I can see Donish hopefully it will be up in a minute and we'll get going this morning
all right can everybody hear me
I was having a little bit of trouble man
having a little bit of trouble
not gonna make a big deal out of it
at least I can hear you now
that's better than I was doing yesterday
that's true I was like wow Matt is not
cutting you know not not cutting my legs
I'm just kidding uh no it's great
uh really great to get started again
should we wait a couple more minutes for everybody to show up or do we have
David do you think we should get
because there's not that many people in the room
I'll tell people that yesterday
I doubled up on my position
a little bit less than doubled up
on my position on Bitcoin
I've been very honest about it
like I had said I was very honest from the beginning
my reasoning has nothing to do with the ETF
my reasoning has nothing to
do with bullshit hype I have made
it very clear what my reasoning is the world
is uncertain and this is an uncorrelated
asset that acts like growth
and sometimes and gold sometimes
which makes it a very interesting asset
to invest in because it helps
smoothen out my entire portfolio
that's how I've thought about it
uh I will thank Scott Melker
advice on this and I actually
don't care that it went up since then
who knows what's going to happen moving forward
but what I do know is that it's going to continue
I will remind people that we still have not seen
inflows uh and I will continue
to do that until we do or we don't
but I will say that the new narrative
that I'm hearing in the crypto
The only reason I'm biting
and I think that that's a very valid
and at this point the SEC
they are the regulator of securities
they should know what they think
in the crypto space is considered
securities they've had a long enough
period of time to go ahead and do that
to regulate the securities industry
which cryptocurrencies are securities
and which are not and therefore
regulated by the CFTC since they would be commodities
it's wrong they're not doing their jobs
and they should be taken to
ETH as a security at least at this
the SEC is going to be hard pressed
well supported legal argument
a security and so therefore it will fall to
all of that is tied up it may take a while
to get it tied up because Gary Gensler
does not like to be a straight shooter
um which again I think is very
inappropriate to the United States
the U.S. taxpayer investors so on
um but nevertheless I do believe
that an ETH ETF is coming
and it may be coming within the year
a nothing burger for Bitcoin
should also be a nothing burger
I don't expect for it to be anything
as an event in and of itself
led to you know nearly a hundred
percent increase right if you think about it
in the long run as soon as the rumors
to whatever it went to 49
I mean we saw that all happen
based on these rumors and
some would say that Ethereum could
see that and then people will again and
FTX really with a lot of selling pressure
you may not get that so that
is the other side of the argument
narratives I'm actually very confused by
why Ethereum would not be a security
I know that people disagree with
me on that and that's that but
likelihood of being a security than Bitcoin
that's for sure because you know it's
actually a platform that people use to build on top of
and then the other side of it
like why isn't XRP being pushed
right now since that they've already
won a court case so it's kind of an interesting
do think that the one thing the crypto
industry is learning right now
is that traditional finance
there's a lot of competition
dollars within traditional finance and you
can't just come with hype you have to have something
behind it and I think that
looking at this ETF in my
right from the traditional finance
it's funny for an industry that
coins itself as like this
oh we're going to be decentralized
you all couldn't wait for the people
and get involved and so it is
I have to say that like for the
degens out there which I am
definitely not I would never even want
to be it is kind of interesting
that they're so excited about BlackRock
about Vanguard initially but
they're going to finally get the recognition
so they got the recognition and guess what
the market didn't really get
excited about it right away by the way
anybody could have told you that especially
I mean there's a part of me David
that kind of wishes we had an organization
or a country where we could
at least investigate whether they did a leak
on purpose the day before
what happened I think that actually had a lot
to do with this I think a lot of people
were like this is a lot more volatile
so I think they kind of like
they're on purpose didn't stick
the landing I think Gensler
really wanted to hurt the crypto industry
an RIA I would not be recommending this to
I did not do it through the ETF
I did it I'm self-custodying
believe that that is the right approach to owning
Bitcoin but I do think that
and again I bought again when it
dipped and I will probably
buy again I'm not going to go too crazy
with it like I said it's going to be in a single digit
so my portfolio I think that's smart
for me because I'm not an expert but
wanted to get some thoughts on the
really quickly before we jump
into the big news of the day
which I think will have crazy macro
giant geopolitical things happening
China has officially announced
stimulus package I think it's going to be
I think it's going to be very
pro-inflationary across the
the second is that they're
and Hamas are working towards a
for a few weeks now we've seen these
fires happen before and break but
counter narrative to what Israel's been saying
hey we don't want to do a ceasefire
I think the international pressure really
everybody will say that less killing is good
as long as it leads to less killing long term
both short term and long term
Israel's really kind of gone out on a limb
being pulled back a little bit by the international community
which I'm happy to discuss I really don't
care as much about the politics of it
I do want to talk a little bit about what happens
inflation and more inflation
this vicious cycle of inflation
juxtaposition where China is now
announcing stimulus and I'll share some details
about that really quickly
and then let's talk about China first then we'll talk about Hamas
in Israel because I feel like Hamas in Israel
is going to take me a little bit more deep
but the China Central Bank
around banks so it's going to be
a little bit technical but hopefully
everybody that's listening if you all are listening
and you don't understand what we're trying
DM us be like guys you guys need to go in a little bit deeper
because we have a lot of banking folks up here so
I do want to be thoughtful about that
Chinese banks are in deep
trouble because the real estate industry
the reserve ratio, so as of
Chinese bank has now announced
that from February 5th forward
the reserve ratio requirements
what they're calling the triple R
will provide an additional 1 trillion
capital so essentially what they're
you can re-release this money out into
the world because you don't have to
implications of this we all know
what happens here, yeah David is like
this is kind of dangerous
because if the Chinese people go out and do a
this probably wouldn't pass a stress
test in the United States if Chinese
businesses did a bank run but you know what happens in
China when you do a bank run?
