We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP507: Market Indicators, CBDC's and Real Estate w/ Joe Brown
Episode Date: December 23, 2022IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN: 05:56 - Indicators that Joe watches to forecast market moves. 13:19 - Why the Fed pivot might take much longer than many current estimates. 14:56 - How the Fed coul...d use $2T in reverse repos to provide liquidity before needing to lower interest rates. 27:49 - CBDCs and how they compare to bitcoin, Ethereum and others. 55:39 - The real estate market in the US. 60:40 - Household financial health. And much, much more! Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Heresy Financial Youtube. Financial Heresy Podcast. The Forgotten Depression by Jim Grant. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River Toyota Range Rover Sound Advisory American Express The Bitcoin Way Vacasa USPS Onramp SimpleMining Public Fundrise BAM Capital Shopify HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You're listening to TIP.
My guest today is Joe Brown.
Joe runs Heresy Financial, which is one of the best resources on YouTube for bite-sized
market updates and other financial content.
Joe and I spoke about a year ago on episode 404 about the untold history of money, which
I highly encourage you to also check out.
In this episode, we discuss indicators that Joe watches to forecast market moves,
why the Fed pivot might take much longer than many currently estimate, how the Fed could
use $2 trillion in reverse repos to provide liquidity before ever needing to lower interest rates,
central bank digital currencies or CBDCs and how they compare to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others,
the real estate market in the U.S., household financial wealth, and much, much more.
I always enjoy seeing how Joe's brain works as he unpacks an incredible amount of knowledge
into a very easy to understand framework. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So with that,
here's my conversation with Joe Brown.
to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that
influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.
Welcome to The Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie, and today we welcome back our
friend Joe Brown. Joe, welcome. Hey, thank you for having me. You know, I was surprised when I saw
this, but I think it's almost been a year since we last spoke. So, you know, not much has happened,
but I'm sure we'll find something to talk about today.
Yeah, not much has happened in the last year, right?
It's been insane.
So, yeah, I wanted to kick things off here and talk about where you're viewing the market
and this one ratio you've thrown out there I wanted to zoom in on, which is the put-call
ratio.
You know, we're all on this quest, I think, to forecast where the market's going to go.
And people use all kinds of different metrics and ratios.
Talk to us about the put-call ratio, what it's telling us about the market and why you
look to it as an indicator. Yeah, absolutely. It is one of those things that every once in a while
is, you know, kind of flashing a signal saying, hey, look at me. And basically what it comes down to
is, you want to be looking at what the consensus is thinking, the consensus of professional
traders, the consensus of retail traders, usually those are different. As Ray Dalio always says,
if you want to make money investing, you have to bet against the consensus, but you also have
to be right. And most of the time, the consensus is right. And so when we look at the put call ratio,
This is one of those things that it measures sentiment on the market.
It looks at the total number of puts being traded, the total number of calls being traded.
And then so the higher that ratio is above one, that means that there are more puts being traded.
There are two different put call ratios.
One of them is for indexes.
So on things like SPX, the actual index.
And then there's other ones, it's the equity put call ratio.
The index put call ratio is mostly professional traders, mostly use.
for hedging. So that number is going to be higher most of the time because more puts are going to
just, there's a bias towards that institutionally for hedging. When you have the equity put call
ratio, that is more going to be retail traders. So the small investor. And we know that small money is
typically dumb money. And so when that number peaks high, that means there's a much larger number
of puts being traded, which indicates the average retail investor is very bearish. This is considered
a contrarian indicator because by the time the masses have become the most bearish,
where that number will get really high, most of the bad stuff is going to be baked into the cake already.
And so when we use this in light of everything else that's happening right now, macroeconomically
speaking, like what the Federal Reserve is doing, what the inflation numbers are doing, what the
money supply is doing. When we put the put call ratio in light of all of that, it looks like a pretty
strong contrarian indicator that the bottom might already be in with the stock market.
Very interesting. So, and I wasn't actually even familiar with this one to begin with it. This is
all about purchasing these calls or puts, right? Not selling? It is both because every time one person
purchases a put or a call, there also has to be somebody selling the put or the call. So it does
just look at total volume. And usually market makers are not taking the other side of that trade
directly. Market makers are going to try and stay neutral. And so if you go out there and you buy a
put, you're going to be making that transaction with the market maker, but they're simultaneously
doing an opposite transaction with somebody else so that they have a net neutral book.
And so there is going to be a buyer and a seller for every transaction.
So it does just have to look at total volume.
It's still going to be looked at as puts being generally bullish because most individual
retail traders out there are going to be purchasing them.
They're not going to be selling them for the most part.
Now, does this have a, you know, similar to the bond yield curve inverting and how that's
been a consistent signal for a recession, does this have any historical correlation that
you've looked at to say, hey, this is every time this put call ratio gets to X,
why seems to happen.
Yes.
Okay.
So last time, we're at the highest.
It was a couple of days ago, probably on November 18th, I believe, is when this number
peaked.
And it was at 1.46, I believe.
That was the ratio.
The last time it was this high was May of 2020.
Could have been April.
Could have been May.
Somewhere in there, if I misremember my dates.
And that was the bottom of the market.
And so typically what this suggests is that, you know, when the most amount of
selling has taken place, then there's no more, everybody who is going to sell has already sold.
So the only thing that can happen from there is buying. And so that tends to be a reversal.
So that's one of those reasons why this is a contrarian indicator is because that is the most
amount of bearish activity that can really take place. And so the only thing that can happen
from there is the closing out of those trades and then the reversal of that consensus, that momentum.
What other metrics or ratios are you looking at right now to inform your investing decisions?
In terms of the stock market, so we have to make the distinction there because there's a stock market and what those prices are going to be doing. There's the overall economy and how strong or weak the overall economy is going to be. And typically that's looking at like household consumer strength, other people are going to be having, you know, paying economically speaking. And then there's also other asset classes like real estate that I would consider have very different things to look at. In terms of macro economics, I'm looking mostly at the Fed, looking at money supply interest rates, the balance sheet, the reverse repo facility, things like that.
