Video summary
The podcast argues that the current economic landscape represents a far more dangerous crisis than 2008, characterized by an "everything bubble" rather than just a housing collapse. While asset classes like stocks, real estate, crypto, and gold have reached record highs fueled by fifteen years of cheap money and government stimulus, the speaker contends this is not sustainable growth but a financial pressure cooker built on debt compounding faster than income generation. Unlike 2008, which was largely contained to banking and housing sectors, today's bubble encompasses virtually every asset class due to massive liquidity injections from quantitative easing and deficit spending. The transcript highlights that since 2020, the US money supply (M2) has grown by over 40%, with national debt exceeding $37 trillion; interest payments on this debt now surpass defense budgets and are projected to eclipse Medicare funding before the end of 2025. The core argument rests on the concept of "fiscal dominance," where government spending and debt burdens have become so large that the Federal Reserve loses control over monetary policy, creating a self-reinforcing doom loop regardless of interest rate decisions. Raising rates to cool inflation would spike borrowing costs for the Treasury, forcing more money printing and accelerating devaluation, while cutting rates would fuel further speculative bubbles until confidence evaporates. The speaker notes that private capital is drying up as easy buyers are drained from money market funds, meaning future debt issuance must be financed by pulling liquidity directly out of banks or risk assets. This situation leaves the economy trapped between defaults caused by high costs and inflationary spirals driven by low rates, with history suggesting that nations crossing a 130% debt-to-GDP threshold often face revolution, collapse, or civil war rather than recovery through simple tax hikes or confiscation of wealth. To navigate this precarious environment, the speaker advises against trying to time the market perfectly and instead advocates for an "all-weather" strategy focused on discipline over clever trades. Drawing from insights by investors like Michael Burry, Ray Dalio, and Warren Buffett, the recommended approach involves diversifying into uncorrelated asset classes that can withstand funding stress and price shocks. A specific framework attributed to Lyn Alden is proposed as a robust hedge against fiscal dominance: allocating roughly 50% of a portfolio to profitable growth equities with pricing power, 20% to defensive cash equivalents for optionality during volatility, and 30% to inflation protection via commodities like energy, precious metals such as gold and silver, and hard monies including Bitcoin. The central thesis is that wealth transfer will occur from the leveraged to the liquid; therefore, individuals must avoid margin debt, emotional reactions to headlines, or chasing yield in hyper-speculative assets based on FOMO. Ultimately, the conclusion emphasizes that there are no free lunches left as the era of printing money without consequence has ended, and the only way out is through unprecedented growth which history suggests will not materialize soon enough to prevent a reset. The speaker warns that if any catalyst—such as a failed Treasury auction, a credit market freeze in repo markets, or reaccelerating inflation—triggers a loss of confidence, the system could collapse violently and instantly rather than gradually. While political strategies like tariffs, deregulation, and stablecoin regulations may buy some time for the administration to lengthen its runway, they do not defuse the underlying bomb of compounding interest. The final takeaway is that survival depends on building an ark now through liquid positioning and adherence to fundamental principles, as the inevitable deleveraging will punish those who are over-leveraged while rewarding those prepared with cash and diversified assets to capitalize on distressed opportunities when the floodwaters rise.
Read the full video transcript
2008, the housing market is euphoric.
Everyone believes it is going to go up
forever.
Everyone that is, except the quants who
see the truth in the numbers. They know
what the rest of us are going to find
out very shortly. The housing market is
a giant bubble and it's about to burst.
The numbers just don't add up. The
subprime mortgages are a ticking time
bomb. Given the default rates, collapse
isn't just possible, it is
mathematically certain.
>> [music]
>> And then it happens. Bear Stearns
vanishes in a week. Lehman Brothers
collapses under hundreds of billions of
toxic assets.
>> [music]
>> Within days, the global credit freezes
and entire industries flatline.