you don't see the next day, that's what happens
and so I think the Chinese government
don't do a bank run otherwise
you know what will happen in
the middle of the night it's an authoritarian
but they're saying hey we're going to ease it so that the banks
don't have to hold as much cash
and it will literally lead to a trillion
into the market into long term capital
the people's bank of China said there's
room and this was the bigger deal actually
because a trillion won is not the same as a trillion
dollars so let's be realistic
the people's bank of China came
out, Tang Gongsheng came out
that there's room for further
and so I wanted to take a second
it great to welcome China to the fractional
reserve system, kind of interesting
people's thoughts on this, David, China
is stimulating their market through
liquidity, through monetary policy
is this something that can
really, you know, they're trying to
jumpstart their economy again
David do you think this can work?
I think they can throw a lot of money
I think they can throw a lot of money at their system
and to go ahead and paper
it for a little while and
it will take a really long time
evil of what they're doing
to go ahead and rear its head
they can go ahead and allow money to flow
to look a lot like the United States
seem like they are mimicking
and this is a real, you know, this
is a clear mimic of the West
on a bunch of different levels, whether it be
with businessmen, politicians
common citizen, I think that that's
a bad look for the government
so, you know, if they could do this once
great, if they do this once
and it starts to become a slippery slope
for them, then I think that that's a really
David Nikosky, your thoughts? And then we'll go to
Dwayne, I know you're watching the markets
been posting quite a bit on the
Chinese markets, I mean, the breath
actually improved up until
about a week and a half ago
and then, you know, with the dip that we saw
on Sunday night, you know, Monday
morning, you know, it was interesting
I was watching the FXI and despite
that we saw the week before, six
cents, we're talking like
everyone's bearish China, you know
of the components for Apple iPhones
like if you're bearish China
then you might as well get out of Apple
a different view than perhaps most
and I'm not of favoritism
any means, but you know, if you
country in the world to collapse
you know, the Taiwan situation
you know, there's counter party risk
to everyone on the face of the planet
personification that, you know, China is
bad, and again, I'm not a proponent of it
but the U.S. sat there and built this
enterprise over there with U.S. companies
to the poker game before we invested
one penny there, and now we're
you know, if you look at every
State of the Union address by every president
they all talked about China
not one did anything about it
until Trump came into office, and this is
not a Trump comment, this is
literally every single president
in every single State of the Union
sit here and go, we knew that
we knew how the game was played, imagine
playing poker with your buddies
and after 20 years you change all the rules
that's not what happened, the rules
have stayed exactly the same
and the U.S. is playing tit for tat
and they do a majority of it around
the world, you know, if you want them
to fail, we're going to see
anything that's processed
are going to skyrocket, you know
careful of what you wish for
because you may get it, so that's
has bottomed, but you know
there's a difference between a bottom
This is a bottom, I think China
is going to continue to lose
market share in the world
as I've indicated many times
you're seeing it go to India, I think India is
you know, very overpriced for
what we're seeing, you know
the emerging markets have
relative to the S&P, you know
if we get a dollar decline, I think
that there's so many great
places to throw some money at
because for the 14 years, you didn't
that we're seeing and how
much it, you know, is taking the
that should be something that you
you know, question, can we
you know, push the dollar
lower for a couple of years, I
think that's going to be the case
so that's my view on China
I do think it is a bottom
parabolic down like that, just like you
don't have markets that go
parabolic up and you get, you know, so
far extended from, you know, trend lines
that you get a really, really
Yeah, I mean, David, I will say
we knew what we were doing, but
we had to do what we had to do at the time
that was sort of the mentality
I think, I will say that decoupling
is here, there's been a lot of decoupling
and Apple's moving manufacturing
to other countries right now
we know they're moving their manufacturing, for example
to Vietnam, there has been talks
of them moving their factories to India
and others, the cost spaces
may not be the same as China, but with automation
Dwayne, my thought on China
and I wanted to get your thoughts on it
decline and they're trying to do what we did
this is like true, you know,
liquidity and quantitative
easement, do you think it will work Dwayne?