One of the things that we have to pay attention to for the overall economy is indicators of strength
or weakness like the FedEx indicator is one. This is one like logistically speaking. We're moving into
the end of the year, the holiday season here. This is a time period when you would expect, you know,
normally a lot of temporary hiring like somebody like Amazon is normally hiring tons of temporary workers
right now filling up their warehouses saying, hey, you can work as many hours overtime as you want.
We got you a job until, you know, let's say January. And we're actually just a job.
seen the opposite of that right now. FedEx during the busiest time of the year, they're furlowing their
employees. We're seeing Amazon laying off, I think, 10,000 employees right now. And so we're seeing a lot of
signals right now, economically speaking, that we do have more pain ahead. But we know that asset
prices tend to predict that. And so it looks like they've already priced in the pain of the overall
economy. Now the economy is going to be experiencing kind of the depth of that as asset prices are
starting to move through the other side already. Very, very interesting.
You threw out something in there. You kind of just mentioned it briefly, which was the reverse repo as a
potential metric that you look to. And this is something you've brought to my attention. And I think
it deserves a lot more attention. There's currently over $2 trillion in reverse repo sitting on the Fed's
balance sheet right now. And as I understand it, this could give the Fed a huge release valve if economic
conditions continue to worsen without them having to lower interest rates. So this is really something
I don't think anyone's really talking about, at least that I'm familiar with.
So can you walk us through first, maybe what repos are in general, then how the repo tool came about and why we are now looking at the reverse repo.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the repo market, repo stands for repurchase and not a repossession like a car and a bank.
And so the repo market is one where the banks would go to each other very basically simply, oh, I'm oversimplifying it here.
Overnight, the banks would go to each other and they'd say, hey, I've got a bunch of extra cash.
Does anybody need some cash?
And then the other bank would say, hey, I've got collateral, but I need some cash.
And so they'd go to each other and they'd say, here, I'm going to sell you my collateral.
And you'll give me some cash for that because I need the cash.
And I promise at some point in the future, whether it's tomorrow or a later date,
I will repurchase that collateral from you.
So if we go back to like 2005, 2006, a lot of this collateral was mortgage back securities
that were being bought and sold to each other for overnight cash needs between banks.
Well, at a certain point, all the banks decided at once, this collateral is not
actually get anymore. And so I'm not going to buy it from anybody. So a lot of banks were strapped
for cash. And this is actually what caused Lehman to collapse is because they couldn't access any
overnight cash. They were bankrupt overnight. And so this is why the repo market was central to the
potential of the financial system collapsing and why the Federal Reserve and the Treasury stepped in there
because of the way that the banking system operates. Well, when we fast forward to September of 2019,
the rates for that cash, that overnight cash, spiked again in September of 2019.
Many people were scared that there was rot in the system again,
that there was a bunch of bad collateral on the bank's balance sheets.
Well, it ended up not being the case.
Really, what was happening was everybody had just bought so many treasuries
that there was no cash left in the system.
And so government has a high appetite for borrowing.
They borrow mainly from financial institutions.
Financial institutions create those loans and loan that money to the government.
So financial institutions like banks have a ton of U.S.
treasuries on their books and they realized, hey, we need some cash, but nobody had cash to lend
so those rates skyrocketed. And again, banks were at risk of collapsing if they couldn't access
that overnight cash. So the Federal Reserve stepped in and they just said, we're going to
operate directly in the repo market. And we are going to be creating cash to lend into the repo
market at this point so that any banks who need that overnight cash can access it directly from
us, the money printer, so those rates don't skyrocket. Now, a lot of people said, hey, this is,
you know, this is a way for, you know, indirect roundabout money printing.
But just a few months later, everything with COVID happened and that blew up.
And so that gave them the opportunity to kind of switch and get out of operating in the repo market
because it wasn't necessary anymore, given the amount of new money that was created through
trillions of dollars that were printed and then spent by the government.
So what you had at that point was the government borrowed, you know, a couple trillion dollars
and started spending that all into the economy.
So you had this huge influx of cash into the system.
So suddenly now banks have this overabundance of cash.
Well, cash deposits for banks because when the government spends that money, that money goes
into somebody's bank account.
Like, that's what happens when they spend money.
It goes into a businesses or an organization's or a politician's bank account, an individual's bank
account.
And then that person then spends that money to somebody else's bank account.
And for banks, deposits our liabilities because they owe that.
And so there's a certain amount of collateral banks are required to own to offset their
liabilities.
And so they'd have to go out there and buy like T-bill.
and treasuries to offset their liabilities. Well, at the time, interest rates were so low that this could
have pushed interest rates negative. The Fed didn't want that. So they opened up the reverse repo
facility so that banks could access collateral directly from the Federal Reserve instead of going out
and buying it on the open market and pushing rates negative. They wanted to soak up a bunch of this
excess capital so they increased the rate they were paying in this reverse repo facility. So basically
telling all of the banks, hey, if you need collateral, come park your cash with us,
we'll give you the collateral and we'll pay you an interest rate on that cash. So, that's a great deal.
It's literally the only risk-free. We talk about treasuries being risk-free, but you still have
the risk of the price of the bond fluctuating if you have to sell it beforehand and you risk the
government defaulting if for some reason they can't fix the debt ceiling issue or whatever and they
default on the debt. But with the Federal Reserve, they're the ones with the monopoly on printing money.
So it literally is the place where you can go to get risk-free return. So banks park that cash with the Fed,
get that interest rate paid to them and it's great.
The problem is it soaked up about $2 trillion worth of cash from the system and that's all still
in there.
And so what your question was alluding to in the beginning was what are they doing with this and
what's the potential next step here?
At some point, that money will leave the reverse free-bo facility.
And so when we look at interest rates right now, how they're rising and borrowing costs for
the government are going up, my opinion is that at some point with that gets too tight for
the government, not for households, not for corporations, but for the government, the Federal
Reserve will drop the amount they're paying in that reverse repo facility. Suddenly then,
you don't have that risk free return. Banks have to take that cash and go out to the open market
and buy bills and treasuries. And so when they do that, that will be a nice little boost in
funding for the government. When it's not coming from the Federal Reserve, it'll come out of
the repo market. And that'll be about a $2 trillion buffer that ends up hitting the government's
purchasing power there.
It won't be a permanent solution, but a $2 trillion band-aid is a pretty big band-aid.