It was the first time most people
learned the words "too big to fail" and
the first time they watched the
government print trillions to stabilize
the market. But it worked. Well, it
worked like drinking to cure a hangover
works. We printed money and pushed the
inevitable pain into the future. We
layered on more debt, lowered rates to
zero to keep the economy moving, and
[music] we somehow convinced ourselves
that money really could be free.
Tragically, as we're learning right now,
it really can't. The illusion of free
money has now metastasized into
something [music] far more dangerous
than 2008. This is no longer just a
housing bubble. It's an everything
bubble. Stocks, real estate, crypto,
gold, AI investments, all of it pumped
to record highs on a decade and a half
of cheap money. The quants see it all
again. Debt is compounding faster than
income. Interest costs are outpacing
growth. Liquidity is pouring [music]
into every crevice of the market,
including hyper speculative asset
classes purchased on margin. The math of
what is coming is clear and it won't
just be housing or banks that break this
time. It will be everything. [music] And
for anyone who's not prepared, it is
going to be an economic bloodbath. We're
going to cover what exactly is going on
today in four direct parts. Part one
explains why I am sounding the alarm as
the market is hitting all-time highs.
Part two explains the math that
guarantees, despite the all-time highs,
the system is going to break. Part three
is a surprise you don't want to miss.
And part four is the wise man's path
forward. [music] Problems are only
interesting if you have a solution, so
welcome to part one. Things look great,
but we are totally screwed. The S&P 500
is up 16.5%
year-to-date and all major indexes hit
record highs in late October. Home
prices are still up over 45%
from pre-pandemic levels, despite the
rate hikes. Gold recently hit all-time
highs and the crypto market cap is back
above three trillion dollars. And the
Dow Jones? It just posted its longest
winning streak since 1987.
If you're a part of the 10% of Americans
that own 93% of the assets, this year
you have laughed all the way to the
bank. Money is cheap, plentiful, and
flooding into the market right now,
driving valuations up on everything.
Even Pokémon cards are selling for
thousands of dollars per box. But the
question is, what's really going on? Are
asset values actually going up? Is the
value of the dollar just going down? Is
this a bubble filled by euphoria and
speculation, or is it actually different
this time? Is the economy somehow so
strong now that it will go up forever?
Is modern monetary theory right and we
can just print money without any
negative consequences? And why, if
things are so good, is the average
person needing to buy things on layaway?
Basic things. And why should you care?
Statistically speaking, much to my
dismay, odds are low that anyone hearing
this right now has a meaningful
percentage of their income in assets.
All right, let's speed run those
questions and then I'm going to tell you
exactly why you should care, because
regardless of how much of your money is
tied up in assets or not, what's going
to happen next is going to affect
everyone. Are asset values actually
going up? Yes, asset values are a
function of supply and demand. Is the
value of the dollar going down? Yes, it
is racing to zero. We add a trillion
dollars to the deficit every 100 days.
It will swallow the earth soon. Is this
a speculative bubble? Aggressively.
Humans are hyper prone to psychological
contagions. It's one of the key drivers
of markets. Is it different this time?
No, it's never different because the
economy responds in predictable ways to
stimulus. It's a complex system, but
it's still a system. And like all
systems, it obeys rules. If you hear
people saying it's different this time,
sell everything. Now, I'm not saying the
economy is perfectly predictable. It is
not, far from it. But I am saying that
money has something akin to physics. And
what we're seeing right now is not
normal market growth. It is a financial
pressure cooker built on cheap printed
money that drives inflation and extreme
speculation, creating bubbles
everywhere. When the dollar is devaluing
through money printing, smart money
flees into assets. When interest rates
are low, money is easy to borrow, people
borrow, and it floods into assets. When
you can borrow money at 6 or 7% and the
S&P 500 is growing by 16.5%,
you can understand why people borrow
money at historic levels and plow it
into the stock market [music]
on margin. But when you have that much
liquidity flooding into the system, you
begin chipping away at the stability of
the economy as a whole, because
everything becomes a bubble. And all
bubbles burst eventually. And unlike in
2008, which was largely a housing and
banking crisis, this time everything is
inflated. Stocks, housing, bonds,
crypto, art, even consumer collectibles.