I mean for the short term, I think
it will work in the sense that
this is, you know, boosted markets
we're talking 2 trillion won, which is
work in regards to their markets
so we've seen a boost in the indices
but even with this stimulus, this isn't going to really be enough
to solve some of the problems
that they have there, especially with the real estate
at the Chinese people in general, there's
own stocks, and that makes up about
4% of their total assets here, so
real estate, so that's not really
going to solve some of their long-term problems
here, we talked before about the decline
in the Chinese population, this is the second
year of declines we're seeing, we have about
births here, and it's probably lower than that
because obviously the numbers can't
necessarily be trusted here, but there's something
easing and moving into some of these
stimulus ideas here, because
it's going to cause a lot of problems
in terms of sentiment, so
there's something to be said here
about trust in the government
for the Chinese people, and trust in the
real estate market, but you can't really have that
trust if you have tofu drag
construction, where things are falling
apart, if you don't really have
affordable housing, so that's
definitely going to cause a lot of
problems here, so I think in the short term
markets rise, and I think a lot
of people are invested in Baba
and invested in a lot of the Chinese
role to play here overall,
because if you took all of the
industrialization on that side out
of China, it's going to make
obviously a difference to the Chinese economy,
but China is still dependent
on for rare earths, for copper,
China is still going to be that
resource provider to the world, regardless
of what happens, so China isn't
dead, I don't want people
to get the impression here that we're saying
that it's all over for China, but
their economy is definitely going to
decline, but they still have a lot
of industries that, at least
for now in the interim, are going to be irreplaceable
at least for three to five years here.
Yeah, David, your thoughts?
And then will he go ahead with David?
Yeah, I just wanted to say
and inflows, and foreign reliance
So, for the third straight month,
activity in China shrunk.
That was October, November, and December.
and if we don't think we're in a growth cycle
and Donish, as you mentioned,
people looking, or companies looking
for manufacturing alternatives,
The second thing is, the funds
That was the biggest since
that it can do in this instance,
I don't know if it's going to be
enough. It'll be enough to
and by the way, regarding Baba Jack Ma
of Baba stock to go ahead and show
certainly thinking that it's at a value
before this announcement.
Come on, man. Oh, no, it's totally
inside baseball. No, no, no, come on.
I'm certainly not. I'm just
saying, in other words, we know what China
is, right? The question is,
we're going to see if the market believes
doing, and whether it can
go ahead and pull it off. Again, it is
a totally different regime.
To go back to David's point
earlier, yeah, we know the rules
of the game. By the way, this is not
out. This is the United States' trick.
Very clearly, that's part
of our rules, and we know
that. Certainly, anybody could do whatever they
of the day, the question is,
in the rule book for China?
to try to go ahead and save themselves?
And we'll see what the market reaction to it is.
stocks are going to jump, but I wonder
if over a period of time, even a short period
of time, if that jump is going to go
This is the third change.
There were two last year, but
this one was the largest, and it's the first one
of requirements. So, banks
are holding less and less capital
Your thoughts on China, and how
worried we should be about
China loosening its standards
with you guys again. Look,
than usual, but they've done this.
Actually, this is not the most potent
They could have outright lowered rates.
They could have done many things. Frankly,
it's justified because they have
outright deflation on the PPI side
inflation, like 0.1, 0.2, but well
2% bogey. They could have
lowered rates outright, as opposed to the
don't think this is such a big deal.
deal, which is why the stocks are rallying,
is everyone thinks there is
bailout program that they announced 2 trillion
potent than this one from a
China as this unique thing
is all that relevant, because yes,
China has 300% debt to GDP.
the neutral bomb over in Japan
if people lose faith in that bond market
which is quasi-nationalized. More than
50% of the bond market is owned
by the government pension
funds. If that happens, then
Let's not forget here, in the US.
36 trillion by the end of this year.
That's the 2 trillion deficit
plus some of the extra lending
they pivoted. There's a reason why
there's leaking now that QT has
to be decelerated, if not stopped
by probably the end of this year.
There's already talk that if we're going to get
then we'll go to outright
willy-nilly talking about that.
In a nutshell, this is a global thing.
We're all playing merry-go-round.
I keep saying the same thing like
liabilities when you count unfunded pension
liabilities globally, corporate and
on top of the sovereign debt.
That's the only thing that seems to get attention
but you have to not forget about the other two.
and looseness is unfortunately
and I think that's why risk
in the face of a shitty economy
Everyone's saying, God, these
all-time highs sure don't feel like all-time highs.
$30,000, $32,000, $32,000
they'd bring out those hats that celebrate
where unfortunately we're
hard assets, crypto, gold,
silver and real estate are not going to work.
real quick, as you mentioned
right at the beginning, China
has been in outright deflation
with their PPI, CPI data.
inflation around the world?
it's not one thing. Everything is going to
export inflation. Look at the inflation
The fact that these guys are
single time they say, ooh, we're going to go up to
1% and we're going to breach and then all hell
breaks loose and everyone starts to panic
and shift their bed, right?