Now, would you consider that move to be a Fed pivot?
You know, everyone's talking about this Fed pivot that could potentially happen.
I think everyone's thinking they're going to just lower interest rates.
But are you thinking that instead of doing that or in lieu of doing that,
they would actually just add liquidity through this reverse repo system?
I do think this will be first, absolutely.
So they'll be able to maintain face and save credibility by saying,
hey, we're still raising interest rates.
We're still selling assets off of our balance sheet.
But because they stop paying, you know, that risk-free rate onto, into the reverse repo facility,
all that money has to go somewhere.
And that's all cash that's in the system that right now is kind of held outside.
And so if they do that and shut off the free money flow into the reverse repo facility,
all that money comes out, buys T-bills, buys treasuries.
And suddenly then that makes borrowing costs a little bit lower,
makes borrowing a little bit easier for the government.
So if there is some sort of issue where the government cannot fund itself, cannot access,
maybe the rates get too high for when they try and do their auctions, maybe they go no bid or whatever.
Well, now you have $2 trillion of funding for the government that they can use to continue to spend.
And so I think that will be kind of an undercover first phase of the pivot.
Most people will not know what's going on there.
Most people won't understand the mechanics of it.
And so it'll just be like, you know, hey, the Fed is still tightening, just like they said they were.
And there's this other thing out there that's making it a little bit easier for everybody and people will kind of shrug their shoulders.
But I do think this will be kind of the first phase of the pivot before they'll do that before they change their interest rate policy, lower interest rates or start increasing their balance sheet again.
So when we talk about using this as an indicator, because you kind of listed it earlier, are you looking for the $2 trillion start going down as far as the Fed's balance sheet holding less and less of that repo money?
Yes.
And this will happen a little bit naturally anyway because as conditions get tighter and tighter,
well, interest rates are going to continue going up. And so the amount that's being paid to the repo facility right now
is just about as much day-to-day it changes as the 10-year treasury. And so as interest rates continue to go up,
that gets more and more attractive where lenders might be willing to say, hey, I'm willing to take on some risk
by putting it into bills or treasuries or other form of debt instead of keeping it with the Fed,
because there's a much higher return.
So we might see that reverse repo facility start to dwindle down.
The problem is the Fed keeps on raising the rate that they pay into that facility every
time they raise rates.
And so when we see that change and when we see a difference in how much they pay versus
the federal funds rate, that's when I think we'll see the big draining start to happen.
And that's what we'll see probably a sizable impact on asset prices.
And a bullish impact, if I'm understanding.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
So how does this repo market compare to September 2019? Because back then, you were hearing all about the repo market seizing up, right? So did they just not have this fed backstop at that moment in time? Or because I think a lot of people are also anticipating with these rate hikes that repo market was going to seize up again. But it hasn't. Is this the reason why?
Well, I mean, partly. So these are going to be opposite tools. So the reverse repo facility is to give banks collateral when they need collateral. They've got too much cash. Here's how we give them.
collateral. The repo market is how the Fed, their repo facility is how they give banks cash when
banks need cash, but have too much collateral. And one of the interesting things that the Federal Reserve
did, I think it was, don't quote me on this, I believe it was April of 2021. One of the things that
they changed about their policy was they opened up access to the Federal Reserve's regular repo
facility to basically anybody, because prior to that, very few institutions had access to them for
repo transactions. And that looks to me like foresight saying, hey, I know right now there's a lot
of cash in the system. There's too much cash. So the reverse repo is what the system needs right now,
because everybody has too much cash. But eventually, that cash will be used up. Eventually,
it'll drain out of the reverse repo facility. Eventually, it'll all be spent. Eventually,
prices will go up. Eventually, we'll get into another situation where there is a cash crunch.
And if we get into that situation, we want to be ready to go and offer any financial institution
access to cash from the Federal Reserve without.
having to touch our balance sheet. And so that looks to me like foresight. They're not using their
repo facility yet, but they did increase access to it, broaden access to it. And so at some
point, institutions will need it. And when they do need it, the Fed will be ready. Let's take a quick
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I might be going out on a limb here, but for those of us in the Bitcoin community, which I am,
a lot of folks on the Bitcoin side are basing their current thesis on this eventual
monetary debasement, or at least the gradual monetary debasement that seems to be inevitable.
Does this Fed tool throw a bit of a wrench in this thesis, at least in the short term?
So yes and no.
So this basically gives puts that money back into the economy.
It's kind of separated out of the economy right now that $2 trillion.
It's already been borrowed, but it hasn't yet worked its way throughout the entire system.
It's still sitting as deposits, you know, in money market accounts, basically, but it hasn't
fully worked itself out into other asset prices or the prices of goods and services.
And so as that drains out of there and provides additional government spending power, then there will be some
additional inflationary pressures from that. However, during this time, we're probably also going to
be seeing a lot of deflationary pressures coming up very soon here. So in my estimation at the very
most, we'll see an offsetting those deflationary pressures. And so concerning Bitcoin,
or any asset that you expect to go up from monetary or currency to basement, I would say we have a
little bit of a further timeline that the Federal Reserve can continue to tighten, since they have
that $2 trillion to offset that tightening. And then once that is all used up, yeah, at some point,
they're going to have to completely reverse pivot, start easing again. And then at that point,
you'd expect those inflation hedges to really perform extremely well.
I'm curious to know if you have an opinion on when that might happen, because, you know,
as of right now, we are going to pay, I think, around $400 billion in interest this year.
And if, you know, these rates continue to normalize, say closer to 5%, we'd eventually be looking at like a trillion and a half dollars of just pure interest that we're paying.
So where is the breaking point in your mind as far as when the Fed will just be backed into too much of a corner?
So it obviously depends on a few things.
When you look at projections, it's based on, you know, some assumptions about how high interest rates will go and what government spending will be along that time period.
if they do implement any sort of austerity whatsoever and get back to, you know,
2019 level budgets or anything like that, then this can last a lot longer than people are
expecting. In fact, we get interest rates for, you know, the average federal government
borrowing costs, new borrowing costs up to, let's say, 6%. It could still take five years or so
before that becomes a problem for them to get the funding that they need, simply because
how long it takes their debt to roll over. So just because, you know, the 10-year treasurer,
goes up to, let's say, 10%, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the borrowing cost for all
of their $30 trillion that they currently owe. As that debt matures and they have to pay it back,
they're going to borrow new debt to pay off that old debt. So as that, that's what rolling over.