They are all levitating on the same tide
of easy money created by a government
that never met a dollar it didn't want
to print out of thin air. Now, do not
get me wrong. Bubbles can inflate for a
very long time and I get why people want
to get while the getting is good. But
there is a structural, mathematical
reason why this bubble is nearing the
end of its ability to keep inflating.
So, welcome to part two, the physics of
money. Since 2020, the US money supply,
known as M2, has grown by more than 40%,
the fastest expansion in modern history.
Roughly 1/4 of all US dollars in
existence were created in the last five
years. Every 100 days, as I said, the
federal debt increases by another
trillion dollars. The national debt now
exceeds 37 trillion dollars, up roughly
11 trillion since 2020 alone. Interest
payments on that debt just crossed 1.1
trillion dollars per year. That's more
than the entire US defense budget. At
current borrowing levels, every 1% point
rise in rates adds roughly 370
billion dollars a year in new interest
costs alone. If average Treasury yields
returned to just their 2007 levels,
annual interest expense would blow past
2 trillion dollars a year. That's
roughly half of all tax revenue. Federal
deficits are now running above 6%
of GDP during peacetime, a level that we
normally only see in an extreme crisis.
US debt to GDP sits around 122%
and is projected to exceed 130%
within a decade. The threshold at which
nearly every country in history has
collapsed, gone into revolution, or
defaulted. Meanwhile, the Federal
Reserve has already had to take on over
7 trillion dollars in assets to prop up
the market. And it can't sell them off
without crashing the bonds market. And
if it just keeps printing money to buy
more assets to keep the markets humming,
it will crash the value of the dollar
itself, on paper and in real life. This
situation is mathematically impossible
to sustain. Debt is compounding faster
than the income needed to service it.
Think of it as a debt flywheel that is
now running out of control. And unless
the flywheel of accumulating compounding
debt faster than revenues increase is
halted, there will be blood. Remember,
compounding interest is a perpetual
increasing machine. Left alone, the debt
just grows bigger and bigger by the day
until the country has to default on its
debt, obliterating its ability to raise
sensible debt, which is actually
necessary to run a country. And that's
why economic warning lights are
beginning to flash all over the place.
Markets [music] are really just
confidence Ponzi schemes. Don't forget
that. And as long as people believe,
they work. When people lose confidence,
however, the markets crash. And right
now, it looks like people are beginning
to lose faith. Crypto's momentum is
fading. Gold has fallen off of its
all-time high. Housing is bending under
interest rate pressure. Commercial real
estate delinquency rates are now higher
than they were in 2008. The stock market
long ago detached from fundamentals.
Michael Burry, the big short guy that
called 2008 right, is saying it's an
everything bubble. Ray Dalio, the
world's most successful hedge fund
manager, thinks we're headed towards
civil war. And legendary investor Warren
Buffett says there are no deals to be
had and is holding a massive amount of
cash. Add to that the fact that there's
over a trillion dollars in margin debt
for the first time in history. And
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now, let's get back to the show. If I'm
right and these are signs that people
are losing confidence in the market, if
any kind of event comes along that
causes distress in the market, prices
can reset violently across virtually
every asset class all at once, causing a
massive loss in individual wealth. For
everyday investors, the risk is massive.
Home values could plunge, retirement
accounts could get slashed, and hyped
assets like AI and crypto could vaporize
in a dot-com bubble style moment with a
massive contagion effect that will
threaten many sectors of the economy.
This time, we are not going to be able
to print our way out of it because we
have already done as much of that as we
can possibly do as the math verifies.
For 15 years, every crisis was papered
over with cheap money. The mantra was to
push interest rates lower and lower, but
the economy runs on physics and
prolonged cheap money creates bubbles.
Now, if you're only half listening, this
is the point where you stop and pay
close attention because I'm about to
steal most people's copium.