America's in a trap. Japan's in a trap.
China's in a trap. We cannot raise rates.
We shouldn't be lowering them, given where unemployment
is and inflation is. But it's
because you're getting this huge disparity
between the haves and have-nots.
There's economic malaise everywhere.
so overlevered, you're seeing
this very structural thing
that inflation is being exported everywhere.
it's all correlated. You might think
that geopolitical conflict
is not correlated. It is. It's all one in the
same trade, right? So you'll see
flare-ups in the Red Sea. You'll see
flare-ups in, you know, North
Korea because they want people to pay attention
different pockets because you're getting
you know, this once every 70-year
cycle playing through where you
get this structural inflation. We saw that
right into World War II, right?
sort of what's happening, right?
And so that's why I think
it's not just Japan exporting inflation.
It's all these different pockets doing the same thing.
By the way, for everybody that's listening that wants
to keep up with all of that news
all of these things, we have the post
join the Telegram. You can join the newsletter.
They are live and they are
much more on top of these things
than the rest of us. And so,
you know, just wanted to give a shout out to the team
breaking news on Telegram live
around a lot of these things.
people know what my political views are,
means that I'm not always right, but
I'm always on the same side of the argument.
I don't believe in war. We can talk
about that some other time.
It looks like, at least according
if I would have seen it on any other news
network, I would have said, I don't care. It's
which means that money is behind it, Israel
reportedly working towards
morning. I'm sure our team broke it earlier.
But the reports are coming
I want to use the words that CNBC used
because it tells you about
the global sentiment around this.
I care, obviously, what's wrong and right,
think that that matters as much as what the narrative
is becoming. This is on a
not left leaning. But the
words that came out of their mouth is
Israeli bombardment of Gaza
been an impasse in talks.
that's how they use their words usually.
the global sentiment in my opinion, but I'm happy to hear from others.
reportedly so far refused to come to an agreement
short-term ceasefire, but
one to two months in exchange for
all the remaining Israeli hostages.
from a market perspective,
I think the market will be
this conflict potentially
coming to an end. And I think people will
against Israel. But David, I know
your son is in the IDF and I want to give you the chance
to respond to this. I don't think Israelis
are going to be mad about this. They were
marching in the streets against Bibi saying,
do something about the hostages first
before we do all of this. So it is
interesting to see this come to head. David,
by the New York Post, by the National
Post, that the offer on the
table was a two-month ceasefire
release of Palestinian prisoners
for the exchange of freeing all the
hostages inclusive of those that
are dead, the bodies of the hostages
that are no longer alive. And Hamas
has rejected that proposal.
I'm sure there's a he said, she said
I'm going to be incredibly
in terms of who's saying what
and what's going back and forth.
on the table, and rightfully
so. I mean, you come into
take really innocent hostages,
that's on the table, and if
or nothing short of, a permanent
ceasefire, at this point, without
releasing all the hostages,
I don't think that that's going to be on the table.
I'm sorry, I want to push back just
a second again, just to keep
240 hostages, according to Israeli officials,
1200 people were killed, but
in the three and a half months since
nearly 90% of Gaza's population,
and at least according to
the numbers that have been released
from Palestinian officials, and
actually reported in CNBC, reported
I mean, the problem with war,
and I'm just going to make a political comment,
the problem with war is that people
There's no, you know, it's not like suddenly
you know what, they've killed enough of us, we're going
to stop being upset. I'm just saying
it's only going to empower
on the other side. I do want to give the other
Dhanesh, Dhanesh, can I please step in
and just say, let's turn this to finance.
I think we've heard both sides of the story.
God, my God, we have so many political
we come here for solace. I will
say from a financial point of view
the incremental news today on Gaza
this is all happening, there's an immense
amount of pressure on Gaza, there's an immense amount of pressure
the news that is CNBC is very
positive. If there's a ceasefire
there will be a Houthi ceasefire
and that was the biggest.
I just wanted to give the other side of it.
I think that's where I've made my finance comments
and so I wanted to make sure that
it's not unrepresented here.
like you said, it's very complicated.
We have incredible experts that know
this space much better than I do.
the other side of it, which is it's not just one-sided.
It is a two-sided affair.
from the finance perspective, Wahid is
absolutely right. The two big
on the Houthis attacking in the Red Sea.
associated with this situation. Now I'm not
completely convinced they're going to back down completely, Wahid.
especially if there's pressure
other countries based on the ceasefire.
Number two, with less chaos
in the Middle East, we may see
a retracement of oil again.
That's the other big, big thing for me.
So product deflation or product
have thoughts on whether you think
that this will actually lead
to that in the short term? Are people going to get ahead of it
or are they going to wait to see what happens?
people will discount that,
but can I just be very honest with you?
God, it's so sad when I say this.
