'Quoth The Raven' Chris Irons: We Are Completely Off The Rails In Unprecedented Territory
Summary
Monetary Policy Challenges: The discussion highlights the Federal Reserve's difficult position between managing inflation and preventing economic collapse, with potential future actions including yield curve control and bond market bailouts.
Gold Market Dynamics: The podcast emphasizes a significant shift in the global monetary landscape, with gold prices rising due to concerns about the dollar's value and increased central bank purchases, suggesting a potential long-term trend.
Inflation and Asset Prices: The conversation suggests that current high asset prices, including stocks, are a result of a prolonged inflationary cycle, with expectations of continued inflation impacting financial markets.
Short Selling and Market Liquidity: The challenges faced by short sellers in a market with excessive liquidity and speculative behavior are discussed, highlighting the distortion in asset valuations and the potential risks of a market correction.
Global Economic Shifts: The podcast notes the increasing move by countries like China and Russia to de-dollarize and accumulate gold, indicating a potential shift away from the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Investment Strategy and Caution: Listeners are advised to conduct their own research and remain cautious, as market conditions are unprecedented and predictions are uncertain, emphasizing the importance of avoiding overconfidence in financial forecasts.
Fiscal Policy and Government Spending: The discussion touches on the unsustainable nature of current government spending, with limited options for fiscal reform, and the potential consequences of continued fiscal irresponsibility.
Transcript
And so we're just really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like Jerome Powell is not in an enviable position. What is he going to do? Are they going to print to save the stock market and the economy and whatever breaks, whether it's regional banks or commercial real estate, or are they just going to let the country slip into some type of deflationary like massive debt default, which they won't do. So what'll happen is they're going to wind up doing yield curve control at some point. They're gonna have to bail out the bond market and our country is going to be going down the path that like a lot of emerging market countries have gone down which is going to be negative for the dollar which is what you know the gold market's probably already pricing in. Chris Irons quote the Raven author of Fringe Finance on Substack. It is so great to welcome you to the show. Great to see you in person. It's been almost 10 years. >> Yeah, nine years. >> It's been a long time and I'm thrilled to have you on. I saw you on X and I had to get you on. So, making your debut on the show, Chris, I know you watch the show. We always >> I do. >> I listen to it. >> Okay, you listen to it. Um, well, we always start the show with the big picture. Macro view, where you see things today as it relates to the markets and the economy, your framework in which you're looking at the world, where you see things headed, and as you know, you can take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture. >> I know from listening to you. First off, I'll say on the air what I said off the air, which is congratulations for like making the pivot from, you know, business insider to Yahoo to like going full, you know, Austrian economist conspiracy theorist with everybody else that's got common sense. So, >> your show is awesome. I love your guests. I love listening to it. I saw you just had Larry Leard on, >> which is awesome. >> Yeah. >> Who's a friend of mine. Um, my big picture macro view is that we are completely off the rails in unprecedented territory the likes of which we've never been in before. All types of things are breaking behind the scenes. You know, most notably visible in this like generational move in gold that you've seen over the last, you know, two years. So, the global monetary landscape is shifting. the Keynesian experiment seems to be like failing and uh the fiscal and monetary position of the country are both horrific and reprehensible. >> Okay, a few things I want to pull on there. Um you mentioned gold um which has just been ripping but also I just more of a curiosity like stocks have just been also at all-time highs. It doesn't quite make sense, does it? What do you make of >> It does when you just think that, you know, we're in this massive like 100red-year inflationary cycle. I mean, like the price of everything's going to go up. So, financial assets, you know, that's why your coffee is $10 today and our grandparents were paying five cents for it. So, you know, >> and we'll probably say to our great grandkids, "Oh, back in my day, I was paying $10 for my stock." >> Exactly. So, it's not that insane to see stocks where they are. It's just uh you know they're running things hot and they're going to get hotter here as the Fed cuts and as I'm suspecting we're going to have like a very sharp deflationary period of maybe like you know a month or like two months or 3 months or 6 months and then the Fed's going to have to come back in. I mean, we're already seeing it now, like real rates, so real rates in the economy have been positive for, you know, the better part of like two or three years now. And we have this enormous debt bubble outstanding, as I know that, you know, and everybody on your show has already said. Um, and at some point something is going to give that's a, you know, positive real interest rates has a corrosive effect on the consumer and on the economy in general. So it's this uh you know it's this thing that just slows the gears of the economy you know little by little until one day you wake up and again there's turmoil in regional banks or you know commercial real estate's collapsing or you know so bubbles have a way of finding a pin. I don't know what it's going to be first, but I know that there's a lot of places I suspect it might show up. Um, and then the Fed will unleash a barrage of money printing again. You know, the strange thing is the Fed has to work kind of the gas and the brake here right now >> because we're at this spot where inflation is at, you know, 2.8% or wherever it's at. Um, so you have, you know, they kind of have to choose a mandate whether >> and the mandates kind of are in there's a tension between the two mandates. >> Yeah. And uh, and so I'm not sure at any point in recent history we've had a Fed that's going to continue to cut interest rates while inflation is, you know, close to 3%. >> Um, and so we're just really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like Jerome Powell is not in an enviable position. he, you know, really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I mean, what is he gonna do? Are they going to print to save the stock market and the economy and whatever breaks, whether it's regional banks or commercial real estate, or are they just going to let the country slip into some type of deflationary like massive debt default, which they won't do. So, what'll happen is they're going to wind up doing yield curve control at some point. They're going to have to bail out the bond market, and our country is going to be going down the path that like a lot of emerging market countries have gone down. um which is going to be negative for the dollar which is what you know the gold market's probably already pricing in. Hm. Okay. So, we have the Fed meeting at the end of the month. I think everyone's consensus is they're going to cut, >> you think? Okay. >> I think so. >> So, like what do the cuts even do at this point? >> It's a good question because they operate on like, you know, a 12 to 18month lag, right? Which is something I found out the hard way because I was writing on my Substack a couple years ago that, you know, positive real rates are going to slow the economy now. tomorrow we're gonna wake up and things and that just didn't happen. You know, there was this excess of liquidity from COVID that uh even I think the San Francisco Fed wrote this big piece about that like they had underestimated the amount in savings that people had or the amount of credit and leverage people were allowed to take on. Um and that has finally like started to run dry. And so the same like lagging effect that monetary policy had when rates, you know, rose is still going to be there when they go to cut rates and, you know, we have some type of deflationary problem in whatever market that sends the stock market reeling next. Um, it'll be like in I was reading a note the other day. I published this on my Substack. There's a chart showing that like the market didn't bottom in most instances until the Fed started cutting, >> right? And so that that's where that like period of like limbo is going to be. Um >> so it does take, you know, so you're asking what's 25 basis points going to do at this point like nothing. I don't think anything. >> Yeah. And who's it going to benefit too? It's like >> well who's going to you know refinance at 25 basis points lower than they weren't going to do it now, right? It's >> And what relief is that going to give to people that have maxed out all their credit cards at 28%. >> You know, that's not going to do anything for people. >> You know what's interesting? I I feel like you have written about this or at least talked about this for the first time. It feels like Okay, I don't know. I feel like more people follow monetary policy or pay attention to the Fed than they have before. >> Yeah. >> Do you think that's fair to say? >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think Bitcoin has a lot to do with that. So we were talking about Bitcoin before we got started. >> I think one of the positives of Bitcoin is that it has ushered in a whole young generation of like you know completely insane like freaks of nature. You know these like late teens early 20s like psychopaths that are out there speculating and gambling on you know you know what Trump is going to say at his press conference on Khi and all this [ __ ] that whole like generation of people understands monetary policy when they normally wouldn't have and I think it's by virtue of the fact that to understand Bitcoin which is you know the hip trendy uh you know gold substitute for young people that they have to understand monetary policy otherwise you know it's like why does fixed supply matter why do these things matter so that's cool because most people I think most people in our generation and certainly like my parents um you you know, they didn't have time to [ __ ] learn about monetary policy, you know, like they went out, they went to work, they were too busy providing the goods and services that people need to like make the world work. So, you know, my dad's not going to get home from working 6 12 hour days at the post office and in the middle of cooking dinner be like, well, you know, what do you guys think about Alan Greenspan? You know, like do you think he's lying today at his press conference? Like, what did he mean when he said cut interest rates? Like, nobody nobody knew. So, now the secret's out. And the crazy thing is the last time that we had major Fed intervention, which was COVID, it was widely ridiculed. You know, like there's memes all over the internet of Jerome Powell sitting at a uh sitting at a printing press >> the the printing like dollar in the background and like >> you know so the Fed is being widely ridiculed because it has been laid bare >> how stupid it is when something like Neil Qashqari gets on 60 Minutes and says we have infinite money like and by the way you don't need to be a [ __ ] monetary policy expert to understand why that's a dumb statement like nobody has infinite anything. So let's just start there and then back our way into monetary policy. So I think this next goround psychologically, you know, people are I, you know, I think there could be a real loss of confidence in not just the Fed but in this whole model that the rest of the world is using and and I think it could be coming at a time where >> the BRICS nations and you know, China, Russia, all these other countries are now starting to embrace gold for trade. They're thinking about things like sound money. They're getting out of the dollar, you know, like gold is surpassing treasuries now as people's reserves. And so, it's a very interesting inflection point that we're at. One that feels unprecedented. It doesn't feel like it has over the last 10 years. I mean, I have been like bitching and moaning about this stuff for a long time. And for a long time, like nothing has happened. And then all of a sudden one day