If you are thinking we can just keep
printing money or tax our way out of
this, consider this.
After 2008, the Fed faced an impossible
choice. Let the system burn or print
insane amounts of money and flood it
with liquidity. They chose the flood. A
biblical flood. The kind of flood that
would have drowned Nela.
Quantitative easing, the rainwater, was
supposed to be temporary, an emergency
measure to restore confidence after the
banking collapse.
But when trillions in printed money
stabilized the market and asset prices
roared back, we learned a very dangerous
lesson that printing money works and a
little rain can't hurt us. By 2010, the
Fed had already expanded its balance
sheet from under 900 billion to over 2
trillion. Within a decade, that number
would exceed 4.5 trillion. But it worked
well enough, right? So, when COVID hit,
they didn't hesitate. They printed even
more money and bought up even more
assets to prop up the market. Between
2020 and 2021 alone, the US printed
roughly 27%
of all dollars ever created in the
nation's history. Stimulus checks, PPP
loans, corporate bailouts, over 6
trillion dollars conjured out of thin
air in less than 2 years. And once
again, it worked. Markets soared,
unemployment collapsed, confidence
returned. But here's the problem. Every
time we used money printing to solve a
crisis, we made the system more fragile.
The dose that once saved us, in terms of
money printing, now barely gets us high.
And that's why the Fed's balance sheet
now holds a ridiculous 7 trillion
dollars. The floodwaters are truly
getting deep. The economy has officially
become addicted to artificial stimulus.
We just keep deficit spending and
printing to cover any and all
shortfalls. And though we can look
around and see the masses of Americans
drowning in debt, unable to make ends
meet, we just keep pretending that money
printing works because markets keep
rising and inflation is confusing enough
that the average person just accepts it.
But the reality is that debt compounds.
We mathematically cannot just keep
printing money and not end up going bust
as a country. We now spend over 2
trillion dollars more each year than we
collect in taxes. We already spend the
1.1 trillion in interest payments that
we were talking about earlier and there
is no signs of that number slowing down.
And because money has physics, we are
now trapped. You can't print real
prosperity. You can only borrow it from
the future and we have borrowed every
dime that we can because that future
always arrives. It's here and it expects
to be paid back with interest. The laws
of money are simple. If you inflate the
money supply faster than entrepreneurs
can create new goods and services that
people want to buy, prices will rise. If
you borrow to pay debt, your interest
costs will rise and that's where we are
right now, in the phase economists call
fiscal dominance. Fiscal dominance means
the government's
spending and debt burden is now so big
the Fed can't raise rates without
seizing the credit market and causing
the government itself to default, which
would cause an economic calamity. The
current bubble can't keep inflating
because the central bank has officially
lost control of its ability to mediate
the markets through monetary policy. And
that is why Trump and Powell are
fighting. Here's how the fiscal
dominance trap works exactly. When the
economy is too hot, people are too
exuberant, and bubbles are forming, the
Fed needs to tighten the interest rate
to slow everybody down and slowly
deflate the bubbles. Money therefore
becomes more expensive to borrow. People
can get a higher risk-free rate of
return in treasuries and bonds. More
money goes into government debt where
it's safe and overall asset prices cool
down. That's where we are right now.
That's what we need to do, but the Fed
can't raise rates right now because we
already have too much debt. If the Fed
tried to raise rates right now to cool
asset inflation, the cost of servicing
the 37 trillion dollars in national debt
that we already have would spike,
forcing the Treasury to issue even more
debt just to make the interest payments.
That would mean printing even more
money, which would drive the debt and
the interest payments higher, creating
the need to print even more and on and
on it goes in a flywheel of death.