We're so overlevered that
the risk on, risk off move
all happens on the margin
doesn't do anything beyond six hours.
war in Armageddon, we sell
off for six hours and then we frickin'
thinks about fundamentals
huge impact on the markets.
I do want to push back a little bit.
I'm being facetious about
$6,000 but actually, proof
is in the pudding. It didn't.
It didn't. Look at that gas.
Look at oil. Look at German
stocks. After three years and
20% cumulative price increases.
with the exception of NatGas, all that
a vicinity of weeks. NatGas
played out in four months
because there was big stockpiling and people
did not know, but now NatGas
We'll push back with core inflation.
The core structural aspects
priced into core inflation now. And so that's leading
to slowdown in growth, which is why
the volatile aspects of inflation
in the medium term people just forget
about it. I understand the attention issue
but we've seen it kind of
play in, no? Especially supply chain.
geopolitical uncertainty,
all the things that you cited, there's no
frickin' way, no frickin' way
risk markets should be where they are.
You can't fight the tape.
That's what I mean, I agree with you.
I'm agreeing with you, but that's the point.
It's like because we trade on liquidity
we don't trade on fundamentals.
when the truth is finally priced in.
will be long gone. It might be
my children or my grandchildren.
But it's not going to be in my lifetime.
now. Any auditor that would look
at a global balance sheet, we're
is going to go through a regime change
and right now I think everybody
the war has to de-escalate.
Things are going to be very different in 12 months
it's similar to a sovereign wealth fund.
They're going to just do whatever
they need to do and I think we forget
if you go to a Walmart or
a Target in the U.S. everything
still says made in China.
you just got to look at it for what it is.
You said a U.S. regime change.
becoming president, that man will print
all this in a couple of minutes.
escalation that has happened
in the Middle East and I'm a person
show your hands and you're not
strong, this is what happens.
Number one, I'm a peaceful
person. I don't believe in war.
I don't think, I think any
time you use violence against kids
and grandparents, it's very, very
again, we need a regime change in the
everybody's making their New Year's resolution.
They understand that everything
We will have a new president
talking just really quickly about that,
say that something that was said earlier
in New Hampshire. We didn't mention it.
David, I was surprised that she got
40% plus of the vote, no?
Surprising to a point. I mean, all
of that is rigged too. At the end
of the day, this is going, we'll see
what happens. I was just in Hawaii.
Everybody's talking about Michelle Obama
coming onto the ticket, possibly.
It's going to be a Biden-Trump
thing. If you go anywhere
in the U.S. right now, people
That's just where, that's
the topic of conversation. People want
change. People don't want
war. People want stability.
from a financial perspective,
all of these elections with
one thing that I'd love to hear
from people is, how are people thinking
about the volatility we would expect in
an election year? Usually,
Does anybody have a thesis around
2024 and how you want to play an election year?
anybody? I just want to get people's
thoughts on, how do you play an
election year? It is a little
and it feels like previous cycles
may not be representative of this one
because, again, we're in more debt than
ever. We're currently technically
in quantitative tightening, but we're
doing the BTFP program in the background,
which should be ending in March.
It is kind of, how do you play this
David, I'll go to you first and then we'll go to David
I don't know your last name from orthogonal.
it's going to be a bumpy year and
anybody I talk to at the big investment
I don't know if we're, this is
exactly like 2008 because
we seem to bail out everybody,
I don't know how big the rate cut
will be, but I do suspect a rate
It's all about telegraphing at this point,
I think it's going to be bumpy. I think if
you look at bankruptcies and credit card
but for some reason, the stock
market is at an all-time high. So I think
anybody that's sensible, that
has any type of balance sheet
background, is playing things very
how are you playing this year?
Yeah, I think relative to other
election cycles, I actually
we're an incredibly divided
country, I think this election cycle
in terms of playing it investment-wise
vis-a-vis protecting your downside.
the soft landing is happening.
I mean, we've discussed this
not in the first half of the year,
administration, if it gets
reelected, I think things
but pretty good. I mean, the market has done
quite well that you can't deny in terms
of if Trump gets elected,
are going to go to the moon.
in so many different ways in terms of
both his policy, but also remember
his personal interests. He
puts his personal interests
very much at the forefront, his family's personal
interests, and so on and so forth, and the things that
they are invested in and so forth, and the
people that he socializes
with and counts on for support
activities, for his campaign,
he is going to go ahead and reward
in the event that he becomes
president. And like the previous speaker
said, in terms of diffusing
some of these conflicts, he may diffuse them in
really turn people the wrong way,
but will he diffuse them?
He will certainly make sure that
believe that he can't handle.
on the outcome of the election cycle.
Exactly. Because I was going to
and I will respectfully disagree with David
the markets are actually doing really well, and I don't
expect there to be a significant, unless
there's some form of Black Swan event,
which again, I think China
was the most likely source of a Black Swan
event, but the reason why they call it a Black Swan
event is because nobody gets to see
the markets are going to go down, I just said
technically the market shouldn't be up
the way they are right now.