we woke up and like gold, you know, went from 1300 to 4,300 and is showing no signs of stopping. And China and Russia, who started ddollarizing back in 2022, I think, um, are all of a sudden out there buying tons and tons and tons of gold. And so that is coming at the same time as like in April when we had liberation day and our markets sold off. Like bonds sold off also with stocks. Like >> that's [ __ ] weird. That usually doesn't happen, right? Usually stocks sell off, people go into bonds, right? >> So that's like more like emerging market stuff there. So >> it feels like a very precarious moment in an unprecedented like point in history. >> Gold keeps setting new all-time highs, but price appreciation isn't the only way to profit from owning gold. Monetary Metals is redefining the future of precious metals investing. Instead of paying to store gold, imagine getting paid to own it. With monetary medals, you can earn up to 4% on your gold paid in physical gold. That's right. Your ounces grow each month, not just your paper balance. A yield on gold paid in gold means you're stacking more ounces every single month. And you still benefit if gold's prices rise. You're earning more gold every month and enjoying potential price appreciation at the same time. Go to monetary-medals.com/dullia to learn more and see how you can start earning 4% on your gold paid in gold. Okay, on gold, um, I just want to bring up an idea a guest brought up, and I have a feeling you're going to disagree with it, but that's okay. Is gold at risk of becoming like a meme stock with all this momentum, or does it make sense to you like these moves that we're seeing? I think it was up like 163 bucks today. I feel like every week I've talked about it, I'm like, "Oh, gold's at 3,600 today. Oh, it's 3,800. It keeps going up." >> Yeah. Is there any sort of risk that it could be almost a meme stock? >> I mean there, you know, I saw somebody tweeted this Saturday, right? Who was it? >> I can't remember. Somebody had just tweeted like gold could be a meme. Gold could be a meme stock. >> Well, okay. Danielle D. Martino Booth talked about it on the show. >> It wasn't her. Somebody else had just like put this out on Twitter. >> I don't know. >> All right. Not important. Yeah. I mean, look, to the extent that anything can get overhyped and anything can get overbought and anything could get, you know, anything can miss the mark like to the upside, right? Um, is it, you know, as likely to do that as something like, you know, GameStop? I mean, to call it a meme stock is, >> I think it's like the momentum or something behind it, >> right? it could become, you know, a a crowded consensus trade, but I don't think that we're there yet or anywhere near there. I think the buying is coming from central banks. And I think that, you know, look, gold, I think, was off like $100 on Friday. Today's Monday. It was bid back up through where it was and made new all-time highs. And gold mining stocks today were I think they were down like 7% on Friday and today they were only up like 2 or 3%. And so to me that's indicative of still kind of like climbing some wall of worry a little bit. >> Um >> but yeah I mean it's possible for anything to become a crowded trade. >> What do you when you say climbing the wall of worry? What do you mean by that? >> Meaning that gold mining stocks did nothing for so long that I think you know I don't think that they're a consensus like trade yet. I mean, you turn on CNBC and watch it all day. Are people on there like, can they not get enough of gold mining stocks? No. It gets like a token mention like here and there. You know, it's bizarre to me that the move in gold has not been reported on, you know, more than it has. Even Scott Bent yesterday or on Friday was at this conference and they asked him, he's like, "Yeah, you know, more buyers than sellers." It's like, look, Scott Bent is a seasoned professional. >> He's a macro guy, too. knows what the hell he's doing and you know that's not what he thinks about what's going on in gold that just says there's things going on behind the scenes that he doesn't want to talk about and whether it's the US's buying gold and taking delivery of gold or he knows it's China or whatever. Um, so the fact that it's not a bigger story on mainstream financial media, I think is bizarre. And I don't think that, you know, certainly don't think that we're at any point where it feels like, >> you know, it feels like there's this mass hysteria to buy gold at all. I mean, this could just be catching up to >> years of poor monetary policy that was not reflected in the price of gold for the, you know, whatever eight years or seven years that it's stayed between 1,000 and,500. >> Yeah. >> While we were printing a shitload of money. >> We're not a gold channel, but gold is definitely popular on this show. Um, I've told my audience this, but I've held my gold since 2011. That was a bad time to get in in August 2011. Um that was I had a few rough years there but um and you've been talking about gold for a long time. >> I have. >> So what do you make of the conversation now around the debasement trade? Like it seems like it's kind of going more mainstream or like >> more widely discussed on Wall Street where I feel like it was discussed by many many others >> for a long time before that. >> The thesis was always the purchasing power of the dollar is going to go lower. Argo the price of gold is going to go higher. I mean, just the same reason that the price of everything that has a relatively fixed supply and stays in, you know, relatively the same demand increases just so now just so happens now people are taking tons of delivery of gold in ways that they haven't before and silver and so you're getting I think the that additional demand in addition to, you know, the price of gold reflecting the loss of purchasing power in the dollar at the same time. Um, you know, but yeah, I mean, I've I've been talking about it for like 10 years because it just to me it just always made sense, you know. I don't 10 years later, I haven't had this come to Jesus moment where like modern monetary theory is like, oh, like, yeah, somebody just needed to explain it to me the right way. It's like the more I learn about it, the stupider it sounds. And again, I don't have a econ. So maybe that's the problem that I didn't come out of Yale or whatever, you know, department of Princeton that Krugman and Bernaki came out of together. >> Not a Keynesian. >> No, but I mean, you know, I was raised in a household where I, you know, I learned to save. I learned to underconume. And that is what took my two parents who worked, you know, I would say like lower to middle class jobs and afforded us the ability to always have a car, to always have food on the table, to always have a house. And, you know, my parents did well just by working hard and and saving and under consuming. And so, you know, when you first learn about the basics of balancing your checkbook and then you learn how, okay, like how does a balance sheet at a business work and you're like, okay, this is the same thing. And then it's like, all right, well, how does a balance sheet of, you know, uh, the state of New Jersey work? It's like, oh, it's kind of the same thing. And then all of a sudden you get to the sovereign level and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Everything, you know, everything's different. Like, we're allowed to do whatever we want. Debt doesn't matter. the whole like, you know, all of the rules that you've learned about like the natural laws of economics don't apply here. And that never made sense to me and it's never going to make sense to me. You know, I'm not sure. You want to put me in a room with Stephanie Kelton books and see if I can, you know, unfuck my head enough to try to like have that be like, oh yeah, the the deficit myth. Yeah. Like, oh, it's a myth. I get it. It's debt is money we owe to ourselves. You pay off debt by taking on more debt. Makes total sense. makes zero sense to me. But >> when you look at our fiscal picture, do you see a way out? What do you think is the ultimate endgame here? >> I don't know. I thought that we had a rare opportunity to try and really make I mean fiscally, if we're going to try to make sense of things, the idea would be to cut spending, right? >> Mhm. >> And so because I don't know how much more like you're going to be able to raise taxes uh before people just start leaving. I mean >> I mean oh my gosh in New York City, >> right? So I mean >> I want to get your take on that later too >> when this Well, you know what my take is. >> Well, you can give some spicy takes. >> I'm not going to be giving Zoran Mandami a round of applause. That's my take. Um you know, look there there's only It's like during the Biden administration, they were talking about an unrealized gains tax. Okay, which could be the dumbest [ __ ] idea I've ever heard of. It's like for the Democrats, no amount of taxation is enough. And you know, it's like they've never seen like, look, I was an English major in college. I've seen the laugher curve before. I understand that like at some point like taxes become regressive and like capital will flee, you know, whatever jurisdiction it is. I don't know why that's so difficult for, you know, some people to understand, but fiscally, you know, I don't know how much more room there is to raise taxes. I think if they had done, and I wrote an article about this on my Substack that just basically said, you know, the capital flight out of the US if they do that is going to be monstrous. You know, you're going to lose all these major corporations. You're going to lose all these billionaires. Like, they don't give a [ __ ] They got passports easily. >> Yeah. They got Malta passports. They can go wherever they want, whenever they want. They can hop on the yacht and live in international waters for the rest of, you know, eternity. And the people that will suffer from that are the people still living here in the US. So I think if fiscally the picture is going to get back in order that it has to be done from cutting spending and I thought that we had an opportunity >> Doge >> with Doge and you know at least the fact that he like campaigned on it and so it wouldn't have been a surprise to people that he would have hacked away at you know really hacked away at some huge line items. Um but really they didn't. They cut a negligible amount, $20 billion or whatever, and then Trump and Elon got into a fight and that was it. And now all of a sudden, you know, the courts, excuse me, the courts are overturning a lot of [ __ ] And, you know, most of a lot of these people are getting their jobs back. And so, the country's spending addiction is like a giant unstoppable machine that just continues incessantly. And it does seem that there's no way that it's ever going to stop. Um, nothing stops this train as Lyn Alden puts it. So, >> well, I mean, look at look at like look at Chris Christie a couple years ago held some like press conference. Now, Chris Chrissy, as far as I can remember, actually did a decent job of balancing the budget in New Jersey. And he went to a uh he held like a town hall about changes he was going to make in um teachers, pensions, and you know, a couple other things that he was doing to try to to try to balance things a little bit. And uh and he was just, you know, absolutely eaten alive by people. like there's, you know, people get scores of people get angry and furious, you know, and I remember him trying to reason with some woman like, "Hey, you know, we're we're just saying like you can't have the like platinum health care plan like for life, you know, some like $200,000 a year healthcare plan." and he's like, "We're going to move you to gold and like it expires when you're like, you know, 90 or something instead of some stupid like tiny change that really if it was you balancing your home finances, you realize, okay, like you have to have an uncomfortable little change here in order to underconume, in order to try to balance things out." And he was met with such like such a visceral, you know, insane reaction that well, you take something like that and you multiply like across the country and then you want to try to talk about like, all right, we're going to cut social security or, you know, we're going to try to cut like, you know, defense spending or something and it's just uh it seems impossible. What you need is you need a politician that's not a coward. And so far, the only one of those I've seen my entire life to ever run for president, I think, was Ron Paul. >> Oh, yeah. >> And and his son. >> You had him on your podcast, didn't you? >> I did. Yeah. >> Oh, I would love He