah, but Atlas Shrug is the kind of thing that makes you angry when
you're reading it because you see, and it's obvious that people like Elizabeth Warren,
although in the book the character is called Wesley Mooch, but it could literally be Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren and AOC.
They would literally be in the book.
And she chronicles how their constant stupidity effectively destroys innovation, destroys the
the people who were making the economic output and the country completely falls into total
disrepair. And, you know, of course, in that book, there's this thing called Galtz Galtz
where all the smart people move. Modern day Galtz Gulch is, you know, is that people move
to other places and or potentially use Bitcoin and or whatever. But, you know, it is, it is amazing
how you could be as dumb as Elizabeth Warren's policy proposal. So let's just understand that. Just do the
map. They never pass anyways. No, it'll never pass.
pass and it's not constitutional, but it doesn't matter. The fact that the person who literally was
the most important person in the previous administration in the conduct of economic policy
is proposing to tax 2% a year on, you know, pretty much any business, because $50 million is
any business, right? You know, do you understand that in the, first of all, what is that? Bring that.
Bring that business, it's your wealth. It's a wealth. It's a wealth. It's a share. It's a
share of wealth. Every penny you own over $50 million. That's what I'm saying. So any family
business will be, you know, any business all of a sudden, you're going to be selling 2% of your
holdings every single year who's going to buy it. What happens? Do people start, you know,
creating and taking risks? All you have to do is start to understand. First of all,
every time a wealth tax has been tried, it's failed. But all you have to start doing is math.
in a decade.
And she talks about selling this money over a decade.
Because of compounding, it's actually more than 20%.
Taking 20% of the wealth of people will effectively bring that wealth down dramatically.
Most economic models have it as more than double the impact.
You're looking at a 40% catastrophic loss of GDP.
The numbers are just historically bad.
And by the way, the amount of money that she's talking about,
isn't enough to even even in 10 years of it doesn't close one full year of budget.
I mean, it's just, it, the numbers are just stupid.
And yet she publishes it.
And it's relying upon people being stupid.
Yeah, but it's like, look, it's all performative.
Like, all this stuff is just like, you, the stuff that's coming out of DC,
you know, you can't listen to anything anymore.
It's just all, it's just all a big, you know, show.
And like, it's, there's no, there's no truth.
comes out of DC anymore.
Like, there's just none.
It is, it's all because, and now, and that's before AI is dominating everybody's life
and how they consume news.
So you're going to have AI channels.
Effectively, I think that, you know, the movie idiocracy, I mean, I always thought it was a funny
movie.
I never thought it was meant to be a documentary, but it certainly feels like it.
And, you know, the average human is just not thinking for themselves.
And they're, you know, they'll accept things at face value.
And that is enormously problematic, if you think about it.
What does that mean?
You know, like, it's like the dumbest shit.
And the politicians used to be constrained.
Like, the thought that the Democrats could say that the Save Act is bad,
this is this political voting act,
because, but we agree with voter ID,
but we don't agree with that.
And then there was a vote on an amendment.
And they're going to do another one where they all voted against just nothing else
other than pure voter ID.
And no, and not just expect, but no,
that the people who vote for them won't hold them accountable.
The fact that Trump could say to help Scott out here,
because I know it's been a big thing,
no new wars and he goes to war and he expects,
no, we'll hold them accountable.
Our politicians don't think that people care anymore
about what they do because there's an echo chamber among their voters.
And it's all on the margin.
Yeah, but, Dave,
it just becomes tribal.
You know, you've got this very strong left support,
and you've got the very strong right support,
and it just becomes tribal.
It doesn't matter what your team says,
they're going to be right.
I don't care.
And you hear people say,
non-intical stuff about the voter ID.
Like, it's just, it's not truth.
They know it's not truth,
but they don't, they can't even,
all they care is that their team wins.
It doesn't matter.
And that's where we are now.
And that's, so we just have to, we have to take DC at performative value, not face value.
It's just, it's an act.
They're up on stage.
They're waving their arms around.
And so this idiocy that comes out of, you know, Warren's office that they post this thing about,
let's tax people's wealth.
Like, it's just, it's going to get her votes.
And that's all she cares about.
It's just going to get her votes.
We've had all these ideas, right?
We have the California billionaire tax.
She basically saw that and saw.
how much press it got and just ran with it.
But we've also had, I mean, even yelling in the last administration was floating
unrealized capital gains, right?
Which is a, yeah.
What it comes down to, Scott, is that they all understand that we have a case-shaped
economy, that people are really upset, that the billionaires and millionaires are,
they're running this economy because they're the one spending 80% of, you know, services
and goods and, you know, the top 10% of whatever that crazy statistic,
was the top 10% are spending like two thirds or more of whatever. People feel that. They see it.
They're like, all the prices are going up because the boomers, they have all the money and they're
frustrated. And they want they want theirs. And they say they're like they're playing on that simple
concept that, you know, the economy is is K-shaped. You've got super wealthy people are doing very well.
you've got, you know, the middle class and lower class demographics that are not doing well.
And why is that?
It's because of everything we just talked about the beginning of the show.
It's about the cantalon effect.