You should come to our shows.
I've been screaming like, what the hell is going
on? I don't know if you know, but last year
I was just like, this makes no sense.
It's completely wild and crazy
and people that just keep pumping stocks keep
saying, oh, we're winners. And it's like, just because
it's going up doesn't mean you were right.
It just worked out that way.
They don't call them the Perma Bear for no
reason. That's right. I'm kind of a Perma Bear,
Perma Bear. I was going to say,
the economy is going the way it is, in my
opinion, is employment is carrying the
markets. Today Chipotle announced
that they need to hire 19,000
more workers. So I guess some of those
tech people that lost their jobs are going to be working
Their recruitment goal is up by
It's been really difficult for them
As a heads up, Chipotle has
So you know when you see a tech firm
let go of like 10,000 people and everyone's
like, oh, it's the end. Unemployment's
about to break. Chipotle has
110,000 and they're about to hire
we take our burritos seriously in this country, guys.
We take our not cooking at home
very seriously. Yes, agreed.
Service industry is doing great, right?
And that's the point, which is, we are a
services economy. We are our own
that makes us incredibly different than other countries.
The only other country that's kind of working towards that
is India. Go ahead, Justin.
Is that because of the rise of
quick serve? Because food prices are going up
so people go to quick serve things because
they still don't really want to cook at home.
But quick serve is perceived
as a little bit cheaper. Although I'd argue
in some cases, some restaurants
are actually cheaper than these quick serve
establishments. But is that the reason we're seeing
I actually think that it has a lot to do
with the fact that we have a fake
And I think that we're seeing growth
at 50 basis points by just going to the discount window
which is like fake quantitative
easement. So that means that we actually haven't
seen banks change consumer
lending as much as they should
and consumer debt. People are running
out of their savings, but
we're idiots in this country in a
we literally will go from our savings
gone to starting to now get
I have like a zero percent
six months and they'll just like
load up on debt. And so right now
what we're seeing is people aren't feeling like
their individual liquidity is
going away. And I think that
this quantitative tightening
in quotes is quantitative tightening
on the corporate balance sheet, not as much on the consumer
balance sheet. And I think that's what's happening.
People are just going and buying shit because they think
Well, I'd say that's what I guess my point
being yes. One hundred percent. That is
a layer. I'm wondering if the other layer
is, oh, things are getting a little tighter
now. So maybe we should go to Chipotle instead
of that sit down restaurant. Oh,
instead of sit down restaurant. Oh, that's a good point. People are
switching from the I didn't understand your point then.
Yeah. They're switching from the nice restaurant to the
not so nice restaurant. Yes, absolutely. I was going to say also
their jobs. Right. If people have more
benefits to their jobs, they have more
money coming through their jobs supposedly.
Right. They don't understand purchasing power
of the dollar. That's not how the average
they realize that things are getting more expensive at the store.
But suddenly you got to raise Justin.
You just got like a 10 percent raise.
You're like, oh, this is not bad. You're
not thinking about inflation. People don't.
The average person thinking about price is not inflation.
And so, you know, they're super excited.
Justin just got excited because you got
a 10 percent raise. I was going to say
that, you know, the company. Thank you, Dr.
I come with gifts. So I was going to say
the company will be matching Chipotle
will be matching up to four
making contributions to 401k
if they make student loan
Chipotle is working with the Biden administration
to get student loan payments improved.
Seems like additionally, Chipotle
credit AI debit card, which builds
fees or interest. So you can actually go
and get a debit card. And as you use your
debit card, it actually builds your credit.
I can explain that some other time, but they are
providing this as part of like
a facility to help their workers
improve their student loan debt,
improve their credit and become
and improve their 401k. It's
sort of this like there's been a huge move, by
the way, in terms of benefits
for employers where they're saying, hey,
I want to think about your like, just
like we talk about your vision and your dental,
your medical health. We want to talk about your financial
health. There's a whole, it's called fringe
benefit. There's an entire industry
building around that. And I think
there's actually a lot of legs to it.
Perhaps people going back to work too.
And so lunch establishments are going to
take a jump again. I don't
remember the chart I saw, but someone showed the
work from home, work from work,
work from work percentages
and the work from home percentages
are dropping and people are going back to the office.
So I don't know, I would guess
people at the office not wanting to pack their lunch.
Let's go to, you know, let's go to Chipotle.
So are we going to also see the same
trend in a bunch of other quick-serve restaurants
Panda Express, McDonald's, Burger King,
Wendy's, all the rest, Chick-fil-A,
Which is, you know, which will be really awful
for everyone's health. Dwayne, your thoughts?
inflation has been going down
since the beginning, you know, since the
inflation in specific items like
your fixed costs are coming down
for the consumer overall and you have a little
bit more disposable income, a little bit
more money in your pocket at the end of the month
and that's going to go into
have jobs, they're not worried about
And they can also rely on credit.
going to continue to see the same sort of
trends that we've seen, say,
the inflation is going to come out of
the food and services economy
and go back into hard assets like
we're kind of seeing a return
to that so people are going to spend.
is that hiring, especially
in the service industry, is strong. We've learned
that people are going to continue to spend,
side of the economy will be strong
I'm going to keep asking this question, Paul.