would be a dream guest to get on the show. I'd love >> Dr. Paul. >> I'll give you the guy to contact. >> Yeah. Um, you're right. He is the only one in recent memory in our lifetime that ran on that. So, um, this also just brings me back to gold then. Nothing really alters the thesis then on gold the trade. >> It's like >> are we earlyings? Like where are we right now? >> It's like Larry says, you know, like I tell people that come into my gold fund, the only thing that could, you know, make this not work is if the government gets responsible with their spending >> and you do the probability of that. Yeah. >> So what do you think early innings then? Yeah, I think probably like, you know, look, it's difficult to handicap, but certainly it feels as though we're on the precipice of a big change. And this is something that I talked about. >> Yeah. What do you mean by that? >> Well, this is something I talked about for a long time. Like, you know, I'd have guests on my podcast back when I was doing it. people like Andy Sheckchman back in 2022, 2021 and we're talking about China and Russia ddollarizing and you know just the things changing in the background with the global monetary picture and the global economy um but things changing in a way that they're not immediately noticeable. When I started writing about China and Russia doll dollarizing, nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. you know, then all of a sudden when when we seized uh Russia's uh reserves as part of the sanctions for the war in Ukraine, then all of a sudden, you know, their ears perked up a little bit, our ears perked up a little bit more, and now all of a sudden it's been kind of hoisted here into the uh you know, into the main like picture a little bit more than it has ever been. And what we had always talked about was that at some point the world is going to call [ __ ] on the dollar and call [ __ ] on the country's finances essentially. And one day they're going to wake up and flip a switch and say, "Hey, like you know, oh, we said we had x amount of tons of gold. By the way, we have 100 times that." And like we're backing the yuan with gold or whatever. >> And so it just feels like we're on the precipice of some moment like that. Was there a moment for you? >> And this isn't like this isn't some like complex, you know, crazy 5D game theory thought process. It just seems like very logical, right? Like our country's been abusing the privilege of having the reserve currency for the better part of, you know, a half century. That has to end at some point, right? So when and how quickly I don't know but does kind of seem like we're moving in this one direction and at some point we won't be. At some point things are going to stop. At some point things are going to be different. And so, you know, everybody in the world of finance and all these macro analysts and all the people on TV, um, they're very happy with the status quo and they're happy with, you know, the age-old wisdom of whatever it is. You know, just buy the dip or, you know, the nothing's going to dethrow the dollar or it's, you know, the cleanest dirty shirt in the hamper, whatever. Um, but it just it doesn't last forever and I don't think it's going to be. And I think what we're seeing in gold now certainly like pretends that something's going on, right? Like can you remember a time where, you know, gold was making a move like it is now? I mean, I wasn't around in the 70s and the 80s, but you know, I've never seen anything like this, and I don't really know what it means, but it means something. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, you write fringe finance, which is one of the most popular substacks out there. >> I don't think it is, but >> yes, it is. It's from what I understand, it's definitely in the top for the finance substacks. >> Okay. >> And you and I first crossed, we crossed paths, I know in 2016 at the se conference, but even before that, like digitally online >> during Herbal Life. >> Yeah. >> Short selling. So, you kind of come from the shortselling world. Like, I actually don't know your full story. I know Philadelphia. you have roots in Philadelphia, but like how did you kind of get into this world and even back in that time period, how did you kind of >> I don't I just have never asked you so. >> So, and not many people have actually. So, um I started basically, you know, I went to college and I was bartending in Philly for a long time and uh I met somebody and I had always been like in invested in markets poorly, you know, just basically learning from just getting my face punched in all the time in markets. But, you know, Scott Trade was like one of the first discount brokerages I'd opened. I remember opening a Scott Trade account and [ __ ] around and finding all new creative ways to lose money. And um so I had been doing that since I was I don't know maybe 18 or 20 and just kind of as a hobby. And then I met somebody at the bar that I worked at who was working for a startup company that was a publicly listed company on the overthec counter markets. um you know just he was sitting at the bar one night. It was a slow night. Talked to him for an hour. He told me about the company. Thought it was a very cool idea. I got involved uh with the company. Wound up going company was in Niagara Falls, New York. Wound up going up to Niagara Falls, New York to work for the company. Um had, you know, invested some money into it, whatever little money I had at the time. Um done a bunch of, you know, due diligence, read, you know, the 10Ks, all the presentations, all this other stuff. Um, and at some point that company was, but before I worked for them, the company was sued by the SEC um, for uh, an issue with their accounting. They had they had like mismarked uh, some media credits that they had either as it was supposed to be fair value and they booked it at cost or the other way around. I don't even remember. But I remember talking to IR at the company and they were doing a horrific job of explaining it. And you know, to me, I kind of thought I had a good read on it that it was just like, you know, that it wasn't a nefarious act. It was more of a technicality. Um, you know, you can say what you want about that, but um I didn't think their IR was doing a good job conveying that to shareholders. So, I found the CEO's number and called him up and just said, "Hey, like let me come be your IR guy." And he said, "Okay." So I w up going up there and that was like the first place that I learned uh you know the first place I worked with securities lawyers, worked with actual seuite executives um you know planned like earnings calls was helping write you know 8ks 10ks and stuff um and then also at the same time was a money losing company with like a startup technology that short sellers you know love to just beat the [ __ ] out of. And so I spent most of my days actually on the phone with shareholders trying to refute arguments that >> from shorters from short sellers. Right. Exactly. >> Wow. Okay. >> So, um between that and between like, you know, sitting with securities lawyers and watching how they would write filings, the word choices that they used, you know, all those different things. >> There's probably a whole language to it, >> right? There is. There is. Um, so from there, um, I started to write as quote the raven kind of on the side while I was doing it. >> And you were totally anonymous at this time because I remember no one knew who you were. Yeah, >> 100%. >> I feel like I I swear we met when you were still anonymous, but maybe not. >> Maybe. Yeah, >> I feel like we did. And you kind of like hinted who you were. Anyway, >> but um so I had started kind of like writing on my own on Seeking Alpha basically because I was taking some of my pay in stock and I really I wasn't making a lot of money at all. And so I was just trying to earn some money on the side. I was writing about, you know, whatever. I knew I had to stay anonymous because like I wasn't doing anything wrong. I wasn't writing about the company I was working for or anything, but like I didn't want to conflate the two things together. So um as that company started to wind down because we weren't able to raise money. So eventually that company just ran out of money and became defunct um around the same time I had started reading reports by like uh Geo Investing by Muddy Waters uh all these reports on these China reverse takeovers that were happening at the time. Uh, so I would be, you know, sat up in my apartment there and reading these like extensive due diligence reports. And now with a little understanding of what I'm looking at, I'm reading these reports like this is this is incredible, you know? And then all of a sudden, I started reading the sellside analyst reports on the same companies, right? So you'd look at a company like, you know, a longweight petroleum or something and, you know, you'd read like Maxim Group like reiterating overweight buy $20 price target and then you'd see the geo investing report and it' be like we went to the [ __ ] factory and it doesn't exist. Like we went to China and there's nothing there, you know, like the rail spurs closed. They're not moving trucks in and out of the facility, whatever. And so I would look at the short seller report and I would look at the sellside analyst report. I'd be like, "Wow, like one of these people's full of [ __ ] this guy has like a nice branding and a name on it that I recognize. The other one is this boutique research shop. Like is it possible? And so over and over and over again started to read a bunch of reports that short sellers were doing and found 99 times out of 100 short sellers were doing way better work than anybody on the sell side was doing. And it's still the case. Short sellers do tremendously better work than most people on the sell side. So when that company went defunct, I came back to Philadelphia and saw that Geo Investing was right there in Philly. >> And I called up them and I said, "Hey, like you know, it's like the best due diligence I've ever seen. Like I'd love to come work for you. Like I love to write." And then I started working there. And that that was kind of like how things took off with me in shortelling. >> Amazing. Um, speaking of just shortelling, this is more of a curiosity. I was having this conversation with Tommy Thornton on the show and he was pointing out like right now the the basket of shorts that comes out from Goldman Sachs, the hedge fun basket, it's up like 38%. And so he was pointing out like a lot of short sellers have probably gotten squeezed out of the market and he was like that's actually really concerning because they're the natural buyers when things sell off. Do you think there are concerns like that right now when you look at like the levels of where asset stock prices are in particular? I don't know what the short selling industry is like today, but >> the problem is that like when I started, you would read like you'd read Greenlight's letter, right? >> David Einhorn, >> right? Yep. >> He was like Einhorn was one of the first people to like talk to me because I remember he was short Quest Core and I had started doing due diligence on Quest and I was like, "Oh, this this Actar thing is like the biggest [ __ ] scam I've ever seen." So you would read his letter and like his reasons for shorting something were perfect. It was like, you know, when Aman did NBA, what did he do? He looked under the hood at what NBA had, saw it was dog [ __ ] and said, "Okay, eventually this is going to zero." When Einhorn did Allied Capital, it was the same thing, right? Everything's mismarked. Everything's [ __ ] At some point, it's going to come crashing down. >> The problem is, and that's what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to short garbage that doesn't generate cash. >> Are a important part of the market. Well, they're they're the smartest people in the market, I think, in my opinion. Now, I'm from that ilk, so take that with a grain of salt. But the sharpest analysis that I read, you know, the stuff that I rush, >> they're so good. They're so sleuthy. >> The stuff I rush to read >> Yeah. >> are things that come out of, you know, all these boutiques that are doing short selling stuff. Um because, you know, that they're going to have an angle that, you know, regular sell >> Carson block stuff is iconic. Carson's I mean he's just >> and he's an exceptionally intelligent person too. So >> um lost my thread. What was >> Oh, sorry. Um we were talking about short sellers getting squeezed out of the market and like the importance of them. >> Yeah. So like back in the day, you know, if you were an Einhorn or an Aman or whatever, even, you know, when