So as that happens, then the total cost of servicing their entire debt service debt pile does go
up. And so at the current pace, I'm thinking that it would probably be about five years, four years,
before it gets to a significant problem where the government is just like, hey, no matter what we do,
we can't pay our debt, especially because like if we push this to an extreme and we say,
okay, let's imagine what would happen if interest rates are go to 20%. The Fed pulls of Paul Volker,
the federal funds rate goes up to 20%. Well, suddenly, the federal government's borrowing costs
skyrocket, but that will attract a lot of capital. And so you would then have this flood of capital
saying, hey, I'd rather lend to the government risk-free. It wouldn't be up at 20%. It would be
completely, you know, severely inverted. So maybe 15 or maybe even 10%. And so you'd have a bunch of people
loaning to the government at those really high rates. That would suck capital away from the market.
And given the fact that we have the most over-leverage society in basically history, that would cause a
huge crash, a lot of deflationary pressures. They would completely eradicate any inflationary
pressures whatsoever. It would probably spill us over into a deflationary death spiral. And so when we look at
that then, then you're not worried about the rates on government spending going up because then they
could just pull interest rates right back down subsequently to that because they wouldn't have
to worry about inflation at that point. And so I don't think within the next five years, we're going
to be seeing major issues of like the government cannot pay its bills no matter what. However,
within the next 10, probably 15 years, it's almost inevitable that that happens at some point.
fascinating. So when you said five years or it might take five years, is that assuming that interest rates are
continue to stay where they are or higher from here? No, it's assuming interest rates. I mean,
if interest rates today were 6%, it would take probably about four to five years for all of that to
catch up as they roll over their debt to the point where it would be a problem for them given the
current amount of spending they're doing. And if for some reason or another, you know,
we get a win for the American people and the government starts spending less money, it might last
even longer than that.
And what if interest rates go back to zero for another 10 years?
Yeah, well, if interest rates go down, we obviously have to worry about the inflation thing,
but that certainly makes spending for the government a whole lot easier because borrowing
is essentially free at that point. And I also have to mention, I didn't even bring this up,
but if the Federal Reserve is able to cause some sort of mechanism to where the rest of the world
starts to dump U.S. Treasuries, that would not be a good long-term solution, but any debt that the
Federal Reserve owns is interest free for the federal government because any profits that the Federal
Reserve has get swept back to the Treasury. So if the entire $30 trillion that the federal government
owes, tomorrow we snap their fingers and that was all owned by the Federal Reserve and we're paying
10%, 20%, 30% to the Federal Reserve, well, it doesn't matter what the interest rate is. That's all
coming back to the federal government. So it's essentially like they're taking money out of one pocket
and putting it in the other. Now, one of the other thesis for Bitcoin is a potential C-Betka,
CBDC, right, a central bank digital currency, which we explored a little bit last time you were on the show a year ago.
But at that time, it was sort of just an idea.
I mean, I think the government had talked about maybe exploring it at some point, but I don't know if anything,
really materialize.
How have governments, not just the U.S., but other governments around the world, progressed?
And what is the current status of a potential CBDC in America?
Yeah, absolutely.
This is just recently within the month of, really, it's all happened within the month of November.
leave maybe the end of October, but we've seen governments all around the world, especially in light of
the collapse of FTX, we've seen governments just jumping on this as an opportunity to talk about
and try and get people familiar with the idea of a central bank digital currency. So as a background,
CBDC is basically like the exact opposite of Bitcoin. Bitcoin's a public ledger. Anybody can see all
the transactions back to the very first one, all the wallets, how much Bitcoin they have versus a
CBDC is a private ledger, only the Federal Reserve and some financial institutions would have
access to it. Bitcoin, nobody can control how much of it there is. The CBDC. It's fully controllable.
Bitcoin, no transactions can be stopped or caused. A CBDC, any transaction can be stopped or caused.
And so it's fully programmable and fully controlled and fully under surveillance at all times,
fully censorable. And so you have 100% control over the flow of resources in an economy because
you just control the money. So anything that happens, you can stop where you can cause,
you can credit money and say it can only be spent on gas. You can limit money and say you can
only spend up to $300 a month on gas because people are hoarding gas. And so you can do all sorts of
things that now don't even, don't even require legislation, don't require votes, don't require
politicians that have some sort of accountability to getting voted out of office. You just have
a small group of ivory tower elites controlling everything top down centrally in an economy. It is
just a recipe for disaster. But we've seen governments all around the world recently talking about this.
We've seen the Christine Lagarde came out recently started talking about we might need a digital euro.
We've seen the Federal Reserve just started a 12-week trial program with major financial institutions and banks like HSBC and Wells Fargo and Bank of America and a bunch of others to test a simulation of a digital dollar with the Federal Reserve.
And then now recently we saw the UK talking about establishing a digital pound.
And so it looks like never let a good crisis go to waste.
take advantage of people's skepticism and fear and the fact that they lost money in these
scams and use it to usher in a bunch of new things ultimately culminating in a CBDC.
So a former member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, wrote recently
this week in the New York Times that the U.S. should race to put out a digital dollar
or risk losing power to China, given their E, C, and Y.
Is there any validity to this thesis or is this simply self-serving propaganda?
It's a little bit of both.
So I don't really think there are, there's really anybody.
I would be willing to bet even China doesn't see their CBDC as the future of, you know,
replacing the dollar globally.
They've recently been in talks with Russia and the other BRICS nations like Brazil and India,
South Africa, Saudi Arabia, I believe is in talks as well about establishing just.
a new currency that is just for international trade that is backed or redeemable with a basket of
commodities like oil and gold. And so their model has always been to keep their, you know,
an internal currency and then an external currency. And I don't believe that they view their
CBDC at least right now as something that would replace the dollar. When we look at the way the
world is going and we look at how, you know, the speed of transactions and the security of transactions,
especially for international trade matters a lot.
And the fact that the dollar makes up most international trade,
and it is built on this archaic system that is really slowing things down
and giving the United States a lot of undue advantage over the global financial system,
then there is this ability for competition to step in and countries to say,
hey, look, if we keep using the dollar, we're going to have more and more disadvantages.