It's about, you know, people, so I have people calling me this week and asking, you know,
they're not in finance, not investing.
They're like, how do I get into these new IPOs?
I want to get to SpaceX and everything.
It's like, you don't understand.
Like, you are the exit liquidity.
Like, the game.
The gains have already been made, and they're going to then package it up and sell it to the street.
That doesn't mean that these things can't go up in the market because of irrational exuberance.
But the cancel on effect is real.
If you're close to Spigot, you're getting the benefit of that.
And people inherently know that.
And so they're never going to admit that.
They're just going to do this more.
They're going to have this act on stage, and they're going to do the, you know, the performative
stuff and they're going to say we need the tax of rich we need tax of rich oh it's not because of the
fed and congress overspending and fiscal stimulus and fiscal stimulus it's not because of that
it's because rich people bad yeah i mean trickle-down economics don't actually work
we've known that for a very very long time dave i'm surprised you haven't done this yet
i mean it's true i mean look what trickle-down economics does work but that's what they're doing
Be clear.
All they want to do is distract.
I mean, look, this weekend we saw it, right?
So what is the ultimate irony?
The ultimate irony of a no king's protest of 8 million people, many of them, in fact,
in most protests, they were all former 60s hippies who protested Vietnam and are trying
to relive their glory days.
You know, some of the interviews of these people were just, I mean, off the charts,
funny, but not in, you know, in an Iraq.
sense because they have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. But what's the ultimate irony
of a no kings index, no king's rally? The no king's rally is to fight against the government that
supposedly is all powerful and taking away your rights. Yet what is the policy prescription
from the organizers? More government. It's much more government, much less rights. So I posted something
that got a little bit of people a little bit annoyed, but it's okay. It's true. I said, I wonder what
percentage of the people that know King's rally would willingly vote for Obama to be president
for life. And I'm betting that number is very high. And the irony is just is incredible. People
say they want X, but they don't want X. They want Y. What do they want? They basically want a return
to normalcy in an uncertain world. And what is normal about a world, especially if you're,
if you're older, where everything is being done by computers, right? Everything is being done by
agents, you're being told, you don't read a novel anymore. You go on AI and say, what does,
what is the point of Slaughterhouse Five instead of reading Slaughterhouse Five and experiencing
Vonnegut? You know, it's like that is what our society is coming to. And when you do that,
then the people who control the AI are the ones who are going to control how you think. And so if you
want to understand how important, you know, it is that there is, that AI is not dominated and
controlled by a few key voices, you end up, and you also understand that it's almost certain to happen.
It is extremely dangerous because, you know, rallying against, if those is a rally against,
we shouldn't go to war.
Okay, I could get that.
But then you get the flags that are out there are hammer and sickle flags, literally,
and Cathia flags and the one, you know, Kathia wearing and Iran flags.
I mean, you know, you're really supporting that.
Yeah, David, it's like this, yeah.
I mean, people don't want to think for themselves.
They just want to be told what to support.
But that's my point in my bio today.
You know, it's just, yeah, I mean, it's virtually.
We have lost the, the art of critical thinking.
It's gone.
Like we, people don't critically think.
And a lot of it's due to this.
You know, they're just told what to think all day long.
We are not meant to take in that much information synthesize it all day every day.
I'll tell you the biggest challenge as an investor now.
And this actually is something important for all of us.
The biggest challenge for me every single day is to look at all the news and everything
that I'm getting, but just bombarded with and to filter out the noise.
It used to be pretty easy.
You walk in, you have your Bloomberg terminal, you see what the headlines are.
You can filter out what's noise and what's not, and you can get to work.
Now it's like-
Tom Brokaw told you 30 minutes a day and you didn't have 24-7, 365 access to, quote-unquote,
breaking news.
Right.
You're not supposed to have that 24, 7, like, every 10 minutes is something new.
Like every three minutes is something new that something big, you know, it's like,
but most of it's noise.
Like if you're an investor and you could just, what the most important thing to do is to
go throughout the noise and get the first principle on everything, you know?
And that's difficult, more difficult today than it's ever been, in my opinion,
an investor. But yeah, I can't wait till Mike gets here so that we can talk about oil, but I think we
should probably, well, so many things we could go through. There's a lot of actually just like
continuing to see negative news across any metric that you can look for that should be giving
us signals of things being bad, but markets aren't even down that bad. I don't know if you guys
saw this one. Breaking UBS has stopped withdrawals from its nearly 500 million real estate fund for up to
three years. So this is real estate. Blue Owl, Black Rock, Black Rock,
Laxone, Apollo, UBS, most of those being private credit funds, obviously.
I mean, is this a new boogeyman?
I can't tell because, yeah.
They're just going to continue to try to, you know, allow the gates to work the way they're supposed to,
which is to protect a run on the bank, you know, and force them to sell illiquid assets.
But again, and I wrote all about that and the matchup.
the mismatch and some of these funds of the duration of the fund and the duration of the investment.
But, you know, the problem is they keep upping these investments and pushing them back out further
because they, you know, they're not liquid yet.