On the other hand, if the Fed tried to
cut rates to alleviate the burden of the
interest payments and ensure the
government remains solvent, the cheaper
credit would now flood the system with
more money and the bubbles would
continue to inflate until everyone loses
faith in the system. As we have already
covered, we're already seeing the first
signs of this happening. People are
losing faith. Either way right now, no
matter what the Fed chooses, it is a
self-reinforcing
doom loop. Lower rates create bubbles,
higher rates create defaults. Either
path feeds the same fire. That's the
problem with fiscal dominance. So, the
question now becomes, if it's inevitable
that these bubbles are going to burst,
when are they actually going to burst?
Welcome to part three. Timing is
everything.
The government is now borrowing 50
billion dollars every single week. In
the past 18 months alone, the US
Treasury Department has raised roughly
2.5 trillion dollars in new debt,
largely purchased by the flood of excess
private cash that had been sitting idle
in the money market funds.
>> [music]
>> That pool of easy buyers is now almost
entirely drained, but the government's
need to issue even more new debt hasn't
slowed at all. In fact, it's speeding
up. As of today,
>> [music]
>> the Treasury is on pace to issue over
2.9 trillion dollars in new debt this
year alone, which is the largest
peacetime borrowing binge in American
history. But this time, there's no spare
2 and 1/2 trillion dollars in private
money sitting around to buy it. That
means the debt issued this year and in
future years, if [music] we make it that
far, will need to be financed by pulling
liquidity out of banks or the stock
market or other risk assets by offering
yields high enough to attract new
buyers. But as we covered in the
previous section, the Fed can't raise
rates without breaking the system. So,
how do you keep raising new debt? Said
simply, eventually you don't. And even
if you did, you'd be pulling money out
of the part of the system that's already
working. It does not take a genius to
understand that someone with nearly
[music] $40 trillion in debt who
counterfeits their own money, spends
like an unhinged hoarder on meth, and
borrows $50 billion a week isn't exactly
creditworthy. So, eventually, uh
ventually, people stop extending them
credit. Eventually, the constraint isn't
liquidity or rates, it's confidence.
People will not extend credit if they
don't think they're going to get paid
back. Markets can absorb almost anything
except [music] disbelief. When investors
stop believing that the Fed, the
Treasury, or the dollar itself can
manage this mountain of debt without
destroying the currency, that's when the
system breaks. And it does not happen
gradually. [music] It happens all at
once. A sudden loss of faith that
freezes the financial world overnight.
But the trillion-dollar question
isn't if it'll happen, it's when it will
happen. [music] And the only honest
answer is, no one knows for sure. But
here's why the answer mathematically
must be soon.
Right now, interest on our debt is the
third largest line item behind only
Social Security and Medicare. [music]
And based on the latest Congressional
Budget Office CBO projections from its
Budget and Economic Outlook, interest
payments will eclipse Medicare before
the end of this year, 2025. For fiscal
year 2025, the government collected
$5.23 trillion in tax revenue. That
means the interest payments alone
already eat roughly 20%
of all tax dollars collected. And here's
a fun fact, the interest payments in raw
dollars are expected to roughly double
in the next 10 years. But in reality, I
cannot imagine that will actually
happen. Because who in their right mind
would still be buying the debt at that
point? And if people stop buying the
debt, the government will be forced
>> [music]
>> to default. And that is financial
Armageddon. We will return to the show
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>> [music]
>> And now, let's get back to the show. So,
here is the cold fact we all have to
face.
When your debt is this large, there's
only one real way out.
You have to grow your revenues faster
than the debt obligations compound.
Everyone is going to scream tax the
rich, but even if you confiscated 100%
of their wealth, forget tax. Not Not
even just their income. If you
confiscated their total net worth in a
fantasy land, you would still only get
about $7 trillion.