But if we move over to this new option, we've got more and more advantages.
And so there is something to be said about the, if you,
want to maintain your power globally, you're going to have to maintain the countries using
the dollar and the way it's going, it looks like technology will present more and more competition
to displacing the dollar for that. And so it is a little bit of both, but I don't think
pointing at the EC&Y is going to be something that is extremely valid. I would argue that the
dollar has more competition globally from things like Bitcoin, from like a gold-backed
currency, or even the euro moving forward into the future.
You were talking about the U.S. using a system now.
Is that the SWIF system that we were using for sanctions on Russia and other things that
probably both people are probably losing popularity with around the world given that we use
it as a weapon now?
But is that the system you're referring to?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so the fact that you have everybody using the dollar and needing SWIFT for international
trade means that if you want to, you can abuse that power for your own advantage.
But every time you do that, it weakens the rest of the world's resolve to continue
using that. And so it's like almost like a one use or a two use weapon where it eventually
destroys itself. But specifically with Swift, when they're looking out at the rest of the world and
many countries are trialing or researching their own central bank digital currencies right now,
there's this fear that that will be displaced, that we will not have any sort of control
over cross-border payments anymore. And so you can look up the Bank of International
settlements as talk about looking at Swift and designing it with a new layer that
has language to basically be the in-between between different central bank digital currencies
that cannot communicate with each other. And so they like to maintain that power over those
cross-border payments international trade. And so they want to be that in-between systems so that one
CBDC that is incompatible with another CBDC can use Swift as the go-between. And if Swift
stays as that infrastructure for international payments, then you get to maintain control
over the global financial system.
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All right. Back to the show.
Speaking of that control, you were kind of throwing out some examples of, I would say, censorship, or at least certainly control over how people spend or use the money. Is this based in any evidence or is this just sort of people that have postulated of what you could do with something like a digital dollar? And to further the question, is this something Ethereum could be doing? Right. Because in my mind, that's kind of the exact same setup as a CBDC, right? It's a centralized token, if you will, at least ether is. And do they have that kind of capabilities, theoretically?
at the moment. So just a kind of a funny way to look at this, a geeky way to look at this is in the movie
Thor when he is unworthy, Odin takes away the hammer and he says you're not worthy to be Thor anymore.
I've taken away your power. If you would have looked at Thor and said, you're not worthy to
wield this power anymore. So I'm going to make the hammer more powerful. Everybody would have looked
at that and said that's a dumb story move. But for some reason when we look at the government and we look at
corporations and we look at lobbyists and we look at corporatism and we look at the,
you know, movement towards totalitarian control of everything. We say,
what we really need is more power for the government as long as we just have the right
person in power here. So it's completely backwards. What you need to do is strip that away.
And so we can look at track record to see, okay, well, what have they done with their increased power?
And we look at things like the Patriot Act and anti-money or anti-money laundering laws.
And we look at things like K-YC rules. You look at those and you,
you see the abuse of that power over time, who they decide to use that against and when and what
sort of recourse there is for people who get kind of trapped in that. And you look at people who get
locked out of payment systems, people who get censored because of political statements or
disagreements about the way that things should be done or even saying things that are highly
offensive. You get people that get locked out of the traditional financial system all the time. And so
it really doesn't come down to, is there evidence that a government will,
use a CBDC for this evil. The question you have to ask is, what have they done with the power
that they have up until this point? And then does a CBDC represent more potential power or less?
And the answer unequivocally is, the more power that governments have been given, the more they
abuse it. That's virtually universal. And then a CBDC represents absolutely more power over the
financial system compared to the traditional system. You might have banks able to exercise control right now.
And if you try and engage in certain business, it's very difficult.
to get business bank accounts and use payment systems right now for certain types of business,
but it's better to have 10 tyrants that are competing for power than one tyrant who just has it all.
And so it absolutely represents the potential for more power to be abused.
Now, you brought up Ethereum, and that's an example where it's like, hey, yeah, there's,
there might be the potential for them to abuse the power that they have because of how centralized
it is, but they've never done that.
And when you look at, look at the track record, for instance, of the money supply, they've only made it harder over time.
They haven't made it easier.
But really what it comes down to is, yes, but is the potential there?
Like, do they have the capability to go the other way?
Because as long as that capability is there, it represents a temptation and a surface area of attack that somebody like the U.S. government could come in and Trojan horse that and take over it and then use that to their own advantage.
If you have a tool that's very powerful, it's going to attract the people who want that power.
and the CBDC is the kind of the ultimate example of that.
With all the FTX chaos that we've been seeing over the last couple of weeks,
you made this point that it's given this the government,
this free pass to come out and say,
hey, look at this CBDC of ours.
It's way better, way more trustworthy.
We're also seeing at least talk of the SEC now cracking down really hard on these tokens
and putting out a lot more regulation that would essentially be competing with their CBDC, right?
So you see a lot more of this regulation coming out,
against these tokens that will just kind of, you know, because now they're competing with the actual
government.
Yeah, 100%. So when you look at what's going on right now and over the last couple of years,
what we're seeing looks like a perfect storm. And I'm not saying that it's designed or that
it was premeditated, but at the very least, it's a perfect storm where you have the creation
of a ton of new money. First, whenever you have the expansion of the money supply, especially
to the extent that it happened over the last few years, what you are going to have is fraud.
You're going to have Ponzi schemes.
You are going to have theft to take place because everybody then is looking for a place to put all
that money.
You have people, individuals, companies, organizations say, I feel rich.
I want to get richer.
So people start buying assets.
Prices start going up.
And so it's no longer good enough to get 8% because that's, you know, just the boring old
stock market from 30 years ago.
I want to get something that's 20%, 30%.
So people start buying these things that do that.
And so you have fraudsters step in and take advantage of this.
the people's willingness to invest in anything that just promises a higher return,
regardless of any fundamentals that are not even there,
regardless of any utility, regardless of any company behind the security.
And so you have all of this money just looking ravenously for higher returns.
So you get the criminals that come out and take advantage of this and say,
I'm going to create this. I'm going to offer this.