I brought you up because I was thinking maybe
you can give us some insight. What
for, do you just hold equities
Paul? Or are you being conservative?
I think David mentioned being conservative, so I'll
stick with that. David from
orthogonal did. But Paul,
are you being conservative
in 2024? Again, it's not financial
advice. We don't give that, but really
how are you thinking about this year?
I'm not giving out any financial advice.
one stat I was looking at was that
after rates start increasing.
So you kind of look at like
asking for the recession for
years later, or 2006, and then
the recession didn't come for multiple
So that's kind of one of the things that I think
I didn't catch the whole session today, but
obviously people are talking about rates
coming down at some point
for lots of different reasons.
conservative on some of these things because
I just view it as there's better
credit as banks kind of backed away.
at your returns in private
credit opportunities versus equities,
for potentially similar yields.
there's lots of different options
than ever as people become
have to just put your money in
the public equity markets
There's lots of ways that
own personal balance sheet.
just check out that topic.
How long does it take for
a recession to happen if the
Fed starts raising rates? I think the average is
24 or 26 months. It's a long time.
And it probably won't be there until after the
election, Paul. 10-4 had back
I guess he is a Republican.
present something, at least
to the public, that he's not
That kind of limits him in terms of
when he can actually do things. I think September
he could do something. And I think they actually move
usually it's on Tuesdays. I think they moved it to
a Thursday so that it was not
on or near the election day
I'd say just check out the schedule there.
by September. He can't do anything.
that's usually in very extreme
circumstances. And normally
and they haven't for a long time.
dates. And obviously you don't want to
see that, but the ones I remember are like
they don't need to necessarily meet
that actually did sadden me a little
bit for the people that were involved.
But I think it's really important given where
we are and what we do every day.
a large number of people.
actually quite heartbreaking. If you follow
the LA Times, look, they're not always right.
they tend to be actually surprisingly
more moderate than others.
regardless for these people, this is
their livelihoods, and a lot of
what I wanted to discuss was not
the people involved. Again, some
of the folks are, interestingly
some of the folks that, I think they really were
trying to be equal opportunity on
commentaries, so some of the people were super
left leaning, some of the people were super
right leaning, and some people were moderates in terms
of the writers specifically.
what that means for corporate news media.
You know, their business model
trying to do it behind paywalls
Trying to use advertising was
really don't understand how people get
the news anymore, and they don't
they think that gatekeeping
and this is a call for all the people
that were laid off, don't go
back and try to look for a job at another corporate
news media. Try to look for
alternative media. Try to go and
We actually need experts.
We need people that are more articulate.
We need people that understand
how to do the news better.
media is kicking your ass
It's absolutely beating your
butts on business model, but
I don't know if we're beating your
prowess, prowess yet. We're
working on it. I think we tend to be
faster than you. We tend to be
to not just do sound bites and put bullshit
headlines that get views and
eyeballs, so we're a little bit better than that.
and discuss things a little bit further
even when people think that maybe we're
discussing it for too long. I'd
rather be too long than too short, which
is what news media has done for way too long.
just wanted to bring that up. There is
It is coming, and I will tell you
that you saw this with LA Times. I expect
to see this across everything.
Everything is going to be
doing this. Expect this to happen to the
New York Times and the New York Post and
The Wall Street Journal and
CNBC and others, were kind of eating
this show right now live about
5,000 people are listening or 4.8
during the course of the week, and
again, anybody that's listening right now
I want you to message me saying yes
I do listen later, because a lot of people don't
realize where those numbers come from, but
during the course of a week our five shows get about
a million listeners, which
they try their best, they can't
do that. It's kind of interesting
how, you know, who the fuck
But the fact that we're able to get the news,
discuss it with people with very different viewpoints,
instead of just kind of being an echo
chamber, I think that's actually
media that they have really messed up
in corporate media. It's the same voice.
Sure they had advertising dollars, but those advertising
And Matt, I wanted to actually
year I was saying, look, I'm not sure if
the advertising dollars are going to come
coming back. I'm seeing more ads from
more established brands, not just Cheech and Chong.
Not just Cheech and Chong trying to sell me dummies,
I wanted to commend the other people
that said that I was wrong. My
whole point was, they don't want Twitter to live.
They don't want X to live, but
I guess X is still thriving. We've got
sponsors for our shows. We've got
people are continuing to build on
this. People are generating revenue from
the new media. And the question is,
is it a better media? I'm not so
I think you're right. I mean, how many
articles did we see in the last
12 months about, oh, Twitter is dying
and Elon Musk is killing X and all this
seemed to have some valid points at the time
and there were all sorts of people
saying they were going to leave X.