And they want to, they're, they're creating, I don't want to say false, but they're,
they're creating creative, you know, marks on these things to make sure that they don't trip
covenants that can just keep going, keep kicking it down the road and hope that it works out.
But that's what we're going to continue to see that.
But that's not something that worries me as much as what's going on in Iran and the whole
energy issue we have here.
That is so complex and volatile that that worries me more than private credit right now by
far.
Yeah, I mean, U.S. government officials of the Wall Street analysts,
we're starting to consider the prospect that oil prices might start
and sure not unprecedented $200 a barrel.
Welcome.
I'm going to talk about demand destruction.
I mean, that'd be it right there.
Hey, so Mike, so why is oil not at 150?
There you go.
Here's one example.
U.S. natural gas, the number one measure of heat, electricists,
and fertilized in this country is down 22% in the year.
In January, it was up 100%.
It did the same thing in 2022.
It spiked to 10.
And by 2023, it was down to 2.
It's exactly what happened in energy.
It rinse and repeat.
I think the key theme is crude oil, all commodities are their own worst enemies.
We learn that in cryptos when they go up too much.
Crudel specifically, it'll bring on global recessions, pump up that supply, curtail demand,
and rinse and repeat and go over, and you're seeing that industrial metals like copper made new low in the year recently.
Silver peak from a decent high up 63%.
It's all tilting over and crude oil is just bringing things down.
So I look at it going forward, skating to where the puck is going.
Just look at that December crude oil future is actually ticking down on the day for a little while.
It's $77 a barrel.
It has to ride a significant wall to get to $100 by the midterms, which is it'll be front month right before the midterms.
And going back down the 50 is normal.
What does Mr. Trump need?
I think, you know, that front crew contract you see right now at 101.
By the time we get the meritorums, it's more likely to be 50.
And that's just looking forward to where the puck's going.
So $200 oil are we now in the realm of hyperbole?
So I'm glad you went there, Scott.
Remember $200,000 Bitcoin a year ago?
And remember seven to 10,000 gold just a few months ago?
I've been in calls last week.
I just saw one from Acquiry this morning, look for a $200 crude oil.
I'm like, yeah, that could happen in the short term if you want a global depression,
which would mean severe deflationary forces.
It always starts with inflation and deflation.
But that's peak signs.
When you see that, like I said, we saw it in cryptos last year.
We saw it in gold and silver just a few months ago.
and now we're seeing a crude oil.
It's crude oil's turn.
But that pump then dump trend is consistent.
Like I mentioned, natural gas was up 100% and now it's down.
Copper was up 15% now it's down.
Silver was up 63% now it's down.
Bitcoin was up 10% or so, now it's down.
You see the trend by the end of the year.
To me, this stuff's just getting started.
I mean, okay.
So let's unpack.
We have a geopolitical situation where we can't,
get oil from the places that produce it to the places that want it.
We got them.
I understand.
That is the core problem.
We have people at the Fed.
We got 20,000 of them.
That could be replaced by a bunch of monkeys smacking on keyboards and throwing darts in terms of economic
forecasting.
That's something we kind of know.
It's something the administration sort of knows as well.
We'll see whether the Senate will be able to approve a new
Federal Reserve Chair. And I think the market thinks that they won't. And that's one of the reasons
why the dot plot is the way that it is. No one's talking about it. But the truth is, is Thune's going to
have to grow a pair of balls and they may end up having a user recess appointment the first time.
And they've basically been blocking. For people who are paying attention don't understand how
bad it is in D.C. There's an enormous number of unappointed people throughout the administration.
and this is the first time in decades that the Senate hasn't allowed recess appointments to go through.
And so, you know, frankly, Thune, I can't believe he's still the leader.
You know, I publicly, I cannot imagine how he has kept his job doing that.
I mean, forget all the other stuff.
I mean, I'm not talking about the legislative stuff.
I mean, legislative stuff, as James said earlier, it's performative theater.
So the real question is, are we going to get a new Federal Reserve chair?
That's a real actual question.
at the same time
we have the Federal Reserve
making the
I mean they would fail
if I were teaching an economics class
the notion that before you continue
Dave it was interesting that Powell said himself
he will stay on as long as he needs to
I know I heard that
why would he say I will stay on as long as I need
unless your term is up
like why would you say that
he's saying it because they don't
because they don't expect worse to be
Democrats are likely to block
he's been told that they're likely to block
Warsh or anyone else that Trump appoints.
So in order to keep the government frozen.
How does that work, though?
I mean, if you're done, you have to have someone in the job.
The Federal Reserve is on, there is no accountability in the Federal Reserve.
It's a private freaking corporation that the only thing that in a properly functioning
government they can do is nominate and or replace the head.
There is very little accountability in the Fed.
The only good news about this is if it does play out the way it was,
way it looks the calls for ending the fed and restructuring the fed will get much much bigger because
you know but but then again people are going to be told by their favorite AI or news media
not to care because everything's okay here so you know it's it's sort of like that that mean with the
dog in the fire you know it's like don't worry about it everything is fine but the point that
i was making is as long as the federal reserve has this notion that an oil shock means
inflation and inflation who must pull rate hike lever, you know, which is is dumb, you'll get
double demand destruction. And that would ensure a absolute, if you think that inflation is bad for
the midterms, what's inflation with a misery index that spikes because we decide to raise rates and
hike unemployment? I mean, the honest truth is we know what that means. I'm not saying that's what's going on.