You get things that great example is Nicolot,
who created these videos of their semi-trucks rolling downhill and then shifted
the video to make it look like it was an actual truck that was driving down the road and attracted
a ton of capital and, you know, that had no working product and it was, you know, a complete fraud.
And that's a very small example compared to all of the crypto scams and what's happening with like
FTX right now. And so you have the first initial phase, which is printing all the money and getting
all of the investments in these things. And coincidentally, we had no regulation. We had no new laws,
no new rules. And so the big money, the real institutional money, has stayed out of it this entire time.
because they don't want to get involved in something unless they know these are the rules
because they don't want to commit something and have the rules change and then have to undo everything
that they were doing. So a lot of the big money has stayed out of this entire space up to this point.
But that didn't happen for everybody else, all the retail money. And so you then have, you know,
the regulators staying out of this and saying, we're just going to let this game play out. And
every time you have Ponzi schemes and frauds, big frauds like this, Charles Ponzi and Ron,
Bernie Madoff, these are always built up during times of easy money, and they always collapse when
the money printer shuts off. And so inevitably, when inflation takes off, now the money printer
shuts off. And like Warren Buffett says, you don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.
And when the money printer shuts off, that's the tide going out. And then all these Ponzi schemes are
revealed for what they truly are, which is frauds that cannot continue going up unless new money comes in.
And, you know, the people at the top just, you know, stealing money from other people. And so that's what's
going on right now and we saw very curiously absolutely no legislation or regulation passed about
any of this. It's let all the money flood into these things that we know are presenting themselves
as securities. So we know they're violating securities laws. And so we let all this happen. We know
it's going to collapse. We know a bunch of people are going to lose all of their money on this.
And then once people are desperate and once people are begging for blood, once people are begging for
regulation and begging for the government to save them, now we're going to step in. We're going to create
all these new laws about it to crush any real technological applications, any real progress in this
space. That'll be crushed because they can't stand up to the threshold of those, the overbearing
regulations that are put in place. And then we're going to offer our own solution, which is going to be,
hey, there will be a couple stable coins that might exist because they're in close proximity to
real financial institutions and Federal Reserve. And apart from that, there will be the CBDC. Now, I have
to say with a caveat that the only thing that I think that doesn't include is Bitcoin, because with
Bitcoin, it has kind of passed that point where you can legislate it out of existence. You can pass
laws about it, but passing laws and enforcing laws are two entirely different things. There's just
no surface area of attack for Bitcoin like there is for every other cryptocurrency. And so I do
think that that is kind of the way things will play out. And 95 to 99% of crypto will be dead in five
years and there will be a few stable coins, Bitcoin, maybe Ethereum, and a CBDC, and that'll probably
be it. I agree with you on that. You know, the FTX saga, I mean, the fraud knows no bounds,
it would seem. They're just still uncovering things as we go along and I'm still wrapping my head
around all of it. But it's kind of interesting, isn't it, that it says some degree, what they were doing
is a little similar to fractional reserve banking, right? Which is what we have now. I mean, they had this
token that they made up out of thin air that they were using as collateral. But essentially what
happened is there was almost like a bank run, right? They're just selling off this token and
then everything collapsed from there. But what does that say about our own fractional reserve
banking system? I mean, and are there any other risks or lessons to be learned from that?
Yeah, you're 100% right. Back in the day when people had gold coins, they eventually trusted the banks
to hold the gold coins for them and they used paper receipts that were redeemable for those
gold coins at any time. And eventually, the banks took advantage of this, printed way more
paper receipts than there was actually gold to back it up. And there would be a run on the bank.
Everybody would go to get their gold because they would realize it's not there. And so the first people in line
get their gold and everybody else is screwed. And instead of outlawing this, governments centralized
this and nationalized it and said, you have to have a license to do this and do this with the central
bank. And they were able to stop local bank runs, but they didn't stop that same local effect from being
scaled up to the entire system. And so that's why after the Federal Reserve was created in 1913,
just seven years later, you had the first Great Depression. It's the forgotten depression.
Great Book by Jim Grant.
And then just eight years after that, you had the second Great Depression that was even worse
than the first.
And so this is all because that boom bust cycle that used to be isolated to when the fraud
would happen to a local economy, that got scaled up and transferred to the entire system
and caused even more damage.
Now, the reality is today with our current system, we don't have to worry about that
because they don't have a limitation on how much money they can print because it's not tied
to the amount of gold.
So there is no bank run where people can go redeem their dollar.
for gold. So today what people do when they see that there's not enough wealth to back up the money that
was printed, they just go out and buy real stuff. And so when we see massive inflation, that's a bank
run just on the economy instead of on gold. And then when we look at things like FTX happening,
well, they don't have a monopoly on being able to create money out of thin air. And I would argue that
the fact that you can't create Bitcoin, you can create all your other tokens out of thin air,
but they can't print Bitcoin. That was one of the catalysts that caused this bank run to really get
going because of how many, how much in liabilities they had in Bitcoin. And so you're absolutely right.
This is identical to the thing that has always been done throughout history, but governments don't
like competition. And so when you start to run your own Ponzi scheme, they want to put you out
of business because they want to have a monopoly on running the money Ponzi scheme themselves.
I love it. And this is, I mean, the fall of SPF is just the quickness to go from, I think he was
around 30 billion. It was his net worth. I think it's 26 the last time I saw it. But that was just
put that in perspective, that's more than Ray Dalio. I mean, that's almost twice as wealthy as Ray Dalio,
this guy. I mean, this isn't, even though he's like a young kid, it's like, this guy was extremely
wealthy and it went to zero in a matter of days. Is he going to go down as the face of this everything
bubble, do you think? Because, you know, we had our Lehman moment with the GFC. We have this huge
asset bubble that we've created. Is he going to be the pin that breaks it? Or do you think there's
more to fall given, you know, how much is actually still in the system?
If I was betting one way or the other, I would say he probably will go down as the face of it,
the Lehman, the Bernie Madoff, the big name that is remembered.
However, we know that everything that was going on there is just a small example of what has
been going on in our traditional financial system forever.