But what you've seen is just that the traffic
has actually increased during all this
time. And meanwhile, all these legacy
media companies, they're seeing their traffic decrease.
buy Twitter, but in retrospect
I'm still not, by the way.
of your take on it, he seems to actually
be driving some increased
traffic to it. Whatever he's doing
seems to be resonating. I think
what we're seeing with this show and all the others that
Mario has seems to be working.
such a lack of trust in a lot of the
the place that a lot of people are going to
information. We've just seen so many examples
of it with room temperature, semi-conductor,
all the stuff in Israel and Gaza.
All the most important stories are
breaking here. And then if you see like two days
Wall Street Journal or New York Times, whatever
for all the problems that X has
it really is the place to go for
really good quality analysis.
And there's a lot of other stuff that's not good quality
it's hard to argue just with the
stats that Twitter's driving right now.
from Twitter soon, especially with
the payments coming. I don't
know, but I would say it's gonna
Yeah, I mean it is interesting to
I thought that was, again
when you look at Elon Musk's portfolio
of companies, maybe this all makes sense.
But for Twitter itself to outsource
this LLM was a big, giant mistake.
By the way, for Tesla to do that as well
is a huge mistake. I will say that
over and over again. I don't give a shit.
I know people will hate on me because there's a lot of
Tesla folks. But if I'm a Tesla
work that's gonna be coming into Tesla cars
that's kind of worrisome.
Again, it's good for Elon because he gets to
own it, but it's not maybe
so good for Tesla shareholders.
But we're seeing a lot of this stuff happening
and that's why I said to Matt, I'm not a big fan
person that's running this because he's thinking about his
portfolio instead of thinking about the company
and his shareholders. But
if yes, David, you're right. If payments come through
there's been video and messaging
for a long time and nobody's using it.
So I'm not so convinced that
payments are gonna work because
peer-to-peer is not super
strong on this. People come in here for
audience, not for peer-to-peer communication.
VMs are great, but they're not
I don't use this exclusively.
I usually take things off to WhatsApp and
other sources because they're better at that.
So I do think payments will be
a lot of hype. I'm just not 100%
convinced that it's gonna lead to
they could raise on that, no doubt about it.
Yeah, the one thing I wanted to say, and Elon said
when you look at business news, business news
is like they look at the newspaper
and they talk about stuff that was in the Wall Street Journal
stuff. So it's like two day old news.
And I see that across a lot of
the mainstream media. It's like
things that they're talking about are things
people have talked about on Twitter
other sources like that are
live news, real news that you're seeing
there's a lot of filtering that may need
but you're seeing it happen
I follow a lot of Mario's other
spaces throughout the day.
free. You gotta get some AI to actually
summarize all his spaces.
Maybe that's the next project.
but the world is quite chaotic
right now and people want what they
give people what they want. Interestingly, Paul,
I will say one thing that we've
done is audience segmentation. And the
audience that comes to the morning show
is very different looking than the audience
that listens to the evening shows.
speak in the morning shows,
believe that it's a better looking
and much more bright audience than the people that come
to the evening shows. But we
can keep that separate. But Justin,
your thoughts? And then we're gonna close.
point, you're absolutely right. And I
never dug down deep enough to figure out
what the core problem was. But when I was
at iHeart, our show was like
listeners, for young people. Our show
was, we were told that talk radio
format, older people would only listen,
young people wouldn't. That's what the data said.
So that was our fastest growing demographic
And so it took this data and showed it to
the program director, and he had
two responses. Well, one was on the digital
side. What's a web impression
and why should I care? Which is literally
his job, to drive web traffic.
The other question he had was
when I showed him that our show
was getting more younger listener acquisition
on talk radio than Kiss FM,
say that that's not true. And I
replied, this is your data
dude. This is the data you
use. And he just completely ignored
it. And then they ended up
ending the show three months later and putting an
older guy on it and the ratings tanked.
So this is the kind of legacy
leadership that's leading a lot of these media
institutions. And what really sucks
is you have these younger writers
that have great instincts and
great coverage and really great abilities
to write amazing pieces and find
those stories. Like everyone thinks
chat GPT is going to replace journalists
but what they don't know is journalists
it's not the writing that's
the issue, it's their instincts and their ability
to chase down a story and
do some investigative reporting.
But a lot of the leadership
are pushing them away from
proven articles that will actually get readers
and actually get subscriptions.
Like some of the leadership is
just based, I honestly never
figured out where their headspace
is or what their vision is for these
publications. But my hat's off
and condolences to the writers affected by
this because they're out there trying to do
great work. But I think a lot
of people don't fully understand how much
influence they have to deal with
in order to craft these stories and how much
an editor can really dramatically
I really feel bad for all these people that were
doing the right thing, just generally
speaking, doing the right thing
to push the needle on coverage and break great stories
and they just got the can.
I will end the show today
we will see everybody at 8am Eastern
thank you for everybody who joined us today
and we will see you tomorrow at 8am Eastern.