I'm saying that there are people talking about that's what we should do.
And that's, and that is, that is absolutely important.
The, the fact that oil price rises going up is bad for the economy.
It is bad for demand destruction.
It causes, uh, inflation in pass-throughs of goods, but it doesn't cause people to demand
higher wages when their companies have lower profit margins or they can demand it,
but they won't get it.
Right.
In order to get wage inflation, you need to have the ability to pay the wage
inflation, right? And that's not very good right now. Right now, what happens when you demand higher wages
is you get replaced by AI, right? So it's very interesting, and it's a totally different dynamic than in the
70s. But the reason that I went on this rant was because, you know, look, the notion that all these
markets are interconnected, I think we should pull it on the string. I joke with when I heard you
weren't going to be here that I really want to ask you about gold, because I told you my view on gold is
that equilibrium is 5,000.
My view is that 4,500 will turn into support.
It's going to stay around these range.
Your view was that all these assets are going to roll over and gold made a multi-decade
high or whatever it was.
I'm curious what you think now.
Do you think that there's fundamental strength there or do you think that it's still
likely to roll over and go back towards 3,000?
Yeah, it's over.
The rally, to me, it's similar.
So I'll put it in context.
I think the significant rally we had in Bitcoin for over a decade.
head is over. I think the significant rally we had in metals, which I've been on top of forever,
is over. And they're going to languish forever, particularly gold. It's going to languish
between $3,000 and $5,000 potentially for a decade. It's just a way it always does. It got so
extreme, so severe. I just look at it versus a basket of U.S. Treasuries just a few months ago.
It was gold was the highest since 1982. U.S. Treasuries are lowest. That's my bias towards
treasury. It's just getting started. So, and then you look at other things. Like, you have to go back,
Oh, historically, you take the S&P 500 total return divided by gold.
It always goes up, except it stopped going up since 1997 because gold took off.
That's just too long.
I mean, it's a stupid rock.
And I hate the rock.
I loved it when it was going up, but now it's time to say, yeah, it's done.
That rally is done.
And the calls and the questions, I love it.
It's the questions I get.
It was in February.
Usually you get a ding.
I remember there was a few crypto chats I was on last year.
I'm like, yeah, everybody was so boring.
I'm like, okay, sell.
I just remember these things.
I was on a gold webinar in Hong Kong in February.
Same thing.
It was just so bullish.
Mike's sold to you.
But it's also the extremes that happen in gold.
Remember, gold warned us.
Last year was the best year since 1979.
Best year ever absent inflation.
So it warned us what was happening.
It's done its duty.
It served its purpose as a safe haven store value.
But now what's happened, 180-day volatile gold has shifted to 2.5 times the S&P 500, maybe 2.4 times.
It only happens a few times in history.
And when it does it, it shifts over to a highly speculative risk acid puts in a peep.
That's what we've done.
So something might have to change.
But here's a key thing to think about forward.
As we get to midterms, it's a scenario I don't see what helps, what stops is it's all about getting to midterms and what's happening in the Gulf.
Obviously, if the Gulf stays clothes and this gets worse, and we get up in the morning and hear the word fallout or something, yes, that's good for gold.
But gold already priced a lot of that in.
It's just what normally happens.
This thing should be cleaned up, at least worked out.
And then we rinse and repeat.
There's really no reason for gold anymore.
To me, the key thing now is the problem with the stock market.
All that volatility in gold, which was just look at one key fact.
60-day volatility in gold this year was up about 60 to 70 percent.
60-day volatility on crude oil is up about 150 percent.
60-day volatility on the S&B 500 is flat.
That's my problem.
Everything's trickling over and if stock.
market goes down, everything goes over, and that goes down to me, Bitcoin warned us.
So let's just forget Bitcoin for a heartbeat. Just talk about the stock market.
Most people when they invest in the stock market are, we're not talking about trading now,
but most people when they invest in the stock market are looking at forward PEs and growth
rates over years, if not longer. And most people who are investing in the stock market look at this
and look at what's going on in the golf and look at all this stuff and say, okay, well,
we don't know what's going to happen at the other end.
So, but is this really going to affect multiple years of earnings of most of our companies?
And what are the, what are the expectations and how much are moving?
And when you look at the S&P and you look at analysts, I mean, you have the data.
I'm going to bet that analysts forward expectation of earnings haven't really moved very much.
And if that's the case, then why should the volatility in the S&P be high?
The volatility on oil is high because people have no freaking clue, whether, you know, where it's going to come from, how it's going to get where it needs to go.
I understand that.
Volatility on gold is really high because we have, we've had central bank buying and we've had private wealth buying.
And a lot of that private wealth now needs to get more liquid.
And so there's a whole, the whole wall of selling that occurred as people tried to reliquify.