Like one of the key characteristics is you take an asset and you loan it out and then that
loan gets, you know, re-deposited and then re-loaned out. It's called re-hypification. And so as this happens
more and more times, well, eventually you get to a point where if one of those links in the chain breaks,
the entire chain breaks, and that is the, that is like one of the pillars of our global financial
system, whether you look at gold contracts, whether you look at cash, whether you look at bonds,
whether you look at like currency, like everything is based on, you know, this continued
loaning out again and again and again and again and has created the most over-leverage global economy
in world history. And so it's possible that just like BlockFi was about to collapse,
SBF came in and rescued it, and then that led to his collapse. Well, eventually there's going to be
something maybe pretty soon here that, you know, a European bank goes out or the UK pension
system goes out and a bailout comes in, but it's not enough to fix the rot and that bleeds over
into something else that's bigger.
And so it's possible that we have not even begun to see the carnage yet.
Yeah, I'm not so sure.
And that's why it's so interesting all these signals you're getting because when I see,
you know, this bullish signal maybe for the put call ratio,
you mentioned these deflationary pressures that you might see coming down the pipeline
that could reverse course a little bit.
I just, I'm not so sold on it because I'm like, I don't know if that's enough, you know,
this, this FTX thing while it was extreme, it's also very isolated, right?
It's kind of there's not really, we don't, I don't even,
so far, we haven't seen much contagion happen from it like we would have in a Lehman moment.
So it's just interesting to see, is this really the bottom of the market or are we going to
bounce back from here?
Stan Drucken Miller actually has this theory that we're going to just be sideways for, you know,
the next decade.
What would be your take over the next 10 years if you had to bet on which way this market's
going to go?
Yeah.
So this is where I like to differentiate between asset classes because I think we're going
to see a lot of variability here.
I think crypto, almost everything is going to zero.
Oh, anything that still exists right now that's still trading, eventually most of it is not
even going to be trading at all.
Something like the stock market, we can look at the major indexes and say, okay, the major
indexes might have some more room to go down.
But when you look at a lot of stocks, like in the S&P 500 even, more than half the stocks are
down 30, 40, 40.
A lot of them are down 60, 70%.
When you look at tax stocks, a lot of those, especially the ones that IPOed in the last couple of
years are down 80 to 90% from their highs just within the last few years. And so we've seen a lot of
economic pain priced into many stocks already. When we take a look at something like the overall
economy that I was talking about the deflationary pressures, basically what happens is you have
more money coming to a system that chases the existing wealth that bids up the prices. That's the
basic mechanism. When money stops increasing, there's no more money to continue pushing prices up. And
when people buy things because the prices are going up, they sell them once the prices stop going
up. And when the people start to sell them, then the prices start going down and cause even
further selling. The money supply has not increased since November of 2021. It is sideways.
It is actually a little bit down. We know that the money supply changes take a little bit of time.
There's a lag between the money supply change and how it hits the overall economy.
That would mean, in my estimation, starting 2023, we,
start to see some severe deflationary pressures, we start to see unemployment, we start to see
price cuts, we start to see major economic pain. Now, I'm not saying that that means the stock
market, the indexes have another 80% down to go, but I'm saying that households will probably
experience a lot of economic pain over the next year. And so that's why I kind of like to
differentiate between asset classes there because I think they'll all respond very differently.
Well, just touch on the consumer there for a minute as well, because another indicator we're
seeing is the level of debt that just households have right now versus credit card debt versus
savings, for example, savings at near all time lows. What is this telling you about the actual
economy underneath these markets that might be propped up by institutions or other kind of liquidity?
Yeah, absolutely. That's another thing why I say that American households probably have a lot of
pain ahead because they're most over leverage that they've been ever. And so one of these things is going
to be mortgages, obviously, but you also have credit card debt absolutely skyrocketing at the
fastest pace, it's skyrocketed. And we have credit card rates going up dramatically at the exact same
time. And so you have people who have depleted their savings, like all the money that people had
from stimulus checks, the mortgage refinances and all that. That's gone. People have depleted their
savings and debt is through the roof and people are using their credit card just to make ends meet.
Well, eventually people start not being able to pay that debt, which means they start to default,
which means that debt for everybody else dries up, which means that.
that more people start to experience economic pain because if everybody starts defaulting on their credit
cards, guess what the credit card companies do? They stop letting you use the credit cards. The credit
limits go down. They stop letting you put more on them. And so people can't pay the bills then.
People can't get groceries. And so people have to start making sacrifices and stop spending
money on other things. And every one person's expenses, another person's income. And so you could
have the entire economy really slowed down, grind to a halt and experience a big economic pain.
And so the massive debt load is a huge issue right now.
Yeah, the household debt is actually over $16 trillion at the moment, which, you know, it does include mortgage debts.
But I'm kind of curious about what your take is on mortgages and where they're going because real estate appears to be in this negative feedback loop, if you will, where prices are high, interest rates are high, but supply and demand are low.
In your estimation, will these factors actually keep us from entering a crash like we saw in 2008?
Yeah, there are a lot of indicators that people usually look at for the overall real estate market.
And really, in my opinion, there are only two that matter.
The first one that matters is the total number of housing units compared to the overall population.
Basically, how many places are there to live and how many people are there that need a place to live?
This number has been getting worse and worse and worse for a very long time,
especially because we had basically a decade where no houses were built compared to population.
after the last housing crisis. And so then you get to the last two years and everybody who could,
everybody who is planning on it at some point bought a house and got it at two and a half, three percent,
three and a half percent for their mortgage. That means that right now you have most Americans who own
a home sitting there and looking at, hey, that's a home that's equal to my home. If I want to sell my
house and buy that house, my payment will go from $2,000 to $4,000 a month. I can't afford that.
So I can't move.
And if people can't afford to buy the new house, they also can't afford to sell the current house.
And you might think, okay, well, everybody's just going to sell or walk away and start renting.
Well, that means that all the investors will buy up the houses to rent them out, which will again be a floor underneath prices.
And so we don't have a situation where rents are really low right now, mortgages are really high.
And that could spill over into an equalizing effect where house prices come down to compensate.
It's just not happening because there are more people who need a place to live right now than there are places to live.
And yeah, we had about 18 months where housing starts jumped because of all the new money,
but that's dropped off a cliff.
Homebuilders are not building any more homes now.
And so it doesn't look like that was a sustainable increase in home building.