>> [music]
>> And if you tried to do it in reality,
even if you jailed everyone so they
couldn't leave, the value of everything
that they owned would plummet as you
flooded the market. [music] Wealth is a
trapped asset. It is not that easy to
turn into actual dollars. But [music]
even if you were able to get the fantasy
payload, you only buy yourself a couple
of years. A couple of years. So, instead
of calamity happening in, let's say, 6
or 7 years,
>> [music]
>> you become an evil dictatorship that
strips your citizens of their freedoms,
and you steal all of their and
calamity still happens,
>> [music]
>> but in 8 or 9 years. Boy, do I hope that
sounds as obviously stupid as it is in
reality. So, that leaves growth. It is
your only hope. We have to grow our way
out of this problem [music] if we want
to delay what is currently
mathematically inevitable. That's
exactly what the Trump administration is
attempting to do, all in an effort to
lengthen [music] the runway. They've got
a three-part strategy that looks
something like this. Part one, tariffs.
Tariffs are essentially just taxes under
a different name. They're designed to
raise revenue without having to call it
taxation. It has raised additional
revenue, and the additional revenue is
definitely helping, but it comes at a
cost that could further weaken the
system, because tariffs also raise
prices, which acts very similar to
inflation. This will further pressure
the Fed to tighten rates to try and tame
true inflation, which is also
concurrently driving prices up. Part two
is deregulation. The administration is
trying to cut red tape and remove
barriers to innovation, which spurs
growth by kickstarting productivity and
attracting investment back into US
industries. The logic for sure is sound,
because if we can make it cheaper to
build, innovate, and hire, we can grow
GDP faster than we are now and generate
more taxable revenue and personal
incomes. But the positive effects of
deregulation take time, and the
compounding effects of debt wait for no
one. And it is not enough to grow. You
have to grow faster than the debt
compounds. And so far, there are no
signs, no matter how much deregulation
you do, that we're going to be able to
pull that off. The third part of their
playbook is to create new demand for US
debt. Behind the scenes, this is
probably the most novel and
consequential idea that they've got. The
push to back stablecoins with US
Treasuries. I covered this in detail in
this video, so you can learn more about
it. But for now, just think of it as
using sensible crypto regulation to
create international access to dollars
through stablecoins. It would be a huge
win for people around the world that
don't have access to a stable currency
in general, and US dollars specifically.
And if the regulations forced
stablecoins to back one-to-one with US
Treasuries, it would be great for
protecting the public who have to fear
Ponzi schemes. And perhaps most
importantly, it would incentivize
[music] the private sector to hold more
US debt. It's a very clever strategy,
which will help a little. But honestly,
unless we balance the budget, it only
buys us a little bit of time. It does
not actually defuse the bomb. Better
than nothing, to be sure, but we still
have a bomb that is counting down. But
it is the kind of thing that makes the
job of predicting when exactly the
credit markets will freeze and the US
will be forced to default, ushering in
the economic apocalypse, that much
harder. [music] Now, before I put a
final answer to how long this thing is
going to take, let me add one more log
to this raging inferno of warning signs.
Once a government spends more on
interest payments than it does on
defense, [music] infrastructure, or
health care, every election becomes a
zero-sum fight over a shrinking pie.
Each party stops debating [music] how to
grow the economy and starts fighting
over which side gets what. The nation
turns inward and begins attacking
itself. The debt becomes the underlying
cause of a domestic civil war, first
fought through policy, then eventually
fought through outright [music]
violence. And that's what history has
shown over and over and over. As
countries cross 130% debt-to-GDP, they
break into [music] outright violence,
revolution, or just full-on collapse.
And right now, the US is currently at
122%, [music]
a number expected to cross 130% within a
decade. That's why social unrest and
political violence are on the rise in
the US. When the pie shrinks, people
fight to ensure they get as much of the
pie as possible for their team. And if
our debt trajectory keeps climbing,
America is just going to race further
and further down the path of violence
until ultimately revolution tips the
tables of all of the debt system, the
economic apocalypse happens, and America
finally hits the reset button. Now, if
history is any guide, despite the reset,
this is a brutal period of violence
where exactly no one wins. But the final
question remains, what will ultimately
snap the system? When's that going to
happen? What actually turns
unsustainable into active [music]
collapse? There are a few possibilities.
A failed Treasury auction would do it.