So we kind of understand, you know, where the volatility is coming from in the commodities.
you know, leave Bitcoin and out of it because Bitcoin's volatility has been, I mean, I don't know,
it, it's been lurching into a range and then staying in a range. And we're still at the same price that,
you know, if we talked about Bitcoin price, I think the last three weeks, we've been within
$1,000 of, you know, every week, you know, where it is during the show. You know, it's,
it just hasn't really moved all that much. But gold is moving a lot more. And, you know, look,
I think you're right. I think that there's a shit ton of complacency.
in the market in the stock market.
But until analysts and people start making major changes,
you know, it's really about the new shiny object.
If you want to know what I think pops the,
that creates the volatility in the stock market,
it's if the wave of IPOs,
which won't happen, by the way,
if the straits are still closed,
but if the wave of IPOs materializes
and you have multiple trillion dollars of new companies coming in,
that money has to come from old companies.
And we saw this,
pretty much every time an IPO wave crests,
is generally a market top.
I mean, we've seen this many, many times before.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm just curious.
I mean, you know, what do you think about that?
I mean, you know, SpaceX is very interesting one for a lot of reasons.
But it's not just them.
It's XAI.
It's obviously anthropic.
Yeah.
It's open AI.
You know, these are four monster IPOs.
They're not small.
I don't believe anybody is getting on.
for those. What do you say, Scott? Yeah, I agree. I mean, those are
top. I would argue that a high percentage chance that those are
at least temporary market tops for quite a while. Yeah, well, I think there's
a high percentage chance they don't actually happen this year because
people don't IPO and go on road shows and go
going around the world looking to private wealth funds
when the world's at war. It just doesn't tend to happen.
So what's interesting though, something something that's interesting though is that Mike what you said about gold look we do have to recognize that gold it did bottom out for at least the moment about 27% off its highs you know is up at 5,600 came all the way down to 4,100.
So that's a pretty big move, you know.
And so that's not something that is to just dismiss.
That's number one.
Number two is, look, if you believe that gold is going to go back to, what did you say,
$2,500,000, somewhere around there?
$3,000.
Okay.
Well, you know, you're talking about then it's going to be down, you know, roughly 30% from here.
That you're assuming then over the next 10 years, then it will not react to either.
we will not be printing money or it will not react to it, right?
So I don't, and I, so that's where I just can't reconcile that.
I can't reconcile.
We're not going to print or it's not going to react to it.
So you're telling me it's different this time.
No, I'm not saying it's different this time.
I'm saying that it's going to be, you know, we will print.
What I'm saying is that we've done this now twice in a row.
And what do you think is going to happen the third time when we have a recession?
But like I said, like for gold to stay up here, it has to be different this time.
Never in the history of gold has it rally at such a velocity, get the most expensive versus
commodities, get the most expensive versus most other entities and other entities and stay up.
It just doesn't will happen.
It's got to have a good reason and versus itself.
And what you say about the print, yeah, I get it.
That's a known knowns.
We all get the print, the big print.
We had the big print in 2000, 2021.
May I point out, that's when Bitcoin's outperformment stopped.
I keep pointing that out. It's over. That big prints happen. Now we might get a big print like we did in China.
And what's happening in China? 1.8.1 is there 10% of their 10 year old deal? That's what we're going in this country. The bottom line is for any risk gasket, all of them.
I kept pointing this last year when people were saying how bullish they wear copper. I'm like, okay, so it's a bulls to stock market.
Like it's the same chart now. Even gold. It's the same chart as a stock market. And that's my point is you have to be bulls of stock market. And then just to I get what Dave says. But that's all stuff that we all know, known.
It's the bottom line is when you get a trigger like this, we had a world that was very much,
we first saw, consumer sentiment was already getting hammered before this event happened.
We had a world facing unprecedented tariffs in the U.S. and pretty significant deflation from China
because China couldn't export as much.
The U.S. and more so they're exporting the rest of the world.
Mostly Europe.
Oh, by the way, there's an oxymor of them supporting a war in their customers background.
Now we have this flip, this switch.
And we had all the signals there.
We have a switch to cut off the consumer sentiment to say, hey, honey, we're going to stop spending for a while.
And by the way, AI might be taking my job.
And the key theme I think we'll be thinking about is look a few months from now.
What's the data from now going to look like?
Even if we wake up tomorrow and the Hormuz is closed, right away, that means crude goes to 50.
Bond, 10, you know, yields drop below 4%.
Yeah, stock market rallies.
And then rinse and repeat and roll over and say, oh, we've had a spike in energy.
We've had a spike in food costs.
We've had major flip in consumer sentiment.
This is the trigger.
This is 9-11, 2008, 2022, all in one.
And the stock market's most expensive in history.
So to me, this is just getting started.
coin and gold warned us.
Just for clarification, you say that they're the same chart.
And I think there's an argument for that.
But, you know, the stocks are down, what, S&B 9 to 10%, I think, from all time high.
Gold's down 25%.
That would imply that gold is high beta to the stock market.
So it's a simple rule of, and Dave can show us, when you have an asset that trades 2.5 times
beta, when beta goes down, typically high volatility assets go down more.
That's the problem with gold now.
It's switched.
The answers have changed.