Citron got started, you would find these cash burning piles of [ __ ] that were either laced with fraud or eventually were going to collapse unto themselves like dying stars and it would be very easy. But all of a sudden, when the Fed has this unlimited liquidity spigot that it keeps pumping into markets, it allows for these massive distortions in names like these, which is what you're asking. Like, oh, shorts are getting carried out. Yeah, they're not getting carried out because they're wrong about, you know, their fundamental analysis. They're getting carried out because there's so much liquidity that like people don't even know where to put it. You know, there's $2 trillion dollars worth of dog [ __ ] in the crypto market with a zero bid. Okay? And I'm not talking about Ethereum or Bitcoin. Let's put those aside and say that they're like legitimate. Okay? >> So, let's say half the crypto market is legitimate, which is generous, but let's just say that. That means the other two trillion is zero bid crap with no I mean like something like Fartcoin, right? >> Fartcoin. something like that has a $50 billion market cap. There's no book value. There's no like if Apple goes down enough, somebody's going to buy it because the book value and the revenue or the cash flow stream are going to be worth something, right? So, you have all these assets that essentially are worth zero. There's no bid for overnight could go to zero, but they all have bids and there's $2 trillion of it out there. Why? Because there's so much liquidity that people don't know what the [ __ ] to do with it. There there's so much liquidity and cash out there in financial assets and there's so much speculation now >> and leverage >> in ways and leverage now in ways that there never was 10 or 20 years ago >> that everything finds a bid. So, you know, god forbid Fartcoin has a bid, but then you look at something like, you know, throw a dart at some cash burning spa pile of [ __ ] and you know they have these bids because at least they at least have a story. Like Farcoin doesn't even have a story, but you look at something like, you know, one of these spack companies, at least at least the lawyers take the time to write like business objectives in the 10K. They never happen and like the things always wind up burning cash and eventually, you know, getting crushed, but there's at least a suggestion that they are striving at some point to be slightly legitimate. And so, you know, shorts are fighting an uphill battle now in ways that they never have before, you know, and it's profoundly different now than it was 10 or 15 years ago because, you know, a you have the passive bid and you have all this dog [ __ ] that's indexed into, you know, these major funds, which you've talked about a million times. I've talked about a million times. You have more people in the options market now than you ever have before, which is essentially people just bidding things up with leverage and you have, you know, these insane gamma squeezes in in equities that have no business. It's what happened with game uh with GameStop. You had like a giant gamma squeeze. It's what happened with Tesla in 2019. Um, and so everything is so um unnatural and the bid feels so distorted and so unnatural that it makes sense that shorts are getting carried out because short sellers rely on common sense. They rely on the fundamentals to tell the story. They rely on the regulators to shut down fraud and those things don't always happen. Yeah, it I'm trying to it's hard for me to even think of like a recent examples of shorts that I know like the Nickeola truck when they were pushing down the hill. I can think of that one, but I I feel like when I was a reporter 105 years ago, like I feel like they're >> Look at look at her life. We were talking about right. So there's a quintessential example, right? Bill Aman puts on this 4hour presentation with Shane top to bottom that explains exactly how it works, >> right? And the key concept was whether or not the business was being driven 5149 more towards recruiting as opposed to sale of the retail product. Now anybody with half a brain knows that nobody is using those products. You know they're out there. Some people use them, but really what's being sold is the business opportunity, right? Predominantly that's the business model. >> Everybody knows it's a pyramid scheme. Everybody knows multi-level marketing is a [ __ ] business model and they know that it's a pyramid scheme. And Aman did a damn good they had Michael Johnson on video CEO Michael Johnson saying literally it's the recruiting that drives our business. They had him at some [ __ ] conference somewhere saying that, you know, and so here you have this business model which is essentially a mathematical impossibility at some point. And you know the FTC says, "Well, we have not determined that it was not a pyramid." and they find them $200 million and let them keep doing business. So, you know, when you rely on common sense and you rely on fundamentals, you know, sometimes just doesn't work. Money uh money talks, [ __ ] walks. You know, they were generating $500 million a year in free cash running their business model and so that they were able to buy back a lot of stock >> ganged up on by like Icon and others. So, that was a Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So what happened? Ultimately the thing went down 95%. Here we are 10 years later and and the company has basically like crumbled. So it turns out he was right but it was a pirick victory because he lost on the trade >> and um and that's just the way of markets. You know he got ganged up on like you said and >> right idea, wrong execution and that's >> I wonder if like he just did it and didn't do the whole big presentation and stuff if that would have been if that would have played out differently. Who knows? with it. >> Well, to be honest with you, I think that he had it right. >> Oh, yeah. >> And >> I think that, you know, you you had a probably a group of lobbyists and Sarbin or whoever was doing PR for Herbal Life at the time. Um, you know, they had brought on Alan Hoffman. I remember they had close ties to the government. Kla Harris was attorney general of California when this was going on. And there was a permanent injunction put in place in 1986 that halted Herbal Life from conducting the quintessential business operations that they were doing that were integral to running the business that at any second she could have shut the company down for uh for violating this permanent injunction. There's a great article about it written by a guy named Matthew Hanley. It's called Herbal Life and the 1986 California or Herbal Life in the California 1986 permanent injunction. Look up something like that. Um, but you know, it's not how it happened. Kla Harris was married to Douglas Mhof who was a partner at Venible who had represented Herbal Life before and everybody kind of knows each other and the government you know says all right we're not in the business of putting companies out of business. So it's like okay. So, you know, the idea of like how how egregiously do you have to be breaking the law to get shut down, you know, sometimes it has to be a giant public spectacle of a collapse for, you know, for those things to happen. But you, me, and everybody else with a brain knows that that business model is a mathematical impossibility. But he got it wrong. >> Yeah. Well, fast forward to today. How do you how do you think what do you think ultimately plays out in the market? It's like it seems like we've probably inflate Do you think we've inflated like the ultimate bubble here? Like what do you >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think um I think that when things finally like I think we saw this in April with Liberation Day and I'm just going on feeling here. So I don't have any like charts or facts or figures to back this up. My style is more style here. >> My style is talk [ __ ] now and then back it up later or you know pretend like I never said it. But I got this feeling in April that we were days away from some type of big problem in the bond market. I don't know if you remember, but after Liberation Day, the 10-year yield went like bananas. All bond yields did, but everybody was like obsessively watching the 10-year yield because as the market was selling off, bonds were selling off at the same time. Just felt like there's a lag, right? people's portfolios get smoked and people have like whatever a week to post collateral or public companies have a quarter before they have to tell people that hey like our book is permanently impaired or they have to find a bid to do like the Silicon Valley bank fire sale there's a little bit of a lag there and I got the impression that we were right there I got the impression that if the market had continued to stay volatile and Bent and Trump hadn't walked back coming out and saying that um you know we're going to put a 90-day pause on tariffs that I think we were going to see some real [ __ ] and I think that that is um what we're in for at some point. I think we're going to have a sharp deleveraging. You know, you're seeing this shakiness now in like commercial real estate in subprime autos and a lot of the regional banks again. You know, you saw what happened on Thursday. They were bid back Friday. They were bid back today. Let's just wait and see. A lot of these banks are stuffed with garbage. They're stuffed with subprime crap. They're stuffed with, you know, uh treasuries that they were buying when yields were zero. Um and so at some point that's going to happen again. And because of all of the layers of, you know, leverage and all of the times we've kicked the can down the road, that deleveraging is going to be sharper the longer we put it off. So, I think it almost happened in April and I think it will happen at some point and uh God only knows what happens then. >> Chris Irons quote the Raven, author of Fringe Finance, it's been so wonderful having you on the show, getting to spend time with you in person. Before I let you go, um why don't you let folks know where they can find more of your work and leave this audience with some parting thoughts? anything that you'd like to leave with them to the >> My parting thoughts are don't listen to anybody including me. >> I knew you were going to say that. >> Those are my parting thoughts. >> Yeah. >> You know, don't listen to anybody including me. Do your own research and like you're more than likely smart enough to be able to trust your own convictions because the people in financial media are not going to save you. The sellside analysts aren't going to save you. The Fed's not going to save you. the Treasury Secretary Terry >> Secretary is not going to save you either, >> right? 100%. So my piece of advice would be everybody's full of [ __ ] myself included, and just keep that in mind at all times. You know, I'm I actually have a draft of an article I'm going to publish this week just called avoid certainty because the number of tweets that I saw over the weekend with people that just say like gold is going to do this, Bitcoin is going to do this, like you know, equities are going to crash that, you know, the amount of certainty that's being pushed out there on message boards, on social media, you know, when really the truth is nobody has much of a clue. We've never really been here before in history. You know, I write in my article, if I woke up tomorrow and gold was at, you know, 50,000 or a thousand because some anomaly in the paper market or whatever, you know, I'd be surprised for 5 minutes and it would be like crazy. I'd be like, yeah, you know, kind of expected something like that to happen. So, like with COVID, one day, you know, the the headline that cases are rising isn't something that everybody ignores and the next day you wake up and everybody's fist fighting over [ __ ] toilet paper at Costco. So, things change very quickly. Things could be profoundly different tomorrow than they are today. By the time this podcast comes out, the market could be, you know, limit down. We like we have no idea. So, I would say there's a reason that the saying past performance is not indicative of future results is printed on every piece of financial literature ever. Like that's the quintessential disclaimer because it's the truth. So, no matter what you're looking at, just remember that like, you know, recency bias, what is going to happen isn't always going to be what has happened. Um, and that's it. Just keep your head on a swivel. You know, it's getting it's getting very strange out there. >> I think we'll leave it at that. Chris Irons, thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time.