That's when investors just refuse to buy
our debt without much higher yields.
This would serve as a signal that
confidence really is gone. It's the
modern version of the Nixon gold shock,
the moment the world realizes the US
promises are not going to be honored. In
the '70s, though, we still had plenty of
tricks up our sleeve for dealing with
the crisis. Now, we have few to none
other than AI becoming a miracle of
productivity that allows us to grow our
way out of this. A credit market freeze
would also do it, when repo markets
seize because there's not enough
collateral to roll overnight loans, and
liquidity vanishes in hours. Or
inflation could just reaccelerate. If
prices spike again and the Fed is forced
to tighten into an already weakening
economy, that would trigger a cascade of
defaults across both public and private
debt. The Treasury would then have to
choose between honoring its obligations
or stabilizing the system. Either path
is going to end in what Ray Dalio calls
an ugly deleveraging where debt
restructuring on a national scale
happens under emergency circumstances
and the market just gets [music]
slaughtered. If any one of these
catalysts hits, the everything bubble
doesn't just deflate slowly, it pops and
the reset [music] begins. Now, how long
do I think this is going to take? Based
on the things we just walked through,
I'm going to say no more than 10 years,
but honestly, the debt flood waters are
rising so fast and the system is so
structurally unsound, I'm trying to
build my ark now. So, welcome to part
four, surviving the flood, where we go
from here. Every collapse is also a
transfer of wealth. Money moves from
people with debt to the people who are
liquid and can buy the distressed
assets. Money flows from the emotional
to the disciplined. So, the question
isn't whether the system re- sets or
even when it's going to reset, it's
whether you're going to be solvent,
educated, and ready when it resets.
First of all, please do not try to
outsmart the market. Accept radical
uncertainty. Getting the timing right in
the market [music] is next to
impossible. Even heavy hitters like
Michael Burry and Peter Schiff have been
criticized for predicting 20 of the last
two [music] recessions. And the biggest
names in the game, people like Soros,
understand how unpredictable things can
be left to their own devices. So, big
secret, they don't leave things to their
own devices. They get involved in
international politics, they fund
campaigns, NGOs, and foreign
governments. Soros is famous for
literally breaking the back of the
British pound. And guess who helped him?
The current Secretary of the Treasury,
Scott Bessent. These guys know how to
play games that the average person is
just not prepared for. When you're
playing in the market, you're going up
against people like that. Have the
humility to know there are people and
forces at work that are effectively
impossible to map accurately. Worst of
all, you can be right on the direction
of things and still get the timing
wrong. I remind myself of this
constantly. And if you're leveraged,
getting the timing wrong is the same as
being wrong.
>> [music]
>> So, your edge is discipline,
preparation, position sizing, having
personal rules, hedging your bets, and
being patient. Think Dalio's approach of
systems and diversification over trying
to outsmart the quants and the ultra
wealthy who can sway international
markets. Or Buffett who takes a
fundamentals and price approach,
eternally being patient and looking for
good deals and only moving when there's
a deal to be had. Here are the kinds of
operating principles to consider if
you're going to take this approach.
Build a portfolio around uncorrelated
asset classes that won't all go up or
down at the same time. It's going to
limit your upside, that is true, but
it's also going to limit your downside.
This is what Ray Dalio calls an
all-weather strategy. Remember that
financial assets have fundamentals that
make them attractive in the long run.
Focus on those fundamentals and look for
quality assets at the right price. Look
for businesses and assets that can
withstand funding stress and price
shocks. Never forget that liquidity is
oxygen. Debt gives you leverage, but it
also puts you at risk. Keep cash on hand
to keep your options open. The leveraged
die first. Inflation is a risk to watch
out for, but it's not nearly as risky
for the average person as debt. Build
your portfolio based on rules, not on
your certainty around where the market
is going because you're inevitably going
to be wrong about that. The only thing I
can guarantee you about the future is
that it will surprise you in some way,
even as it adheres to timeless patterns.