That's not.
That's my point.
It did.
It did.
So that's what it did.
That's why last year was a shocker.
Obviously, some of us were bullish gold.
I never expected to perform that well.
It was wonderful to just hang on and lay out and watch it happen.
But now that it has happened, markets mean things.
They do things and they tell us stuff.
It told us what was happening.
It makes sense now.
But the thing is, it's made its front run.
It front ran this.
Oh, it's done.
It just, it's already happened.
at its store value, warning rally and history says when it gets this expensive versus any kind
of moving average long term, you're supposed to take profits.
And so that's my focus.
It's still gold, I think, is peak.
You remember, of course, I got beat up on a lot of that for Bitcoin last year.
I love getting beat up on these things because if everybody agrees, I'm usually wrong.
That's a key thing.
When I was on a call last week, and people were calling to my call, some internal for 200 crude oil
and an $8 gasoline in U.S.
I'm like, okay, that's a global depression, which means.
means gas will eventually go drop down to two boxes. Just the way things work. Well, it's true
because of the price elasticity and the technological advances that allow us to extract.
Sorry. I'm staring at the visual capitalist global government debt hits $111 trillion in 2025,
and it's accelerating again now. I just have an enormous problem.
with analysis that ignores the fact that the U.S. government, you know, deficit went from
under $5 trillion to pushing 40 this year and thinking that that has no impact upon assets
that are denominated in dollars. I just can't do, I can't. I, I, I, you need to normalize those
things. And if you think eight, so if you take gold going back to wherever and say eight percent
growth in, you know, is, is baked in the cake for an asset, literally, that's what you
think, then it's a question of baseline. So you do the math and you say, okay, gold peaked at
1900 and went back down to 1100. It did do that. And we've all seen it. Gold is one of those
assets that its volatility is, what's the word I'm looking for? Is volatile, I guess is probably,
the volatility of its volatility is very hot. Gold could be a very low vol asset for a very long period
of time and then immediately change as people start, start moving.
moving into it. It's been a manipulated market for years. If you listen to GADA and the World Gold
Council, and I think there's a lot of, a lot to what they say. And so I look at gold and it's really
a question of just as a divisor of monetary policy, if you take technological ability to impact
purchasing power out, gold is more or less where it should be. It's not far off of it. And it was
way cheap before that.
And there were a lot of people who would have said that.
It's probably the only thing I agree with Peter Schiff about.
I mean, everybody was sitting, all of us on this show multiple times, when gold was
2000 or just around 2000, we said, you know, it breaks 2000.
It's going right to 3,000.
And I said, I thought that where its value is is as much higher, but whether it will
be allowed to get there is the question.
It's just they lost the ability to do anything about it.
And part of it is, it's not that they lost the ability, is that they realize people don't
really give a crap. I mean, Alan Greensman used to obsess over the price of gold when he was setting
monetary policy. Jerome Powell couldn't give a rat's ass. Nope. Not even on the radar. And that's a
big difference. Maybe keep talking about oil, but I mean, you see these headlines, right? Obviously,
this was a little while ago, but Trump draws bipartisan backlash for easing oil sanctions on Russia
and Iran, kind of the antithesis of the intended effect, I would say. None of you guys just saw
this, Trump administration waves gasoline regulations to address surging fuel prices. Now you can get
crappier gasoline at the pump. What regulation was that? I'm curious. E-15 restricted in about
half the U.S. during the summer months due to regulations to prevent air pollution.
So you've got to address this. This is a key thing. I've been at a few agriculture conferences
in the last few months. The number one thing is there's a glut. We have a massive supply to soybeans
out of Brazil. They haven't stopped. Another record, 180 million metric tons, pushing the U.S.
on the market. We have a pretty significant oversupply in corn in this country. Another good crop.
It's just called superabundance. And there's two potential things we can do in the U.S. to get
prices higher. Number one, a drought you can't predict. Maybe exports, which are kind of tough,
and biofuels. So that's the shift. E15 is part of that shift to more and more biofuels.
15% of our unleaded gas now is coming from almost 15% from ethanol. We're exporting a lot of it. We've got a
surplus on it. In the past, typically it took maybe one bushel of corn for one gallon,
two gallons of ethanol. Now we get three. It said technology that Dave pointed out. So there's
one solution there. That by switching to biophilus, we're going to add that glut of crude oil
liquid fuels in this country. Right now with Canada, we have a surplus running near a surplus
of eight million barrels a day of crude oil and liquid fuels. Just a few years ago, that was a
deficit. What's just happened? Price spiked, rinse and reprete, increase that surplus. That's
what's happening in the North America, the Western Hemisphere and the whole space has become a
massive surplus. Yes, there's this pretty significant cut, you know, in the Middle East,
but all that, maybe they say 20% in oil, okay, maybe it ends up 10% as we find workgrounds.