So right now, those are the factors that we have to look at for the housing market.
Doesn't look anything like it did in 2006, 2007, 2008.
What should people who don't currently own homes know about where this market's heading?
And how would you advise them to act?
Yes, this is one of those areas where I feel the most compassion and the most, like, I really feel very strongly about this for a lot of people who I know have been sitting on the sidelines since 2011 or 2012.
And they've been saying, I'm just going to wait for the next crash. When the next crash happens, then I'll buy.
They've been maybe saving a little bit of money. They've been renting. Their rents have been going up every single year. And meanwhile, home prices have doubled or tripled depending on the city that you live in.
And so we're getting to a place where right now, housing prices should have crashed if they were going to crash.
We should have seen foreclosures.
We should have seen short selling.
We should have seen prices collapse because interest rates are higher than they've been in a very long time.
And nobody can afford to buy right now.
But housing prices have not come back down.
And on top of that, we're getting to the point where, in my opinion, we're going to start to see some deflation soon,
which means the Fed is going to back off on raising interest rates, which means that mortgages might stay at 6%, 7%, even 8%.
they're probably not going to move much higher than that.
And there's a chance they might start moving down in anticipation of the next Fed interest rate drop.
And we already saw that anticipation with mortgage rates having their biggest drop in a long time.
As soon as the inflation numbers came out, just a little bit lower than expected,
because mortgage rates stopped in anticipation of the Fed's future pivot,
which has not been announced yet or even talked about yet.
And so we're in this position where housing prices might be at a place where they might not come down much from here.
And the next move, the next economic move, might make them go.
up even more. And all the people sitting on the sidelines right now waiting for the next crash
don't have their foot in the game, don't have their foot in the door. And so when prices do eventually
start to go back up from interest rates getting pushed down again at some point in the future,
they'll be locked out of buying forever, we'll no longer have the ability to save up enough for a down payment
and will be stuck renting basically forever. And this will happen to a lot of people we're going to be
turning into a nation of renters and landlords. And so I'm not telling people to go out and start
investing in real estate to start buying up a ton of rental property.
who don't know what they're doing.
I'm not thinking that this is a time period like 2011, 2011, 2012,
where all you had to do is buy and you're going to make money.
I am saying, though, that if you're renting and you don't have any skin in the game
for real estate whatsoever, it might get to a point very soon where you're locked out forever.
And you're going to have to have a mortgage or a rent payment either way.
So at least for 30 years, you're going to be paying for where you're going to be living.
So the question is, do you want to pay for where you're living and have exposure to the real
estate market that might go up or do you want to pay for where you're living and not have any
exposure whatsoever and bet on something falling that the fundamentals don't say has a real chance of
falling a lot. Yeah, as my friend who's a real estate agent would say purchase price is permanent
and interest rates are temporary because you can always refinance too, right? You can get in and
sometimes we'll see some, hopefully we'll see a little bit of lower houses in the near term just
because of these interest rates where they are. But I'm also curious about the $16 trillion
of debt that we mentioned a minute ago, should people be focused on buying real estate or should
they be more focused on just paying down those current levels of debt that they have?
It depends on the type of debt, very, very different things here. So I like to use the example
of shorting of stock here. Many people are familiar with the mechanics of shorting of stock.
You want to sell first and then buy back to close out that trade. Well, people who are new to trading
kind of like, I remember the first time I heard about shorting, it was like, well, how does that make
sense how do you sell something that you don't own? And the answer is, you have to borrow it.
So, when you short something, you borrow those shares from somebody, you then sell them,
you get cash for that. And then to be able to close out that trade and walk away, you have to buy
those shares back with cash and then give those shares back that you borrowed. And so the definition
of shorting something is borrowing something and then exchanging it for something else.
And so you short something that you think will go down in value. That way, when you close out
the trade, you get to buy it back for less than what you sold it for. And so when you look at the dollar
and you say, okay, over the last decade, how much has the dollar lost in its value?
What about over the last two decades?
What about over the last three decades, the regular length of mortgage?
The dollar's gone down in value a lot.
That's what inflation is.
It takes more dollars to buy the same amount of stuff because they're less value.
They're more abundant.
And so when you look at a mortgage, that is by definition shorting the dollar.
You are borrowing dollars and then exchanging them for a house.
And then to close up the trade, you'd exchange dollars for a house again.
and then give back those dollars.
And so you are, by definition, able to short the dollar by getting a mortgage on a house.
But the key is it has to be fixed rate because if your attempt is to short the dollar,
your goal is that the dollar will fall in value.
Well, that does you no good if you end up owing more dollars back than you originally signed up for.
That only does you good if you owe the same amount of dollars back no matter what.
And so with a fixed mortgage, that's true.
You can short the dollar effectively if you expect the dollar to go down in value.
However, with any adjustable rate debt, you're going to be screwed because the lender will always increase the interest rate enough to compensate for the loss of purchasing power, for the inflation that's there.
And so you're not going to be able to short the dollar effectively because even if the dollar loses value, you'll have to owe back more dollars because the interest rate will go up.
And so on any sort of debt that is adjustable whatsoever, that is the first thing.
No matter what, get out of that debt, especially like credit card debt, the highest interest rate debt.
That is priority number one for anybody above investing above anything.
get out of that because it's extremely dangerous.
Next step would be get rid of the high interest rate debt that is pretty much always
going to be above the rate of inflation, even if it is fixed.
And then once you're there, then you can say, okay, do I want to short the dollar?
And if so, mortgages are like the best way to do that.
Well, Joe, it is always such a pleasure to have you on the show.
And I always enjoy the content you put out there.
It's amazing.
I recommend everyone go check it out.
Please give a handoff to the audience where they can learn more about you
and see all these amazing videos.
and in your own podcast, I believe now that you have from the videos out and there to educate people.
So tell them where to go.
Yeah, thank you.
Heresy Financial, mainly on YouTube is where I put a video up pretty much every single day.
Very active on Twitter at Heresy Financial on every social media, Instagram, TikTok, you'll find me.
And then on anywhere you get podcasts, I've got a separate podcast as well now.
And that one is called Financial Heresy.
So just the opposite there.
Joe, always a pleasure. Let's do it again. Thank you so much for having me. It was great time.
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