'Quoth The Raven' Chris Irons: We Are Completely Off The Rails In Unprecedented Territory
Summary
Transcript
And so we're just really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like Jerome Powell is not in an enviable position. What is he going to do? Are they going to print to save the stock market and the economy and whatever breaks, whether it's regional banks or commercial real estate, or are they just going to let the country slip into some type of deflationary like massive debt default, which they won't do. So what'll happen is they're going to wind up doing yield curve control at some point. They're gonna have to bail out the bond market and our country is going to be going down the path that like a lot of emerging market countries have gone down which is going to be negative for the dollar which is what you know the gold market's probably already pricing in. Chris Irons quote the Raven author of Fringe Finance on Substack. It is so great to welcome you to the show. Great to see you in person. It's been almost 10 years. >> Yeah, nine years. >> It's been a long time and I'm thrilled to have you on. I saw you on X and I had to get you on. So, making your debut on the show, Chris, I know you watch the show. We always >> I do. >> I listen to it. >> Okay, you listen to it. Um, well, we always start the show with the big picture. Macro view, where you see things today as it relates to the markets and the economy, your framework in which you're looking at the world, where you see things headed, and as you know, you can take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture. >> I know from listening to you. First off, I'll say on the air what I said off the air, which is congratulations for like making the pivot from, you know, business insider to Yahoo to like going full, you know, Austrian economist conspiracy theorist with everybody else that's got common sense. So, >> your show is awesome. I love your guests. I love listening to it. I saw you just had Larry Leard on, >> which is awesome. >> Yeah. >> Who's a friend of mine. Um, my big picture macro view is that we are completely off the rails in unprecedented territory the likes of which we've never been in before. All types of things are breaking behind the scenes. You know, most notably visible in this like generational move in gold that you've seen over the last, you know, two years. So, the global monetary landscape is shifting. the Keynesian experiment seems to be like failing and uh the fiscal and monetary position of the country are both horrific and reprehensible. >> Okay, a few things I want to pull on there. Um you mentioned gold um which has just been ripping but also I just more of a curiosity like stocks have just been also at all-time highs. It doesn't quite make sense, does it? What do you make of >> It does when you just think that, you know, we're in this massive like 100red-year inflationary cycle. I mean, like the price of everything's going to go up. So, financial assets, you know, that's why your coffee is $10 today and our grandparents were paying five cents for it. So, you know, >> and we'll probably say to our great grandkids, "Oh, back in my day, I was paying $10 for my stock." >> Exactly. So, it's not that insane to see stocks where they are. It's just uh you know they're running things hot and they're going to get hotter here as the Fed cuts and as I'm suspecting we're going to have like a very sharp deflationary period of maybe like you know a month or like two months or 3 months or 6 months and then the Fed's going to have to come back in. I mean, we're already seeing it now, like real rates, so real rates in the economy have been positive for, you know, the better part of like two or three years now. And we have this enormous debt bubble outstanding, as I know that, you know, and everybody on your show has already said. Um, and at some point something is going to give that's a, you know, positive real interest rates has a corrosive effect on the consumer and on the economy in general. So it's this uh you know it's this thing that just slows the gears of the economy you know little by little until one day you wake up and again there's turmoil in regional banks or you know commercial real estate's collapsing or you know so bubbles have a way of finding a pin. I don't know what it's going to be first, but I know that there's a lot of places I suspect it might show up. Um, and then the Fed will unleash a barrage of money printing again. You know, the strange thing is the Fed has to work kind of the gas and the brake here right now >> because we're at this spot where inflation is at, you know, 2.8% or wherever it's at. Um, so you have, you know, they kind of have to choose a mandate whether >> and the mandates kind of are in there's a tension between the two mandates. >> Yeah. And uh, and so I'm not sure at any point in recent history we've had a Fed that's going to continue to cut interest rates while inflation is, you know, close to 3%. >> Um, and so we're just really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like Jerome Powell is not in an enviable position. he, you know, really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I mean, what is he gonna do? Are they going to print to save the stock market and the economy and whatever breaks, whether it's regional banks or commercial real estate, or are they just going to let the country slip into some type of deflationary like massive debt default, which they won't do. So, what'll happen is they're going to wind up doing yield curve control at some point. They're going to have to bail out the bond market, and our country is going to be going down the path that like a lot of emerging market countries have gone down. um which is going to be negative for the dollar which is what you know the gold market's probably already pricing in. Hm. Okay. So, we have the Fed meeting at the end of the month. I think everyone's consensus is they're going to cut, >> you think? Okay. >> I think so. >> So, like what do the cuts even do at this point? >> It's a good question because they operate on like, you know, a 12 to 18month lag, right? Which is something I found out the hard way because I was writing on my Substack a couple years ago that, you know, positive real rates are going to slow the economy now. tomorrow we're gonna wake up and things and that just didn't happen. You know, there was this excess of liquidity from COVID that uh even I think the San Francisco Fed wrote this big piece about that like they had underestimated the amount in savings that people had or the amount of credit and leverage people were allowed to take on. Um and that has finally like started to run dry. And so the same like lagging effect that monetary policy had when rates, you know, rose is still going to be there when they go to cut rates and, you know, we have some type of deflationary problem in whatever market that sends the stock market reeling next. Um, it'll be like in I was reading a note the other day. I published this on my Substack. There's a chart showing that like the market didn't bottom in most instances until the Fed started cutting, >> right? And so that that's where that like period of like limbo is going to be. Um >> so it does take, you know, so you're asking what's 25 basis points going to do at this point like nothing. I don't think anything. >> Yeah. And who's it going to benefit too? It's like >> well who's going to you know refinance at 25 basis points lower than they weren't going to do it now, right? It's >> And what relief is that going to give to people that have maxed out all their credit cards at 28%. >> You know, that's not going to do anything for people. >> You know what's interesting? I I feel like you have written about this or at least talked about this for the first time. It feels like Okay, I don't know. I feel like more people follow monetary policy or pay attention to the Fed than they have before. >> Yeah. >> Do you think that's fair to say? >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think Bitcoin has a lot to do with that. So we were talking about Bitcoin before we got started. >> I think one of the positives of Bitcoin is that it has ushered in a whole young generation of like you know completely insane like freaks of nature. You know these like late teens early 20s like psychopaths that are out there speculating and gambling on you know you know what Trump is going to say at his press conference on Khi and all this [ __ ] that whole like generation of people understands monetary policy when they normally wouldn't have and I think it's by virtue of the fact that to understand Bitcoin which is you know the hip trendy uh you know gold substitute for young people that they have to understand monetary policy otherwise you know it's like why does fixed supply matter why do these things matter so that's cool because most people I think most people in our generation and certainly like my parents um you you know, they didn't have time to [ __ ] learn about monetary policy, you know, like they went out, they went to work, they were too busy providing the goods and services that people need to like make the world work. So, you know, my dad's not going to get home from working 6 12 hour days at the post office and in the middle of cooking dinner be like, well, you know, what do you guys think about Alan Greenspan? You know, like do you think he's lying today at his press conference? Like, what did he mean when he said cut interest rates? Like, nobody nobody knew. So, now the secret's out. And the crazy thing is the last time that we had major Fed intervention, which was COVID, it was widely ridiculed. You know, like there's memes all over the internet of Jerome Powell sitting at a uh sitting at a printing press >> the the printing like dollar in the background and like >> you know so the Fed is being widely ridiculed because it has been laid bare >> how stupid it is when something like Neil Qashqari gets on 60 Minutes and says we have infinite money like and by the way you don't need to be a [ __ ] monetary policy expert to understand why that's a dumb statement like nobody has infinite anything. So let's just start there and then back our way into monetary policy. So I think this next goround psychologically, you know, people are I, you know, I think there could be a real loss of confidence in not just the Fed but in this whole model that the rest of the world is using and and I think it could be coming at a time where >> the BRICS nations and you know, China, Russia, all these other countries are now starting to embrace gold for trade. They're thinking about things like sound money. They're getting out of the dollar, you know, like gold is surpassing treasuries now as people's reserves. And so, it's a very interesting inflection point that we're at. One that feels unprecedented. It doesn't feel like it has over the last 10 years. I mean, I have been like bitching and moaning about this stuff for a long time. And for a long time, like nothing has happened. And then all of a sudden one day we woke up and like gold, you know, went from 1300 to 4,300 and is showing no signs of stopping. And China and Russia, who started ddollarizing back in 2022, I think, um, are all of a sudden out there buying tons and tons and tons of gold. And so that is coming at the same time as like in April when we had liberation day and our markets sold off. Like bonds sold off also with stocks. Like >> that's [ __ ] weird. That usually doesn't happen, right? Usually stocks sell off, people go into bonds, right? >> So that's like more like emerging market stuff there. So >> it feels like a very precarious moment in an unprecedented like point in history. >> Gold keeps setting new all-time highs, but price appreciation isn't the only way to profit from owning gold. Monetary Metals is redefining the future of precious metals investing. Instead of paying to store gold, imagine getting paid to own it. With monetary medals, you can earn up to 4% on your gold paid in physical gold. That's right. Your ounces grow each month, not just your paper balance. A yield on gold paid in gold means you're stacking more ounces every single month. And you still benefit if gold's prices rise. You're earning more gold every month and enjoying potential price