That's China problem. That's the Europe problem. They're already having problems. In the North
America, we have a glut. You see that in the futures curve. You can go back in natural gas,
corn and soybeans, and crude oil, and you can go out two to three years. And if you're worried about,
inflation. You can buy those futures at zero, cheaper than they are in the front contract,
no cost to carry. And basically there's no storage cost. That's just, why is that? Because the whole
market is looking forward. So there's your big trade. If you're right, and if crude oil stays up,
the problem is the whole market sees this tilting towards the deflation. The problem is,
look at that futures curve. It's telling you where things are going. And we've got a pretty
significant supply of energy in this country. That's true. We just can't get it. It's just the problem is,
the people who don't have a significant supply can't get it.
That's the issue.
I mean, it is, it is interesting.
Yes, what does that mean for them?
It means it means depression, prices spike for them, but from a U.S. centric standpoint,
I mean, Trump's got all the cards in this case.
Yeah, well, I mean, there's truth there.
I mean, look, it's, that's probably partially why the markets are holding in the way they are.
I mean, you know, it's like we're here again.
And if you told me, I don't know, before the war started, that oil would
be, you know, over 100, then people would be talking about it doubling again and all this other
stuff, you know, where would the S&P be? I probably wouldn't have answered, you know, pushing up
towards 6,400. And it was at 6,400, you know, a few minutes ago, right? You know, and it's still green
on the day, if basically flat. You know, I, you wouldn't say that, but people are getting, it's,
it's, it's the old expression, people getting numb to it. I mean, we've seen this before in wars and
these things. People get numb to it. And they start saying, okay, what's next?
except for in this case, the risks are much larger than most people would have thought.
I mean, in previous wars, it was, oh, what would happen?
Oh, my God, if the straits-so-horamose got closed.
But what they're getting numb to is President Trump all over CNN this weekend were these
anti-King protests.
So to me, this is a classic shift in human nature, political sentiment with markets at record highs.
And the signal I got in 2007 was way early, and certainly in 2001 when 9-11 hit, but this is all
combine and the thing is it's all about stocks now they got to stay up where everything goes down and
you know crypto's warned us now um gold warned us and i just say heed the warning stay out of the
market and stick with treasuries and look for opportunities i don't think anything near we've
reached decent discounts yet in markets you should be looking to buy stuff well i mean we we disagree
in a couple things i mean golden definitely disagrees with you goldman just said that they're seeing
signs of capitulation oh i love it i made a good money fadie
them in 2007 and eight in 2001.
But typically it's one analyst at Goldman with respect for the firm.
Stocks, Dave.
Yeah.
10% down.
They're basically saying that they're seeing such heavy short sales by hedge funds
and just complete sellouts that they feel like they're getting to the point of capitulation.
What's figureback in that?
Right now we have VIX at 30.
and 180 day volatility running around 12%.
It's a fraction of the VIX.
So people are hedging when they should be selling.
You know how that works.
Hedging can be really difficult and particularly in bare markets.
That's the unique thing about Bitcoin.
It's been a very orderly bare market.
But just hedging, I know a lot of ways to lose money in option strategies and hedging.
I've done those.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, Dave, if you could see this.
I don't know if you can see this.
That's good.
Yeah, I'm not good.
See, does that come up?
There it is.
Right.
Yeah, this is, this is what they're seeing.
They're seeing that, you know, we're getting near lows of the buying versus selling.
You know, it's the net buying is two and a half times lower than the net selling is two and a half times more than the buying.
Right.
You got to take that back to 2006.
Okay, that's fair.
Absolutely.
But 2020 wasn't something to sniff at.
No, it wasn't.
But it was human-created somewhat artificial,
and the stock market cap the GDP has almost doubled since then.
I get it.
And so a good point.
I think that's what happens.
We've been in a bare market in crypto for less than a year now.
Everybody keeps trying to buy dips.
That's what's perfect in bare markets.
They don't bought them until people capitulate.
I still haven't heard that word yet.
you know, healthy correction, partly because maybe because people have said it.
Maybe that's the first sign of it.
You got to hear that.
It's just, this is, obviously I'm calling for a paradigm shift and gold warned us.
Cryptos warned us.
And now that's crude oil spike.
And even Dave you said in this event, this unprecedented closure, straight of homeless, man, to me,
we got a perfect catalyst for things I've been looking for for too long.
Yeah.
I just think that the people who understand what's going on, the need to continue to pump up financial
assets is greater now and it creates even more likelihood of it.
You know, as I said, that denominator is what I have focused on.
I've said it before.
I'm not going to repeat it.
It's been every week for the last three or four weeks.
I think Bitcoin bottomed at 60.
I think we're sitting in this range.
Not much is going to happen.
1010 took a ton of leverage out.
I haven't heard a damn person.
There's not even a squeak of, you don't even hear people talking about buy the dips in
crypto.
Forget Bitcoin.
Non-Bitcoin crypto is.
has been horrendous. I mean, you know, Ethereum, if it wasn't for Bitmine buying it,
who knows where it would be. My guess is around 1,000, you know, maybe 800, maybe 600. I don't know.
It would be a lot lower.
What if Microsoft's a loan to Bitcoin, it would probably be at 40 or 50. That's a very big
difference, right? You know, one would be, you know, a significant drop. One, I'm talking, you know,
literally 50%, 60% lower. So it's important. And, you know, we look at,
we look at this and we have to understand what does this mean.