Again, you can be directionally correct
and still get clobbered by bad timing.
All right, that covers the Dalio and
Buffett approaches, at least in a
nutshell, but there's a new voice that
shares Dalio's historical lens,
internalizes the influence that debt and
policy have on economic movements, and
puts together a game plan for investing
during fiscal dominance. That phase
where government spending and debt are
so so insane and over the top that the
Fed can no longer come to the rescue.
It's a plan popularized by Lyn Alden and
it goes like this. There are three
pillars to her diversification strategy.
Pillar one, profitable growth equities.
This is about 50% of your portfolio and
is focused on businesses with pricing
power, real margins, and the ability to
grow cash flow even when the market is
distressed. Pillar two, defensive assets
in the form of cash and cash
equivalents. These are short duration,
high quality, and instantly deployable.
They provide optionality and safety when
volatility hits. This should be about
20% of the portfolio. Pillar three is
inflation protection in the form of
commodities and hard monies. Think
energy commodities, precious metals like
gold and silver, the companies that pull
them out of the ground, and things like
Bitcoin. This is going to be about 30%
of the portfolio. Exact percentages will
vary based on your own assessment of the
markets, expected returns, etc., but
that gives you a rough idea of how to
hedge against uncertainty during fiscal
dominance. Now, why these approaches
work in an everything bubble is because
they acknowledge the inherent
uncertainty of timing while accepting
that the math is clear. The debt
flywheel guarantees that the bubble is
going to burst because the economy is
full of wild distortions right now
brought on by government interventions
that have walked us into a trap where we
break the system no matter what we do
short of extremely unlikely levels of
unprecedented growth. Burn into your
psyche that you don't beat a debt cycle
with clever trades. You survive it with
[music] positioning that acknowledges
the inherent uncertainty around timing.
If you're trying to nail the exact top
or bottom, you're competing with
supercomputers, AI, and people rich
enough and well-connected enough to move
global markets. You will lose that game.
You win by preparing for the fact that
in a true ugly deleveraging, wealth
moves from the leveraged to the liquid.
So, your job right now is to get liquid
enough to capitalize on opportunities,
stay disciplined enough and avoid
emotional moves, and stay in the market
enough to not get eaten alive by
inflation should this all play out on a
longer than expected timeline. What you
should staunchly avoid doing is all-in,
all-out flips based on headlines,
reaching for yield in junky
hyper-speculative assets based on FOMO,
using margin to buy the dip, assuming
everything will just keep going up
forever, and saying anything even
remotely like, "This time it's
different." Math is math. It's never
different. In the end, what's happening
right now is not about fear, it's about
the physics of money.
We've acted for so long like we can
deficit spend forever and that money can
be printed for free, but now the bill
has come due and we realize there's no
free money. The only way to avoid the
devastation of compounding interest is
to pay off your debt, but
we've pathologically refused to even
balance our budget, let alone pay our
debt. So, now the flood waters really
are rising. Barring historical levels of
growth we have no reason to believe will
happen, the economy is going to break
under the weight of our debt. The final
boss of the economic game is always
compounding interest. It eventually
demonstrates to the market that the debt
will not get paid back, that debt
holders will lose their money. And when
that happens, confidence disappears. And
when that happens, the government can no
longer raise money through debt. And
when that happens, the country defaults.
And when that happens, it's game over.
So, plan now. Build an all-weather
strategy now because when the flood
happens, it will be a flash flood and
only those on an ark are going to
survive. All right, if you want to see
me explore topics like this in real
time, be sure to join me live Wednesdays
and Fridays at 6:00 a.m. Pacific on
YouTube, X, Twitch, or Kick. You can
join the debate or just chill in the
community. I hope to see you guys there.
Till next time, my friends. Be
legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like
this conversation, check out this
episode to learn more.
On December 7th of 1941, Japan launched
a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,
sending much of the US's naval fleet to
the seafloor and killing thousands of
Americans. The next day, [music] the
United