appreciation at the same time. Go to monetary-medals.com/dullia to learn more and see how you can start earning 4% on your gold paid in gold. Okay, on gold, um, I just want to bring up an idea a guest brought up, and I have a feeling you're going to disagree with it, but that's okay. Is gold at risk of becoming like a meme stock with all this momentum, or does it make sense to you like these moves that we're seeing? I think it was up like 163 bucks today. I feel like every week I've talked about it, I'm like, "Oh, gold's at 3,600 today. Oh, it's 3,800. It keeps going up." >> Yeah. Is there any sort of risk that it could be almost a meme stock? >> I mean there, you know, I saw somebody tweeted this Saturday, right? Who was it? >> I can't remember. Somebody had just tweeted like gold could be a meme. Gold could be a meme stock. >> Well, okay. Danielle D. Martino Booth talked about it on the show. >> It wasn't her. Somebody else had just like put this out on Twitter. >> I don't know. >> All right. Not important. Yeah. I mean, look, to the extent that anything can get overhyped and anything can get overbought and anything could get, you know, anything can miss the mark like to the upside, right? Um, is it, you know, as likely to do that as something like, you know, GameStop? I mean, to call it a meme stock is, >> I think it's like the momentum or something behind it, >> right? it could become, you know, a a crowded consensus trade, but I don't think that we're there yet or anywhere near there. I think the buying is coming from central banks. And I think that, you know, look, gold, I think, was off like $100 on Friday. Today's Monday. It was bid back up through where it was and made new all-time highs. And gold mining stocks today were I think they were down like 7% on Friday and today they were only up like 2 or 3%. And so to me that's indicative of still kind of like climbing some wall of worry a little bit. >> Um >> but yeah I mean it's possible for anything to become a crowded trade. >> What do you when you say climbing the wall of worry? What do you mean by that? >> Meaning that gold mining stocks did nothing for so long that I think you know I don't think that they're a consensus like trade yet. I mean, you turn on CNBC and watch it all day. Are people on there like, can they not get enough of gold mining stocks? No. It gets like a token mention like here and there. You know, it's bizarre to me that the move in gold has not been reported on, you know, more than it has. Even Scott Bent yesterday or on Friday was at this conference and they asked him, he's like, "Yeah, you know, more buyers than sellers." It's like, look, Scott Bent is a seasoned professional. >> He's a macro guy, too. knows what the hell he's doing and you know that's not what he thinks about what's going on in gold that just says there's things going on behind the scenes that he doesn't want to talk about and whether it's the US's buying gold and taking delivery of gold or he knows it's China or whatever. Um, so the fact that it's not a bigger story on mainstream financial media, I think is bizarre. And I don't think that, you know, certainly don't think that we're at any point where it feels like, >> you know, it feels like there's this mass hysteria to buy gold at all. I mean, this could just be catching up to >> years of poor monetary policy that was not reflected in the price of gold for the, you know, whatever eight years or seven years that it's stayed between 1,000 and,500. >> Yeah. >> While we were printing a shitload of money. >> We're not a gold channel, but gold is definitely popular on this show. Um, I've told my audience this, but I've held my gold since 2011. That was a bad time to get in in August 2011. Um that was I had a few rough years there but um and you've been talking about gold for a long time. >> I have. >> So what do you make of the conversation now around the debasement trade? Like it seems like it's kind of going more mainstream or like >> more widely discussed on Wall Street where I feel like it was discussed by many many others >> for a long time before that. >> The thesis was always the purchasing power of the dollar is going to go lower. Argo the price of gold is going to go higher. I mean, just the same reason that the price of everything that has a relatively fixed supply and stays in, you know, relatively the same demand increases just so now just so happens now people are taking tons of delivery of gold in ways that they haven't before and silver and so you're getting I think the that additional demand in addition to, you know, the price of gold reflecting the loss of purchasing power in the dollar at the same time. Um, you know, but yeah, I mean, I've I've been talking about it for like 10 years because it just to me it just always made sense, you know. I don't 10 years later, I haven't had this come to Jesus moment where like modern monetary theory is like, oh, like, yeah, somebody just needed to explain it to me the right way. It's like the more I learn about it, the stupider it sounds. And again, I don't have a econ. So maybe that's the problem that I didn't come out of Yale or whatever, you know, department of Princeton that Krugman and Bernaki came out of together. >> Not a Keynesian. >> No, but I mean, you know, I was raised in a household where I, you know, I learned to save. I learned to underconume. And that is what took my two parents who worked, you know, I would say like lower to middle class jobs and afforded us the ability to always have a car, to always have food on the table, to always have a house. And, you know, my parents did well just by working hard and and saving and under consuming. And so, you know, when you first learn about the basics of balancing your checkbook and then you learn how, okay, like how does a balance sheet at a business work and you're like, okay, this is the same thing. And then it's like, all right, well, how does a balance sheet of, you know, uh, the state of New Jersey work? It's like, oh, it's kind of the same thing. And then all of a sudden you get to the sovereign level and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Everything, you know, everything's different. Like, we're allowed to do whatever we want. Debt doesn't matter. the whole like, you know, all of the rules that you've learned about like the natural laws of economics don't apply here. And that never made sense to me and it's never going to make sense to me. You know, I'm not sure. You want to put me in a room with Stephanie Kelton books and see if I can, you know, unfuck my head enough to try to like have that be like, oh yeah, the the deficit myth. Yeah. Like, oh, it's a myth. I get it. It's debt is money we owe to ourselves. You pay off debt by taking on more debt. Makes total sense. makes zero sense to me. But >> when you look at our fiscal picture, do you see a way out? What do you think is the ultimate endgame here? >> I don't know. I thought that we had a rare opportunity to try and really make I mean fiscally, if we're going to try to make sense of things, the idea would be to cut spending, right? >> Mhm. >> And so because I don't know how much more like you're going to be able to raise taxes uh before people just start leaving. I mean >> I mean oh my gosh in New York City, >> right? So I mean >> I want to get your take on that later too >> when this Well, you know what my take is. >> Well, you can give some spicy takes. >> I'm not going to be giving Zoran Mandami a round of applause. That's my take. Um you know, look there there's only It's like during the Biden administration, they were talking about an unrealized gains tax. Okay, which could be the dumbest [ __ ] idea I've ever heard of. It's like for the Democrats, no amount of taxation is enough. And you know, it's like they've never seen like, look, I was an English major in college. I've seen the laugher curve before. I understand that like at some point like taxes become regressive and like capital will flee, you know, whatever jurisdiction it is. I don't know why that's so difficult for, you know, some people to understand, but fiscally, you know, I don't know how much more room there is to raise taxes. I think if they had done, and I wrote an article about this on my Substack that just basically said, you know, the capital flight out of the US if they do that is going to be monstrous. You know, you're going to lose all these major corporations. You're going to lose all these billionaires. Like, they don't give a [ __ ] They got passports easily. >> Yeah. They got Malta passports. They can go wherever they want, whenever they want. They can hop on the yacht and live in international waters for the rest of, you know, eternity. And the people that will suffer from that are the people still living here in the US. So I think if fiscally the picture is going to get back in order that it has to be done from cutting spending and I thought that we had an opportunity >> Doge >> with Doge and you know at least the fact that he like campaigned on it and so it wouldn't have been a surprise to people that he would have hacked away at you know really hacked away at some huge line items. Um but really they didn't. They cut a negligible amount, $20 billion or whatever, and then Trump and Elon got into a fight and that was it. And now all of a sudden, you know, the courts, excuse me, the courts are overturning a lot of [ __ ] And, you know, most of a lot of these people are getting their jobs back. And so, the country's spending addiction is like a giant unstoppable machine that just continues incessantly. And it does seem that there's no way that it's ever going to stop. Um, nothing stops this train as Lyn Alden puts it. So, >> well, I mean, look at look at like look at Chris Christie a couple years ago held some like press conference. Now, Chris Chrissy, as far as I can remember, actually did a decent job of balancing the budget in New Jersey. And he went to a uh he held like a town hall about changes he was going to make in um teachers, pensions, and you know, a couple other things that he was doing to try to to try to balance things a little bit. And uh and he was just, you know, absolutely eaten alive by people. like there's, you know, people get scores of people get angry and furious, you know, and I remember him trying to reason with some woman like, "Hey, you know, we're we're just saying like you can't have the like platinum health care plan like for life, you know, some like $200,000 a year healthcare plan." and he's like, "We're going to move you to gold and like it expires when you're like, you know, 90 or something instead of some stupid like tiny change that really if it was you balancing your home finances, you realize, okay, like you have to have an uncomfortable little change here in order to underconume, in order to try to balance things out." And he was met with such like such a visceral, you know, insane reaction that well, you take something like that and you multiply like across the country and then you want to try to talk about like, all right, we're going to cut social security or, you know, we're going to try to cut like, you know, defense spending or something and it's just uh it seems impossible. What you need is you need a politician that's not a coward. And so far, the only one of those I've seen my entire life to ever run for president, I think, was Ron Paul. >> Oh, yeah. >> And and his son. >> You had him on your podcast, didn't you? >> I did. Yeah. >> Oh, I would love He would be a dream guest to get on the show. I'd love >> Dr. Paul. >> I'll give you the guy to contact. >> Yeah. Um, you're right. He is the only one in recent memory in our lifetime that ran on that. So, um, this also just brings me back to gold then. Nothing really alters the thesis then on gold the trade. >> It's like >> are we earlyings? Like where are we right now? >> It's like Larry says, you know, like I tell people that come into my gold fund, the only thing that could, you know, make this not work is if the government gets responsible with their spending >> and you do the probability of that. Yeah. >> So what do you think early innings then? Yeah, I think probably like, you know, look, it's difficult to handicap, but certainly it feels as though we're on the precipice of a big change. And this is something that I