Well, you know, Bitcoin was literally built, literally built for financial crises and top-heavy
manipulated economies, which is exactly what's happening in real time.
Now, whether or not people will believe it or not is an interesting question, and I guess
we'll find out.
You know, gold is something different.
Stock markets are, you know, with AI, are being driven to even more extremes.
I mean, this this case-shaped economy stuff is non-trivial.
It is real.
It is real because we've had three, four decades of policy that has prioritized asset
inflation instead of consumer inflation in order to mask what's going on in monetary and fiscal
policy.
And it's accelerating.
And so to expect that that to reverse is hard in nominal terms.
In real terms, I think you're right, Mike.
That's the difference.
It's like it's all the difference.
The difference in the UNI is mostly real versus nominal.
Like I look at a day like today and everyone is like, you know, the markets aren't really doing much.
The Treasury market, we know and there are a lot of people who said this.
And I was trying to get James to talk about it before that a line in the sand is four and a half.
I think the real line in the sand is five, but whatever.
Yields on eight basis points today.
Well, it's not on good news.
Oil prices are higher.
And the yield, but every single market.
Yeah, but it's because oil prices have gotten, and the fear of oil prices staying high has gotten people to the other side, which is, which is for Mike's point, which is demand destruction, you know, and that will ultimately cause everything, all prices to collapse.
And that's, that's the fear there that you're seeing today.
So now it's got, you've gotten so far that, oh, now oil is going to be so bad.
The price of oil is going to be so bad.
It's going to stress economies out so greatly that you're going to.
have demand destruction you know that's what you're saying that's true then why
if the reserve not the bonds today unless you think something different Mike well the key
thing that happened last week is that long bond got up to 5% at the same time WTI
crude is up at a hundred at a hundred dollars that's to me key resistance crude all can keep
going up and it higher goes and more like it's going to go down hard but I'm looking at
the long bond still and yeah I've been wrong we lost a lot less than everything else
this year but still think that the long bond's going to be the place to go I think just like
corn, I expect corn to be more likely at four than five by the near. I expect that long bond
by the end there to be more likely at four or lower than at five. Five is a global, is a recession,
lose-lose situation. Four is normal in a normal deflation environment. Simple little thing.
180-day volatility and S&P 500, just recovering from a 10-year low. Not complicated.
What it takes to do that, I'll let you guys figure that out. But to me, the difference between
you and me, Dave, is I take the lessons of Charlie D. and Market Wizards. All that matters to me
were that price on the statement.
Whether it's real or not, it's a number of that statement.
It's a number of my statement.
That's all the matter.
None of those guys lived in a world with 8 to 10% growth in budget deficits in peacetime.
We had a cyclical economy.
We had a balanced budget under Clinton, right?
120% plus debt to GDP.
None of those guys lived in those world.
The unfunded liabilities.
It's mind-blowing how large these deficits are.
And they're not going in the other direction.
Right.
Well, but that matters, right?
You know, it's not this time is different.
I hate this time is different.
No, it's this epoch, this era that we've been in for the last 20-some-odd years of deficits exploding to, I mean, $40 trillion is a huge number.
It's actually, however, not even close to accurate because it's ignoring unfunded liabilities.
And if you put the, and if you look at the whole thing, I mean, which makes it probably closer to 200.
And that is just, those are numbers that are so big that people's minds explode when they think about it.
And so all of that matters.
Everything else you're saying, Mike, is true.
And that's why you expect certain things like corn.
I mean, we produce way more corn.
than we should. We're using it as fuel as idiotic. It's been idiotic. But Iowa being very important
to presidential elections, neither party's willing to screw with it. We're run out of time, but I got to
mess with you a little bit there, Dave. Before the invention of the Model T, most of the U.S. farmlands have
used for one thing, transportation fuel for Ford horse feed. Now we're just switching back a little.
It's not idiotic. It's like, but it's, that's from Yuval Noah Herrera. I think it was 21 lessons of
21st century, one of my favorite authors. But that's a key thing. I love. I love. I
pointed out in the corn belt because it's the key thing that's we have to do something
you'd see that or writing checks for farmers not to produce i used to have one of those farms and
i used that for a little while or do what farmers want just find sources of demand and right now
it's just an obvious one i think uh we ran out of time
another five we could have done this forever oil and now we just need to call it oil mondays
we had smelting town hall dave think you know we need a metal show and an oil show for a front
us to focus. I think the
dumb rock Monday. It'll be
dumb rock Monday. Boomer rocks
as Mike calls them. Mike, you missed
the beginning when we were talking about the global
uncertainty index being at all-time highs
and I think it's the best bookmark is we can talk
through these things all day. The bottom line
is nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
So it's just a very hard
time I think to handicap what's going to happen
to any asset class, much
less markets and the economy in general.
All right guys, it's all we got for you today. Thanks to
Dave, Mike and James.
Mike, you're going to have to stop getting so popular so we can get you for a full hour, man.
So I bought oil.
That'll stop.
All right, guys, Dave, I'll see you in about 10 minutes on Cryptotown Hall.
Everybody else will see you tomorrow or next week.
Bye.