talked about. >> Yeah. What do you mean by that? >> Well, this is something I talked about for a long time. Like, you know, I'd have guests on my podcast back when I was doing it. people like Andy Sheckchman back in 2022, 2021 and we're talking about China and Russia ddollarizing and you know just the things changing in the background with the global monetary picture and the global economy um but things changing in a way that they're not immediately noticeable. When I started writing about China and Russia doll dollarizing, nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. you know, then all of a sudden when when we seized uh Russia's uh reserves as part of the sanctions for the war in Ukraine, then all of a sudden, you know, their ears perked up a little bit, our ears perked up a little bit more, and now all of a sudden it's been kind of hoisted here into the uh you know, into the main like picture a little bit more than it has ever been. And what we had always talked about was that at some point the world is going to call [ __ ] on the dollar and call [ __ ] on the country's finances essentially. And one day they're going to wake up and flip a switch and say, "Hey, like you know, oh, we said we had x amount of tons of gold. By the way, we have 100 times that." And like we're backing the yuan with gold or whatever. >> And so it just feels like we're on the precipice of some moment like that. Was there a moment for you? >> And this isn't like this isn't some like complex, you know, crazy 5D game theory thought process. It just seems like very logical, right? Like our country's been abusing the privilege of having the reserve currency for the better part of, you know, a half century. That has to end at some point, right? So when and how quickly I don't know but does kind of seem like we're moving in this one direction and at some point we won't be. At some point things are going to stop. At some point things are going to be different. And so, you know, everybody in the world of finance and all these macro analysts and all the people on TV, um, they're very happy with the status quo and they're happy with, you know, the age-old wisdom of whatever it is. You know, just buy the dip or, you know, the nothing's going to dethrow the dollar or it's, you know, the cleanest dirty shirt in the hamper, whatever. Um, but it just it doesn't last forever and I don't think it's going to be. And I think what we're seeing in gold now certainly like pretends that something's going on, right? Like can you remember a time where, you know, gold was making a move like it is now? I mean, I wasn't around in the 70s and the 80s, but you know, I've never seen anything like this, and I don't really know what it means, but it means something. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, you write fringe finance, which is one of the most popular substacks out there. >> I don't think it is, but >> yes, it is. It's from what I understand, it's definitely in the top for the finance substacks. >> Okay. >> And you and I first crossed, we crossed paths, I know in 2016 at the se conference, but even before that, like digitally online >> during Herbal Life. >> Yeah. >> Short selling. So, you kind of come from the shortselling world. Like, I actually don't know your full story. I know Philadelphia. you have roots in Philadelphia, but like how did you kind of get into this world and even back in that time period, how did you kind of >> I don't I just have never asked you so. >> So, and not many people have actually. So, um I started basically, you know, I went to college and I was bartending in Philly for a long time and uh I met somebody and I had always been like in invested in markets poorly, you know, just basically learning from just getting my face punched in all the time in markets. But, you know, Scott Trade was like one of the first discount brokerages I'd opened. I remember opening a Scott Trade account and [ __ ] around and finding all new creative ways to lose money. And um so I had been doing that since I was I don't know maybe 18 or 20 and just kind of as a hobby. And then I met somebody at the bar that I worked at who was working for a startup company that was a publicly listed company on the overthec counter markets. um you know just he was sitting at the bar one night. It was a slow night. Talked to him for an hour. He told me about the company. Thought it was a very cool idea. I got involved uh with the company. Wound up going company was in Niagara Falls, New York. Wound up going up to Niagara Falls, New York to work for the company. Um had, you know, invested some money into it, whatever little money I had at the time. Um done a bunch of, you know, due diligence, read, you know, the 10Ks, all the presentations, all this other stuff. Um, and at some point that company was, but before I worked for them, the company was sued by the SEC um, for uh, an issue with their accounting. They had they had like mismarked uh, some media credits that they had either as it was supposed to be fair value and they booked it at cost or the other way around. I don't even remember. But I remember talking to IR at the company and they were doing a horrific job of explaining it. And you know, to me, I kind of thought I had a good read on it that it was just like, you know, that it wasn't a nefarious act. It was more of a technicality. Um, you know, you can say what you want about that, but um I didn't think their IR was doing a good job conveying that to shareholders. So, I found the CEO's number and called him up and just said, "Hey, like let me come be your IR guy." And he said, "Okay." So I w up going up there and that was like the first place that I learned uh you know the first place I worked with securities lawyers, worked with actual seuite executives um you know planned like earnings calls was helping write you know 8ks 10ks and stuff um and then also at the same time was a money losing company with like a startup technology that short sellers you know love to just beat the [ __ ] out of. And so I spent most of my days actually on the phone with shareholders trying to refute arguments that >> from shorters from short sellers. Right. Exactly. >> Wow. Okay. >> So, um between that and between like, you know, sitting with securities lawyers and watching how they would write filings, the word choices that they used, you know, all those different things. >> There's probably a whole language to it, >> right? There is. There is. Um, so from there, um, I started to write as quote the raven kind of on the side while I was doing it. >> And you were totally anonymous at this time because I remember no one knew who you were. Yeah, >> 100%. >> I feel like I I swear we met when you were still anonymous, but maybe not. >> Maybe. Yeah, >> I feel like we did. And you kind of like hinted who you were. Anyway, >> but um so I had started kind of like writing on my own on Seeking Alpha basically because I was taking some of my pay in stock and I really I wasn't making a lot of money at all. And so I was just trying to earn some money on the side. I was writing about, you know, whatever. I knew I had to stay anonymous because like I wasn't doing anything wrong. I wasn't writing about the company I was working for or anything, but like I didn't want to conflate the two things together. So um as that company started to wind down because we weren't able to raise money. So eventually that company just ran out of money and became defunct um around the same time I had started reading reports by like uh Geo Investing by Muddy Waters uh all these reports on these China reverse takeovers that were happening at the time. Uh, so I would be, you know, sat up in my apartment there and reading these like extensive due diligence reports. And now with a little understanding of what I'm looking at, I'm reading these reports like this is this is incredible, you know? And then all of a sudden, I started reading the sellside analyst reports on the same companies, right? So you'd look at a company like, you know, a longweight petroleum or something and, you know, you'd read like Maxim Group like reiterating overweight buy $20 price target and then you'd see the geo investing report and it' be like we went to the [ __ ] factory and it doesn't exist. Like we went to China and there's nothing there, you know, like the rail spurs closed. They're not moving trucks in and out of the facility, whatever. And so I would look at the short seller report and I would look at the sellside analyst report. I'd be like, "Wow, like one of these people's full of [ __ ] this guy has like a nice branding and a name on it that I recognize. The other one is this boutique research shop. Like is it possible? And so over and over and over again started to read a bunch of reports that short sellers were doing and found 99 times out of 100 short sellers were doing way better work than anybody on the sell side was doing. And it's still the case. Short sellers do tremendously better work than most people on the sell side. So when that company went defunct, I came back to Philadelphia and saw that Geo Investing was right there in Philly. >> And I called up them and I said, "Hey, like you know, it's like the best due diligence I've ever seen. Like I'd love to come work for you. Like I love to write." And then I started working there. And that that was kind of like how things took off with me in shortelling. >> Amazing. Um, speaking of just shortelling, this is more of a curiosity. I was having this conversation with Tommy Thornton on the show and he was pointing out like right now the the basket of shorts that comes out from Goldman Sachs, the hedge fun basket, it's up like 38%. And so he was pointing out like a lot of short sellers have probably gotten squeezed out of the market and he was like that's actually really concerning because they're the natural buyers when things sell off. Do you think there are concerns like that right now when you look at like the levels of where asset stock prices are in particular? I don't know what the short selling industry is like today, but >> the problem is that like when I started, you would read like you'd read Greenlight's letter, right? >> David Einhorn, >> right? Yep. >> He was like Einhorn was one of the first people to like talk to me because I remember he was short Quest Core and I had started doing due diligence on Quest and I was like, "Oh, this this Actar thing is like the biggest [ __ ] scam I've ever seen." So you would read his letter and like his reasons for shorting something were perfect. It was like, you know, when Aman did NBA, what did he do? He looked under the hood at what NBA had, saw it was dog [ __ ] and said, "Okay, eventually this is going to zero." When Einhorn did Allied Capital, it was the same thing, right? Everything's mismarked. Everything's [ __ ] At some point, it's going to come crashing down. >> The problem is, and that's what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to short garbage that doesn't generate cash. >> Are a important part of the market. Well, they're they're the smartest people in the market, I think, in my opinion. Now, I'm from that ilk, so take that with a grain of salt. But the sharpest analysis that I read, you know, the stuff that I rush, >> they're so good. They're so sleuthy. >> The stuff I rush to read >> Yeah. >> are things that come out of, you know, all these boutiques that are doing short selling stuff. Um because, you know, that they're going to have an angle that, you know, regular sell >> Carson block stuff is iconic. Carson's I mean he's just >> and he's an exceptionally intelligent person too. So >> um lost my thread. What was >> Oh, sorry. Um we were talking about short sellers getting squeezed out of the market and like the importance of them. >> Yeah. So like back in the day, you know, if you were an Einhorn or an Aman or whatever, even, you know, when Citron got started, you would find these cash burning piles of [ __ ] that were either laced with fraud or eventually were going to collapse unto themselves like dying stars and it would be very easy. But all of a sudden, when the Fed has this unlimited liquidity spigot that it keeps pumping into markets, it allows for these massive distortions in names like these, which is what you're asking. Like, oh, shorts are getting carried out. Yeah, they're not getting carried out because they're wrong about, you know, their fundamental analysis. They're getting carried out because there's so much liquidity that like people don't even know where to put it. You know, there's $2 trillion dollars worth of dog [ __ ] in the crypto market with a zero bid. Okay? And I'm not talking about Ethereum or Bitcoin. Let's put those aside and say that they're like legitimate. Okay? >> So, let's say half the crypto market is legitimate, which is generous, but let's just say that. That means the other two trillion is zero bid crap with no I mean like something like Fartcoin, right? >> Fartcoin. something like that has a $50 billion market cap. There's no book value. There's no like if Apple goes down enough, somebody's going to buy it because the book value and the revenue or the cash flow stream are going to be worth something, right? So, you have all these assets that essentially are worth zero. There's no bid for overnight could go to zero, but they all have bids and there's $2 trillion of it out there. Why? Because there's so much liquidity that people don't know what the [ __ ] to do with it. There there's so much liquidity and cash out there in financial assets and there's so much speculation now >> and leverage >> in ways and leverage now in ways that there never was 10 or 20 years ago >> that everything finds a bid. So, you know, god forbid Fartcoin has a bid, but then you look at something like, you know, throw a dart at some cash burning spa pile of [ __ ] and you know they have these bids because at least they at least have a story. Like Farcoin doesn't even have a story, but you look at something like, you know, one of these spack companies, at least at least the lawyers take the time to write like business objectives in the 10K. They never happen and like the things always wind up burning cash and eventually, you know, getting crushed, but there's at least a suggestion that they are striving at some point to be slightly legitimate. And so, you know, shorts are fighting an uphill battle now in ways that they never have before, you know, and it's profoundly different now than it was 10 or 15 years ago because, you know, a you have the passive bid and you have all this dog [ __ ] that's indexed into, you know, these major funds, which you've talked about a million times. I've talked about a million times. You have more people in the options market now than you ever have before, which is essentially people just bidding things up with leverage and you have, you know, these insane gamma squeezes in in equities that have no business. It's what happened with game uh with GameStop. You had like a giant gamma squeeze. It's what happened with Tesla in 2019. Um, and so everything is so um unnatural and the bid feels so distorted and so unnatural that it makes sense that shorts are getting carried out because short sellers rely on common sense. They rely on the fundamentals to tell the story. They rely on the regulators to shut down fraud and those things don't always happen. Yeah, it I'm trying to it's hard for me to even think of like a recent examples of shorts that I know like the Nickeola truck when they were pushing down the hill. I can think of that one, but I I feel like when I was a reporter 105 years ago, like I feel like they're >> Look at look at her life. We were talking about right. So there's a quintessential example, right? Bill Aman puts on this 4hour presentation with Shane top to bottom that explains exactly how it works, >> right? And the key concept was whether or not the business was being driven 5149 more towards recruiting as opposed to sale of the retail product. Now anybody with half a brain knows that nobody is using those products. You know they're out there. Some people use them, but really what's being sold is the business opportunity, right? Predominantly that's the business model. >> Everybody knows it's a pyramid scheme. Everybody knows multi-level marketing is a [ __ ] business model and they know that it's a pyramid scheme. And Aman did a damn good they had Michael Johnson on video CEO Michael Johnson saying literally it's the recruiting that drives our business. They had him at some [ __ ] conference somewhere saying that, you know, and so here you have this business model which is essentially a mathematical impossibility at some point. And you know the FTC says, "Well, we have not determined that it was not a pyramid." and they find them $200 million and let them keep doing business. So, you know, when you rely on common sense and you rely on fundamentals, you know, sometimes just doesn't work. Money uh money talks, [ __ ] walks. You know, they were generating $500 million a year in free cash running their business model and so that they were able to buy back a lot of stock >> ganged up on by like Icon and others. So, that was a Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So what happened? Ultimately the thing went down 95%. Here we are 10 years later and and the company has basically like crumbled. So it turns out he was right but it was a pirick victory because he lost on the trade >> and um and that's just the way of markets. You know he got ganged up on like you said and >> right idea, wrong execution and that's >> I wonder if like he just did it and didn't do the whole big presentation and stuff if that would have been if that would have played out differently. Who knows? with it. >> Well, to be honest with you, I think that he had it right. >> Oh, yeah. >> And >> I think that, you know, you you had a probably a group of lobbyists and Sarbin or whoever was doing PR for Herbal Life at the time. Um, you know, they had brought on Alan Hoffman. I remember they had close ties to the government. Kla Harris was attorney general of California when this was going on. And there was a permanent injunction put in place in 1986 that halted Herbal Life from conducting the quintessential business operations that they were doing that were integral to running the business that at any second she could have shut the company down for uh for violating this permanent injunction. There's a great article about it written by a guy named Matthew Hanley. It's called Herbal Life and the 1986 California or Herbal Life in the California 1986 permanent injunction. Look up something like that. Um, but you know, it's not how it happened. Kla Harris was married to Douglas Mhof who was a partner at Venible who had represented Herbal Life before and everybody kind of knows each other and the government you know says all right we're not in the business of putting companies out of business. So it's like okay. So, you know, the idea of like how how egregiously do you have to be breaking the law to get shut down, you know, sometimes it has to be a giant public spectacle of a collapse for, you know, for those things to happen. But you, me, and everybody else with a brain knows that that business model is a mathematical impossibility. But he got it wrong. >> Yeah. Well, fast forward to today. How do you how do you think what do you think ultimately plays out in the market? It's like it seems like we've probably inflate Do you think we've inflated like the ultimate bubble here? Like what do you >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think um I think that when things finally like I think we saw this in April with Liberation Day and I'm just going on feeling here. So I don't have any like charts or facts or figures to back this up. My style is more style here. >> My style is talk [ __ ] now and then back it up later or you know pretend like I never said it. But I got this feeling in April that we were days away from some type of big problem in the bond market. I don't know if you remember, but after Liberation Day, the 10-year yield went like bananas. All bond yields did, but everybody was like obsessively watching the 10-year yield because as the market was selling off, bonds were selling off at the same time. Just felt like there's a lag, right? people's portfolios get smoked and people have like whatever a week to post collateral or public companies have a quarter before they have to tell people that hey like our book is permanently impaired or they have to find a bid to do like the Silicon Valley bank fire sale there's a little bit of a lag there and I got the impression that we were right there I got the impression that if the market had continued to stay volatile and Bent and Trump hadn't walked back coming out and saying that um you know we're going to put a 90-day pause on tariffs that I think we were going to see some real [ __ ] and I think that that is um what we're in for at some point. I think we're going to have a sharp deleveraging. You know, you're seeing this shakiness now in like commercial real estate in subprime autos and a lot of the regional banks again. You know, you saw what happened on Thursday. They were bid back Friday. They were bid back today. Let's just wait and see. A lot of these banks are stuffed with garbage. They're stuffed with subprime crap. They're stuffed with, you know, uh treasuries that they were buying when yields were zero. Um and so at some point that's going to happen again. And because of all of the layers of, you know, leverage and all of the times we've kicked the can down the road, that deleveraging is going to be sharper the longer we put it off. So, I think it almost happened in April and I think it will happen at some point and uh God only knows what happens then. >> Chris Irons quote the Raven, author of Fringe Finance, it's been so wonderful having you on the show, getting to spend time with you in person. Before I let you go, um why don't you let folks know where they can find more of your work and leave this audience with some parting thoughts? anything that you'd like to leave with them to the >> My parting thoughts are don't listen to anybody including me. >> I knew you were going to say that. >> Those are my parting thoughts. >> Yeah. >> You know, don't listen to anybody including me. Do your own research and like you're more than likely smart enough to be able to trust your own convictions because the people in financial media are not going to save you. The sellside analysts aren't going to save you. The Fed's not going to save you. the Treasury Secretary Terry >> Secretary is not going to save you either, >> right? 100%. So my piece of advice would be everybody's full of [ __ ] myself included, and just keep that in mind at all times. You know, I'm I actually have a draft of an article I'm going to publish this week just called avoid certainty because the number of tweets that I saw over the weekend with people that just say like gold is going to do this, Bitcoin is going to do this, like you know, equities are going to crash that, you know, the amount of certainty that's being pushed out there on message boards, on social media, you know, when really the truth is nobody has much of a clue. We've never really been here before in history. You know, I write in my article, if I woke up tomorrow and gold was at, you know, 50,000 or a thousand because some anomaly in the paper market or whatever, you know, I'd be surprised for 5 minutes and it would be like crazy. I'd be like, yeah, you know, kind of expected something like that to happen. So, like with COVID, one day, you know, the the headline that cases are rising isn't something that everybody ignores and the next day you wake up and everybody's fist fighting over [ __ ] toilet paper at Costco. So, things change very quickly. Things could be profoundly different tomorrow than they are today. By the time this podcast comes out, the market could be, you know, limit down. We like we have no idea. So, I would say there's a reason that the saying past performance is not indicative of future results is printed on every piece of financial literature ever. Like that's the quintessential disclaimer because it's the truth. So, no matter what you're looking at, just remember that like, you know, recency bias, what is going to happen isn't always going to be what has happened. Um, and that's it. Just keep your head on a swivel. You know, it's getting it's getting very strange out there. >> I think we'll leave it at that. Chris Irons, thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time.